Say It Ain't So!

                I don’t know how you felt when they announced that Pluto was no longer a planet, but I felt as if my world had been turned upside down.  More accurately, my Solar System.  You do not do this to someone who spent hours in the third grade, making a mobile of little papier mache planets, and then watching them above her bed, turning in the moonlight.

                Facts have nothing to do with it.  It’s change that’s the problem.  So if you struggle with change, as I do, stop reading now.  If you feel daring and confident, proceed.  But remember, you were warned.  The following are five things you thought were so, but are not:

                German Chocolate Cake isn’t German.  150 years ago a chocolatier named Sam German came up with a baking bar called "BAKER'S German's Sweet Chocolate."   A hundred years later, when a woman in Texas sent a recipe using German’s  Sweet Chocolate to a Dallas newspaper, it went viral (well, as viral as a thing could be in 1957), and other newspapers printed it without the apostrophe and the s.  Hence, German Chocolate Cake.

                Platinum is actually very dull.  Yep, this pricey, shiny metal is dull as dirt in its natural state.  Its rarity makes it valuable.  And then you buff it up, of course.   But unlike gold and several other metals, this one does not sparkle in the least.

                Despite what you heard in The Lion King, stars—including our sun—are not burning balls of gas.  They’re plasma, not gas, and it’s fusion, not fire.  This is not the plasma you find in blood; it’s a fourth state of matter and fusion makes it glow.  I know, I know—I can hear you gasping through my computer monitor.

                Tin cans are not made of tin.  They are made of aluminum.  Tin is too rare and expensive these days, so it’s usually combined with other metals to make an alloy, and while it’s still used to preserve food, it is not on your supermarket shelf with a Del Monte label attached.  Oh, and this one’s a double: Goats do not eat tin cans.  Nor clothing, nor tires.  Goats are, in fact, picky eaters and may chew on something inedible, out of curiosity, but they won’t actually eat it.

                 Play Doh doesn’t just happen to smell that way from the ingredients which were used to make it.  Nope, they added that scent artificially and on purpose.  And they weren’t even trying to create a toy; they were trying to make wallpaper cleaner.  St. Bob, always eager to chime in, says he doesn’t think Plato got to vote on it, either.  The nerve.

                Play Doh, Pluto, Plasma—it’s all too confusing for someone who still misses the retired Crayola colors of orange red, maize, and teal blue.  And Twinkies were nearly extinct—remember dodging that bullet?  

Whew.  Just as long as there are Twinkies, I think I can cope with the rest.

Get your Christmas shopping done early!  Check out my 3 newest books and you’ll find something for everyone—a funny chick lit one, an adventure/romance, and a literary novel.  Kindle OR hard copies. And don’t forget one hot off the presses—Wishes for the LDS Child, available here.

First Pluto, Now This!

          You know how upset I was when Pluto was stripped of its planet status? I wrote about that and a bunch of similar disappointments here.

          But now two of my childhood songs are exposed as having entirely different meanings than what I was taught.

          You already know that I attended a laboratory grade school  on the USU campus, and one of the things they did in Kindergarten was to introduce us to French. No, I cannot speak French. But I love—and sing-- these two little songs with French roots. You probably know them, too.

One is Frere Jacque and the other is Alouette. Here’s the skinny.

Frere Jacque is about a Catholic friar. In English he’s called Brother John. I was taught that he was sleeping in, and some kind person is trying to wake him up because “morning bells are ringing.”  But no. He is a slacker who is supposed to be pulling the rope in the bell tower to remind the other monks to pray. Turns out he is literally sleeping on the job.

Alouette is about a little bird. I thought we were singing about a perky little fellow who was helping us learn the words for head, nose, eyes, wings, tail, and so on.  Ha!  Spoiler alert: This is a cheery tune about plucking the feathers off a poor little lark so he can be sliced up for cooking!

Ah, innocence shattered.  And don’t even get me started on nursery rhymes. (And yes, this is why I wrote the book, “LDS NURSERY RHYMES”).

Check out that book and many more at my website. Then take a gander at my short Youtube Mom videos. I promise not to sing about laziness or butchering.

Dirt Cheap Ice Cream

          Ice cream is ruined.  At least soft  serve ice cream and at least for me.  I walk into the house the other day and my son says, “Oh, enjoying your clay?”

          This is where my eyebrows lower and I stare at him, waiting for the explanation that is going to forever spoil my fun.  The same exact thing happened with Pluto not being a planet.

          I look down at my vanilla soft serve in a cone, and say, “This is ice cream.”

          “No it isn’t,” he says.  “That’s why they call it Soft Serve.  They can’t call it ice cream.”

          WHAAAT? 

          “It’s made with bentonite,” he tells me.  This kid should never have gone on that volcano study to Hawaii, where he became entirely too smart for his britches.

          “Bentonite sounds like an ingredient in linoleum,” I say.  “Like a plastic or something.”  And suddenly my treat seems a little too airy, a little too smooth.

