Filed under: General
To me the beauty of a journal is being able to look back a week ago, month ago, year ago and see where I was.
Where I was last year on this day looks like a great place to be.
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
Here’s to being taken care of.Here’s to my big fluffy comforter, without which curling up on the couch with a book wouldn’t be nearly as comforting.
Here’s to quilt batting, glue guns, and pompoms.
Here’s to making lists and checking them twice.
Here’s to coffee. Coffee is pretty awesome throughout the year, but there’s something special about the smell of coffee on a cold December morning.
Here’s to waking up with a cold nose. As opposed to waking up with a nose cold which you mistake for allergies, then you finally concede that perhaps it’s a cold, then have to admit that yeah, it’s the freakin flu, then you sit and cry for 30 minutes because you can’t call off work because it’s the day after Thanksgiving and you’re the only one not scheduled off, and you cry so long that you don’t have time to get a shower so you go to work unshowered, sick, puffy eyed, sniffling, feverish, with flat hair.
Here’s to toddlers in snowsuits so big that they can’t put their arms down, so they walk around looking like they’re begging to be picked up.
Here’s to the giant cupboard that used to be in my great grandmother’s house and is now sitting in my living room, just waiting to be filled with books and other goodies.
Here’s to the energy and vibrancy of winter. It’s the season when everything is dormant and waiting, but (at least for the first few true winter days) the sunshine is brighter, the air is sharper, the dark is darker.
Here’s to being able to wear sweaters or turtlenecks every day. Every Day!
Here’s to mittens.
I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, but there are two things in life that I run across often that I absolutely positively can’t remember:
- I can’t remember how to spell truly / truely. Even now. I don’t know which one is correct. They both look right to me.
- I can’t remember that if I try to reach around behind the iron to get the spray bottle, that the very tender flesh on the inside of my wrist will most likely come in contact with the very hot iron.
I wish I could say this was the first time I’ve done this. Or the fourth or fifth. It’s more like the ninth.
Don’t even get me started on how many times I’ve burnt my forehead with the curling iron.
The only thing on my To Do list for yesterday was to put up the Christmas tree.
But it was silly not to put the storm window on the window where the tree would sit first.
And it was silly not to put ALL the storm windows on if I was going to do one.
And it was silly not to take down and wash all the venetian blinds and curtains before I put the storm windows on.
And it was silly not to dust and vacuum behind the furniture that I had to pull out to get the blinds and curtains down.
And it was silly to dust and vacuum behind some of the furniture and not all of it.
Today I’m sore from climbing and pulling and stooping. There will be no Christmas Tree Putting-Upping.
On the bright side, I have some really clean windows and curtains.
Filed under: Daily
Today I’m wearing a pair of jeans that are one size too small specifically for the purpose of walking up to my friend, pulling up my shirt, pointing to my crotch and singing (ala Aqualung):
“Cameltoe my friend…Won’t this nightmare ever end?”
Filed under: General
Do you ever get the feeling that the story’s too damn real and in the present tense,
and that everybody’s on the stage and it seems like you’re the only person sitting in the audience?~ Jethro Tull, Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day
Filed under: General
Mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be 36 year old women who date musicians.
They won’t get enough sleep
and their bar tabs won’t be cheap
and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and something that rhymes with “musicians”.
Filed under: General
There are no songs out there written about women like me.
For years I’ve been the Paper Products Gal at any covered dish occasion. Everyone knows that I’ll come through with great paper plates and some nice plastic silverware, but no one ever asks me to actually cook anything.
Mostly likely that’s because I love to tell people that I can’t cook.
The truth is actually not that I can’t cook, it’s just that I don’t. I’m single, I live alone, and I really don’t like leftovers. Give me a Lean Cuisine and a little salad and I’m good to go.
Lately, though, I’ve been cooking more. I make chili or lentil soup and share it with my grandmother and the VIM. I’ve discovered that I can make some mean baked apples. I mean, geeze, I’m not a complete loser in the kitchen. I just choose to look like one sometimes. But those times are getting fewer and further between. Maybe I’m growing up. Maybe I’m getting bored with Beanies and Weenies. Who knows why these things happen?
So for the last covered dish meal I was invited to I offered to *gasp* bring a covered dish. The hostess did well in hiding her fear and surprise and said, “Great.” (I think she added another “Juuuuuust great” under her breath, but I was already walking away, formulating my plan.)
I needed a crowd pleaser. Unfortunately the only thing I was certain would be pleasing was baked apples, and I wasn’t keen on the idea of peeling apples for 100 people. So the VIM offered a suggestion: Hot Sausage.
“It’s easy” he says.
“There will be a lot of beer drinkin’ guys there, right?” he asks.
