Ten Things

At this point in the evening, I'm running on fumes.  It's 7:20 and I'm watching Jeopardy.  I have been awake since 4 this morning, because SOMEONE needed a ride to the airport.  That someone has a job interview in Utah tomorrow.  Just between you and me, I'm deeply disturbed about the possibility of moving to Utah.  In the past couple weeks, I have read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and 127 Hours:  Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston.  Aside from the obvious similarity of having authors whose first names contain no superfluous letters, these books both take place in Utah.  After reading them, I am having a hard time deciding which fate I would prefer over living in Utah:  would I rather be stabbed to death by a Mormon Fundamentalist or amputate my own arm after spending several days drinking my own urine while pinned in a narrow canyon?  Kind of a toss-up.

Anyway, I made this list of ten random insights about my favorite topic - myself.  Then I got a little carried away.  You know what they say.  When the cat's away, the mouse will play.  With Andy gone until Saturday, I'm seriously living large.  Cleaning, organizing, blogging, going to bed early.  It's like a one-woman version of The Hangover up in here.

Without further adieu:

1. I have never changed a diaper in my life.  I am so not into wiping the butt of any other living creature.  I think if I ever produce any human offspring (as opposed to sticking to my comfort zone of rearing feline and canine buddies) I think I'm just going to keep the kid in a baby pool or a sandbox or something and just hose it down once a day.  Sort of like crate-training a puppy, right?  Bet that kid would be potty trained inside of a year (if it isn't removed from my custody sooner). 

My complete ineptitude with children is both the cause and the result of never babysitting.  Sort of a positive feedback loop - I didn't like kids, and didn't want to babysit, so the longer I went without doing it, the more I became afraid I would be terrible at it if I tried, so I avoided it like the plague.  Then one time I babysat my youngest cousin, and it was alright.  She was maybe 8 or 9 at the time, and I was around 22.  We just watched some Disney movie about a hot teenage boy on a competitive double dutch team (what the hell?) and I drew her a picture of a unicorn stabbing a cupcake with its horn, which she thought was the greatest thing ever.  I'm not sure if babysitting family counts, because she (and her parents) already knew I was weird and they weren't expecting a whole lot.  And, thankfully, no diapers were involved.  Because seriously, an eight year old in diapers?  I'm not going near that one.

2. I absolutely hate being interrupted.  It happens with disheartening frequency because I have a quiet voice and I am not assertive at all.  I try really hard not to interrupt people, and if I realize that I have done it, I make an effort to either let the other person speak or go back to whatever they started to say after I've blurted out my own thoughts.  I recently decided that when I am interrupted, I should refuse to finish whatever I've started to say because the other person must not value my input, so I'd be wasting my breath to continue.  I realize this is kind of immature and spiteful, and it has had mixed results so far.  I think it pains me more to withhold something that I thought was important enough to say out loud than it bothers the other person. 

I don't always have a lot to say, so when I do, I usually feel pretty strongly about communicating it.  Not that my brain is empty at other times - I think a lot but I'm not often compelled to share, for various reasons.  Much of the time, what I really want to say would be totally inappropriate.  Self-censorship is an unfortunate side effect of adulthood.  If only there were a medication that could alleviate this...oh wait...it's called booze.

3. I'm a stander.  I just really don't like sitting down for long periods of time.  I don't even really enjoy going to the movies most of the time because I don't dig on sitting still for two-plus hours.  Maybe you can chalk it up to all those years of going to standing-room-only concerts and remaining erect (tee hee) for hours in a crowd of smelly teenagers bobbing their heads to the beat, but I really enjoy standing.  I feel less lazy and more energized than I do when I'm sitting.   Especially at work.  If I spent my work day in a chair, I would probably fall asleep.  Thankfully, my work surface is counter-height so I'm not hunching over a desk, which would be really uncomfortable and look super weird.

4. I cannot stand the word 'moist.'  Seriously.  It gives me the willies.  It just connotes so many disgusting images and sounds.  I'll take wet, soggy, damp, soaked, flooded, humid, muggy, dank, or even clammy.  Just not moist.  Anything but that.  This is kind of a problem because I love to bake, and I certainly don't want my cookies or muffins to be dry.  But do I want to call them wet or soggy?  Probably not. 

I used to loathe the C word, until I met someone who was one.  I know, I know.  As my grandmother probably says (because she says a lot of smart things), using foul language is a sign of having a limited vocabulary.  However, with all the expansive verbiage at my disposal, I decided that this person could not be so fully and succinctly described by any other term.  If you're curious, this person was a former roommate who, in complete seriousness, threatened to stab me in my sleep.  Among other things, not limited to accusing me and two other roommates of being the spawn of Satan and anointing our bedroom doors with "holy" (read: canola) oil and raiding someone's curbside trash to bring home a cushionless, leaf-covered couch that smelled like a wet sasquatch.

