And IIIIIIIIiiiiiiIIIIII... will always judge YOUUUUUUUU

WHY DO YOU PLAY THIS SONG AT CELEBRATIONS OF LOVE!?!?!?!?! HMMM???? Could it be the lyrics, "Bittersweet memories/ that's all I'm taking with me"? Or, "We both know I'm not what you need?"
OH, HOW LOVING. HOW FULL OF DESIRE TO BE TOGETHER FOREVER.

Bambi, you stink.

EWWWWwwwwww. John and Mike went deer hunting over Memorial Day weekend (for those of you well versed in hunting seasons, SquirrelGirl, Mike's grandmother owns a small farm and she got a short term permit to hunt because deer were eating her crops) and got one doe. John brought back about 30 pounds of meat and decided that instead of taking it to a butcher he would prepare it himself. He did a great job of making ribs, steaks, and I was especially proud of his ground meat mastery. It's tough to mix the right combo of meat and fat, but he did it. He used the meat grinder attachment of my KitchenAid mixer to make the ground meat. I have to say it's adorable when he and Mike make jerky or do anything else uber manly and meaty because all of our kitchen appliances and accessories are pink. So John weighed the dear meat on a pink scale and ground it with a pink mixer. Well I had never cleaned or used the meat grinding attachment before. I read the manual and it said that the attachment was dishwasher safe. Great! Into the dishwasher it goes. Lord, that thing STANK. I mean, it just smelled worse than anything I've ever smelled before. I inspected it and realized that you had to take it apart before washing it. Up in the tubes and gears and grater/ screen thing were fine pieces of deer meat and fat and some of the meat had actually turned green.
EWWWW.

Doggie Dreaming

Cujo does not bark. I wish I could take credit; I got him that way. I have no clue if he just doesn't want to bark or if one of his former owners taught him not to. The only time he will bark is if other dogs are barking. Endearingly, he looks at them when they do it. For example, if someone is coming in through the garage and Cujo is the only dog around, he'll look at the garage door and get really wiggly and excited but not bark. If another dog is there and that dog barks, Cujo will bark and bark and look at the dog, not the garage door, and almost try to get that dog's attention. "Look at me barking! We are barking together! AWESOME!"
Cujo is sleeping next to me and his little feet are twitching and his nose/whiskers are going a mile a minute and he is intermitantly barking. Yay! He's totally dreaming about running around with his doggie buddies.

I picked a great day to watch class from home

Both of my classes this summer can be taken online, but I greatly prefer to go to the classroom and be there. My car is in the shop today so I had to watch my classes online. Not only do I have a weird stomach thing that makes every burp feel like I'm going to throw up, but my afternoon class is UBER boring. The professor is showing us how to research for our final project and I couldn't imagine sitting in the classroom while she's going over websites. "This is how you search for things on the CDC website." Ugh. SO glad I'm here at home.

Chigger, please.

John got chiggers from a hunting trip this weekend. GAAAHHHH must bathe must bathe now must bathe forever...

Do you think people would believe me if I said I was keeping kosher?

I've always liked seafood. I lived on the coast for all of my childhood and we now live about 2 hours away from the Atlantic Ocean. However, Granny and one of my aunts live in Charleston and get delicious fresh seafood all the time. Shrimp, scallop, crabs, I used to want to eat them all. My in laws have an annual custom of going down to the docks in Charleston and buying several hundred pounds of shrimp in the summer and then freezing it and thawing it as needed. Last summer I helped make coconut shrimp and for the first time was involved in cooking shrimp from beginning to end. UGH. Peeling and taking the legs off is fine. But that vein that runs down the back? I always thought it was an urban legend that it was the intestines. Um, it is not a legend. When the shrimper catches some shrimp right after a big meal, you can tell. Washing your foods feces off of itself is a great way to make that food unattractive.
I've given up on shrimp but somehow, in some corner of my mind, I hoped crawfish were different. I've written about my love of them via the Crawfish Festival before. They are at least easier to disassemble than little baby shrimp so taking out the guts was easy to do in one fell swoop. I ate a few until there was one who I didn't thoroughly de-gut. Chewing sand particles that had once been in a crawfish was a one way ticket out of crawfish town.
The one sea animal I've never liked eating was oysters. I know they're a delicacy but to me they just taste like rubber bands. Then again, I've only been offered them when they're steamed or raw. Last night John and I shared a seafood platter and it had oysters on it. No substitutions. They were fried so I figured I could enjoy them. My first bite in I felt that ominous grit in my mouth and, after quick inspection, saw that there was a black spot in the oyster filled with sand. Well, half a black spot. I always thought that spot was like, the dark muscle where the oyster is tethered to its shell. NOPE. It's a stomach.
Shellfish, I think we're done. It's been nice. Not really.

Cutest baby ever!