Wednesday Advice Recipedown

(Or, the Wednesday Recipe Smackdown, but isn't "Recipedown" a funny word?)

No advice column today, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead? Something better. As the old saying goes, "You give a girl a hair product, her hair looks awesome for one day. You teach a girl how to make homemade Reese's chocolate peanut butter cups, her already-awesome hair will distract everyone from her huge, fat ass."

So exactly. I'm going to teach y'all how to make homemade chocolate peanut butter cups that taste just like the Reese's ones, only better, because they're a lot more difficult. Except they're easy!

(I lie! I lie! Why do I tell such lies?)

Some context: today is Chocolate Day at work. Which is pretty much just what it sounds like. It's our annual Day Of All Things Chocolate For Which To Stuff Our Faces With. Everybody makes or bakes or buys something chocolatey and we eat it all. All day.

Here's the spread this year:

I think I kind of want a salad.

The last couple Chocolate Days I was super-ambitious to out-chocolate people and made "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Clones" from an old seekrit family recipe that I found online by Googling "fake peanut butter cups" and clicking on the first link.

This year, I casually mentioned to our Office Bubbe, the Organizer and Reigning Queen of Chocolate Day, that I didn't think I was up for making them and might just buy some candy.

I might as well have said that I was thinking of rounding up some puppies and drowning them in front of everybody while an American flag burned in the background. There was wailing. There was begging. There was much ego stroking.

These things are THAT GOOD.

So I made them. And took pictures. Ta. Da.

HOW TO MAKE FAKE REESE'S PEANUT BUTTER CUPS FOR FUN & PROFIT

First, get your ingredients together.

For 24 cups, you will need: cupcake/muffin cups, two bags of milk chocolate chips, one huge honkin' tub of reduced-fat creamy peanut butter, powdered sugar, salt and two bottles of wine. Also Pringles.

Next, cut the tops off the muffin cups so they're shallower. Eat Pringles.

This is mostly for cosmetic reasons. Just like clipping a dog's ears, only not as stupid.

Then melt the chocolate chips, one bag at a time, in the microwave. Drink wine.

2 minutes at 50% power should do it. Stir very gently and let the bowl sit for a minute or two. If additional meltage is needed, do 30 seconds at a time at 50% power. Be careful because burned chocolate smells so very, very bad and you will just have to throw the bowl out because you'll never get it clean. Bah.

Using a spoon, spread chocolate into the muffin cups, coating the bottom and sides with a wafer-thin layer. Use the back of the spoon to coax the chocolate up the sides.

Put the cups in a metal muffin baking pan and stick in fridge to harden. Ignore plaintive stares from dog.

Mix two cups peanut butter with one cup powdered sugar. Add half teaspoon salt.

This is hard work. Betty Crocker must have had fucking arms of steel.

Make sure to taste-test your work.

I don't really like a lot of my coworkers, but you may choose a more hygenic sampling method.

Melt the peanut butter in the microwave for one minute at full power.

Spoon into the cups. Leave a little room at the top for the last layer of chocolate, brainiac.

Put in fridge for one hour. Drink more wine. Watch Gilmore Girls.

Did you know if you hit pause on the TV at the right moment you can totally pretend to be hanging out with Lorelai and Rory? It's true.

To wreak full intestinal havoc on one's self, take a break from the Pringles and peanut butter and chocolate sampling for a burrito with hot salsa.

Remelt remaining chocolate for 30 seconds at 50% power and spoon a thin layer on top of hardened peanut butter. Stick back in fridge for final hardening process.

It's also way more fun if you forget about this step until 11:30 at night.

Take to work and have everybody make a fuss over you and your kickass candy-making skills.

And after they've all been eaten, post pictures of yourself licking the peanut butter on the Internet. Your work is done.

Dreams Dreams Dreams

dfohdhf. AUOJDFhldfhllllllllsud9.;.

Yes, really.

Bitches, I am TIRED today. In an effort to not become a total tranquilizer sleeping pill addict and end up like Winona Ryder stealing Coach bags from Neiman's while sleepwalking, I went sleeping-pill free all weekend.

The worst part was actually not the not-sleeping-part. The worst part was the crazy-ass dreams I had when I did manage to sleep for an hour or two.

