Bacon + chocolate = pure evil

I walked home from the doctor's last night (I'm fine), for the sake of a little time to clear my head. Walked by Whole Paycheck Foods and thought, "Well, I'm out of awesome chocolate, I should pick up another bar."

Lo and behold, I came face-to-face with this.

Yes, that is what it looks like. It's a gourmet chocolate bar made with bacon.

I stared at it for a while, and then, because my Hub has often claimed that there is nothing, nothing that cannot be improved by adding bacon, I bought it to bring home to him. (And a bar of Green & Black's Maya Gold, because there was no way I was staking my entire week's chocolate future on something that looks like a photoshopped joke idea.)

He was astonished. And intrigued. And a little scared. He made me take pictures of the entire process of him tasting a piece of the chocolate, and the faces he made were just priceless. I asked him how it was, and he just kind of blinked at me with this blank look on his face and shook his head. "I don't know. The chocolate was good, but it was... I don't know."

About an hour later, he convinced me to try some. This was a mistake. You know how the taste of bacon kind of goes up in your sinuses and lingers? Imagine that, plus salt, plus milk chocolate. If you can imagine that, you're a brave one, and you're also short of the mark because it was SO MUCH WORSE THAN I THOUGHT. On the one hand, there was nothing wrong with any of the ingredients. Good bacon taste, good chocolate taste, but as Xander Harris once said, "THESE ARE UN-MIXY THINGS." It made my brain hurt. It wormed its way into my sinuses and stayed there. I couldn't stop tasting it. I had to drink some hideously dry wine to get some other kind of taste up in that region, because the longer it stayed with me, the worse my brain-pain became.

People: don't do this. Just don't. Vosges does some awesome mixy things, but this is not one of them.

In other news, I kept my equanimity all the way through my doctor's visit, which was good. Then I went home, which was likewise good. Then I called my parents, and that's where things went haywire.

People in my family are under a lot of stress these days. There's a wedding that may or may not happen, and the open-ended question there is dragging all of us through a lot of tension, along with trying to figure out where the line is between "helpful advice" and "pushy busybody". There are several family members-- not immediate family for me, but close enough for my folks-- who are having a lot of health issues, so there's a lot of guilt and exhaustion flying around, along with the worries about care and money. My folks are within a few years of retirement, and of course the stock market promptly started going haywire-- hopefully their financial advisor was following proper procedure and had them in low-risk bonds and whatnot, because otherwise this is going to be bad-- and some serious bad drama is happening at my dad's workplace that is making him seriously consider turning in his keys and never going back. Which, frankly, I'd support, because he'd probably make more money going full-time with his much-beloved side gig, but the idea of such upheaval is making my mom's gray hair even grayer.

In short, these are not soothing conversations, and I never come out of them well. There's something about parents that will push a child's buttons, no matter how little the parents intend to and no matter how old the child is. When my parents are tense, I get tense. It has a lot to do with associating that tone of voice from my father with bad news for Meg, like I've disappointed him, or I've crossed him, or he's just generally pissy and is going to take it out on me. (Ah, childhood.) I ended up in knots by the time I finally prised myself out of that phone call, and it took a lot of deep breathing, a little bit of crying, and some quality cuddling to undo most of those knots.

I'm still kind of tense, and I'm recognizing the particular brand of tension as my "What? What did I do? How am I not good enough now?" tension. It sets me up to overreact to everyone else and feel like the world is out to get me, which is really not the case. Well, not so much "out to get me" as "vastly disapproves of me". So I start withdrawing and avoiding contact with people, which... is not good. Ah, fragile self-esteem, complicating everything. Yeowza.

Also, saw a picture of myself which I did not like. My Hub said, "But, you're gorgeous!" and I said, "Yup, no question about that, but there's a bit more of my gorgeous self than can fit into most of my favorite clothes, and this is photographic evidence which I cannot deny." I'm trying to hash out what to do about that, because I am not down with the idea of going whole-hog on a diet, and to add to the fun my Hub is still on bulking rations and eating hamburgers twice a day. Difficult to live with that. Also bad timing by falling in a budget-tightening time. You'd think that since both budget and diet = belt-tightening of a sort, that this would match up well, but that's... well, it's never been the case for me in practice. Hoping to change that by doing a LOT of deep breathing. A LOT.

Sigh.

Well, on the up side, tests of the Mario Badescu Drying Lotion have been done, since my Hub had a lovely pimple appear over the weekend and I pounced on it immediately (much to his horror). Seems to reduce inflammation and take care of the juicy white center of the whitehead overnight, leaving a lurking red spot in the morning. I could not get my Hub to agree to a second treatment, so I can't speak to whether a second shot of the stuff the next night (or, under makeup, in the morning-- it is pale pink and definitely does not blend with most people's complexions) would eliminate the red spot over the next eight hours. Further tests to come! Onward and upward!

Cut for length-- click to read more.

Green & Black's chocolate = SO DAMN GOOD

God bless her, DG brought me chocolate-- a bar of Green & Black's Maya Gold chocolate. I made it one whole day before breaking off a few wee squares of it for testing purposes.

