Ramblings Of A Neurotic Housewife – Kimberley Zuehlke Anderson

So, I like to have fun, I’m not as much of a stick in the mud as some people like to think I am.  For example I can appreciate a good prank phone call, I used to make a few of them with my friends in college.  “What??? No dinner for four?  You no order dinner for four?  STOP THE RICE!!!  NO DINNER FOR FOUR!!  STOP THE RICE!!”  Ha ha ha, that one used to be so much fun.  A bunch of us would be in the background making “kitchen noise”, shuffling cutlery in the sink, knocking dishes around, running water and making other restaurant kitchen noises.  We would pick some random poor sap out of the phone book, call them up and say we were from the Shanghai Kitchen and we were confirming their order, a dinner for four.  When the person would insist they didn’t place an order whichever one of us was on the phone would go through the whole spiel about the “no dinner for four” and we would each take our turn, one at a time, yelling, “STOP THE RICE” as if there was an assembly line of half deaf kitchen staff that had to pass the message on to the person next to them and to the next and the next until it finally reached the head cook.  We would be laughing hysterically thinking we were the bomb.  The best though was this one night we called some dude that sounded a little stoned and he decided that he was suddenly hungry and said that even though he didn’t place the order he would take it anyways because Chinese food was sounding pretty good.  Poor sucker, who knows how long he sat waiting for his order to come from a restaurant that doesn’t even exist here in Lethbridge. 

I live for jokes.  I have so many good jokes but most of them are either too, um, how should I say this?  ‘R’ rated.  But I do have a couple favourite clean ones.  When a serial killer is walking through the park what path does he take?  The psycho path!  Ha ha ha ha.  I love that one.  I have another.  How do you make a hormone?  Don’t pay her!!  Okay, one more.  What do you call Mexican cheese that isn’t yours?    Nacho cheese!!  Ha ha ha ha ha.  Go back and read it again if you have to.  Read it with a ghetto accent, it’ll help.  Mentioning nacho cheese makes me think about nachos.  Mmmmmmm, yum yum yummy!  I love nachos.

There are some things in life I take very seriously like putting the toilet seat down when you flush so there won’t be any airborne poop spores floating around the bathroom only to land on a toothbrush.  My books need to be organized on the book shelf so that the tallest one is to the left end of the shelf and they gradually get shorter as they get to the right end.  I don’t have them arranged alphabetically by name or author (even though that does eat at my conscience and has kept me up many a night with worry) because they wouldn’t have a natural and gradual slope across the tops of the books.  They would look all jaggedy and sloppy.  It’s a huge sacrifice I make daily leaving them all out of alphabetical order but on most days the meds keep me from having anxiety attacks about it.  Most days …….  I also make sure that all my make-up compacts get cleaned about once a month so that there isn’t a build up of loose eye shadow or blush just hanging around in them.  That mess drives me mental!  I also have to keep them organized a certain way in my make-up box/case thingamajiggy.  The single eye shadow shades are together (arranged by size like the books), the duos are in their own spot, the blush are in their own corner and so on.  What if I had a make-up emergency and needed to find a certain blush and eye shadow and didn’t have the extra 14 seconds it could take to rifle through everything to find them?  It could be the difference between good self esteem from an excellent make-up day or complete depression brought on by wearing pink eye shadow with a peach coloured blush.  For shame!  Wearing colours together that aren’t in the same colouring grouping.  I could be sent to cosmetic hell for that!!  Can you see why having a system is necessary even with my make-up?  When I get into bed the blankets all have to be pulled up straight with the same amount of material hanging over on each side and they need to be folded over at the top about 4 inches.  I cannot stand having the blankets just being flopped around all willy-nilly and uneven.  I would not be able to sleep one single wink in that kind of chaos!!  I’ve had nightmares in the past about messy blankets and I’ve been woken up to my own shrill screams, covered in sweat and shaking so violently the windows are rattling.  After two and a half years of intense therapy and a cocktail of experimental drugs I can finally sleep again without the fear of raggedy blankets.  It should be illegal to let your blankets be all messed up, it’s just not natural people.  

