This Ain't No Goat Blog

Anybody who tries to call Nanny Goats in Panties a goat blog is severely mistaken, according to a recent Google Search. I Googled "goat blog" and NGIP does not appear even once in the results! Of course, I only checked the first four pages, but still. Not a goat blog.

I can't begin to tell you how proud I am, however, that people around the globe have come to my blog while searching for the following terms in the last month:

1. buddha sex with skulls
2. pissing contest
3. all you can eat panties
4. son of a gun from nannygoatin'
5. there once was a man with a bucket 
6. a mean old nanny goat doesn't change into a dove because a little time has past

and my favorite - drumroll please.....

7. you want me to be your garden gnome. you want me to be your plastic flamingo. you are not my mother and i want to go home.

But that's not why I called you people here today. I got off on a tangent there right out of the gate and the real reason I wanted to speak to you is to tell you that I drove past my neighbor's house today and saw this near his door:

A Christmas wreath? Ack!

I considered going over there, knocking on his door and laughing boisterously in his face, pointing at him while I held my belly and laughed and laughed, mercilessly mocking him as I wiped tears from my eyes, struggling to get the words out about his wreath. Except that when I walked into my house, I saw THIS in my living room:

I would try to further defend myself by declaring something like, "Oh yeah? Well at least there's only two ornaments on the tree and the blanket underneath is gone!"

Except that the tree never got past two ornaments at its peak decoration. And I never found the blanket.

The good news is, we'll be having a Valentine's Day Tree this year.

What? I don't have time to take it down right now. I'm busy packing for a trip to Tucson. Speaking of which, you guys need anything while I'm there?

Is It Christmas Again Yet?

I got a pair of Keds for Christmas. Wanna see?





I know, right? My very own NGIP shoes! Woo hoo!

What about you? Did you get cool stuff for Christmas too?

Okay, good - now that that's over, it's high time you thought about gearing up for Christmas. Of 2010.

Why? Because if Rite Aid's behavior is any indication of this nation's priorities, we need to act now to stay ahead of the curve.

On December 21, 2009, which some of you may not know, is approximately four days BEFORE Christmas, Kim Tracy Prince (of House of Prince)  tweeted the following:

On December 21, mind you. You know what this means, right? It means that in June of 2010, they will be taking down Thanksgiving decorations and putting up Christmas stuff. And that means that on December 20th of 2010, they'll be putting up Christmas decorations again and some loser might say to the blue-aproned employees at Rite Aid, "Wow, this is so nice that you are only just now putting out the Santas and the Christmas music, so we don't have to be bombarded by it all for two months beginning in October."

And the oppressed drugstore employee (who's still pulling staples out of his head from the previous holiday decorating debacle) will say, "Oh, this isn't for Christmas now, it's for Christmas of 2011". Which he will pronounce "Twenty Eleven" instead of "Two Thousand Eleven" because the National Decorating Committee at Rite Aid has been pronouncing things using "Twenty" for awhile now. In fact, they just finished their meeting this morning discussing the "Twenty-Fifty" 4th of July holographic mobile hangings that will automatically and digitally convert into Four Leaf Clover mini-Hovercrafts for St. Patrick's Day of "Twenty Sixty".

In other words, if you want to see the future, shop at Rite-Aid.

Oh, and I'd like to wish you a Happy New Year, but I don't know if I should be sending out salutations for 2010, or 2011. 






Hey, remember that video game I wrote for? Coconut Queen, from iWin Games?

graphic courtesy of iWin.com

Well, it made Gamezebo's Best Picks of 2009 list - yay!

It's not too late to write a blog post about your New Year's resolutions and then link it up on NGIP's Resolutions Party Post. Also, MamaKat from Mama's Losin' It, is hosting a link up for New Year's Resolutions at her place, so you get TWO linkups for the price of one! After you link up, be sure and visit other bloggers on the link list.

The Battle of the Fruitcake

And now, a sentimental Christmas song about love for family.

To be sung to the tune of Jingle Bells:

Dashing through the store,

They're turning out the lights, 

They close at half past four,

The fruitcake's in my sights,

I lunge for the last cake,

And so does some strange man,

"It's Christmas Eve", I beg of him,

I plead like no one can.

Oh, that cake's mine, no it's mine,

No, I saw it first,

Fists are hurled, blood spews out, 

A broken nose, I'm cursed - hey!

Grab his legs, he falls down,

Knocked out cold - I win!

'Cause when it comes to my Aunt Betts:

"No fruitcake is a sin." 

Merry Christmas, everybody!

To all fellow bloggers... 