Dream #1 involved me posing as a flight attendant. It was a high-pressure masquerade, as I kept whacking people in the elbows with the beverage cart until one guy stood up and yelled that I was the WORST STEWARDRESS EVER and that I should be fired. And then all the oxygen masks fell from the ceiling! And the captain informed me that we were all going to die! And there were all these damn passengers who wouldn't put on their damn oxygen masks because it was against their religion. Gah.

(And during the whole dream I kept wishing I was allowed to operate my laptop so I could write an entry about it. That's dedication, people.)

Dream #2 involved a volcano, a bicycle, the city of Des Moines and Krusty the Klown from The Simpsons. Enough said.

Dream #3 was like, the mother of anxiety dreams. I was on deadline at work but I hadn't  read my publication once. I was also barefoot and my throat was so sore I couldn't talk. My friend Andie also worked in my office and announced that she was pregnant and everybody asked me why I hadn't had a baby yet and I started to cry, and then my office Bubbe slapped me and told me to grow up. I ran back to my office to call my mom, only to find that my new window office was actually a big room I had to share with five of the most annoying coworkers I've had from all my past jobs. And the windows were all boarded up just out of spite. And then my desk turned into a bed with really filthy sheets. And then a huge praying mantis crawled out from under my pillow and ate my dog.

I decided to just stay awake after that last one.

Oh! And my car's battery was dead this morning. The carwash guys apparently turned on the interior light while vacuuming. I would like to go back and demand the $3 I put in the tip box back. So that was really fun.

And Andie is back from Hawaii and informed me that while they were not eaten by any volcanoes, they did bike down one. So, um, sweetie? Remind me to smack you next time I see you, for you is BATSHIT CRAZY. You may also need to buy me a retroactive drink to calm me down.

Anyway, y'all must excuse me, as I'm off to inspect my still-under-construction window office and make sure that the window is not boarded up and that there are no dog-eating insects.

Then I might take a little nap.

Shatner To the Rescue

I think everything is going to be all right. Jason sent this to my office yesterday:

Say it with me. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

The thing is? While this album is, of course, COMPLETELY hysterical, it's also way better than it should be. For real. I'm like, ENJOYING it. Credit to Ben Folds, who arranged it and got all sorts of cool-enough-to-appear-on-a-William-Shatner-album-and-have-it-make-sense artists like Aimee Mann and Joe Jackson to play along. I'm not sure what this says about me, but I heart this CD so much. Jason also sent me these:

I know, right? I suck. At least that's what my new therapist told me yesterday.

No, not really. But I kind of felt that way after pouring out all my assorted Crazy to the sweetest, gentlest person I have ever met, only to be told, essentially, to grow the fuck up.

No, not really. But also yes. And then my hands stopped trembling for the first time in weeks and I was suddenly aware that there was absolutely no chance that I would drop dead of massive-internal-organ-explosion-itis while sitting there on her couch. Huh.

So see? This Shatner album really IS good, and that's not just The Crazy talking.

Two Steps Back

Damn. Damn damn damn.

I was doing really well there, couldn't you tell? Besides the Volcano Crazy and the Manic Bitch Crazy, I was definitely on an uptick. I made it through the Social Phobia Event of the Season. I made it through a week with the Amazing Projectile Pooping Puppy with grace and ease and four bottles of Nature's Miracle. I made it through a week of Incredibly Important Grown-Up Meetings and did not get fired, but was actually invited to my company's equivalent to the Big Kid's Table for more Incredibly Important Business Planning Brainstorming Thingies.

I made dinner one night and put my clothes away. I went to the store and bought Jason a present to thank him for all the flowers and gifts and molten chocolate lava cakes he's sent me over the last few hellish months. Real-life people who know me complimented me on how "like myself" I was.

La, la, la, bunnies and rainbows and such.

But I think It's back.

I'm still not even sure what "it" is. I just know it sucks and it makes me sad and it makes life hard for everyone around me. It's panic, tears, trembling, insomnia, fear, worry and the urge to self-destruct. It's scratching at my own skin until I bleed and lying about how many Tylenol I just took. It's lying in bed, too terrified to move lest my heart stop beating while at the same time wishing that it would.

I'm not ready to say it's definitely back. That I'm back where I started. I'm not. I can't be, because I'm fighting it too damn hard. I'm not curling up inside of it like a warm blanket. It. It it it.

