Category: Humor

Be still my heart

Published on by NouveauSoileau5 Comments

Clogging an artery near you

I spent several hours at the state fair last week, and while the reprehensible sights one can behold at such an event are usually so numerous they could fill at least one, hair-raising book, this vision leaves them all far, far behind.

Behold: The Donut Burger. Forgetting for one moment that the spelling “donut” alone makes me spit up a little, let us take a few minutes to contemplate this frightening foodstuff.

According to the Courier-Journal, which paid one of its reporters to actually eat one, the Donut Burger packs a hefty 800 calories per sandwich. And unlike the affront to culinary sensibilities served at the Wisconsin State Fair, which plated its cheeseburger demurely between a single, horizontally sliced donut, the Kentucky version brazenly slapped its cow patty between two whole fried-dough confections.

If the combination of doughnut and beef isn’t enough to stop your heart, the intrepid diner can also add cheese and, that most sinful of all foods, bacon. Approximately four slices, if my field observations are to be believed. Of course there is lettuce and tomato which can be piled upon the foul mix as well — although with a heart attack like this going, I have no idea why anyone would introduce anything as close to health food as vegetables into the mix.

It should probably be mentioned at this point that there is no way in hell that I would ever eat a Donut Burger, so if you got this far looking for a review, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Perhaps your misguided curiosity can be placated with my favorite part of the Courier’s story:

Two bites, then three and soon it started to taste like a regular cheeseburger with a hint of sugary glaze. By the fourth, fifth and sixth bites the doughnuts had flattened from trying to handle it and the grease was starting to mix with the glaze, creating something that doesn’t really have a name. Let’s just call it “glease.”

The booth where I spent my hours at the fair wasn’t far from the Donut Burger stand, and at no time during my stay did I ever look donutward and not see a line of similar length to the one depicted before you. It was generally made up of persons of girth commensurate with the main bulk of the population; that is to say, people lining up to get at this thing were thin, average and alarmingly overweight.

I myself indulged in a pork-loin sandwich and, I must admit, strayed into Donut Burger territory, grease-wise, in my choice of sides: a mighty plate of deep-fried, freshly cut spiral potatoes. An entire paper-plate full. I ate every one. I am certain that this indulgence would rarely lead to cardiac arrest; I am not so sure of our pal the Coronary Burger.

Will each of the fair-goers who succumbed to its greasy siren song do penance this week on the treadmill — or add it to their list of sins when seeking the solace of the confessional? I have to admit, while my one  greasy plate of tates did launch me into a renewed burst of cholesterol-fighting energy on my walks over the weekend, I did stop short of frightening our parish priest with my tales of state-fair sin.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone did, though; it’s so rare to see, in the wild, a victual so heinous and so sinful that it’s literally heart-stopping!

We never talk

Published on by NouveauSoileau2 Comments

Hi. Remember me?

I know, I know. I never write! It’s just that I’ve been busy — I know, that’s no excuse. We used to be so close! Remember all the good times we used to have, hanging out, talking about cooking and old prints that hung on our dads’ office walls? I know. Those were the days, weren’t they?

I mean, it seems like it was only last September when I threw myself out on the Internet and announced I was A Blogger. Wait. It was last September.

Well, it’s been a busy month or so. I have an excuse. SUMMER has arrived. Things have heated up ’round the old Soileau homestead.

For one thing, vermin have been eating my garden just as fast as I can plant it. I’m feeding several species of darling wild mammals here — mammals who are perfectly capable of supporting themselves, mind you … DO YOU HEAR ME, WILD MAMMALS?

Chipmunks: bah! You are dead to me, you sunflower digging-up little cretins. And bunnies. Bunnies! What could be cuter than bunnies? Well, listen you darling little things, I ain’t having NO MORE OF IT. Quit eating my Dianthus. And stop consuming the sunflower leaves that managed to poke their way skyward, despite the chipmunks. Go be cute elsewhere. There is no feeding trough here. I see plenty of clover out there, ready to become your sustenance. Stop it.

That’s funny. I didn’t know bunnies could chuckle.

And speaking of cute, would you look at this? Trassie is attracting flocks of girls.

Girls are appearing out of the woodwork.

OK, not the woodwork. But definitely from across the greenspace, the lush area behind my house which, I guess, supports an animal population of endless proportions. (Where are the OWLS, I’d like to know? I’m looking for Circle of Life stuff here — and the raptors crap out on me.)

But back to the girls: directly opposite our back yard live The Girlies: Allison, Lauren and Catherine. The first two are 8-year-old twins, the the remainder, a 5-year-old. Trassie likes ’em all. They jump on the trampoline, they eat popcicles. They tramp in and out of the house, gathering up Mario paraphernalia; they fly across the divide to THEIR home, amassing mermaids and stuffed floppy doggies. Piles of socks have appeared on the grass. Sandals and ponytail holders have sprouted on the deck. I’m having flashbacks to Claire’s girliehood.

