We are having a moment...

Yup.

And this one too. 

Not there yet.

That was just gas.  Excuse me. 

We'd like to end up here.


How's things with all y'all?

Some days...

...you just feel like Neely O'Hara.

You know, just fucking done with everyone, including all the Helen Lawson's in the world.

Unlike Neely, I need not escape into booze and pills.  Sometimes you just gotta find something else to focus on.

Like the President and his embarrassing vocabulary.  Last week he announced that the U.S. was developing a "Super Duper" new missile that was "Super Duper" fast.  Like "ten times faster" than anything the Soviets, oops, I mean Russians, or Chinese have.  I mean after using Super Duper, we know he is thinking like a five-year-old.  I just don't hope he's still in office when he starts sucking his thumb. But then again, we may be there right now.

Like the October rollout of Schitt's Creek, season six, IF that when they roll it out in the U.S.  C'mon, David, we're tired of waiting.

Like this miserable weather, we are having.  We had three days of May and now its fucking March again.  What the hey, Mother Nature.

Like the people in grocery stores who are not abiding by the six-foot of space rule.  I am beginning to feel that in the not too distant future, there are going to be 100 of us left in the world who played by the rules.

Like this high school friend who makes disastrous life decisions over and over and over, because they have no idea that there is a future and no idea how to plan for it.  I get these questions like "Should I invest everything in widgets?"  I say no, they do anyway, and then the widget market collapses they lose everything.  Then they call up and say "Should I declare bankruptcy," and you say no, but they do anyway.  Then they call up and whine that they can't rent an apartment because of the bankruptcy on their credit bureau, and on and on and on. The latest is "I am going to raid my IRA because I am going to be sixty next year and...."  And NO!  Your retirement money is for RETIREMENT.  It's not something you saved because someone has given you some kind of cocky locky idea to spend it all on something silly.  I love my friends. I am loyal. But stop calling me for advice, not taking the sound advice I am giving, and then asking for remedial advice over and over again because you aren't listening.  And no, you can't move into my retirement villa when that time comes because you blew it all when you never thought you would need it later.

Cookie has a limit, you know.

Now I am going to pour myself a Cranberry Juice Cocktail from the Oceanspray bottle. add some seltzer, bundle up, and go outside to look at the Iris bed in the back yard. 

Cookie needs that moment of Zen that keeps Cookie from becoming Neely O'Hara.

Old Bay Hot Sauce: PRECIOUS IS MINE!

Why is master wanting my precious?

So an old friend from college, who lives in Ohio, contacted me in February and asked if I could pick up a bottle or six for her of McCormick's "Old Bay" brand hot sauce because she couldn't find it anywhere.

Frankly, Cookie was gobsmacked.

"Six bottles of that Old Bay Hot Sauce?  Just what the hell is Marilyn smoking?" I said to my husband.

Long story short, McCormick, the spice company, is an old-line Baltimore company.  Now its based about five freeway exits from the beltway in Hunt Valley.  And someone got it in their mind that it would be wonderful to mix up a batch of hot sauce and dump in some Old Bay, bottle it and sell it in a limited edition.  Locals have been doing it indirectly with hot sauce and the spice from the tin.   Well, once that hot sauce sits for a which with the Old Bay in the bottle, it gets really tasty.

The problem is, McCormick is making it in small batches to test the market and create buzz.  Well, let me tell you, before the toilet paper, and paper towel shortages thanks to COVID-19, Old Bay Hot Sauce was like a unicorn in the wild.  A store would get it in and the consumers were like fighting one and other for it.

And it kept selling out.

INTO THIS, came Marilyn who was asking for the six bottles.  SIX? Why not ask me to steal some jewelry, cause it would be easier to find and pull off than buy six bottles of the stuff.

Still, Cookie loves a challenge. So I undertook the task with gusto.  I had no luck, but I was stopping at every market you could imagine trying to find this item.  I looked for weeks, nada.  At one point, I started to feel like Gollum searching for precious.  The color of the sauce was certainly the color of the lava in Mount Doom.

And then COVID-19 upended our world.

I still looked, people were buying all sorts of stuff.  At the Safeway in Towson, at one point the hot sauce section was bare, just down to a bottle of something green that looked angry when you picked it up.

This is the God Damned Stuff, Man...

So yesterday, Cookie is out and about trying to find Swiffers (they too have progressed to Unicorn status) and I stop at this supermarket that we never patronize because it's really out of the way, and the smell of stale air permeates the place, as does the smell of moth crystals.  Still, Cookie will go deep to find Campbell's Tomato Rice Soup.  And as I look at the sad produce department and then move on to the sad deli department, and on my way to the sad meat I noticed some sad little product on the top of the counter and it was in a blue, yellow and red bottle and the color was that hot sauce orange that I avoid (delicate stomach) it was some sad hot sauce that a rep dropped off and probably said: "try and sell a couple of these, will you?"

And then I walked down the to paper towel section and I thought "well what do we have here? Bounty?  Name brand paper towels?"  And just as I reached for that last eight pack of real paper towels I thought...

"JESUS! THAT WAS THE GOD DAMNED HOT SAUCE!"

Well, I turned around so fast that I just about knocked this old woman over.  BUT I HAD TO GET THAT SAUCE!  By the time I returned all but two were gone.  So, reader, I grabbed them for Marilyn.  Upon seeing them at home, the Husband said, he would have never thought that was it. "They're kind of small.  I was expecting a bigger bottle."