Starting on Monday, December 28, NGIP is hosting the This Time I Really Mean It! campaign. Come over and share your New Year's Resolutions blog post URL in the Linky widget that will be provided on that Monday's post.

For more information, or to grab a button to tell your friends about it, go to the Details of "This Time I Really Mean It!" campaign for 2010.

I'm a Princess Among Thieves

I've never participated in a White Elephant gift exchange before. And I thought they'd disappeared along with the 1970s which is more or less the last time I'd heard a reference to them. So they're either back in vogue, or they never left and I fell asleep for about 30 years.

I went to a holiday party at The Urban Hive and after doing some extensive research on white elephants, because I didn't want to embarrass myself by bringing something totally inappropriate, like, say, well, actually there is no gift that would be inappropriate. Maybe some store-bought Tiffany jewelry, which would probably cause a bit of a kerfuffle during exchange time so that when your friends ask you about said party, you can honestly say it was a riot.

I scrounged around the house, per the internet's instructions, and wrapped my white elephant gift thusly:

You know all those scraps of gift wrapping that you save, just in case you have something small to wrap and you never do and you don't want to waste paper so it just piles up over the years? I figured this was the perfect time to use them up and sort of slap them together onto the box. I was going for "hideous", but the comments at the party were complimentary, so were they just being nice, or did I accidentally create something cool and funky?

Well, something that DID get high praise and demand for its recipe was the "appetizer" I brought: Spiced Pumpkin Dip. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of it in all its glory at the party, but I can certainly show you the carcass which I'm sure you'll find quite helpful.

Here is the mixing bowl I used to mix up the dip.

Doesn't that look yummy?

I've also included a picture of the leftover dip I brought home and the empty Ginger Snaps box that used to hold the cookies which were used for dipping.

So yeah, imagine cookies on the plate below, surrounding a bowl of delicious Spiced Pumpkin dip.

If you want the recipe, I found it on AllRecipes.com

 
So a White Elephant Gift Exchange is a total crap shoot. You can get something really nice, or you can get crap. Or something cheesy, but funny, like this:

 It's a Trump doll!

Knowing you, you're probably wondering what was in that hideously wrapped box I brought. Okay, okay, don't get your panties in a bundle - I brought a bottle of wine:

Jane (editor of MidLifeBloggers) opens the gift I brought

I don't know if you can see the label, but it says "Bitch". Somebody gave it to me and I wanted to pass on the love.

If you know how a White Elephant gift exchange works, then you also know that when it's your turn to pick a gift off the table, you can alternatively choose to steal a gift that's already been opened. So when it was Kari's turn to pick or steal...

Kari of Juniper James steals the Bitch wine.

And then when it was Monica's turn to select a gift (or steal one from someone else):

Wow, what a bunch of thieves I'm hanging around. Steal, steal, steal.

Another rule to this game was that an item could only be stolen two times. So Monica kept the wine for good.

I'm not much of a robber, so when it was my turn, I walked up to the table and selected a gift. This is what I opened:

You might be saying, gosh that's a pretty scarf/shawl/thing, but why is Jane modeling it? Well, I'll tell you why. It's because she STOLE it from me. Because someone had stolen her Bitch wine.

But then when it was Janna's turn, she stole the scarf from Jane, and wasn't afraid to show off her ill-gotten goods either.

Janna (of The Janna Monologues) pilfers the scarf from Jane

What a bunch of heartless heathens! I realize that by now you must think I have made some bad choices for friends if all they do is go around stealing things. And you're probably full of all kinds of questions, such as: "If Monica stole the Bitch wine from Kari, then what did Kari do?"

Well, Kari saw someone open a Bop It! earlier and went hunting that down. Do you know what a Bop It! is?

This is a Bop It! and its first receiver, Scott

But Scott didn't have the Bop It! any more. She found the guy that currently held it, clutching on to it for dear life and cornered her victim ready to tear it away from him:

"You'll have to pry this from my cold, dead hands, sister!"

She couldn't do it. She walked away, defeated, settling on something less.

Meanwhile, since someone had stolen MY scarf, I had to pick something else, so I returned to the table to unwrap this CD with a cool mix of music:

Yes, I realize that is not me, holding the CD. It's Jeremy. And do you know why it's Jeremy holding the CD? That's right. It's because he stole it from me.

So I went back to the table and opened a gift bag that included free movie passes and you know what happened after that? Yep. Stolen.

Grrrrr! I'm such a victim! Luckily, there was only one gift left on the table. It wasn't wrapped and people kept passing it over and I took it:

A musical snow globe

After being robbed several times, I left the party with a sense of being violated. And how fun is that? I can't wait for my next White Elephant gift exchange in a couple of weeks. After Christmas. Which is a great opportunity to offload more crap that I'll probably get in my stocking. How do you wrap coal, anyway?










