Buying, Eating, and Playing With Your Cheese

"Sure, Millie, I've thought about buying those little Mini Babybel Original Cheeses," you're saying. "But the thought of convincing my husband I need them, unwrapping that daunting packaging, and eating and enjoying my Baby Cheeses is such a foreign idea that frankly, it gives me gas. What can I do?"

Friend, snort nasal spray and tank up on cabbage no more - we've all been there. As an oppressed Mormon wife who is only allowed outside on Jewish holidays - and even then, only while wearing a burka and a flowered apron - I can tell you that procuring these sweet little succulent cheeses for your gastronomical enjoyment is just a hop, skip, and a "Yes, master" away.

1) Convincing the Skeptical Spouse: While $3.48 for a pack of six at WinCo might seem a little spendola, too bad. You need them. They're just so cute. Look at that package of adorable little cheeses in their happy red netting wrapper. Wouldn't you love to get little cheeses like that and have them in your fridge for snack time? Wouldn't it make you happy every time you walked by your fridge, just to know that they're there? And best of all, they're made by The Laughing Cow. There's nothing but happy snacking when you eat these cheeses. I say, whine and throw a fit and kick and scream in the aisle until your errant husband puts them in the shopping cart for you. Better yet, go shopping by yourself and eat them on the way home from the store. He'll never be the wiser.

2) Actually Opening the Thing: Now stay with me. There are a few steps to this tricky process but I promise they're worth your time.

Look above at the net bag covering the cheeses. It appears as though the netting is tied together in teensy little knots, right? But this is an illusion, as the netting is actually fused together by a mysterious net-fusing process. Rending a nice hole in the netting couldn't be easier - just pop in a finger and give a big yank. Not too big, you don't want to rip so gaping a hole that the rest of the cheeses fall out - just big enough to get one cheese out. (You big cheese hog.)

Each cheese is covered by a crinkly red plastic wrapper. Find a convenient corner and delicately tear the wrapper. If a convenient corner can't be found, find something sharp - scissors, perhaps - and cut a small hole in the wrapper. BE CAREFUL - you're wielding a sharp instrument near your very precious body. Don't be in such a snit to get the thing open that you slice yourself open. This should be a happy experience, not a "I wanted cheese but instead I ended up with an I.V. and 45 stitches" experience. Please don't hurt yourself, or the delicious little cheese inside.

3. Really Getting Your Money's Worth: Once the red plastic wrapper is gone, you will find that the cheese has been encased in a tight red wax covering. Don't panic! It's easy to get inside. Simply find the white plastic tab protruding from the red wax casing and gently pull. See how easy that is? And look what you have as a result:

You have a red wax Pac-Man! Sure! After you remove the cheese from its layers of wrapping and begin to enjoy its cheesy deliciousness, have some fun with Pac-Man. Be careful with Pac-Man - the wax is fragile. I know, it was hard enough to open that you'd think it would withstand some pressure, but alas. It's pretty weak stuff.

This can work to your advantage, however. When Pac-Man is squished after a few moments of play (as he inevitably will be), just look at the fun options you can try.

Break Pac-Man apart, and voila, you've got a fun red pair of wax lips to mold to your mouth. Go around with those on for a while and make your kids laugh. Or make them scared. Make your neighbors think you've had collagen injections gone horribly wrong. Make those lips your own, honey. After all the work you've done to get this far, by all means, have some stinkin' fun with them. They'll be gone soon enough.

Now again, remember, that wax doesn't stay together long, so after your lip fun has met its tragic end by falling off your face and onto your lap, take one of the lips and mold it to your nose. Look, you're Rudolph! And what's great about the nose idea is you can do it with a friend. What a sweet moment, bonding over leftover cheese wax. Ah, the memories you'll create with that special someone...

Next time you hear those little cheeses cry out to you from the deli case, don't be afraid. Don't be intimidated. Don't tell the check-out lady they're actually for the kids. You enjoy the heck right out of those little cheeses. Come on... you know you want to.