I know, so did I!  Then I told him how I passed them by and then almost knocked over an old woman.

And then the husband says, maybe they'll have more tomorrow morning.

Needless to say, Cookie couldn't sleep.  I was up at 4:30AM today at the idea that they might have more.

And they did.  The guy was putting them out and I asked what the limit was.

"There's no limit.  People are so freaked out about COVID, they aren't rushing the store for this."

So I got four bottles.  And guess what else, that old woman was back in the store this morning.  We ran into each other while social distancing at check out number 6.

She looked at me, and then she looked in my cart.

"My, that certainly is a lot of hot sauce," says she, all judgy like.

And that's when I went full-on Gollum on her and snarled "PRECIOUS IS MINE!"  Then I gave her that rolly eyed look that only CGI make.  That scared her, and she darted to Check Out 3.

I did get a hold of Marilyn and tomorrow I will figure out how to send this to her.  And yes, I will be able to part with the stuff.  Marilyn is thrilled, and am I.  I am glad I can give this to her.   So now to find a box and packing for the glass.

Unlike Gollum, I can live without this precious.

Hot time in the old town tonight

Katrina Morgan - photo credit Ottawa County (Ohio) Jail

There's an old Bette Midler joke, that she tells as a Sophie Tucker joke that goes like this:

"I will never forget it you know. Ernie, Lucky Ernie, Flying Ace Ernie from WW 2, had just gotten back from that very same war. He took me up to his apartment, stripped me naked, and threw me on the bed. He took gasoline and poured it on my privates, then lit my groin on fire. I said “Ernie, Lucky Ernie, what the hell is going on?” He said, “When Lucky Ernie goes down, he goes down in flames!” 

Its a joke of dubious quality.  But it just seems so right at this moment.   Especially when something happens that you just can't make up.

For Katrina Morgan of Port Clinton, Ohio, there was no gasoline, no Ernie, but her night of drinking apparently went up in flames, and the account is spectacular.

The Port Clinton News-Herald reported that Katrina had a run-in with the law on Saturday, May 2, 2020.  Allegedly, Katrina and some friends had been drinking.  Allegedly, perhaps a wee teensy bit too much.

Anyhow, Katrina was either feeling randy or social distancing was getting to her so she got on the phone and call 911.  Apparently, Katrina was hot.  No, actually, Katrina called 911 TWICE to report that she had, not a Hot Pocket, but a fire in her crotch.

That's what the headline said.

Digging deeper, eh hum, Katrina apparently stated that her "P_ _ _ Y" was on fire.  And she needed some firemen to put it out.

Ms. Morgan, on the 911 calls - YES, she made not one, but TWO calls to 911 and which were recorded -demanding to know if their "hoses" were working.  That right, her "P _ _ _ Y" was on fire and that a fireman's hose was needed, presumably to treat the fire in her crotch.

And her P _ _ _ Y just wasn't on fire.  No, per the audio, it was "On FIIIIIII-ERRRRRRRR!"

Cookie's reaction? "That is so Fuckin' aye Molly Hatchet"

When the Police arrived they found not a fire, but a couple of friends drinking, empty bottles, and poor Ms. Morgan, whose crotch not on fire, but she was combative.

She resisted arrest and only complied with officer directives until they threatened the use of a stun gun.

While said fire may have been metaphorically true, evidently the lack of tangible evidence meant that she was charged with Disrupting Public Services, a felony, and with Making False Alarms, a misdemeanor.

Since the News-Herald is a Gannet paper, the story went out and became a wire story.  From Bing to various newspapers, Ms. Morgan and her alleged predicament went worldwide.  The New York Post carried it, and even the Voice of India.   And you just know that the British Tabloids latched onto this, too.  They live for this stuff.

Said a friend who is a lawyer, "She looks like she could need a pubic defender."

NOW, lest you think that this is fake or fraud, let's go to the audiotape of the 911 calls.

Let this be a warning, people.  If your crotch is "on fire", that life is not a porn movie.  Once you call the police, they will not "Brown Chicken Brown Cow" when they discover that your claims are just a call out for sexual healing.

A special nod goes out the 911 operator who kept a level head during this crisis.

Take it from Dr. Cookie, they make a cream to treat that ring of fire.

Source: Woman charged after calling 911 to report fire in her crotch.

Another 31 days for the Cookie's

Cookie's husband, always referred to as the Husband, got notice last week that International  Amalgamated Ltd. Inc., his employer, was going to keep the offices locked down through the end of May 2020. 

By the time this is over, that will almost be eleven weeks of being housebound.  Seventy-seven days. 
Now the world around us, we are told wants to start right back up. 

Cookie's not buying it.

I think more people are freaked out about what is going on and floating in the air than they willing to recklessly start resuming contact points. 

I understand the need to start-up food production, in a safe environment.   I get that.

But we don't need everything opened up. 

So to that end, we are staying put.

I am not going to die from someone else's stupidity.

On the good side of this, I am getting allergy shots again so I can breathe without wheezing and coughing.

While Cookie is an introvert, even all of this is getting to me.  We'll figure out a way to get through it all. 

In any event, I hope you are all doing well and taking precautions.  I know its no fun.  But better no fun than no nothing.