Mmmmm, I’m still thinking about nachos.  They are so tasty and just happen to be another one of the things I’m very anal and particular about.  They need to be prepared properly and that may take time but it’s so very worth it.  Dumping the toppings on a heap of taco chips and calling it nachos is just wrong!!  Do you hear me?  It’s wrong with a capital “W”.  I’m starting to break out into a nervous sweat just thinking about the miscarriage of justice that is carried out numerous times a day all over the world with these half-assed prepared plates of so called nachos.  For all of you horribly uneducated people out there that don’t know how to make nachos the proper way, grab a pen and paper and take notes.  It is very important that we ensure the nachos of the world are being prepared correctly.  You never know, it may just be the difference between war and peace.  I wouldn’t doubt it if the cause of the Twin Tower attacks was all over a plate of ill prepared nachos.  Maybe Bush and Bin Laden were having a little get together one night at Bin Laden’s pad, just play along and try to picture this people.  And maybe Bush likes his nachos made like I do and Bin Laden didn’t have the culinary skills to pull it off and that pissed Bush off and he told Bin Laden just how he felt.  And maybe Bin Laden can’t handle criticism and it really hurt his feelings and he went into a bit of a depression and slightly psychotic state.  And maybe he doesn’t have a good enough health plan to have therapy sessions covered and he couldn’t afford them out of pocket so instead he just sat in his underground hiding place and let his anger and anxiety over Bush’s nacho comment build up inside him until he couldn’t take it anymore and he decided he had to let Bush know how he felt before this depression consumed his entire life.  Now since he doesn’t go to therapy he wouldn’t have the social skills to just sit down with good old Bush and talk things out so he let out his emotions via the airplane crashes.  A little drastic?  Yes.  But he is crazy you know and who knows how crazy people justify things in their evil little minds.  You might think I’m WAY out in left field on this but hey, it’s nacho theory!  Ha ha ha.  Get it?  Na-cho theory!  I crack myself up sometimes.

Anyways, let me tell you how you should make nachos properly.  It doesn’t matter if you use a plate or a glass baking dish, use whatever you have handy.  You need to lay the tacos in such a way that they aren’t overlapping at all.  I mean it, not at all!!  You can root around in the taco bag and find broken pieces that you can fit into the gaps between the full sized chips.  It’s kind of like making a mosaic pattern with stained glass only you’re using taco chips and it’s something you will be eating.  I suppose some people might eat glass but I’m going to pretend I don’t know that it actually happens because that is just icky.  Yeesh!  Freaks! 

Once you have the tacos laid out nicely it’s time to prepare the toppings.  It’s all about the toppings.  Use sliced black olives, chopped green onions and diced tomatoes.  When dicing these things it’s ubber important to keep them all close to the same size.  If it wasn’t for the fact that actually measuring each little piece with a ruler would take a couple of hours I would most likely do just that.  I just estimate with a very critical, well trained eye.  Why is size important you ask?  I can tell you why, at least in regards to nachos that is.  When putting the diced toppings on the tacos it’s important to have one piece of each one on every taco and if they’re almost identical in size then you won’t have one flavour taking over and being a taste attention piggy.  You just cannot ever mess with the nacho taste bud mojo thingy that goes on.  I’m pretty sure that doing so can actually put a hex on you and from that point on every single nacho you put in your mouth will go directly to your ass!!  Yup, you heard me.  Your ass.  My ass is proof of all the wrongfully prepared nachos I have ingested over the years.  Tsk tsk, it’s a bloody crying shame I tell you.  It’s the dang nasty nachos that have made my rear a wide load.  And now my ass end hydraulic system is all seized up and I can’t dump my dang fat ass load!!  It’s bigness is here to stay.  Sigh ……….

