Tits Time for Coffee

You’ve been invited to a house-warming party or to a friend’s place for dinner, and if you’re like me, you spend a frantic 30 minutes running up and down the aisles at Target trying to find a passable gift for your host and still make it in time for cocktails.

Does he need a Shake Weight, I ask myself. Maybe she could use a Ped Egg. And after scolding myself for considering any item emblazoned with the red “As Seen on TV” logo, I grab a bottle of merlot or a scented candle and scamper to the check out.

I’m sick of giving tired and predictable gifts, and while wine is always welcome, you want to give your host something that will impress. Homemade gifts are always unique and genuine, but can be hard to pull off. That’s why I came up with the “Tits Time for Coffee” mug; it’s easy to make and guaranteed to get a toast from your host.

What You’ll Need:

• An old coffee mug
• Smutty magazines
• Scissors
• Decoupage glue (I use Modge Podge)
• Sponge brushes

Let’s Get Started:

First, ensure your old coffee mug is clean and dry. Soak your coffee mug if necessary to remove excess coffee stains or lipstick residue from the rim of the mug.

Next, cut enough pairs of breasts from your smutty magazines to cover the exterior of your old coffee mug in its entirety including the mug’s handle.

Working in small sections, liberally spread your decoupage glue with your sponge brush to your old coffee mug and begin sticking your breasts (the cut-out breasts, not your actual breasts) to the mug’s surface. Be sure to apply your breasts by first working from the center of the picture to the edges. This will ensure that you do not get lumps in your breasts.

Continue gluing your breasts to your old coffee mug until your entire mug is covered. You may overlap your breasts if you wish.

Once your decoupage glue has dried, apply another coat of glue with your sponge brush to your coffee mug and allow glue to dry. Repeat this step until the edges of your breasts are smooth.

CJM

Lententide is Here Again

I didn’t grow up celebrating Lent, or dreading Lent, as some do. I suppose the Pentecostal church of my youth simply hadn’t heard of Lent, nor were they informed of women wearing pants or the toxicity of snake venom. Yet, now that I am a card-carrying Episcopalian, I look forward to each fresh Lenten season as a time of reflection and penitence as well as an opportunity to flaunt my piety by unabashedly working into conversations the 40-day sacrifice I make to ensure my eternal salvation. Giving up chocolate is child’s play; try abstaining from pooping until Easter.

I often wonder what first attracted me to the Anglican faith. Was it its church’s red doors that I find so reminiscent of an Elizabeth Arden fragrance? Or perhaps it’s the throat-choking fog of incense that sends Vietnam veterans scuffling under the pews for their gas masks. No matter the reason, each Lenten season brings with it the promise of redemption and the occasion to prove oneself more worthy and virtuous than others.

This year, like in years previous, I am giving up shaving. Refraining from shaving is my personal reenactment of our Lord’s sacrifice of proper personal hygiene when he wandered in the wilderness for 40 days. However, unlike Christ, my beard is as thick as a 14-year-old Latina's; therefore, I’m obliged to fill in the patchy spots with mascara.

GET THIS LOOK: To get Conor's bold and bushy beard, apply mascara liberally to thin
spots and rub into beard to blend. For long-wear hold, finish with White Rain Firm
Hold Aerosol Hair Spray.

Admittedly, not shaving for five weeks is not all that much of a sacrifice. I detest shaving and will forgo the razor for several days only to shave my neck to give the impression that I’m growing a beard. But, as previously stated, my facial hair is thin and wispy like the coat of dog with mange. “You’re trying to grow a beard,” coworkers will comment. “That’s so cute.” And I’m forced to come face-to-blade once again with my Lady Schick Quattro.

Aside from having the face of a babe and the whiskers of a menopausal woman, my beard of burden often gets me mistaken for Jesse Tyler Ferguson. I will concede, however, that like Asians, we redheads look more or less the same. Still, to be beamed at by buoyant women who just have to tell me who I look like for the next 40 days is, in some ways, my own Via Dolorosa.

Besides relinquishing my razor, I plan to stave off booze—save for the Blood of Christ, which according to the theology of transubstantiation, makes me something more akin to a vampire than an alcoholic who’s fallen off the wagon. And so, I’m trading in my usual spirits for the Holy sort.

Halting the hooch isn't all sacrifice, however. I won’t miss the headaches, nausea and vomiting. And I certainly won’t pine for those guilt-ridden occasions of trying to explain why I simply had to call you at two in the morning to ask your opinion of the last episode of Glee. I won’t miss sweating gin, leaving my office cubicle smelling like a pine forest, or the tremors and tantrums that come with withdrawal. But mostly, I won’t ache for the false confidence that assures me that I can actually sing "Alone" by Heart.

