Still working with my Granny on her memoirs. Hoo-boy! It’s more exciting than a trip on the MAX train. (I only wish I was kidding.) You need a recipe from her, don’t you? It’s a little enigmatic, just like my dear Gran, but I think you will be able to decipher it.

Bon appetit!

WM

PINEAPPLE UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE

* Cake mix: Yellow, Supermoist Duncan Hines

* 1 big can + 1 little can pineapple (instead of using water to make the cake, use juice from the can)

* Make brown sugar/butter: Melt ½ cube butter, add brown sugar to butter, keep adding it as long as it can handle it.

* Bake in two 8 x 8 pans, greased (no flour)

* Sugar/butter, then pineapples, then cherries (fit them between the pineapple rings), then cake mix.

Everyone on the MAX train smells, my friend, except for me and thee. (That’s what my grandpa would say — “Everyone is a bit odd, except me and thee.”) It always smells like pee and B.O. on the MAX train and the bus and it is “nasty.”

Also, I’ve only had two good experiences on the bus. No, three. One time, I saw a sign at the bus stop that said: (more…)

Do you ever wonder what it would be like, dangling from a thin cable way up high, swaying in the wind, praying you don’t crash to a sudden death?

Me neither.

My kids and husband wanted to know, though, and today they took a ride on the Portland Aerial Tram. I stayed home and read a book. It was a boring book, I’ll spare you the details. Then I washed dishes, did some laundry, worked out, stretched into some yoga poses and meditated until they all three tromped back home. That’s all the excitement I need.

Pictures on Flickr, if you’re interested.

(all out of order)

quotes recall wacky wacky wacky other cake mommy mommy mommy nasty volcano sex sex chocolate trains volcano dirty cake holidays thomas neighbors sluts phrases

Ash in Wonderland had her baby girl! She is so little and perfect and… sigh. And she doesn’t know how to curse yet! (Wacky Boy, earlier today: “Shit! My favorite word is shit!” Me, thought bubble: “Oh, #@!$&!”)

Babies are so appealing, for this and many other reasons. Sweet babies, I love you so. Go say hi and congrats. Also, last month, even though she was eight months pregnant and busy and all, she took it upon herself to name me a Rockin’ Girl Blogger. Awww! I am just now getting around to bestowing the title upon five other chicks (who are supposed to name five additional chicks — sharing the love). I say…

Whoorl

Mrs. Flinger

Mallory in the Middle

Busy Mom and…

Planet Nomad!!! Who is coming back to Portland!!! (This pretty much ensures we will find work in Iowa and move away, probably two days after she and her family arrive. More on Iowa later — I know I haven’t been keeping everyone updated on that. But I will. Oh, I will… because I know how intrigued you all are by my yearning for a Midwestern lifestyle.)

Welcome to the club!

Thursday 13ers and Usual Suspects, we have company today. The Oregonian is here. Sure, they won’t leave comments or anything, but they’re here.

Hi, guys. (more…)

Jack Bog has an interesting discussion going on about some shake-ups at the Oregonian, our daily newspaper here in town. Check it out.

What are the newspapers like in your cities? Boring as ours? More boring? Do you read them, or just hand them to your kid so she can read the funnies? That’s what happens at our house. I do love the TV listings. And Chelsea Cain. She talks about her dead mother even more often than I talk about my dead father.

It’s kismet, really.

Speaking of death — (more…)

(That’s a whole lotta exclamation points, no? WM)

Reviewed and mentioned today:

For this week’s review, we’re talking about “Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases”, by Paul A. Offit, M.D. Your unfriendly reviewers are Wacky Mommy and the Pink-Housed Housewife. To start, may I, WM, just say that the book is about Montana native Maurice Hilleman, but you wouldn’t know it from the title. I thought Offit was the big genius but he’s not. They need to add Hilleman’s name to the title. (They may have — we’re reading review copies.) (Also, there are no indexes in the review copies. I have found this vexing.) (more…)

1) It’s hot and I am sticky.

2) My husband is going to be so sorry he put Hormonal Woman in charge of balancing the checkbook, paying the loans and credit cards OFF and slamming money as fast as I can into savings, one nickel at a time.

After this, nothing but soup for you, buddy.

Dear Hormones,

I hate you. You suck. You have always sucked my entire life, since I “became a woman,” since I “started with the thyroid problems” since I “had the two 10-pound kids and reeled back, slammed against the wall, never recovering even five years later.”

Breast feeding? Pregnancies? Miscarriages? Bloodwork every two months because my thyroid is still out of whack, even though it was removed in 1992, when I was 27 years old and technically… Should. Not. Be. Causing. Trouble. Still.

Also, hormones, you mess with my writing and everything comes out crazy.

If it wasn’t for you, I’d be running for President, not Hillary Clinton. (Does she have hormones? I think not. Otherwise, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky would be charred in a house somewhere, left behind as burn victims. She would claim to know nothing about it.)

Leave me be, hormones. I have things to do.

Hatefully yours, until menopause (and hopefully that will be the end of it),

WM