Tag: Fun

The Count…

On By charminfothIn encouragement, Humor, LoveLeave a comment
Count on your surroundings
The Count

There are no children at my house, not that I need any, my hubby, Andy is a big kid himself. Believe me when I tell you, the only difference is the cost of his toys.

We never had children together, I never felt bad about that. I have a beautiful step-daughter I am proud to say I know and love. She is an amazing young woman.

Andy and I love children, and relate to them because we function on their level. 🙂 The kids think we are great fun. I have had tea parties, colored, made friendship bracelets, built forts with sheets, played games, you name it. Andy loves to play video games, play pull my finger and burp letters of the alphabet, great boy stuff. We both watch cartoons. We once had a little boy turn around in the theater at a Disney movie and ask where our kids were? We have never lost our childish nature, and I think that is a good thing.

But, sometimes I think our friends, the parents, worry when we come to visit.

Please don’t, I think I finally have him trained…somewhat, and here’s how I did it.

At times, Andy is the Duke of Inappropriate Conversation. He has gotten better over the years but still sometimes there is no buffer between his brain and his mouth. When you don’t have children around all the time, you get used to saying exactly what’s on your mind at any given moment. That has always been one of my favorite parts of our marriage. We can truly be ourselves around each other. However, once you step into someone else’s world, at the very least you want to appear civilized.

When we were younger there were so many times a parent had to say, “Andy, the kids.” Don’t get me wrong, I am far from perfect, I can lose my filter too, especially if I feel safe with people.

Several years back we went to visit friends in Virginia. I reminded Andy, two weeks earlier he had offended another of our friends by saying or doing something goofy that was not intended for children’s ears. I did not wish to repeat that event. I told him that when he had a quick comeback to what someone said he needed to stall his quick response. I suggested that when the urge to utter something he thought was witty, that he count to ten slowly and think about who was in the room.

Five minutes after our arrival in Virginia, someone said something and I immediately saw the look on Andy’s face and he began to count out-loud, 1, 2, 3, 4… you get the picture. I couldn’t help but laugh and our friends asked, “what is he doing?”

I told them about my idea to make Andy aware of his surroundings. They began to laugh too.

Well, as the weekend progressed, Andy had to count many, many times, and soon the kids were in on it. As soon as someone would say something, the kids would look at Andy and begin to count. It was priceless. As soon as Andy began to count all the adults could guess the direction his thoughts and would begin to laugh. So he never had to actually say the comment out loud.

My friend said she was going to make it a family rule and apply it to both her brothers and her brothers-in-law. It seems that Andy is not the only “Duke of Inappropriate Conversation” out there.

I think everyone had a great time with the count. If you have a “Duke of Inappropriate Conversation” in your life, don’t get discouraged. Suggest they count. It could be fun. I recommend to ten, but if they are really bad, you may want to consider more. Just be sure you do it with a smile.

Thanks for reading.

Republished from November 2010.

The Deviled Egg Debacle of 2011

On By charminfothIn Cooking, HumorLeave a comment

By Charmin Foth

For those of you who know me, housewifery is not my strong suit.

Don’t get me wrong, I can clean and do laundry with the best of them, but when it comes to all things kitchen, it’s scary. I’m not saying I can’t cook. I can, and generally the things I make are edible, even tasty. I would say I’m better at baking, but that’s not entirely true either. And sharp objects, don’t even get me started. They banned me from the kitchen of the church where I used to attend, because of a little accident cutting apples at a church sleepover. Let’s just say, life with me is never boring.

The church where we attend was having a church picnic and someone suggested that I make deviled eggs. Since we have chickens and usually an abundance of eggs, I thought, “cool, I can do that, no problem.” Ha, I should have known better.

My wonderful hubby, helped me out by boiling the eggs and putting them in the fridge for me. That way I could make the deviled eggs at my convenience after I got home from work. (I really think he is afraid for me to use the stove.)

Well, after a day of crazy work and errands, I open the door and see the pesky boiled eggs staring at me when I open the refrigerator door. So I sigh, and set myself about the task of making deviled eggs. I get all my ingredients out, a mixing bowl, a big wooden spoon and then I spy a long forgotten gadget hiding in the drawer with the mixer, my cookie gun. Yes, I said, cookie gun.

I thought, “Oh! That will make fancy work of these eggs, I’ll be done in no time.” Ha, again.

I prep the eggs, mix all the ingredients and I’m ready to fill the cookie gun with the yummy egg filling. There are several different options for how I want the mix to fill the eggs. there is an attachment for making Christmas tree cookies, stars and all sorts of cookie shapes and then there are attachments for cake decorating, like rose petals and ribbons and such. So I thought, “Hmmm, egg filling is kind of thick so lets go with the one that has a wide star shaped opening.”

 Sounds easy enough, so I set it up, and load the egg filling into the gun. Here’s where it gets interesting…
The first few eggs looked beautiful, and then nothing so I keep pressing the trigger on the gun. Rapid fire, is never a good idea.

Before I knew it, so much pressure had built up in the cookie gun, that it exploded deviled egg filling across the kitchen counter top and it ricocheted all over me. I was covered in deviled eggs. I looked like I had been spackling a very colored ugly room.

Not all of the egg concoction fit into the gun, I still had enough to fill the eggs I had, so I thought, “all is not lost, I can still make this work.” So I wiped the egg off the counter and me. For some reason, I still thought the cookie gun was a good idea. All I can say, looking back, is duh. Anyway, I changed the decorating tip on the cookie gun to different tip, thinking the star pattern was the problem.

It wasn’t. The problem is that pickle relish gets stuck in the little prongs of the decorating tips and causes a huge back up in the gun. And it has serious repercussions to the one wielding the weapon. I don’t know if I will ever get all the egg out of my spiky hair. It is now brown, silver and yolk colored.

Ah, but alas, I am not one to give up. I must have a persistence gene that just won’t allow me to give up on things. I think it has plagued me all of my life, now that I think about it. At any rate, I still had egg goo left and I was determined I was going to get the gun to work or die trying.

I did get the gun to work. I took the decorator tip off all together and it worked like a charm, and I had just enough egg filling left to fill all the eggs. However, there was a drawback to this methodology, without the pretty decorator edges, my eggs looked like little yellow piles of dog poop. Yumm! How appetizing is that?!

So I’m home all alone, looking at these eggs, and laughing my butt off. I have truly lost it. I can’t serve dog poop eggs to the people at church, or can I? Hummmm. So I got a little spoon and smashed all the little piles down and swirled them around and covered them with paprika. Maybe, maybe not, I can’t decide, take them don’t take them? I’m the only one who knows they looked like dog poop for a short time in their lives. Andy may get to eat a lot of deviled eggs, and then he’s going to have to sleep in the barn.

The moral of the story is, use a spoon, unless you are authorized to use the gun.

Thanks for reading.