Tactless Wonder

Everything All At Once...Again

2012-02-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

I'd like to blame the hormones.

Not necessarily my hormones, either.

How is it we can go weeks, months, possibly years (please, years is nice) with the same ole' same ole' and then all of a sudden, shot-in-the-dark-style, everything right is wrong again (to quote my favorite alternative 90's band.)

Maybe it is just me. I am an ever-changing, adaptable, personable, professional (wait, that's the kind of stuff I put on cover letters, never mind...) But I have to admit, when I get this way, I look for new things. It takes a LOT to get me to this point...I am in love with safe zones and comfort, maybe a little lazy at heart, easily amused, willing to let things slide off of me like juice off washable yarn...yet somehow? It's happened.

NO! Calm yourselves, it's not knitting that's brought me to this point. That would be the exact opposite. I know, I never post ANYTHING anymore, much less pictures of all the things that keep me from exploding. Even the site that I joined that's wholly dedicated to all-things-yarn, well, it has my profile, but I'm just too quick at giving stuff away to document it. Maybe what I need is a twitter for crafts? Critter? (OMG if I just came up with the next million-dollar social media site idea!!! Yeah, no. Way too many of those already.) And it's not Seattle. It's not friends, nor even family. I know you're all intelligent stalkers/readers, so I'll not insult you and just keep going.

Anywho, parts of my life got ummm dull, and very soon started grating against me. First extremely minor, but slowly building up into big whopping against the grain/nails on chalkboard/in the car with your sibling for way too long kind of ways. And seriously I can't tell if it's me being overly sensitive, or if there really is a conspiracy going on against me! You know, so I can be made an example. Be shown "my place." At every-day-that-much-closer-to-forty*, I've learned I can't stand that BS. I graduated high school So.Very.Long.Ago. I do believe 2012 might actually be one of those "significant" years even. Suffice to say? I play very well with others, but I hate silly games. Especially when people are only out to "prove something." So I've officially taken steps.

As my mom said just yesterday when I let her in on what I needed praying for (What? Doesn't everyone ask their religious-bent folken to intercede with their deities on their behalf at times when you think "A little more can't hurt?") we all have to keep moving forward. Cuz, otherwise (thank you A.H. in whose little boy mid-west twang I will always hear this in my head) you're stu-uck. And now it's all about "hurry up and wait." Either this will be a wake up call for them....or me. It goes both ways.

I think I just need to know where I stand in the world. Like I said, significant time has lapsed since I was fresh and young and had a whole life in front of me. I refuse to become a bitter ~~old~~ mature woman. I let a lot of things pass me by and sometimes do wallow in the "what could have beens" I will not lie to you, that would make all of this useless to me, but you don't win the lottery by just watching the adverts.** And I guess I just bought my first scratcher in four years. (Did that metaphor go to far?)

And thank you blog, for being here like an old friend so I can at least let that much out. It's like taking an enormous cleansing breath. I started you so I wouldn't make my housemates go stark raving mad about all the yarn and patterns and WIPs and FOs and rants like these...and I miss you. And I'm trying to come back. Again, taking steps...though some might be itty in comparison.

*I know, I know, I've got a couple years yet to go. I think I hold forty as the new 25. Or something. You know, that "age" that we used to make lists about? "When I am 25 I will have a nice haircut." Or is that something only I used to do?

**I have no idea where some of these sayings are coming from...I blame the creeping anxiety + maybe a little more coffee that I usually drink on a Saturday morning.

It Happened Again

2012-01-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

Google is awesome, really they are, but if they keep changing Blogger from what seems like (to me and my bad posting ways) one day to the next, they're going to go too fast too far too soon for me to keep up.

I guess this is why it's a good thing that my blog is not a popular one. Trying to figure out how to just get here to post was more difficult than I expected. Is that the little old lady inside me trying to get out? Damn technology! Young whipper snappers! Get off my land! -- Oh wait, too far.

I'm probably not supposed to be typing right now so I will keep it short...or short for me. 2012 is the year of the shoulder for me. As the blog as my witness, I'm getting the last bit of my August 25th 2008(? really? that year might change once I verify) "Bike vs F150 Pick Up Truck Accident" taken care of for reals this year.

I don't know if I already mentioned it here (it's just a bit too much for me to look, and rewriting it is way easier) but back a couple years ago my company was gifted free massages from a local massage/chiropractic office that wanted our business. I opted not to sign up as I did not have the means to embark on a massage expense, even if if was just for a co-pay, times were tight. However, my coworker couldn't attend hers so she asked if I could take her 15 min. session. The guy was all smiles and instead of trying to sell me a package - I told him straight up I had no cash, just a hurty shoulder, he stopped being a salesman and just eased the lighting and fire than were ravaging my neck/shoulder/arm. As he worked he noted that whatever was going on was part of a much bigger ache (I so wish I had this ability, touch a muscle and read it's historical woes....). He advised that even if I did not come to his clinic, that I should look into it as it would not heal on it's own.

I tried, and failed, to get my act together enough to see my Osteopath and get some kind of treatment started/continued for the next two years. I failed so badly that last October I was hit with intense soul-crushing muscle spasms that made me cry and voluntarily go to my regular doctor so she could give me lots of drugs. Cyclobenzapreen (spelled differently I'm sure) is the bomb, but not what I want to be taking daily; nor was my increasingly daily use of Cake lyrics to describe the ache/pain in my shoulder (seriously, it really was "monster-truck force.")

Then we moved cubicles the last week of the year. You know, the one I wrote about having to work? The day we finished unpacking I was on the phone scheduling an appointment, which occurred today. I might have to found the Church of the Blessed Osteopathy. I went into my appointment not even knowing where to begin in how wretched my shoulder felt. Typing today was an experiment in masochism. I could not raise my arm enough this morning to run a comb through my hair.

But now? Well, right this second I HURT. My arm feels like it was yanked from it's socket, given a good shaking, then shoved back in. Which is kinda what an Osteopath does but with his fingers and pressing on just the right tendons/muscle groups. More magic, I tell you. But magic that left me feeling like I could pitch a no-hitter! (I don't actually play baseball, so if that makes no sense, just pretend it does, I'm basing my knowledge on such educational films as Bull Durham and Major League. I could try a fencing analogy, but aside from me? No one would get it.) My shoulder/neck/arm felt better than it has for...yeah, going on three months since the muscle spasms from hell.

But tomorrow! Tomorrow should be a day of at lease 50% improvement, and I'm so looking forward to this.

December 25th...We Made It!

2011-12-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

I know, it's like six days until the real year end, but I'm celebrating all the baby steps at this point.

2011

Besides, I work all next week, so it'll be new year's eve before I know it.

For this year's LBJ birthday-stravaganza I spent some cash at the local Daiso store. (Do you have Daiso? It's the Japanese dollar (-fifty) store (unless otherwise marked).) Oh yea baybee, this year's tree? $1.50. Or maybe a dollar...it was already on sale by the time I decided to update my Xmas decorations and not try to kill my "Charlie Brown Xmas Plant" that hates me enough already for Seattle NOT being the tropical weather it thrives in (I rescued it from being an office plant, where it was really dying; you just can't win).

Just a note for me for next year: I need a better backdrop, maybe a cork board where I can pin all the awesome "Kid" xmas cards, which are all currently on the refrigerator...maybe dress up the make-shift "table" (which are currently discarded speakers...classy, I know) with a green cloth or something.

I used to think putting these kinds of hints for me was silly, but seeing as I just dug back into the blog to remind myself how to get the image details so I could post the above picture from iPhoto? Not at all silly. In fact, I feel like I should pepper my posts with more hints. If I were better at knowing how to search the HTML after publishing, I'd document my code the way all my computer science friends did when they were in school!

As is usual (and preferable) for me, Xmas eve was spent calmly watching the 4 hour version of "The Sound of Music"on network teevee. Yep, filled with commercials galore. What better way to clean up the mess from the days'-worth of cooking? See, I attempted tamales again.

The chicken mole part is fantabulous!

The masa? Weeelll, the texture is good. The flavor? Kinda bland. I followed the suggested proportions on the web and the bag of masa harina. Unlike previous years I did not follow my mom's... (you don't call them recipes...suggestions? Hints?) letter describing how she makes 80-100 tamales (with no real measurements of course...).

I was aiming for 3 dozen at MOST. I just don't have the capacity, nor the minions required to mass-produce the way my family did when we were kids. Nor do I have the access to a fresh masa supplier...so I used the bag flour again - but a different version, one specifically ground for tamales! Like I said, good texture. But maybe the way it's processed leaves it missing something? (Like taste?!?) And also? I didn't use lard. (I KNOW! What was I thinking!!!) In years past I've used a corn oil/butter mixture to get the needed fat in...but last year I used vegetable shortening and it worked...this year? Different can/brand, different result.

It's like using a random ball of yarn instead of the suggested ones will not give you the object the pattern describes...I get that now. Thankfully there is extra mole which can be drizzled on top for more flavor and/or this is why God had us invent salt shakers :).

But next time? (Yep, another note.) 2 tsp of salt to 4 cups of masa harina is BS and was written by people who are watching their salt intake and/or using bullion cubes/canned stock instead of the homemade stuff I made. LISTEN to the little voice that actually read the entire recipe and noted that they were using BULLION CUBES instead of blindly going forth! And also? Must get someone else to taste the masa. I am not a very good judge of how salted/seasoned something is after I've been cooking all day. Palate = ruined.

However, still a successful endeavor as now there are tamales in the fridge-but not too many, and I've figured out how to make them better for next time!

On that note, Merry Christmas!

Incredulous

2011-12-04T09:49:00.001-08:00

...but I'll touch/knock on wood, and toss some salt over my shoulder just to cover all my bases.

I left my yearly LA visit in November with the thought that I really really really need to get my act together and start looking for my niece and nephew's birthday-xmas-birthday (in that order) presents RIGHT NOW as Turkey day would be upon me before I knew it and I would find myself born upon the wave of too-many-shoppers and not enough parking spaces as I did last year. (There is nothing more bizarre to me than being at at a crowded toy store at almost 11PM, I really didn't want to repeat that experience.)

I should have been more determined.

In the same WHHHHOOOOOSH that has been time this year, hello, really? We last touched base in September and since then even Blogger's desktop has changed so radically I'm not sure how badly I'll mess up this post....it's DECEMBER. Black Friday had come and gone and all my plans...well...not so much achieved. I did manage to procure and wrap at least the bday gift before I boarded the plane for home...but in no way managed to even start the xmas shopping, for anyone...

Until last night.

I've known what I wanted to get my niece for xmas for a while, ever since a friend of mine posted about their existence on FB in...was it October...I will slyly link to their main page here with no picture preview or name because they keep SELLING OUT, possibly from the cuteness, if you are into dolls, that is, and toddler-aged looking ones especially, and I was actually finally defeated and wondering what my plan B would be, when I purchased the one I wanted the other night by sincere and happy accident. I was lamenting to my supervisor that I was going to actually trudge my sorry self over a tolled bridge in order to try to procure, one last time, the item in question...he was intrigued, so I showed him the site and the doll, and it was IN STOCK. To his astonishment, I logged in right then and there and put it in my "cart." (Yes, I even created an account just in case.) I couldn't whip out my credit card, even I have limits, but I was NOT going to just let it pass. Could not.

That just left my nephew, for whom I'd have to venture into stores, gulp, during the official maniacal xmas shopping period. There is no link to his present. Not because I'm being all secretive, mostly because I could not find any! The goal was coloring book based. Remember those? Didn't we have a jillion of them? You could get them anywhere and everywhere for all the characters of your commercially branded favorite cartoon/movie/heart's desire. Not watercolor or activity or, dear god, really - STICKER books, but good, old fashioned COLORING books. If this blog exists into a time where he is reading this, I hope it to be a little bit of evidence as to how much I love him. Because added to that, this weekend in particular, beautiful and sunny (yet bitterly cold) as it is? Is also experiencing a pretty bad "Air Stagnation" alert. It's just smog, in a place where the winds generally dissipate it. Imagine one of those tar boiling machines driving into your neighborhood...and stopping for a visit. The smell isn't that bad, thanks to our 40-degree highs, but your eyes, throat, and lungs sense that there is a great disturbance in the force. The air feels "thick" in places.

But out I did go, and I might have gone down streets I had not intended as the crowds of people was at times a little hard to wade through (up hill, in the snow, both ways! I know, I sound like such a sufferer :).) Suffice to say, people smell bad. Downtown Seattle does not smell like roses right now. Paint thinner and used sweat socks are a better description. Despite all this? I'm done. And it's only the 4th. I have about 10 days to gather wrapping and shipping supplies, and maybe bake some cookies if I really get on the ball, as I patiently wait for that one item to arrive so I can ship them all together, and it feels deliriously wonderful.

I'm not trying to rub it in, really, I just wanted to share this feeling of bliss. If it makes anyone feel any better, I'm only speaking of the little ones' gifts here. I've only just purchased the yarn for one gift, and still have to figure out where to go to best obtain items for the adults on my list. Nor have I achieved the gift buying for the January bday. Like I said, I definitely need to be more determined next year. If this whhhhooooshing trend continues, I won't have long to wait.

Dude! It Worked! And other Realizations

2011-09-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

2 for $6.00.

There is no way to write that out without making my head hurt a little bit. $3.00, each for a Whole Foods Avocado. Cuz they are hand picked by virgins in the light of the full moon, right? After a complex and apparently expensive Wicca ceremony? But it was less than $5, which was my upper-end limit. So I bought it. I know it was a milllion years ago and the economy broke between then and now but in my heydays of shopping the Mexican markets and getting 1 KILO of avocados for 7 pesos (that's 70 cents for 2.2 lbs in 'merican, or 32 cents/lb.) it still boggles the mind how much more I pay for one kinda small, but ripe enough, avocado, when I am desperate.

Were my father to read this he'd laugh as he went outside to pick me six or twelve of his home grown avos. And today, unless I find a non-ovo-breaded chicken recipe I like, I'm going to have to pick up some eggs...which my mom would chuckle at as she'd point to the dozens she has in various buckets from her hens.

Oh the things I took for granted growing up. But this is the life I chose. And I'm still okay with that, thankyouverymuch. For now, at least.

And speaking about choosing? I finally get it. It's that old Lucy and Desi skit where she is correcting his reading English skillz, but for technologically advanced yet poorly educated (or maybe just lazy?) English speakers with no Lucy to correct them.

See, the Internet is awesome in so many ways (and yes, just as scary and full of porn, ying and yang). Coming at it as a former educator it fills my need for filling my brain with useless trivia or random knowledge. For example, that old BBC show "Survivors" whose pilot I watched last night was based on a book written by Terry Nation (best known for the Dr. Who Daleks), and now I'm going to be on a hunt for it. There are articles about what I can do for my high blood pressure that sure, include some old wives tales, but also suggest something as simple as Hibiscus drinks/Tea (which I drank gallons of when in Mexico and Hawaii and SURPRISE, never had an issue back then....again with the things we take for granted). And yes, there are sometimes some copy editor mistakes that I chuckle at, but they are the same kind of oopsies you'll find in printed books/newspapers. But that Face Place? With the "your"s instead of "you're"s (as in your so not proofreading your posts? Cringe) or "loose" instead of "lose."

I know, The Oatmeal has covered this, but now I get it. You choose things but you lose things. And I only know this because it was beaten into me via old school spelling tests (thank you Sister Julia). But if I had not been so ~~damaged~~ - EDUCATED, I'd use my best guess, and if you CHOOSE things, obviously then you pronounce LOOSE the same way. (I never said I was a QUICK former educator. This totally came to me as I was commenting on a picture and knowing, just knowing that it was going to be misread because, yeah, it's Desi trying to read the children's book all over again.)

I ~~stand~~ sit here shaking both my head and fist at whomever put together the modern English language. You make my brain hurt, sir.

It's Not Like I'm Asking for a Pony

2011-09-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

Oh great and powerful deity that directs the Whole Foods Produce Buyer, I come before you, nay, grovel before you, if I could type at the same time I'd be on my hands and knees beseeching you with all my heart, please please please let there be an affordable, ripe avocado across the street when I get off of work today.

You see, I wouldn't be asking - nay groveling, if it weren't for the fact that every.single.time. I've gone into Whole Paycheck this ENTIRE summer, no matter what it was I was looking for? They'd be out. Be it cheese, baking yeast, fresh basil, bread, raisins, vitamin C, flax seed oil, toothpaste, that super yummy kettle corn I bought by accident that one time and have never seen again, hard cider (! I know!), you name it, if I thought I'd just pop in on my way home so that I wouldn't have to drive 20 minutes to the next nearest (and way cheaper) grocery store? HA! The universe/the other deities that take care of all those departments would bust a gut laughing so very hard at me.

So I'm taking a new tact, and if it weren't against the workplace code, I'd light a candle to you, really, I would. I just need one medium-sized avocado that isn't $5 a pop (or a lb.). Take pity on me, just this one? 'K?

Thisaway & Thataway

2011-08-13T12:07:00.001-07:00

I think the best way to begin this is to state, for the record, that my thoughts (and conversations at work prove this) are best mapped if you compare them to an episode of the Simpson's.

You might think that the main story line is going to be about selling chocolate at school, but in actuality it's all about how Abraham vanquished the Capital city bull...or something, and along the way you get to see Maggie doing something cute, Lisa doing something smart, and Bart being Bart.

Also, my brain never sleeps.

You see, I woke up wondering what is to become of "clockwise" and "counter-clockwise" when we've gone so far into the future that everything is digital. Oh laugh at me now, but back in 1999 I had to teach a student of mine how to read the analog clock in my classroom. I taught 7th grade. She was also not alone in believing/understanding how the 9 could possibly equal 45 minutes, just the only one to actually voice this out loud. It was both funny and disturbing. The class of 2004 (oh my, really? They're that old now?!) grew up only knowing digital clocks and watches. (I know I promptly went out and got my baby brother a Mickey Mouse ANALOG watch, just to hedge my bets a little.)

So...what's it to be then? I know, I know, there were ways of saying clockwise and counter-clockwise before clocks, but um, do they trip off your tongue? Or did you just google them the way I did? (Sunwise is a favorite, as is "deiseil." And "senestrel" or "weddershins" for the counter, which I should have known, it being in so very many Discworld novels (turnwise being it's opposite). I commented as much on Facebook when someone put up a link to this video - which is super informative on it's own. That's when the title of this post was brought up. Simple enough, really.

Which then led me to ponder the movie I saw last night. (I did warn you.)

So I got out! And watched Cowboys & Aliens. What can I say, the lure of Han Solo AND 007 (not that I've actually watched any of the new ones) in the same movie was too much of a temptation. And if you love rough men trying to out-gravely-voice one another? This is so your movie.

It's not getting very good reviews though, well, fair-middlin', but with the stars and the storyline? You'd think more people would like it. But there is just something in the film that keeps you just on "this side" of giving it that 4th star or the A-. I think I've figured out what that is: there are only black hats in the movie.

I thought at first that the incident with 007's hat was put in for comic effect. That man surely did love his ill-gained hat. A black hat, no less. But it hit me somewhere in my "weddershins" thoughts that that was the point. The western films and tee vee shows I grew up watching were ALWAYS the good, the bad, and the ugly. Or the cowboys vs the Indians. Or the black hats against the white hats. And there it is; you can always tell who the villains are because they wear the black hats! But here? The hero? He was very much not a nice man. Neither was Han, nor the aliens. Where, then, is the white hat that to whom can put our movie-audience-good-juju? It throws you off kilter. Just when you think you know who the "good guy" is, it turns out he's not, or he dies, or he gets lassoed by aliens, or his fingernails are just so icky-dirty that you hope the alien does get him!

It messes with your head.

But still, I liked the movie. Possibly because it messes with your head. It seems society doesn't get entertained by sappy/over-the top/happy endings anymore - there would be fewer talk shows/reality tv and more soap opera/princess movies if we did. So maybe that's what they were going for. Most cowboys weren't Roy Rodgers, and what good are aliens if they're not out to get us! Decades of Star Trek have taught us that! (I may be watching "Enterprise" for the first time ever, currently, but what little coolness points I've accumulated won't actually let me admit it.)

Happy Saturday!

Don't Deny Your Geek Girl Nature

2011-07-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

Following a link from Facebook this AM made me late to work this morning, and I'm so glad I was.

I never became a scientist, or the astronaut I was jonesing to be after watching the launches on the tee vee as a kid. All because of a very very idiotically dumb reason: none of the cool kids were doing it.

Fast forward thirty years to the last launch...and I'm working in an office...and all the cool kids? I don't actually know what they do...they are not so much with the sharing on their Facebook profiles...but me? Not so much the happy.

I've tried being a bookseller, library person, teacher, sailor, roustabout, and now playing with numbers...and yet...I just don't have the same excitement as I did as a kid about playing with rockets.

I still remember helping this kid, Chris; we were going to design and build a rocket out of whatever bits and pieces we had at our fingertips in the classroom. I was so excited to have someone who was equally interested in something like this that I lost myself in it...until I was harshly jarred back to the reality of the middle school years by Chris' cousin (?) Marina, "Why are you doing that? Do you think Chris is like, cute or something? You do don't you!!!" (Fill in the rest with so many taunts and laughter that I literally backed away, got to my desk, and, yeah, kinda just gave up.)

Cuz it's all about the boyz during those years, right? And Chris? Gangling, skinny, buck-toothed? Yep, so totally hot, right? And the only reason I'd want to hang out with him was because of that hotness, right? Is it any wonder I once wished, maybe out loud in front of another boy, that I had been born a boy? (Which, yes, then spread the rumor that I was a total freak...add teh glasses and braces and you can just tell how popular I was in school...)

All this was going through my head during the constantly delayed countdown. So maybe when the shuttle finally took off...the tears (yeah, I might have gotten a little snifflely) weren't all about the 135th and final launching of the Space Shuttle...

I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here, because if you're reading this I'll bet you already let your kids be as geeky as they want to be. You're already telling them they can be anything they want to be when they grow up, no matter how crazy you think it is. And NOT telling them they're crazy for wanting to be something just because you don't ever see yourself doing it. I had to swim through an ocean of negativity to get to where I am today; which is only an island maybe halfway to shore....maybe more. I certainly would never wish it on any of the children I know and love today. It's too hard a road to travel sometimes.

I know I'm a dork, a weirdo, a geek. I've have 37 years to realize, reject, then embrace myself all by myself. I sometimes wish I'd had someone equally geeky to let me know earlier that it was okay to be me. That I wasn't full on strange girl for wanting to figure out how to take apart alarm locks and put them back together, for being interested in how engines work and why things happen the way they do. I think...no, I know I would have been a completely different person today. Maybe even sitting in front of a big screen at Cape Canaveral; facing pending unemployment in uncertain economic times, of course...but dude! What a ride it would have been!

Feeling Good In my own Skin

2011-05-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

Before this morning, I thought I'd peaked in the whole "feeling good in my own skin" thing back when I was jumping around like a mad woman in front of seventh graders in my 20s. I mean, even principals and superintendents could not deter me from teaching tone, vocabulary, or grammar while dressed in odd outfits and/or possibly having taped poster board pieces to myself for emphasis.

But today? Today! After slathering my tissue-chafed nose up with Neosporin? I left the house and walked myself to work, head held high and everything. I am not so blind that I can't see the tip of my oh so red and irritated nose from a weekend of non-lotioned tissues (as an aside, um, scientists of the world? Seriously? We've been around how many thousands of years and the closest we've come to not shredding up our drippy noses are tissues coated with some slimy stuff that STILL irritate - and even more so if what you are suffering from is an allergic reaction to a very pretty kitty cat so that even the lotion is making you sneeze and you have to go back to the sandpaper that is non-lotioned facial tissue?)

I will admit, it is hard to work the sexy knowing my nose is Rudolph red (and yes, rather shiny, thanks to the Neosporin). But either I've reached and demolished some mental threshhold, or I'm still too sick to care. I'd like to think it's the first.

Case in point:

A friend had a "Mad-Men-Esque" themed birthday party. I don't know if I have the cajones to post the picture here, but I went as as "Joan" wannabe. Except maybe my hair made me look like a 1960s stewardess more than an office sex pot. Well, that and the fact that I'm about 15 years older than anyone on that show and probably should have gone for the matronly mom-look with pill-box hat and conservative suit instead of the ruby red top belted (!) over a long black skirt (thank you spanx for your support). Way more figure defining than the usual slacks-and-t-shirt-like blouses I normally wear. But maybe it was the spanx talking, I dunno, or maybe it was because all the other ladies-in-pearls (of course!) looked as uncomfortable as I felt, but by the end of the night, along with being ever-so-grateful that I didn't have to wear as much makeup or updo my hair on a daily basis, I thought, if I had to? I could totally do this "dress up" thing on a regular basis. I know I don't look "LA hot." But heh, maybe that's why I live in Seattle?

Donation Letter

2011-04-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

It's audit time at work.

No, not the IRS, I work for a non-profit, we do it to ourselves, for the donors.

I think a whole lot about donors and donations. They pay my bills. Were someone to know who I work for, I try not to be a supreme pain in the ass, because hey, I might be nothing more than a cog in the great machine, but what if it's me and my outrageous behavior that makes them NOT write a nice check to us this year?

It could happen.

And I know this because I am also looking at it from the other side. My HS has send me their annual donation letter. Do they not know better by now? Or since they haven't heard from me in years do they think that my fortunes have magically altered? That I finally married into money (cuz lord love 'em but there ain't no fortune coming my way from any of my current or aging relatives...half of zero is still zero and all...)

And besides, as they themselves have proven to me to be less than honorable, funding them so they can continue to perpetuate the lie is not exactly high on my list. Yes, dear alma mater, I have grown up and let go of a whole cargo container ship of baggage with regards to me and my own personal experience with you, and yet your rotten smell lingers beneath the false facade as you first mess with my mom, and then, most recently, with my dad.

All I can say is, please don't let your kids attend the high school you work for. At least not if you are in the maintenance department and it's a snooty west-side school.

Aside from the ribbing and the nose-turning and the outright ignoring your child will suffer, they won't get a chance to complain, even unto their almost 40s (really? Time = not my friend) about these experiences to anyone but you (and the internet, obviously), and then maybe not you if your child knows of your pride and hot-headedness and does not want to be the one responsible for your losing your job when you go ballistic on those responsible for her misery.

And then, THEN, years later when it's obvious that now the school has turned on you directly, giving you a hard time, giving you managers that see you not as a human being but a thing, heaping task after task upon you to see when you will break, she still has to keep her mouth shut because you have not retired! And if she were to complain about anything they would (and yes, they would, take it out on you!)

And yet, with all this, they keep sending her donation letters filled with bullshit about helping to raise good, moral, upright, prejudice, closed-minded, bitches who are shocked, absolutely SHOCKED when they hear she got into Stanford for grad school, sailed half way around the world in her sailboat, lived and bought a house in Hawai'i (man, my life seems so glamorous!). She, who'd been told she shouldn't even bother to apply to college because there was no way she'd ever get anywhere what with the beginnings she had...(yeah, I may have dumped the baggage but I seem to have kept a carry-on or seven).

