Writing Prompt #1: Worst Meal Ever (in second person again!)

It’s Thanksgiving in your thirteenth year and you can’t enjoy your meal. You just got your braces on this Tuesday and your jaw sorely aches with every bite. Your pathetic attempts to chew the meat remind you of when that mountain of a kid Zion gave you a gum eraser in the third grade and told you it was real gum. Even the tiniest nibbles are like gnawing on a Michelin. But to top that off you have a cold. A bad one. The kind where you try to close your mouth so you don’t look like the billy goats Gruff’s troll, but you just end up gasping for breath every time. Your sense of smell left you ages ago and you are left with but five tastes: bland, flavorless, insipid, plain, and ordinary. The squishy cranberries taste like balls of bath oil, the mushy green beans might as well be overcooked slivers of drywall, and the soggy potatoes insist that they are papier-mâché props. You reach for the slimmer-than-usual celeries only to discover with your earnest (and painful) crunch that they are actually green onions and somehow your taste buds have suddenly kicked into action with a burning hatred. This is so far not to mention the fact that your pain medication leaves you desperately thirsty and no amount of refreshing water or sparkling cider is keeping you quenched. Your aunt brings out her homemade apple pie a la mode and you almost cry in anticipation of the dullness in both flavor and aching that awaits you. But you are surprised – sure the pie is apparently made from Saltine crackers and lemon juice, but the vanilla ice cream is perfectly cool as you delight in the sweetness that one kind taste bud has allotted you. With no chewing involved, that ice cream eases your sore mouth, soothes your dry throat, and raises your spirits as though you had been feasting all along. Ahhh…thank God for ice cream.

Forrest Gump in Eat-o-Vision party

Well my 25th birthday is tomorrow and I thought I'd share how my party went. I called it Forrest Gump in Eat-o-Vision and it was a blast! I got the idea when I read an article about how Smell-o-vision is making a comeback and they were doing it to Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. So I thought it'd be fun to do that only with food, but then I thought people might get sick of all the Wonka sweets, and I decided to watch Forrest Gump and serve the food onscreen. It went pretty much exactly as I planned. There was a hang-up with the TV (if any of you ever makes a TV please please make it work with all its functions even if the remote is lost), but after Justin found where Kirby had stashed the remote (in the china hutch, of course) and we served a couple foods out of order, we got the movie started and it all went well. We served the following:

• a box of chocolates (for the opening parkbench scene)
• popcorn (for the cornfield praying scene)
• Dr. Pepper (for the meeting Pres. Kennedy with the football team scene)
• shrimp (for the scene where Bubba describes all the different shrimps)
• chicken breasts (which I referred to as "shrimpless chicken" and lumped in with the shrimp scene, but one clever partygoer noted could have been referring to Jenny's breasts when Forrest ruins her roommate's bathrobe)
• ice cream ("The only good part about getting shot in the buttocks is the ice cream!")
• snap peas & carrot sticks with ranch dip (for after Forrest reconnects with hippie Jenny)
• wine (for when Lt. Dan is hanging out with Forrest on New Year's Eve)
• apple slices (for the "some kind of fruit company" part)
• coffee (for when Jenny is waitressing as Forrest runs)
• a parkbench cake

I would have also added tea & toast for when Jenny is sick (not from a cough due to cold) and I toyed with serving chocolate pudding for when "..it" happens as Forrest runs, but thought that might be too icky. It was way fun, though, and I think I'll do another similar housewarming party for when Justin and I are moved into our new house in Tacoma. Hopefully it could be a showing of Elf and we could serve hot cocoa and cookies and milk and coffee and spaghetti with syrup, etc. and then at the end have Santa come and give everyone candy canes. Fun! But first I'm planning my friend Marilyn's 35th birthday party as An Early '90s Prom. We'll play only music that would have been played at a prom from 1990-1993, take cheesy photos with a tacky backdrop (any ideas?), and vote for the queen & king. I love parties!!!

PS If you haven't seen my MySpace yet, I got my birthday tattoo after all, plus friends were super generous about cards and gifts this birthday. I got lovely flowers from 3 different people, a Target gift card, a super cute rocker-chic spa set, a case of Thomas Kemper (my friends know me well!), a CD, a lovely silver and amethyst bracelet, a handmade tea spoon plus chai & cocoa, a bar of dark chocolate (yum!), a bottle of wine (which I used for the Lt. Dan part), a bag set and a hilarious magnet, some disposable bowls for ice cream since I forgot to buy them for the party, and my dream purse from Dreamsville. I haven't gotten that many presents since probably my sweet sixteen. 25 rocks!!