Well, my first thousand!

That's right.  Now there are two things in my life that equal a thousand.  The number of posts in this blog and the number of men I have slept/tricked with.

Thanks so much for being part of it.

Seriously, what the hey

So the husband and I are driving back from White Marsh today and we encounter a "convoy" of cars that all seem to have the same car club decals on their rear windows.  Almost all of the cars are from Pennsylvania.

As we wait at a light, with the convoy in the right lane, the husband says "Seriously? What the hey?" and he points. There, on the Yukon next to us is this sticker:

Its a pink ribbon - breast cancer awareness, usually - and the wording "LADY BM".

So, what do you think "Lady BM" stands for?

Always the struggle

Cookie gets political: From Carpet Muncher to Carpetbagger

Pity poor Liz Chaney.

Dick Cheney's daughter is about as welcome in LGBT community as Anita Bryant.   She has a nice smile.  And that lovely blond hair.  And happy home life.

Yes, we know that he father helped get Maryland's Question 6 passed last November, but, most people still think of Dick as the magical community thinks of Lord Voldemort.

But Liz Cheney is different.  Liz Cheney sold out the gay community and actively worked to install politicians into office that hate the LGBT community.  And Liz Cheney has never lifted a finger to do anything for the LGBT community.  She has never lent her face to a cause for LGBT rights, she stayed silent during last November's marriage races.  Nada.  Nothing.

So what's a girl to do now that daddy, and her for that matter, is personae non-grata in Washington DC?

Why move back to Wyoming so she can run for the U.S. Senate!

But there is a problem.  Wyoming already has a Conservative Republican Senator by the name Mike Enzi. And its time for Enzi's reelection campaign to begin.  And this is the seat that Liz has decided she wants.  And Mike Enzi isn't ready to retire.

And the people of Wyoming aren't ready to vote Enzi out, either.

As a matter of fact, it appears that Liz has the problems, if you take the one stated above into consideration, problems with this plan of hers.

First, Mike Enzi isn't ready to retire or go out quietly.

Secondly, she's seen as an outsider - someone who moved back home just to run for office.  In the dictionary thats called being a carpetbagger.  Wyoming residents don't like that.   They don't cotton to people from the big city of Washington using them for their own personal gain.

Thirdly, Liz is having really bad poll numbers.  How bad?  The numbers show that Enzi is popular and that less than 40% like Cheney.  Most say they don't know her.  And they don't know her because she hasn't spent her life building bridges with the people in her home state.

And when you don't have bridges to reach across and shake hands with local donors, you have to look elsewhere to fund your primary campaign, and if there is anything that Wyoming resident distrust more than someone from Washington DC, its money from Washington DC.

Even Olympia Snowe, the highly regarded former Republican Senator from Maine finds Liz' exploits "unfortunate".  And Olympia loves everyone.

Now between the election in 2014, Liz could very well pull this stunt off, but it isn't going to be pretty.  Liz is going to run a dirty, dirty race, because thats the way she rolls.  But while Wyoming residents may love a good bullrider, they don't like a bullshitter.

And thats what Liz is. Bullshit.

Sources

Huff Post
Politico
Salon

Our Twa-LAY

Well, here we are back again at it again.

The news flash from Balimawr is that our toilet, in our only bathroom, has reached a stage where it needs to be replaced.  We knew we were on borrowed time with the beast when we bought the house, but like an aging dog who keeps losing ground in its ability to hear, or see or even know its inside, so don't pee on the carpet, the toilet is finally where we are going to have to put it out of our misery.

And what is wrong with our throne?

Flush it and it runs like its in a marathon.  An hour can go by and its just runs and runs.  It used to take a long time, now it's at the point where it is self flushing.  And every hardware store that has sold us a new flush regulator, or a CorkyPlus flapper ("The red color tells you, its for hard water!") promising us that this would solve the problem has lied to us.

Quite literally, we've been flushing money down the drain trying to keep the "Jacuzzi" (a name the stirs images of swingers from the 70s getting stoned, all naked together, stewing in their own filth until they prune and pair up and copulate together, but not a toilet) in service.

And when the plumber came and looked at the toilet, his words were, and I quote: "There's your problem - that Jacuzzi toilet is nothing but crap."  But I think the pun escaped him. "Why did you put it in?"

I explained that we didn't - it came with the house.

