Pumpkin Goo… and The Essence of Thanksgiving! (Pics)

(Save it, Baby! Count me in!)

So, it goes like this . . .

So people want to know what my pumpkin goo is…

Well…

Pumpkin Goo is my interpretation of pumpkin pie without the crust. I bake it for 5 hours until the moisture is almost completely gone, and then I force my family to eat it with Cool Whip and tell them it’s actually pumpkin pie.

I think they bought it…

Can you believe that I got compliments?

I am a horrible cook.

I really don’t even know why I try sometimes, but my husband… my husband is incredible!

Super yum.

I would love for him to cook every single day, not only for the fact that he is an excellent cook but also for the fact that then I wouldn’t have to be in the kitchen.

Boooo-ring.

I can’t help it that I am not a Martha Stewart kind of girl.

Have you ever seen one of Martha Stewart’s television shows?

Like I would want to party with her.

It would be much like sleeping, but only awake… and on a bountiful table of sun-toasted greens and mixed hay on a a bed of sea salted crusties.

Snooze-ville.

So, yeah… my family is used to my own interpretations of many holidays.

I am not bound by tradition.

I draw outside the lines, baby.

Always have, always will.

It is not a mistake that my family loves my Pumpkin Goo since they have been raised on cripy black hot dogs, blue-box mac-and-cheese, and Albertson’s Monday Chicken Meal deals from the market.

Frankly, they crave my Pumpkin Goo since it is the closest thing to home-made food… once a year…  😉 

… that is not burnt.

I’m a really great person for love, though.

Got tons of love.

Never out of love.

I am the Queen of Love.

But… cooking… how you say… not so much.

I do believe that Thanksgiving is about Food AND Love.

So… One out of two isn’t bad. A 50% success rate is not too shabby on a day that has some serious cooking in it, right?

That is the essence of Thanksgiving to me… my Pumpkin Goo, and someone else making all the rest of the great food, and lots of love.

Yeah, like ample amounts of love.

Like my mom crying when she says how much she loves us…

And, then at that vulnerable moment I throw some more Pumpkin Goo on her plate…

Just kidding.

I also sneak on some more Cool Whip.

It’s all good… including the Pumpkin Goo.

And, the love.

And, the yelling that the rolls are getting burned.

Yelling is a big part of Thanksgiving.

Loud love.

Lots of loud love.

Lots of love…

Hope your day was over flowing!

xoxo

Be well,

Belle

  A 78th Annual Writer’s Digest Award Winner

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
and Belle Karper Face Book & the popular Twitter-Belle – all on Website
Save it, Baby! Count me in!

I think it’s time…

(Save it, Baby! Count me in!)

So, it goes like this . . .

 

Yes, I think it’s time to clean the fricking house.

God. I hate this part.

Save me.

Help me?

You know you want to . . .  right?

—-

Be well,

Belle

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Belle Karper Face Book & the popular Twitter-Belle – all on Website
Save it, Baby! Count me in!

Coffee is Brewing…

 (Save it, Baby! Count me in!)

So, it goes like this . . .

 

The coffee is brewing.

The breeze is coaxing me.

A reminder of life past the screen door.

My mountain bike is calling me . . .

 

Be well,

Belle

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Belle Karper Face Book & the popular Twitter-Belle – all on Website
Save it, Baby! Count me in!

Continued Adventures of Super-Belle! Vacation Voo-Doo…The Dreaded Timeshare Presentation – Part A

 (Save it, Baby! Count me in!)

So, it goes like this . . .

 

Okay.

Here am sitting in the beautiful California mountains, on a blissful mountain side. Three and half hours it took me to drive up here. 3 and a half Goddamn beautiful hours.

We check in on Saturday, into a two-bedroom timeshare unit. I get out of the car. Stretch my legs, which the backs are now dimpled with the upholstered impression of polka-dot imprints from the stupid seat insert. Nice. I gotta get rid of that thing. It’s really not comfortable, and makes my hot-pant-legs look less than “hot.”

I look at the grounds of the resort.

Nice.

Huh, huh. Yes, these are adequate surroundings in which I will be able to embarrass my two young off-spring. The construction looks flimsy enough for everyone to be able to hear my screechings.

So, “Yes, everybody,” I decree, “This will do fine.”

It was 100 miles of my kids comparing fart jokes, my daughter’s eye-rolling to every comment I say (between each text, ya know. Can’t be bothered, right?), the air-conditioner not working due to a lizard that decided use my A/C hose for a hide-a-den, and my forced-straight-ahead-stare, because I woke up with a “crick” in my neck from forgetting to detach my Bluetooth while it charged before I fell asleep last night. (BTW, what the frick is a “crick?” I am from the south, so y’all will have to forgive me.)

So, life is not quite as magical as it might seem on beautiful facia of La-la-land.

So, when the going gets tough, yes, the tough go out of town. And, yes, I made that up.