Where was I?

Right. I maybe just used you to get all that bad off my chest, sorry. I have such positive things to post about, I do! But this kinda plunged me into a dark place and before I could think again about the happy? I needed it to go away. I know I'll feel 10xs better as soon as I shred that letter.

Happy Wednesday!

Birthday Tamales

2011-03-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

When you've decided to make tamales over three days time in honor of your birthday? It really doesn't seem like all that much work.

The idea popped into Andy's head about Thursday. He was turning forty+one on Friday. I am officially no longer 36, today. (Last year we were both sick with what-might've-been-swine-flu-but-we-never-verified-it so we literally ignored our birthdays and strove instead to NOT DIE.) This year? We were not sick, but it seems we've hit those magical ages where we don't actually want to party down/up/whateverwhichway and just enjoy our days in whatever way best pleases us. Besides, we are both very cat-like and unmotivated and parties take planning.

But tamales? What are we thinking. If it happens? Grand! If it doesn't, we'll have a ton of chicken mole on hand (I make tamales with a chicken and mole filling on purpose. If the masa doesn't turn out? You can ALWAYS just eat the filling with beans and rice and emphatically state that that's what you planned in the first place, oh yes, indeed.

Yesterday's ginormous accomplishment was the shopping. I mean it, really. I am super proud of us as the fridge was starting to look like no one lived here. Then, instead of being good, and using some of the food we'd bought to, oh, I dunno, MAKE DINNER, and maybe get a head start on the tamales, we decided to take a break and congratulate ourselves and toast Andy's birthday at a sweet little bar just up the street. It was happy hour after all! Let's go be happy!

As it was a bar, on a Friday night in downtown Seattle, we were kind of limited in who to invite to join us. So if you didn't hear from me or Andy it's not cuz we don't love you, it's cuz we were not going to make anyone endure the madness that is Seattle-on-a-Friday-night-traffic. But Tim showed up anyway :).

And after happy hour? We were, again, quite logical and honest with ourselves and realized that unless Andy was having Ramen for his birthday dinner? We'd be going out. So we did. To a really wonderful French Restaurant. With really wonderful French food. And OMG the wine pairings! And boy howdy, is Andy hungover today.

Yet somehow, today being chicken and mole making day, which is my end of this endeavor? I am typing away having verified that the multiple pounds of onions, carrots, and chicken are official "soup" which I will divvy up into broth for the freezer and chicken for the mole once it's not cauldron boiling hot, and the mole? Let me tell you about the mole.

Andy got me a mini/4-cup food processor for my birthday. I actually jumped up and down when I opened the box. Why? Because on Thursday when he mentioned tamales the first thought running through my head was "oh how I miss my old blender." The one that currently sits on my mom's kitchen counter. In L.A. The one I used for mole making since my mom first (finally) shared her recipe with me.

I do own a blender, oddly enough an earlier gift from Andy as well. And it's a Waring (for those of you keeping score). But as powerful and as sleek and as cool as it is, grinding sesame seeds and peanuts and garlic was not what it was made for. Either that or I just don't have the brawn required to keep the top-heavy glass pitcher/carafe in place while at the same time trying to get the ingredients to play nice with the blades. Nor are my spatulas and/or fingers agile enough to scrape out what has been pulverized from around those previously mentioned non-removable blades and "trademark cloverleaf carafe." My second thought was, "How easy would it be to get a molcajete in Seattle." Because going super old school was sounding better than using that blender...

For it's inaugural use? I have nothing but wonderful things to say about my little food processor. It's this one. Someday I will graduate to one that can handle liquids and then, boy howdy, will I be powerful, but for now simply being able to get the "base" of the mole finely ground enough (think the consistency of tomato paste) with my not shedding tears of frustration is magic, baby!

Okay, now to see if the chicken can be dealt with.

Happy Saturday!

And We'll Keep Trying Until We Run Out of Cake*

2011-02-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

So you know that little voice in your head that sounds suspiciously like you're mocking your mom by using all of her words and wisdom against you in your head in your voice? You know, the one that berates you for walking around the cold kitchen floor in bare feet? Leaving the apartment without a heavier coat? Giving you the big stink eye and a heavy sigh when you take a spoonful of ice cream directly out of the carton, even though its all yours and no one else will be having any? Same goes for when you eye the milk jug because really you only need one small sip to get an aspirin down?

Yeah, that one.

As I was taking my third dose of sudafed + ibuphrophen just a wee bit ago (hellllloooo sinus infection!) that voice just about screamed at me, letting me know that the caramel flavored popcorn I had while watching Out of Africa this evening with my work mates not only did NOT count as dinner, but was most definitely insufficient padding for putting that many chemicals in my tummy at 9PM...(let's not even touch the fact that I just took SUDAFED at 9PM),

So I may have added a piece of cornbread I had lying around, cuz yeah that is SUCH a well-planned and healthy meal...And where did all that come from? I mean, that whole, "we must eat real food and not the bag of chips we're eying." Is it really all guilt driven?

And by that I mean, I totally got it when I was a teacher that I was the adult in the classroom and I had to TAKE CHARGE (tm) and be a good example for my students and and not swear or use violence to get my way and show them that just cuz you grow up the world does not end and look! I even eat healthy lunches! See! Apples! And, you too can be a well-mannered fully functioning adult in the world and not get arrested! And it wasn't guilt, it was me feeling like I wanted to show...well, what did I want to show? That this is a good way to be living?

But when you're almost thirty-seven and you eat lunch alone in your cube and there are no little people in your house to which you have to show how awesome you are...what is it that compels me to cut up my apple and eat it with my yogurt and maybe a turkey sandwich when the avocados are on sale? What keeps me from eating the whole pint of ice cream for dinner (instead of that one spoonful for dessert)?

Why not bake a cake and eat it straight from the pan morning, noon, and night? Is it because of that voice? Because of the guilt I would feel if my mom found out about the fact that I had caramel popcorn and a piece of cornbread for dinner tonight? And even though my mom is going to live forever and ever and ever (shut up, let me live in my delusion), what would happen if she wasn't there for me to fear being discovered?

Gak! It's like my mom (or that voice-thing I've got going) is my morality, or some-such. This might be far too much to contemplate when my head is threatening to explode into a million pieces, but there you have it. "Right" and "wrong" as policed by fear and guilt. Oh, and maybe the little promise I made to myself that I would not "grow" out of my favorite pair of jeans...that might have a little be to do with it too...so add a little vanity as well.

Wow, not really where I expected this post to go. But if you get a chance? Watch Out of Africa...it's a bit long, but watching it as an adult in one-go instead of as a kid with your mom over two nights on teevee? Whole different take and whole lot of meaning. And Robert Redford is only a smidge less than a year younger than my mom...that kinda totally blows me away.

*My geekiness knows no bounds, especially not when cake is involved. A face-place friend recently became super addicted Portal, and seems to be passing the time until Portal 2 comes out by posting many Aperture Science related wares...most recently the end-song, which mentions cake, often. What's not to love?

Waiting Really Is the Hardest Part

2011-02-09T07:49:00.001-08:00

As I was waiting for this to upload into blogger I was trying to remember if I've actually finished any sort of project in 2011 yet...

- I was 3/4s of the way done with a sweater....it's now back to being hand-wound cakes (WAY TOO BIG).

- I was 9/10s done with Andy's sweater...all of that yarn is currently wound around a notebook waiting for me to get it back into cake-form (way too not Andy).

- I am a toe away from finishing Lev's first sock (of two. But not a pair, he just wants two socks...makes this VERY easy for my failing enthusiasm for the knitting of a millllion stitches for his Mens size 10s (11s? Can no longer remember....ooops--which is why I stopped at where I think the toe might be...and started the second sock instead....)

So that would be um, no. Nada. Only by baby brother's xmas scarf....which I don't think I shared on here either....my thought was that it was an xmas gift and he might see it! (If he ever found my blog...which doesn't seem to be the case as yet, unless he's reading all stalker-style, which is okay too. I stalk his FB page all the time, hi mijo!)

But um, yeah, this was December 2010:

Cascade 220 superwash....size 7 or 8 needles (useless with the memories here) in purple, cuz that's the color he asked for. Good old basketweave stitch with a...um...what's that k1p1k1 edge/border called....moss stitch, maybe? One thing I can state as fact? It's possibly the fastest full-sized scarf I have EVER knit. It's 60" long, mas/menos. I was asked for this scarf after the first of December, and mailed it with everyone's xmas presents. Yes, it might have gone into the dryer after I realized that there was no way it would be ready to go in the box along with everything else. Yes, I did actually wonder if I could pack it in desiccant (no, not the wee little packets you find in nori, I'm talking about the cereal-box sized stuff they sell you at craft stores to dry out your flowers), but I trusted my never-hot-enough dryer to do the job. I chose superwash for a number of reasons, see.

Okay, guilt of not posting that is fading...

But the above? Secret project that I've been doing when not cranking out the itty bitty stitches required for Lev's socks. US 7 needles are a godsend to uncramp my fingers after an hour of size 1s. (Yes, I have not learned my lesson and keep using the itty bitty needles for men's socks...they just last longer that way, really.)

But now it's blocking/drying and I'm back to waiting....It's made from Regia Silk sock yarn. I bought the yarn five years ago when I went to Bellingham, WA to visit the "Santa Cruz of Washington State." I'd tried making socks with it (imagine, silky socks?) but the yarn is way too "halo"-y. It's the silk part, I'm guessing. So instead, I saved it...and now...it's almost ready. And I'm trying so very hard not to chuck it into the dryer (machine wash/tumble dry right on the yarn label!!!) so that it can be a my first fully-finished 2011 project...

Out of Sorts...

2011-02-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

You know that adrenaline feeling you get when you are startled awake by earthquakes, sirens, gunshots, small crying children, ginormous diesel machinery breaking apart the street (or something similar) two blocks away from me? (Guess which one I had happen...)

So now you're all AWAKE and OMG is it really only 4AM!!!

And you know that thought you have? The one telling you maybe it'd be better to get up now? I mean you're so awake? And yet the bed is so warm, you are so comfy, there's at least a hour and twenty-five minutes yet before you need to worry about getting up/listening to the annoying deetdeetdeetdeet of the Community Transit bus and slowly but surely the heaviness in your eyelids makes the decision for you? And you know in your heart of hearts maybe this wasn't the best thing to do? Like that time you decided to "study" in bed, under the covers for that Biology final?

Because then? THEN! It's an hour after you were supposed to BE UP? Because you've slept through your alarm because you fell into such a coma-like sleep after the startled premature wake-up that your entire sleep-schedule now seems to be ruined?

Yep, that would be me this morning. I've pretty much finished my one cup of coffee and it had done nothing for me. This will be one very long Friday.

Oh Dear...

2011-01-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

You know that awful feeling you get when you realize that the notes you scribbled onto your stickie notes pad at work for your next blog post are actually not in your jacket pocket but possibly still somewhere on your desk? Maybe in a place where someone will read them and wonder just what insanities are really going through your head and maybe bra sizes and imaginary lasers attached to your glasses are not the most appropriate things to write about in an accounting department and did I mention insanity? Combined with why do we let this person handle our money?

Yep. That feeling.

It's just awful isn't it?

Instead I will distract myself and my mounting hypertension with a cup of chamomile tea and this lovely picture I got of the shadow of the Smith Tower...whose pewter rendition is in the previous post. The pyramid/triangle (in 2-d) portion is actually an apartment. The walkway where I was standing is at the base of the triangle.

Happy Sunday!

When it Rains, It Pours!

2011-01-15T16:19:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Yep, a bit belated. The first 14 days of the year have been kinda rollercoastery in the fullness department.

Seriously, I think I had the awesome luck to be otherwise occupied just about non-stop the first 7 days in very happy ways. Visits to friends, invites to dinners, birthday celebrations, etc. and so forth. I was all coordinated with work and social calendar and times were awesome and good...

Then last week hit, and I was at work until just near 8 PM for too many nights in a row with all deadlines being 5PM yesterday and dear lord am I happy to see the end of that week.

And now it's the Saturday of a three-day weekend and I'm typing this from bed, which aside from going out to get a burger for lunch? Is the only thing I've done today...and this makes me immensely happy.

Oh wait, I lie, I actually stepped into a bookstore on my way home from lunch to complete my niece's birthday gift (eight...EIGHT, she's got to slow down! I'm so not ready for her to be EIGHT!). She wants to learn cursive, but the closest thing I've found is a cursive practice book. I'm hoping they still teach cursive at her school and this can be something extra...but I keep hearing that's no longer in fashion...which is kinda sad, but not really.

I mean, I gave up writing cursive years ago...summer of 8th grade to be most precise. It was not "cool" to write "just like the nuns do!" Or so that was the comment that stuck in my head. I was in a study skills course the summer before starting at my high school and we had to write something...who knows what the actual assignment was, but after 8 years at my elementary school with the constant insistence from various teachers that my writing looked like horrible chicken scratch when I printed anything and that I could only fake "neat" handwriting when I used cursive, I'd be damned if I was going to be labeled a messy writer at my new school!!!

So I painstakingly wrote out my multi-paged paper in cursive. Only to have the girls in my class eye me rather warily because OMG Becky! Who writes like that? How old fashioned! Her writing looks like Sr. HolyWater's! (We were all products of Catholic schools, the big difference, apparently, was that they had recently been taught by them whereas I'd had Ms. T. Except she'd been a former nun, hadn't she...hmmm.) This was still a bit of time earlier than I was DRESSING like them, so I was caught between a nun and a chicken scratch place. I chose to squawk from that point on. And 22 years later it seems to still be affecting me.

I was supposed to mail off my niece's gift on Friday, or so I'd planned, but then (see working until 8 PM above), completely spaced it as I slept through my alarm and rushed rushed rushed just to get out the door before my first meeting of the day (you know, that makes it seem like I have an important position at my place of drudgery, don't you believe it). And then, as I realized my lack of present to mail when the outlook reminder started flashing (yes, yes I do remind myself to mail packages, go to the pharmacy, take a lunch break, don't you?) that I never got around to looking into the cursive book.

"Cursive!" I thought...and laughed out loud a little as I lifted and shook my fist! It really had been a rough week. But after confirming with my SIL that I actually had four more days than I'd thought to get the present down to LA, I breathed a sigh of relief and stickie-noted a reminder to go to the bookstore today.

I may have a pile of laundry that I'm totally ignoring, but I feel like today has been a total win from that little accomplishment. It's amazing how 7 days of awesome were so decimated by 7 days of awful that on day 15 I'm calling this a big win. Oh 2011, what will you have in store for me this year?!?

And just so we won't have a total pictureless blog, I've been playing with my camera again:

During my end-of-the-year vacation I visited the Smith Tower as well as picked up a replica of the needle...and now I may be on the verge of starting a pewter building/monument collection! Good thing these aren't as popular or portable as those stretched penny machines, and that I don't actually go anywhere ever, or we'd have a problem.

Another Year Gone...

2010-12-31T09:44:00.000-08:00

So, 2010 was not my year for blogging, I know this. But as I am also not that good with the "year in review" or the "resolution making" or even much reflecting, I'll just leave it at that.

Every year is different. This one had so many things going on, most times all at the same time, that finally when I had time to sit and share...it was such old news and already competing withe "the next thing" that I'd give up and delete the draft I'd half-started. I have a super awesome grand appreciation for all the bloggers with families. How you do it I have no clue. I am shocked and amazed that I can get myself up and dressed and fed and to work some days...and it's JUST ME! You all rock, is all I'm saying.

I have no plans for 2011, aside from trying to keep the noise at a tolerable level. But that's always been my hope. Less stress, more time for me....more time to share.

You know it's taken me this long to go through and organize my vacation pictures from November? And this is due mainly because I promised a HS friend I'd get her the pictures? Seriously, with purpose, and forethought, and motivation! And hello a month and a half and I am still getting them ready to upload to flikr, or wherever. "Wherever" being more sought after as I don't seem to have a clue as to who or where or how I signed up to flikr...so when I asked for my password...that spiffy email they send? Not in any of my inboxes...

See? Sample of my insanity lately. It's like I've fallen off the disorganization tree and hit every branch on the way down. (Does that twisted analogy work?) Can you tell when I write lately I'm all stream-of-consciousness/one-take? I used to do this with letters back in the day, you know, before computers? Before hours and hours and a click of a couple keys could reorganize whole paragraphs and no one could tell you wrote a page and a half and then deleted it when you thought better?

I could say I'm doing the Kurt Vonnegut thing, he was all about the writing one sentence at a time thing and not going back...except I'd be lying as I just thought of that this very moment. It's more that I missed that era of my writing.

We're so good at self-editing now-a-days that no one sounds like who they really are anymore. I do it all day in emails and calls for work, but lately also for facebook comments and even phone conversations. I really and truly I feel like I've lost a little be of who I am/was. I titled this blog tactlesswonder for a reason...as a place for me to share and get it all down and out and...well...I stopped that. I started pouring over my prose to make sure everything was "just right." That everyone and anyone who came across it would see I'm not a danger or a threat or an offense. And I'm not sure why.

So I stopped. Blogging became more than a 10-15 minute update, it became WORK. I do enough of that already.

So maybe this is me making a resolution of sorts, except I started it this year instead of next. I'm posting what I'm doing/thinking/being from-the-hip. Short and sporadic updates seem to be my thing now, but they are me again. Or so I hope. I feel like I'm trying to find my "voice" again, and like my aging body and it's molasses-style of healing? It's slow-going. Slower than my patience is happy with (what patience? where? did I miss something?...)

SO! Everyone! Thus ends another year! I hope you spend it in the company of wonderful friends and/or family (or both for you lucky peeps). May the new year be filled with lots and lots of hope and positive thoughts and a boatload of motivation and wishes and unicorns and rainbows and anything else you can throw in the mix.

Happy New Year's Eve! I will clink-clink to you now as I'll probably be snoring by the time the date change happens...not that I snore! Girls don't snore...or something ;).

Like Getting Blood Out of a Turnip

2010-12-28T21:49:00.000-08:00

Or so I hope....

Dear Con Artists,

I know by now Lost has probably been translated and parsed out to a multiple of countries but I'm going to say this now, what worked for Sawyer will not work for you. We've all been getting the million Zambian dollar emails for years now, we know better, really, so please stop trying to take my parents' money!

I understand how hard you've been working, what with them not being a part of the Internet generation you've had to take extreme measures and (gasp!) CALL them on the telephone, but still, really and truly, they are not so gullible (thank god) to believe that they have just won a thousand dollars!!!!!

And as old and hurty as they are? No, they will not gather up $200 cash to give you when you send them "magical" medicines to cure their ills(!!!).

And lastly? fake Mexican relative that just got into an accident and they will be sending you to jail unless you get wired $1000? Say hi to your new jailmate rommie, they didn't fall for that one either.

And really, fake Mexican uncle? You are the one I'm most offended by. So offended I'm writing you a letter! On teh internets!

You've got a big brass set to go calling someone out of the telephone book, I'm thinking, and introducing yourself by saying, "Hello! Who do you remember from way back in Mexico!" When you heard my mom's voice answer the phone (in Spanish, of course). And how UTTERLY convenient that when she said the first name that came to her head, that name was your name too! SHAME, dude. How many numbers did you have to call before you got someone to speak to you and/or answer in Spanish, I wonder...

And then! THEN! John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, going on and on about how you were just finished filling the tank up with gas in Tijuana and were a mere few hours away and couldn't way to see her again!!!! Her, not your brother, but your sister in law? Really? And when she said your voice sounded nothing like her BIL you had the gaul to say it was because you had the flu?!? Cuz why? You thought maybe they were so soon off the turnip truck that they didn't know that these wires and tubes and electrical devices transported your voice so clearly that it's almost like they're in the same room with you? Hi, it's just shy of 2011 here boy-o, time to buy a clue.

Color me naive, but maybe I'da fallen for it too, just for a second, after a few Manhattans. Thank you jeebus that my mom doesn't partake of the fire-water. Instead she said, "Well, okay, see you when you get here," without having shared her name and address AND letting my dad know (you know, your brother? the one you didn't ask about?) that something was afoot. Which was a good thing when your SECOND call came, the one wherein you got into that accident and now "waily waily" they want to send you to jail because the driver's little girl got smashed into the windshield! (There is a special hell for such creativity you know.) And can your wonderful family send you the money before they haul you off to Mexican jail!?! (I'm guessing, seeing as you'd just called to say you were in TJ.)

Props to my dad for being equally creative, speaking to you telling you how sorry he was but "carnal," totally tapped for money due to the mint and a half he spent during xmas (see referenced turnip comment above).

You failed in your effort to extort money from my parents, but what you did do? You bastard? You upset them. You put doubt into them about what if it was him? What if we really didn't recognize his voice? What if he really is in trouble? A few phone calls cleared that up, but the damage was done, you ass. If anyone has earned the right to upset my parents, that's me, not you! Who the hell do you think you are anyway? Dude, I'm a firm believer in both Karma and bad juju and with the ferocity of bad feelings I'm directing your way? You'd just better watch out.

Sincerely,

Your Loving Niece

I Couldn't Resist

2010-12-24T16:25:00.000-08:00

My love of Neil Gaiman + my twisted nature = sharing Nicolas Was with you all.

39 Degrees North: Christmas Card 2010 from 39 Degrees North on Vimeo.

Merry Christmas!

I'm As Bad as My Former Students...

2010-12-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

I go on vacation tomorrow for the rest of the year (I know, it's only a little over a week, but it sounds much more fabulous to say "rest of the year" vs "one week" you know?)

And I don't want to go to work today.

I doana wanna! How poopie. Who invented work anyway! (And whateverallelse my students were prone to say on the last day before any holiday/break/summer vacation.)

But I am an adult! Or so I keep reminding myself...and I need to finish the tasks I've set out on my cube door (we have frosted glass "doors" on our cubes for "head down" time which I found out preeeetty early on - day one? That you can write on with dry-erase markers. I know, I am a dweeb, but it gives me a place to write my agenda like the old days...or something...)

Anyhow...just popping in to say I'm still here, maybe drowning in work a little, but it's okay, see above re: vacation. ONE MORE DAY!

I can do this.

Xmas Shopping Blows

2010-12-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Last night at the holiday party a co-worker's wife asked if we all did the "holiday" thing.

Living two blocks away from the "downtown shopping center" has reminded me just about daily since "Black Friday" what I hate about that same-old holiday thing. The daily emails telling me how much I'm missing out on all the discounts for all the shopping I'm not doing is not helping lift my "spirits."

I did put up the mini metal xmas tree-shaped ornament holder my friend gifted when she was packing for Australia. If it were a teensy bit taller it would be a much better way for me to display my FULL SIZED ornaments...but it's not, so it kinda looks a bit Jack-Skelington-style Xmas instead of what I pictured...but um, whatevers, it's the thought that counts, or something. And at least my little ever-greenie plant thing isn't bowing under their weight this year. (In a more Charlie Brown Xmas Tree style that pulled at my heart strings just a little too much last year.)

The holidays bring me down in a odd way. Thanksgiving is the beginning of the end. It used to be the last time that we could all be happy about getting together for a big meal and not be blasted by the ads and commercials and nonsense of the capitalistic nature of the US (my Santa Cruz is showing, sorry.) This year, though, it started in July...

Color me naive, but that whole "Xmas in July" thing had absolutely NOTHING to do with getting together with friends and family and being happy to be together and spend time with the kids and play and laugh and eat to excess...it was all about buying stuff. Because buying stuff is supposed to make us all happy! (These people need to watch an episode or three of hoarders, I think.)

What really got to me was when I was in LA last month. When the tee vee was on, it was commercial after commercial after commercial for toys and widgets an gadgets that you had to have to make this holiday special...um, this was a week before Turkey Day. What happened to waiting until Black Friday? I'm just being one of those old folks who go off about "back in my day" here, aren't I?

I guess I'm just holding a little pity party for myself as I have to go brave the crowds to find a birthday gift for my nephew, as well as visit Hay See Penny's for the very specific thing my mom said she'd love another pair of (gramma jeans, my mom wants gramma jeans...sigh, and people wonder just how I developed into the fashion queen I am :).).

How do people do non-xmas shopping during this time? I'm already strategizing which grocery stores I will be limited to as anything connected to any shopping center's parking lots will be prohibitively full by 8AM...and I don't know about you...but that's just not my cuppa tea either.

Flannel Sheets Make all the Difference

2010-11-15T07:56:00.000-08:00

Color me jaded by silly things like forced air heating, and too many visits to the linens section only to exclaim, "Really? That much for flannel sheets! Are they threaded with gold or something?"

I am a changed woman.

My mom lives in LA, and as wonderful visions of Baywatch and Melrose Place or 90210 fill your vision, as well as that stand-by there is no "weather" or "seasons" there…not like Minnesota (or wherever your family is from), well, no, not really.

But as with all places, the people who live here have definitely acclimated, and like my girls in Hilo that used to pull on those super big and fluffy sweatshirts when the temps got below the constant 85 degrees, so to do the Angelinos prepare for "winter" as best they can by pulling out the various sweaters and jackets and ugh boots and flannel sheets once the months ending in "ber" come along.

And I have to keep reminding myself, really, it is a desert. It might be expected to get up to 80-some-odd degrees today, but it starts off at the "high" that Seattle was seeing all last week…somewhere in the steady 50s.

My mom seems to be a non-identified participant in the "Heater Wars" that I read other bloggers are having with themselves…her thermostat is busted, so she warms the house exactly the way it was warmed when I was a kid, turn on the stove/oven and start making breakfast.

So I might have gone to bed last night thinking, um, really? Flannel? But At 5:30 this car-alarmed filled morning (oh yeah, I've heard 4 already…welcome to East LA?) I'm snuggling in my sheets wondering why I have been depriving myself of such a obvious utter necessity.

The Wonders of Modern Technology

2010-11-13T09:09:00.000-08:00

I am typing this on my lappy at the gate to my flight.

Yep, this is still a new thing for me, having access to the 'net when not ensconced in the (relative) safety of home or work. If I ever get a smart phone, I think my brain might explode at all the possibilities I'll have at my fingertips.

Of course people around me are smirking a little as they do their surfing/blogging/facebooking on their little devices of doom. Yep, always a generation behind. Not caring all that much, really.

So, somehow I finished getting everything ready to go before midnight last night. I KNOW!

As usual I probably over-packed...but it's a sickness really, my inability to go under-prepared. Were this a school or work-related thing, it'd make sense. Rely on me, I will have the extra pen, a copy of the agenda/extra copy of the document, notes to that Chemistry class no one bothered to listen in. I am the person people come snag ibuprophen, tissues, even eye-glass cleaning supplies from (it was a free sample).

Turning that switch off when traveling? Worse, when traveling allbymyself? Impossible.

So now my back might hurt a little as dragging my not-so-carry carry-on and backpack through a million miles of airport corridors (why does my flight ALWAYS leave from the furthest gate from the check-in point??). My hope is that I'll only need half of what I'm bringing.

There seems to be movement...next stop, LA.

I Think I've Mentioned The "H" Word and Packing, Right?

