Let them eat cake!

Since Mac has had his bake on here lately (did I mention that last night he couldn't sleep so he baked chocolate chip cookies at 2am?), I was thinking maybe I could employ his help on a little baking project I want to do. Or maybe I could buy all the ingredients, give him a recipe and get out of his way?

Fat Tuesday is February 16 and this year I wanted to bake a King Cake to bring to school. I have two sections of reading I teach (in addition to my 5 periods of aide duties) so I was thinking of making 2 Cakes, one for each class.

I've been researching and have learned all about King Cakes. The basics: usually a cinnamon yeast roll type of cake, shaped in a circle and decorated with the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold. Traditional cakes have a plastic baby Jesus baked inside the cake and the person who gets that is King or Queen for the day, and is usually in charge of bringing the Cake to the next celebration. In my case, since I want to bring these to the public middle school, I think I might just bake the Cakes and leave a plastic baby Jesus in the center, like many bakeries that are afraid of lawsuits do. I'm also going to drape the cake with beads in the traditional colors. Then I thought the reading lesson that day could be about Mardi Gras. Something fun and different and festive.

I live in the Midwest and most of my students have never heard of Mardi Gras let alone Fat Tuesday or anything else related to this event so it might be kinda cool. I was in New Orleans around Mardi Gras time (once upon a time and a lifetime ago), and it was fun for sure. Though maybe I should omit those stories...

If I can motivate myself to actually DO the baking. Like I said, maybe Mac would like a chance to upgrade his baking skills....

Mardi Gras Queen Maggie

Stifling my inner freak

I've discovered since living with Daddy-O I have some really weird habits. Or if you don't necessarily want to call them habits, you could say there are some strange things I like to do. And since I live here, I don't do those things because... well, I guess I don't want anyone seeing me do them. But I don't mind sharing...

I like to make bread dough while drinking glasses of wine while wearing my pajamas. And I usually play big band music or Rogers & Hammerstein scores and sing along. Often time, the bread never comes to fruition because I knead it too much. I'm really working out frustrations and I enjoy the process of whacking, pounding and banging the dough around that it bakes up really shittily so I usually toss it before baking. And when I'm not singing and dancing around, I'm usually talking to the pile of dough, swearing at it and calling it by names of people who make me angry. Yup. I've stopped bread dough abuse for the last 11 months.

On weekends I often used to put my jammies on when I got home from school, around 330 in the afternoon and not take them off until Monday morning when I went back to school. I would mostly lay around, sleep, nap, read, talk to myself, and just do nothing (maybe make a batch of bread dough). I might grade, I might listen to music, I might grade, I might read. But mostly I would lay on my bed or on the couch and watch one movie after another after another. I wouldn't even answer the phone. I wouldn't shower. I would eat mac and cheese at 2 am for dinner or just have popcorn for breakfast. Or eat crackers. The goal was to "lay". And do nothing. I haven't done this since I've been here.

You can't just stay in your jammies for 60 hours when there's another person in the house unless you're deathly ill. It's weird to the other person and they get all worried. And part of that fun is the not talking to or associating with other humans. If I did that here, I would have to talk to Daddy-O and if I'm gonna talk to him I might as well do it in street clothes and be ready to go somewhere since I'm already in regular clothes, with shoes next to the front door. Ya know?

Nor do I dance around in my underwear and sing in my hairbrush, pretending to be giving a concert at Carnegie Hall. I also don't read letters from old boyfriends aloud and make fun of their grammar. (I usually drank wine when I did this.) I also don't talk to the movies on tv, throw food at the screen, or trash talk the cat, mostly because I don't have a cat. I also don't get out all my shoes and try them on and talk to them. (Hmmmmm, that one even sounds weird to me.) I also don't play my favorite game: get either a really bad action movie or find a soap opera on the Spanish channel. Then I put it on mute. And I write my own dialogue and I do voices. I don't really 'write' it down though; I just lay there and make it up aloud.

Maybe it's a good thing that I'm here and am giving up all these unusual little hobbies for things that are more productive and involve interaction with real humans rather than my tv and a wine bottle? Oh hell, we all know I'm lying. We know that as soon as I have my own place again I'll be back to my old habits of weirdness.

One weird chick,
Maggie

The Drama Queen Network

Mac says if - on TELEVISION- a woman is raped and molested and physically abused then stalked, and is a drunk or one who abuses pills and huddles in a shower crying, then it must be a made for TV movie on Lifetime. And while his example may be a bit to the extreme, I also thinks he has a point.

And for those of you who like Lifetime movies, then that's cool with me- entertainment for everyone, I say- so please, no hate mail about my ANTI Lifetime movie stand- please? So, that being said...

Around our house we have always made fun of the "high drama" and bad acting and "after school special" like quality of the movies on Lifetime. No, not all of them could be described that way, but LOTS of them can... and they are often cheesy, overdone and just plain... well, bad. Bad acting, bad scripts, bad bad bad.

But while subbing on this half day of school, for 2 periods, I learned of a new use for Lifetime Movies.

I was in a health class and the teacher left a movie for me to show. I popped the VHS tape in and bam- it was a Lifetime movie called Mom at Sixteen. Really. A Lifetime movie in a high school health class. As if subbing isn't tough enough, but now she makes me show a Lifetime movie? I got the giggles. There were boys in that class who were not what I would call impressed by this either. So, the kids watched the movie- and had to TAKE NOTES OVER IT! They were studying teen pregnancy/ STDs/ Sex in class and it did suit the purpose, but still... a Lifetime movie? I guess it was no different than when I was in high school and the same teacher showed us After School Specials to prove her points.

So the next class rolls in. It's an all girl's PE class who was having "health" day. And they were studying eating disorders. So in went the VHS tape- and it was another Lifetime movie, only about a teenage girl with bulimia. Oh. My. Goddess. I had another attack of the giggles.

And what was bad about the second movie, the bulimia one, was that the girl with bulimia had a boyfriend. Bulimiagirl's BF kissed her BFF at a party one night and half of the the students in my class were enraged that he cheated on her. The other half thought Bulimiagirl deserved it because she was a bitch to her BF. Oh. My. Goddess. I mean, Bulimiagirl is under huge stress, her hair is falling out, there is an obvious change in her mood and temperament and health and family problems because of her eating disorder but the girls in my class were pissed off over the "love triangle" aspect which lasted for about 3 minutes. Do you think the point was lost on these girls?

I told Mac about it today- and you know what he thought? He said making students watch Lifetime movies in class was a form of corporal punishment.

Cruel. Oh so very cruel.

Save the drama for your mama,
Mags