Use Your Words: When to Get Away With Murder

Today’s post is a monthly writing challenge. If you’re new here, this is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once. All of the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the recipient will take them. Until now.

At the end of this post you’ll find links to the other blogs featuring this challenge. Check them all out, see what words they got and how they used them.
I’m using: snapped ~ company ~ under ~ post ~ wear ~ seen

They were submitted by: Searching for Sanity.

I've always tried to take my responsibility as a moral compass for the boys very seriously. I hope that not just what I say but what I do is an example of how I hope they will choose to act.

But there's one instance, just one time, when my actions were not ones I chose for the boys to emulate. In fact, as much as I believe in honesty, I've kept this isolated incident a secret from them. I was unsure whether to even put this story into my blog post because . . . well, besides the legalities . . . it is something the boys can never know. 

But they don't read my blog so as long as you don't tell, I think it's fair to assume my secret is safe.

This happened many years ago when the boys were in middle school. Hubs was changing careers and I'd been keeping my eye out for a job I might like to do. Something not too stressful and that would have me home at a reasonable hour.

I'd found just the thing. An assistant to a VP at a local company known for treating employees well. I sent in my resume and was called in for an interview.

The day before my interview was laundry day. I had put it off all day and at around 4 pm was finally going to have to give in and get it started. That's when the phone rang.

It seems the VP had been called out of town the next day and wanted to know if I could come in now. Now? Who does that? I can't come in now. I have to do laundry. All I've got left for underwear is an old pair of granny panties and a bra held together with pins.

But, of course, I had to go.

The VP's office was lovely. What a great work environment. His secretary was friendly and kind. I knew we'd get along.

A short time later the secretary's phone rang. When she hung up she looked at me as she started to stand and said "I'm so sorry but I have to get to my son's soccer game. Make yourself comfortable, he says he'll be no more than 10 minutes."

When she left I took the opportunity to use the lady's room, wash my hands, fix my makeup, brush my hair, no toilet paper stuck to my shoe, good to go. I was back in the empty outer office no more than 2 minutes when he opened his door and brought me inside.

Now I'm not bragging, but I have to say that the interview went well. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. This one did. There were no inane questions, just discussion of what he needed in an assistant and what I had done that qualified me to meet those needs.

As I was leaving the room, feeling quite confident I might add, I turned to smile one last time. A parting reminder of my sparkling personality.

When I turned, I happened to see in the window behind him, a mirror-like image of myself. With the most cliche embarrassing moment on the planet. Yes, the back of my dress was tucked into my underwear. My big ugly laundry-day granny panties.

And I just snapped. How to get away with murder? That's just a tv show. But when to get away with murder? Well, he'd seen my ugly underwear. There's no going back. It's justifiable. Good thing the office building was empty 'cause I was gonna have to kill him.

Spaghetti Brains

Links to the other Use Your Words posts:

Spatulas on Parade

The Momisodes
Sparkly Poetic Weirdo 
 Southern Belle Charm
 Rena's World
Confessions of a part time working mom 
Never Ever Give Up Hope 
Someone Else's Genius 
Searching for Sanity 
Climaxed 
Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
The Bergham Chronicles  
The Angrivated Mom 
Eileen's Perpetually Busy  

Spaghetti Brains

                                                                        ©www.BakingInATornado.com
 
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients:
8 oz spaghetti
1 cup Homemade Marinara: Recipe HERE
1 cantaloupe
2 orange slices jellied candies
2 gummy lifesavers
2 mini M&Ms
1 2-inch piece of twizzler

NOTE: You will need 3 toothpicks
OPT: kitchen knife for presentation

Directions:
*Make sure your cantaloupe can sit on a platter. If not, slice as little as possible off the bottom so it sits flat.
*Cut the top off of the cantaloupe and carefully remove the fruit. Be sure not to puncture the sides.
*Cut the toothpicks in half. Press a toothpick half, from the inside of the cantaloupe, into spots for the eyes and ears. Attach the orange jellied candies to the part of the toothpick sticking out to make ears. Do the same with the gummy life savers for eyes. Fill the inside of the eyes with mini M&Ms.
*Position the twizzler piece where you want the mouth and press into place with the remaining toothpick halves.
*Carefully, avoiding the toothpicks, line the inside of the cantaloupe with tin foil. 
*Cook the spaghetti according to package directions. Toss with the marinara. Place into the cantaloupe, making sure none of the tin foil shows.
*OPT: Place kitchen knife in the top for presentation.