2010-11-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again.

The temperatures are dipping to a lovely 50-ish degrees, I'm wearing some knitted creations that I probably haven't blogged about...and I have to figure out where I put my shorts and would sneakers or my Birks get less attention at the airport...

It's my yearly trek to LA. You know, in November, when temps are finally down to the um, 80s.

I leave on Saturday, which is coincidentally my dad's b-day. I might bake him something if their kitchen isn't in the 90s. Hmmm, just mentioning that makes me think it might be a better call to actually go out and find the necessary sugar, you know, to appease the gods...and my need for cake. (Cuz, yeah, it might be his birthday, but HELLO, all.about.me. :).)

I am procrastinating even going to work as my shower thought this AM was, "Hmm, maybe I should pull out the suitcase this morning...." Yeah, so here I sit, just having KNITTED on my SWEATER (the one I mentioned, I dunno, a year + ago?) instead of actually doing anything which might involve the "P" word.

As long as I pack my mac and a credit card, I'll be fine, right? I'm going to LA la land after all...

I'm sure there is a support group out there I should join.

You Take a Month Off....

2010-11-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

of blogging that is, and not quite a month...there's days to go before I hit 1 month exactly.

Excuses, excuses. But no one to blame but myself. Shocking! I know!

So here is a funny...Blogger doesn't seem to want to play nice with Chrome. Seeing as they are both a part of the Google conglomerate is yet another reason I should just buy the iPhone and get it over with :).

Not too long ago I celebrated the re-releasing/25th anniversary of Back to the Future with what felt like a room full of teen-aged boys:

Seriously, I looked around the theater and realized I was one of a very few women who have fully accepted their geek natures. Ah well, I also fenced, also not your average sport for a girl who grew up in SoCal. Regardless, it was a blast!

See, I do do stuff, even if I don't post about it.

The Worst Part Is the Keeping Quiet

2010-10-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

At 3AM? Seattle is silent.

The first Community Transit bus does not show up to the courthouse until 5:30AM, or so. Which is why my alarm is set for 5:25. I hate that deet deet deet deet of the bus, it's way too fast-paced to wake up to, and you can hear it from pretty much anywhere in my apartment.

But at 3AM? On a Tuesday, mind? There isn't even a hum from the I-5.

Unfortunately, the uber silence makes even my getting up to pee sound like a cacophony, so instead I just lie there, hoping that whatever started me awake, FULLY awake, would let me go back to sleep for another two hours and 25 minutes.

Did. Not. Happen.

Too dark to read, too dark to write, too quiet to turn on my lappy, and too damned awake to go back to sleep. I wish I could wax poetic about how the city of Seattle wakes up; the echoing sounds of hard heels on the concrete, the hustle and bustle of the service folks runny to and fro and here and there...but I live at the edge of South Lake Union, my apartment overlooks the federal courthouse...when this place gets going? It's all at once, you know at around 5:30 when the first bus discharges 20 to 30 people at a time (they are HUGE double-long monstrosities) and all of a sudden there are engines and bells and whistles and people everywhere.

Which was finally my signal to get up and start the day as well, instead of playing tag with my snooze bar as I tend to do, daily, when I am allowed to sleep more than 5 hours.

Dude! FIVE HOURS. I know, a luxury to some, but I know me, and we are not happy with less than six. One, MEASLY hour...and yet its the difference between my being able to take what the world flings toward me...and my biting you, hard, because I can.

Yes, I will not lie, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that I am always only a few hours of sleep and a meal away from being one of the, um, odd folks on the streets of Seattle, but as GI Joe taught me, knowing is half the battle.

At least I have a load of laundry going in the dryer and it isn't even 7:30AM.

Bigger, Badder, and Way More Yellow

2010-09-26T22:31:00.001-07:00

So, here we are at the very start of the walk:I don't think, at least not on Andy's cell phone, a picture exists to show what I looked like at the end. This lack of documentation is probably best for all parties concerned.

We were doing pretty good, I think. We were somewhere in the middle of the sea of people at the start, but due to the fact that Andy, just past mile one, had to, ahem, "use the facilities," (and by no means did this translate into "honey bucket" or "porta-potty,") my friend Ann (in the sunglasses and equally yellow tee behind me) and I were racing to keep just ahead of the ambulance and patrol car that actually ended the walk.

Andy was nowhere in sight for most of the second half of the walk as, it seems, the coffee shop he'd ducked into, I'm not one to name names but let's just say it rhymes with Sully's, refused to let him use their WC unless he bought something. He had been planning on it...but not BEFORE using the bathroom as, um, hello? Would you go into a public MEN's bathroom holding your latte (or whatever?) eeeuuuwww please don't answer and let me continue believing you'd have said, "nuh uh."

So he sought out a more humane and just plain decent coffee shop, rhymes with "meets," where they were quite happy to let someone doing the AIDSwalk (hi, blinding yellow t-shirt clue enough?) do their business before giving them business. And yey for them some more, they even gave him a dollar off for being in the walk!

Anywho...I finished, which, as I said before, I was not actually sure I was going to be able to do. By the end my shoulders were killing me, so I spent the rest of the day either napping or resting or just plain not doing anything that required much walking or arm movement...and today was a little more of the same but maybe mix in laundry cuz, yeah my hip is sore, but not incapacitated, which is all I really hoped for, because dirty clothes wait for no man...or something.

So, yey for the human body's ability to heal!

Now, this could, theoretically, kick-start me into doing more walking...but I'm going to hold off on making any promises until I'm past the dreaded and much feared "day three" of any overly strenuous activity. I'm fully in that group of people that are happy-go-lucky until the magical 97th hour when their body finally realizes that whatever was done to it three days prior was really really bad and is going to get back at them for it.

Not so much yey for the human body's ability to age...

We Shall Shine Like the Sun...

2010-09-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

So, AIDS walk. That's still today.

I've been stretching and practice-walking with my sneakers and everything. I think I wrote about how I am such the epitome of cool in my last post...nothin' like rockin' the sneakers with work clothes, oh yeah bay-bee.

But honestly? I'd rather not mess up my knees as I'm trudging around trying to make it to a mile a day (failed most days, but not for lack of trying...see chicken pox update below.) Today will be interesting to see just how far I can go...if I knew where my pedometer was, I'd take it...I seem to have misplaced it and a wee little (dirty) tupperware container that I'm sure will come back to haunt me sooner than later.

I know I've reached uber-stressy proportions when I start losing random shit. Which makes this walk all the more necessary. Even if I don't make it, it will force me to just concentrate on walking, and nothing more. Maybe (oh please) just maybe, I'll be able to clear my head of all the static.

Except maybe I won't be able to concentrate due to the BLINDING nature of our team shirts. They are definitely YELLOW. Dear lord in heaven above we promise we are not trying to mock how bright the sun is, really, it just maybe seems like it because of the particular shade of SUNSHINE YELLOW that the CFO decided upon. I will try to get a picture, but I'm packing light. I found I cannot stand to have anything across my shoulders for ANY amount of time just now...again, see below for more details, so I'm going to ask one of the peeps with a smart phone to do the honors.

And the Chicken Pox Vaccine Update:

It started Monday. I could have sworn I had the flu. My brain was so foggy I couldn't figure out a simple excel table that I had created.

I think I may have actually creaked with how stiff my joints were. And then it just kept getting worse. By Wednesday I could barely walk to work. 800 mgs of ibuprophen at a time are the only thing that kept me moving as I was more afraid of staying still and then NOT BEING ABLE TO MOVE EVER AGAIN, than hurting a little as I maneuvered about.

I actually went home EARLY and, was it Tuesday? The days seriously ran together. I slept for 12 hours straight. Got up, was good for 3, then came home again and lay down and, seriously, started wondering which of the "dangerous" side effects I was having...the ones I'd have to go to the emergency room for...the ones that ended in my not being alive anymore. And I may have cursed the makers of the vaccine, a little. Obviously? I've gotten better, a little.

The running theory is that as I was obviously immune to the chicken pox, having gotten along fine for 36 year without ever having them, even after being exposed to them countless numbers of times...) injecting myself with the actual disease is just plain crazypants! My body HATES me now and is showing it to me in so many ways on so many levels. It's saying, "This, lady, is what you get for TRYING TO KILL US!"

Or something.

So! I'm going to attempt to walk the Seattle AIDS walk circuit today in my blazing yellow team t-shirt and see how far I get. Cuz you know? I may not be taking a camera, but advil? Oh yeah, that is essential.

Well, It Is Still September...

2010-09-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Quick update, mostly because I'm just not in the mood to dwell.

My father...is still alive. I've kinda given up on the whole...well everything. I'm just there to listen to my mom and give her a place/person to let it all out to. We are preaching to the choir here. How many different ways can you say exasperated about someone who STILL BELIEVES he is hurting no one but himself with what he does. Moving on...

Chicken Pox Vaccine Shot 2 of 2 was Friday. Having been through round one, I thought I was all in the know about what was coming. Except the pharmacist burst my bubble by saying that the second shot is almost always never the same experience as the first. Even if it is was created from the same batch/set of poison, it's your body that is reacting to it in so many different ways....so I got a fever and in the middle of moving boxes, the ITCHIEST ARM IN THE WORLD....the injection spot had swollen up like a TB test, really. It looked scary and bad and my friends gave me ice and told me to sit down and maybe it was time to quit for the day... So more on the saga of cure-worse-than-the-disease as it comes up.

I feel cursed...I feel like everyone I've gotten semi-close to at work, like even almost hang-out-and-get-drinks/food-post-work...has left, is leaving, or thinking about leaving work. Some to more extremes than others, hence my moving boxes in the previous paragraph. But she's moving to Australia to go take care of/spend time with her mom during her cancer treatments. But I do feel like telling the other gal I've been hanging with about my curse so that she is forewarned. I'd be fearful about her thinking I'm a big weirdo, but um, yeah, that's not exactly secret knowledge.

Especially after the Avatar thing....cuz you know I had to go see the extra 9 minutes in IMAX 3-D at the Pacific Science Center, no less. I'm also not ashamed of saying so, to my coworkers, who are still trying so hard to be cool...um, we work in the accounting department. NO ONE will mistake us for cool. Ever. I've embraced this aspect. I mean, think about every movie, tv show, book, short story, novela, you name it...that has mentioned an accounting department. I know, I know, life of glamour and excitement. It might be an age thing. I am one of the more, ahem, mature, peeps in the group. I've outgrown the heavy black eyeliner and doc martins and way too much black in my wardrobe (well, maybe except for that last bit), but they maybe still want to be hip-hop super stars...or something. Whatevers.

I've signed up to to the AIDS walk next week...I hope my hip will take it. With the weather playing Indian Summer vs Thunderstorms, all my old injuries are acting up. This too is something my coworkers don't get...but that whole "sports" thing is something only one other in the group has done...though not to the extreme (sailing to Hawai'i) I did. So the injuries? Not so much. But I need to go do some stretches and maybe a little more breaking in of the sneakers I've chosen. If you're out there, my group will not be hard to spot, our CFO has decided on the YELLOW with red lettering T's for our "team." Good thing I'm not a fashion maven, but I am busting out my yellow socks to match! (And if we look like Team DHL to you too? We've already told him so....good thing he has a sense of humor.)

Everything All At Once...

2010-09-04T03:47:00.000-07:00

-Or-

Why I'm glad it's finally September

When I last posted I was a happy-go-lucky/life is pretty boring/this is your thirties kind of lady. My biggest worry was wondering when the bruise on my arm would go away (still there for those of you keeping track.)

Had it not been for the official email from HR letting me know I was promoted, I think I'd have been looking for the hard-reset instructions for August.

Seriously, the month started pretty well, I got to see the uber-hyped Inception (good movie, but in my head I've already re-written it to be smarter...so meh, the important part was that I got out of my rut and went to see a movie! In IMAX no less!)

But then? There was that chicken pox vaccine thing, that pretty much affected what all I did for the rest of the month (and part two can be taken any time after this weekend, yey, sooooo looking forward to that...oh, let me wipe that sarcasm off the floor, sorry, I must be dripping.) 10 days of being worried if I was going to break out, which made me break out in other ways instead; days and days of feeling just plain sick; the whole "my body is toxic" feeling; ending with the latest: MY BODY IS TRYING TO KILL ME.

It helped a whole lot that I had friends "making" me go out, celebrating birthdays, and generally keeping me from sinking into a malaise that I was totally denying, but all that kinda fell apart when my dad ended up in the hospital.

Was it heat stroke? A heart, um, what do they call them when they don't want to say "attack?" Yeah, one of those (like when they never call it "cancer" even after they've lopped off your breast? Exactly.) Maybe a panic attack? I'll know more after he has his official cardiologist appointment. He's had enough mini doctor's appointments so that he's been cleared to go back to work, but the fact remains that he is not well.

Not that he's ever been. Hello, alcoholic? His spell in the hospital may have tuned him in to the fact that if he is ill to the point of requiring medication? OR hospitalization? Alcohol will be missing in that equation.

My hope of all hopes is that finally, at almost 65, this is the wake-up call that he needs, that, maybe? Just maybe? He can finally learn to get along with the world without having to fall into a drunken abusive stupor nightly. I mean, hi? How can I and, (and I'm just throwing a number out here) MILLIONS of others do without wrecking our heads and bodies nightly? And yeah, maybe we party it up on the weekends, or more like once a month (okay, maybe every two months in my case...oh all right, maybe three), but somehow, even when there might be "one too many," the need to drink myself stupid ended back in my college days. Yeah, okay, there were a few months there during the divorce...and yet, I think he was just revving up his tolerance in his 30s. Don't even make me try to calculate how much he goes through in a week.

Of course there is the other side to this...either he stops taking his new sets of pills (for sure one is for his blood pressure, my mom didn't fill me in/and bad daughter that I am, I didn't ask what the others might be), or just reaches a new level of slow suicide and kills himself by drinking AND taking his medication...but I've decided to purposely play stupid and avoid that train of thought for now...work with me.

Did I mention sooo happy it's September? Like a new month is a new beginning, or something. If I hope it hard enough will it come true? If my blogging on a 3AM is any indication of the month to come...I may have to wish harder. (No, not up all night...woke up from a nightmare filled sleep and being unconscious just does not seem all that inviting.)

OW, My Arm! And...The World is So Small

2010-08-22T08:28:00.000-07:00

Again, for those who might need to have a chicken pox vaccine, I relay my experience thus far:

So I didn't fair so well the first week or so after, like I'd been hit with the flu stick. Then came the sinus headache that I contained with my usual ibuprophen + pseudrophedrine hydrochloride (I do not make enough money to buy the brand names, currently). Little did I know that the ibuprpophen was doing double duty!

About day 10, you know, also known as "The Day of the Lesions" (if they were to show, that is), I rolled over to get out of bed and OH DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN, what sin am I being punished for now, because my left arm HURT. It seriously felt like something had taken a bite out of the "wing" that I'm developing back there (a whole 'nother blog post entirely). There was what looked like a red circular burn-welt just about where the PIT (pharmacist in training) had jabbed me...

But it was early...before coffee....so I did not immediately put two and two together, oh no, first I ran over to Andy and was all, "Did you do this? Do you remember me smacking the back of my arm last night? Do we have spiders?!?!"

And my arm got worse and worse as the day went on, with the little circular welt swelling quite nicely into a big fat arm feeling...every time I flexed my wanna-be girl muscle, or even, you know, just bent my arm, I could feel the skin stretching back there as it hadn't since the aforementioned "wing" appearance. (Seriously, NOT the best gift my body could have given me for my 36th birthday, no way, no how, wings? Where did those free weights go?)

Anywho...I think it finally hit me the next morning, after tenderly exploring the area, that there was a definite BIG OWIE feel right where I'd gotten stabbed with virus 10 days previously. But dude! 10 days! I went to the pharmacy (it's across the street from my work) just to verify that I wasn't going to die from an ever increasing swelling that stemmed from my arm.

Nope, that's just what fat does when it's "fighting back." Um, what? Yep, peoples, I was informed that, you know how hard it is to lose weight? It's because fat is much stronger than we give it credit for. Hello! It is currently fighting off a chicken pox vaccine! Most likely by swallowing it up and making it into a pocket of nasty!

Because I dunno if you've ever lost a ton of weight as you crossed half the Pacific Ocean on a 32' sailboat, but when I did? I was sick ALL THE TIME, to the point where I begged a doctor friend (I know! Me? Voluntarily go to a doctor for advice?!?) to help me figure out if I was allergic to the Island or something! Oh no, he said noting I was about 50 lbs lighter than he'd last seen me on the mainland, I was basically suffering from every cold that my body, or rather, the fat in my body, had fought off by, um, surrounding it and sealing it up in the fat cells. (i.e. SWALLOWING it up...tasty sounding, I know.)

Yeah, I left thinking that maybe doc had had too much pau hana on the brain (we were in Hawai'i, it may have been Friday....) but here was a Seattle-based Pharmacist (not in training) telling me the same thing, sort of. This is why we get all sicky feeling when we're losing weight, yeah, there is the lack of food and fun stuff, but um, also as the cells are giving up the ghost? They are giving up the nasties that they stored inside them.

This insight does not make me happy as I am almost (not quite, maybe next month) determined to start losing the weight my last two incapacitating bike accidents have piled on...especially since I can finally walk a mile without my hip hating me for a week (or seven). It's hard enough for me to say, g'bye 15# of love and comfort, g'bye an extra 5 that snuck on when I wasn't looking (ice cream, I'm looking in your direction)....but now I might be reliving some of the uber nasty Hilo and Tahoe colds and flus I thought I'd seen the last of?

And worse yet, I'll be showing these viruses to a whole new set of people who may have never left their home state. Ah the human body and it's more bizarre aspects...sure does give a whole new concept to the small world aspect of the universe.

So Memorable I should Blog It

2010-08-14T15:31:00.000-07:00

Today, Saturday August 14th, I left the house without a sweater.

Yup, August. The 14th. First time, all "summer," t-shirt, shorts, and sandals. And also, yes, I too am a little sad and bewildered about the non-existent climate change and am wondering if this means it's finally summer or if I only get one week of it this year...

I know there was a day or so...maybe even a couple days a few weeks ago where it was warm enough to be out and about in just a t-shirt, come the middle of the day/afternoon, but those were work days, and I left home early enough to still need my fleece, as the mornings were chilly.

This being a Saturday? I didn't start my errand running until after 11 AM, and boy howdy! SUN! Warmth, I might even have worked on my farmer's tan as I ran from the A/C of the car to the A/C of the grocery store! I am not proud, just, you know, no longer used to temperatures over 68 degrees...

It's supposed to hit 92 today.

Hotter than LA.

Mind boggling.

Chicken Pox Vaccine, Part 1

2010-08-10T07:41:00.001-07:00

No, the title does not imply I'm about to write an epic saga about the pox, the vaccine, or my limited interaction with it.

It's that there will be a part 2 to the vaccine in about a month...and what with my swiss-cheese memory these days, I thought that if I wrote about it, and the fact that I was jabbed on the 6th, it might prompt me to make the '30 days later' second appointment.

If I don't turn into a brain-sucking zombie first.

I don't know the mechanics of the vaccine except to say that they injected me with a live virus, I heard the word "attenuated" at one point and the fact is, aside from the double-sided pdf I printed out from the department of health which tells me I could die? I'm not looking too deeply into what is floating around in my system because I am already SUPER OOKED OUT about the fact that I had a lovely pharmacist-in-training inject LIVE VIRUS into me. And hello? I could die? Super awesome news there.

Anyhow, I think I last posted about my non-chicken-poxed status like at the beginning of the year? That would be when I was supposed to get this over and done with. But because it was left up to me? And my adoration of voluntarily going to a doctor's office? I put it off as long as I could. And then some.

Thanks to bureaucracy that again, I do not care to understand, only be mad at, my own doctor could not inoculate me. I'd have to go straight to the department of health! And thanks to messed up economies we keep hearing about, actually no, Dept. of Health could not help me, because I am not currently a patient of theirs (which is a big catch-22 in the making, but I'm leaving it there).

That's when I thought about yellow fever, and malaria, and hepatitis B. No, I'm not a hypochondriac. At least I don't think I am... But I do reimburse quite a number of folks for getting those vaccines before they go off on their Global Non-Profit trips (you learn a lot working in the accounting department, let me tell ya, you want all the good information? Make friends with the A.P. department...just sayin'). A travel clinic who can get access to the Yellow Fever Vaccine has GOT to be able to get a hold of a couple doses of Chicken Pox Vaccine. And then I kinda let the information simmer until about June, cuz, um, yeah, possibility of GETTING the chicken pox from the vaccine is not zero...and I am a chicken. (HA!)

But I finally manned up (womened up?) and called up my local pharmacy, which is also a travel clinic, and ordered dose #1 (to my knowledge not covered by my health insurance, but I'm told I need to revisit that...I hope I didn't lose the receipt...), and got stabbed by, as I mentioned before, the pharmacist in training (PIT) last Friday.

I currently feel like poo.

I was fine the rest of Friday, though I fell asleep really early... and Saturday morning I was able to get my act together and go help shop for "business casuals" for a friend, and then totally fell into a puddle of tired once back home....and the same went for Sunday, but I was having to muster the energy ALL DAY...but was able to be okay during the 3 hour birthday party for a friend's daughter....then yesterday....

My energy is coming and going in such sharp shocky spurts that I feel like a diesel engine trying to burn up the dregs of it's 36 year old tank. I hope this is normal and not the start of the pneumonia that there is a chance of developing...one in however many hundreds...fingers crossed. And double crossed if it means that in 6 days I don't wake up with the spots. (The PIT called them lesions. Yes, I know that's what they really are, but um, PIT? Really and truly, call them pox or spots, NOT LESIONS! Am I not scared enough already?!? Sigh.)

On the bright side? If I catch the pox, I won't have to go in for the second (costly) dose! (If you're wondering, I think it was $130...but again, not sure where the receipt is...)

Scary Underwear Women

2010-07-29T18:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I was packing up my mom's b-day gift yesterday and this thought sprang into my brain that just won't let go...

I feel like I've posted about grandma underwear before...have I? Maybe I just thought really hard about it. Especially as my mom has officially gotten used to my procuring her unmentionables for her as birthday/xmas/mom's day gifts. Seriously, this is what she asks for, and I think it's because she's tired of trying to find out which obscure corner of the department store have they shoved the old lady accouterments. Seriously, it took me longer to find the display case than to pick out the merchandise! And if you're stuck with the same job as me? Ask where they keep the girdles. No, not the spanx, the girdles. Your goal will be within a 5 foot radius of the most horrific of the bunch.

And that got me thinking about my underpants. I already know I've become an old lady with regards to my bras. I own one "modern" thing that can stand up on its own. I feel like I'm wearing a bullet-proof vest when I don it. Seriously? I don't mind the lift of the modern day push-ups, but do I have to become a triple-D to achieve it? So instead I scour the internets looking for (and mostly failing at) finding the perfect over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder.

Where was I? Right. For as long as I've remembered/been sentient/aware of my mom...which would be a few years older than I am now... she has worn granny underwear. When I grew out of the girls' section/selection she led me over to my "choices" which included a few packs of her favorite, um, grammie whities, but was okay with getting me things that still had bows and a little lace, as long as they were WHITE. Okay, light blue was fine too.

When I visit now? She is aghast at the colors and styles of my cotton bottoms. Mostly because they are NOT WHITE and maybe a little loud in the colors/patterns (VS cotton, if you really must know). I know there is a huge age gap between us...as well as a bit of culture shock. I know also that 40 is the new 25 or whatever, and that cougars can be sexy and all that noise...but, um...if I don't have the sexy bodies that Jessica Parker/Courtney Cox/Demi Moore are sporting when I'm their ages will I have to turn in my Victoria's Secret for Underscore? And when will they switch? Sally Field is making osteoporosis commercials...but somehow I just can't picture her modeling the brands I just wrapped up for my mom, you know?

Hence the title of the post...are we (and maybe it's just the royal we, here) headed down the road of being, ahem, mature women who wear underthings that might just scare the bejeebus out of the younger generations? Seriously, I hope not to be that old lady trying to get my wrinkled body into a pair of briefs I have no business wearing...but when will the granny pants start calling out to me?

The Blueberries might Have Been on Sale Yesterday

2010-07-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

I knew if I did one more pictureless post, I'd start losing readers...seeing as I'm down to 4 regulars, that would be tragic, as 25% is a HUGE figure. So I made the grand sacrifice and tried to figure out iPhoto, just for you.

Blueberry Scones!

But if anyone is interested in the recipe...it needs a bit of tweaking.

(More on this after my iPhoto rant.)

The last time I veered away from Photoshop, was to learn enough iPhoto to walk a friend through so he could find where the original files were kept...as that was back when I still used my G3, I'm guessing 5 years have passed since then.

A lot has changed in iPhoto since then, and I think the only aspect about it that I find highly useful, as I still can't figure out how to upload pictures to Facebook, is that it has a "post to facebook" button. Aside from that? I am not pleased.

iPhoto does not trust you. It happily lets you import your photos like it always has, but if you happen to want to use, say, blogger to upload your picture from your computer? GOOD LUCK finding where it has scurried away your picture. That folder where you copied the original files to? Empty. Going to your hardrive and clicking along to the iPhoto folder to find the docs like I did five years ago? No dice. Using the obscure (but highly useful when you only have a trackpad) double-finger tap to get to the right-click mouse features and FORCE it to show you the original file? And THEN having to figure out how to make a copy and stick it back on your desktop? Not the most intuitive thing.

Were I just a mac-nubie? I'd have never known where to go or what to do, yes, there is both an "email" button as well as a "post to flikr" button, so there are alternatives, and I even know why they made this change...too many of those aforementioned newbies who might move or change the names of the original photo files and then wonder why iPhoto can't see them. But even knowing this still has me a bit pissy about the whole thing.

I need to apologize to a friend of mine who shared the awesomeness of AppleCare and their ability to walk him through how to move his photo files onto an external drive so that he could still have access to them on a different drive. I was all, "Really? You needed their help for that?!?" Now I know better. The way they have protected us from ourselves? If my life, job, access to the pictures of their baby from birth, depended on it? I would be useless in trying to help them, and that bothers me to no end.

Big fail, Apple. I'm glad I own a copy of Photoshop, no matter how ancient it is, I'd rather have complete access to my original files and suffer the consequences of my own stupidity, thanks.

Okay, rant over... That was more long-winded than I thought it would be.

BUTTERMILK SCONES, with Fruit:

These are pretty easy to make, but as I said, I need to tweak the recipe a little as the original calls for 3/4 cup of buttermilk, but it's not real buttermilk...or maybe it is...it's the liquid that you gather after doing something fancy with cream and other ingredients to make a glaze or something.

