You had me at "Rats wearing vests"

 

How Bill believes I listen to him.
And why I believe Stephan Pastis lives in my house.

 Last night on our way back home from the bookstore Bill shared what he had been reading, which is really his sneaky way of telling me I'm not taking care of my body/mind/fill-in-the-blank in a way that benefits me/him/Blue Cross Blue Shield.
It was about rats that were used in a test to prove interval training at high intensity for three minutes got the same results as rats that excercised for three hours at low intensity.  Oh, and they put weighted vests on the high/less time intenstiy rats.  Which was where he lost me.  Not that I couldn't follow his thread of conversation it's just I was stuck on envisioning rats in vests.  Who makes these vests? Are they like the orange life-saver  vests on cruise ships?  How long does it take to convince a rat to put one one?  If it's weighted how did they determine how much weight was too much weight?  Did the rat say , "too heavey, too heavey".  Who cares how much exercise a rat gets?

All of which he did not find funny. Which is why I didn't ask if rats that wore weighted vests during sex performed better quicker as compared to rats that took fricking forever with the same results.  Even though this was what I was thinking.  Plus I was still in the car and it was a long way to walk home.

And I was in a cooking mood anyway.  Which made me think how much a rat would have to swim to work off butter and cream.  Because every time I see the movie Julie and Julia I get all worked up to cook, bake, frappe and generally whisk anything in sight.  It usually lasts long enough for me to purchase another french cookbook to add to my burgeoning collection.  And disappoint myself by hunting for mushrooms who's names I can't spell much less pronounce leaving me to sound like a drug addict as I try to describe what I'm looking for to the produce clerk.   " Yes, I'm looking for some spaneii7?wyi mushrooms, you got those?"    "yes, it's spelled with the number 7 because it's FRENCH".     If you don't blink you can actually pull this off.

( Which is why we were at the bookstore to begin with, where I  tried to buy another of Julia's cookbooks but there was only one copy that had been mauled by "others", simply unacceptable.  It's a problem I am burdened with.  I also never take the first slice of bread.  Or wear bowling alley shoes.)
 

So instead I made my momma's chocolate meringue pie.  No mushrooms, french or otherwise.  Still, after all these years I have to read the footnotes I scrawl along the edges of the recipe card.  Like - remember - "Make the pie first , THEN the meringue"   Meringue is temperamental.  It , much like my husband, does not like to be kept waiting.  But unlike Bill it can't be distracted by frilly lingerie. Or rats wearing vests.   

 

I suspect these were Home Schooled Cows.   I suddenly feel inferior to a carton of milk.  Judgey bovine.