OMG. SO GOOD. ::dies:: I don't think I'll be able to face the idea of ordinary chocolate ever again. I mean, I have a serious weakness for designer chocolate already-- my love for Vosges is already documented, particularly because they do an annual batch of exotic chocolate bunnies for Easter-- but OH, MY, GOD. Orange and cinnamon and nutmeg and vanilla and AWESOME DARK CHOCOLATE, all together; genius. It's so damn good. I have no words. Usually dark chocolate is an iffy prospect for me; I like it, but it's got that harsh edge. Here: NO HARSH EDGE. Or if there is one, it's disguised brilliantly with the twist of orange and the spices. It's like if God made some kind of dark-chocolate chai tea, only more awesome.

Seriously: best gift ever. I am aswoon. I have been picking at it very gingerly, because it's the only one I've got, but now I discover that lo, they are here in the U.S.! In fact, in Chicago! At Whole Foods! I am so happy. Not really eating it any faster (although I am now grudgingly sharing with my Hub), but still, YAY.

Note to DG: while you're in town, see if you can find some Vosges bars, particularly the Black Pearl. There's a boutique in the mall at 520 N. Michigan, and I know they have them at Macy's... if I'd known you were bringing tasty treats I would have arranged an exchange!! (Oh, and re: the other stuff we talked about, check Nordstrom's at 55 East Grand Avenue.)

Anyway, my point being, DG is so incredibly adorable. SO CUTE. I had a sign all set to wave in case we didn't recognize each other, but it turned out that we did just fine; she started waving from across the courtyard of our office building and my Hub said, "Is that her?"

"Who?" I was looking in the wrong direction.

He cranked me around to look right at her. "Her! There!"

At which point I shrieked a lot and we did a hilarious run to go hug each other on sight. It is always so wacky to meet internet buddies; there's this "OH MY GOD, IT'S YOU, YOU'RE REAL!" moment, then a "...and now what do we do? Christ, there's no editing function here" moment, then eventually things settle into a groove. DG was no exception to this.

I brought my Hub along on our brief tour of Millennium Park ("This is cool. This, also, is cool. Oh, and this. Um... that's all we know.") and then we hauled DG up into our building ("This is our office. Um, it has windows... and you can see down... there's the lake!") where we snuck into an empty section so that we could look out windows with impunity. Both my Hub and DG did an excellent sneak, complete with miming guns at the ready as they went through the door, and at that point I figured out that this was definitely going to go well. We also learned that midges, which I'd always assumed were some kind of Scottish gnat, are in fact EVIL BITEY THINGS which have gnawed the hell out of poor DG's ankle.

For lack of anything more intelligent to do, we hauled her back to our place, with a short drive past Wrigley Field ("they play baseball there, and stuff!"), where DG checked out the apartment and met our cats, one of whom had to be hauled out from under the couch because there had been construction noise outside all day and she was in full freak-out mode, poor thing. Then on to the famous home of the KILLER MARGARITAS, which had the entire sidewalk outside ripped off so we had to walk in the middle of traffic to get to the restaurant, and face down a construction crew, and pick our way through gravel and sand. We must EARN the right to drink there, it seemed.

Here's the thing: I don't go to this place a lot. I need an excuse, such as visitors (strangely, both times we've gone there this summer have been to hang out with visiting Australians), and in-between visitors I remember that the margaritas are awesome, and that they taste very good, but I forget that they sneak up on me mid-way through the smallest size and knock me for a mammoth loop. So I was very enthusiastic about going, but I forgot that I would get completely hammered off of one wee margarita. Happily, DG also got completely hammered off one margarita, so it is now my belief that it's not me, it's just that those margaritas are packed with some kind of super tequila with MAGICAL DRUNKY POWERS.

At this point, things got wacky. I could not stop talking long enough to remember to eat the tasty food I ordered, which I'm sure contributed mightily to my continuing lack of sobriety. I honestly wasn't trying to limit my food intake, I just COULD NOT SHUT UP. ::headdesk:: On the up side, we all got to see each other's driver's licenses, which is always good fun, particularly since my Hub's picture looks like a mug shot after being nabbed for drunken disorderly, and mine looks like I have scalped myself (the problem with cutting my own hair is that sometimes, I get carried away with the cutting part). And I got to see the historic "you rawk" train ticket! Very exciting.

We picked our way very carefully out of the restaurant ("Obstacles! Oh, obstacles!") and back to solid land, where we fed the meter and then wandered off in search of shops. Did not in fact go to any of the sex shops, but did go to The Alley and Beatnix and that sort of thing. Much wandering and pointing. I think DG took a picture of someone's house. I know (for I have seen proof) that a picture was taken of us giggling our way down the street. Huzzah!

By the time we found the car again, we drunkards were getting snoozy, so it was decided to drop DG off at her hotel. My Hub, who was driving (very wise), wanted to know where the place was, and we both said "W... it has the big W." He apparently did not find this to be helpful. (Earlier in the day I had actually typed "W" into Google and hit enter before realizing that no, that's not going to find the place for me.) We cruised down Lake Shore Drive instead with our eyes peeled for the giant W, and eventually found it. Looks like a very posh place; good deal for BlogHer folks! Sad farewells &etc.

I am so damn glad I got to meet this lady, and almost just as glad that my Hub got to meet her, because I've been talking about this visit non-stop ever since and it's great to have someone to babble at. She is everything you'd expect from her blog: sweet and hilarious and brilliant and bubbly and adorable. I am still all delighted. GOOD TIMES. Must meet her again, only next time I am going to make my Hub sad and leave him behind, and keep DG all to myself. HAHAHA.

Cut for length-- click to read more.