"Man, I wouldn't have bought the house," sayeth he.  "What other corners did they cut? Pennies behind the fuses?"

When the husband and I redid the bathroom in Columbus, I bought a TITAN by Eljer, and it was close to $300.  The husband thought I was crazy. But I went to the plumbing supply place with an inquiring mind.  I wanted the best damn toilet they had.  And the TITAN was the best damn toilet I ever owned.   And the husband discovered its charms.  Made in Ohio, misery on water, and it never clogged.  And the name, with our friends, was legendary.  

This time around, sadly, we're not getting a TITAN, even though Eljer catalogs have upped the ante with the TITAN IV.  We can't get one.  We can't even get a TITAN II or III.  EVIDENTLY, Eljer has been merged into American Standard.  So we can only get a Titan IV if we bought it through Menards, of which they are none on the east coast.

Oh, pooh.  Quite literally.

So our plumber is selling us, at cost, the best toilet on the market today, according to him.  And the name of said new throne?

"The AVALANCHE, by Gerber," sayeth he.

"The baby food people make toilets?"

"I get that all the time," he laughed.  "Plumber humor."

This from a man who taught me the phrase "Any tighter, and I'd have married it," when he installed our new boiler last fall.

Now, when I think of the stuff that moves through a waste pipe, I do not think of the stuff of avalanches - that white powdery stuff called snow.

But in his vernacular: "Oh, it handle a whole shit storm without any problems.  I guarantee it."  And true to form, Consumer Reports ranks this as the top flushing toilet they have reviewed.  And I can't get it cheaper than what he has it at.

Normally I would install said toilet, however because its our only house and the nearest real hardware store is miles away instead of around the corner, we're letting the plumber do it.

So Friday, that giant sucking sound that you may hear will be the AVALANCHE in our bathroom, flushing down our "cares and woes," so to speak.

It's a boy!

Babe Vigoda

And I'm sure that the Royal Prince is just as cute as a bug in a rug.

What does the full moon do to you?

Well?

A little traveling music, please...

...because Cookie is taking some time off for some R&R.

Frankly kids, my brain feel about as dull as a butter knife.  So a few days away will do us some good. Remember: Stay Cool.

Back soon!

Pimpmobile

So my niece, who I call Niecy, came to Baltimore yesterday with her youngest child.  Nephew in Law is still up in the mountains at their camp and has their daughter and is teaching Niecy Jr. all about boating and hiking.   So we had a pleasant visit, but Nephew Jr., who is two and a half, got a case of the fidgets, as boys his age are apt to do, so Cookie got out his suitcase of old battered up Corgi's for Junior to play with.

The kid was immediately smitten and began doing what a child of his age can do with an old box of cars - he lined them up.  Then he moved over and faced a different direction and lined the same cars up another way, and so it went for about an hour.  Quietly, he studied each car.  He grouped them by colors.  Then by size.  By three he'll be crashing these semi broken reminders of my childhood into one and other, but for now he was content to look at the and open doors and hoods and trucks of toys from long lost makes like Rover and NSU.

His mother was telling us that he was learning his colors and she asked him "What color is that one in your hand?" And he responded "BLUE".  And then he had to go down the line, calling out his colors as I pointed to them.

And then we got to a bright magenta car.   Since magenta hasn't crept into his vocabulary at that age - although I had mastered it by age two, I am not judging - he had to think about it.  He was smart enough to know it wasn't really purple, nor pink.  But he was on the spot and his mind was trying to find the right words.  And then it did.

"PURPLE PIMPMOBILE!"

Say what? What did you say?

"PPURPLE PIMPMOBILE! and dis one orange..." and down the row he kept going.

"Did he just say..." I started to asked Niecy.

"He heard it while we were on a tour bus from another rider and now its just one of those things.  He'll outgrow it if we just ignore it."

Next year, Nephew Jr. starts daycare while his parents work.  I wish I could be a fly on the wall when he belts out a "PURPLE PIMPMOBILE" but my Niece is probably right - he'll forget it in due time.

But this was one of those charming moments when a child belts out something they have heard and the adults in the room laugh, because, well thats what we laugh at.

But when Nephew Jr. grows up and has children of his own, I plan on teaching his son PURPLE PIMPMOBILE.  Gotta keep those family traditions alive...

How to have a summer cocktail party

The Cookie's are hosting their first Baltimore Cocktail Party!  And guess what we're serving!

