1. Breakfast time barstool seating arrangements.
2. Who has dibs on the last Frosted Cherry Pop Tart.
3. Whose turn it is to feed the cats.
4. Whose turn it is to feed the dogs.
5. Which Jonas brother is the hottest.
6. How it is SO SO SO SO (INFINITY!) STUPID that they changed the name of the shows to Hannah Montana Forever and Jonas L.A..
7. How IT IS NOT SO SO SO SO (INFINITY!) STUPID that they changed the name of the shows to Hannah Montana Forever and Jonas L.A..
8. Who gets to use the Nintendo DS charger first because both of the DSs have dead batteries.
9. Where the other Nintendo DS charger was last seen and who has to go find it.
10. Who gets to play Bejeweled on Mommy’s iPhone while waiting to use the Nintendo DS charger.
11. Who takes ownership of Mommy’s iPhone someday when she dies.
12. Whose turn it is to let the dogs out.
13. Whose turn it is to let the dogs in.
14. How long it should take to use the bathroom when someone else is waiting to use it, specifically related to whether the person using the bathroom is going Number One or Number Two. Also, whether the person waiting needs to go Number One or Number Two.
15. Why the person waiting to use the bathroom doesn’t just go use a downstairs bathroom.
16. Who has to clean up the Barbie Monopoly, i.e. who touched a playing piece last versus who was sitting in the floor last.
17. Which flavor of Kool-Aid Mommy should make.
18. Lunchtime barstool seating arrangements.
19. Whose turn it is to push the button for the automatic doors at the library. For each of the two sets of automatic doors. On the way in and on the way out.
20. Who made Mommy so mad that now we aren’t going to the library.
21. Whose turn it is to stand in the dining room corner.

1. Say Anything — because it has so many good lines (“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”), and because Lloyd Dobler makes me believe in love.

2. The Notebook — because I have a serious crush on Ryan Gosling as well as one on Rachel McAdams, so it doesn’t get much better than a movie starring the two of them together. It’s like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups of movies.

3. 12 Monkeys — because I’ve watched it probably five or six times and I still don’t get it, but I’m still not tired of trying to figure it out.

4. Zombieland — because an awesome movie about Outwitting, Outplaying, and Outlasting slobbery, blood-thirsty undead people (including Bill Murray as a fake undead person) is really just a metaphor for the reality game show that is Survivor. Or else Survivor is a metaphor for Zombieland. I can’t be sure, I think zombies ate my brain. Or else Jeff Probst did.

5. The Hangover — because I have never laughed so hard in my life as I did when I saw it in the theater, and if I’m all alone on an island, I won’t have to worry about peeing in my pants while laughing this time and I’m not saying that I actually peed in my pants the first time, but I did worry about the possibility of peeing. In my pants. Whatever.

(Flickr credit)

* Yes, I realize the Survivors aren’t actually allowed to take movies to Exile Island.

Not that you’d know it from the minimal posting here, but things have really been hopping.
HA! AN EASTER PUN! THREE DAYS LATER!

First, I’ve been working with a terrific group of people to relaunch the new and improved Indie Ink website. I am a contributing editor and the Marketing & Media H.B.I.C. over there. If you are a writer or a photographer you should definitely consider contributing some of your work.

Second, I HAVE been writing, just not here. Case in point: I wrote a guest post for today over at Happy Healthy Hip Parenting. Show me some love, go on over there and read it. I promise it will make you think twice before flying to Vegas ever again. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but there it is.

Third, if you found your way here via my guest post at Happy Healthy Hip Parenting, WELCOME. I assure you that this post is in no way indicative of the usual caliber of my writing as evidenced by its near lack of run-on sentences and MINIMAL USE OF CAPS LOCK. Anyway, I am very glad you are here. Grab a Mochachino and stay a while. A good place to start is the Crash Test Faves box over there on the upper right.

Fourth, I also actually DO have a few posts in draft including “5 Things that Are Seriously (Okay, Probably Not Seriously) Wrong with Me” and “5 Things from My Childhood I Wish My Mom Hadn’t Sold at that Garage Sale in 1985″. I’ll try and finish at least one of those and get them up for your reading pleasure in the next day or two.

Or I won’t. Maybe I’m just saying I’ll post something, but in the end it’s all just a big April Fool’s joke. Six days later.

We shall see. I know you’ll lose sleep over it.

(flickr credit)

Anyway, while I was watching Chateau La Rue’s remodel (which — HELLO — Tori, Dean, and their designers can come and makeover MY chateau ANYTIME because the finished product was TDF) I decided to do some tinkering around in this here website’s control panel. And by “tinkering around” I of course mean BLOW THE WHOLE THING UP.

(This is the part where you think to yourself that’s why I don’t have a self-hosted WordPress blog and then you condescendingly ask me whether or not I had a backup saved. And I tell you that yes, I DID have a backup saved and even if it was a few days old and missing my most recent post and comments, it nevertheless still qualifies as WAY BETTER THAN NOTHING.)

