The Sunday Salon ~ Do You Eat Kitty Litter for Lunch?

I am back from church, and soo hungry I could eat a whole panful of Kitty Litter! LOL… before you go all, “EwWwW, gross!” let me ‘splain.

I’ve just finished my first Read-a-Thon, and was surprised by a LOT of how everything worked out. My thought going in was this: I read every day anyway, how hard can a 24 hour Read-a-Thon be? *cue insane laughter now*

Yeah…. First off, I have kids. I have 3 kids, in fact. Three delightful and loving sisters who delight in few things more than tormenting one another and making each other squeel. Which, in turn, makes ME squeel. Second, the idea of hourly updates really made it harder for me to get much reading done because, by the time I finished the update and settled back into reading, it would be time for another update.

BUT… by far… the greatest enemy I found was that damned evil blue bird, TWITTER.

It seems I have yet to master the skill to be plastered, obsessively, to the TweetDeck AND read a book at the same time. So I ended up tweeting, totally random and slap-happy at times, to an unproductive degree.

On the upside, though, I did have the oppurtunity to offer up some Kitty Litter Cake:

A nice, big, overflowing pan of Kitty Litter Cake! YuM!

It seems to have been a popular post :-D, and I’ll be taking some of this revolting-to-the-eyes-but-delicious-on-the-tongue dessert to the Mother’s Day carry-in 😀

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Oh my… I’ll never get anything done now!

Read-a-Thon ~ Final Tally

I’m writing this final RaT post on the fly, waiting for our ride to church. When I get back, I’ll write my Sunday Salon post and go a bit deeper about things, but I just wanted to write an official wrap up post.

The last two hours of the Read-a-Thon were looooooooong and slooooooow. The last half hour, I pretty much kept reading over the same lines again and again, never comprehending the bizarre inked symbols pressed into the once-living-tree-material. My last page in Marked was 134.

On the other hand, oddly enough, I’m feeling a tremendous, magnetic pull from one of the families in one of the books I’m writing. The eldest and youngest sisters are fighting and expelling everything they’ve ever thought and felt about the other’s character flaws and bad-daughter-ness. I’ll def have to work them through it later today.

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Reading Totals:

Empire Falls by Richard Russo ~ finished.
The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis, Chapter Four “The Bell and the Hammer” ~ finished
How to Be a Villian: Evil Laughs, Secret Lairs, Master Plans and More!!! by Neil Zawacki ~ finished 😀
Marked: A House of Night Novel by P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast ~ 134 pages.

Read-a-Thon ~ Like That DAMN Bunny, I’m Still Goin’ !

Yes, like that pink, drum-beating, shades-wearing, battery-hawking Rabbit, I’m still going. A little slower and a bit less chatty, but still awake and reading Marked.

After a third cup of coffee and no food since somewhere around 6:30 last night, my stomach was feeling rather roily. I made a nice bowl of old-fashioned oats (made with milk, not water), refilled my water bottle for the I’ve-lost-count number of times, and another cup of coffee. The oatmeal settled my stomach and gave me a boost of energy, but I quit the coffee after a sip or two started making me sick. I may take the dog for a walk to the gas station and get a couple cans of soda, then come back and pop some popcorn.

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I started this last stint of reading on page 46 of Marked, and I’m now on page 99, meaning I’ve read 53 pages in the last 2 1/2 hours.

*stinging sensation in my throat… the beginnings of heartburn, caused by too much coffee* Yeah, I’m taking the dog to get a soda.

Reading Update:

Empire Falls by Richard Russo ~ finished.
The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis, Chapter Four “The Bell and the Hammer” ~ finished
How to Be a Villian: Evil Laughs, Secret Lairs, Master Plans and More!!! by Neil Zawacki ~ finished 😀
Marked: A House of Night Novel by P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast ~ starting Chapter 11, page 99, almost a third of the way through.

Read-a-Thon ~ Settling Back In

Okay… I’ve got the MP3 player resolved… still have room for ONE more song, but it’d prob take me 3 more hours to finish if I tried to find that ONE song.

My eyes are a little sticky and wanting to shut, and it’s 2:25 am here, which means I have 5 1/2 hours left in the 24-hour Read-a-Thon. I’m going to count song titles as reading :-p … lol.

Back to Marked. I’m on page 46. I’m baked, toasted and fried.

