Things people compared to food that made me hate them

Food is for eating. It can be delicious.

Please don't use food to describe things that are not for eating and are not delicious. Otherwise I will hate you. Just like I hate these people:

The pediatric nurse who asked me if my daughter's poop had the consistency of mashed potatoes

When Audrey was younger, she experienced really bad gas pains sometimes that would keep her up for hours at night. So like any worried mama, I called the pediatric clinic to talk about possible solutions to the problem.

The nurse I talked to asked me a variety of questions to try to figure out the source of Audrey's gas -- what does she eat, how often, how much, etc. And of course poop color and consistency came up. I tried to keep the descriptions clean -- using terms like "soft clay" and "sometimes liquidy." But the nurse kept steering them towards food.

First, she asked if the poop was like mashed potatoes. So I thought about mashed potatoes. 

Then I thought about poop. Then I thought about mashed potatoes made out of poop. Then I thought about eating the poop. I thought about poop on my plate next to my Thanksgiving turkey, bathed in gravy.

Just like this, only made out of excrement from the ass of another human.

Then I thought about throttling that nurse because I couldn't eat mashed potatoes for a month after this conversation.

She followed up by asking me if the poop was more like "cake batter" or if it ever got really hard "like M&Ms." Lady, you're either doing this on purpose or you have some kind of fetish. Who looks at a dirty diaper and thinks "hmmm, what kind of delicious food product does this turd make me hungry for?"

I'm so sorry for this.

That nurse, that's who.

The lady in my office who said the pastries in the break room looked like someone had their period all over them

There were strawberry danishes in the break room. They looked delicious and I was going to eat the f*** out of one.

Until someone walked in and was like "eww gross, those look like someone had their period on them."

Now all I see are nasty clumpy clots and menstrual blood. No danish for me. You are mean, lady. Very very mean.

Yes, menstrual blood is red. Other things in the world are also red -- things like strawberries and strawberry syrup. There's no need to point out the resemblance every time you see it. I would have enjoyed that danish very much.

Every baby book that makes sure to point out that breastfed babies will have poop that is mustard-yellow and the consistency of cottage cheese

I've always had a complicated relationship with cottage cheese. But after reading this description in like ten different places, and then seeing it in my kid's diaper, I now have NO relationship with cottage cheese.

  +  

= SO YUMMY

Oh, and as I was googling that picture of cottage cheese, guess what the suggested searches were??

Just in case you weren't clear, that's VAGINAL discharge. Yep. Just wanted to make sure you knew what we were discussing. Infected vaginas. Mmhmm.

How does ANYONE eat cottage cheese at this point? 

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T DO IT! YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE THAT CAME FROM!

The friend who said he blew his nose so hard, something resembling a craisin came out

This was years ago, but I still remember it and I still kind of hate him for this. If you're reading this, craisin-boy, just know that you f***ed me up good. 

I love craisins. I eat them all the time. And they look like dried-up bloody boogers. :-( You stole my innocence. You stomped it like the glass at a Jewish wedding. 

THIS CAME OUT OF YOUR NOSE.

In conclusion, the world is full of disgusting assholes who want you to never eat again. But I'll show them. I'll show them all.

I'm going to have one of the danishes in the break room, no matter what anyone says.

After all, no one can possibly say anything bad about this one:

MMMMMMM.

Right??

When someone you know writes a book

Are you friends with anyone who has written a book? Because I am! She's published and everything. And a long time ago (like a year ago probably, maybe more, I am a bad friend) she asked if I might consider reading her book and drawing some pictures to accompany it in my blog. And I was like "sure! I would love to do that!" And then I spent the next year being distracted by shiny objects. But today I am going to follow through on that promise.

It's always a dangerous thing when someone you know asks you to read a book that they've written. Because there are many ways the whole thing could go wrong. For starters, it is impossible to not picture your friend in the role of the main character. I could write a book starring a 4'11 extremely religious Korean girl, and you'd still picture me when you read it. And this leads into the second major problem with reading a book written by someone you know: sex scenes.

Reading graphic sex scenes -- while picturing your middle-aged overweight coworker who really ought to shave his mustache -- is going to traumatize you for life. Because reading the scene is sort of like watching that person have sex in a porno -- so if the person is really good-looking and you don't know them that well, then you'd probably be okay with it. Or if you've actually had sex with them before, then it'd be all good. But what if the person is hideous, or if they're your boss, or if they babysit your kids on the weekends? You don't ever want to watch your boss in a porno. And you especially don't want to watch them in a porno that they wrote and directed and that features nothing but fantasies from their own twisted mind. Imagine if your money manager was the chick who wrote Fifty Shades of Grey. That sick bitch likes getting caned by dudes who pull her tampons out for her. Try looking at her the same way again with that knowledge in your head. You can't. Even if she doubled your portfolio in the last year, you'd still have to pull your money out (like that tampon in the book) and oh god.

Here is a picture of a sunset to take your mind off the whole tampon thing.

But, luckily for me, my friend Erika, the author of Blood Money, is both attractive enough to watch in a porno AND she didn't write any graphic sex scenes into the book. So there's that.