5. As much as I would love to be a spontaneous person, I'm a slave to routine.  It probably borders on OCD.  It's bad.  I have to make plans far in advance, not because I'm busy doing important things, but because I have to brace myself for a change in my routine.  I'm like an 80 year old woman who has to be home by 7:30 to watch Matlock or whatever.  Except my Matlock takes the form of:  eating certain foods, eating at certain times, laying out my breakfast supplies and outfit for the next day, and spending an unhealthy amount of time brushing, flossing, gargling, eyebrow grooming, lotion-applying, etc.  I guess a lot of these things are work-induced survival mechanisms to help me cope with the fact that I am not fully functional in the morning until I'm showered, fed, and caffeinated.  But if it wasn't these things, it would be something else.  I'm like a social and behavioral Benjamin Button.  By the time I'm eligible for an AARP card I'll probably be at the point where I can like, decide what I'm going to wear right before I need to get dressed.  Maybe in my mid-90's I'll really throw caution to the wind and start doing blow and haphazardly loading the dishwasher.

6. I am moderately proficient at a lot of things, but not amazing at anything.  Some people would just say they are a jack of all trades and a master of none, but apparently I'm not great at getting to the point, either.  The thing is, I get really excited when I try my hand at something new and find that, at first, I have some kind of aptitude for it.  Once I hit a plateau where I stop making easy progress, I get discouraged and lose interest unless there's some kind of fabulous incentive to press on (or if some external pressure/threat of unpleasant consequences forces me to keep trying).  I don't always give up on an activity entirely, but I will usually develop a 'whatever' attitude towards something if I feel like I won't ever be the best.  I don't like not being the best.  I don't like to struggle. 

This past summer, I tried to learn how to knit.  A nice lady at the yarn store showed me how to get the needle started and get a few rows going.  I went home and practiced, and after a few hiccups, it proved easy enough, albeit time consuming, to knit row after row.  However, when I looked at my instruction book to see what I should do once I was ready to finish off the end of my rather anemic attempt at a scarf, I was baffled.  I could not make sense of it, no matter how hard I tried.  I was afraid I would get to the end of the scarf and ruin so many hours of work.  I found excuses to set my project aside.  Obviously, it's too hot to knit in the summertime.  It's so itchy to touch all that woolen yarn.  Oh, it hurts my hands.  Truthfully, it hurt my self-esteem.

7.  One of my pet peeves about culture and the media right now is the prevalence of food advertisements that equate unhealthy foods with emotions.  There's just so much wrong with that I don't even know where to start.  Yes, eating a meal has traditionally been a time to gather with family or community.  Food can be social, it can be celebratory or ceremonial.  As with any sensory experience, food can take on an emotional connotation and evoke strong memories.  That's all fine, when we're talking about a home-cooked meal made from whole food ingredients.  I know I have a lot of nice memories that flood back at even the thought of certain foods, like the Finnish bread my grandmom makes every Christmas, or the amazing carrot cake my mom and grandmom made for my birthday one year.  But when you go so far as to name a candy after an emotion (Hershey's Bliss?) or have commercials with cartoon moms serving little cartoon children freaking pop tarts for breakfast as if that is what a loving, caring mom does, we have a problem (yes, let's give a growing child a hunk of artificially flavored, sugar coated cardboard for the most important meal of the day.  oh, you put it in the toaster first?  here's your mother of the year award).  Not only are these commercials trying to force us into unnaturally associating their food product with happiness and being cared for, but they are portraying them as everyday foods.  I could go on about this for days. 

I don't want to insult anyone who may be an emotional eater or who just doesn't see anything wrong with eating processed foods and/or equating said foods with emotions.  But, given the health status of the majority of people in this country, this is clearly a very real problem.  I realize the irony of ranting about equating food with emotions given the name of this blog.  I should probably explain, if I haven't already, that it just seemed kind of funny to me at the time.  I was probably subconsciously inspired by that scene in Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan's character is getting the rundown on all the different lunch table cliques and one group is the girls who eat their feelings.  Kind of funny in that context, but not so funny in reality.  I've only recently realized how much these kinds of commercials bother me, because I went without television for several months and that respite from commercials has made me a lot more critical now that I'm watching non-Netflix/Hulu TV again.

8.  My first celebrity crush was Davy Jones.  Yup, this guy:

If you're wondering, I was three years old at the time, and he was a DREAM. BOAT.  (Because you don't understand the concept of reruns when you're three, not even when those reruns are almost 20 years old).
 
9.  Running out of steam here.  Losing interest in this project.  I've been awake for 16 hours, what do you want from me?

10.  I got nothing.  I was afraid this wouldn't be the best '10 things' list, so I got discouraged and gave up.  I'm nothing, if not consistent.

Hello and welcome to the show

Funny how I swore that working wouldn't preclude me from blogging.  Of course I will still write all the time, I claimed.  If anything, having a job will just be grist for the mill.  Fodder for the pigs, if you will.  Well, that was wishful thinking.  Working takes up a lot of time and makes you tired!  (Whereas unemployment makes you tired because you're either starving or drunk on Carlo Rossi.  Or both.  Old friend, that Carlo.)