We’ve also been doing yard work, which involved something I’m calling Prune Surprise.

Tras took the trimmers to the trees along the street which, as trees will do, have been growing and impeding Progress. This Progress is mainly mail delivery. The mailman got tired of fighting the limbs blocking the mailbox and finally one day got medieval on them. I found them twisted and broken — but certainly out of the way of the mailbox. Not wanting to inspire any more violent outbursts on the part of postal personnel, Tras himself went medieval on the very same trees, and ended up with a container full of trimmings. Here, Christopher poses with the container.

But let’s look a little closer.

It appears to have contained something more.

The old Prune Surprise.

Tras asked the rest of us, indivdually, to come outside and take a look at the lawn, and more or less scared the living daylights out of us when the container full of branches began wildly giggling.

If you’ve ever owned and operated a 5-year-old, you know they don’t tire easily. In our case, they don’t appear to tire at all — so the game was just as fresh by the time the last family member was fooled as the first.

So June has arrived and we’re all outside. It’s a light-filled, exciting time – one that leaves precious few moments for the deep introspection and quality philosophizing you’ve come to expect as the hallmark of NouveauSoileau.

Hey! Don’t tell me that’s the bunnies chuckling.

In the high hide

Published on by NouveauSoileau6 Comments

In the movie The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park, something called a High Hide is prominently featured. Because I recall the book by Michael Crichton better than the movie, I’ll describe what I remember from it, not the movie … but if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s this tall platform that animal researchers can use to observe dangerous predators, like lions, in their natural habitats without danger to themselves. They were not designed for dinosaur observation and thus we have forward momentum of the plot.

But at any rate, the term has been on my mind for the last several weeks, as Tras completes his array of high hides in the garage.

Not that we have any predators to observe. We just have a garage with a high ceiling, a vast open space that screams “potential storage area” to my handyman (and pack-rat) husband.

Ok that, wasn’t exactly fair. Yes, he is a pack-rat, but he’s not the only one. When you combine households, as we did six years ago, you get a lot of duplication (and triplication: at one point we had three sets of washers and dryers). That duplication also comes in the form of stuff — he and I both had boxes and boxes of college textbooks, files, and the various flotsam and jetsam of life we couldn’t part with, not to mention  all the paraphernalia, equipment, toys and clutter associated with the children I had then so far produced.

So this was his solution: affix to the high ceiling, and walls, various shelving units which could store all the things that probably would be best off out of the attic (fragile, melty stuff among them) and leave up in the attic what could be stored there (bunk beds, other furniture, suitcases).

It’s an exciting project for me because, in order to affix these various high hides to the garage ceiling,  they had to be bolted to the floor above … a space otherwise known as the attic. And to accomplish the delicate task of finding the right stud to mount [stop: this is a G-rated blog] the bracket to, the attic had to be cleared of most of the things previously stored therein.

So we’ve had some boxes sitting around for a while while this project unfolded. And soon, they will go back into storage. But in the meantime let us celebrate: Tras was justifiably proud of his handiwork, once finished, and couldn’t resist demonstrating its cargo-lifting capabilities with young Trasimond, who enjoyed his trip into the high hide thoroughly. So much so that he couldn’t resist a goofy expression or two.

So now, should any prehistoric creatures threaten, we know we’ve got built-in safety measures already in place. I guess all that storage it can provide was just incidental.

[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=dinosaur&iid=308352″ src=”0305/0000305073.jpg?adImageId=12879626&imageId=308352″ width=”380″ height=”322″ /]

Where the buttons are

Published on by NouveauSoileau6 Comments

It’s something of a sport in my family, when things get dull and boring, to introduce a topic guaranteed to send an otherwise-content family member into complete nuclear orbit. What’s even more fun is the fact that, most of the time, the family member in question absolutely knows he or she is being picked on, but is unable … to … resist … the … urge  … to … RANT!

For some strange reason, most of these stories have to do with some mode of transportation. We’ll start with me, because I’m fair like that.

The Nut Rant. I’m sure I am not the first person to have noticed nor will I be the last to be deathly appalled by the existence of truck nuts. Ah yes, the polyurethane depiction of naked man balls, attractively attached beneath the rear bumper of a large, compensating-for-something pickup truck. No, the hilarious reaction I had when these … things first became available and/or widespread was my complete denial that they were, in fact, exactly what they appeared to be.