Calling All 2010 Resolutionaries...



In 2 weeks, NGIP will be hosting a New Year's Resolution Campaign called This Time I Really Mean It!. Come over on Monday, December 28, 2009 and add a link to YOUR blog post about your New Year's resolutions in the Linky widget at the bottom of Monday's post. Then everybody can read everybody else's resolutions. For more information, or if you wish to help promote it to your fellow blog buddies now (where you can grab a promo campaign button), go to the Details of "This Time I Really Mean It!" campaign for 2010.

This Year's Christmas Card: The Yule Kids

If I were sending out Christmas cards this year (and I'm not, so don't hold your breath), this is the picture I would slap on the front...

sent in by Tammy of Happenings on the Hill

And now.... a Christmas Carol:

Deck the halls with boys and nannies,

Baa-baa-baa-baa-baa, baa-baa-baa-baa.

Throw on makeshift hats from panties,

Baa-baa-baa-baa-baa, baa-baa-baa-baa.

Don we now our smiles and say cheese,

Baa-baa-baa-baa-baa, baa-baa-baa-baa.

Hurry up Mom before we freeze,

Baa-baa-baa-baa-baa, baa-baa-baa-baa.

From all of us here at Nanny Goats in Panties to all you "kids" out there...

We wish you a Merry SITSmas! (because today is a big bloggerama SITSmas card swapping extravaganza party thing where all the gals and a guy named Preston run around the blogosphere like crazy wishing each other a Merry SITSmas).

Also? There's a big holiday party going on over at SITS, where EVERYONE, SITSta or not, can join in the fun. Prizes are given out every hour all day, so go hit SITS every 60 minutes. I mean, it's not like it's a work day or anything, is it?

Also? In between goofing off to win fabulous prizes, you can visit some of the SITS gals I recently met in Vegas:

The R Family Diaries
Mindless Junque

Stroke of Living

House of Prince

Bobbi in LaLa Land

Chicken Nuggets of Wisdom

The Young and the Relentless

Damn You Little Rock

The Bee Dot

Also? If you haven't yet entered the NGIP giveaway where you guess how much money is in the jar and the 15 closest guesses wins a copy of the hilarious memoir, Marrying George Clooney, then for the love of all that is holy, go enter now!

Also? I'll be shutting up about the contest before 11:59pm on Wednesday, December 9, 2009.

Goat Thing of the Day: Labor Day Goat

I thought Labor Day in the U.S. was like Memorial Day and Veterans Day and Independence Day, where we had parades to celebrate something American and patriotic. You know, three cheers for the red, white and blue, and all that rot. But, no.

Labor Day is a holiday that was lifted from Canada after some American dude saw people celebrating with parades and stuff in Toronto. It's less about U.S. soldiers and more about labor movements and trade unions. It's also called May Day and International Workers Day and held by most countries on May 1. So, not only are we copying everybody else, we are also late.

So in the spirit of vague knowledge of holiday history and its questionable patriotic American notions, not to mention severe lateness, I give you the Labor Day goat:

Click pic to enlarge

Thanks to Keith for sending this one in.

It's Snot 2008 Anymore

How was my New Year's Eve Party, you ask? Fantastic, but now it's back to the drugs:




I don't get sick that often and when I do, the symptoms can differ from the previous snork fest so that every time I go to the medicine cabinet at the onset of a cold, any drugs I do find are expired. Also, living in two cities, doubles the likelihood of numerous expirations.

But this raises the question: do drugs really expire? And when they do expire, do they turn into poison, or do they just become less effective? Or is it all one big conspiracy from the pharmaceutical companies to get you to buy more drugs than is necessary? Like those jokers at the lube shop blowing hot air about how you HAVE to change your oil every 3 months or 3,000 miles. They're lucky if they see me twice a year - greedy bastards.

Drugs have a long, long list of horrible side effects including death and 4+ hour erections. And that's when they are taken within the designated date range. But what happens when you take an out-of-date pseudoephedrine tablet?

At 2am the other night, it felt like my throat would crack from the dryness if I wasn't allowed to fall asleep with my mouth closed. I rolled out of bed in search of relief and found some Actifed decongestant pills that had been stored for God knows how long in my desk back at the office and were still in the packing box when I was laid off in November.

When you buy drugs it seems like the expiration date is YEARS away. But the very next time you get sick and grab it again, it's expired. And this Actifed didn't disappoint. The expiration date (or expiry date, for some of you non-US readers) was August 2008.