          “They put it in milkshakes, too,” Richie says, completely comfortable with his role as Bearer of Bad News.  “It’s a clay made from chemically weathered volcanic ash.  But it’s totally edible—they use it as a filler.”

          Like sawdust?  Like feathers?  I’m eating ashes?

          He goes on to tell me it’s sold in health food stores and is completely safe, even added to baths for its healing properties.

          I don’t care.  I look it up and all I can see are examples of cat litter and mud drilling. 

          And it’s clay.  When I wanted ice cream.  I’ll tell you this.  No way am I eating cheesecake or truffles or donuts around that guy. 

Have you visited my website, lately?  No filler whatsoever.  Just a bunch of cool stuff like a music video, YouTube Mom videos, and tons of books you can buy!

A Frisky Frisking

            It all began innocently enough.  My dear friend’s daughter was having a baby shower, so I flew to L.A. for the day to help her celebrate.  Four of us raised our kids together, and consider each other’s children more as nieces and nephews.  And we’ve all vowed to be on hand for all their big milestones.

            I needed to haul a few presents, so to save space in my carry-ons I left my wallet home, just quickly grabbing my driver’s license, a credit card, and some cash.  And the shower was a lovely tea in a hotel ballroom.  Here’s just a sampling of the beautiful party:

           

 

             But back to my driver’s license.  In my haste I had grabbed the wrong one.  The expired one.  The one where I am not standing there with a dead gnat stuck in my lipstick and my hair frizzed out as if I’ve been electrocuted (I wrote about that here).  Oh, sure, I carry that hideous baby around for when someone demands a current license, but the expired one is the one I generally show for I.D., and that’s the better looking one I grabbed by mistake.

            No problem leaving Sacramento.  The guy at security happened to remember St. Bob and me from Bob’s TV days, so I glided through without a hitch.  But in Burbank, on the way back, the sweet girl checking I.D. asked her manager over, and he explained that I’d have to be patted down.

            Suddenly I am whisked aside like the terrorist I so clearly resemble, and a fierce (that’s all I will say, just fierce) woman came over, snapping on some blue rubber gloves like she was about to do a rectal exam, and said, “I’m going to have to pat your breasts and groin area, is that okay?”

            First of all, I am not certain that anyone has ever said the word, “groin” to me in my lifetime.  I sputtered, incredulous that I was even being asked this question, and said, “No—no it is not okay!”  I wanted to add, “Are you insane?” but thought it might create an even bigger problem.

            “We can go in a private room if you’d prefer,” she barked, all business.

            Like that would be better?  Are you kidding?  Heaven only knows what happens in those private rooms!  “Certainly not,” I said.  “Let’s do this in full view of the public.”  I glared at her but she was unstoppable.

 

           

            

            “Since you have on a dress, you’ll have to hold your legs apart,” she said.

            Gads!  Seriously?  I wore a dressy outfit there and back, and could only imagine her reaching up my skirt.  I was still in shock when she started rubbing my collar, then running her hands up and down my back, sides, front, you-name-it. 

            Why don’t we just have public mammograms?

            Horrified, I stared at the other passengers filing by.  Couldn’t they see I was being violated right here in front of them?  Nobody cared, nobody came over and said, “Here, here, now,” which someone surely should have shouted.

            This was worse than the time Pluto groped me at Disneyland, when we were trying to pose for a family photo with him.  Don’t ask.

            “Stay there and don’t touch anything,” she ordered, as she went over to run her gloves in front of some bomb powder detector thingy.  What was I going to touch?  Walls?  Other passengers?  How about I just pass out on the floor and inadvertently touch the tiles?

            Finally she came back and let me put my shoes back on and gather my belongings.  And for the rest of my life, I am carrying a current I.D., a passport, and a birth certificate, and I don’t care if there’s a pelican stuck on my lips.  I’d also wear a chastity belt, but I’d never make it through the metal detector. 

Hey, at least you could buy my books so you’ll have something to read, next time you’re detained at the airport.  Sisters in the Mix is a hilarious chick-lit novel even men enjoy.

           

Bunny Butts

            This is not a post about how to get kicked out of WinCo Supermarket, so keep reading.  First, I think we can all agree that traditions are a good thing in life, bind families together, and even keep society from coming apart at the seams, right?  These are the things that confirm our values, give us hope for the future, and tell us who we are.

And I, my friend, am bunny butts.  Every Easter I not only make Italian Easter Egg Bread (Google it—it’s so cool—the colored eggs cook while they bake, tucked into a braided wreath of dough), but I also make not one, but TWO bunny cakes.  Okay, the reason I make two is that this is what you get when you slice a frosted cake in half.

Here’s the deal: You make two circular cakes using any recipe you like.  Carrot cake seems especially rabbity.  But instead of stacking them and frosting them like a standard round cake, you cut each cake crosswise, in half, to make two semi-circles.  You frost the bottom sides together, place them cut-side-down on two plates, and voila! Bunny bodies.  I usually scatter green-tinted coconut around them for the grass, give them pink card stock ears, jellybean eyes and noses, and then (wait for it) a pink Hostess Snowball for the tail. 

