Obviously God is on board with this expression of anniversary love. Why else would the cake come out like this? It’s a sign from God. My husband covets black breasts.

P.S. Ganache icing is horrible! An abomination to all things buttercream! Bleck!

P.S.S. I had to eat a second piece of this cake, for my breakfast, to verify that yes, ganache icing is horrible.

P.S.S.S. The horribleness of the icing has been double verified. I think I’m going to have to make another cake this weekend just to erase the taste in my mouth.

©2010 Queen of Shake Shake. All Rights Reserved.

I was *THIS* close to crazy.

I almost bought a bikini.

I managed to stave off lunacy and properly rewire my synapses by rushing home and baking the BEST BATCH OF BROWNIES IN THE WORLD. I ate 5 of them.  Huge pieces too. I made an ice cream sundae with one of them. With homemade hot fudge sauce, which is also the BEST IN THE WORLD.

That’ll teach me to come *this* close to buying a bikini. I mean, am I an American woman or a French. I am so American that you can practically see the words “U.S. of A.” in the pattern of my abdominal stretch marks.

I think I’m incapable of enjoying life unless I sabotage myself with food on a regular basis. What would I gnash my teeth over if I had a great body? What internal demon would I wrestle? I have great hair, my children are wonderful, so is my husband. I was never molested, abused, nor did I grow up with a drunken father. As a writer, aren’t you required to have at least one of those?  I need a demon to slay, damn it, and so I choose sugary concoctions as my adversary.

I spent 30 minutes in the dressing room, wearing that bikini and looking at myself in the mirror. The thing is I didn’t look bad. I didn’t look perfect either, but with a month’s dedication to eating right (I already exercise 4 times a week) I could wear that bikini in public.

But that would mean sacrificing nachos! And pizza! And pan-seared shrimp with a creamy, cheesy garlic-lemon sauce over pasta! Horror! I better eat all of these fucking brownies before I stop believing in God!

So I eat a bunch of fattening food to ward off a different form of insanity. And osteoporosis. I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but “They” now say an extra 10 pounds is actually better for women’s bones than being skinny. Gwyneth Paltrow may wear a bikini, but in 30 years, I will totally kick her ass and make her break a hip.

Sigh. Now I’m sitting here depressed. I was *this* close to a bikini for the first time since…oh my god…since Fred Flintstone pedaled a car with his feet.

And I blew it.

Wait a minute. Why do I even care? I just ate the best brownies in the world, that I made from scratch. Did you hear that? FROM SCRATCH. In this age of boxed, processed, dump and stir cooking, that’s a lost art, people.

Any floozy can wear a bikini.

Only God’s Anointed can successfully bake brownies from scratch.

I prepare my forehead for the sacred olive oil.

(Do you think it will help the wrinkles?)

©2010 Queen of Shake Shake. All Rights Reserved.

.

Fudge

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Presents

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Overeating

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Wow, wasn’t that like the most amusing and interesting Christmas recount out of all the millions of post-Christmas blogs right now? So let’s move on to what I really want to talk about – DRYERS.

I know what you’re thinking: Please, God, tell me Santa left Heather a new dryer so she will stop bitching and complaining about her horrible dryer and the heaps of ironing she is forced to do because of the horrible dryer.

Santa DID NOT.

I know! I feel compelled to do emotional binge eating too, why doesn’t Santa love me?

What Santa did give me was money. And a brother-in-law who is a super genius at mechanics and told us how to fix my old dryer so it will heat once again.

On the Sunday after Christmas, I masterminded an escape from my current house arrest and got away from my small rabid co-inmates who have been lodged up my craw for a week. Meanwhile, Wally promised he would try to fix our old dryer.

“Oh honey, if you can fix our old dryer, I will (specific sexual favors redacted), that is how happy it will make me!”

Wally made a beeline for his Craftsmen tool set. Of course he did. Because he loves to make me happy, I’m sure, and not because he really wants to (redacted).  I bebopped out of the house, deciding to price out some new dryers, just in case he can’t fix it. And that’s when I went into a fudge-induced diabetic coma OMG, NEW RITZY DRYERS ARE A THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS.

But I recovered quickly. It’s not like I didn’t know they were that expensive. But still, being faced with the price tag while in serious consideration of buying? I need smelling salts just retelling it.

The salesman tried time and again to impress me with one fancy dryer option after another.

Machine sanitizing option!

Eh, we’re too germophobic as a society. A little bacteria is good for us!

24 button control panel!

Yeah, I use all of two settings on my dryer. Seriously.

STEAM!

$1500 for steam. Are you fucking kidding?