Pink Panty Pulldowns

1 can of frozen Pink Lemonade

Vodka

Mix the pink lemonade with half as much water on instructions (usually two cans)

Add one can of vodka and mix

Add one half can of water

CHILL WELL, and serve ICE COLD

Serve in a wine or martini glass, drop a cherry to the bottom of the glass for full effect.

And be careful with these.  The sneak up on you.  So make sure you eat:

 Cocktail shrimp, and lots of it.

Bacon wrapped prunes. 

Trust me on this one.  Its always the one people go to first and people are always clamoring for more.

Add a little:

And don't forget the most important part:

And some unpredictable people, and add some of these

and a couple of these

  Better yet:

A few more of these. 

Have a great weekend!

Serious stuff: The Black Cars Traveling to Youngstown

My mother and I had a relationship with lots of ups and downs. I loved her dearly, and she drove me bat shit insane. She was a beautiful woman, and an "interesting creature", according to my father in law, the retired psychiatrist.

Though many of the things she tried to teach me ran through my mind like a sieve, one lesson stands out because it was one of the few times that she let down the wall that protected her ability to show her vulnerable side.

I had friends that working in women's health care when I was at Ohio State.  One of them gave me a bumper sticker that said "Keep Abortion Legal" and under that it said "Keep it Safe" and "Keep it Rare".  So I stuck it on my car.  My parents had always talked openly about why a woman should have a right to chose, so my mindset developed along their thinking.

When my mother saw the bumper sticker she asked where I got it.  I thought the next thing out of her mouth was going to be to remove it from the car.

"Look, there are a lot of people out there," she paused.

I thought I knew what was coming next; but I wasn't ready for what came next.  Instead, she lowered that wall of invulnerability.

"...don't know what it was like for woman back then.  A girl would get in trouble and if her family had money they could send her away.  If a girl wanted to keep the baby, then she could get into a Salvation Army Hospital.  But if she was in trouble and couldn't keep the baby, she had to go to Youngstown."

My mother had left north central Ohio in 1946 and moved to Cleveland where she was a registered nurse.  She eventually met a man and got married and a couple years later, they divorced.  But she worked as a nurse and in doctors offices until she married my father.

"Why Youngstown?" I asked.

"Because thats where people (from Cleveland) went when they needed something that they couldn't get in Cleveland.  Like liquor that the state didn't sell, or dope or pills," she paused, almost as if her need to tell this story was exposing too much of her soul.

"Anyway, people knew people who would take care of girls in trouble.  You couldn't ask your doctor because it was a crime.  The mob would hire these men to do it. And someone always knew of someone who knew someone.  But it was always Youngstown."

"You see these black cars would drive out from Youngstown on Friday and they would pick girls up from certain businesses - one week it was a hotel, the next the back room of a dress shop.  It always changed because they didn't want to be found out," Mom explained.

"On Sunday the cars came back and dropped the girls by a bus stop.  If we were lucky, they'd call the doctors office after the fact and we'd get them in and make sure they weren't mutilated by those creeps."

She explained that after the fact, no doctor would turn a girl in - it was too late, or what was the point of making them suffer more?

"But if they waited until the pain was too bad, or worse someone found them when the septic shock set it, it was too late.  We'd get the call from the hospital that 'so and so' was dead, and we had just seen her a month ago and, well, people today just don't know what it was like then."

"There mothers would call the office, crying - why hadn't the doctor told them to talk to their mothers?  But sometimes it was the mother who arranged for the procedure."

"And then there were the girls who thought that they were lucky got through it with no infection.  But years later they would come in with their husbands and want to know why they kept miscarrying.  The doctors had to be very careful and counsel them that a "previous injury" - code for abortion - could prevent them from being mothers like they dreamed now that they were ready."

Then, in a rare demonstration of caring she said "Be careful.  You're right on this.  No girl should ever have to go through what we heard about or saw.  These men don't get it because they never saw the wreckage, just the pretty pure girl."

And then back in her shell she went - to a place that was safe for her. And I can tell you that I loved my mother more after she told me that than I did before.

Why am I telling you this? Because Texas is again trying to turn the clock back on Abortion Rights, even in cases of rape or incest.  In Ohio, the Republican legislature is requiring ALL doctors counselling women who are considering an abortion that abortion "leads to an increased chance of breast, cervical and ovarian cancer" even when there is absolutely no scientific proof from any leading hospital or research program to this effect. If this astounds you, think about, a state legislature is mandating that a medical doctor violate his or her Hippocratic oath by lying to a patient.  This puts the doctor malpractice insurance to risk as well because it is  quackery.