August 2008? That's like coming up to a traffic light when it's yellow and almost red. Do you take your chances and gun it? Or do you stop and wait the longest possible time for the next red and be miserable until it's your turn again?

Actually, that was a crappy anology. Forget I said that. I'll save it for another, more appropriate time.

Anyway, I wasn't about to go looking for a 24-hour drugstore just to avoid Mouth Breather of the Year. Not when I could risk my life taking this barely expired little white pill.

So I pressed that little pill through its packaging, laid back with my Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast and waited. The next thing I knew, I was breathing through my nose again and falling fast asleep. Ahhhhhhh.

But I didn't do this just for me. I did it for you, my dear readers, and pretty much all of mankind, really. I'm keeping you all safe from the possibility of keeling over from any long-in-the-tooth cold remedies.

It's a service I provide with pride. And phlegm. So now because of Nanny Goats in Panties, you can look forward to your next cold feeling safe in the knowledge that your congealed cough syrup is just fine. Spit out the chunks if you must, but the rest of it is perfectly harmless.

And in these tough economic times, isn't it a good thing to know that you don't have to throw your money down the drain for so-called "fresh" medicine, when stale, out-dated drugs work just as well, if not better? I mean, wasn't penicillin discovered from a moldy petri dish or something?

Nightmare, Thy Name is Christmas

Well thank God THAT'S over.

Christmas sucks. For me, anyway. It's that dreaded time of year when I am forced to spend "quality" time with loved ones. Blech! Ptui! - I say.

My loved ones (and while I use that term repeatedly, I use it loosely) are a bunch of two-bit half-wits. Take my eighteen-year-old niece. She showed me this so-called "art" she created:

What a loser! I could do that. Anybody could, right? Obviously, she's doomed to flipping burgers for the rest of her life. I fought the urge to tell her she was a no-talent hack; I figured that would just send her into yet another shrill drama queen scene that she's so famous for.

Art, my ass.

Oh, and don't get me started on that whole nasty train wreck of a Christmas gift exchange. A bunch of thoughtless crap that you have to pretend to be overjoyed about as you open it. For example, how about this garbage I got from my husband:



Now what am I supposed to say after opening this pile of dog turds? "Thank you, Honey"? "Oh, just what I always wanted, sweetie"?

Yeah, it was a Charlie Brown Christmas for me. It always is. But, it's the cross I must bear, if I'm to get into Heaven someday. And so I go on pretending to like these people and feigning gratitude to have them in my lives.

The Christmas Video They Don't Want You to Know About

Stringed popcorn doesn't last more than two minutes at the Nanny Goats household, let alone make it onto the Christmas tree. I'm busy stringing one end while cousin Billy Goat is gnawing on the other end. He's such a pig.

I feel like a ten-year old at Christmas. Why? Because I have yet to figure out how to work my video camera and free video editing software well enough to produce something for the holidays worth watching. So I end up with something that looks childishly strung together on one end and chewed up on the other.

And because of this, you would think that nobody would be paying attention to the Christmas video I made of our little group outing to see Christmas lights and posted on the internet last year. Many months went by before I was accosted via email by some video hosting service who shall remain nameless but it rhymes with "BlueBoob".

They made some outrageous claim that I was using copyrighted material and that I could get in super D duper big trouble. I mean, I know Disney can be very proprietary, but Mickey wasn't on MY lawn with Santa lights, so why are they after me? But then I remembered I had included a song that may or may not have been "borrowed" to accompany this lame video.

BlueBoob must have realized just who they were dealing with -- a silly and harmless little blogger to whom nobody pays any attention -- and decided in their caustic letter to me that they would "let me" continue to keep the video up unless something or other, I don't remember what else they said.

So, for those of you interested in catching this video before I am forced to cease and desist, I give you Nanny Goat's Virtually Banned Holiday Music Video (less than 3 minutes) (Also? Dramamine tablets will be provided for those prone to motion sickness due to my wonky cameraman skilz):

If the above link doesn't work, the direct video link is here. 

Goat Thing of the Day

Tracy at I Hate My Message Board showed me this picture of her son with my buddies:

Jenn at Of Cabbages and Kings gave me a new set of knickers. Boy, I sure am getting a lot of panties for Christmas!

Elizabeth from A Nut in a Nutshell thinks NGIP is fabulous.

Pooba thinks NGIP is exceedingly charming.

Valerie Gail at It's a Wonderful Life - gave me the butterfly award.

Thank you, ladies - I appreciate it!

He Sees You When You're Sleeping, He Knows When You're Awake

Christmas Cards are going out early this year. Here's yours:

photo credit

Twas the night before Christmas,

And Nanny Goats waited,

For her gift from Santa

To see how she'd rated.