So, tres sadly, the thoughtful comments you beautiful people left on my Crash Test Mommy TV Episode 1 post are now gone from this here website. But really, the situation easily could have been much worse, so silver lining and all.

The important thing is that nobody got hurt and that I took away some valuable lessons that I will share with you:

• The steps are: Hit Publish –> Backup Files. In that order. Every time.
• Think twice, then delete.
• Watching Tori and Dean requires one’s complete attention or VERY BAD THINGS HAPPEN.

Here’s hoping your weekend is the bomb.

——————–

For the Real and/or Imagined Haters: If you are even dreaming of judging me for watching T & D don’t waste your time. Their show, now called Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, is starting its FIFTH SEASON on Monday and that just proves that I’m not the only one watching it and furthermore where is my Nielsen box when I need it?

Peace out, Holmes. J. MO

I’ve been reading a lot of backlash in The Internets and The Blogosphere regarding the enormous popularity of Taylor Swift in light of her questionable ability to . . . you know . . . sing.
Or to stand up straight.

Well, I am here today to tell you that I have solved the mystery that is The Sycophancy of Taylor Swift. (And to thank thesaurus.com for giving me such a kickass synonym for the word “popularity”.) And, because the goal of this here website is now, has always been, and forever will be to offer the world the benefit of my opinion, I will share the solution with you.

Y’all ready for this?

Taylor Swift’s songs are telepathic, subconscious, super-hero-strength EAR WORMS.

It is my strong belief that, with as little as even one exposure to Swift via the likes of “Love Story” or “You Belong with Me”,  human beings are powerless to move through their daily lives without whistling, singing, and/or humming those melodies ON ENDLESS REPEAT.

And what’s worse? These same humans become powerful weapons as they go from their homes to their jobs and into eating and entertainment establishments and places of business, passing on the Taylor Swift catalog to OTHER UNSUSPECTING HUMANS like the musical equivalent of the Ebola virus.

Yet, the United States government’s national threat level remains at only Yellow? INCONCEIVABLE.

So what can we do to MAKE IT STOP? Well, I, propose a five step approach.

1.  Prohibit the out loud playing of any of Swift’s songs in your home, in your car, and at your place of employment. You may need to purchase a satellite radio or iTrip device for alternative sources of Swift-free music, as well as make physical threats to co-workers, to complete this simple step.

2.  Avoid watching televised music awards shows. Obviously. She wins A LOT of awards. And, on second thought, avoid watching televised awards shows of ANY genre on the basis that Swift could be invited to sing for groups of drunk nominated famous people at any time without warning, plus the jokes on those shows are always lame anyway.

3. Delete any Taylor Swift songs currently in your iTunes library. Yes, even “Fifteen”. ESPECIALLY “Fifteen”.

4. Cancel your cable subscription. By subscribing to cable, you are actually PAYING your provider to potentially Swift-slap you via MTV, MTV2, MTV Jams, MTV Hits, VH1, CMT, and all their HD and On Demand counterparts. Also, did you know that your digital cable package likely entitles you fifty or sixty free streaming music channels? A casual flip through the upper channels to search for that Law & Order: SVU rerun could easily end in tragedy.

5. Do not look at pictures of Taylor Swift, do not talk about her, and, most especially, do not read or write any blog posts about her. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE. Ever been Rick-rolled? How about Swift-rolled? Don’t be the next victim of this preventable world wide web crime!! And I know you’re asking, “But why can’t I write about her?” Well, let’s just say that after I finish writing this post, I will be forced to make myself listen to Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” a minimum five times to re-program my brain, which is, by the way, the official safety measure to take should you experience an accidental Swift exposure. Do you want to take that chance? Do you?

Armed with the above information, I believe we can stop the Taylor Swift Love Train dead on the tracks. Are you with me? Yes, we can!

Now GO! my mighty minions, take my information and SAVE! THE! WORLD! (With the understanding that if a Taylor Swift song ever ends up being covered on Glee then we are so incredibly screwed.)

This commercial is so heartwarming that I’m switching to U by Kotex immediately. Well, sometime in the next twenty-eight days.

(Footnote: U by Kotex is so BOSS that it has its own Facebook Fan Page. Can your brand of tampons say THAT?)

Guess what came in the mail yesterday. Yes, as seen above, the Crash Test Family has been invited to become a Nielsen family. No, really. At first I was as shocked as you are now, but I did some Googling and Wikipedia-ing and rest assured the process for selection is ENTIRELY RANDOM, so it’s not like the Nielsen people are recognizing ours as a family of movers and shakers or anything.

I sense your overwhelming relief.

You can also see in the above photo, the Nielsen people are not averse to BRIBING us to allow them to monitor our television watching habits so that they may compile those habits and pass them on to Television Network Big Wigs who then use the information to decide which shows to renew and which ones to cancel and all I have to say is THEY ARE IN LUCK because I am not averse to accepting those bribes.

Also, in the spirit of the game, I would like to announce that the line for bribing me to save your favorite shows forms to the left. I accept money order, cash, and credit cards through PayPal. All bribes are non-refundable.