See, as the friend who gave me the recipe did not use the glaze? And she is a super awesome cook who doesn't really rely on measurements but on look and feel? And owns a food processor? She only passed on the actual scone recipe, wherein if you use the 3/4 C of buttermilk? You don't have enough liquid for the 2 cups of flour, 3 Ts of sugar, 1 T of baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda 3/4 tsp kosher salt 3/4 stick of butter that you pastry knife into the above until it looks like coarse meal, to become the "batter" that you can "spoon" from the bowl onto the baking sheet, especially not after adding 1 1/2 cups of washed AND dried blueberries. (The recipe said to "fold them" in after adding the liquid, but um, yeah, I dont' follow directions and I hate breaking blueberries as I try to get them to "fold" into batter. Much easier to add the liquid last. )

I further tweaked the recipe by adding a teaspoon or three of poppy seeds (let them soak in the butter milk as you mash away at the butter).

So I grabbed handfuls of the stuff and kinda patted them together and stuck them on the baking sheet. Then, instead of buttermilk, I used my regular 2% to "coat" the tops (I wet the tips of my fingers and more like massaged the milk into the crumbly dry things to try to keep them from falling to pieces on the baking sheet) and sprinkled brown sugar on top instead of more white sugar.

Bake for 17-ish minutes at 400 degrees, cool on a wire rack if you own one.

If I Twittered...Or maybe, Why I don't Twitter...

2010-07-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

Where the hell is Kakamega?

Hee hee, Kakamega!

I Get It...Sort Of

2010-07-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

I think FaceBook is making me ponder humanity and their actions too much.

It's not a wonder I look in once in a blue moon to stalk people and post the ridiculousnesses of my life (which I then expand upon here. Seriously? I'm a blogger more than a FB/Twitterer, like I'm an emailer more than a texter. Is it only me who equates these things with the drugs of the 80s? I'd be the stoner over a tweeker. Not just because of the munchies and inactivity involved versus the energy and activity that the other side of the coin is connected with...but maybe the brownies and the intense need to make food (I did attend the University of CA at Santa Cruz, after all...man did those people feed me well.))

Where was I?

Right, pondering my navel.

I was friended by another HS acquaintance recently and I started to wonder what all had become of their group. I always felt like I was at the periphery, only there because my best friend from high school had struck up a friendship...with this particular girl, actually. The one time I found myself near her, post-high school (and slumming the Berkeley area with the group of odd-fellows I'd befriended and my wonderful roomie (dude, how did you even put up with me?!?), it was awkward, to say the least, to be around one another sans my bff from hs. I do believe that was the very last time I had any contact with her. And she seemed so...well...normal, no longer the crazy red-head from high school.

Fast forward 17 years (I KNOW!) as I think about my baby brother starting his first college-level-esque classes (he's doing what used to be known as summer bridge, now known as "XL" at Pasadena City College (!)), combined with a comment I heard from that same bunch of girls with regards to one of their number deciding to attend, as a last-minute switch, a tiny college in the South vs the huge UC where her group of friends were going. The gist was that they were ready to be the weird fish going into the big ocean to meld with/find more of their kind and stop being seen as weird, where as she was going where she would stand out, on purpose.

To me, who was going to a tiny little UC so I could get away from everyone, this seemed an unfair judgement. Were they thinking the same about me?

To me now, with my baby bro choosing PCC over any other Community College in the area (it's LA, there are loads), I get it. He's picked a school close to home, yes, but also far enough away from his current neighborhood that maybe, just maybe, he'll find the pond has turned into a lake instead. Maybe, just maybe, he'll see just how he fits into the puzzle of society, without, you know, having to go 370 miles away like his big sister had to.

Woops!

2010-07-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

Yep, still here...had a bit of a rough time the last um, almost 2 weeks (really? July 5th?!?). Not that I made any out loud promises, but I had been trying to post more regularly to keep the emails asking about my demise at a minimum. Seeing as I'm about as bad at responding to emails recently as I am picking up the telephone. You'd think I'd become a hermit. And sometimes I wish it was that and not the fact that I've been spending 46 or so hours a week at work...

But that has officially changed! Or so my supervisor keeps telling me. We've finally filled the empty position in our group. No more doing my job AND someone else's...well, sort of. Now my day is filled with rushing through my work and training (and maybe retraining) the new person. And then trying to finish up my stuff before 7PM every night! I can understand why a desk manual would be super useful right now. Alas my company is known for "oral history" style of training. And shoot-from-the-hip style fix 'ems. These worked back in the day when there were only 100 or so people, but they're almost 10x bigger now, and things are simply no longer that simple. As such, one of our tasks is to have created our manuals by the end of September...so it boggles my mind that the person I'm training isn't writing anything down...Yes, I did tell her about the desk manual. Yep, told her nothing was currently written down for their position...umm hmm, did say we were each responsible for creating our own parts as no one has the same job description in our group.

And as the blog as my witness, I am not going to worry about it anymore, promise. Not my job. Besides, I need to worry about my own desk manual.

So, aside from the above, I feel like a million and one things have occurred that I'm in no way going to be able to cover, so as is usual for me, I'll just randomly update as the pictures get uploaded...which is part of the bloggy problem.

I am lacking in resources just now. Sort of. See, I'm writing this from a new-to-me lappy. It's a 3+ yr old macbook my father procured for me from the ones my old high school/his current employer was selling off as they are from the graduating seniors and are too damaged to be given to the incoming frosh. Superficially damaged that is. Mine is missing a chunk from one corner.

How have I lived without a laptop for so long?!? It is the bomb to lie here with it resting on my lap/legs and type this out for you. However, I haven't actually merged what's on my mini onto the lappy....so...no pictures, no bookmarks, no links to explain my goings and doings...not for lack of trying, more for lack of organization. See, remember the whole carpet-being-replaced dealy? So even though my mini's cpu, keyboard, and mouse are within proximity of one another, they have yet to be connected. There are boxes and boxes of things that are of a bigger priority for me to get back in order in order to REACH the computer. Which, I'll have you know, was uploaded with pictures and notes and maybe a funny story or two, prior to being disconnected. I thought it was only going to be for a couple days, you see.

Then I got the lappy...which is, again, the total awesome. I can surf the web and fulfill my morning need to find out just how bad things are in the world (pretty bad, don't look, it's not worth it), and therefore kill the need to connect up my slooooooow mini even more.

Except for the pictures and bookmarks and such, that is. Minor details, I know. But like I said, now that I have my bloglines and blogger bookmarked, I'm one step closer to having no excuse to regale you with tales and updates and maybe a rant or seven. I do try to keep those to a minimum, but I think Andy is hoping I blog more and rant less the way I blog about my knitting and make him look at my stitch definition, less. You know?

And it's late, and I've promised I'd help finish getting the living room in order tomorrow, so more later...much more, promise.

Why the Cap'n Slices his Apples...and other Things...

2010-07-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

So I went into Williams Sonoma yesterday...okay, more descriptively: Slowly semi-limping and trying to clear my head as my back spasmed AGAIN, I stumbled into Williams-Sonoma looking for an overpriced, but all-metal apple-slicer.

'member how I said my back didn't seem hurt after all the moving of big furniture that happened for the carpet? Right, scratch that. My back being sore is not the big issue, it's the cramping-spasms that have lately thrown themselves into the mix. NOT HAPPY.

But what was sneakily worse was that they didn't start until after I'd ventured out into the gloominess of Seattle and ordered my clam chowder lunch...see, for the second time in a row, I seem to be sick on 4th of July. And a piping hot sourdough bowl of clam chowder sounded so yummy. And it was.

What, you ask, hot chowder on the 4th of July? Are you mental? If the weather were even half decent? (It actually rained yesterday, hard rain, real rain.) I would have agreed. But hot cocoa in front of a roaring fire-place fire sounded like a better plan than being out in the stormy day waiting for dark. And I'da totally felt kinda super pissy about crawling into bed and forgetting about the world a little later that afternoon... But um, yeah, hurty back, scratchy throat, and rain? I'd rather watch vampire/werewolf episodes on Hulu.

But the apple slicer hunt...was a total bust.

To answer Bezzie's question and make me not look like too much of a princess? I pre-slice my apples for my lunch. I know, I am not a browncoat and no one is going to hide an explosive device in my Fujis. But barring say, cherries and blueberries, I pretty much slice all my fruit before eating. Yes, even strawberries if they are um, suspect enough. I think this goes back to growing up on the fruits that came out of my dad's backyard. I know this must be the case because I'm getting all heebie jeebie about it... Let's just say there is NOTHING like biting into a peach that someone else has already laid claim to... Remember that scene in Labyrinth? Yeah, that one? With the peach? Urgh...lived it, thanks.

But I never used an apple slicer until a few years ago. I think I was first introduced to one at one of the temp jobs I had in Seattle. I had no idea how easy/one step such an instrument could be! And you can use it on pears just as easily! But $10 for one at the fancy kitchen tools store? Dream on, I was temping after all! Every penny counted back then. So I got the $2 plastic one from IKEA. With the number of apples I consume in a year? I should have invested on the more expensive one. Because now? Looking for the all-metal one that Williams-Sonoma used to sell for around $15? Total fail. They've changed it up to be a plastic-handled one that "dials" the size of your slices and costs over $20. Really? I can go back to wielding a knife while preparing my lunch, thanks.

Oh and just in case anyone says, but dude, how often will you find a rotten piece of fruit/infested thing when you bite it? With my luck? The last time I bit into a whole apple was last year, the morning of a friend's b-day party as we were snacking before getting the enchiladas started. Of all the apples I could have gotten? Right, mine was a rotten-core one. Just a coincidence? I don't care. Life is short, and I eat a whole lot of apples.

Thumbs are WAY More Useful than You'd Think...

2010-07-01T21:46:00.000-07:00

I have learned my IKEA lesson. I promise. No more $2 apple slicers, no matter how red and happy they look.

I broke mine this morning and messed up the tip of my left thumb some kind of bad. Have you any idea how hard it is to slice that little bit of apple seed area off with only 9 digits? Yeah, I still had the prehensile movement going for me, but as my left thumb was happiest up and away from any more sharp things? It was more of a battle than it need be.

Thankfully I am right handed. Otherwise I would not be here typing this, what with the spacebar and thumb connection. I knew it was too good to be true that I didn't throw out my back with all the recent furniture moving...urgh.

T-Minus 11 hours

2010-06-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

The carpet guys will be doing awful things to my living room floor tomorrow...so I'm about to shut down the computer and frantically figure out where to put all the last minute things and get my room ready to do the same but opposite tomorrow night...

Before I do though, I have to share my latest trauma...Wells Fargo sent me back a "legal copy" of the Toyota Finance refund check...that bounced. See, apparently I overpaid my car loan (I know!), so they sent me the difference back in December while I was visiting my family in LA. I lost track of the check until last week when all this cleaning and sorting for the carpet replacement came up. So I guess the fault was my own for not cashing it immediately, or so the customer service representative was trying to convince me. See, it even says so on the check, void after 90 days or somesuch BS. And it is BS.

There is no reason, except utter spite, that Toyota should refuse to allow a valid check # to be cashed. Having worked in an accounts payable office for almost 3 years now? I know the drill: Bank A tries to get funds from Bank B via a check draw. Bank A's check is out of sequence (by a lot) so Bank B contacts the issuer of the check via message/email/in some way, shape, or form so as to get a person to accept or reject the check # & amount. The issuer says it's okay, fund transaction happens, EVERYONE HAPPY.

Toyota denied Wells Fargo my $13.19. Seriously. So who got dinged? Me. Not only did the cashing become a withdrawing, but now I have a $7.00 fee for the service. You bet your aunt Fanny I'm on the phone with Wells in the AM.

However, I feel I must give out the secret password to the internets. If you find yourself in a conversation with a customer service representative FROM ANY company and they tell you that they cannot do anything about the fact that your check has "expired?" It's a lie. Demand to speak with their supervisor. A company cannot "void" your refund/money it owes you. They must clean up their books LEGALLY, and those funds get to go to their home state as unclaimed cash. This takes a LOOOONG time. We wait a year before starting this process. Step #1? Contact the vendor and see why the check was not cashed. It is NEVER void the check and keep the money. No matter how small the amount. Again, ask for a supervisor.

Yes, I may have gotten a bit irate over $13. But really? Listening to the CSR convince herself that this is the way things are done and she can't do anything to change their policy? It galled. It rubbed me so the wrong way. It raised hackles. And then she went and called me ma'am.

Do not believe the money is no longer yours. It lives in their system as an uncashed check. If they keep it? It is officially stolen from you. See, I can't change policy either, but I do know how to read the lovely notices the IRS sends us with regards to unclaimed funds.

I started to wonder how many people believed her story, or any other CSRs similar explanation. They use very level and even voices, sound pleasant even after you've blown your top (ma'am), put you on penalty hold if they think you need a time out...and are very surprised when you're still there...oh yes, I was. I mean, what else did I have to do? Especially now that I felt like I was fighting for every person who had ever hung up/given up. (Blame it on being overworked...I dunno, seriously could not stop myself.)

So I'm being issued a new check. However, I still need to find a way to get Wells Fargo to reverse their $7 BS fee. Maybe someone else in the internets has a success story to share. THEN I will shut down and pack like a madman.

By Waterproof, I Did Not Mean the Yarn Needed to be Superwash...

2010-06-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

On Thursday we had such awesomely wonderful weather that I seriously considered playing hookie. We've spoken about my work ethic at length. You know this is not an option. Except Thursday? SO NICE.

But this just means summer is finally here, tra la, not to worry, plenty time for sun and fun and did I mention sun?

Mother nature hates me.

I walked to work IN THE RAIN on Friday. Not fog as Andy said, looking at the forecast on the 'puter, not "mist," oh no, this was rain. But so determined was I to cast on the 150 stitches I need for a hat I'm playing around with (100% wool, superwash), that I trudged through, sans umbrella, and only shoved the hat into my pocket when I noticed the bamboo was no longer slipping through the stitches all that easily.

It's been "All Summer In A Day" here for so long that I'm seriously thinking it's affecting my attitude. Me, who isn't all that enamored of the ball of flame that gives me freckles that are starting to look like perma-stains along my wrinkle lines can think of nothing better to do than stand at the window and let the heat burn the back of my neck as I waited for signatures on checks last Thursday. Mmmmmmm what a lovely memory.

There was a marathon or some-such event today, but except for a quick bento box lunch out, I've been inside sorting and packing and getting ready for new carpet. Yep, they raised my rent but I insisted that if I had to pay more? Then the carpet stain/bleaching the size of doormat that the previous tenants left us had to be fixed. As it's too big to patch? And the carpet reached some magical age? We're getting all new carpet for the entire apartment.

(If I already posted about this, I apologize, it's almost 2 AM and I've been packing and sorting and going insane with the mess all day). I'd feel all put out about missing more nice weather but um yeah, when we were out getting lunch? It was not warm enough to wander about in just the light sweater I'd thrown on. The sun on my face? Lovely. The breeze making me shiver? Not so much. Besides we had work to do. Seeing as we have to move everything around for the carpet guys, we've decided to do a thorough clean and sort of our stuff at the same time.

OH THE MESS!

I am not a neat person. But there is something about the boxes and the unfinished packing ALL OVER THE APARTMENT that is driving me batty. I need a sorting/packing system. I pick an area and I go go go until it is done. It is my way. My nature. Andy, however? Not so much with the patented one-box-until-it's-full method. I'm sure he has a plan of his own, but it's disjointed enough to make we want to weep.

He said earlier this evening that I needed to not spazz out so much, it would get done and it's not as if we're on anyone's schedule (seriously, our choice for what days they come in...), but I can't live like this. It's like moving out without moving out and the boxes are everywhere and I no longer know where anything is! His solution is for me to think of "everything" as my keys. I am notorious for not knowing where they are. I might have smiled, but also maybe stifled a cry.

It's time to pass out now, as there are more boxes and messes to deal with when the sun comes out...that is, if it's not stuck behind some new freak-never-happened-this-late-in-the-year storm. Seeing as we plan on putting a slew of stuff out on the deck to get it out of the way, join me in asking the sun to start summer here already, seeing as it's almost July and all. Just a thought, no big rush or anything...

Apparently I'm Only Tight Up to A Certain Size...

2010-06-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

This is a knitting post, promise :). And I know! How long has it been since I wrote about what was once my obsessive passion? Let's just say that same damned bike accident changed even my near addiction to something I could do when sufficiently not hurting...aaaauuuummmm, moving on...

I've posted before...years ago maybe? About my ability to make water-proof socks? Or "stand-on-their-own" non-felted socks even? I have this thing about knitting something utilitarian/non-lacy on super small needles (US1s and 2s), the tighter the stitches (without actually stretching out the yarn...it's a VERY thin line I cross) the more durable/strong/scary the fabric. It works, especially for plain socks.

Not so much for scarves, or lace though.

So for larger-drapey items I use a slightly bigger needle size than called for, you know, a US3 vs US2, or maybe US4, depending. My US7's get lots of use in lieu of US6's (I'm not actually sure if I own a 6...). As well as constant vigilance that I am not gripping the yarn in a death hold. If knitting is relaxing, I should not see white knuckles, right? Right.

Then something wonderful happens after that. Maybe it's because I feel like I'm knitting with pencils? I dunno, but it's magical. If something calls for a US8? I can use an 8. A US9 you say? No worries, 9 it is.

And that's where the magic ends. I have a "Goldilocks Shawl Kit" that I won a while back now sitting and stewing, and maybe losing 1+/- of it's 540 yards in my trying to knit using the called-for 6 mm/US10 needles. I just can't do it! The yarn is too thin, the needle to fat, increasing as the directions called for was near impossible so I did my own, and it looked so bad, especially with the start and restart and restart again and this time try one larger? Okay maybe one smaller....that I seriously had to cut my losses. Mohair/silk? Does not play well if you've had to start again a few times.

So it's in time out. And I'm back to carting my mom's mom's day socks (yes for 2012 at the rate I'm going) and not knitting on them...They are panda-something-or other, and I think that's the problem...I think I need to give those a break and just pull out something more woolly and more forgiving...and maybe willing to become waterproof.

Better...

2010-06-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

This morning? Much better.

Something happened on Friday...actually, Thursday. No, I did not go postal on my workmates in the fantastical way I described I could be pushed to do so as I chatted with my mom this morning. Or maybe I did, but only in my head.

See, my back? Got much much worse before it got better. As I sit here typing sitting up straight and trying my best to type at the correct angle (the desk is a might too tall, the chair too short, it's not like I sit here 40 hrs a week, and I do love my desk...but I'm silly that way...where was I? Right, so bad that I could neither sit nor stand nor lie down nor crumble into the aforementioned ball...much less manage to call my "butt-doctor" and see if he could work a miracle. Instead I flat out busted out and cried my eyes out.

That's when I realized that there was a lot more stress tied up into my hurt than what I was giving credit. Mind over matter and all that? Why not? If 800 mg ibuprophen was barely cutting it, I was open to multiple suggestions from everywhere and anywhere.

And people? A good cry is sometimes exactly what the doctor ordered. That and ranting a little to your immediate supervisor who was about to go on vacation (!) about how much you do not look forward to training a new temp because you've actually not been given official notice that your current temp is leaving on Friday and why am I the one in charge of these people if I'm the lowest man on the totem pole!...also helps, LOADS.

See, I've mentioned my horrible work ethic before, right? Horrible in that I maybe care more than my station and take on extra work and responsibilities and possibly get recognized for my efforts, but never ever compensated. I know it's probably because every job I've had was me being responsible for getting my work done without someone having to remind me of my to-do list because: we were a really small office; I was working for myself; or it was just the easiest thing to be the shift supervisor so we could get stuff done.

There is, however, a limit. And seeing as I do not want to end up like my mother with her handful of ulcers and high blood pressure, I need to chill more. If my supervisor is willing to go on a long weekend during our search for the next team member? Check-run be damned, I should not care so much. Eventually, once the team is fully staffed again, we can meet all our goals. Until then? I promise I will not work myself to death.

And so...on Thursday, 5PM we were booted out of our system as we were finally upgrading to the official latest version of our accounting software. So for the first time in how long? I was able to go home...ON TIME. I could not do any more work, too bad, so sad, I know! And Friday? No system. I was able to clean up my inbox like you wouldn't believe. All with little to no interruptions as everyone in the know, knew I had no access to our records, so....I couldn't find any information for them even if I wanted to! And the day was lax enough for me to give my back a break, and yet still be able to get my act together for Monday. Except maybe I think the temp took the key to the lockable drawers in the cube...I'll have to ask about that, later. Cuz you know what? Not really my problem. And that is my theme for the time being.

As the blog as my witness, I absolutely refuse to get sucked into the ball of "must happen yesterday" that my wee little team can delve deeply into. I'm too old for that (yep, that would be me saying everyone else on my team, barring our main boss, is younger than me, it happens, I guess).

And my shoulder is starting to tingle a little...probably from a combination of typing and thinking about all this mess, so that's my cue to stop.

For any dad's reading my crazy-pants musings: HAPPY DAD'S DAY!

Someone to Watch...Over Dummies Like Me...

2010-06-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

So I lost my American Express Card on Friday...and didn't even realize it until Sunday when the nice folks at AMEX let me know they were cancelling my card and rushing me a replacement and could I let them know what the last purchase I made was?

Yes, my heart may have stopped/skipped a beat just before performing a hard staccato/piano forte tune. But after a multiple number of expletives (I'm sorry neighbors whose very thin wall is the only thing separating us...I could not stop myself), we realized that the last charge was indeed mine, and nothing more had been placed on the card.

Given that I actually lost the card 7 or 8 blocks away from where it was last used? At a completely different business? This seems rather miraculous to me. Yep, we had dinner near the convention center and meandered closer to where my friends were going to watch a show and found ourselves across the street from a dessert shop, The Chocolate Box. Yep, free advertisement for them because dude! Not only did they have yummy gelato, but someone found my card, kept it "safe," AND called it in to AMEX so they could find me!

I only wish I could say that that's the worst of what happened this weekend.

What? More? I messed up my back carrying groceries...either from the cart return to the car...or from the car to the apartment. I'm not really sure when it happened as it wasn't your traditional all-at-once-omg-I'm-going-to-die feeling that I once got bending over to grab a tupperware. See, there was a twinge a couple times, but I totally ignored it. By the time I was done making myself some dinner? I had no appetite and it was all I could do to keep moving about and not curl into a ball and die...except I doubt I could have gotten myself into a curling position what with my back hating me and all.

And yes, for those of you following along for years now...it's all related to that busted hip/bike accident of years ago. My muscles are not as strong as I wish they were, and my tendons are far more stretched out than I let on. Last night was a reminder, I guess. But what is a non-whiny way to say that I'm so very sick and tired of being a puddle of broken?

Empty Headed...or is it White Noise?

2010-06-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned more than a few times that I need a brain-to-computer connection...or a pennsieve (sp?) or similar to get all the vying thoughts smashing into one another in my brain OUT and somewhere where I can sort and enlighten myself, and maybe entertain others.

This morning I finally made time to sit and draft a post (or seven), and as soon as I logged in? Nothing....or rather, too much, yet it's all white noise. I've been sitting here trying to wrack my brain and figure out a starting point...and I can't.

So much is going on in my noggin, all whirly and intertwined and knotted so well that I can't catch even one strand to make even a random list to share with myself, much less the world at large. And yet? Because I am mean and like to torture? I'll try:

- To those who realized my lease is coming up again this month? Chances are 99.999% good that I'm renewing for another year. Until I see the actual lease? I'm not saying for sure. Yes, I know I'm cutting it close, what with that whole 20 days notice...does anyone know if that is business days or calendar days?

- And those of you who wonder if I knit anymore? I feel like I've unknit more than I've knit lately...which is kinda impossible if you think about it...but of the 9 projects I had going, (I know!), I have 2 finished items (baby hats), one that would be finished if I could make a pom pom...which I am absolutely unable to lately (child hat), two that are completely stalled (socks, both for mom), one that I just restarted for the fourth time (a cowl) and 3 that, though temporarily started to look like something (a scarf, a cowl, a hat) that are now pretty little cakes of yarn, or knotted little pieces of ... yarn.

- Yes, all very small projects...good for sticking in my work bag and forgetting completely about because work has been, hard. People shuffled about just enough to leave a HUGE, GAPING hole in my team and as much as I appreciate the temp they brought in? She has the temp mentality, you know, "I'm only here for a month." As such? Of the three things we brought her on to take over? She's only accomplished one. Which leaves me to add even more to my plate. Overtime is nice, but I'd rather have a new hire, stat.

- It's 8:15...I should be heading off to work right this second...instead I'm sitting in my robe typing this. I'm having the adult version of, "I doanwannagoto school." It sucks. Why isn't the guilt kicking in? Oh right, maybe because I didn't leave work last night until almost 7PM.

Gah! Okay, much more later, I hope.

Walking Past Johnie's Machine Makes me Nostalgic for Days Long Gone

2010-05-26T14:45:00.001-07:00

This very rainy morning as I walked to work and passed by Johnie's Machine, seriously, that's what it's called, I was surprised that he was open and even more surprised that the smell that emanates from the open garage door is not something that builds up throughout the day, but instead something that is always there.

And when I say smell? I don't mean it in a bad way.

It's the smell of years of motor oil and grease and engines and ancient mechanical stuff.

It's a smell that reminds me so very much of my dad's section of the carport growing up. You know, back when I was young and innocent and, as I had no boobs, was allowed to participate in the striping of alarm locks and pieces of old car engines and getting my fingers black with the goop and grime of a thousand oil changes.

Good times, people.

And as I was figuring out a title for this post, I couldn't help but think of that Primitive Radio Gods song, "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand," mostly because of the length of its title...and maybe because it's the same bittersweet mood I got into as I pined for the childhood where I didn't have to be the "girl" or the "sister" but was just a "kid." Getting dirty and fiddling around with stuff that was definitely not pink or soft...

Anywho... As I've taken to embedding things for us all, here's the actual song...and before today? I'd never seen the video for this song before. Thank you internets :).

Stuff, and Superman

2010-05-23T01:02:00.000-07:00

I was getting that "cluttered" feeling lately.

But instead of like actually physically cleaning up my space (sorry, Andy), I started sorting through random files on my computer.

Mostly I was looking for music. Most specifically "Superman" by R.E.M. I no longer seem to have that song on my computer. Thinking back? I know I owned the cassette tape...for the life of me, however, I have absolutely no idea if I ever upgraded to a CD of that album, much less put it on my hard drive.

It made me stop and think about technology and its evolving nature and how my parents must have felt with vinyl vs. cassettes. They still have a working turntable, so there is that. For me, however, I have that added (self-imposed) challenge of moving every couple of years. And when the packing boxes come out, I tend to toss things that I just can't stand moving one.more.time.

I did this when I was deciding what to do with my tape collection. I just couldn't stand to schlep it about again especially as the CDs I owned were well, more compact (hence the name, right?!?), so I left them in LA for my brother(s) to commandeer (my older brother ended up passing most of them to my baby brother when he was done with them).

The crazy thing was/is that I never really tried to rebuild my old collection, that gets expensive FAST...so if it wasn't super cheap at the used music store in Santa Cruz, I probably don't own it anymore. That is my excuse for my inability to remember if I own a copy of the Life's Rich Pageant album anymore. Besides, it's far too late to be rummaging around my stuff.

