What a crock

Raise your hand if you remember my obsession with bowling balls?  How about the Duck Tape (TM) phase?  The Vespa fiasco?  I didn't even realize my current obsession was an obsession until I obsessed about it.  

2015 will be the year forever remembered as "The Year Phat Phreddy was Phorgotten by Phamily at Christmas".  I'm not going to dwell on that.  Everyone has seen Home Alone and has seen how little blood matters to blood when it's all about the gifts...it happens.  I'm not bitter.  Honestly, I'm not.  Although a phone call to tell me they remembered they forgot would have been nice, I'm honestly not going to hold it over their heads for a decade.  Honestly.  

The nice thing that came out of not one single person in my family remembering me, or calling me to tell me they forgot me at Christmas, was the tremendous amount of guilt felt three days after Christmas when the phone call finally came (again, I'm not angry, shit happens).  Mom promised she would make it up to me, and boy, did she.  She got me perhaps the greatest "I'M SO SORRY WE ALL FORGOT YOU AT CHRISTMAS AND DIDN'T BOTHER TO CALL YOU ON CHRISTMAS EVEN WHEN WE REALIZED IT" gift, ever.

Meet "Bruce".  

Bruce is a WeMo WiFi enabled crock pot (NOW ONLY $110 at Amazon!).  Bruce is my everything, now.  I love him more than soap.  You may be asking yourself, as I did, when I first learned about Bruce, "Is a WiFi enabled crock pot really necessary?"  And let me tell you, YES!  I have been using crock pots for several years, and I've always found that turning it on when I leave the house in the morning, as early as 630, and leaving it cooking all day until I get home from work, most days 5 or 530, that one of two things have happened: 1) My meat (HONK) is SOOOOOO tender that it has turned to dust in the crock pot; 2) the vegetables (usually the potatoes) have cooked SOOOOOO long that they are now fossilized and could break car windshields on I-35.  (Too soon?)

Bruce can do two things that traditional, $20 crock pots can't.  1) He has the ability to set a timer.  Yes, yes.  I know.  There are crock pots out there that ALSO have a timer for much, much cheaper.  2) HE CONNECTS TO THE INTERNET!  And he has an app that you can put on your phone that let's the two of you talk to each other ALL DAY LONG.  So what, you ask?  So on the days I'm at work and not feeling up to staying the whole day and want to run home at, say, lunch time to eat my dinner that has been cooking on low for 3 hours but has 5 more to go...I just pick up my phone, and turn Bruce's heat up to high to cook it faster.  Or, if I get stuck on a project at work (much more likely) and won't be home early enough to turn him off, I just hop on the app and can turn him down to low, or even lower to warm, or turn him off completely (without having to send him racy photos!).  And since two-way communication is very important in any relationship, when Bruce has finished cooking my dinner, he sends me a sweet little text message letting me know that he's exhausted from his hard day at the office and will turning himself to a lower temperature setting to keep my dinner warm for me until I get home.  

Ohhhhhhh, Bruce.

So over this past weekend I was putting some stuff away and was having some trouble shoving some pots and pans in the lower cabinets whilst still being able to shut the doors completely.  I started cleaning out what I had in there and found some of Bruce's kin-folk...

I knew for certain that I had *at least* two crock pots already, but had no idea that I had inadvertently developed an obsession with crock pots.  In any case, I now have a very happy family with a new step-father.  I adore you, Bruce.  Jed used to whisper this in my ear when we first started dating.  Now, I feel, it's more appropriate for you.   "Te amo.  Te adoro. Eres mi toro, yo soy tu vaca."  It's true.  I couldn't think of a better life partner than you.