I await your response
DEAR INTERNET RECIPE (THAT I WILL NOT LINK)
Homemade tater tots, huh. Huh. I would not bother, personally. I would save my big-deal-cooking energy for something that has a higher potential for being Worth It, like homemade pasta or a from-scratch pie. But: you do you.
However, taking those homemade tots and then turning them into a goopy tater tot casserole is borderline insane. Just buy the bag of tots, if you’re going to dump cheese and soup all over everything. No one is going to pause their slurping at the sodium trough to say WOW ARE THESE TOTS HOMEMADE.
I am neither anti-tot nor anti-casserole, nor really even anti-tater-tot-casserole. I have never made one but would I murder a plate of it at a Midwestern funeral lunch? Yes I would. I am just anti-wasting-one’s-time.
FOOD AND NOT-GREAT MUSIC AND ALSO KIND OF GOING INSANE
There is an old-school Ke$ha song, from before she threw away her dollar sign, that starts with “hot and dangerous.” Whenever I hear it I picture a restaurant server putting down fajitas in front of me, with a warning about the sizzling plate. It is like a little music video I cannot get away from: sometimes Ke$ha is the server and sometimes it is someone else who says the words, but either way that song starts off with the thought of fajitas.
When I am feeling expansive and cheerful I sometimes think that language evolved to share stupid things just like this. Words as a form of magic, putting actual thoughts in actual separate people’s minds. (Don’t think of an elephant. Imagine a tree on fire.) Language probably evolved to help us kill animals more efficiently, though. That is not quite as romantic.
Similarly (but not?), I had a very vivid dream that I crafted a Post Malone puppet, that it became more popular than the living Post Malone himself, and that it eventually replaced him altogether. I know, this reads like some David Foster Wallace undiscovered manuscript (the eras don’t match up, but just roll with it) and I don’t know why my sleeping mind did that. I am peripherally aware of Post Malone; I know he’s one of those dirtbag-looking white guys with face tattoos and his “Circles” song sometimes gets stuck in my head, particularly the part where he rhymes “special” with “sex though.” For the record, here is a photo of Post Malone.
His real name is Austin and I doubt he has ever washed his hair. (And his Nirvana covers are kind of decent! Use the timestamps in the comments to find the songs because trust me, you don’t want to hear Post Malone talk.)
It seems that this situation where I’m isolated with my family, working from home, sleeping weird, and drinking too much tea and/or wine (the switch flips at 6 pm, baby!) is just going to lead to ever stupider “ideas.” After the Post Malone dream I went downstairs for tea and internet and found myself looking up patterns for Muppet-style puppets and pricing out felt. Then I came to my senses and logged off.
BUT I LOGGED BACK ON FOR: NEW TV ADDICTION
The kid and I have discovered Lifetime movies, in particular the White Woman In Peril crime-based ones. The Killer Downstairs! Killer In My Home! My Baby Is Missing! Sinister Surrogate! (There is a LOT of baby-anxiety involved in Lifetime crime movies.) The “killer” ones are my favorites. Usually a blandly handsome catalog-model-type moves in next door and he’s so nice! But he will definitely try to kill you. He foreshadows this by staring at you really intently after you turn your back, with some scary keyboard music.
The wardrobe for these movies is universally VERY BAD, no matter when they were made. It feels like all the production assistants were told to go clean out their moms’ closets and show up with a garbage bag of stuff the next day.
I am off to go steal a baby. If you have Lifetime crime (Lifecrime?) recommendations, please share them.
—mimi smartypants is the killer downstairs!