The 80s: Decade of Buns Worship

Not many people say the word “buns” anymore and I say, Thank Goodness.

The other night on Fox News, Greta Van Susteren was talking up Donald Trump’s new book with its dignified, typically Trump-esque title, Think Big and Kick A-- . Trump, on the phone with Greta, mentioned he’d been advised to “tone down” the title a tad – maybe to “Kick Butt” instead – but to his ear, Think Big and Kick Butt just didn’t have that literary-classic-sounding flow that “Kick A—“ did. Isn’t that shocking?

Bri and I discussed this and I said, “He should have called it Think Big and Kick Buns.” Then I thought, Ewwww, buns. I hate the word “buns.” It’s right up there with “panties.”

“Buns” is a word I hadn’t heard on television for years, until I caught an episode of VH-1’s “I Love the 80s,” when the sight of two middle-aged hausfraus singing the praises of some male celebrity’s “buns” brought back some powerful, and not pleasant, memories. All the embarrassing giggly simpering that once accompanied the word “buns” came slamming back like a car door on an ankle bone.

In the 80s, “buns” became a popular word. Right about the time a certain high school flame was wearing holey-butted Levis with red boxers underneath (“cuz I gotta have faith! Faith! Faith!”), they were on almost every woman’s mind: Buns and the Men Who Had Nice Ones. Everywhere you looked, there they were – hanging out of David Lee Roth’s and Prince’s buttless pants… quivering beneath Tom Cruise’s tighty whities in “Risky Business”… even The Missionary's mother commented that Billy Ray Cyrus, of “Achy Breaky Heart” fame, had nice buns (the statement “At this, I became overwhelmingly nauseated” is not an exaggeration).

What could account for this sudden buns interest? I can blame only one thing: the Women’s Liberation Movement. Yes, now follow along. Women weren’t content with voting, straddling horses, wearing pants or chewing tobacco like a man anymore. There was another, as-yet-uncrossed female frontier: the objectifying of men. Sure, men had been eyeballing us and making lewd comments for centuries, but women? No way. Nice women – LADIES – did not notice men’s behinds, nor comment about them. Not once did I ever hear my mother or aunts or (heaven forbid) grandmothers say, “That Frank Sinatra has a nice pair” or “Boy, wouldn’t I love to be Elvis’ black leather pants” or “Look at Tom Selleck’s eensy weensy little shorts! You can see every detail!”

But by the 1980s, the wheels of progress had turned. FINALLY! Women were free to notice – and when I say “notice,” I mean “gleefully discuss, lust over, and froth at the mouth about” – men’s hineys. The shorts were on the other cheek; frantic female fans declared their Man-Buns-Hankering independence. No longer could men say to their wives, “Myrtle! Stop staring at Willie Nelson’s keister! Get your big white can out to the kitchen and make me some gravy!” and get away with it.

By the end of the decade, no man’s buns were safe. Even my father was a buns-lover’s gawking victim. One morning, as Dad was standing beside his bread truck, taking bread products into a store, the town crazy lady, Betty Bonkers, caught up with him and hissed witlessly, “Nice buns!” To this day, no one in the family can decide if Betty had her eye on Dad or his bread.

After living through that decade, I’m happy to see that “buns” has largely been dropped as a term for “buttocks.” I can’t bring myself to say “buns” anymore – at least, not to anyone older than 5-year-old Carter and 3-year-old Rosalind, whose sweet little buns I still pinch semi-regularly. If I must refer to anyone’s posterior, I will most likely call it/them “cheeks” or “tushie” or “self” (as in, “No Cool Story, you have chalk dust on your little self”) or, depending on whom I’m with, “bunzolas.”

Think Big and Kick Bunzolas… Trump should call me for title ideas next time.

Why My Assistant, Ethel, Is Insane

"I DON'T WANNA WAIT!!! For our lives to be overrrrrrr! I want to know right now!! What will it BEEEEEEE!!!!!"