Freddie and Jason and Spiders and Texts

 Freddie and Jason, ghosts and witches, spiders and bats. Ah, you gotta love Halloween. The holiday, the foods, the trick or treating, the costumes the stealthy stealing borrowing of kids' candy. So much of the holiday is predictable, yet still fun year after year.

One thing that changes, both as you and your kids get older is the meaning of "scary". I wrote a pretty serious post about the new scary, called It's NOT About Religion, Stupid, a few weeks ago.

Today I'm talking about another way that the meaning of "scary" has changed, and it's about technology.

No, I'm not afraid of technology. I may be inept, but I truly have embraced it. I did finally get a smart phone and although most of the features confound me and it has a mind of its own, I have to admit that I,  like everyone else, love texting. It's a great way to keep in touch in quick and easy snippets. Well, I try anyway. For my kids it's just another place to ignore mom.

Although they often "don't see" my texts, the boys do use them to contact me. In fact, it's their medium of choice due to the aforementioned quick and easy. For me, receiving their texts has become a whole new level of scary. Especially as the mom of boys who are always cryptic, giving me just enough info to be an electronic "BOO".

Examples? Here are some actual texts I've received. The first group was while the boys were both home, either in their high school days or over the summer:

*I'll be home late, gotta give a statement to the PoPo.

*From my son who was clothes shopping: 
I hope my credit card is in the wash.

*Bringing like 6 friends home for dinner and  we can't eat until after 8:30, it's Ramadan.

*This one from high school truly stopped my heart and is the epitome of not enough information:
There's a shooter.

*This one came in while I was in the grocery store:
Basement toilet overflowing. I had to leave for work.

Bloody Bandaid Sandwich

And these from when they were away at college:

*How do you get blood out of canvas?

*If you hear from the school about the bomb threat don't worry too much, I'm not in that building.

*Speed traps should be illegal. They're entrapment.

*How much would a new clothes dresser cost?

*After having avoided video chatting with me for 2 days, I got this text from PurDude:
OK, I'll video chat with you in an hour. When you see what I look like, please do not say anything.

I have to admit, spiders will always be at the top of my list of scary things, that'll never change, but these days texting is running a close second.

What scares you?

Bloody Bandaid Sandwich

                                                                        ©www.BakingInATornado.com
 
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients:
2 slices bread
3 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp red jelly
1 green gummy worm

Directions:
*At an angle, so it's as long as possible, cut a strip about 1 inch thick out of the bread slices. Leave the crust on one end and cut the crust off of the other.
*From one of the leftover chunks of bread, cut a piece about  1/2 inches long and the same width as the strips.
*Cut 2 - 3 small slices of the green gummy worm.
*Gently toast the 2 long pieces of bread. Immediately spread with peanut butter. Using a knife or toothpick, score the peanut butter diagonally one way, then the other.
*Place the jelly on the smaller, untoasted piece of bread. Dot with the gummy pieces.
*Assemble the "bandaid" with the jelly covered piece in between the two slices of peanut butter toast.

Blog With Friends: Scary Stuff

Today’s post is the next in our series of Blog With Friends theme collaborations. Each month a group of bloggers get together and each publish a project based on a theme. What I love about this partnership is that it’s not bloggers with similar interests or strengths but a diverse group coming up with a variety of posts. In any given month we may have a recipe, sewing tutorial, crafts projects, book review and/or a technology post all related to the theme of the month.

There will be individual project pictures and links to what everyone else has to offer at the end of my post, but here’s a peek at what we all came up with:

This month our theme is Scary Stuff. I made a Billy the Puppet Cake.

Billy the Puppet Cake

You know who Billy the Puppet is, right? He's from the movie "Saw". Haven't seen it? Go ahead, check it out, I'll wait here.

I have to admit that this is the second project I did for this post. The first one got scrapped from this post when all of my friends thought it was cute. Cute? Not really a word I associate with scary so back to the drawing board. And I had nothing. Good thing College Boy, the more local of my 2 muses was here. He suggested a Billy the Puppet cake.