 

Here is a picture of a similar bunny cake I found online, on Natscorner.com.  Except it doesn’t show the tail, and this is where the bunny—and the plot—thickens.  Maybe you’ve noticed the recent news that Hostess, an American institution and the maker of Twinkies and Cupcakes, is shutting down.  As in NO MORE SNOWBALLS.  Which means NO MORE BUNNY CAKES.  Which means NO MORE HILTON FAMILY EASTER TRADITIONS.  Which mean JONI GOES BALLISTIC IN WINCO.

Okay, not entirely ballistic.  But I did shout, “You mean the government can step in to save Chrysler but not Hostess?  What kind of country is this?” when I learned they had no Hostess Snowballs.  I went on a teensy bit more about this essential part of our Easter dinner and maybe some things about Communism, I can’t really remember,  then I marched over to the muffin section of their bakery to try to improvise, thinking maybe I could slice off a muffin top, cover it with frosting and coconut, and make do.  But what a sorry selection of fluffy tails those were!  Knobby little mounds of nuts and bran?  Are you kidding?

And I was standing there with my lower lip sticking out enough to be a bunny tail itself, trying to wrap my brain around the loss of Pluto as a planet, phones you could work without an instruction book, and now Hostess!—when the kind clerk I had just accost—uh, enlightened—came up to me with a veritable treasure trove of bunny tails!  Did I hear a heavenly choir, singing?  (Well, probably rolling their eyes at my completely ignoring the real meaning of Easter, but back to my story).  Here was a box of knock-off snowballs!   They’re called BOMBOLINS and they’re even pink—look!

 

Across the top it says, “El Mexicano,” so Thank You, Mexico for saving the day.  And if the photo on the box is any indication, this box must hold about 16 tails—why, I could make bunny cakes for the whole neighborhood, right?  I’m not going to, but I could.

My heart lightened, I eagerly bought the Bombolins and brought them home.  But then I opened the box.  Uh oh.  These cookies are nowhere near the size of the photo.  They’re the size of Susan B. Anthony dollars!  WHICH YOU CAN’T FIND ANYMORE, EITHER. I know people with bigger thumb prints than this.

 

To make bunnies the right size for these tails, I’ll have to use cupcakes and cut them in half.  Hey—stay with me here—this means I could have a whole litter of baby bunnies!  Be still my heart-- I think I’ve launched a new tradition.

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You've Got to be Kidding

            It was too good to be true.  Just when you think we’re getting a handle on endangered species, the New York Daily News announces the horrendous shock that we are now facing a shortage of clowns.

            That’s right, folks—fewer and fewer people are going into the noble field, and one day we could live in a society completely devoid of red noses and big shoes. 

            They quote the president of Clowns of America International (which is it—America or international?  Whatever), Glen Kohlberger saying that older clowns are passing away.

            And the World Clown Association (which claims to be the largest trade group for clowns in the U.S. which makes me ask, again, if it’s for the U.S. why are you calling it “world”?) says their membership has dropped by a thousand clowns since 2004.

            They’re having a hard time getting younger people to go into clowning.  Obviously they haven’t met my children, any one of whom would qualify for this group, gloved hands-down. 

            You do remember my story about St. Bob and his beginning in show biz, right?  As a cartoon clown on TV?  So I shouldn’t be surprised at the acorns falling so close to the tree.

            But these experts say clowning has taken a red nose dive, because it is no longer “cool.”  Let me get this straight.  Are you telling me that clowning was once cool?  When, in the history of history, was it cool to wear white makeup, a giant red mouth, and purple, oversized polka-dot shoes?

            “Hey man,” I can just see some guy in the Sixties, whispering to his buddy, “if you want to impress the chicks, you gotta wear one of these.”  And he pulls out a pink and green fright wig. 

            Ah, yes—The Secrets of Popularity could be a class on tying balloons and throwing pies into people’s faces.  That’ll impress the crowds, alright. 

            Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey (and, and, and—there’s something funny going on in this clown biz) only keeps 26 clowns on its touring roster, and chooses just a handful to attend their training boot camp, so the chances of making it in the big time under the big top are even more miniscule than making the NBA.  That means every other aspiring clown has to work birthday parties, where the pay is, well, peanuts.

            But what about all the people who are clowns by accident (come on, you know you’re thinking of that guy next to you at work)?  I see clowns almost everywhere I go.  They may not be wearing big, wavy collars, but they are sword fighting in the state capitol, rollingcars down hills, sending thank you cards for colonoscopies, wearing ridiculousclothes at WalMart, taking away the planet Pluto, giving mattresses to cows, and trying to turn my TV into a death ray.

            If anything, there’s a surfeit.

            You can easily fill your clown quota by subscribing to this blog and reading all about the unheralded clowns that blanket the landscape.  Evidently it is my mission to cross paths with them and then tell you about it.  You’re welcome.