The scene went something like this:

Me, in the passenger seat of the car, in traffic: “What IS that hanging under that truck up there?”
Husband Tras: “What does it look like?” [suppressed laughter]
Me: “Well, it looks like testicles — good lord, what has someone got on the back of their truck that LOOKS like man parts?”
Tras: [raised eyebrows]
Me: “No.”

“No,” I said, “those are NOT manufactured depictions of human gonads. That is not what they are, because there is no one, anywhere, who would willingly and on purpose purchase and then place such a thing on the back of a vehicle. There exists nowhere in the known universe a person who would make the conscious decision to attach a replica of the most unflattering and graphically detailed piece of the human anatomy which God himself created in His image on the outside of a motor vehicle which anyone driving by could see, even GRANDMOTHERS and small children and … and …”

And. Well. Um. Ahem — yes. I guess I stand corrected, then. There is a form of humor lower than a pun — and it certainly appears that it hangs lower as well.

And so, if there is ever, at any time, something that I protest cannot possibly be, Tras has only to remind me that these things exist and I am forced to admit that indeed, the devil is loose in the world, and he is treated to Installment #487 of The Nut Rant.

Yellow Truck. Although I did not witness the birth of this long-lived peeve, I have been around for its maturation, fruition, and eventual elevation to Beating a Dead Horse heights.

It seems years ago, my brother-in-law David pointed out the idiosyncratic color scheme adopted by Yellow Transportation Inc. for its semi-tractor-trailers. They’re not, as one might reasonably predict, yellow — they are orange. Cue rant.

One day Tras entertained the children and I with the stories of the vehemence, length, and apoplectic nature of the Dave Yellow Truck Rant.™ We were, of course, delighted, and from thence forward, on any car trip, every eye was peeled for a glimpse of the hilariously rant-inducing Orange Yellow Truck.

One bright fall day, on our way South for a family get-together, one such truck was spotted and Tras snapped its photo with his phone and promptly emailed it to David, who would be joining us at our destination. The rest of the trip was merrily consumed with predictions and suggested enactments of just how David would react upon receiving the email. This we of course told him all about when we all reunited in North Carolina.

At first he was all “yeah, yeah, yeah, it bugs me, you’re all so funny, hee-hee-hee,” but, as expected, he eventually started defending his Anti-Orange Stance When It Comes to Yellow Trucks. We all sat back, pleased with ourselves, and thoroughly enjoyed the rant in full flower. (Available in either yellow or orange.)

No Hams on the Gunwale. Tras has a ski boat which I, as wife and life-partner, now own as well. Due to circumstances not particularly favorable for intensive weekends of skiing and boating (which would be, in order, the birth, rearing, and management of a 5-year-old plus the introduction of termites into the aft deck which has rendered it mostly unseaworthy) I have yet to sail upon it. Boating was, however, for many years, quite the Tras passion and I have heard many, many stories from him, his family, and his friends about the varied exploits which have, over the years, occurred on the water.

One of these was a Soileau family outing. As might be expected from an extended family which included a mother prone to making potato salad, they arrived fully laden with enough food to feed a small country for at least a week. In addition to the aforementioned potato salad, the menu apparently also consisted of pork and beans, two-liter containers of various carbonated beverages, plastic cups, silverware, and a large, fully cooked, bone-in ham.

Let us contemplate the scene. Tras deftly maneuvers the boat and trailer into the lake, the family aboard, and he quickly takes truck and trailer to the parking area so that the many other boating parties may also launch in as timely a manner as possible. This is boating etiquette and boating protocol. So when he begins to make his way back to the launch site, Tras is understandably perplexed at the long, long line of cars, boats, and trailers stretching off into infinity. My, there certainly must be a LOT of people on the lake today.

The reason for the line, it soon becomes apparent, is the presence of one boat blocking the launch site. This boat hasn’t courteously been moved out of the way so others could launch — no. It is full of a merry band of picnickers, unconcernedly quaffing Cokes and sawing away at a large ham perilously parked upon the gunwale of the craft, which has drifted not one inch.

Appalled at this breach of boating decorum and stunned at the depth and volume of the feast, Tras quickly maneuvers the family out of launch’s way and on with the day of boating. Yet the ire, it did burn.

“We knew Tras was mad about something, but we didn’t know what,” said Tras’s sister Diana years later, when the event was trotted out for public consumption.

Many apologies from boating-protocol-ignorant family. And from Tras, good humor at the ribbing — which eventually, to everyone’s delight, deteriorated into low-grade, delayed fuming.

Everyone waits for the climax of the rant, for Tras can depended upon to, at least once, recall in vivid detail the horror he felt when he returned from the parking area and saw his boat at the eye of a hurricane of boater irritation — with his oblivious family happily munching around none other than a large ham laid out upon the gunwale.