So I guess all I can do is issue a pre-emptive apology to everyone for birthdays I'll forget, phone calls I won't return, lies I'll tell and crazy things I'll do. I'm sorry. It's not me. It's not who I am.

And I promise that I'm fighting It with every ounce of strength I have. Because I've fucking had ENOUGH of this shit.

Wednesday Advice Smackdown

A WORD OF ACTUAL ADVICE TO ALL RECIPIENTS OF FAKE ADVICE: My job has erupted with the crazy and the busy. Like a volcano of work. Boom! Also, I am fighting a cold that I absolutely positively must not come down with. There is no time to be sick. There is also no time for this column, but I’m not letting that stop me. You know why? Because I am a trooper.

Now what was I saying before? Right. This week’s advice will probably be even suckier and faker than usual. Because wah.

(Also, the Wednesday Advice Smackdown has officially reached full Cabbage Patch Kids proportions, with the number of questions far exceeding my wee brain’s ability to answer in one day. So if your question is not answered here, please check back next week because I keep them all forever until they are answered and also your call is very important to me, please stay on the line, etc.)

Hey Amy,

I want to thank you for your recent advice column where you recommended several haircare products for those of us who are unfortunate enough to have fine, oily, stringy hair.  I just got a haircut like two weeks ago and I couldn't justify the expense of getting another one right away, but I bought several of the products you recommended and my hair has been AMAZING.  Seriously, all my friends are like, "How is your hair so pretty?  What did you do?"  So, thank you for that.

Along those lines, do you have any other beauty products that you would like to pimp out?  Like, moisturizer, makeup, that kind of thing?  Help me look even more pretty, maybe even as pretty as you!

Thanks,
Meghan

(HINT: Sucking up greatly increases your question’s chances of getting noticed.)

First of all, I am thrilled that I am making a difference to hair follicles across the nation. Second of all, I am pissed that the Bed Head people STILL have not sent me any money.

So no Bed Head pimpage today. (Except for After Party, for those of y’all who get the frizzy fly-away ends. Also because I find the packaging extremely amusing.)

Today I shall pimp Ahava, a line of moisturizers and skincare products from Israel. My parents visited Israel a few years ago (before it was QUITE as crazy to go there) and brought back samples for me. (My parents are only moderately crazy.)

(Also, you read that right. My parents went to Israel and brought me hotel toiletry samples as a present. Because they know me that well.)

ANYWAY. Ahava makes a mud mask from Dead Sea mud, which you know has to be good because it sounds holy and sacred. They also sell Dead Sea bath salts, which are just heaven for dry skin and eczema. (Which I do not have, but I have testimonials that Ahava Dead Sea Bath Salts are a gift from God for eczema.)

And they also make a bazillion other moisturizers for every other part of your body, because you CANNOT put the same moisturizer on your feet as you put on your elbows. You CANNOT.

I also use their facial moisturizer for oily skin (and good God I’m getting tired of typing out the word moisturizer), because my face gets very, very angry very, very easily. Also the mud mask (or masque rather, because this shit ain’t cheap) and hand crème.

Amy: Say my skin is kissably soft.
Jason: What?
Amy: I need a testimonial. Please say something nice about my skin.
Jason: It is as milky soft as the milk that flows directly from a cow’s udder.
Amy: Ew.

See? There you go.

So. Ahava. Available at Sephora, Snooty Department Stores and also www.ahava.com.

Dear Amalah,

Am confused. Brain is hurting. Help. How are there TWO "ramdom muses"? http://therandommuse.typepad.com/ and http://randommuse.diaryland.com Which one is good and which one is evil? If one random muse jumps off a bridge do all random muses jump off a bridge? What is your Queenly opinion?

Graneezy Speezy

(It is at this point I shall pretty much offend everybody and cross the line of uppity like I’ve never crossed it before.)

My dear Graneezy. Please to be typing into your Interweb browser the address of www.therandommuse.com.

Who’d you get?

If you have to type anything like blogspot/diaryland/typepad/diary-x when getting to your site, you are a tourist. Get your own damn domain. Unless you have wept bitter tears over the domain mapping/custom DNS process, you hold no title to your corner of cyberspace.