Back to the nachos …… once you have very carefully placed your toppings on your tacos it’s time for the cheese.  Oh yum, I love cheese!  Shred it and sprinkle it on top.  Not a lot of pressure here in this stage of the preparations, except that you must make sure that every single chip has cheese on it!  They must ALL be covered with cheese.  You must remember this, definitely write this tid bit down.  A nacho without cheese on it is not really a nacho, it’s just a warmed up taco chip!!  Like helloooooooo!

When eating nachos prepared by others that haven’t been done the right way (my way) it takes all the energy I have to not have a visible stroke right then and there.  Of course, I would never turn down a plate of nachos, no matter how haphazardly they have been thrown together, because I wouldn’t want to risk hurting someone’s feelings.  I mean, how would that sound, “Oh …. thank you, but no thanks.  I simply cannot nosh on this pile of messed up bullshit you’ve placed in front of me.  I may need to be medicated to prevent me from going into some sort of OCD freak attack seizure just from the mere thought of touching that dreadful crap to my lips.  But thanks anyways for the offer.”  Instead I will take a quick moment before ingestion and speak to my taste buds silently inside my head and will say something like, “I’m SOOOO sorry the mojo is all amiss with these nachos I’m about to eat.  I promise that I will make it up to you by preparing the perfect, expertly assembled nachos soon my sweethearts.  Please, forgive me for this atrocious snack I’m about to consume.”  As my mouth starts to get moist I know that this is not my mouth salivating, it’s actually my taste buds weeping over the injustice they are suffering.  Sniffle sniffle sniffle.  It just tears me up inside that they have to suffer like this.

 I just realized that I haven’t even touched on the topic of the condiment cross contamination possibilities.  Oh man, just give me a minute here.  I’m starting to break out into a sweat just thinking about it.  Oh geez, my heart is beating way too fast and the room is spinning a little.  I’m just going to take a moment here to regroup ……………  Okay, I think I can continue now.  Cross contamination with condiments is just so beyond wrong, it’s iniquitous!  (My big word for the day, google it if you have to)  Okay, so if you’re serving salsa, sour cream and guacamole with your nachos please, I beg of you, PLEASE have three separate bowls (not a lame ass divided dish doo-hickey) and you must have a different spoon for each condiment.  And if you’re going to put some salsa on your nacho first then some sour cream for example you MUST plop the sour cream on top of the nacho and you must NEVER scrape it off the spoon.  That’s how the sneakiest kind of cross contamination happens people.  Some of the salsa on the nacho can get onto the sour cream spoon and when the sour cream spoon is put back into the sour cream bowl there is now salsa in the sour cream.  Oh boy, here come the shakes now.  This whole topic is really upsetting me.  I need to take a few deep breaths for a minute.  Inhale …… exhale ……. inhale …….. exhale ……..  Phew.  I’m good, really, I’m okay.

 You just don’t ever want to lie to your taste buds and tell them that you’re going to be having a nacho with just a smidge of sour cream on it then all of sudden you pop it in your mouth and your taste buds immediately pick up on the unwelcome intruder, a droplet of salsa.  Naturally they will assume that you lied to them, they just don’t understand the world of accidental condiment cross contamination.  Have you ever seen a taste bud all jacked up from what they assume to be a nasty food lie?  It ain’t pretty people, and I know this from past experience.  My taste buds have done some horrendous things to me when they’re mad at me.  They’ve made Tequila and even Spumante taste bad to me!  Gasp, I know.  How awful is that?  It’s madness I tell you, right bloody madness.  Those are some of the darker moments in my life, moments I would much rather forget.  I’m sorry, I’m getting all choked up now.  So are my taste buds, I can feel them weeping.  I need to console them with maybe just a little drinky-poo or two of Spumante.  It’s a treat they just love and since I’ve obliviously upset them dredging up these abominable memories of some nasty nachos of days past, it’s the least I can do for them.

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