Oh, and one last thing, you better believe it will cost you A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN FIVE DOLLARS to secure a fourth season of Rock of Love or another Bachelor wedding and I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING.

On an unrelated note, I have now typed and proofread the words “bribe” and “bribing” enough times that I just now had to go to webster.com to double-check the spelling. The human brain is so weird wierd weird.

]]> http://crashtestmommy.net/2010/03/im-gonna-change-the-world/feed/ 10 http://crashtestmommy.net/2010/03/im-gonna-change-the-world/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/crashtestmommy/~3/OcsbiFSzo_E/ http://crashtestmommy.net/2010/03/time-travel-and-garbage/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:08:00 +0000 Jenny http://crashtestmommy.net/?p=1000

Against my better judgment, I went to the Redbox one evening last week and rented The Time Traveler’s Wife, and if you don’t know what I mean by “against my better judgment” this old post explains a lot.

For the record, I decided to go ahead and risk watching the movie based on three factors:

1.  Redbox only charges $1.00 plus tax for rentals, so even if I couldn’t watch more than, say, thirty minutes of the movie, I figured that was still less money wasted than that one time I bought the girls Bendaroos and Pixos for Christmas and then threw them both in the garbage by New Year’s. (The Bendaroos and Pixos, not the girls.) Also that time I had my entire face waxed and the “”"”ESTHETICIAN”"”" kept enough of my skin to make a girl suit, and by the time the scabs healed all the hair had grown back. Moving on.

2.  Jake, my seventeen-year-old son with aspirations of a career in film directing, is a certifiable Movie Snob, so I make it my business to watch movies that I know will annoy him to even have in the house. If Parental Retribution on Teenagers was an Olympic sport I would take gold.

3.  I have a girl crush on Rachel McAdams, and by “girl crush” I mean I would pay full-price-movie-admission-plus-popcorn-and-a-Diet-Pepsi to watch her read the phone book. Or the health care reform bill. Mooooooving on.

Anyway, I started the movie, watched the first twenty minutes, stopped the movie and thought about what I had seen and what it all meant, rewound the movie and watched the first twenty minutes AGAIN, and then stopped the movie AGAIN. As I sat on my bed deciding between watching the rest of it or cleaning the upstairs bathroom drain, Jake walked into my room and asked me what was up.

I explained the plot up to that point to him and expressed my dumbfounded confusion about how a human person could travel in time in their present body and meet up with their past body or future body since we only have one body and why are we all here and why does my head suddenly hurt and everything is going black in my right eye???? And Jake, in his seventeen-year-old-Movie-Snob wisdom said the words that have forever changed my life: “It’s just a movie, Mom. Time travel can’t really happen.”

With that, he left the room, and I decided to go ahead and watch the rest of the movie. And you know what? I LOVED THE MOVIE. LOVED it. Like pet it and hold it and squeeze it and name it George LOVED it. Like still smiling and bawling ten minutes after it was over LOVED it. LOVED. LOVLOVLOVLOVLOVED.

All because I have a new-found wisdom and comprehension that the meaning of life is: TIME TRAVEL CAN’T HAPPEN.

And now Jake will expect a new Xbox game for that.

Back in January, I mentioned something on my Facebook wall about making Baked Potato Soup, and several of my friends or fans or followers or what-have-you commented and/or emailed me asking for the recipe, and, because I like to keep my word even if it takes me eight weeks to two years, I am giving you that recipe today. I hope you feel the love.

—————

Aunt Patty’s Baked Potato Soup

Prep Time: 1.5 hours       Cook Time: 45 minutes       Difficulty: Medium         Serves: 6

Ingredients

4 pounds of Russet potatoes (5 or 6 big ones)
2/3 cup butter (for best flavor, I recommend real butter, not margarine)
2/3 cup flour
6 cups milk (whole milk is best, otherwise soup takes FOREVER to thicken)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
4 green onions (scallions)
12 slices bacon
1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
8 ounces sour cream

Preparation

Bake potatoes and let cool. Once cooled, cut each lengthwise and scoop out pulp. Fry bacon on stovetop, using a skillet or griddle, until very crispy. Set potato pulp and bacon aside.
Chop green onions.

In stockpot (5 or 6 quart will work), melt butter over low heat. Slowly add flour, stirring constantly and until smooth.

Increase heat to medium and gradually add milk. Continue stirring until thick and bubbly (be patient, it takes a little while).

Stir in potato pulp, salt and pepper. Add 2 tablespoons of the green onions, 1/2 cup of the bacon, and 1 cup of the shredded cheddar cheese. Set aside remainder of those for garnish.

Stir in sour cream and cook until thoroughly heated, stirring frequently.

Serve in bowls and garnish with remaining bacon, onion, and cheese.

—————

Just think, if I were The Pioneer Woman, I would have pretty pictures of the ingredients and the process to show you. Of course, if I were The Pioneer Woman, I would also have eleventeen thrillion readers a month, a bestselling cookbook, and a movie deal with Columbia Pictures, but I’m not bitter because I have a DELICIOUS! BAKED POTATO SOUP RECIPE! And now so do you.
WE WIN.

(flickr credit)