“They’ll love you” he says.
“It’s easy,” he says again.
“Here’s what you do: you getcher sausage at the butcher shop and cut it up into short little sandwich sized pieces. Throw it in a pot and boil it. Throw it in a crockpot with sauce, peppers and onions for a few hours, put out some rolls beside the crockpot, and voila. People love hot sausage sandwiches.”I’ll take his word for it.
So I gathered all the ingredients together and began the quick and easy task of making Hot Sausage Sandwiches.
Step 1: Cut the sausage into little sandwich sized pieces.
Have you ever tried to cut fresh sausage (and let’s not even get into what “fresh” could possibly mean in this case, ok)? I string out the 2 pounds of sausage on my counter and start hacking at it with a knife. The skin (blarg) is tough. It doesn’t want to be pierced. Sausage starts squeezing out the other end. I try a straight edged knife. I try a serrated knife. I try scissors. I end up with glops of ground pig on my counter and noticeably thinner sandwich sized pieces of sausage.
Step 2: Throw it in a pot and boil it.
Apparently I wasn’t listening and missed the real second step, which was to poke holes in the skin before boiling the stupid sandwich sized pieces of sausage. But whatever. This was a truly easy step. I was beginning to feel at ease. I was beginning to feel like a cook until the water started boiling. Suddenly the whole shebang changed from some nice little sandwich sized pieces of sausage floating placidly in some water to a turbulent, roiling, tormented ocean storm of pig fat. At least that’s what I think it was. Scroll back up and look at the picture. Click on it to enlarge so you get a Real Good Look at it. I had no idea that fat could puff up and foam like that. I also had no idea how bad foamy pig fat would smell when it boiled over the side of the pot onto the electric burner. and did you know that the sausage itself will puff up? At least the ends of it. I guess if I had poked holes in the skin it would have had ample room to expand. Since I missed that step, the sausage expanded exploded out instead. I should have fished one of the exploded-end sandwich sized pieced of sausage out of the boiling foamy pig fat and taken a picture of it, but at that point I was heading to my happy place.
Step 3: Throw it in a crockpot and let it cook.
This was about the only thing that went right. The sauce hid the disfigured sandwich sized pieces of sausage, and the peppers and onions soon covered up the smell of burning foamy pig fat.
The end result was amazingly a success. People actually ate that stuff. I mean, they ate all of it. Blargh.
I did it. I brought a covered dish. Now can I go back to the paperplates and plastic silverware???
- Today I get to tell an employee that the sponsorship visa we were applying for in his behalf has been canned. The quota was reached before we were done. Although it isn’t really anyone’s fault (we didn’t know that he needed a sponsorship visa until days before the quota for next year was already reached…we needed MONTHS advance notice), I will have to tell him that there’s nothing we can do at this point. This new job sucks hairy ass.
- I’m trying to get back on the fitness track. Lifted weights yesterday. Not being able to lift my arms above my head sucks hairy ass.
- Our department at work has scheduled a “Team Building” session. You know…where you do stuff like blindfold a coworker then lead them through some kind of obstacle course. I can’t even begin to tell you of the evil glee I experience while daydreaming about the session.
- Before the team building session, we are having a department meeting where each of us has to teach something to our coworkers. My session is going to be titled “Why It Isn’t Polite To Turn Up Your Desk Phone As Loud As It Can Go Just So You Can Hear The Ring If You Happen To Be Out Of Your Office.” Either that or an instructional video on how to refill the paper in the copier, since obviously NOONE knows how to do it.
- PMS – it sucks hairy ass.
- Today I get to tell an employee that the sponsorship visa we were applying for in his behalf has been canned. The quota was reached before we were done. Although it isn’t really anyone’s fault (we didn’t know that he needed a sponsorship visa until days before the quota for next year was already reached…we needed MONTHS advance notice), I will have to tell him that there’s nothing we can do at this point. This new job sucks hairy ass.
- I’m trying to get back on the fitness track. Lifted weights yesterday. Not being able to lift my arms above my head sucks hairy ass.
- Our department at work has scheduled a “Team Building” session. You know…where you do stuff like blindfold a coworker then lead them through some kind of obstacle course. I can’t even begin to tell you of the evil glee I experience while daydreaming about the session.
- Before the team building session, we are having a department meeting where each of us has to teach something to our coworkers. My session is going to be titled “Why It Isn’t Polite To Turn Up Your Desk Phone As Loud As It Can Go Just So You Can Hear The Ring If You Happen To Be Out Of Your Office.” Either that or an instructional video on how to refill the paper in the copier, since obviously NOONE knows how to do it.
- PMS – it sucks hairy ass.