I continued to be unimpressed, insisting I wanted a dryer that (are you sitting down?) simply dries clothes without everything coming out wrinkled. I’m so demanding, I expect dryers to perform miracles!

When I returned home, Wally proudly showed me the relay out of the dryer, thinking that’s the mechanical problem. And won’t that be an easy fix?!

On Monday he went to the appliance repair store and bought a new relay, plus two other thingies that control the heat of the dryer. One of these three will fix it! For sure!

“Really? That’s great! How much were the parts?”

“Only $75 for all of it.”

“You mean I’ve carried out 4-6 hours of ironing each week for over a year when all it cost to fix our dryer is $75 and two hours of your time?”

“Um.”

Yes, yes I have. I did four loads of laundry yesterday. In my old dryer that is now heating. And there were no clothes that needed ironing. So now I’m forced to renounce my offer of (specific sexual favors redacted) and reevaluate exactly who owes who what around here.

Let’s see: 4-6 hours a week or ironing, we’ll say an average of 5. At least $10 per hour for menial labor (I’m cutting him a deal.) That’s $50 per week, 52 weeks. I think I’m owed somewhere around $2600 just for labor, and what about pain and emotional suffering from the ironing?.

When I presented this offer to Wally his response was, “It would be cheaper for me to buy you a new fucking dryer.”

Ok, fine.

In return, though, Wally agreed to make some housewife p0rn for me. And because I love my readers, I am going to share it with you.

Untitled from Heather Hitchcock on Vimeo.

That is some of the best p0rn ever.

©2010 Queen of Shake Shake. All Rights Reserved.

ONE.

That’s all. The remaining 1,573 wrinkled pieces belong to the short and loud people in the house who show no appreciation for all the ironing I do every week.

Some of you may think it’s my laziness that causes so much ironing. I must not get the clothes out of the dryer promptly! Well, you’re wrong. The buzzer doesn’t even finish buzzing before I’m in there, desperately pulling clothes out, trying to prevent wrinkles. It never works.

The real culprit of the weekly mountain of wrinkled clothes is the goddamn dryer. I once had a wonderful dryer. WONDERFUL! Then, after a mere 6 years, it broke. Stopped heating, just like that! I guess Kenmore isn’t so wonderful after all.

We considered buying a new dryer, but did you know most new dryers cost more than a house payment? I’m not even making that up. It’s insane. Do people make it a habit of stealing from their kids’ college savings in order to afford these things?

Lucky for us (or so I thought at the time), my dad had an extra dryer since he’d just purchased a new one. Yay! No need to fork out $1200 for a dryer right now.

Now I know why my dad bought a new dryer. Everything comes out of this dryer wrinkled. EVERYTHING, even the wrinkle-free clothes.

So I really should be ironing right now and for the next three hours instead of writing this blog post. But I’m not. I can’t make myself do it. There are so many other things I’d rather do. In fact, I decided to share with you the things I’d rather do than iron.

• Pluck toe hair.

• Pluck my husband’s old-man ear hair.

• Listen to my kids cry and whine when I force them to do their homework.

• Read blogs.

• Like The Bloggess, who, thank god, doesn’t get Twilight either. I’m adding her to my Christmas list, along with all other Twilight haters. I hope she likes handmade scarves. I plan to knit one that says FUCK EDWARD, COUNT DRACULA HAD BALLS!

• And Stacey, whom I love with the strength of a thousand moons. That’s in direct opposition of how much I hate doing push-ups on the 30 Day Shred (with the strength of a thousand suns). That is how much I love Stacey’s writing. I can’t recall her thoughts on Twilight, but I’m hoping I can keep her on my Christmas list too.
• Look up when to use “whom” or “who.”

• Give myself an enema.

• Give an old person a enema, that is how much I hate ironing.

• Discover the cure for male skid marks, which would make me rich enough I could hire someone to do my ironing. Or just buy a new ritzy dryer.

• Have sex with Santa in exchange for a new ritzy dryer.

The extremes in which I would go to avoid ironing knows no bounds. Except for one. I’ll iron for 40 straight days and 40 straight nights before reading the rest of Twilight. I read all the way up to page 285 and had to stop in order to make my last will and testament before killing myself, that was the torture I endured. Never again. Not even ironing is that bad.

But it’s close.

When Wally got home, I cried and demonstrated the extent of my suffering to him by serving cold leftovers for dinner. And to this he replied, “Honey, I’ll do the ironing for you.”

That’s just like a man, getting in the way of a woman’s success as a martyr.

©2010 Queen of Shake Shake. All Rights Reserved.