And really, it's only in these once-every-six-months sessions that I'm rooting around for specific music. Thanks to the interwebs, if I must have a listen RIGHT NOW, it's just a google search away.

Here, I'll share:

As a bonus? Christopher Reeve....(sigh). Yep, that old. Sorry.

All Cookies Are the Same Cookie...

2010-05-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

Did I ever mention I spent almost a decade in Santa Cruz, California?

That goes a long way to explain my title today, eh?

See, when I was in college (UCSC) and my brain felt too full or the drama got turned to eleven, I'd beg, borrow, or steal a kitchen, and bake...cookies. Chocolate chip cookies to be more precise.

I did not grow up baking things with my mom. I think I may have mentioned this as a comment somewhere some time ago, I didn't even know my mom could make anything other than out-of-the-box cupcakes for the school cupcake sales until the one time she brought home cookies she'd made at work...from scratch. Chocolate chip cookies.

In the Spring quarter of my freshman year at UCSC...oh so very many years ago now, I remembered that moment and the absolute surprise and joy that cookie brought that 9-(maybe 10) year-old me. (College is a very strange time for most kids, far away from home, surrounded by so many people and so totally alone...and way too young to know any better--dear lord, who said that!) So I went out and searched for a chocolate chip cookie recipe. I had a plan, you see, I'd recreate that damned cookie if it was the last thing I did.

I seriously think this little project saved me from having a nervous breakdown. I baked a lot of cookies during the five years it took me to collect a couple sets of initials after my last name, always the same kind, but never quite the same cookie. By the third year it wasn't just my friends that knew they might be able to score some chocolate chip baggies of love, I was literally rolling in dough (hee), having started a side business in selling cookies to homesick classmates (all quite secretive and under the table, mind, I did share the kitchen with the residential assistants, and bubbly-headed and obnoxiously popular they might be, but they were also the law.) These were very much virgin cookies, by the way. The stoners ate them for the munchie need, not cuz they were in any way packed with stuff I had no way of affording, had I even realized the monetary potential.

In grad school, a little north of Santa Cruz, all I had was a toaster oven (!), and I could make exactly 8 cookies at a time...but there were a number of 3AM mornings that found me creaming up butter and sugar and hoping that there was enough chocolate in the house to stem the anxiety.

I stopped the crazypants baking shortly after graduating, getting married, and moving firmly back to Santa Cruz and next door to Zachary...whose very being inspired my title tonight. When my X got into one of his uber-bitter moods, Zach was right there with his, "Positivity, man, no negativity." I wonder where you are now, mr. positivity, I really hope you found your place in this crazy world...

That was the headspace I was in tonight when I remembered I'd set out two sticks of butter when I got home so I could try an oatmeal-cookie-that-looks-like-a-chocolate-chip cookie recipe I saw on Super Eggplant's blog.

See, I may own about 7 or 8 very similar but not quite the same chocolate chip cookie recipes that I've made a million times over in that span of 5 or 6 years (it's a RARE thing for me to make cookies of the chocolate chip variety now), but I never did learn how to make any other oatmeal cookie than the one stamped on the cardboard tube top of the Quaker oatmeal box. And an oatmeal cookie that fooled the eye into thinking it was NOT an oatmeal cookie? This I had to try.

There are 3 cups of oats in there...where they are hiding? I couldn't say. On my hips? Well, yes, there is that.

What I learned:

- I am very rusty at following a new cookie recipe.

- I had to fight against myself so as to follow the recipe exactly and NOT try to turn it into my chocolate chip batter. Except maybe there should be vanilla in there, that's all. And would shaved chocolate do it any harm, really?

- I must use my experience of making cookies all by hand to realize that some sort of mix-master-flash special mixer was present to be able to actually add in and combine those aforementioned 3 cups of oatmeal AS WELL AS the cup and a half of raisins, without creating a caked up mess. I only own a small handheld mixer. I almost burnt out the motor by the time I got to the oats. (See above about following the recipe exactly.)

- Must try again, but ditch the mixer after the egg...or even maybe during the egg? And maybe watch the oven like a hawk so as to take the cookies out when they're still soft in the middle.

- Start much earlier in the evening. 10PM is not the best cookie eating time for me.

I Don't Even Need to Pack a Bag

2010-05-11T12:17:00.001-07:00

If I'm to believe the weatherman (which I've learned one does not when one lives in Seattle), this coming Thursday we are to warp space and time (cuz you have to do both) and borrow Hawai'i's weather.

70 degrees and 85% humidity.

Who needs to travel when the weather is coming to us!

But that is days away. All I know is (and oh boy, do I know) is that my internal barometer is rising and dropping faster than I can deal. Sudafed, my dear wonderful BFF, is keeping it kinda sorta at bay, but man oh man, whatever the weather is going to do? Can it please do it, like now?!? Before my head explodes, out my eyeballs?

But enough about me me me.

My mom is doing fine. It was just one of those super paranoid-crazy-tin-foil-hat feelings I was going through yesterday. Although I wanted to share that throughout yesterday weird stuff KEPT happening. Not so much the breaking of things, but for example: at work I had a long message from someone saying they were calling for some big company we lease office equipment from asking me to call them right away with regards to our account. Seeing as we have 4 or 5 accounts with the same company, I went all last-century and pulled our paper files to make sure I was well prepared for them to tell us how much we owed on what invoices...

Well, that account? Not in my files.

So I try calling...And the number I had reached did not exist according the the telephone lady-voice.

And people wonder why I subscribe to the "they really are out to get you" point of view!

Is Today Jinxed?

2010-05-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

The necklace I tell everyone my mom gave me (bought with birthday money from her, close enough, right?) broke this morning in a completely unexpected way.

I'm not super superstitious (just enough), but I'm waiting anxiously until I know my mom is done with her morning errands so I can call her.

Or maybe I should just attribute it to it being my unanniversary? Is it to be an "everything that can go wrong," will sorta day? Is it because I've ignored it for so long? My last mention of it (even to myself) was in 2008. And now it's angry at me and wants my attention...or something.

This could explain why this weekend was packed full of fun broken things...my blog, (I'm using chrome today), my sewing machine, and now my necklace. If things happen in 3s, I'm good. It's all taken care of now (hear that, universe? Can you please go find someone else to torment? My X maybe? That'd round things out nicely, I feel.)

Technical Difficulties

2010-05-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to log into my blog all week.

I thought at first it was some work-blocking thingie and to be honest, totally forgot to check at home as these last two weeks've been kinda rough on the workload aspect.

But just now? Also not able to log in from home. Something about cookies being disabled. Only, um, Firefox's preferences tell me that I have cookies ENabled...so I am at a loss. (Yey for blogger's email posting ability!)

Were this my sewing machine, I could just take it apart (again, like I did yesterday?) and tinker 'til everything was working okay. Except, um, does anyone know where I can get a new bobbin winder? Because until I figure out this cookie thing, I can't even order the part from the ONE online store in Georgia that seems to carry it. I suppose I could try (gasp!) calling...or maybe another browser, but man, this is just annoying. Anywho, that seems to be my excuse this time around.

Happy Mother's Day to all my mommy readers!

Test

2010-05-09T08:31:00.000-07:00

Just a test.
More later.

But Enough About Target...

2010-04-30T06:19:00.001-07:00

Really? I had that post up about my new belt for how long?

This is what happens when work takes over my life. I'm not putting in more than my usual 40 hours...of work working... But lately a whole bunch of stuff has been going on that involves me in meetings about updating/upgrading/making my life at work better that apparently sticks with me long after I've shut my computer off.

Like this morning, when I woke up realizing one of the awesome new changes they are trying to implement for a payment module simply will not work. It took me dreaming about it to realize that we were heading down the wrong road.

And I just finished sending the email to the appropriate contact, who, if she sees the time stamp, will think I maybe need to not be in office mode at 5 AM. I reread the email about 7 times because, yes, this was before coffee even.

And moving on from that...I think I've realized what I'm really good at. You know how people have made it a business to come in, take a look around, and then tell you what you are doing wrong and how to fix it? I don't quite despise those people, but it's close. Simply because they come in and without actually trying to do your job, they are telling you how it "should" be done because it's worked in the past for the hundreds of prior clients they have had. Cuz we are all automatons or something.

I am not one of those people. Who I am, though, is someone that needs to use the systems in place, work with what I am given, see the pros and cons, AND THEN, once it's been something I do for a month or two, start changing them to both benefit who I am, how I work, and those around me.

Too bad it's not the career-making ability like those people I dislike so much who can do it in a day. But it has put me in the position where I am in hours-long meetings to review/revamp/shed light on what has been done and what I think should happen moving forward. Which, in it's vicious-circle style, now has me working ALL THE TIME.

I need a raise.

I Just Spent the Best $7 Ever!

2010-04-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

But before I go on and on about my new bad-for-the-environment/made-in-china/children's/labor (no I don't know any of this for sure, but hi, $7?), I want to note here, for future reference, when exactly I resigned myself to becoming my mom.

I promise I will not be all, "That'll never be me" again. Because those "nevers" keep disappearing and I keep thinking, "Well, I guess that explains that particular crazy-assed behavior. And it makes PERFECT SENSE! EVERY TIME! I know not why I ever doubted it." (Except maybe, of course, people of the younger generation that will have to deal with me will be shaking their heads and/or saying, "Crazy-assed lady," to themselves about the exact same behaviors I shook my head at. All I can say is, your time will come, oh yes it will.

See, in the last week I almost got cheated out of $60 dollars.

No, some guy in an shiny leather coat did not come up to me all Lucky-Lenny-style to try to sell me a $30 Rolex. We don't seem to have those guys here in Seattle. Down in LA? I've been offered "leather" jackets, "gold" necklaces, roller skates, even a laptop by fellows (and ladies, let me not be sexist here) in semi-nice looking get-ups trying to scam you out of your fun money (usually at gas stations, in case you're curious).

No, this near loss of almost 4 hours worth of wages has happened at two grocery stores and, well, depends what your Target looks like, I was just going to say Target but my second (or third) topic of conversation today was, when did Target become a grocery store?

Okay, okay, I get that cashiers are only human and they might punch in the wrong code and charge me for $40/oz saffron instead of the $4/lb cumin for the million bulk items I tend to buy, this explains the two grocery incidents. I mean, the numbers can be very very similar and if they have been at the register all day? I get it, bound to happen. And I only noticed it as I stood there and read the names of my items and thought, hmm, I didn't buy saffron, nor did I buy tangerines. Both times we all laughed about it because yeah, I definitely did not have $35 worth of saffron and nope, mushrooms and tangerines look nothing like one another.

But scanning? I've been there, I've done it. The formula has not changed in those 14 years:
One beep = one item.
Two beeps = did I just scan this twice?

And to that Target cashier, I have to say, yes you did. I saw you stop, I saw you look at what you had in your hands, and then I saw you CONTINUE TO SCAN THE REST instead of looking to see if you had one too many items on your screen.

Were this item the $1.00 magnetic note pad I found in the dollar bins (love those bins by the way) even I would have said, too much trouble, or maybe even the gum. But it was that tiny pack of refill blades from my razor. You know, the ones you use until they won't shave no-more because they cost a mint to replace? Yep, I kinda noticed the $20 jump in price there immediately.

She apologized when I mentioned it, and really, her eyes getting that wide was enough for me to see that she hadn't realized how much that wee little box cost, but still, I totally get each and every store visit I ever made with my mom as a kid. She watched hawk-like as the prices appeared on the little LED screen and would not let us talk to her or interrupt her as she stood there making sure the numbers didn't go against what she knew the item cost. At the time I totally thought she was bonkers.

I mean, why would the cashier charge her the wrong price? A million apologies mami, I will never doubt your paranoid old-lady ways again, especially as they have saved me from spending and extra $60 in the last 7 days.

But the $7 purchase that I did make...

I bought a belt!

Okay, I know this is only awesome news to you if you too have taken to wearing the newer style of jeans/pants out in the world of fashion and noticed almost immediately that none of your belts fit anymore because they were bought back in the day when we all wore our pants "at the waist."

So I've been going without. And this is fine for the "first wearing" of most of my clothes. And as most of my clothes are work clothes and accounting work is dirtier than you'd think (paper = dusty like you would not believe, and stress = sweat, so I wash, often.) I put off buying a belt to go with the new sit-on-my-hips pants. After-all, aren't hips there to stop the pants from sliding down, right? And with the main reason I've had to buy all my new pants, my permanent lovely lady lump, there is no way I will ever have a wardrobe malfunction at work.

Then, I got my very favorite pair of jeans. They are "curvy" jeans from Eddie Bauer. They are super comfy because they are JUST DENIM and not a lick of spandex that seem to be in all the other girl jeans I have recently acquired (hello 80s? I have your pants). But after wearing them for 10 minutes, I understand the need for the spandex. They go from sitting "just below my waist" to "on my hips" to "why is my crotch keeping me from taking a step" in 20 seconds flat. Attractive, I know. This does not make running errands all over Seattle a happy thing.

So, in a moment of WTF, Target basket in hand, I walked over to the Accessories department and was ready to plop down some serious cash for something that would keep me from having to haul my pants up every three steps.

That's when I noticed that all the belts I was looking at were $6.99. A sign from the gods of fashion, or something. Whatever the case, I grabbed one that fit and put it on right there. I had no idea why I waited so long to get a belt. The difference was amazing, life altering, almost. Seriously, as far away from home as I was, and Target being only the first of 3 stops I was planning on making, I was ready to go home and give up today's excursion.

As I was in line taking off the belt to get ready to pay, I noticed the lady in front of me asking for her belt to not be placed in the bags and was there a pair of scissors she could use to clip off the plastic bits that I had pretty much ripped off with my bare hands. The cashier said she didn't have a pair so as her husband paid I told the woman I could do that for her as I'd done mine about 20 minutes prior. Then she and I both laughed because we were both buying "emergency" belts so we could run our errands today.

But yeah, before I sign off...I know it's been a while since my last visit, but um, when did Target start selling so many groceries? And really I wouldn't find it so odd except for the fact that the motors for all the cooling fridges and freezers drown out all the noise in the store, so it's just you choosing your shampoo down the way from the wall of frozen pizzas. Not that it's all that different from the big grocery stores out there, except for the fact that I can see the women's clothing section from their chip aisle and that seems kinda weird to me.

Another Post Brought to You By the Paint Fumes...

2010-04-15T23:01:00.000-07:00

But different.

When I got off the elevator this evening, the prevailing smell was the very same combination of almost dry paint and industrially cleaned/new carpets that transported me back to my high school, Butler Hall, circa 1980 or so during the warmer part of the day, about late July/mid- August. All the major maintenance done and the classrooms repainted and ready to go for the start of the school year. (I almost posted this on Facebook, but seeing as people from my high school have been friending me, I get that uber-insecure feeling about reminding them that I was the janitor's kid and therefore maybe grew up at that school...I know this is silly of me, but hello, me = very silly and insecure sometimes.)

Right. By the time I reached the end of the corridor and slid my key into the lock? I was already lost in nostalgia, which I think should be classified as some kind of (mild) mental disorder. Or who knows, maybe it is? The fact is, by the time I was stuffing the towel in the crack under the door and opening up a window? I'd been sucked down the nostalgia whirlpool.

So instead of watching LOST (via the abc site), I found myself clicking on the season/series finale of UGLY BETTY. No, I have not actively watched this show since the first season. Once I realized they were not going to follow the traditional mexican soap opera formula and were going to keep Betty as ugly as they could for as long as they could? And make the mexican family so uber-tacky mexican with worse accents than what I have? I lapsed. Bad first generation Mexican-American, no churro for you.

But like the good American soap opera it became, I had absolutely no problem picking up the story line and getting caught up on just about everything (except for the Scottish lady, and maybe the surgically altered sister...but that's what the internet is for). And though it didn't quite end the way I'd expected (and dreaded) it to? Okay, really really didn't want it to? It was a great thing to watch. (I hope that was vague enough for anyone out there who hasn't watched it yet but is still going to.)

See, I never got past the nasty, skeevy, ookie Daniel. The fault is completely mine. I could not separate the Daniel character from the skeevy, ooky, nasty character he played on the L-Word. In fact, he pretty much WAS the same character! And we all HATED him. Yes, I may have seen the entire first season of that show, I mean Jennifer Beals! Am I aging myself when I say her + Sting in The Bride inspired countless terrible fake victorianeque short stories that filled journals that even my best friend never saw? And hello? As 'Alex' she was a freakin' welder in Flashdance! Okay, and maybe a stripper or whatever, but dude! WELDER! Hmm, this explains so much about me that I am laughing as I reread this paragraph.

But yeah! UGLY BETTY, skeevy Daniel, cheesy stereotypy mexicans, and Macy Gray's "Beauty in the World."

The other day I actually wondered out loud how I'd lived (so very long now) without ever having heard anything by The Insane Clown Posse, and now I'm thinking I need to not only listen to ICP (they are rude and crude and make me LAUGH, but I will not subject you to a link), but hi Macy Gray and the lyrics to the song they played to end the show made me cry and feel so good at the same time.

Dude, LIFE SUCKS, but blue skies, butterflies, and shaking your booty to the beauty in the world can make it just a little bit better. Even in front of the Watts towers...or the sketchy alley with the um, interesting decor...Oh LA, how I've missed you:

"Throw your hands up and holler

HEY YEAH

When you don't know what to do,

when you don't know if you'll make it through"

And yeah, I'm in uber-polyanna mode right now, but it seems to be what I need, so we're all good.

Epsom Salt is My Friend

2010-04-12T07:49:00.001-07:00

The rumors of my alien abduction have been enormously exaggerated.

I am, in fact, still here. So lethargic I wonder if I'm anemic or maybe have mono. Or maybe I'm just in one of those moods.

I've been dragging bills and thank you cards and stationary of other sorts back and forth from work and not even once getting a chance to pull them out and do something about them. The same goes for the socks I had on the needles...had being the operative word here. Totally hit complete ennui state with that one.

Maybe it's that "time of the year." Yeah, taxes smaxes, mine are done and have been done for over a month, but, hello? IRS? You lie when you say electronic filing = faster returns, because I am still waiting. And now I have to call, or so my tax guy told me to (yeah, I work in accounting but I don't do my own taxes...I used to call that the uber-lazy factor, now I wholeheartedly say it's due to the safety of internal controls). See, apparently no information regarding my filing/taxes can be found via the quick "status of your return" page. Yet another thing to put on my "to do" list that just keeps getting longer.

What I really mean is that I'm burnt out...of being sick, of winter, of having my office torn apart by the yearly audit, of my life right now. I need a break from it all.

And then there's the quiet time that my brain spends mulling over all the bad and wrong and dark thoughts that I need to stay buried when I'm knitting (or unknitting) or cooking or not-quite-reading...you know, when you're reading something easy like The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor (I warn you now, it's a trilogy...yes, I went out and got the second book yesterday). You know, books that are light and easy to get through and leave the rest of your brain to muddle through the thoughts you wish would stay locked up deep inside you.

Or worse, the super quiet time in the Epsom salt bath.

Okay, can someone tell me why it took me 36 years to find out about Epsom salt? It's not just for old peoples' foot baths! It's like the wonder-cure for all your ails! I wanted to wait a bit before I went on my soapbox and preached about the new snake oil, but dudes! It is doing my broken body good!

See, this time of year? The weather is not my friend. Yeah, there are allergens, there are always those, but the extreme weather shifts do a number on my multiply layered injuries (damaged knees from fencing, busted tailbone from crossing the Pacific Ocean to Hawai'i, busted hand/arm from catching my fully-loaded (i.e. all my teaching stuff) bike that one time in my classroom, busted hip from being forced off the road that one time on the way to sign my divorce papers, busted sternum/elbow/back from the orange F150 that I was almost killed by a couple years ago in the rain when biking home).

So instead of drowning in some probably-expired vicodin cocktail, I dragged my sorry self to the local Bartell's Drugs and bought some of the magical salt to see if it could do something for me. And man, does it ever!

I sit in my too-shallow tub letting my hip and shoulder take turns being underwater (if you too have access to a too-shallow tub you know exactly what I'm talking about), as I watch the time tick away....Twelve minutes minimum sitting there listening to myself breathe and trying not to get caught up in all the thoughts that are trying to take over my brain...pretending they are being sucked out of my system along with the swelling and the toxins and whatever else the Epsom salt promises to do on the package labeling.

I know I sound bat-shit insane this morning. I think I shall blame a big chunk of this on the paint fumes. Remember the fire in my building? They've finally gotten around to the painting stage of the repair job. We have crammed a sacrificial towel in the crack under our front door to try to keep most of the fumes out. Seeing as it's all of 40 degrees outside, it's kinda hard to keep a window open so we don't die of fumes inhalation...so instead you get posts like these.

Happy Monday.

No, Yesterday's Post Was Not A "Fool"

2010-04-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

The canned air I own officially gave it's lase apoplectic fit last night when I tried using it between the keys to force the water out/channel it to an exit point... So I gave up, turned everything off, turned the keyboard upside down at an angle, and gave it my best, "go with god" look as I went to bed.

It's still kinda "damp" on the inside (if you call big droplets of water that I can see through the clear plastic back "damp," but I have space bar usage once more!