Read-a-Thon ~ Go Eat Kitty Litter!

Okay, TBH, I’ve not read anything but Tweets, blogs, emails and comments since my last update, and look at my new book 501 Must-Read Books… look, I said, not read. I was getting a tad burned out with reading.

So I’ve been fidgetting… fingering… flipping around… and every other F-ing thing (exceptone… lol). I had tried to delete some songs on my MP3 player so I could put on some of the new ones I just DL’ed from Rhapsody the other day, but it kept telling me the thing was write-protected. It’s still new to me, and I’ve only loaded it just the once, the first time, so I couldn’t figure out what was up with it. I put it down and figured I’d fiddle with it later. THEN, about an hour or so ago, I was going to poke the reset hole, and saw the MODE button was on. DUH!

So I’ve been working through my player, which was full (2G) and I’ve managed to free up about 125 MB… crap. Meh… maybe it’ll be enough.

Okay, so since I don’t really have any READING to update, I thought I’d share a bit of the Twitter scush. Bookaliciouspam (blog: Bookalicio.us) tweeted “ran out of red food coloring, my red velvet cake is baby poo green.”

That reminded me of the time I made Kitty Litter Cake, and I had to share it with y’all!

A nice, big, overflowing pan of Kitty Litter Cake! YuM!

Here’s the recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

1 package German chocolate cake mix
1 package white cake mix
2 packages instant vanilla pudding mix
1 package vanilla sandwich cookies
3 drops green food coloring
1 (12 ounce) package tootsie rolls
1 NEW and UNUSED litter pan
1 NEW and UNUSED litter pan scooper
1 NEW and UNUSED litter pan liner

DIRECTIONS:

1. Prepare cake mixes and bake according to package directions (any size pan).
2. Prepare pudding according to package directions and chill until ready to assemble.
3. Crumble sandwich cookies in small batches in a food processor, scraping often. Set aside all but 1/4 cup. To the 1/4 cup add a few drops of green food coloring and mix.
4. When cakes are cooled to room temperature, crumble them into a large bowl. Toss with 1/2 of the remaining cookie crumbs, and the chilled pudding. You probably won’t need all of the pudding, you want the cake to be just moist, not soggy.
5. Line kitty litter box with the kitty litter liner. Put cake mixture into box.
6. Put half of the unwrapped tootsie rolls in a microwave safe dish and heat until softened. Shape the ends so that they are no longer blunt, and curve the tootsie rolls slightly. Bury tootsie rolls randomly in the cake and sprinkle with half of the remaining cookie crumbs. Sprinkle a small amount of the green colored cookie crumbs lightly over the top.
7. Heat 3 or 4 of the tootsie rolls in the microwave until almost melted. Scrape them on top of the cake and sprinkle lightly with some of the green cookie crumbs. Heat the remaining tootsie rolls until pliable and shape as before. Spread all but one randomly over top of cake mixture. Sprinkle with any remaining cookie crumbs. Hang the remaining tootsie roll over side of litter box and sprinkle with a few green cookie crumbs. Serve with the pooper scooper for a gross (but hilariously funny) dessert.

When I made this with the kids, we found the best part about the preperation was making the “cat turds” (warmed up Tootsie Rolls) look as REAL as POSSIBLE. Rolling them between our palms and stretching them out like a clay snake in art class, then dragging them through the “litter” (crumbled cakes) so they have that dirty look to them, and finally swirling them around for that “fresh pile” look or draping them over the side for the “lazy, sloppy kitty” look.

The second part that was funny as HELL with it was watching how people reacted to seeing it on the counter… right smack in the middle of all the delicious-looking desserts. You could almost hear their thoughts, “Cherry Delight, ooh! Watergate Salad, mmm! Peach Cobbler, yes!” Freeze in place, a look of terror and disgust flashes across their face, “What the F_@K?!” ROFL!

Some people would see it before they got to the table, think for a second or two, then walk away… Dessert plate tossed into the trash. Others, twisted twins-of-my-soul that they were, would take a nice big scoop for themselves, then grab a second dessert plate and heap some on for their friend/wife/husband/teen daughter/etc. You knew what they were up to by the evil glint of devilish pleasure in their eyes.

Hehehehe… Remembering this makes me chuckle… I know what I’m taking to the church Mother’s Day carry-in 😉