sushi-- "fuji tower" roll at fuji grill on maple

perfect cure for a shitty week

We have some sort of Animal. If it is quiet in the living room, occasionally you can hear a persistent irregular scratching noise. It's familiar to me; I grew up in an old farmhouse in the country. We had mice in the walls in the winter; in the summer they'd move back outside and do their thing. The myriad cats we had occasionally caught one or two, but mostly left them be. Mice don't hibernate; they're like squirrels and other small rodents, and hoard food that they live off during cold months, so they are active throughout the year, and even build tunnels in snow.
(Ominously, rats are also active all winter, and I saw one a couple of weeks ago, a few blocks away, as I drove home from practice one night: I glimpsed it very clearly as it skittered across the road, not hopping or jumping like a rabbit or squirrel, it was clearly a rat, probably seven inches long, with a long naked tail behind it and a running gait, not a lope. But I think a rat in our house would be much louder than this.)

So there's an Animal. I have heard it on and off for a while, but tonight Z finally heard it. His attention span is longer than mine, as are his problem-solving skills, so it is marginally more likely that he will do something about this than me. (Worth mentioning, he was also not raised as a hillbilly, so his not-minding-this-sort-of-thing instincts are likewise less-developed.)
For tonight, though, our solution has been to throw the cat up the stairs and hope that the mysterious scratching noises are why she has been so fascinated with the attic of late.

I have a dilemma and I need to consult the creative brains of (e:strip)pers.
I am bouting on March 7th. The team we are bouting against is possibly the funnest team in the league. (With the possible exception of my own-- we definitely have drafted a whole lotta fun in the last couple years.) Tonight they skated against another team, and for their warmup, they all wore fake adhesive moustaches.
They also have a thing where they almost always skate with underwear as outerwear. One of them skated tonight in hot pants that were metallic American Flag lam�. Which is awesome since her hind end is like a size 20, and fabulous. It's just this thing. They all wear panties with hilarious slogans.

I desperately must have the most festive underpants ever for the March 7th bout. But I am stumped. What on earth can I wear??? What on earth can top metallic American flag lam�?

So far my only idea is to embroider a moustache on the front of a pair of underpants, because I think that would be hilarious. I don't necessarily understand the moustache meme, but I love moustache rides as much as any red-blooded American woman (oh I do love them), so, it seems appropriate.
But what should I write on the back of them, in that case??

I bought a pair of red lacy ruffle panties to wear under my uniform (it is royal blue, with red and yellow in the logo), but Z pointed out, accurately, that it looked odd-- the uniform this year is a field hockey uniform, very sporty, very clean lines. Ruffle undies just look... sort of... out of place.
So what should I wear??

I don't know. I can buy something if it comes promptly, but I might have better luck making something. (Yes, I have sewed underpants before. They're not too terribly challenging, though my shape means I often have to add a drawstring because elastic is not enough to withstand the smooth curves of my chubbeh belleh in athletic motion.)

I don't know. Help me. Advise me, o (e:peeps).


oh p.s. I was totally gonna buy (e:zobar) the Google Phone for Valentine's Day even though we don't really celebrate V-Day that much but he totally beat me to it and bought it for himself. It's OK, I wouldn't have known what to do about our cellphone plans. The solution seems to be giving his old iPhone to his mom and putting her on my family plan. Well, why not, right?

I Facebook too much. Livejournal is boring, and I blather on way too long there. All my other blogs are lapsed and inactive. I am burned-out on blogging, I think, and yet, I am completely unable to keep my online mouth shut.
Oh yes! (e:strip)! I think of you all often, and then, don't come. I apologize for that.

So I will share a recipe here, to chase away the winter blues a little bit. It's not even awful for you!! Just old-fashioned. On LJ after considerable debate we decided that the woman in the recipe's title, Blanche, is my first cousin twice removed, since her mother Esther was the sister of Mabel, whose daughter Elizabeth was my mother Christina's mother. But then... I don't know why Blanche is called "Aunt" in the title, and was introduced to me that way. Except that my mother's folks weren't so big on extended kinship reckonings.

LOL I just hit "paste" and instead of the recipe, I had a really long excerpt from a novel I'm writing in there. Have you ever played that meme? Just, wherever you are, no cheating, just hit "paste" and see what comes out. Often it's hilariously out of context.

Anyway, the promised recipe.

Women of the Rotary Apple Cake, from Aunt Blanche 1955.
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder
Sift together, and rub together with 1 Tbsp butter.
Beat 1 egg well, and add to above.
Add 1 cup diced apples, and a few nuts. Spread in well-greased pie or cake tin, bake at 375 for 20 minutes.
Note: serve with whipped cream or ice cream, and can be mixed in pie plate so as not to dirty a mixing bowl.
(I made this last night just to fill up the oven, so it wouldn't be on just for one single side dish; I dirtied a fork, a pie plate, and a half-cup measure, because the knife and cutting board were already dirty from dinner prep so I only had to wash them once. It was pretty ace. I also used up some sad-looking bruised apples to make it, for bonus thrifty points. I'm sure you're supposed to peel the apples, but I didn't because I am lazy and because most of the nutrients are in the skins, and I assure you it was fine.)

Cannot stop watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" on Hulu.com. Just can't stop. Am up to Episode 8 or 9-- just watched the one where he opens with "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." His point being that we are all made of elements formed in the deaths of stars, which is fascinating to know. But the best part is that he immediately goes to cut the apple pie and serve it onto a plate, and it being a freshly-baked apple pie, it does what apple pies do: it crumbles into chunks and looks like absolute hell on the plate. Then he goes to cut the piece, not a wedge so much as a chunk, in half to illustrate his next point, and it's too chunky for the knife to go through and it cracks and crumbles and smushes into this big old mess. I found that immensely amusing, in this day and age of choreographed perfection on TV.
In an episode I watched yesterday (7, I think, which was about the problem of travel at near-light-speeds) he falls off his bicycle trying not to run into a horse and cart, to illustrate a point, but not with a whole lot of grace. I don't know why I enjoyed that so much.

What I really like about the show is that it is an extended lecture on basically a single topic: he diverges widely, and makes a number of tangential points, but he is pursuing a single thesis, and the well-written script follows the digressions with a purpose toward wrapping up said thesis. They are essays, these lectures, and it is wonderful to be so entertained and enraptured whilst following a complex and yet well-illuminated topic. Part of another episode (6?) is actually filmed excerpts of a lecture that he delivered to a classroom of sixth-graders. Fascinating, yet not condescending.

But, above all, Carl Sagan looks and sounds a lot like Kermit the Frog, and it's very soothing.

I asked Z, who is cross-stitching again, to make me a piece featuring Kermit in a Carl Sagan wig (and beige corduroy blazer) posed in front of a starscape, with the subtitle below of "billions and billions". I think that would be the sweetest thing ever. I am going to have to make it myself, though, because Z does not understand how unutterably sweet this would be.
Instead he is working on a piece about the Oregon Trail video game. Which is also sweet, but not *as* sweet.