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

...all the letters seem to work

`1234567890-=123456789=/*-+.0

as do the number & numeric pad keys

I guess I'm back in business.
~~~~~

It must be my punishment for wanting to share what happened yesterday.

I'd blame it on scoring the wrong score on that "How Autistic Are You" quiz that's going around Facebook, but um, I know better. It was just my normal runaway-mean disease. It's happened before, with the same girl. (And yes, I think I'm using that particular label on her because maybe someday she will be all growed up, but her innocent hippie ways make me think of her as very very young...)

Okay, I can blame it a wee bit on the fact that I haven't shaken the poopie cold/cough/eunni/exhaustion that has seriously been plaguing me since my birthday week. I had this super silly notion that it being APRIL yesterday, it would all magically melt away...But it didn't/hasn't, only my patience has, it would seem, for self-righteous/hippie/stupid people.

To refresh everyone's memory, this is the girl who asked me, "Why don't you bike" as I was limping around on a leg swollen to twice its size sometime last year. I maybe got a little offended by her back then, but now I wonder if she'd bust out, "Look at the beautiful sunset!" to a blind person...she is that oblivious to the world...which makes what I said yesterday, with only the barest hint of sarcasm that even I almost didn't recognize in myself, SO MUCH BETTER.

See, she drove in to work yesterday. She looked ABSOLUTELY MISERABLE about not taking the bus or biking, "but it was cold, and raining, and I couldn't get out of bed, and I'd left my umbrella here..."

And I genuinely felt sorry for her and said something like, "Better than getting completely sopping wet trying to get here and getting even more sick." (She too has the office crud.) BUT...instead of agreeing or letting herself feel better, she then goes on to berate herself about how the bus stop is JUST OUTSIDE HER DOOR!

When asked what bus she takes I realized it was one that left you off blocks away from here and said so (again, she's sick and it was pouring) she actually looked at me as if I was an alien and said, "but that's only three blocks away! I could have easily walked that! I do! Every day!"

And right there was when I decided I needed to smack some sense into her mightier-than-thou attitude. So I said, "Yeah, you're right. What were you thinking?"

But it got better. We used to live in opposite ends of the same neighborhood so she asked where I was living now, "About three blocks South of here."

She got all excited, "Oh by the blah blah blah" (Artist lofts/more people fresh out of the peace core/hippie-wanna-bes like her.)

"No, that's North, I said South."

The look on her face was priceless. "But that's like, right next to downtown!"

"Yes. But it's better than right next to the freeway." (The blah blah blah she mentioned.)

"But there are no trees and just other buildings around you."

"We do have trees and grass, on the 8th floor, right next to the dog run."

"The 8th floor?!?" Again, another wonderful can't-believe-you-live-in-such-an-unsustainable-artificial-place-look. (My Xhusband used to get that look, I know it well, and realize he is why I must make this poor girl suffer.)

"Yep, and a pool, sauna, jacuzzi, and the whole building has air conditioning."

If you know me, really know me? You know this is not the way I've ever lived. Nor do I take advantage of the amenities here...I am the strange "country bumpkin" neighbor. I am the person who would live in shared housing with a million people. I was that girl. Had there not been a million people trying out for the "core" when I was her age, I'd have been her even more...so instead, I went off to teach the children of migrant workers the fundamentals of the English language and tried to make their world a better place because dammit, I wanted to save the world! I've mentioned this to the girl. We graduated from the same University, but I'm a decade older.

And tired and broken. And, I've said this a number of times, VERY jaded. And more than just a little mean. And I know I'm gonna burn because as I sit here, listening to the rain smash against my window, I'm wondering if that girl is going to take the bus and get sopping wet and sicker that she should get, just so she can prove (to herself more than anyone) that she is NOT becoming anything like me, ever. And it makes me smile.

Water+Keyboard=NoSpaceBar

2010-04-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

Maybe-when-it-dries?

Please?

So-much-for-the-story-I-had-to-share....

Just a Hint of What's to Come

2010-03-23T07:50:00.001-07:00

So...since a few days before my birthday and unto this AM, I've had the same eye-jarring, ear bugging, don't-bend-over-or-you-regret-it headache.

And yet I am crazy, because I finished these:

for sock madness #4. (There is absolutely no amount of picture tweeking that will make my ankles look any skinnier or less, um, stumpy, so I didn't even bother. Besides, see aforementioned headache description.)

I have thank-you cards sitting here waiting for me to write up, pictures of crazy nemo that need a bit of tweeking, a check to cash (!) -- I love getting checks for my bday! But not the big fat tax returny kind (which are awesome, don't get me wrong), I mean the ones written for like$10 or $20 from grandma (or in this case, xMIL), they make me feel like I'm still a little kid, um getting checks from grandma...or a godmother or seven seeing as I didn't actually ever get a check from grandma.

Can you tell I might still be on some decongestants/anti-inflammatories? If I didn't have to go in and reconcile other peoples' money for a living? This would be uber funny. Instead I am fighting tooth and nail to clear my head up before leaving the house/apt/whathaveyou. (Seattle, be grateful I walk to work, 'sall I'm sayin.)

More later, promise.

I am Awful

2010-03-19T06:03:00.001-07:00

I promise another post and then I disappear for a week...

Work + sick + participating in Sock Madness + new sick = I'm not here, I'm in bed, knitting, and on some serious decongestants & anti-inflammatories.

So yeah, consider this one of them drive-by postings I see in the summer-time when people are out having fun. Only I'm not, cuz I'm either at work souped up on Sudafed and Advil, or in my cave at home, trying not to drop any stitches as knit blindly and try in vain to convince the migraine flashes that they do not want to stick around, that there are way more fun places to be than in my eyeballs...all night long...waking me from restless sleep...again.

Anyone else notice I'm posting at 6AM? Up since 4...I can already tell you it's not going to be a good day.

I shall return more when hearty and hale...or at least more hearty and hale...

Le't Consider This One Practice for the Real One

2010-03-12T22:45:00.001-08:00

Soooooooo, technically, Andy had a birthday yesterday (Thursday), and maaaaaaaybeeee today, at around 2:42 PM, I might have officially started my 37th year on this planet. (That makes me 36 now, if you're as confused as I was the first time I heard that phrase.)

But I think we'll actually start celebrating and calling it official after the plague has left chez tactless and moved on to other pastures to spread it's cough and phlegm and massive headaches and exhaustion to them.

I am actually not the one trying to expel any of my innards at the moment, that would be Andy. A party was canceled and everything (he hit that 4-0 milestone, you see). Had he gone through with the party, I'm afraid everyone would end up with the coughing sickness and would no longer want to be friends...and Andy might have caught pneumonia from it all and really, not being too drama-queen about this, the man is ill. Technicolor ill if you catch my meaning.

If the symptoms I'm experiencing are going to become what he has? Yeah, let's just consider yesterday and today practice for the "real" celebrating.

Andy's "birthday" included lots of sudafed, advil, and watching of 2012 (the one with John Cusak that came and went from the theaters before I even realized it was out? Yeah that one.) Watching it made me realize that we need to get a bigger TV for 'splosion watching. That and a good dose of Nyquil before bed was the highlight of the evening. I know, we like to par-tee hard.

My birthday did have a cake, and presents (!) even, but I'll have to post about those tomorrow because the camera is far far away (possibly the living room) and my sinuses are trying to get my attention again. I will share a picture of the candle though (no, Andy would not let me put 36 candles on the cake as I am having enough problems breathing right now without trying to blow out the inferno associated with such a large number of burning sticks.
We found him in our neighborhood Bartells, or as I like to call it, meth-mart. When I was there the other night purchasing the aforementioned Nyquil I got to dodge the fellow who followed me in (by going into the feminine napkin section), try not to get run over by the red-faced guy who really needed a gatorade RIGHT NOW, man, and listen to yelling girl lose her shit with the cashier (I kid you not, I have been at this Bartells no more than 10 times, and 7 of those times yelling girl has been in their yelling at one of the cashiers).

None of these things ever happen when Andy comes with me on a meth-mart run, he is like the shiny little penny I've taken to keeping in my pocket when I go to work. I haven't shared this tidbit either, have I? Penny Man I mean?

There is this guy that stands in the doorway to an apartment building for older underprivileged men that's run by the Seattle Archdiocese (I did my research.) He is older than your average pan-handler, with shoulder-length scraggly white hair and just doesn't seem to be all there.

In this cracking LOUD voice he asks any and all passers by for a penny. As in, "'SCUSE ME, DO YOU HAVE A PENNY!??!" If I have learned anything living where I have? I don't carry an loose change whatsoever. It's just easier for me. But a penny? Really? So I found a penny and put it in my pocket and set out with the idea that I'd give him the penny that next afternoon. But he wasn't there.

Every day for three days I kept that penny in my pocket and no Penny Man. The very next day I use a different jacket and forget to switch over the penny and sure enough, he's there, asking for a penny! And I didn't have one! And sure enough, when I put the penny in my pocket the next day? No Penny Man.

My theory is that if I keep a penny on my person, I will not see him. No really. Today? One the meth-mart run looking for candles? No penny, and what did I spy as we turned the corner and walked the opposite direction of the men's hotel? Yep, white scraggly hair in the doorway. He was a street away so I couldn't hear him and we didn't pass him at all, but still, urgh, you know?!?

Wow, that all kinda got away from me...but YEAH, candle! And it's Nemo with his gimpy little right fin which I totally get with my not-working-right right arm. But those eyes. If the pictures look anything like what I could see from the LCD screen on the camera? Oh just you wait.

Eighteen Years...How Did that Happen?

2010-03-09T09:03:00.000-08:00

Is this a hint of what it'd feel like if I had a child of my own reach adulthood?

I've never felt this way about any of the babies I 'sat. Because I just wrote and then deleted the line: "I used to change his diapers!" Before I realized I've changed a lot of kids' diapers who years ago reached adulthood and I just never felt this way.

I fall back to the fact that my baby brother is the very physical marker of the passage of time.

I pretty much fell out of being a regular tenant at the homestead just months after he was born. I think he was crawling when my dad and brother drove me up to school.

He called me "ann ann" and looked for me...or so my mom said, after one of my short stints at home.

He almost broke my face that one summer I took care of him when my mom had her knee replaced (children's toys with handles and heft are a big no-no in my book).

I may have mentally scarred him with my "your hands ain't broken" way of correcting his actions. We have a wee bit of the same bad temper mentality...This is what happens when the two "babies" of the family argue. (I was the baby for 17.99999 years after all.)

And yet? Is that why we get along? (I think a big chunk of that is because I am only a visitor when I do go home...much easier to get along with everyone that way, really.)

Whatever the case, my baby brother is 18 today...and days away from 36 myself? I am feeling so aged and worn and has it been 18 years? Really? In a few months time I will have officially reached that point where I will have lived away from home as long as I lived at home...and then? From that point onward? The balance tips ever further away (unless, of course I go and "renest" as so many have lately begun doing...oh let's please not go there).

Oh I'm getting all wordy and weird...but that's the head-space I'm in right now.

Dude, 18. I promise to be better about this next year. But dude, 18!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANTHONY!

Hats & the P Setting

2010-03-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

So I totally forgot that I started a post yesterday and now, hello, it's today, and I know I was messing with you all, posting every day for like three whole days in a row...but obviously that didn't last and we're now back to my haphazard schedule.

So back when I was last in LA, for the xmas visit of dooooom, I knit and knit and knit on a hat for my older brother because, hello! His head was RIGHT THERE and I was RIGHT THERE and by gods I would make him one that he could wear and not look like he stole his son's hat.

Or something.

Every evening/into the night, I'd sit and watch my baby brother's DVDs of Bones and Supernatural and knit some more. And finally, when he realized what I was knitting might not look as silly as a hand-knit might (cuz I don't think he's ever really looked at my mom's socks...or maybe he has and pink and light blue and other non-baby brother colors possibly look like poopie to him and any other teen of his age/phase of adolescence...I know, I went through it myself; I'm much better now thank you), he asked if there was any chance I could replicate a machine-knit hat that he'd permanently borrowed from a friend of his.

What? Me knit a beanie on size 2 or smaller needles? Really? And you want me to do it? Not a forced gift?

Dude, I was so there.

As soon as I cast off my brother's gargantua-hat (which I don't have a picture of, unfortunately, but I can tell you all this, it is not too small for him in any way, shape or form...nope, not too small at all) I cast on for my baby brother.

I knit and knit and knit on size 2 needles using a Dale of Norway fingering-weight yarn whose name escapes me in black and dark grey which you can't even see unless you have a much spiffy monitor than me...and once finished I bathed it in COLD water as I usually do...and it barely fit my head, which I have stated before, is MUCH smaller than the heads of all the males in my family. I think it shrank...which makes me wonder what my older brother's hat must look like now...maybe it just fits now, I don't know, whatever the case I am not really sad that I forgot the name of the yarn because I don't think I will ever use it for such things as hats for family members because I was and possibly am still a wee bit peeved.

I put the remaining yarn in a time out and went out into the world to look for more black yarn to make a hat that fit.

That was back when I posted asking about the disappearance of all black yarn in the world...or at least all of the LYS's I frequent, until finally I found some ultra-Alpaca in size cobweb (okay, maybe I exaggerate...but it really is thin) that I actually cast on for and got several inches through the had before I realized I'd be 500 years old before I finished because even I couldn't justify a beanie on size 0 needles. Not in black yarn. During the middle of winter.

So I dug deep into my unfinished sock pile and found some nice black Louet Gems that might do the trick, cast on 150-some odd stitches and perfected my knit-while-I-walk-to-work habit until I finally had a hat in my hands:

Yes, what look like two very similar very black hats. I stretched the bejebus out of the black and grey one until it almost, but not quite the same size as it's all-black brother. If it doesn't fit him, maybe he can give it to his girlfriend and they can be all em0-matchy-matchy. Do kids still do that?

Anyhow, thus ends my tale, and the hats themselves are currently enroute to my baby brother and should (touch wood) be there in time for his birthday...when, sniff, I'll have to stop calling him baby and think of something new...cuz he'll be all of 18 then...dude, I feel so old!

And what about the"P" setting? That's just a reminder to me more than anything. I took my hat pictures using that setting. I must remember NEVER EVER to do that again. This is why you see two black hats as the "P" setting is not my friend. I don't know what it does, but I know it does not differentiate colors that are super close to one another (i.e. black and grey) and when they are set against a super light color? It's all blended together in a weird monochrome I'd rather not have. Okay, that's all.

Creature of Habit

2010-03-02T07:44:00.000-08:00

If Google Reader can import my bloglines list, I may have to motivate enough to try something new.

But I am a terrible creature of habit. It's folks like me that have kept certain cereal makers in business nigh on 30-too many years. And/or juice producers. And maybe even the folks at certain pen manufacturing companies, hair tie makers, blank book producers...you name it, if I'm using it, it's probably because I've been using that brand/make/model most of my life. It takes a whole lot to move me to try something new. Beginning with stopping the production of the item.

Dude, that whole "get them while they're young" advertising game? Too damned true.

Anywho...semi-filler for Bloglines. Because I feel like reaching out to the invisible masses right now. I'm at that stage of not feeling quite right that has me feeling like I should crawl into a dark cave and not let anyone see me...and feeling all needy and wimpy and can someone please take care of me?!?

Being an adult sucks hard at times like this.

I am over the worst of it, I'm guessing. It's an infection of the "tract" variety that requires way too much water and cranberry juice/pills and visits to the WC to keep things, um flowing. You can kill me later for not going to the doctor and getting antibiotics, but the fact is that it just never got to the OHMYGODMYKIDNEY phase. And seeing as I love doctors soooooo very much? And spent over $300 for them to tell me that I've never had the chicken pox? That if I can get over this on my own? I'm gonna.

Yes, internet moms, at the first sign of that thudding/throbbibg/unmistakable pain I will go see someone, I promise. I know this can go either way (i.e. go away on its own or kill me), but as I keep saying, with the fever gone and the utter exhaustion now at the "I'm just tired" level, I'm either headed toward wellness, or faking it pretty awesomely.

Except maybe I still want my mommy every few hours. (Which really is much funnier if you'd ever experienced being sick around my mom when I was a kid...I think I got my bedside manner from her...which says it all if you've ever been sick around me.)

Something Purple

2010-03-01T22:35:00.001-08:00

I do still knit. A lot more than I let on, lately, but I do. It's getting my act together enough to snap a picture before I give it away? That I'm having problems with lately.

I'm seeing the attraction of the 3-ish Mega Pixel cameras on the fancy smart-phones wherein you can snap the shot, send it to your social networking site of choice, and bobs-yer-uncle, you have a finished object/brag page/something to account for the squint you're developing.

But I did like making these:

Through the Loops' Socktoberfest Mystery Socks:

I wasn't sure how to link them, so I kinda just liked the first clue. I'm sure you if you're really burning to knit these you're on Ravelry and have the page/project bookmarked (or whatever you do to save patterns...I need more schooling in these matters, obviously.)

I followed the instructions as written, but finished far too late to enter into the "finished socks" contest, which is okay with me, really. With everything else going on? I'm surprised I got as far as I did and even finished! Hurray for me!

So back in the junior high/later elementary age, I really took a shine to purple things. Not so much the unicorn light-colored lavender, but in a pinch, I'll still saunter over in that direction. But purple? A real blue-hued purple? Prince-and-the-Revolution-Purple-Rain-Purple? I like. And I really liked the shades of this yarn. It's Pagewood Farms in the um, Yukon, um, style? Design? Model? In a very nice (to me, maybe purple isn't your thing) variegated purple.

I made these socks for my best friend from elementary school's birthday this year. I had been aiming for her birthday um, maybe two years ago...but time did that running away thing it does, so I failed. Better late than never? I guess?

She lives where they actually do have snow on a seasonal basis and though these are holey, they are woolly, and I hope she got them and that they fit. It's my first time trying out making socks via long distance for someone other than my mom. And I'm totally willing to try again if I failed, 'kay? No pressure! And if you hate them that's okay too, really! (They don't call me tactless for nothin'.)

For my next trick, I finished a couple hats for my baby brother, who in a few days time won't be so baby anymore...but I am exhausted...which is another update I should talk about, but maybe when I feel 100%, cuz writing about how poopie I feel when the sick factor is high? Just makes me feel worse.

More later.

Testing?

2010-03-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

Well, bloglines still thinks I don't exist.

That's fine. Really. Last time it posted once I hit three posts. So this is a filler one before I post the socks I finished a million years ago.

My Kingdom for a Boring Life...

2010-02-28T14:09:00.000-08:00

But then, would I even bother with a blog at all?

If my writing style is kind off today I'm blaming it on the fever (though once you hit the "sweats" part it means you're finally coming down from it, according so some of the web doctors I started reading...others think I might need to be hospitalized so I'm trying to take the middle road here and just take advil and drink water and see how I feel later.)

I'm at a loss where to begin and it all feels like old news already...but let's start with the fire, as there aren't any pictures of that, and move on to other things which I'll try to "pre-post" so as to not inundate my very dwindled reading population with more posts in one day than I've done in a year, shall we?

But wait, we may need to back up a bit more as it won't explain why the alarm was so dreadful to me by Wednesday. How about let's start with a wee bit more background:

So Monday Andy left for Ohio, and as much as I love living with people and know I will miss them terribly as some point in their absence, I was kinda looking forward to a quiet, empty apartment for the few nights he'd be gone. It'd been a rough week before and I was definitely in the more "I hate everybody" mood, which solitude does wonders for.

Tuesday evening though, I last-minute like (as in I had my bag and sweater over my shoulder for the whole thing) said I'd stick around for the reception my work place had (having moved to the new and kewel building and wanting to show off the lab and workshop, I can't blame them). There might have been more glasses of wine that I thought I'd drunk and some super greasy, but yummy, appetizers that do so very little for absorbing those too many glasses of wine.

I am officially now super grateful that I only live blocks from work, because I am also officially a teetotaler in my mid thirties, really, ask anyone, and the wine and greasy food were just not the right combination for my no longer experienced tummy and liver. But by bog, I was going to get home and watch LOST if it killed me! But I was already passing out as I sat down on the couch.

With how horrible things like too much fish, pork and salt are for my body? I think I might add duck to the list. When I woke up to a very beautiful black man trying to sell me "men's aerobic" products via the tee vee at 2:30 AM? I was not doing very well at all. The room, and my tummy, were spinning...and I had no one to blame but myself. I put myself to bed, admonishing myself for being such a fool, and swearing off both wine and duck empanadas, because they are not the more healthful or wise combination for me, as my swollen fingers were testament to this.

Bleary and in a little pain, which I chalked up to being hung-over and maybe a little poisoned, I went to work, and worked hard. Thank you advil. Thank you makers of vitamin water. Thank you co-workers for leaving me alone. Somehow I made it through the day and my goal was to go home, collapse, and be a new woman on the morrow.

This is where I was/what I was feeling when at 1:30 AM the loudest alarm clock in the world woke me up, and spoke to me. I may have tried to hit the snooze bar on my alarm clock before I realized that my alarm clock did not TALK to me.

WHOOT! WHOOOOOT!
ATTENTION, ATTENTION, THERE IS AN EMERGENCY SITUATION IN THE BUILDING. PLEASE WALK TO THE NEAREST STAIRS AND GO DOWN TO THE LOBBY.
WHOOOOT! WHOOOT!

"No no no no no nooooooooooooo" was what I said out loud and ALMOST pulled the covers over my head. We'd had sooooo many false alarms in the last couple months (3 that I quickly recalled), but never on my floor. Never with that voice. Never with so many voices in the hallway.

So I got up (the room, kinda not quite right) and possibly channeled the younger me who used to live on a boat and woke up that one day to stand in inches of water on the Napa River. I don't think I ever got dressed so fast. But dressed I decided to be as I live on the 17th floor. 17 flights of stairs in my slippers? Not going to happen. 17 flights that ended up with us standing out in the rain (not the lobby?) in my inadequate for the temperatures PJs? Not going to happen.

When I went out the door (then doubled back to make sure I had my wallet and cell phone), there were others milling and one determined floormate that opened the door to the stairs and said, "We should all go." We all did, and it wasn't until we were sitting in the lobby waiting for the firemen to arrive theorizing if it really was a fire or another false alarm that he told us all to go because he passed an apartment on OUR FLOOR with smoke coming out from under the door, but hadn't wanted to mention this as he was all for avoiding a panic/mad dash/trampling/drama. Dude, my hero.

But yeah, 17 flights. We stopped a couple floors down to see if we could just hold out on like the 15th or 10th or maybe the 8th floor (where they have a patio and stuff that I never use) but after opening a few doors and hearing alarms and more WHOOTS and not being sure if it was just the echo of ours, we decided that we should just head all the way down, just in case.

And if I hadn't, I'd have never heard that it was the apartment two doors down from mine that was ablaze and that the fire had actually set off the sprinklers and that the apartments to the sides of the inferno should go back up and check on the status of their apartments. However, one wee caveat...the elevators would be out for hours. We could go back to our homes, but we'd have to take the stairs.

17 flights. All I could think of as we passed the 8th floor and my thighs gave their first tremble? I had been offered a place on the 8th floor. By the time I got to the 14th? I was staggering, gasping for air that smelled very much of smoke, and those aforementioned thighs? HATED ME.

I opened the door to my hallway and was met with a lake of water to my left. My apartment, however, lay to the right. It was now 2:30 AM and the adrenaline was pumping, but at the same time my body was balking and so instead of trying to see past the bodies of the fire and maintenance men and catch an idea of what-all had happened, I staggered home and collapsed into my desk chair and emailed work. (Yes, there was electricity.)

There is nothing like a 2AM email to work (this would be my second...the first was the one I wrote after coming home from the emergency room after having been run over by that orange F150 pickup truck a few years ago.) In some ways I think it's worse than the 2AM phone call, because you don't think to just write the minimum, you know, like the voicemail you cut short because your voice starts cracking?

Anyhow, as I told them, I am fine. The apartment is fine. The water damage (I'm told) stopped about 3/4ths of the way across my next door neighbor's apartment. Even the smoke I inhaled too much of in the stairway was being whooshed out by a HEPA500 fan when I finally did get up to go to work the next day. How I managed that feat I will never know.

My body hated me, first for the overindulgence, then for the lack of sleep, and especially for the adrenaline that seemed to seep through my veins like that asthma inhaler I was prescribed that time I had bronchitis so bad it was turning into pneumonia. (Never a dull moment...) And this is where I plug in how much I love my work. They all pretty much said I should go home. This was especially needed by me as I promised Andy I'd pick him up at the airport late that night...as my day had begun at 1:30 that morning? This was not something I was looking forward to and almost pulled a HUGE favor card and had someone else get him. But I am stupid that way and decided I could do it.

No, I do not have a terrible story associated with that part of my night. I think, except for delaying the flight for 40 minutes (which gave me time to finish my fingerless mitts) the gods had finally decided to look elsewhere for their amusement.

But yeah, both my boss and his boss are ready to have an intervention when it comes to me and everything that always seems to happen to me. I am so with them on that one.

It's Not Just Me...

2010-02-18T17:40:00.000-08:00

Bloglines is having issues picking up feeds.

This explains why I felt like everyone'd gone off on vacation and left me behind...in absolutely no way similar to that movie with the kid and the family and the vacation...which my mom told me all about sometime in the first year of her retirement when she was finally, FINALLY able to watch a movie to completion without anyone wanting to change the channel.

Okay, I am tangent girl...

Anywho, if you got desperate and just started clicking on your bloglist to see if anything new was going on in the world, like maybe I did...I am still here, not on vacation/winter break/etc. Though I was very much longing for a warm dry climate the other day as my internal barometer started to mess with me.

Instead I'm nursing an inner-ear-like-infection (I refuse to acknowledge it completely, you see). I'm at the "if I close my eyes I feel like I'm on the deck of a pitching boat." Makes for fantabulous times sitting in my office chair staring at the screen and trying to concentrate...my kingdom for the kind of sudafed I used to be able to get in Mexico...sigh.

I'm going to go look and see if anyone else is updating now.

"You Must Have Wanted the World To Know..."*

2010-02-16T12:42:00.000-08:00

I am in such a deep fog today.

With so much going on, why do I get bogged down by dreams that suck me into memories of things that happened so very LONG ago now...

I had one of those extended high school era dreams last night, the common denominator being that of one Dr. Gerald Todd, former science teacher at my high school. I tried using the google on his name, but though a number of people popped up, the Dr. Todd of my youth doesn't seem to be on the internets where I can find him.

Is this why I'd drowning in nostalgia? I can't even blame FaceB00k seeing as I'm hardly ever on there and don't stalk people as heartily as the news media think I would. Maybe I can blame the Nivea hand lotion I just got last night. Do you all remember Wondra Lotion in the white bottle with the sky-blue, sometimes lime green top that was really the base because it was of the new generation of lotion bottles that stood up upside-down so you could get every last drop out? (I tried looking for a picture, but wikipeadia tells me it was discontinued in the 80s...except I thought I saw something using the name recently...whatevers, use your imaginations, 'kay?)

Well, my new Nivea hand lotion smells a whole lot like it. No really! I've forgotten a lot of things in my lifetime...more than I'd really like to admit, but certain smells? Definitely stay with me and are bringers of memories past, whether or not I want them to be. And after putting the cream on my hands last night, it's not that much of a stretch for me to be transported to decades past, when life was much more me-centric, and if not simpler, definitely more memorable (otherwise why am I dwelling so much?).

There were no Flock of Seagulls hairdos or Peggy Sue Got Married moments, but at one point a number of us were sitting on the sun-warmed steps of Cantwell Hall shifting through our notes and trying to figure out just what Dr. Todd's quiz was going to involve. I had him for both Chemistry and Physics, and yet, I could not tell you which set of notes these were for.

Gah, high school. I didn't have too rough of a time at all. It was fun in the general sense of the word. But yeah, really and truly was all about "me." Or "you" or "your best friend." The description of teenagers being ego-centric? Well, duh, of course they are. What else could they be if they are healthy and whole? I would hope that they're more worried about whether or not Jake knows they're alive than, say, what they're going to feed their younger brother for dinner and whether or not there will be a place for them to sleep next month.

It's said we infantilize our children a great deal more in these current generations than we ever have...but looking at what the 18 years later Mary has to deal with compared to the me then? I'm glad I had that time to just worry about quizzes and what I was going to wear at Carla's birthday party or whether I could sneak off to UCLA to buy that notebook I really wanted.

When I woke up? I was exhausted and lost in my thoughts...which I'm having a hard time wading out of.

~~~

*I was listening to the soundtrack for Romeo + Juliet and couldn't get "Little Star" by Stina Nordenstam out of my head...Yes, I did have to look up the lyrics....not the easiest song to sing along to.

I Love the Internets!

2010-02-05T09:41:00.001-08:00

So it was like something out of a bad 80s b-movie...

There I was writing up an email asking for alternative project codes for a payment (okay, even bad 80's b-movies might not revolve around the exciting world of Accounting) when I looked down to refer to my backup and see these weird red splotches all over the paper...deep dark red that you only get from fresh flowing zombie wounds...or my dark red-inked pilot precise roller ball pen, which was sitting innocently at my elbow...uncapped.

I've mentioned the manner of my measuring the suckiness factor of a work day by how many pen marks end up on my arms, yes? Well, when the pen marks are actually on the sleeve of a cotton, non-white, long-sleeved shirt? Yeah, pretty mega-sucky.

The only thing I could think of, aside from whiting-out the red marks all over my document, was to blot as much of the ink off and hope that my mom might be home and could tell me what to do.

Yes, I know about the hairspray trick. Do you? GREAT on ballpoints. Use a damp sponge and get as much of the ballpoint ink off the fabric, then douse it with hairspray and toss in the wash. 99% of your ink will magically disappear. The cheaper the hairspray the better. I used to own a wee can of it solely for such times back when I was teaching and there were more ballpoint pens in my life.

Liquid/felt ink pens? Completely different animal, as I found out when my favorite red cloth lunch napkin was left too close to one of the black liquid ink pens...also uncapped (you'd think I'd know better by now...). It's now my favorite dust rag...COULD NOT get the ink out of the cloth...but I didn't try very hard as it wasn't a piece of clothing, you know?

Mom was not home...and the work day progressed and I kinda forgot to try again...so I went home and sat, dejected, at my desk and randomly googled "remove ink from cotton shirt" and was rewarded with a slew of suggestions and videos...including one that covered both ballpoints as well as liquid ink! (They called them felt pens, but he was holding a pilot precise roller ball!!!)

I'd inadvertently followed the first two steps:

1-Blot out as much of the ink as possible. (I did that bit just so I could stop marking up my arm as well as all the paper that lives on my desk...oh yeah, and the desk itself!)

2- Air dry (Like I had any choice!)

3- The third step called for something I wasn't all that sure about...but the more I think about it, I'm guessing the video is from like Canada or someplace where they call things by different names (chesterfields and toques and the like) because as he held up a common $0.99 bottle of rubbing alcohol he said dab with denatured alcohol, getting more of the ink out, and toss in the wash according to the garments washing instructions.

So I did. And then I just washed that sleeve in the sink and hung it to dry to see if I had to budget a shopping trip (I only have so many work shirts after all) or if it could be saved.

This morning? I could barely tell that something bad had happened to that part of my sleeve. I think I might be able to use it again!

So...yeah, it's a measure of how sucky my week has been that this makes me so very happy...

Lacking Unique Title...

2010-02-01T07:36:00.001-08:00

Don't you just hate it when your browser crashes and you lose the entirety of the beginnings of a disjointed post?

Me too. Must learn to click the "SAVE NOW" button more often.

I had a great image in my head of one of those sweatshirts from the 80s that were all cut up flashdance style with the no neck, sleeves and ending all rolled up at the mid-drift. Mostly because Andy tried on the sweater I've been knitting him for the past 5 or so years and um, yeah, it ends just below his pectorals currently. No he wouldn't let me take a picture.

So yeah! I've ditched the idea of knitting myself a cardigan in favor of making Andy his sweater. And just in case you actually remember my posts about his sweater? (Here's one.) I should mention that I took the entire thing apart (again) and restarted it as a top-down raglan. Two reasons for this:
#1 As I was cleaning up my bookshelf, this pattern literally fell into my lap.

#2 This occurred the same day I may have accidentally washed Andy's store-bought (AND SUPER NICE) wool raglan sweater with my "darks." Super oops, but I have a really nice though semi-felted sweater I can wear now...

So...all coincidences aside, I thought I should get knitting. And like I said, I'm just below the separation of the arm-holes/sleeves and working down the million inches of body length...Andy is 6'3" if you all remember...it's a super long torso for which I'll be knitting for years...and don't remind me that his arms aren't stumpy or anything...so, no pictures of that, but here, I'll show you what I gave him for Twelfth Night instead:

Some-a body was a good boy:

Does anyone else do the gift-in-the-shoe thing for el Dia de Los Reyes/Twelfth Night? No? Well, it was a great place to put gifted socks, lemme tell ya :). And yes, those might be Hello Kitty slippers...so?

