April 2010

27 Signs You Are Totally, Completely, Mercilessly Addicted To Blog.

by Lori Dwyer on April 30, 2010 · 16 comments

Happy Flogging Friday!

And welcome Blog Floggers. If you don’t know what I’m waffling on about, get thee butt to Brenda’s blog, grab her cute button, and get McLinked. It’s worth your while. Promise.

And in honor of this, the ninth ever FYBF, I’m quite chuffed to bring you the following. The title says it all, really.

My top 27 signs that you are totally, completely, mercilessly addicted to blog.

Your two year old points to the computer and calls it “Mummy”.
Your husband is threatening to divorce you if you don’t get off that bloody Internet RIGHT NOW.
And he means it.
Really.
Forget bookmarks. Your blog and your Dashboard are both top of your ‘Most Visited’ drop down.
In fact, never mind either of those- your blog is set as your home page.
You see two cows in a playground and your first thought is to pull out your phone and take pictures… for your blog.
This leads you, once again, to the conclusion you really need an iPhone.
Or, at the very least, a compact digital camera for the nappy bag.
Until then, you’re tempted to carry round the big camera with the long len-sy thing in it’s padded bad doovie, everywhere you go. Just in case. But given I live in south west Sydney, this is probably not a good idea.
You find yourself wondering “I wondering how many details of this story I can change, to protect anonymity, and still blog about it…?”
You also find yourself waiting to do something stupid. So you can blog about it.
You dream about blogging.
And have nightmares about blogger’s block and connection interruptions.
You have Follower-related anxiety.
And a slight obsession with your Follower numbers.
You have been known to slump into a drunken depression upon losing a Follower.
And spend the next week staring at your Follow box, trying to figure out who it was.
So you can stalk them.
The thought of socially or personally awkward situations no longer bothers you. It will be worth it if you can get a blog post out of it.
None of your friends ring you anymore. They don’t need to. They read your blog.
You’ve signed up to Twitter. For blog purposes only.
Traffic turns you on. And not the kind with wheels.
Comments are your crack.
Each new Follow requires a full blown bum-slapping Happy Dance.
A little part of you thinks you may have a problem with how much you blog.
And another little part of you says “I think you’re right. Let’s blog about it!”

*Herumph*. Problem? Who says I have a problem? I can stop anytime I want to. Right? Right.

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This Ain’t No Foodie Blog.

by Lori Dwyer on April 29, 2010 · 17 comments

Returning to our regular programming,

There’s a rumor that the sale of cake mixes increased by humongous amounts once a fresh egg was required for the mix, rather than a mix using dried egg powder. Because it made the Stepford wives feel like they were actually cooking, and not cheating. That rumor is false, according to Snopes. Ner. What a pity. It’s a good one.

But hey, I’m a lazy mix mumma all the way, and it never feels like cheating. I wouldn’t know a home made cake if it came up an sat next to me on the bus. I have made muffins from scratch a few times but the recipe required gratuitous amounts of of canola oil. So I’m not entirely sure they count.

How simple and self satsifying are cake mixes? Many, many easy peasy varieties. Icing and sprinkles and paper cake cases included. Even pre-made icing, if you’re Betty Crocker inclined. Add an egg, a bit of milk, a splash of oil and mix. Most of them you don’t even need an electric mixer for these days, you can use a wooden spoon. Ahh, lazy SAHM-ness at it’s best. No, scrap that. Make that total awesomeness for time poor frazzled mummies. And much easier to make with a toddler ‘helping’ than multi step scratch cake.

And no one can stuff up a mix cake. Right?

Wrong.

I have a friend, who we will call CourtneyB. AKA Super Mummy. She has two kids under three, yet still manages to show up to playgroup with a delicious batch of baby cakes she just “whipped up that morning”. Baby cakes that look just like the one on the packet mix box. Quite like this.

Picture proudly stolen from White Wings website.

The Chop and I endeavored to make the same cakes just the other day. Ours looked a bit more like this.

*Ahem*

Oh dear. Somebody call Cake Wrecks. Not only did they not rise, they actually sunk and flattened. The mix was too runny, probably because I got bored and decided it was thick enough after two minutes of stirring. And I just can never get the hang of dropping the mix neatly into tiny cake cases, using two teaspoons like conductor’s batons. It goes everywhere. Hence the burnt and blackened paper cake cases.

The icing was another matter altogether. Maybe I added too much water…? I dunno, but it was runny. Very runny. And lumpy. Just a little lumpy. It’s a good thing the cake cases were burnt like they were. It kept the runny icing in.

The sprinkles, we can totally blame on the Chop. Honest. Unfortunately, I have no one but myself to blame for the uneven icing. See the cupcakes in the front left hand corner, with no icing at all? Hey, it’s difficult to spread or apply or whatever the terminology for icing is when it’s that runny, OK?

Ah, well. They all got eaten, that I can guarantee. I think the most disturbing part of this particular mix cake failure was that the cake mix and icing were both a lurid shake of bright pink, and smelled like strawberry Hubba Bubba. Surely that can’t healthy? The list of numbers on the ingredients panel looked like a phone directory. Whatever.

Foodie blog, this ain’t. But you already knew that. Right?

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