She put out the cookies

And milk; twas lowfat.

Then she hoofed it outside,

In her new Christmas hat.

Her panties were hung 

On the fence with great care,

In hopes that St. Nick 

would bring new underwear.

She stayed up til morn with

 The patience of a lamb.

But Santa came not, 

And she cried out "Oh - 
So that's how it is!" 

photo credit

This post is part of the Merry SITSmas Extravaganza, where the good folks at SITS are giving away fabulous prizes every hour on Tuesday, including a Grand Prize of a $200 Target gift card.

Here are a few of my favorite fellow SITStas:

Mrs. Mouthy
A Duck in Her Pond
The Scattered Mind of a Tattooed Minivan Mom
Don't Forget To Flush
Blah, Blah, Blah Blog


And here's hoping you aren't stuck waiting up all night for Santa in your ratty underwear.

P.S.  If you're SITSmas post-hopping, the next blog in the link list is The R Family Diaries.

My Eyes are Bigger Than My Freezer

As usual, I walked into the grocery store intending to "buy just a few things", spend maybe fifty bucks, and be out of there in ten minutes. I'm not sure why after years of failing to get in and out for less than a hundred smackers, I continue to delude myself.

I always opt for the hand-held basket, because I surely don't need a whole cart. I mean, I'm only shopping for the two of us. How much could I possibly think I need? And then somewhere between the produce section and aisle 9, I'm abducted by aliens, and an hour later I'm standing in the checkout line with my fingers about to fall off from the hundred pound basket I'm carrying.

A couple of days ago I came home bogged down with twelve bags of groceries when out of one of the bags flew this item that refused to fit into the freezer:




It's not like we have some college dorm-room freezer. And it's not like I picked this up at Costco, whose membership generally requires that you own a second industrial-sized freezer out in the garage and by the way, they don't have hand-held baskets; you have to wield a flatbed on wheels around the store.

In any event, you can probably guess what we had for dinner that night.

* * *

Speaking of weapons of mass mastication, last week we went to a birthday dinner party at a restaurant whose name perfectly describes this country's unhealthy relationship with food: Fats. (I'm not kidding)

As I have not written a post in honor of Halloween today, I can offer pictures of the birthday cakes we got for the previously mentioned party:

 

 

The second cake? That, dear readers, is a spider. Mmmmm. Yummy.

Who Says Size Doesn't Matter?

Last week, while test marketing my patented re-usable Kleenex™ with the local men of Schnauz Lodge #492, I saw this billboard:

Wow! A forty-two foot TV? Who doesn't want to win one of those? Mr. Nanny Goats and I have decided to enter this contest because if they're giving away one a day for a month, that's...that's...well you figure it out. In any case, it's a lot, so we're pretty much guaranteed to win.

The problem is, our place is too small, so yesterday we bought a warehouse down by the loading docks at the Port of Sacramento. Escrow on our new digs closes next week.

And just in time for the holidays! You know those Christmas tree places where you hunt down your own fir growing the forest? We're going to yank one out of the ground that's at least 300 years old and plant that sucker in our new front yard.

For the backyard, we'll install an Olympic-sized swimming pool and bid to host the next summer trials. We'll invite Michael Phelps over for tea and a swim. I'm sure we can depend on him to put in a good for us at the IOC.

You're probably wondering how we're going to decorate our not-so-humble abode. Easy - we'll festoon it with big things. Gigantic things. Guinness Book of World Record things.

We are so winning this TV.

Goat Link of the Day

Thanks to Kat of Poetikat for pointing me to this:

Hellooooooo Nurse!

Rhea of Texas World Tangle has more where that came from. And if you're still jonesing for goats, she posted more pics on Thursday here.

Texas World Tangle is not giving away 42-foot TVs, but she is hosting a giveaway for a stir-fry pan and jambalaya mix. Go here for more details. And hurry, the giveaway ends tonight (Friday).

Holiday of the Day: National Pie Day

In celebration of National Handwriting Day, we'll be celebrating National Pie Day, for obvious reasons. First of all, this is a blog, and it is virtually impossible to celebrate National Handwriting Day on a keyboard. Second of all, it's pie!

I would like to thank Erin for contributing the juicy strawberry and crusty goodness to the right as well as this link.

Now go out and have some pie!

Happy Feet Day

For all you ignorant clods out there, it's Penguin Awareness Day.


Link --> How To Celebrate Penguin Awareness Day

Oblivious to its poignancy, the MudPup referred to his chicken drummettes at lunch today as "penguin legs". Wait til he finds out how auspicious his words were.

And what's more important, it's 3 days until National Pie Day!

Did someone say pie?