Here's another picture:
I could tell you yarn and pattern details...but it took me so long to make these that I have seriously forgotten...US 1 needles you see. Size 13 shoe... Or maybe twelve. At a certain point I don't think it matters much. It's Lornas Laces in Forest...I think. I want to say it was a Twin Rib stitch for the leg over 80 stitches. Boring heels and toes as I've not bought any new sock books since the first Sensational one. I just love that they almost match.

This Post Brought to You by Mom, and the Letter P...

2010-01-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

I realized late last night the reason I cannot deal with wee small folks on anything other than a non-professional level...barring that, no more than two at a time. (I did a fabulous job baby-sitting back in my day, after all.)

But when my mom called last night, first to lament about the fact that I might have a killer car (and not in that slang-tastic "killer" way either, she was taking about the Toyota recall), and then, and what was really more important, to make me procure "another" piggy bank like the first I'd gotten for my niece....I will admit I was kinda confused on both parts.

As much as I'd love a new car every year...just for that new car smell...my Matrix is not on the recall list, it being older than the models listed...besides, I checked, and the hooks that hold my floor mats? Are kinda burly. I think I'm good (knock on wood).

The piggy bank, however, really stumped me. As much as I think that some Hello Kitty stuff looks as much like a cat as oh, I dunno, my left foot? I never thought it looked anything like a pig. And here my mom was insisting that I needed to replicate the gift I'd given my niece for her birthday so my nephew could stop wailing at his lacking of it...Hello Kitty dolls? Hello Kitty markers? Hello Kitty pens? (A seasonal (xmas) store at the mall was closing...50% off EVERYTHING.) What did he need so badly that his heart was breaking (okay, really it was my heart breaking hearing him crying in the background) with my dad (my dad!) trying to sooth him ("ya, ya, ya, mijo, ya, ya, ya.")

There had been no piggy bank in my gift box...I was at a total loss. Then she went on to describe it (in a pink box, with "shelves" for the paint and decorations), and I absolutely knew it was neither Hello Kitty, nor something I had bought. But I would be damned if I could not find one to placate this child.

My mom handed him the phone and he calmed down enough to describe it in utter detail (it was at his house, and he was at my folks' house)...and I just about started to cry when he was sniffling and telling me it was bigger than a matchbox car and has glitter and stickers and he didn't care if the box was pink. Did I mention he just turned 5?

Then technology came to my rescue. I googled as I spoke to him and thought I'd maybe found it, but needed to be sure (I could not send him something almost but not quite what he was lamenting about...just could.not. So I asked him to get one of the adults to send me a picture of it using their cell phones. Tio Tony! We were at the point of having him take the phone to my baby brother's room when my mom said she'd go to their house (they live next door) and have my SIL send me the picture.

It's a match: Decorate your Own Piggy Bank by Melissa & Doug. The only catch is that I can't find a local place to procure it. I'm totally calling them this AM to see if they can help me find a place here in Seattle or down in LA so that this can be taken care of. And it must be taken care of.

Andy was totally baffled by all of this...along the lines of, "You must really like your nephew." Well, duh, but aside from that...it's who I am and how I react when someone of the young and helpless variety are so upset that they are losing it. (Remember Sally Struthers and her suffering kid commercials? KILLED ME.) And as the tia, auntie, big sister, or even just good friend of the parents? I can do stuff like this. Well, especially for the niece and nephew, gramma is the usual suspect, spoiling rights are obviously hers, but I had the google at my fingertips this time...so we had to do it in tandem.

This, however, is also why I could never walk into a classroom of under 6th graders (dude, sometimes, 6th graders were just so wee and so pathetically helpless that I had to give them up too) as a substitute teacher. And NO WAY was I taking on a class of my own super-littles when I did do the teaching thing. I can't be everyone's go-to auntie, it would have drained me dry.

I'll just keep spoiling other peoples' kids, as is my right when I'm not being paid to look after/teach them.

The View from Up Here

2010-01-27T07:09:00.000-08:00

So it's just dawning on some of my coworkers, as we are walking towards their bus stops after work, just how close I live to the new building. Especially when I point and say, "See that one? That's where I live."

But all flowers and gravy it never is. And where did that idiom come from? Or is it to early for me to think straight?

Did I ever recount (okay, too early if I'm using that word) the tale of us looking at the apartment back in May/June of '09? You know, last decade? When we may have seen a rocker and a baseball player in the hallways? Both being this place's claim to fame? (Both most likely having moved out as people like us vs. people like them start renting space here...another story all together.)

Anyhow, so as we were given the grand tour I noticed that the HUGE neon-looking sign out the windows that face both bedrooms. "Does that thing light up?" I asked.

"Oh, no, no no. It's just a sign."

I was a wee bit disappointed, simply because it was REALLY BIG and I thought that there had to be a catch and/or maybe a way to get the rent reduced if, say, we had to live with a huge neon sign burning our retinas every night. But the rent was super reduced anyway and we decided to take it.

Sometime around November I noticed that there was great movement on and around the hotel with regards to refurbishing. Especially the lights and lamps that give it it's particular...um, whatchucallit...personality. They are either fuchsia or purple you see. Outside lamps. Shining on huge pots of flowers. (If I've mentioned this hotel or you've stayed there, you don't have to let everyone know where I live, but now you know....although I may have blabbed this somewhere along the line anyway...I do that...)

Where was I? Right...lights...refurbishing...cuz you know, winter is DARK and maybe they need to let more people know where they are? Was it around xmas time that they finished? I want to say so...And January is traditionally the darkest time of the year in Seattle...and I mean, you have to bring in the customers somehow...after all, the name side of the sign points out to the world...but the "HOTEL" side? Right towards our building...and it's pink:There isn't even an alleyway between us from this view...seriously must have been there back when my building was a parking lot or something. It's about as high as the 8th floor...i.e. they are the ones whose retinas are probably all burnt out by now. Or maybe they are even more sleep deprived than I am with the fuchsia glow coming in THROUGH THE CLOSED BLINDS and reflecting vividly across the walls of the bedroom.

This morning? While over-thinking my latest dream in the shower***? I realized maybe why I'm having so many god-awful dreams with pain and death and chasings and knives and mean parents and a constant flashing pink hotel sign somewhere in the middle of it all...

Back in May/June, I remember joking that it would be the bomb if it was a flashing hotel sign where the neon was giving up the ghost like in all those creepy killer movies from the 80s...And in my dreams? It flashes.

***On a semi-drifting off topic...I want to note this here for me more than anything...dreams about parents...I've been having a lot of them lately. Not memory dreams...not always my parents, just parents, interacting with their kids, all pretty much in the same way. No, this is not me wanting children, possibly the exact opposite.

The conclusion I came to as I was rinsing the conditioner out of my hair is that my folks, who wanted me to be more learned and accomplished and successful than they were, kept fighting against my teen-aged self when I did become at least more learned and accomplished than them...because it's one thing to fill a person's head with all this "stuff"...and quite another for them to grow into it. (And oh my gods how I thought I knew EVERYTHING when I was sixteen and why are these people holding me back!)

I don't dwell on the "what would have beens," it just gives me indigestion. Besides, I knew then, even if they refused to see it, that it was completely against their mexican natures to let me be the american teenager I wanted to be. What I wouldn't have given to have them come to this conclusion sooner. See, raising two kids and seeing how they came out before my baby brother even hit puberty? Oh how they've changed...old fashioned they might still think themselves (and ACKNOWLEDGE), and too strict and mean my BB may think them...but man, he has NO IDEA how easy he has it.

I Must Be Looking in All the Wrong Places...

2010-01-20T07:14:00.000-08:00

Shortly before my xmas trip down to LA I got a bug in my ear (does that sound like the right idiom) to make some beanies for the bigger boys in my family: My older brother (OB) and my baby brother (BB).

I started a beanie for my BB from my stash as the boy has this thing about "if it has purple in it, I'll take it" so there was some yarn, with purple in it, and yeah, I started it. (Though, to clarify, he did not know he was getting a hat made, he did not specifically state the above purple statement, both just came to me in a "shower thinking" moment.)

Did I mention my BB has a big head? See, unlike OB, it's because of his hair. He's got more hair on his head than the rest of us, mom, dad, me, OB...put together. So I cast on a million stitches in sock-yarn, cuz there was purple in it. Suffice to say, as with all last-minute/desperate knitting ideas I've had...it didn't work out. Along with the purple there was way too much yellow and the green looked awfully fluorescent...I'll take a pic. later, promise, as it's still sitting in a time-out on my desk as I write this.

Instead I decided I'd focus on my OB. I'd tried (and failed failed failed) in the past to make him a hat that would fit. Both, it seems have inherited some ancient Tarascan BIG HEADS. This time it would be done. So shortly before leaving I ventured into a bit of yarn shopping to find some Dale of Norway Falk yarn (as it's worked super well for me in the past for hats) in black, grey, or other dark dreary colors that my brother would wear...

Did I miss something in the yarn world? Or is it a Seattle thing? I could not find a skein of black yarn in Falk or Louet Gems or any other superwash sock-ish yarn to save my life! By utter chance and mistake I dug out the very last dark grey and two very battered black skeins of Ull in the back of the very last shop I had time to go to...(seriously, leaving the next morning and thinking, "Oh, why not try one more shop...")

But I was armed with yarn and needles and cast on as soon as I got on the plane (I'd be there for a few days before xmas, I could do this...) I knit and knit and knit and caught the attention of the children who helped me lie bold as anything and swore that the hat was for MY dad, not theirs (gotta love kids who will go in on capers with you). But also caught the attention of my BB, who very much wanted a black hat also, please.

Well, after finishing my older brother's hat, I didn't have much yarn left, so I told him I'd see what I could do with what I had and started a duplicate hat for him...It fits my head wonderfully...maybe even my nephew's head...my BB's? With a 25.5" circumference? Not so much. And I'd run out of yarn...

So off I went in search of more black yarn...This was December 20th or so.

It's now January, the 20th even. I finally found some black machine-washable-ish sockish yarn for his hat...Seriously, did everyone buy out the yarn stores of their black yarn from LA to Seattle? (Well, it was xmas after all...)

And yes, I know I can order stuff over the internets...but I really wanted to touch and feel and see what I was getting myself into...again, he's got a 25.5" circumference on his behaired noggin', those are a whole lotta stitches if all I could get was super-ultra fingering weight vs fatter heavier fingering (and you know they are ALL labeled JUST fingering...). And with the shipping charges? For yarn I wasn't sure I wanted? My cheapassed nature got the better of me and instead I worked in running a few blocks to a yarn store into my regular Seattle-centered excursions.

When I was picking up my glasses I again figured, "eh, I'm here" and dropped into the yarn store where I'd neither found Falk or Ull or anything close to what I was looking for, but you never know, right?

Hello battered skein of Berocco Ultra Alpaca...I'm about to finish casting on 180 stitches for this boy's hat...I must like him just a little, eh?

Me Again...

2010-01-18T19:43:00.000-08:00

I was talking with my boss's boss when I noticed there was a chip in her lens that, thanks to an ill-timed fall (she was traveling that week) she would have to live with it until further notice. It got us on the topic of glasses and the importance of spares and backups. What we didn't say, and what I now share with you, is the importance of a spare or backup that you like.

See, back in October my eye doctor pronounced that my left lens needed more tweaking. This is not a new thing. My eyes aren't so bad that were it not for modern technology I'da been eaten by the saber toothed tiger as I'd have mistaken it for a kitty. (Okay, 'member Adventures in Babysitting? Did the movie also have the girl who lost her glasses petting a rat and thinking it was a kitty? Cuz the book was especially good at mentioning that bit...and I can't remember the movie all that well...) But my eyes require the use of my glasses to keep me from say, walking off with complete strangers in low lit crowded rooms thinking they're the folks I went to the party with...

Anywho, the wonders of insurance stated that they'd pay for the lenses, but not the frames...given my knack for eating through metal...I don't have many old frames just lying about, and given the state of the economy, I didn't exactly have the cash to spend on a new frame (new frames?) So I grabbed the only pair of glasses that did have serviceable frames and turned them in for lenses. I know I could have tried wearing the super old prescription as I waited for my more favored pair of glasses to be updated...but there was that whole "can't see to drive" hurdle that I just could not jump. All you Seattle drivers are welcomed :).

So, for the last three months I've been wearing a pair of glasses that..I'm not sure how to describe it...except to say they just weren't me anymore.

I mean, back when I got them, I liked them. A lot. They were, um, well, just like all the other glasses I've had since I got away from the BIG PLASTIC FRAMES of the 80s. Nothing fancy, just wire rims that let me see. Wire rims that faded into the background and could be taken off at a moment's notice to take a picture (back when I could still see the camera clear enough to not squint...). I know this stems a whole bunch from the fact that my mom did not want me wearing glasses, at all, ever! And was actually shocked by how bad my eyes were when I did get them (I was thirteen...glasses and braces and bad hair, oh my!)

Somewhere along the way though, I totally came to accept my glasses as a part of me. So much so that frame choosing became a fun part of the doctor's office visit, and I'd force friends to come with me as you would on any shopping excursion. Sometimes I laughed right out loud when after hours of searching I'd choose something that looked just like the one I had before...no really.

But...going back to this pair of frames that I chosen so long ago? It felt like I was putting on an outfit I hadn't worn for years...and maybe didn't quite fit right anymore...or look right...or feel like I should still be wearing...like that embroidered jean jacket I still have at my mom's house...I love it to death, but wear it? Out in public? Like I said before, they are serviceable, they let me see, but...they're just not me anymore.

So I did it. A few weeks back I took my mom's xmas present (cash) and my first month of no car payment (did I mention I paid off my car? Go me!) and brought my favorite frames (that had no corroded metal damage whatsoever thankyouverymuch) and asked the nice ladies at my doctor's office to make them work again...which they did.

It's like I sent my one rain jacket to get dry cleaned or something. Making due with whatever I could until it was time to pick it up (but not the faded, embroidered jean jacket, mind). I picked them up today and when I put them I could not help smiling...wrinkles be damned! Hello me! Where have you been?!?

Lesson learned...I will budget for frames every year. Like a pair of shoes, I need to both like and be comfortable with what's on my face helping me not walk away with complete strangers or crash my fully paid for car.

The Good News Is...My Mom was Right

2010-01-12T21:16:00.001-08:00

She doubted herself. Tomorrow I will praise her logical thinking.

It's official, I have never had the chicken pox.

Everyone at my Dr's office was all, "Of course you have." And, "Maybe the case was so mild you didn't even know it." Or the brutal but true, "Sweetie, at your age you'd better hope you've had it!"

Nope. Never. Not a speck of it in my system. Damn.

See, and this is where you can't trump my mom's line of thinking:
a) My mom has the best memory of everyone in the family.
b) In my 18 years of living there, she does not remember me ever sprouting any tell-tale fever and dots.
c) Had I gotten the chicken pox as a child, why/how did my older brother & dad escape? (Yep, that's me saying that my dad was also not a chicken pox survivor until...)
d) My baby brother got the pox at age 3 (and I was far far away at college) and both my older brother AND my dad (at the not-so-old-to-me-now age of 48-ish) got it, full boar (bore?), no holds barred.

So, when I have the paper results (as opposed to the voicemail), I get to head down the the health department and see if I can't get an inoculation.

Somehow that doesn't seem like a reward for being right though...

Does It Count as I Actually Cooked, Twice?

2010-01-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was supposed to be a productive go-shopping day.

My trip to LA made me realize just how lacking I am in "non-work clothes." See, work clothes? I have sufficient slacks and blouses (okay, I think of silky/rayon with puffy sleeves and maybe a bow or some-such thing when "blouse" comes to mind...but really they're all cotton knit things that I got in the woman's department at JC Penny's or Macy's...) to get me through...I'd say 2, maybe 2.5 weeks without even having to think about "matching" (they all match) or laundry.

Ask me to go out on a Saturday for a casual brunch or day with your kid and I'm frantically searching for a clean pair of jeans and a non-work shirt/blouse that is not part of my "lounge around the house t-shirt collection" which should never see the light of day, and maybe something that makes me look not too frumpy...but also not like I'm ready to go to a business meeting...with jeans...and I'm super lacking; unless I've been really good with the laundry.

As I scanned what I'd packed in LA for such an outfit to go to my nephew's birthday party? You know with kids? And cake? And ice cream? And kids covered in cake and ice cream? I realized I honestly had nothing to wear. Everything I'd packed was just wrong. Nothing was comfy enough to chase kids in, if the need should arise. And let me be all single-no-kids female here...I was not looking forward to getting "kid" stains out of anything I owned, should the need arise.

So it's been in the back of my mind that I need to shop for such occasions. Especially since more and more folk are getting in the family way and I so do not want to be that person that can't enjoy their time with their friends and their kids because my pants are too nice to sit on the grass and chill out in. I've never been that kind of person, yet somehow my wardrobe is vectoring in that direction.

I know what happened...bike accident + weight gain + pants that HURT my HIP + way more work-style clothes on sale than non work clothes = me with exactly 2 outfits to wear on a "go out" weekend.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day to amend this problem.

Then I woke up with the gnarliest of sinus headaches...so I sat up in bead and started re-re-reading the Harry Potter saga in between naps of epic proportions, sudafed, and advil. I'd say I did absolutely nothing? But I got hungry around noon and made breakfast during the more medicated of moments. Had I not been loaded up on sudafed I think the sound of cracking eggs might have killed me...or made my head explode...that's how bad it was.

Then I went straight back to bed and hit repeat....until dinner.

Seriously? I made dinner? Though Andy helped mightily with this as I was getting super distracted by my head, nose, and I also seemed to have thrown my back out...but as I figured out later, it was that aforementioned hip twisting my tendons and back out of whack again. I think it's something to do with the 11 flights of stairs I went down on Friday (fire alarms cause the elevators to park in the lobby until the firemen make it all better, FYI) in order to leave the building.

Whatever the case? I did not make it to the stores. And I'm rather glad of it. My body needed to collapse and be useless (except for maybe also doing some laundry) after all these weeks of go, go, go! It's winter and I honestly think we are meant to do WAAAAAAY less during this time of year than society says we should.

Today being a whole new day and my headache finally subsiding at about 4AM...maybe I'll venture out, depends on how the hip is doing (Tiger's Balm Muscle Rub is my friend). After all, I did wash my weekend jeans and I'm almost positive I have a t-shirt worth wearing.

On the Twelfth Day of Xmas...

2010-01-05T23:03:00.001-08:00

I'll be at work and probably getting that "third day" soreness from moving that will prevent me from doing much celebrating...so I did my baking a night early:

One Slightly Lop-sided Rosca De Reyes

Why do candied anythings remind me of super old ladies? The smell, the sticky sweetness of them...And why do they always taste as if they've been around for a few decades? I mean, I did check the "packed on" and "sell by" dates and though they might be considered "fresh" for candied cherries and what might be pineapple and some other thing that turned into hard jelly, it just boggles the mind. Some day maybe I will candy my own (and thus I shall complete my training and become a full-fledged little old lady.(Insert Darth Vader breathing sound effect, here.))

But the more things stay the same:

...The more they change.

I made two wee Kings Cakes this year instead of my usual way-too-big-for-two-people one so I could not die a sugary death (because it really is, VERY sugary, and Andy will only have one slice)alone, instead I will share the love with workmates.

Now the hard bit...which one to take in? I'm leaning toward the all red one...though the red/green does look more like a crown...yet it's a wee bit more lopsided as well.

Whatevers. That decision will have to wait on the 'morrow, cuz it took about 5 hours to make these things (silly 70's messican cook books with their "stir by hand" for a million stirs and kneading for like 15 minutes, or something...some day also I will follow the recipe without my skipping a step or seven...), and it's past my bedtime.

Feliz Dia de los Tres Reyes! If you celebrate and stuff.

So I Walked to Work Yesterday...

2010-01-05T07:24:00.000-08:00

If you knew exactly where my new building is, this would not be all that astounding of a proclamation.

I think you'd give me more accolades for just getting out the door and enduring a morning of RUSHED unpacking and setting up and finding out that we had absolutely NO ability to print (though I joked that I could possibly have our Maryland office print up and FedEx me some documents (yes, to Seattle) as I COULD see THEIR printers...but that was only funny for a wee bit).

I was ready to go home by 11AM. No, I'm not that efficient. It's more like, you know that new-building-smell? No, it is NOTHING like new-car-smell. I'm talking about the paint that hasn't quite set, the carpet vapors plugging up your pores, the ventilation system trying to keep up with 462 new bodies + movers + workmen?

Yeah, that new-building-smell. I thought it would break me.

But after a few hours I was so high on fumes that I barely noticed the lack of oxygen and instead was more concerned that my ear drums would burst from the "noise-dampening" speakers. I know it's not the ventilation system, that's down on the ground and as over-worked as it got (it must have been 80 degrees in that building at one point) it was quietly working away and the noise was definitely coming from overhead.

There are these speakers over our heads that along with being the PA system, seem to be pumping out enough "white" noise that one might mistake it for burgundy. I noticed it with a headache throbbing certainty when I went to the other side of the building (to see my apartment building through the window...) and experienced the blessed sounds of silence.

Later, when Andy met up with me to go have an early dinner and check out my company's new digs, seeing as his head is a whole foot closer to the speakers? He confirmed that I wasn't going bat-shit insane (always a good thing on a Monday).

But now it is Tuesday and I have to go back...and finish with the organizing and maybe light a candle to the printer server so I can maybe get some work done. Cuz as fun as it is to sit around and do nothing? I'd rather sit around and do nothing at home than at work, silly me.

A Man, A Plan, a Canal, Panama*

2010-01-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

I got nothin' except for the date:

01-02-2010

*Also a palindrome, in case you missed it :).

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve Already?

2009-12-31T18:12:00.000-08:00

I swear, the end of the year kinda snuck in and waited in the dark for HOURS until I finally staggered home under way too many bags, wet, and tired from the rain (in Seattle?!? Really?!?) and packing and more packing at work, and man do my shoulders hurt...

THEN JUMPED IN MY FACE as soon as I turned on the lights with streamers and awful noisemakers and looking way too happy to be here again.

I joked at work today that if I make it past 10 PM it may be a miracle. I'm not sayin' it's old age...it's just been a harder than usual week for me. I blame at least 90% of it on the moving. I detest packing and moving in my normal hum drum life...moving offices? While still trying to conduct business? Are you kidding me? AAAAaaaaauuuummmm. What's that Bezzie recommended? Push out the jive, bring in the love....I need a whole lot more love, I think. Come 2010/Monday (and that just looks weird) we'll be situated in the new building and hello my other hated task...unpacking.

But seriously, really? New Year's Eve already? You'd think I'd keep track seeing as it happens at the same time every year.

Maybe if I caffeinate enough I'll be willing to walk to the other side of my apartment building to watch the Space Needle explode with color and lights and such at midnight...but man, that's like 6 hours away! And it is COLD outside! And did I mention the rain?

Yes, along with my borderline OCD tendencies, I am a number one wuss. It's good to know these things about yourself.

Anywho, go party it up for me. My goal is to stay awake long enough to watch the "Harry Potter 1/2 Blood Prince" movie that I TOTALLY missed this year...they are going to take away my fan card if I keep this up, I swear. I might be able to finish my baby brother's hat...or maybe just sit there and pretend to be knitting as I nod off...

May 2010 not be so very exhausting.

Bizarro Girl Strikes Again...

2009-12-30T18:59:00.000-08:00

So you know those people who can't be the ones to finish the last piece/bite of anything?

I'm part of the clean plate society, not a problem that one.

It's the ruining of a pristine thing: cutting a pie/cake/etc., or even opening a new box of cereal (until I verify that nope, there are no other boxes of open cereal to consume) or say a bag of super tasty Trader Joe's Hickory Barbecue Potato chips that I bought...not gonna do it...not if I share my kitchen and snacks with someone else who can do it instead, EVEN IF I KNOW there are no other open bags of chips around...

This is not a problem if I live alone...only when I do silly things like share groceries with people. Yep, this means if we split a box of cookies at work, I'll wait for you to open and take the first one...unless you give me permission...no really.

You'd think I weigh 90 lbs. as everyone gets a yummy handful of barbecue potato chips, cookies, pie, anything with way too much sugar, before me...I wish...

No, instead it's just another in my long list of odd things that makes me who I am...

And if I'm at my mom's house? And I'm going to open the Eskimo Pie box? Though it might be the absolute and only ice cream in the house? Of course I ask permission first, even if it's my niece who's asking for the thing and not me.

Thus ends another interlude into my wacky way of being...brought on by the fact that Andy opened up my bag of super yummy Hickory Barbecue Potato Chips...score!

I'm Ba-a-ck...

2009-12-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

And so hating life at hours this early in the AM knowing I have to actually go to work today.

And it's the last week of the year an the last week at the current site (the whole kit and caboodle is moving starting FRIDAY) and it's all just hitting me now.

AND OF COURSE I didn't start any office packing before I left for LA, hello? Have we been introduced?

Okay, enough negativity...time to get out there and at least pretend a bit of productivity.

(Yes, maybe I am a bit more Pollyanna than I used to be in high school...I still wear the same amount of black though.)

On the Ground

2009-12-19T18:06:00.000-08:00

In la la LAnd.

Surprising mom? Totally priceless.

I got a hug and a kiss and a smack on the rump for not letting her clean house before I arrived. But dude, totally worth it.

I've helped put up and trim the tree, have wrapped a million presents, and oh yeah, someone remind me never ever ever to go to a mall the weekend before xmas. I have no idea what I was thinking when I volunteered to go pick up "one last thing." It must be the euphoria associated with home-cooked food and family, that's my only excuse.

Okay, little brother is eying the computer like it's his turn or something...kids these days :).

Real or Imagined?

2009-12-17T07:27:00.000-08:00

There is an old "Rhymes with Orange" comic that I may have referred to in one of my ever-growing number of posts...the text is basically:

If you study too much your brain will swell and dislodge itself from it's place, fall down into your throat, and choke you to death...or something.

So here is my theory, having studied brains, learning, and the stuff that happens therein:

If you study a whole lot, (can there be too much?) for a long time, you crowd out things your brain feels might be so trivial that it eventually starts shoving huge swaths of stuff into places you can only access when half awake in the shower. And it might drive you mad trying to figure out if it was a dream or really happened.

A whole lot of my past falls into this category. Granted, adding um, body chemical altering substances (so as to not say booze and smokes if my little brother ever finds my blog, hi!) in the mix really makes it hard to remember feeding L stove top one turkey day...or being in other L's apartment more than just that one time we played RISK...

I feel like I'm going to need other people to help me remember my past if I keep changing careers/learning new ways to make money. (Learning about fiscal closings and GAAP and USAID requirements is a little less trivial than I thought it'd be...silly me.)

But sometimes you don't have the someone in your life anymore to verify...

I can't stop thinking about the time I arranged to pick up my best friend from high school at the airport. We were attending colleges at opposite ends of the country and I was home first. Did I call her mom and volunteer? Did I call her? I don't remember the details anymore.