In other words: Martha wins.

(ATTENTION INTERNET: The above passage was what is known as a "JOKE." I may tell a few of these "JOKES" from time to time, so please chill out. Think of amalah.com as South Park: if I haven't offended or insulted you already, just wait your damn turn. I'll get to ya sooner or later. Thank you.)

Dear Queen of Everything/ Pretty, Pretty Princess in a pretty pretty BridesMAID dress,

Hi.  I have three questions because I am a HOG.

(1) (This is more up Jason's alley, but I figure you'd have the inside scoop.)  Do you know where to get lovely Teriyaki Chicken in DC?  I've had some at Sushi (?) in Georgetown on Wisconsin, but I am looking to expand my stable of eateries and would like some more Japanese restaurants in there.  Very important point: I do not have a car, so the restaurant would need to be metro-accessible.

(2) I am having trouble with boyfriends.  Specifically, I still really miss my ex (together for 3 years, broke up 16 months ago) and so instead of moving on in any constructive way, I sometimes focus on my rebound (lovely boy, though lives in England, so sort of an impossible relationship).  Is there any way to move on faster?

(3) I moved to DC in July and still haven't made friends.  I came here after I graduated college in Ohio and I didn’t know anyone when I moved here and there are no potential friends in the office.  How do I make friends?  I've been going out to concerts (my favorite activity) alone, but not meeting anyone.  I volunteer at the Kerry campaign, and I don’t meet anyone.  Other than people in my office (again, no potential friends here), there are probably 3 people in the entire city who know my name.  What should I do, oh Miss Popular, to meet other young 20s ladies and gentlemen?

Thank you forever,
You have pretty hair,
Meeeeegan.

Bah! Three questions! Am tired! Wah.

1)  First of all, teriyaki chicken is McNuggets of Japanese cuisine. You don’t want teriyaki chicken. If you want teriyaki chicken you make it at home with some chicken cutlets and a damn bottle of teriyaki sauce. If you want excellent, Metro-accessible Japanese food you go to Spices on Connecticut Ave. by the Cleveland Park Metro. You order tangerine peel beef and spicy crunchy tuna roll and other assorted sushi and edamame and the tempura ice cream for dessert that they set on fire at table. You eat and you enjoy and you tell Amy to stop talking like this because it is insulting.

2)  See question one. Eat eat eat. Especially the flaming ice cream. Then you move on and maybe meet cute sushi chef who will help you throw the most awesome parties because who doesn’t want a sushi chef in the family? That’s better than a doctor.

3)  Well, once you’ve bagged your sushi chef, this should help things. Also joining D.C. Society of Young Professionals.

Dear Amalah,

Is it at all possible, in your opinion, to find the perfect purse that would be suitable for a lifetime? If not, then how long could the perfect purse last? (my husband thinks my new purse every month habit is a bit
extreme.)

Zoot

No.

Although I have one purse that is very nearly close to perfect. It was the very first Coach bag I ever got—the symbol for how far Jason and I have come since the days where the cat ate first and whatever money was left over went to some tuna fish for us.

It’s close to perfect because it has brown leather trim, but was the dark red and black signature C fabric. See? Brown AND black. AND red. You can carry that with everything. Plus it was Coach and therefore classic and always in style and blah de freaking blah.

I carried it without complaint for over a year straight. Then I started messing with perfection by adding a brown suede hobo. Then a Soho tote with blue and green stripes. Then another suede one (it had FRINGE!) and seventy bazillion wristlets and clutches and crusher hats and scarves and now I am totally Coach’s bitch as I bought the $350 limited edition Most Beautiful Bag Ever That Will Only Go With This Season’s Colors.

(Once? After I organized all my purses on the rack in my closet all pretty? When no one was looking? I totally put my arms around the rack and gave them all a big hug.)

Amy,

First of all, Hi.  Hope you and the husband and the mini-pooch are well, and I hope the crazy pills aren't getting you down.

Secondly, I have a question for your Advice Smackdown.  I thought that since you are both Queen of Everything as well as a stylish sort of chick you might be able to shed a little light on the subject of my nappy hair.

I am a natural blond who presently has jet-black hair with an inch or so of natural blond roots.  Needless to say, this looks yucky.