And once I googled Billy the Puppet I agreed to give it a try. Worse that could happen is I'd be in the corner of the kitchen crying. Pffft, like that hasn't happened before.

So I started with my basic sheet cake. Seriously, this cake is so moist and delicious you can just eat it unfrosted. But not today!

Next I had to work out the decorations. This part of the project took a lot of thought because how it's decorated will make a huge impact on whether the cake is recognizable as the character or not.

I baked my cake, cut out my shapes and added a few of my design elements before sticking it in the fridge while I made and colored my frosting. I have to admit that I spent a little time in a panic when, going into the fridge, Billy looked more like Santa.

But once he was frosted and decorated, College Boy made a few recommendations and he was redecorated, he looked a lot less like Santa.

 So, what do you think? Cute? Scary? Billy the Puppet? Or a hot mess?

As always, any time you make one of my recipes, feel free to post a picture of it to my Baking In A Tornado Facebook Page. I'd love to see it!

Be sure to visit all of this month's other Blog With Friends projects:
Stacy of Stacy Sews and Schools shares a tutorial for a Scary Dreams Pillowcase. 

Robin of Someone Else's Genius treats us to a scary Halloween Story. In the End: Re-Imagined

  Lydia of Cluttered Genius shares her Cheap and Easy Halloween Make-Up Tutorial.

Rabia of The Lieber Family Blog shares how to make DIY Trick or Treat Bags.

Billy the Puppet Cake

                                                                        ©www.BakingInATornado.com
 
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients:
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

2 sticks butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar
3 - 4 TBSP milk

4 sandwich cookies
2 red pull and peel twizzler strands
1 package chocolate or black licorice twizzlers
2 peach rings gummy candies
2 brown peanut M&Ms
4 Hot Tamale Candies
red food coloring
edible black piping gel

Directions:
*Grease and flour a 15 1/2 X 10 1/2 jellyroll pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
*Cream the butter ans sugar. Beat in the eggs, milk and vanilla.
*Starting at your lowest speed, beat in the four, salt and baking powder just until incorporated, then increase speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes.
*Pour evenly into prepared pan. Bake for approximately 20 - 25 minutes or until the center springs back to the touch.
*Cool for an hour on the counter.
*Cut out a large light bulb shape in the cake. From the section not used, cut out two equal sized triangles about 2 1/2 inches per side, and a 1 inch square. 
*Carefully, using a spatula, remove the triangles and square. Cut the short ends off of the triangles and arrange with the square in the center to form a bow tie. Place on a plate and store in fridge.
*Remove all of the excess cake so all that's left is the large light bulb shape. Excess cake can be used to make Cake Pops.
 *Loosen the remaining cake with a spatula, then place a large platter over it and flip. Flip one more time onto your serving platter. Press 2 cookies slightly into the cake where the cheeks will be. Cut two 1-inch pieces out of a dark twizzler and press partially into cake where the eyebrows will be.  Cut a 2 1/2-inch and a 1-inch piece of twizzler and slightly push into the cake (resembling an upside down "T") where the nose will be. Refrigerate.
*Cream the butter with the vanilla. Carefully blend in the powdered sugar. 1 TBSP at a time, add in as much of the milk as you need to bring the frosting to an easily spreadable consistency.
*Remove about 1/2 cup of frosting to a small clean bowl and color with red food coloring. 
*Remove the large cake from the refrigerator. Slice about 3 inches off of the bottom and remove this piece to a separate plate. Frost both this piece and the larger cake. Scrape a little of the frosting off of the nose and eyebrows. Put a little frosting over the cookies, "glue" a second cookie on top and frost completely.
*Cut up pieces of dark twizzlers and push into the sides of the top of the cake to resemble hair.
*Place a little of the black piping gel where the eye sockets would be and gently spread around. Put a gummy peach ring into each eye socket with a brown M&M inside.
*Twirl 2 strands of red peel and pull twizzler onto each "cheek".
*Arrange the Hot Tamales to make the mouth.
*Arrange the bow tie under the face and frost with the red frosting.
*Place the reserved bottom 3 inches of the cake below the tie. You may need to cut to make it fit.
*Using more of the black piping gel, pipe lines down from beside the mouth to where the tie starts and around the head for the hairline.