But at the airport, back when you could go all the way up to the terminal door? Really, kids, you could! There was no TSA and you could take LITERS of water onto a plane and the pilots used to walk around and say "hi" (so they could take a break and maybe stretch and maybe NOT FALL ASLEEP while doing their pilot thing?!?) and if you were under twelve and FLYING ALONE (is that allowed anymore?!?) or super cute, or even just smiled and said "hi," they gave you "wings."

I am so very old. Where was I...

At the terminal...a roundish one...I sat and waited for K's plane to arrive and...here is where I am wondering "live or memorex"...K's mom/dad/both? Appear...just to make sure I showed, then left before K's plane landed.

My 19 year-old self felt utter disappointment that they didn't trust me. (My 35 year-old self smiles at the lengths parents went through in the days before cell phones.) See, I remember the feelings associated with the whole experience...and I'm getting extreme deja vu writing this out...if I did already once, long ago, I blame learning about Use Tax Application.

Well...I gotta finish packing (procrastination, I am it), my flight to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula (frankly, much cooler that just plain "LA" in my over-filled mind) is only a few hours away...so unless I can wrest the keyboard from my baby brother's grasp, more radio silence to come...

If I don't make it back on to post: Happy Holidays! Cuz they're all piling up around us whether or not we celebrate any of them.

Unless Blood or Tears are Involved, it Doesn't Count

2009-12-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

I'm talkin' 'bout a sewing project of course!

So...I'm done.

I know, I know, my little Janome Jem (truly outrageous - sorry, couldn't help it) has been through thick and thin...some of these instances have even been chronicled here! Therefor it should be no surprise that it's bound to be an adventure whenever I have to take out my little patchwork Jem.

This was to be an easy venture. My dad's xmas gift, which needs to be packed and shipped tomorrow if I'm to fulfill my ruse. Oh, did I not mention this?

Right, it's been a while. And I've been under radio silence because somehow time keeps passing much quicker than I need it to and it's easier to keep quiet about everything to everyone that to make up stories to keep the lie going....

See, for the first time in what seems like decades, I'm going home for xmas. To make it extra crispy special, we're not telling my mom, it's her xmas gift :). Why am I spilling the beans now? Because I leave in 4 days and I needed some rant and understanding time.

I've planned and plotted with my mom every year to try to get the gifts home on time for distribution and general last minute nonsenses (i.e. "I don't know what to get so-and-so, what are "we" getting him/her/them.") It's usually my dad's gift, you see.

This time though! I figured it out! ALL. By. Myself. I was soooo proud.

The man needs an upgrade from the sad towels he uses to warm his legs in the early winter mornings on his drive across LA to get to work. I would find him a cool lap blanket. Yes, I do know the term oxymoron. Yes, I quickly found out that there is no such thing as a "cool" and/or lap-sized anything with the term "blanket" as a part of its name.

See, this year? It's about throws. Big, fluffy, floofy, fancy throws made of cashmere, merino, mink (seriously?), high quality fake furs, and any and all things non machine-washable.

Hence the need for a trip to a big box craft store to pick up some fleece and thread, and time to pull out my wee little Janome Jem (truly outrageous) for some sewing fun!

Cuz sewing is fun! Really! Unless you need to wind a bobbin and notice this:
My bobbin winder's bobbin holder (say that 3xs fast) has had a piece of it snapped off. I found the piece in the bag. My theory is that it happened during the last move... Regardless, I either need to find a way to fix it, or buy a new machine.

What? Why so drastic a remedy? Because I am done.

I never loved this machine the way I did my Singer (see that linked post above), and every, single, time I need to use it lately has involved my laying out cash for bits, pieces or, in this case, pre-spooled bobbins.

Why didn't I just go get one of those "side-winder" thingies? Because I did. Go out. In the freezing pre-snow-feeling Seattle weather (maybe not down here, but it is snowing in Everett as I type), to hunt it down. The one place that had it? The same big box store previously mentioned, for $40. No, you're not reading that wrong. Yes, I know it's only $19 for the pink one on the website, but in the store? It costs more than I'm willing to shell out for something that might not even wind bobbins that fit with my machine. They had a whole list down the side of the box...not a gamble I wanted to take, I'd rather spend that $40 in LA next week.

So instead I went to Quality Sewing & Vacuum in Ballard to see what my options were...fixing that wee piece, is now more than the machine is worth. See, it's $150 just to send it in to be looked at. When I needed it cleaned and checked out for last years stockings? It was cheaper than buying a new one, I had a coupon, so I went for it.

After being told everything is good and yet STILL having to fight with it every step of the way? I kinda came to the realization that this little machine and I may need to part ways. Today? possibly the last straw.

See, I did accomplish my task:
One lap blanket in black fleece and some black/gray flannel that was going to become pajama pants, but as it was mis-measured for me at the same big-named craft store it was sitting in my sewing tub waiting for a project.

I folded it so you could see the two sides, but also so that it hides the fact that it's not quite rectangular. See, along with the usual cursing and letting of blood that my sewing adventure usually gives me...I also fought with the "teeth" that help move the fabric along. Apparently my little Jem was hungry.

I may have mentioned a straw breaking above? Yep...I'm thinking I need to start saving for a new sewing machine. By the time I need to sew again? I may have gathered enough pennies. (Have you all noticed I only bust out the machine a couple times a year? And to prove I'm not the professional sewer, um, this is the machine that I'm thinking of replacing my little guy with, and before you say anything, yes, it's another Janome.)

And for you knitters:

Done!

65 inches after washing. I didn't block it because, well, it's Berocco Comfort and it's not like the college student that gets this will either.

It's to be packed and sent off to OFA tomorrow...yey!

Speaking of packing? I need to get my act together as I leave on Thursday morning and there are a million things on my to do list before I get dropped off at the airport. This is the part of traveling that I really really hate.

58" Long, but Only When Lying Down

2009-11-30T23:02:00.001-08:00

My red scarf (yeah, I'm doing one of those as well) is now 58" long, when laid out on the carpet...but only seem to come up to my chin when I'm standing up...(I'm 63.5" tall)

Either I've grown, or um, something changes quite drastically between laying something down and having gravity play with it.

Hmm, I just read what I wrote,and I am 12, as I am giggling with how dirty that all sounds. Is it sad I have to remind myself I am still just speaking about yarn? I must be tired.

Was My Last Post Really That Long Ago?

2009-11-30T07:23:00.000-08:00

Hmm, the 22nd...I um, guess it was.

So 'member how I said I was stuffed last week? We had Turkey dinner #2 on Friday, the um, 27th (in lieu of black Friday, more on that some other day). I swear, there must have been a competition between L&L and J&L about how much wonderful food they could make and convince me to eat.

There was a couch with my name on it...and then given a blanket to collapse under...cuz boy-howdy, my system was so devoted to digesting my arms and legs totally froze!

Andy did not make it past the first few minutes post feasting, opting to go to bed instead of watching "the something Riddick" or whatever movie was on. Knowing it would be very very bad of me to lie down so soon after eating (hello heartburn) I watched and inspected my eyelids in turns. We were all stunned into silence, and part of it really was because the movie was soooo gimmicky and terribly cliche...but really, what were we expecting.

My eyelid inspecting won the coin toss in the end and I awoke to the final line of the movie...which, along with most of Vin Diesel's dialogue needed translating...but whatevers, a click of J's magic remote and suddenly we were SUCKED into the stories behind The Facts of Life. No really! And we were all awake and laughing and commenting and my word, what is wrong with Natalie's eyebrows?!?! (If I pick up the outside edges of mine and lift them a la Mr. Spock, I get the same weird skin looking deal going, so I should shut up now...). And Mrs. Garret was still alive! And singing on cruise ships! Oh my youth...

It was a grand way to end the evening.

Another Thanksgiving successfully navigated. Oh, except for the pies I made...

I didn't mention the pies for J&L's did I?

Well, same pies as L&L's. Except I fiddled with the crust after some more comments and recommendations at work...I did something TERRIBLY wrong. I have pictures I can load later. They are quite pretty. Perfect for the bright lights and long hours of food photography. But if you want a slice? Break out a hacksaw for the crust...no really.

I have no idea what went wrong. As of last night I can finally cut into it with a regular non-serrated knife. But on Friday? HA HA HA HA, we had so much fun making fun of my rock hard pretty crust, lemme tell ya.

Remind me not to mess with a good thing.

Early Thanksgiving...

2009-11-22T23:01:00.001-08:00

I am officially stuffed.

And there are so many leftovers!

Which I didn't cook!

I love being the "single person" at couples' Thanksgivings...especially early ones like L&L&T's! Now I'm set for sweet potato pie until Turkey Day!

I would upload pictures of the pumpkin pie and the stuffed mushrooms Andy and I contributed, but a) I forgotted to take pictures of the mushrooms, and b) the pie pictures didn't come out AT ALL as my hand hurt too much when I was trying to take them...

Besides, these pictures outdo what mine would have looked like a million to one:

Sun Dried Tomato Stuffed Mushrooms
Silky Smooth Pumpkin Pie

I used this pie crust, and I just gushed about it in Bezzie's comments:

All Butter Really Flaky Pie Dough

Dude, I shall never fear pie crust again, all I'm sayin'.

About my hand...
So you know how when you stub your toe/have a hang nail/papercut/whatever you seem to find it over and over and over again and hurt and rehurt and rehurt it ad infinitum?

Well, whaddaya know, when you burn your hand as you're taking your bean-filled pre-baked pie crust out of the oven? You will inevitably burn it again with scalding hot water! Then burn it again when you put in the ready-to-be-baked but VERY HEAVY pies into the oven! And yet again when you go to take the tin-foil tents off the edges! And then what felt like a few more hundred times as you're frying the shallots (did you know they are also known as green onions?)! And flying grease on an oven burn? Oh yeah, a new kind of torture, not to mention more burny bits while baking the mushrooms to prepare them for the stuffing!

Or maybe you do if you are me...Regardless, my left hand HURTS, and looks like I set the back of it on fire, or maybe ironed it...or, as I actually did, found that the oven racks are WAY TOO CLOSE TOGETHER! And adjusting them while the oven is set to 400 degrees is a STUPID IDEA. Also, pumpkin pies in pyrex baking dishes are heavier than they look.

I hope next year's me will reread this post before attempting either of the above recipes to avoid looking like I ripped duct tape off the back of my hand. I'm off to go find the neosporin.

Never Ever EVER Mention Your Plans to Save Up for a New Computer In Front of the Old One...

2009-11-18T07:43:00.001-08:00

I know this, really I do, an yet I must have swallowed a stuuuuupid pill as I was working on my budget yesterday.

I'm sorry, Mini, but I REALLY miss having a lappy. It's rather hard to hall you into bed to watch some late-night online b-movies (dude, reliving my misspent childhood with all the old b-movies on hulu, seriously).

And during my pox scare? (No spots yet, I have never been so happy to have my sinuses so stuffed and my head pounding so hard...just a sinus/cold thing...so far...) I really could have used some in-bed computer-doctoring instead of dragging my sorry sore body out of it to see what Dr. Intarweb had to say about how my symptoms compared to the dreaded adult-chicken-pox...

So, yeah, my mini has started to act up by locking up or not shutting off applications, or simply refusing to wake up and force a restart. I'm hoping that whatever temporary insanity it has will amend itself with the next Apple Update. They tend to release them at about the same time that my mini starts freaking out...so fingers crossed because my budget has me not purchasing anything costly for at least a COUPLE YEARS, Mini, did you hear that? YearS. Pretty please get better.

Also, no plague here. And yes, definitely planning on becoming Chicken Pox inoculated as soon as I can find out if my insurance will pay for it...otherwise it's another budget item expense. I realized that if I stay on with my present company, we work with so many countries and people that um, well, it does not hurt to have some extra protection when it comes to childhood diseases I never had.

Sadly, my extra day of staying inside waiting for the pox bloom, also made me miss out on reserving space for the Theo Chocolate Tour. Okay, it was more like I spent all day sleeping and therefore did not call the place to reserve any spots seeing as I was unconscious. I obviously needed the sleep, but um, yeah, kinda pissed at myself and disappointed that I'll not be doing the tour this time around. This is where staycationing trumps a real vacation, though. I can always make it a Saturday trip sometime in the distant future, no worries :).

I did venture underground yesterday, and that was rather fun. There was even a, um, "not quite right" person on the tour, at least for a little bit...to me it just added to the Seattle ambiance. To others? They were much happier to see the backside of his floppy coat and dirty sneakers as he took off at a run far far away from our group.

If the predicted weather holds (torrential rain beginning late tonight) I can go to the Zoo today. The only thing stopping me is the fact that being outside mucking it from one damp display to another in temperatures that "feel like" the upper 30s might not make me happy about such a decision. I'll be begging for a sinus/cold relapse that way...I think my best bet would be to go to the Seattle Art Museum today and catch the Michelangelo/Calder exhibits. Which, being a big dork, really call to me more than the cute Long Tailed Macaque. The zoo might be cheaper in winter...but I might have to wait for temps in the 50s for me to enjoy it better.

The Seattle Times just published a "What to do in Rainy Weather" article...which I found rather amusing. As little as I've accomplished this staycation, I'm not disappointed at all. It really does beat being in the office working, after all. I do still have to motivate and get the xmas shopping done. I've scoped out where I want to go...just need to firmly decide on when.

Staycation or Sick Leave...That is the Question

2009-11-15T15:02:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned I've never had the chicken pox?

On Wednesday AM we were let known someone in the building had come down with them. I was told I couldn't even know what floor they were on, but really how likely would it be that I'd been in contact with them? (!?!)

Are you kidding? You are kidding, right? Hello? Accounts Payable just before the closing of the month sees more faces, paper, and interaction with everyone in the building than the public bathroom near the Space Needle! (Okay, maybe I exaggerate.)

Hello yesterday...I stayed in bed pretty much all day:
- Low grade fever.
- No energy.
- And yeah, I'm kinda itching a couple spots where neither my psoriasis nor my pityriasis rosea have ever been...
- BUT, sniffly as all get out.

So, it could be anything! Personally, since I didn't wake up covered in spots today, I'm leaning more toward stress rash + sinus infection from the 40 year old dust that was blasted over us during the confetti cannons at the They Might Be Giants concert + maybe standing in the rain and cold and wind after midnight at my age and not getting enough sleep might make me catch one of the million colds out there right now + IT'S MY VACATION I WILL NOT BE SICK! = Me in a very bad mood.

But I am just back from the outside (!), armed with Aveno Anti-Itchy Baby Bath stuff (I could not find the adult version), just in case.

For some reason I have it in my head that if I succumb to something, it'll be tomorrow, cuz you know, that would be my first day of vacation and all. Not that I made the best time/weather choice as the Pineapple Express is supposed to hit us full force then...

If bad things come in threes, um, universe? What's it gonna be? Or am I being to brazen to ask?

11-10-09...Countdown Day...

2009-11-10T11:38:00.001-08:00

Okay, I'm a big dork, and get a kick out of the silliness of numbers sometimes.

I guess last year's 10-09-08 was more melodic, but um, I remembered today's today, so there.

And we are counting down very important things this time around:

- I'm leaving work early to go get the apartment ready for visitors

- We're going to THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS tonight!!!

- I'm playing Seattle Tourist (tm) ALL, NEXT, WEEK

Yep, staycation here I come.

I can't wait! I've got a list of things I'm going to do, but only one per day, cuz I am also very lazy and what's a vacation that doesn't involve sleeping in and having time to chill?

So far I want to:
- Take the Seattle Underground Tour

- If it's clear, go up the Space Needle

- If it's not pouring, go to the zoo

- If I can convince Andy to come with me, go wine tasting

- Do the Theo's Chocolate Factory Tour

And in the PM/AM rest of the day? Get my xmas shopping done and over with.

Small goals, really.

If you've done the Seattle tourist thing? Or ever wanted to be a tourist in Seattle? What would you want to do? I need alternatives due to that silly WEATHER thing we have here.

What's that Word that's used When you are Using Someone for Profit?

2009-11-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

And can you exploit a dead person?

Bodies, the Exhibit? (I won't link, you'll see why.) I went the the Seattle showing. From an artistic and possibly medical point of view? Very informative.

From a gut-feeling? It made me very sad.

The website spoke in vague generalities, giving you all kinds of factoid information that seemed super informative in that trivial-pursuit kind of way. But once I scraped away all the floral language I understood that all these bodies came from China and that this exhibit was in no way tied or associated with anything medicinal. Looking at the bodies and body parts and the way they'd been posed and the people they'd hired to care for the "exhibits" made it obvious that every bit, from the laser lights to the bone-shaped ice trays at the gift store, was for raking in as much money as possible.

This part may not be true but it's what I imagine taking place:

- People died.

- Their families sold their bodies to this corporation (not science, mind, but a corporation out to make loads of cash).

- The corporation then plasticized the corpses and molded the muscles and tendons into people running and shooting darts and playing football.

And by their sizes and again, my imagination (possibly overactive), I think the fellow swinging the tennis racket, well, I totally got the feeling that he had never even set eyes on one when he was alive.

Because really? I totally understand donating your body to science and your organs to others and all that stuff. I was a pink-dotter when I had a license that had the dots, but what scenario do you imagine occurring to "give" your body over to a company? It's more like sell...and it wouldn't be you doing it but maybe your relatives...that maybe can't afford to bury you...(I did mention my overactive imagination) and that made me really want nothing to do with this exhibit and it's fake nod to the wonders of science and the body.

It's the Holden Caulfield inside of me I suppose...but I hate this kind of fakery. Disneyland, Renaissance Faires, Roadside Attractions, even Casinos are honest with you. The main goal is to part you from your money as they entertain you. You paying to get a learning experience with the kids running around in fake lab coats giving you BS stories about the "attractions?" That was kinda hard to swallow.

The website, and some of the kids in the coats, were happy to tell you about the process used to create what was there. And truthfully? It is amazing that this process exists. We are definitely living in the future and all that noise. I just wish we lived in an honest one.

Now, if you're an artist and don't feel like digging up and dissecting corpses to figure out the skeletal and muscular structures? Go. It's useful and informative. And some of the bodies and especially the circulatory systems? Amazing. Just don't over-think it, the way I did.

Shock the Monkey

2009-10-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

So maybe I'm a wee little bit out of the whole "knit this cuz everyone else is knitting it" loop...About three years behind, it would seem:

Monkey Socks for Mom:

Yep, another xmas, another pair of socks. But shhh, don't tell her these are for her, 'kay?

I followed the pattern as written, and when I saw they would actually fit my "thick and wides" I decided to frog the one I'd started a million years ago (back when I was on the Italy trip with my xMIL) which was also size 2s, but I'd "adjusted for size" and they could have easily fit my dad's feet...(where I get my "dainties from") except they are in a shade of pink that I don't think he'd appreciate. See, I'm learning again, certain stitches have WAY MORE STRETCH than others.

And I know you're gonna want to know what yarn I used...and I honestly can't remember...it's one of those 50% cotton/50% wool ones...maybe....maybe nylon/bamboo...fer sure it was on sale. I guess this is what that whole Ravelry Queue thing is useful for...

Anyhow, some knitting.

~~~~

Update on the health stuff:

I've switched my fish oil pill with a flax seed oil pill.

After a week? I can honestly tell you that if you want the omega 3s but not the fishy burp? Take flax seed oil. It may as well be iocaine powder, colorless, tasteless and it must dissolve instantly in my tummy.

Also? I have ankles again. But that might be due to the fact that I've practiced abstinence on the whole fish thing, I'm talkin' even veggie sushi (I don't know how purine rich seaweed might be)...you know, just to be safe...after all, when experimenting on yourself, you need to do it one bit at a time. This getting old thing? Sucks. Avoid it at all costs, I say.

~~~

Cuz I'd never leave you with a song in your head: Shock the Monkey, for reals. And can I just say...I think Peter Gabriel is actually younger in that video that I am currently, and that both makes me feel really old...and that I'm kinda not at all living to my potential...le sigh. (And a bigger shocker? Especially if I can't figure out how to not make it auto-play for you? The next song is him in 2009...oh my, time is a cruel, cruel thing.)

Go Flax Seed Oil!

2009-10-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

So I know I said something about knitting and pictures and it's a draft...but I wanted to share this with you all first.

On Facebook a couple days ago I posted something along the lines of:

Dude, my life is so over...purine rich foods (salmon being one of them apparently) are making my inherited gout-like-symptoms, um, bloom. Stupid genes.

See, we made Salmon cakes....and almost immediately after I had dinner I noticed my left ankle was what Andy's cousin affectionately calls a "cankle." You know, when your ankle is so inflamed that you can't tell where the calf ends and the foot begins?

Fun times in TaclessLand, lemee tell ya.

Of course I didn't go to the doctor, hello? What is the internet for? That's how I came up with"purine rich foods." And the fact that I have a world of pain to look forward to in my "golden years..." (sigh)

Only, I didn't think I'd scarfed down all that much Salmon.

Then last night it happened again...and there was NOTHING that I ate that was on the list...except for maybe the pasta...(certain carbs are purine rich you see...). But as my right ankle was getting in on the action? I was getting a wee bit more concerned.

Two things have changed in my life the last few months:

My BC pills went generic
I switched to the Costco brand fish oil.

Yes, I know taking any kind of hormone is prone to making your life a mess, and as much as I LOVE not writhing in pain for 7 days every month...I'm still thinking of ditching the pills if things don't change for the better...i.e. I get my chubby ankles back. Cuz I never realized how much more attractive my stumpy chubby ankles until they were gone...and Dr. Internet says BC/hormone pills will adversely affect a woman's water retention ability to the big clumpy nothing-fits end of the scale. Oh it is SO fun to be a girl.

Before getting all drastic though, I decided to ask the intarwebs about fish oil causing swollen extremities. I mean, remember, I did decide to experiment on myself using fish oil as an anti-inflammatory for my hip woes, right? Maybe it's a side effect?

Um, no. Or rather, I can't find any correlation.

What I did find out I want to pass on as a kind of PSA though. If you mix vitamin D (which I also take) with certain fish oils you can get bad things happening in your system. Nothing mentioned cankles...but the word "toxic" was thrown around a WHOLE lot. So I read the ingredients of my Nature's Made vs Costco omega 3 oils and...did you know that Nature Made has some fish but also flax seed oil in their Omega 3 oil pills? And the Costco brand is like 100% fish oil?

So maybe, just maybe, mind, I was kinda o-d-ing on the purine richness of the oil + salmon cakes + (cuz I fergotted until just now) sushi the other night + maybe a sushi lunch the day before the night of the sushi dinner... Add that to the fact that (since they don't list what kind of fish they use in their pills) I might have been poisoning myself with the oil + vitamin D...and that might explain a few things...

So I'm altering my experiment on my use of fish oil. I'm switching back to the burpy goodness of Nature Made (the Costco brand did reduce that little aspect of taking fish oil, by the way) and seeing if I can have ankles again.

Time for an Update

2009-10-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

Except I didn't upload the picture I wanted to show you.

Let's call this one the wanna be update and tonight I'll be more on the ball and upload my picture and all will be well.

In lieu of entertaining knitting (cuz you know, of course, that's what's in the picture,) I'll recount what I wrote in my wee journal as I rode the bus this morning:

As it's too foggy for me to drive, I thought I'd take the bus. Safety in numbers as well as size, if you look at it that way...of course the bus almost jumping the curb and nearly taking us all out at the same time did not make me feel very confident about my decision.

The driver apologized and as the wheels were still functional we continued on our way...he slipped, we concurred, because of the super wet tram tracks that he was driving on...I did mention the fog? This fact was punctuated several times as we felt the tires skidding all manner of ways as we continued down that same street...oh what fun.

But not nearly as frightening as feeling the same nausea inducing squiggle when we got onto the metal bridge to get me to work. It's one thing to crash and burn into a building, but to crash and fall into the canal? Not really what I had in mind.

It took hours for my stomach to settle.

And it's still grey and wet out, but no rain. Just the constant mist/fog that would make an awesome background to a slasher flick.

Pictures of soft yarny stuff later.

Too Many Things, All at Once, Again...

2009-10-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

I feel like a broken record sometimes.

It must be the sine-wave-esque existence of my current employment.

Trying to keep above water...but like I just stated a few minutes ago in an email that has prompted this post...it really is too many things...all at once...again...but this time? With "feeling." If you get my drift.

So I need to learn to thread water a little longer, else I drown. (Such a drama queen some days...)

More laters...

Almost an FO

2009-10-04T23:21:00.001-07:00

This is a hat for L&L's baby girl...almost.

As T can't stand stuff on her head...and it gets kinda nipping in Seattle, she needs a hat. One that can be tied on. Mom agreed, so I'm adding some ear-flaps and a i-cord style cording to fit the bill.

So almost an F.O. It gave me something to do as I watched that new Stargate show. Is it me or does the main doctor-guy strike you as a cross between Baltar and Dr. Smith? Or are all super-smart science-y guys that end up on space-ships in the middle of nowhere like that?

Motorheads don't get Giants...

2009-10-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

So the thing about sinus headaches and all the nastinesses I've been living with all week...they vanish as quickly as they go as long as they don't take root anywhere and become an infection.

This is what gave me the gumption to go down to the Showbox SODO after work today to snag some "They Might Be Giants" tickets for their November "Flood" show.

However, I must be some kind of hardcore "Giants" fan at heart seeing as I was patient enough to endure the traffic for the ballpark (hello, Mariner's game...) AS WELL AS all the surly burly guys that were hanging out at the SODO as MOTORHEAD is to play tonight. (And dude, their fans look a lot like them....)

I may as well have been asking for a Strawberry Daquiri at the motorcycle dive bar across the way...Not only did I have to convince the door guy I was not trying to buy any sold tickets to tonight's all-star line-up ("Come on, look at me, do I look like a Motorhead fan?") but I had to convince him to call his surly boss on the radio as the box office girl had gone home early...I mean, hi, the show was sold out, who goes to the box office now-a-days to buy tickets for a different show that's on the same night when you can pay the online ticket people up to an extra $10 to get your ticket! (And then wade through the masses the night of the show to pick up your ticket because they opted not to have the TMBG tickets mailed out to folks, which I thought odd.)

With 5 minutes until the box office closed, I took a big gamble...he looked a whole lot like a number of my students from the Big Island...only adult sized, and I could have sworn I heard "bra'" and not "man" when he patted a fellow down before letting him in...so...I asked him to call his "manager-guy" and his eyebrows shot up and the next thing you know we were speaking in the lilting sing-songy Island talk I loved about Hawai'i.

We were all smiles until his actually manager-guy showed up.

I know I'm at least, AT LEAST 10 years older than the guy that finally came up to sell me my tickets, and I know, I KNOW he was wondering why oh why was this lady wasting his time cuz dude, Motor-head, practicing, right behind THOSE DOORS! Can't you hear them (I could hear nothing else...) And he had to reopen the box office for me? For some obscure band that is older than he is? It's not like it's Moby, or even the Pouges (who are also showing up at the SODO and don't think I wasn't tempted to buy some of those tickets...but they were probably sold out eons ago and more likely more than what I could afford (I just checked, and yes to both). Oh how he suffered.

Is there a merit badge for this kind of thing? For either of us?