The other thing to worry about when your friend writes a book is that it might be god-awful. Like, you get through ten pages and you're like "holy f*** how am I going to read this whole thing? And what am I going to say to my friend afterwards? Do I just pretend it's good? Can I pretend that I lost it or that I don't have time to finish reading it? Should I fake my death to get out of offering 'feedback' on this festering lump of microwaved fecal matter that my friend thinks is going to get her a movie deal?" 

Though she might get a movie deal anyway, because the world is an unfair place.

And this can be a very real concern. One time I ordered a free eBook onto my Kindle and it was just sooooooo, sooooooooo awful. I even read the whole thing, too. Because if I start something, I goddamn-well finish it. So many hours of my life that I'm not going to get back. If I were real-life friends with the person who wrote that stink bomb, I don't even know what I would say to them. I would probably open with a good hard slap.

But Erika delivered once again. Her book was entertaining from start to finish. It was short enough to read quickly, and quite enjoyable -- enjoyable enough that I didn't even for one second consider faking my death to avoid offering feedback. How's that for a positive review, eh?!

So anyway, now let's talk about the actual book! As I said, it's called "Blood Money" and it's a thriller about terrorists and the CIA and also accountants but don't worry the accountant is pretty cool too.

Not this guy. This guy sucks. No one wants to read a book about him.

The main character is an Arab British dude named Azzam Abdullah, who works as an accountant for a guy who finances terrorism. But he is also a CIA informer. So he finds out about terrorist attacks that his boss is financing, and he tells his CIA handler, and then the attacks get busted before they can be carried out. Naturally, I pictured my white-female-American-mother-of-two friend as this character.

Dear Erika -- I did this, and it was wrong, and I'm sorry.

Okay that's a lie -- her character comes in later. But anyway, Azzam finds out about one particularly bad attack and wants to tell his CIA handler about it, but his boss has figured out that there's a mole in his organization. So in order to find the mole, he has some lunks following anyone even remotely suspicious. That includes our erstwhile accountant hero.

I googled "crazy accountant" thinking "there's probably going to be something stupid as hell for this." Google did not disappoint.

He meets his CIA handler, a small Asian ninja-like guy named Bai, but everything goes all to hell because the bad guys find them and they have to make a crazy intense getaway, eventually managing to get back to the United States and to the safety of CIA headquarters. The bad guys are pretty pissed about this, so they do everything they can to flush Azzam out, including kidnapping and threatening to kill an innocent woman from his past.

I won't give anything more away, but suffice it to say that some people turn out to be unexpectedly badass.

This may or may  not be a real scene from the book.

The characters are also much cleverer than the usual movie characters. Like, whenever I thought of something smart that they should do, they ended up doing that. And then they did some other smart things that I didn't think of. Nobody decided to run away by going upstairs and cornering themselves, or going to check out scary noises by shouting "hello?" and bringing a butter knife as a weapon. It didn't take them fifteen pages to piece together the clues and figure out what was going on. I appreciated the fact that the characters had a few lights on upstairs.

But if you're into books starring characters who painstakingly walk you through every step of their logic because apparently you're both idiots, then might I recommend some Dan Brown?

Anyway, it's a good book, and you should read it (Amazon has it). Also, I have drawn you this picture of a cat eating sushi with chopsticks.

How does he even operate chopsticks? I don't know.

The minefield that is parenting young girls

You guys, I need help. My daughter is headed in a bad direction, and I'm not sure how to get her back on the right path. Hopefully some of you have experience that can be of help to me.

Here is a selfie that Audrey just posted on Facebook yesterday. It should be obvious why this is concerning to me:

Every time my phone rings, I assume it's the police calling to tell me she's been arrested for robbing a convenience store.

I guess she thinks she's tough? But how do I talk to her about this? If I come down like a ton of bricks, I might lose her completely. But if I'm not hard enough on her, then this kind of thing could continue.

It's especially rough because I remember when she was first born. I remember when she was innocent; before all this acting out started. 

Look at this picture of her when she was just 12 hours old:

Back then, she idolized Winston Churchill. She wanted to bring about world peace.

And then the next day she was super into Short Round from Indiana Jones ...

"You call him Docta Jones, doll!"

Both perfectly harmless role models for a baby to emulate. I mean, I guess I wouldn't want her to behave exactly like Short Round, but there are certainly worse things for a parent to worry about.

How did my little girl go from wanting to be like Short Round to posting that selfie??

Is this whole thing just a rebellion against me, revenge for trying to force her to be something she's not?

"I WILL NEVER BE YOUR PRINCESS!"

Did my flippant attitude towards babies holding fake guns somehow lead her to believe this kind of thing was okay?

Haha this picture still shows up every time Jesse calls me and I laugh every. single. time.

Have we been letting her watch too much TV?

No, impossible. There is only one quantity of TV in this world and that is "not enough."

Too many movies that have made her think it's cool to be the villain?

Quelle horreur!

Sigh.

I don't know guys. I just don't know. Parenting young girls ... what a minefield. Well, at least she's not going in the same direction as Miley Cyrus, right??