No woman I have ever know who has had an abortion has ever discounted the procedure with a laugh or described it as a caprice or a whim. But for those who had the procedure, it was a decision that they made, and they didn't have to be afraid that they were breaking the law, and they certainly didn't have to face an uncertain future after being dropped off at a bus stop in a black car after the procedure was done.

If YOU don't like abortion, then don't have one.  If you are a man who is Hellbent to save these "precious lives", then do us all a favor - get a hold of your sons, your brother and your friends and start at the root cause of an abortion - that male, his penis and his sex drive.   Because if you get that man or boy to do what's responsible instead of pushing his penis and sexual agenda onto and into a woman that solves most of the problem right there.

Men need to learn, if you are going to legislate morality, start with "controlling your sexual need to spread your seed" before you take it out on a woman's right to choose.

Well, now that summer is over...

...Target is putting out school supplies and has marked its outdoor stuff down to clearance levels.

Madness.  Sheer madness.

While today may be the FIFTH of July, Cookie's Razor, formerly known as Cookie's Axiom on Summer Days is that time between the 4th of July and Labor Day speeds up.  After Labor Day, time returns to a crawl as we wait for WINTER.

So what did we do for the 4th?  Well Husband cooked out and we feasted on hamburgers, tater tots and fresh corn on the cob.  Then we hunkered down UNTIL our neighbors set off a couple major fireworks.  And then all bets were off.  So we shuffled over there, had a beer and watched all manner of things explode:

1) Firey Dragon
2) Lotus Flowers
3) Sparklers
4) Red Rose, a ground display that was very close, and continued to grow in size and shape
5) Red White and Boom, which launched all sorts of whizzers and things that went pop, pop, BANG

He also set off something called "PANDA-monium"  which gave us a barrage of ten sizable mums in the air.

But the hit of the night were Golden Showers.  You heard me - our neighbors treated us to Golden Showers.  Their children were delighted to be under the Golden Showers as well.

Of course they were fireworks, you pervs. Great rockets reaching far over the treetops, producing large yellow mums that sparkled like diamonds. That kind of Golden Showers.

Then the kids were asking why the adults found "Golden Showers" to be funny, and while their parents were trying to change the subject the kids did what kids will do when they have been up too long and have eaten too much sugar - they started running around the front yard at 10pm calling out for "Golden Showers" and giggling.

So we decided it was time to go home.  As we left the parents we trying to capture their children and take them inside to bed. This is why we have dogs.

Tomorrow we have a picnic with some of the neighbors from the other neighborhood.  Yay!  And I am taking one of the Seven Salads of Marion, Ohio: Doritos Taco Salad:

1 head of iceberg lettuce.  I know that other lettuce's have more nutritional value, but this salad contains DORITOS for fuck sake.  Just buy the freaking iceberg lettuce, OK?
1 bottle of Kraft regular Catalina dressing
5-6 shots of Tabasco
1 pound lean ground beef, browned and crumbled
A Tomato
A Green Pepper (what they call back home "a mango")
A Vidalia Onion
1 bag of regular Doritos, crushed

-Brown the beef, drain the fat and allow to cool to room temperature.

-Open the Catalina dressing and shoot 5-6 shots (more or less, depending on your tastes, but it shouldn't overwhelm the dressing.

-Cut up the tomato, the green pepper and the onion

-Tear and wash the head of lettuce getting rid of the core and icky outer layers.  Drain well.

Mix all of the above in a very LARGE bowl, and douse the salad with 4/5th of the bottle of dressing. DO NOT BE A PUSSY WITH THE DRESSING and only add a couple drops, complaining about "I'm watching my figure.  Bitches, dump the contents of the bottle into the salad.  THEN add the crushed Doritos into the salad and mix well - and serve immediately.

I know this sounds disgusting but I guarantee you THIS will be the best thing you have eaten all summer.

May the "fourth" be with you

What Norma is bringing to the Fourth of July Picnic

Just so we are clear on this

Happy July! Now, Caption This

There is so much going on here, Cookie doesn't know where to begin.  So I invite you all to CAPTION THIS photo.