Wednesday, November 22, 2006

The Smarty-Pants Family

I really should be upstairs baking the traditional Thanksgiving Oreo Cake. I can put it off until tomorrow morning, methinks. I overheard the Veteran earlier saying he would be here by 8:00 a.m. I don't know what plan the boys have cooked up for tomorrow, which is probably just as well. This afternoon they were shooting bows and arrows over by the barn. As long as we leave the Mansion by 11:30, we will be in time for Thanksgiving dinner at my Hillbilly Mama's house.

This afternoon, #1 son and I went to get our hair cut. The parking lot is undergoing some renovation, and we pulled in to find that there were NO parking spots available. We also discovered HH getting out of his truck, having taken the LAST parking spot. He was supposed to be taking #2 son to a flea market. #1 and I had to park at the Dollar Store and walk through the construction zone, up a muddy path, to get our haircuts. To add insult to injury, upon the completion of #2 son's haircut, HH walked over to me and asked for money to pay for the boy's haircut. Good thing I was there, huh? That man never ceases to amaze me. And not in a good way.

Next stop for us was The Devil's Playground, to pick up some milk and Cool Whip. Hey! The store was full of people buying food! And a lady who had personal space issues who got behind us in the check-out line. She first ran into #1, making him apologize, since he treats the unrelated elderly people way nicer than he treats me. Then she ran right up into the back of me. Not with a cart--with her body. What's up with that? #1 could take no more, and begged a dollar to "Go win a prize for #2." Yeah, right. Such brotherly love I've never encountered. I gave him a dollar to get rid of him, watched him walk into the gameroom, put the dollar in the hook-grabber-thingy, and win a pink stuffed bear about two feet long. He wouldn't carry it out of the store, though. He tossed it into the cart, and volunteered to carry the bags if I would carry the bear. #2 was quite pleased with it when we got home.

The #1 son made me take an IQ test last night. He didn't have to twist my arm, as I enjoy proving that I am smarter than him. The test had 50 questions. I missed 3. And I'm going to argue about one of them, because it's just not right. I think there were two answers that could be right. Here it is: Which letter does not belong? QRNOPXM. I said "O", because it is a vowel, and all the others are consonants. Au contraire, Mensa wanna-bees! The 'correct' answer was "X". I suppose that's because the others come sequentially in the alphabet: MNOPQR. Don't you think my answer was plausible? The other two I missed fair and square, because I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

The easiest one I missed was: Brine is to salt as punch is to (I can't remember all four choices, but I said 'hit', because in my mind, brine and salt are the same thing, and a punch and a hit are the same thing. But no. The answer was 'sugar', which I'm sure is because brine is a solution containing dissolved salt, and punch is a solution containing dissolved sugar.)

The other one I missed was: How many numbers ending or beginning with '2' are found between 100 and 300? I said 120. Silly hillbilly! I was counting 10 ending in 2 from 100-200, and another 10 ending in 2 between 200-300, and all the 200s. But NO! The answer was 110, because the 200s already START with 2, so you don't have to count the ones that also end in 2. Duh!

I don't suppose I'll be sending off for that Mensa card any time soon, even though this little test said my IQ was 144. That is genius level, my son pointed out. He was OH SO ENVIOUS, because after adjusting for his tender age, his IQ was 136. He made HH take it, and he scored
113. HH didn't know the boy told me his score. This morning, I said, "I hear you took an IQ test last night." HH replied, "Yes, I got 132." He's such a liar! I told him the boy told me it was only 113. "Oh...yeah. It was 113!" Anyhoo, that was fun. We are the nerd family. We sit around taking IQ tests for recreational purposes. I don't think a 50 question test is very accurate. And the boy took a real IQ test years ago. It was scored by one of the school staff. He beat my score. I will never tell him what it was. He's already such a know-it-all.

I don't know where he gets it.

3 comments:

Chickadee said...

Hehe. Smarty pants family...I like that. My husband was actually a mensa member for a few years. his iq is 170...mine is like 110 or something. Way different. Not sure why he's with me...I'm so, ordinary.

www.danno.org/blogs

Cazzie!!! said...

Thanksgiving Oreo
Cake..please forward a recipe if you got one..my kids LOVE Oreos..and they do not always get them to eat, but it would sure be a treat for them on Christmas Day, or my birthday even.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Chick,
That would explain his computer knowledge. Haven't you heard? Opposites attract. Who knew I would end up with HH?


Cazzie,
There is no big secret recipe. It was on the back of a cake mix box years ago. It's relatively simple. Buy a box of cake mix, Devil's Food or Chocolate Fudge flavor. Cut a bunch of Oreos in half, so they look like half moons. A lot of them will break, so throw them into a bowl to chop up for the cake mix. After you have enough half-moon Oreos to fit around the bottom of the cake plate, plus five more, set them aside until after the cake is done.
Chop up about half the package of Oreos to a size about like a small grape. Mix the cake batter as the package instructs. Fold in the chopped Oreos (pick up the pieces with your hands to drop them in the batter, because you need to save the little bitty crumbs at the bottom of the bowl). Bake the cake. After the cake has baked and cooled, spread vanilla icing on the bottom layer. I am lazy, so I use a tub of store-bought icing, but you can make your own if you're of the cooking persuasion. I always buy two tubs of icing, because sometimes I run out and need a little more. Getting back to the cake...you have placed the bottom layer on the plate and iced it. Then add the top layer and ice the whole cake. Now you are ready to place your half-moons around the base of the cake, sticking them on by shoving the cut side into the icing. Take the five remaining half-moons and stand them on their cut edges in a little * pattern on the top. Sprinkle the top with the Oreo crumbs left behind in the bowl. Voila! You have a pretty little Oreo cake. I keep mine in the refrigerator, because the icing sometimes tries to slide off the sides. It is a very moist cake. Everybody love it but me. I just don't like vanilla icing.