It was 3.5 hours of bumper cars on the spaghetti network of freeways, getting me out of the fan-fricking-tastic wonderland. Yeah. Like I am going to miss any of this 101 Freeway confestation.

We drive up the winding road. People honking each time we make a left turn, because every time I turn left I go over the center line. Crap that Bluetooth, and it’s Goddamn charging chord. You’d think that by now, the “crick” in my neck would have lessened, however if you ask anyone going downhill from the mountain on this bright and beautiful day – well, their horns work just fine since my head won’t turn left.

So, long as we don’t stop, I don’t think they’ll be able to turn around quickly enough to catch up with us…

We carry on.

Finally, we all got up the hill with only minor incident. My kids inform me that EVEN (as in, addition to) a pair of geriatrics, each only about a 100 years old, were also giving us (me) the middle finger with anguished enthusiam. Thank you very much grandma for showing some God-dang restraint in your stinking personal expression of yourself. My children are at a fricking impressionable age, and your stupid finger-flipping didn’t help too g-d-crapping much while I am trying to demonstrate to them to some respect for their Goddamn elders. Thanks a whole hell of a lot…assholes.

UGH. I digress.

I have checked in, and upon check-in, after verifying that the haggard woman that is standing in front of them is actually the perky chick pictured on the front of my credit card, they have decided to ask me for my driver’s license. Now, since I accurately match the beauty of my Department of Motor Vehicles picture they decide to swipe the old Mastercard and let me pay for this luxurious timeshare experience that we, as a family, are about to embark on.

I’m tired and on my period, man. Don’t mess with me. Give me the keys to the room and no one gets hurt.

Now that they have gotten the approval code, and have questioned my signature…. And, by the way, everybody questions my signature. EVERYBODY. Albertsons supermarket, The Coffee Bean and friggin’ Tea Leaf, and even my real estate agent who handles the rental of my parent’s house forced me to re-signed documents because prospective tenants were scared off by my signature. Hello-o? This is LA. How can you be scared by anything, especially a stinking signature? She mentions in a whisper that she is mailing back the check for the cleaning lady that prepped my parents’ house for rental viewing “The Check-n-Steal check cashing place near Juanilla’s house won’t cash the check. They think it’s fake.”

“But, it’s MY signature!”

“I know, I even showed Juanilla the rental documents that you signed. She’s not convinced. Please, send her a new check with a different signature.”

“With a different signature?” WITH A DIFFERENT SIGNATURE? “Hello, the bank won’t cash it ‘with a different signature.’”

“I know, I know. What can I do? The check place doesn’t believe it.”

“Have them call my bank. They’ll tell them that it’s a real signature.” I can’t believe that a checking cashing place – granted, the pillar of societal morals and impeccable ethical standards, that cashes all kinds of checks from possibly questionable sources, now decides that mine is undeniably a fake…

“I tried that. They want a new check with a different signature.” What kind of a business are these people running here?

So, needless to say, the check in question is sitting on my desk. Along with the envelope that it came in, and there it will sit until “I” get a new signature. Which will be … let me think here …. Never.

I digress. Again.

So, yes, after the “hotel” has checked every ID I have to confirm my seemingly outrageous signature, including my frequent buyers card for the Mobile Buzz-n-Wash-n-Fluff for my dog, they have agreed to hand me some hotel keys. It’s about sticking time. However, they have efficiently diverted me over to the “activities director” in order to obtain my parking pass.

No activities director, no parking pass.

So, I shuffle my numb 3.5-hour sedated butt over to the activities desk so that I can register our SUV and finally check-in to the unit so I can place semi-lame derriere into the couch and watch some freaking TV. That’s why I drove all the way up here, right? To nag my kids and watch television. Evidently I can’t do that well enough at home, that I have to come up to mountains and share my blastings with people from around the globe in the midst of a calm hillside with tiny white yarrow flowers dotting the paths and rocks, and inhale the green effervescent misting of allergenic pollen spores.

Where’s my frigging Allegra, man?

So, I finally get the parking pass from the tenacious talons of the activities commandant, however she does not relinquish it without the covert mention of the possibility of me attending a timeshare presentation. “And, you get entered in the $100 drawing if you go on the weekend!”

What?

What did you just say? Do my ears decieve me? Timeshare presentation? Did she really just say that? Or was it just the dread lingering in the back of my crowded head? Were one of my voices whispering it — just to scare me?

I look at her.  She looks at me. “$50 dollar gift card.”

So, she DID say it.  She said IT. Those words…timeshare presentation.  I don’t even have the balls to type it in capital letters…

…Yay….

 

TO BE CONTINUED…. TO CONTINUE TO THE NEXT PART OF THE STORY CLICK HERE TO Check out NEW–Adventures of Super-Belle! Part Deux — Vacation Submission into Acceptance

So, you come back, now. Ya’ hear?

Be well Dahhhhlings,

Belle

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Belle Karper Face Book & the popular Twitter-Belle – all on Website
Save it, Baby! Count me in!