I cannot decide whether to strip the black from my hair (a painful undertaking) and go blond, take it one step further and attempt to go platinum blond, give up on the stripping and stay black, or attempt to dye my hair a nice dark brown with red highlights without stripping.

I have a pasty, albino-white complexion, but for some reason most haircolors work for me.

Your thoughts would be most appreciated, as I am not a big girl and cannot make huge decisions such as this for myself.

Your sister in psychiatric medication,
Trance

Oh my God, let me tell you a story.

I have always been a blond. Ever since I was wee I was very, very blond. Naturally, my hair started to darken as I got older but I always kept it blond.

Then remember the X-Files? Scully? Who for some reason became this huge sex symbol even though she was kind of down right weird looking?

I suddenly decided I wanted to become a redhead.

And by “suddenly” I mean I made this decision at 2 a.m. in a CVS while buying Cheez-Its and Chips Ahoy cookies. I’ll let you guess as to what made me come to this decision.

So I bought some red hair dye and went home and slept it off. Yet so great was my bender that the red hair dye still seemed like a good idea the next morning. Gah.

I ended up with magenta hair. Fuchsia. A horrible, not-Scully-in-the-slightest shade of red that does not exist in nature.

So yeah. I ended up having the color stripped out of my hair. Then re-dyed. And then cut off. And then stripped some more. The best I was able to get down to was a reddish brown with blond highlights and a really, really short haircut.

I cried. Oh, how I cried.

What does this have to do with your question? Well, nothing really. Except don’t strip your hair if you have to. Do the dark brown thing with red highlights.

Because I think you would look really nice as a redhead. Pass the Cheez-its.

Eruption

OH MY GOD PEOPLE.

OH MY MERCIFUL GOD IN HEAVEN.

For those who haven't been reading very long and who haven't obsessively combed through my archives so as to catch every desperate crumb of Amalah goodness, you may not know that I? Am absolutely terrified of volcanoes.

No, for real.

STOP LAUGHING.

It's all fucking public television's fault too, but I've already told you that whole story.

So the past week? Has not been a good one for me. Jason was actually afraid to tell me about Mount St. Helens erupting again. He actually took my hand gently and looked into my eyes and said, "Baby, everything is going to be all right, but I think you should know that Mount St. Helens is erupting again AND EVERYBODY IS GOING TO DIE A FIERY MOLTEN DEATH OF POMPEIIAN PROPORTIONS."

He might not have said that last part, but I kind of blacked out for a while so it's fuzzy.

To make things even worse, Andie is on her honeymoon in Hawaii right now. HAWAII. WHICH IS BASICALLY DOZENS OF DORMANT VOLCANOES THAT ARE JUST WAITING FOR AMY OR ONE OF HER FRIENDS TO VISIT. Maui is fucking going to explode and eat Andie and Jim whole, and there's nothing I can do about it, because Jason won't let me call them.

How do I know this? Because the volcanoes KNOW. When one erupts? It sends vibrations through the tectonic plates to all the other volcanoes that NOW is the TIME for the APOCOLYPSE and then BOOM, they will all erupt at the same time like they did in that one part of Disney's Fantasia.

Do not even attempt to argue with me on this. That's just good science right there.

Also, I am fairly certain that there is a dormant volcano under Washington, DC, that will also get the bat signal from St. Helens and erupt and I will die. And then you will all be sorry. The whole world will be in chaos like some bad Jerry Bruckheimer movie and Will Smith will be all, "WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO AMY, MR. PRESIDENT? SHE KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!"

And then Martin Sheen will look pensive and turn to his evil vice president who got my letter about the tectonic plates but hid it because it would uncover decades of government corruption and say, "May God have mercy on us all."

And then lava bursts through the windows of the Oval Office and everyone dies. The end.

(If anyone needs me, I will be balled up under my desk weeping softly.)

(And you think I'm kidding, don't you?)

(Wah.)

The Coupon Adventure

So my day started with a coworker giving me a coupon for a free medium coffee at the Krispy Kreme across the street. I don’t like coupons. Which is stupid and shallow of me, I know. I get embarrassed. Not because I think they make me look poor or something, but because they seem so presumptuous. “Hello, I know how to use scissors. Please give me free stuff.”

