Pickles & Dimes

Jason and I are one of those people who buy Christmas gifts for their pets. We even hang stockings for them. I know.

Last weekend, because I couldn’t wait, I asked Jason if we could give the cats some of their toys. He said, “Sure, but we better get rid of some of their older toys first.”

Is that not ridiculous? That our cats have so many toys we have to sort through the pile to make room for new ones?

Anyway, we sat down and started sorting. Here’s what we found:

• Approximately one billion shoelaces (of various lengths and colors)
• A disgusting rabbit’s foot tied to three different pieces of ribbon that I don’t dare throw away ever because it is Abby’s “baby” and she meows lovingly to it and grooms it and drags it to wherever she is napping so she can sleep with it
• Two brushes (filled with enough hair to generate one (1) entire new cat)
• Seventeen Beanie Babies, courtesy of Jason’s mom (Abby drags these around everywhere, yowling all the while, especially a Halloween ghost one that we have christened “Smacky”)
• Three fuzzy balls with bells in them
• Five furry mice (4 with their tails and/or ears missing)
• Three wand thingys (one of which makes a noise like a bird and startles the hell out of Sunny)
• One plush baseball that’s larger than Abby’s head that she manages to drag around to leave in interesting spots. (”I think I’ll take a shower - what the hell is THAT?”)

Amazingly, even though the cats usually “play” by lying on their backs while I run myself ragged around their lazy bodies dangling various toys in their faces, they were totally on top of us as we made a “keep” and “toss” pile, all “What are you DOING?!? I totally play with that, YES I DO.”

After we culled the detritus by one third, we presented them with three new toys:

• A furry mouse on a string
• A hard ball that flashes red lights
• Four plastic rings that can be batted around the floors

Sunny went berserk over the furry mouse, performing complicated aerial flips and manuevers, and actually reprimanded me via loud meows when I finally returned it to the basket. Abby was intrigued by the flashing ball, and both cats went nuts over the plastic rings, with Sunny doing her best Tom Cruise in Risky Business impersonation on the hardwood, while Abby preferred to do her Patrick Roy impression by letting us try to slide the plastic pieces past her giant goalie paws. (Final score: Us: 2, Abby: 29)

Last night, after Jason & I got home, there was a trail of toys strewn across the kitchen floor, obviously filched from the basket while we were at work: the giant stuffed baseball, the rabbit’s foot, and one of the plastic rings that they managed to bat underneath the pantry door. I guess that means they were a hit.

So, what kinds of things do you give your pets for the holidays? (Assuming Jason & I are not the only crazy pet owners around here.)

For the record, I am not a wine drinker. Jason & I own a nice little wine rack that sits on our kitchen counter and houses several dusty bottles of wine that we’ve optimistically purchased over the years. Our choices are not based on wine reviews or our knowledge of which wine features a delightful, smoky-apple flavor, but rather which wine has the funniest label and/or name. (Fat Bastard, anyone?)

So this will not be a wine review. Rather, it will be a recommendation for pairing foods with the two drinks I’m most intimately familiar with: Coke and Mt. Dew.

The way I see it, Coke is the merlot to Mt. Dew’s chardonnay. And they each taste better when paired with certain foods.

For example, Coca-Cola’s heavy flavor is better suited toward meatier foods such as cheeseburgers, spaghetti with bacon, tacos and pizza.

Mt. Dew’s light, citrusy flavor perfectly complements chicken alfredo, pork chops, mini corn dogs, alligator nuggets and lobster.

However, you may drink either beverage when eating chicken saltimbocca, because that recipe is totally awesome and even drinking iodine would not detract from its deliciousness.

Additionally, more research is needed to determine which drink is a better companion to Spam. This will require more hours in the lab and additional funding in order to make a proper diagnosis.

I’ve been so tapped out by work this week that the highlight of my day was searching for royalty-free cow udder images for use on an ad campaign. I wish I was joking.

Anyway, normally I post-date these masthead updates because I feel it’s totally boring to everyone but me. But then I realized those of you who subscribe to this site’s feed see these as new posts anyway, regardless if I post-date them, so here goes.

Man, I labored forever trying to put an image of a dime onto an ornament before I finally realized I could just make it the ornament.

I turned the pickle and dime into ornaments, threw them onto a pine branch, used the Quick Mask feature to make some of the pine needles go over the dime, and voila - done!

I found a font at Dafont.com called “Christmas Card,” and created my own snowflake to use for the background pattern here.

Disclaimer: As always, do not ask me for designing advice because I am self-taught. Seriously. SELF-TAUGHT. You are better off consulting with a true professional. (You do not even want to know how many Google searches I’ve done on Photoshop tutorials. It is probably in the thousands.)

Last night, as Jason & I became unwilling contestants in the cats’ ongoing game of “I knocked an ornament off the tree: find the ornament hook so you can put it back up while I sit smugly in the corner and laugh at you,” he leaned into our tree and inhaled deeply.

“What are you doing?” I asked, slightly alarmed that our tree would have a scent, especially since it’s fake:

(Notice someone’s anal-retentive book organizing in the background.)

He continued: “It should smell like pine.”

“Yeah, it should, but it’s fake.”

“No, it SHOULD smell like PINE.”

“But it doesn’t…because it’s FAKE.”

As we stared at each other, trying to mentally convey our passionate belief that the other person was insane, he finally pulled back some tree branches to reveal this, another reason why I love him:

A pine-scented car freshener. Awesome.