The Devil Wears Pigtails: How I Insulted My Mom Via Handmade Greeting Cards And More!

I was out at dinner a couple of months ago with my father, aunt, uncle, and boyfriend, when it dawned on me to write something about my youth. We were sitting around the table, stuffing juicy steak into our faces, when my father decided to recount "episodes" from my childhood. Some of them, albeit hilarious, were not new to me. I distinctly remember how I was moved from preschool to kindergarten because I wouldn't stop biting this one kid named Eugene. I also kept sticking markers in his ears. Why? Because his name was Eugene. I would bite him and color his ears now if I saw him. His name sucked and so did he.

Babby "Hunger Games."

ANYWAY (Sorry, Eugenes of the world), my father then told us all a story of my poor behavior which quickly nestled its way into my heart and became my favorite story ever. Even better than Pan's Labyrinth. I will retell it to my kids as a bedtime story while flipping through the "Cat in the Hat." Sure, they'll wonder what the cat and the grumpy fish have to do with anything, but their reading comprehension will be so poor that they'll just accept what I'm saying to them and move along.

BACK TO THE POINT AGAIN, I was a Girl Scout (and a ballerina too, as most girls are forced to be). Let's be honest, the best parts about being a Girl Scout were the snazzy outfit and the COOKIES (Samoas 4 lyfe, bro). Your parents had to buy a shit-ton in order to appear supportive and make you look like a baller in front of your troupe. But where did those cookies eventually go? That's right, into your face hole. What were we supposed to learn from selling those cookies anyway? Was that supposed to be a lesson in business, sales, and consumerism? Thank God I didn't waste my cookies by setting up tables in front of old-school department stores like Caldor and Bradley's and selling them to strangers like some of my more entrepreneurial counterparts. Instead, I just marched up to my mom and dad and said "BUY THEM. BUY ALL THE COOKIES.  >:(  ," but I digress.

While enjoying his peaceful two hour break from his demon daughter while I was at my weekly Girl Scout meeting, my dad received an unexpected phone call. He got out of his lavender-scented bubble bath, took the cucumber slices off of his eyes, and set down his black truffle caviar to retrieve the phone (this is all speculation but EDUCATED speculation). The voice on the other end was my troupe leader, but she was not her usual, poised self. "What's wrong, Mrs. Troupeface (I don't remember her real name, but this is probably really close)?"

Violin: favorite weapon number two, second only to saliva.

"Mr. Blakin? You have to come and pick up your daughter."

"Why? Is she ok? Is something wrong? Is she hurt?"

"Nothing like that. She's just...she's spitting on all the other Girl Scouts."

"Oh..."


That was probably the moment when my father lost all faith in me as a youngin'. Good thing my parents were divorced and I still had my mom to shower with love in order to garner her good will and trust. The other week, while my mom was cleaning, she found a bunch of handmade cards from me. Here they are, in what I assume to be chronological order:

I love her more than chocholte. This surely won her over.

Note the strategic use of cats to lure her into a false sense of security.

At first glance, this card seems cute and friendly, BUT LOOK AGAIN. Twisters are dangerous and destructive. As depicted by my sketches, they wreck homes and put peoples' lives in danger. This isn't a silly card from a 12 year old, this is a death threat (and could the figure running and screaming "help" be my mother? possibly...possibly...)

My mom's name is Debra and as you can tell, this card means business. She must not have been taking the cards very seriously because this one is both insulting, aesthetically accurate (my mom always matches her socks to her shirt/cardigan numbers and talks to people smothered in feces), and terrifying.

I'm sure most of you spent many a day pondering silently to yourself and your pets, "I wonder if Taylor was this much of a asshole growing up..." The answer is yes, yes I was. So, if there's one thing you can learn from this post, it's that if you have kids or plan on having kids, make sure you give them all the Girl Scout cookies they want and take their natural disaster-related death threats seriously. Speaking of natural disasters: an earthquake AND a hurricane last week? I'm sure Ryan Gosling is on it but in the meantime, I hope everyone is safe and sound.

Food Review: Arctic Zero Ice Cream

Let me start off by saying that I'm sincerely embarrassed by the state that my blog is in BUT, I do have a legitimate excuse. See, the boyfriend (you may know him as Sam "Stupidface" Gimbel) and I have been apartment hunting since the end of July and finally found a place late last week. If you've never apartment-hunted in New York...DON'T. I cannot stress this enough. I would rather spoon with Miley Cyrus or poop only in empty Poland Spring water bottles for an entire year than ever have to deal with New York apartment-hunting again. Sam and I plan on writing a team post about the experience so stay tuned.

Naturally, the past week I have used my free time to scour Craigslist for a replacement roommate in my current apartment and drink all the champagne and eat all the cheeseburgers in celebration of our new place. That, and troll the decor and DIY section of Pinterest and come up with zany ideas for the new place like a table made out of vintage rulers and mason jar chandeliers and shit. Our new place is in Park Slope, Brooklyn and it's majestic. I would give you all of the boring details on what trains are nearby (2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, B, D, G, N, R, Q, AKA ALL OF THEM) and how delicious bagels are also nearby (Bergen Bagels hollaaaaaaaaa), but I don't think that will impress any of you non-New Yorkers. Universally impressing is that there is a Target a stone's throw from our apartment and that we have our own private backyard that looks like this:

The wooden planters are being left for us but the Great Dane, unfortunately,  is not.

But I digress. I also apologize for all the bullshitting, belly-aching, and bragging...and alliteration. I hope you can take a couple paragraphs solely about ice cream as compensation for sifting through my nonsense. I discovered this ice cream on Tumblr, where it said very clearly on the container that it only had 150 calories PER PINT. Being someone who is figure-conscious but also loves to eat horrible food, I was immediately turned-on (not sexually...OK a little bit sexually). I made a stop at Whole Foods one rainy day on my way home from work and picked up some of the ice cream in chocolate and strawberry. I finished them within the next couple of days, GUILT FREE, and bought some more flavors (mint chocolate cookie, coffee, and vanilla maple).

Look at all of the choices!

I must say that the strawberry, vanilla maple, and coffee were by far my favorites, but I'm also not a huge chocolate person. They don't taste like full-fat ice creams and if you expect them to well, then, you're kind of stupid. These ice creams are, again, 150 calories PER PINT. You can eat the whole thing with the same amount of trepidation as you would exercise eating a cucumber wrap. Of course some of the flavor will be lost with the calorie cut, but if you ask me, it's well worth it. The ice cream is a nice, smooth, consistency and the flavors are true to form. In my opinion, the strawberry tastes like strawberry milk and the chocolate tastes like a fudgesicle (and the snozzberries taste like snozzberries). OM NOM NOM. The ingredient list also isn't long and foreboding like some other, more processed, ice creams:

INGREDIENTS: PURIFIED WATER, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, ORGANIC CANE SUGAR, CHICORY ROOT, GUAR GUM, XANTHAM GUM, NATURAL FLAVORS, SEA SALT, ORGANIC MONK FRUIT.

Woops! The cat is out of the bag. This ice cream is also diary-free. Lactose intolerant readers just peed their pants with joy across the globe.

But furrealz, this stuff is pretty good. That being said, it's also not the best ice cream I've ever had. That also being said, The only foods I don't like are olives and cilantro (And I'll still eat them anyway, folks. Why? Because they're edible and I'm gross). Taking those facts into account, this ice cream might be disgusting. Who're you going to trust though: your own instincts or me in a face mask eating Arctic Zero?:

The choice is yours...