I also hate coupons because most of the time I’ve forgotten to read some tiny print on the coupon and am informed that I can’t use my coupon, not on Tuesdays and not on the East Coast between the hours of 9 am to 8 am. But free coffee? All over that. Plus, I had to run to the pharmacy in the same shopping center as the Krispy Kreme, so it just made good sense.

I had to drop off (surprise surprise) a bazillion refill prescriptions for The Crazy Pills. Okay, just three. But still. The pharmacist there must think I am the most tragic head case ever. My prescription history there looks something like this (yeah, suck that, HIPAA):

February:
Pre-fertility-drug drug
Fertility drug
Prenatal vitamins (haaaaaaaaaaa!)

March:
Pre-fertility-drug drug
Fertility drug

April:
Tylenol with Codeine for phantom broken foot

May:
Fertility drug

June:
Fertility drug

July:
Stony silence

August:
Antidepressant #1
Mood stabilizer #1, dosage #1
Antidepressant #2
Antidepressant #3, dosage #1
Mood stabilizer #1, dosage #2

September:
Scary anti-psychotic mood stabilizer horse tranquilizer #1
Scary anti-psychotic mood stabilizer horse tranquilizer #2
Antidepressant #3, dosage #2
Antidepressant #4, dosage #1

October:
Mood stabilizer #1, dosage #3
Antidepressant #4, dosage #2
Mood stabilizer #2

It’s like a roadmap to Babyville with a huge-ass detour through the Dark Land of the Crazy. Anyway. So I drop off my prescriptions and try to look like someone who is stable and also possesses reliable health insurance, which would imply a job and responsibilities.

Then I encountered the Suburbia Phenomenon in which I, a city girl, got in my car, drove to the other side of the same shopping center and reparked my car. Come on, you know you do it too. Why though? What is it about suburban strip malls that suddenly turn me into a big fat lazy ass who drives five lanes over to go to Krispy Kreme?

Again, anyway. I went into Krispy Kreme, where there was a line of other people who presumably also made sure they had the shortest possible walk from door to car, because we all wanted to start eating our donuts immediately. I took this opportunity to listen to my voice mail, which I never listen to if I recognize the number, because I can usually guarantee I already know why you’re calling me.

Jason? Wants to know if I’m home and what the dog’s poop looks like today. My mom? Wants me to call her already, good lord, she’s worried. Coleen? Is drunk and wants to sing me a song. While I did this I found two “voice memos” I somehow managed to record for myself at Andie’s wedding. I am drunk. I am slurring. I am full of HYSTERICAL ideas for my entry about the wedding. Fo’ reaaaal bitch. They’re so good. I wish you could hear them. I would try to make them into an AudioBlog if I had any idea how to do that.

Or if AudioBlog posts didn’t annoy the living SHIT out of me. Because, hello, I’m most likely to be reading your blog at work. So I’m supposed to ANNOUNCE to the entire office that I’m reading your blog at work? Also what, are you that entranced with the sound of your own damn voice?

ANYWAY.

The first memo is about how I ate Andie’s piece of wedding cake and how it was funny because she and I once ate that other bride’s cake by mistake. But duh, I made Jason take a picture of me eating her cake, so of course I would remember that one. The other one goes like this: “Oh shit. I forget what I was going to record. Because it took me so long to hit the button...thing...um. OH! Okay, definitely write about how your hair fell out during the car ride to the hotel. Because that’s frickin’ weird. Okay, bye!”

So first, I hate my voice, because I sound like I’m 12. Second, I love how I say goodbye to myself on voice memos. Third, why does my language actually IMPROVE when I’m drunk? Also my hair did not “fall out,” like, out of my head. My fancy hairdo just spontaneously collapsed as soon as I got in the car. Frickin’ weird, indeed.

Oh, so by now I’m at the counter of Krispy Kreme, furtively clutching my little coupon, which I handed over to a bunch of Blank Stares. “What’s this?” The girl asked. “So I guess I give you a free coffee?” (See? Coupons and I do not work. We just don’t.) I got my free coffee, and then proceed to order a bunch of donuts so they wouldn’t think I was a freeloader. I ate them all in the car as I drove back across the street to my office.

Somebody called me and I didn’t answer because I’m terrified of the telephone, because I am Crazy. They didn’t leave a voice mail. Oh well.