My hairless armpits and I watched an episode of "Dawson's Creek" this morning, a really good one I missed when it originally aired. (Paula Cole sings the theme song and she had hairy armpits last time I saw her. We used to go out to lunch all the time, but apparently I offended her with one too many Polish jokes. She may have shaved by now. Let me ask my assistant to google that. "Ethel, can you google whether Paula Cole is still sporting pit beards? Thanks.")

OK, it was really, really good. The stupidly ornate vocabulary was kept to a minimum. Joey and Pacey had been lip-lockin' it for a couple of episodes (yummy to watch) and were now at the point where they Must Inform Dawson. It was filmed three different times, each time from a different character's perspective. Dawson actually had tears in his eyes. It was heartbreaking. I'm almost - ALMOST - tempted to rent the whole season so I can see what happens next. ("Ethel, google what season that episode's in. Yeah, the one where Dawson freaks out and snorts coke. HA! Yeah! More drug humor! I know, I kill you. Thanks, Ethel.")

We're watching some movie with Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore - they're lawyers and they wake up married. Apparently she talks in her sleep. ("Ethel. The one where Pierce has long shaggy Bohemian hair and Julianne's mother is the chick that plays Rose's mother in Titanic. Yeah, I know they're the same age. Just check it for me. And move my spastic cat who insists on planting his furry little butt in front of the computer monitor. Oh, stop it, is it my fault he thinks your watch is a toy? Take that dumb thing off. Will you quit that sniveling? Go get a tetanus shot if you're so worried. Yeah, bite you too.")

I had a dream about a guy in our bishopric last night - we'll call him "Harry." In my dream, Harry was the leader of the band I was auditioning for. He actually played on the BYU football team and works for the FBI now, so any band he'd be leading would be a roving band of thugs, and not anything the least bit musical. However, I found myself in an impromptu audition last night, and I stunk up "Somebody To Love" pretty awfully. But he's so nice, he'd never say anything negative, no matter how bad it was. He heard me sing, he stifled back some serious laughter, and then he said to me, "Uh... tell me what to say."

I said, "Tell me it's not the worst singing you've ever heard."
"It's not the worst singing I've ever heard."
"Now tell me it wasn't the best it could have been."
"It wasn't the best it could have been."
"Now say, 'Actually it was pretty stinky.'"

But there, he could not pull the trigger.

("Ethel, now my cat is yowling at the window. When's that neuter appointment? Can't we buy, like, a kitty muzzle or a home neutering kit or something? Yeah, google that.")

At that point, I woke up and thought, "I ate too much last night. Good grief, that burger was huge."

("ETHEL!!! That stupid cat just jumped on my Crock-Pot! Will you get him the heck out of here!")

Then I turned the TV on and watched some "Murphy Brown," the one where Miles is interviewed for a magazine and misquoted as saying, "I'm just a guy looking for a plaything to fulfill my sick whims" or some such thing, and flipped back and forth between it and Silence of the Lambs, the part where that dope Jodie Foster rings the doorbell, whips out her badge, and bounces into - -

("WAIT A MINUTE! Is that Elton John murdering "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" on that Pierce Brosnan movie? Holy crap, my idiot cat yowling at the window sounds less annoying! Ethel! Find out who sings that song on that movie. And quit filing your nails all over my paperwork. It leaves dust, you know. Yeah, whine, whine, whine. Call your therapist, that's right. Your boss is a great big jerk. Cry about it.")

...um, Buffalo Bill's house, the guy who starves the fat chicks and then ... yeah, you've probably seen it. It's too gross to describe. Oh, you haven't seen it? Hang on.

("Ethel, while you're on the phone, tell your therapist I'm threatening to do what Buffalo Bill does after he starves the fat chicks in Silence of the Lambs. I know you haven't seen it. Go ahead, ask him.")

*hehehehheheheheehehehhe*

("Ethel, what's wrong? Don't look at me like that. I was just kidding! It was a joke! Ethel, where are you going? Why are you crying?? What did I say??!? Hey! Does this mean you're not taking my cat to the vet tomorrow?")

*slam*

Crap.