F***.

Product Reviews lightning round: Sofritas, almond milk, Kashi bars, and Jack in the Box

Ready for some more totally legit product reviews?? I have a bunch of them for you today!

Chipotle's new Sofritas burrito

I love Chipotle. It is my most favorite fast food. I always get a chicken burrito there, always always always. And I try to keep it as healthy as possible, which means no sour cream or cheese. This limits my burrito to a very reasonable 8,000 calories and 176 grams of fat.

Well, imagine my surprise when one day I went into my local Chipotle and discovered they had a NEW FILLING! It was called Sofritas, and it was vegan and made with tofu. I figured "that sounds pretty healthy! It might even bring my burrito down to 7,500 calories! I will give it a try." And since then, I have tried it two more times, for a total of three Sofritas burritos.

What can I tell you about it? That it doesn't exist. Sofritas is a lie.

It is made through sorcery of some kind -- sorcery that I cannot explain. Three times I have watched them put it on my burrito. The third time, I even asked them to add a little more, because I needed to be sure about my witchcraft theory. 

Three times I have then eaten the burrito and been unable to locate a single speck of the fabled tofu filling. As far as I can tell, as soon as they wrap up the burrito, the Sofritas vanishes. I wonder what happens when you order it on a burrito bowl? Does it vanish while you're watching, or can it only vanish when you can't see it? What if I got a burrito with nothing else on it except the Sofritas filling? Would I get back to my office and find nothing but a big empty tortilla??

What I'm trying to say is, I have no idea what the Sofritas tastes like because it tastes exactly like everything else that's already inside my burrito. So a Sofritas burrito is essentially just a vegetarian burrito except you don't get free guacamole on it.

Fail.

This picture is from Chipotle's website, and you can't even make out the Sofritas in it. I think I see a little shred of tofu there at the one o'clock mark, but it could just be a trick of the light.

Chocolate Almond Milk

I bought some of this on a whim the other day, because I am a big fan of chocolate milk. I had chocolate soy milk at home, so I thought "why not try the almond stuff and see if it's any good?"

And is it good? YES. DEAR GOD YES.

It is so delicious I have stopped drinking anything else except chocolate almond milk. I put it on my cereal, and in my coffee. I drink it with breakfast, lunch, dinner. I mix rum into it for a lovely cocktail. I give it to my baby instead of formula.* Tonight I'm going to try brushing my teeth with it. I bet it will work well.

*simmer down, I don't give my baby chocolate almond milk

Silk PURE MAGICAL DELICIOUS LIQUID

Berry Lemonade flavored Kashi granola bars

Whoever invented this product is an asshole. And the past version of myself is a gigantic idiot. Why did I buy these? What kind of drugs had I taken that made me think "gee, berry lemonade flavored granola bar, this sounds delish!" and then pay upwards of $4 for a box of them??

These are not good. They taste like someone took a Kashi granola bar -- which is already one of the more birdseedy brands -- and then ran it through the dishwasher and sprayed it with perfume.

It is just a log of grains glued together with lemon Dawn soap and spritzed with artificial berry-scented window cleaner. I guess they might be good for if you have a kid that says a bad word and you want to discipline them in a reasonable and humane way? Maybe they would taste better if you dipped them in Milk and Honey hand soap?

This jug will last a while, unless you're one of those people who doesn't so much dip things into sauce as use the food product as a spoon to shovel the sauce into your mouth.

The worst part is that I have a whole box of them, and I refuse to throw them away so I have to keep eating them. They're great for weight loss, because they taste so awful that after a couple of bites I start wondering if maybe I'm full and can stop eating?

These must be some kind of prank because nobody on earth could possibly think they would actually be delicious.

Except for me in the past, that is. Because me in the past is a f***ing dumbass.

I'M GOING TO PUNCH MY COMPUTER SCREEN IF I DON'T QUICKLY SCROLL PAST THIS IMAGE.

Jack in the Box Waffle Breakfast Sandwich

This morning, traffic was really light so I got to my exit almost forty minutes early for work. So I decided to treat myself to this breakfast sandwich, which I had been craving ever since I saw a commercial for it while I was still on maternity leave.

Was it good? Holy f*** yes it was good. I wish I had another one. I wish I had ten more. I could wash them all down with almond milk and have the best Friday of my life.

I mean, how could it not be good? It's just a fried egg, cheese, and sausage sandwich with two syrup-infused waffles as the bread. The idea of a McGriddle always pissed me off because I couldn't get behind using pancakes as the bread for a sandwich. But waffles? That's a completely different situation. The flavors mix together so divinely it's like the sandwich was made by God Himself, not some minimum wage immigrant teenager.

And it's so inexpensive!!! I am going to start eating one every day. Next time you see me, I will be 300 pounds. But it will be 300 pounds of happiness, which I think is worth it.

Hello, friend. What are you doing later? Would you like to hang out?

So just to recap: don't ever f***ing buy the Berry Lemonade Kashi bars. If you remember only one thing from this post, let it be that. And if you know who invented them, please tell me because I have a score to settle with that guy. I still have like 3 more of those things in the box. F***.