Noticing what I stand to gain by swearing off shaving and alcohol, this year I plan to emanate an aura of charity. For instance, I’m going to make eye contact with the homeless rather than staring at the sidewalk and muttering something in Spanish when they ask for my spare change. It will be a compassionate me who looks them square in the eye and says, “No hablo Ingles.”

I will give more money to my parish by leaving my entire five-dollar bill in the collection plate because I won’t be counting out the children’s dimes and nickels to make change.

And, I’m going to do something good for the environment. I’m going to put my soda cans in one trash bag before tossing them into the Dumpster instead of letting them mingle with my empty shampoo bottles and glass jars.

Yes, I can see it now; I am most assuredly guaranteed a place in Heaven.

CJM

Someone's in the Kitchen with Conor: Sausage, Kale & Potato Soup

I’m not a cook who carefully follows a recipe, nor do I tediously measure ingredients. I’m an eyeballer; I trust my palms and intuition and I’m known to stick my tongue directly into a simmering pot to perfect the ratio of ingredients. Of course, that’s not to say I don’t read recipes. Au contraire. Come by my place on a Sunday afternoon and you’ll find me sprawled on the living room floor among my cookbooks while disassembling recipes and uniting the best from each (if only Dr. Moreau were a foodie.) And, without being egotistical, I fancy myself a slow-cooker savant—a trait I assume I inherited from my mother who raised three boys solely on home haircuts and a crockpot.

Before this gets too Under the Tuscan Sun (the book, not the film,) I’ll just give you the damned recipe, rather than a long soliloquy on brick floors and crusty bread.

What You'll Need:

• Olive oil
• 1 pound Italian Sausage (I like the kind from my grocery store that looks like ground beef and isn't in the casing)
• 4 bacon slices, chopped or crumbled
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced 
• 3/4 pound of kale, chopped or torn
• 4 cups potatoes, chopped (I use red potatoes with the skins on; I like the way it looks in the soup)
• 48 ounces chicken broth
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 pint cream
• Salt and pepper

Let's Get Cookin':

Drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil into a heated skillet. Add Italian sausage and brown while breaking up the sausage with a wooden spoon. Once the sausage is browned, drain and add to crockpot.

Next, add bacon slices to skillet and cook until crisp. Remove bacon and blot with paper towel, then crumble or chop bacon and add to crockpot. Reserve the bacon grease in the skillet.

Add chopped onion to bacon grease and sauté until golden. Then, add the minced garlic to the skillet with onions and sauté until the garlic becomes fragrant. Drain and add to crockpot.

Add kale, potatoes, chicken broth and bay leaves to crockpot and cook four hours on high, or until potatoes are tender. Next, add cream and continue cooking for 15 minutes.

Remove bay leaves, salt and pepper to taste, then serve.

CJM

Back to Bloggin' & Ain't it Grand?

I began blogging in my early twenties as method for catharsis—to purge myself of the accumulated angst of a prolonged adolescence. Of course, my end goal was to parlay my ample rivers of twenty-something self doubt and part-time alcoholism into a tell-all book or a sex scandal involving one of the Channings—Carol or Stockard, I didn’t care which. “Channing Gets Cheeky with Gentle Ginger,” I imagined the headline would curtly read while every shameful detail lay scrawled across page-eight of The Baltimore Examiner. But when neither fame nor shame came rapping unremorsefully at my door, and my lingering adolescence began to bloom into diffident maturity, I unintentionally parted with my dreams of attaining the sort of notoriety enjoyed only by the likes of local newscasters and purse snatchers beaten within an inch of their lives by elderly women armed only with their AARP cards.

And so, I am back blogging—not with the hopes of achieving mediocre celebrity, but because in my thirty-something wisdom and yuppie sensibility, I, like Gwyneth Paltrow, have so much condescension to offer that I simply must heave it out into the blogosphere like a sanctimonious Mount Vesuvius dusting your private Pompeii with molten bits of priceless guidance. Trust me, cherished reader; you’ll be better for it.

In these upcoming annals, you’ll find things that interest me, and should therefore interest you, like stories about me. Additionally, you find recipes I like, and books I think you should read. Consider me your white Oprah with a thinly veiled gay lisp. Perhaps I’ll even provide tips on childrearing. Since I don’t have children of my own, I am at a prime vantage point to ridicule how you raise yours.

So check back weekly, or more often. After all, we have the same goal: ensuring my success.

CJM