Here's how my day usually goes:

5:00 - Wake up!  Get the shower, put on the face, chug the coffee, eat the oatmeal, do the hair, put on the clothes, evaluate the clothes, probably change the clothes a couple times
6:50 - Attempt to leave for work; sometimes successful, sometimes not
7:05-7:20 - Arrive at work in this window, depending on how many school buses assert their priorities all up in my driving space
7:10-2:30 - Do some things with the books and the reading and the shushing
2:50 - Get home, eat a snack, decompress a little, get changed
3:30 - Go to the gym and totally WERK IT (and sometimes get on a cardio machine and watch Oprah)
5:00 - Head home from the gym
5:20 - Depending on how schweaty I got from werking it, get another shower
5:30 - Start making dinner, even though a little piece of me dies every time I don't get to eat dinner at 5:30 on the dot because, at heart, I am an 80 year old woman trapped in the body of a 25 year old
6:00-6:30 - Put dinner on the table somewhere in this general range
7:00 - Do the dishes, clean up the kitchen, pack tomorrow's lunch, set out my breakfast accoutrements for the morning (because I'm not enough of a functional human being to do any such tasks in a timely fashion so early in the morning)
7:20 - Pick out my outfit for the next day
7:30 - Talk to my mom on the phone (i.e. whine about something and/or hear about something adorable or super smart that Linus did that day)
8:00 - Park it on the couch, where I will spend the next hour and a half intermittently drooling, reading other people's blogs, and watching TV (Mad Men from Netflix or the Thursday night NBC lineup if it's a good night, random garbage if it's not)
9:30 - Get in bed and read until my eyes start to close involuntarily and my hands lose their grip on the book
9:34 - Put down book, turn out light
2:00 - Get up to pee
2:30 - Wake up again because large upstairs neighbor is slamming even larger girlfriend on squeaky mattress with loose headboard
3:00 - Eventually fall asleep again to the thought that if upstairs guy knocks up his girlfriend, at least they are already used to being awake in the middle of the night, but if they asked me to babysit I would totally sell it on the black market, or teach it to say the F word, and also I would charge them $100 an hour
5:00 - WAKE UP AND DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN OH MY GOD

So really, as mundane and inconsequential as my daily routine is, there's a scant 1.5 hour window where my time isn't devoted to anything in particular.  By then, however, my brain and body are beginning to shut down. 

Which is why now, more than ever, I am pleasantly surprised when I see that anyone is still reading!  I especially enjoy examining the phrases people have googled to ultimately find this blog.  Just this week alone, the following phrases were responsible for hits (whether or not those people stayed and read anything is another matter, but I'll take what I can get):

• danny devito eating trash
• homesick jersey
• is peaches a drag king
• panty missing laundry
• south park "close encounters of the turd kind"

Thank you, you are all wonderful.  If you are reading this blog as a result of any of those hilarious search phrases, welcome.  May I suggest that you start reading some of the August and September entries, as I believe I was significantly more creative and entertaining when I was unemployed.

The Big O

Today I want to discuss something that I love, that recently made me get a little sweaty and flushed.

I want to talk about Oprah.  Oprah.  I'm not sure where you thought I was going with this, but my intentions are as pure as the driven snow. 

Anyway, Oprah has been one of my favorite human beings for years.  I think she's just great, no matter what my jaded husband says about her.  Plenty of people are rich and famous, but few celebrities are as generous with their money or their influence as Oprah.  I heart Oprah, and I'm just a tad bit jealous of Gayle King...I really think I could be a pretty top-notch BFF to Oprah.  I used to come home from high school and watch Oprah while I binged on E.L. Fudge cookies or something equally disgusting.  I didn't want to watch MTV or talk on the phone - I just wanted to watch Oprah.

Now, 10+ years after I first fell in love with Ms. Winfrey, I am no longer shoveling cookies down my gullet.*  These days, I am usually on a treadmill or elliptical when I catch Oprah.  This past Wednesday was such a day.  I ran my little treadmill 5k and I was getting ready to cool down and head home when the preview for the upcoming Oprah segment piqued my interest.  A couple from Seattle was getting a makeover.  The husband had worn kilts exclusively for the last 9 years.

I just couldn't get off the treadmill until I saw this story.  So I walked.  And walked.  And finally it came on.  This guy had 17 kilts.  One of them was held before the camera as a particularly egregious example - a camouflage Utilikilt.

Seeing that Utilikilt brought back such fond memories of our trip to Seattle last spring.  It was an uncharacteristically warm and sunny weekend in late March, and did we ever paint the town red - well, not so much red, maybe a salmon color, possibly even a coral.  We are pretty tame.  I mean, we made it a point to visit the public library.  But we did spend a lot of time checking out various funky neighborhoods, salivating over the whole city, and discussing ways that we could possibly make Seattle our home. 

Early on the first day, we discovered a little gem in the form of the Utilikilt store.  We clearly HAD to go inside because the display in the front window was a mannequin dressed in a kilt and combat boots delivering a roundhouse kick to the face of another kilt-clad mannequin.  Once inside, we were greeted by a very large man with an acid green mohawk wearing a heavy metal t-shirt, combat boots, and of course, a plaid kilt.  We struck up a conversation with him and it turned out he was from the Philadelphia area, just like us.  He gave us a bunch of insider tips about things we should do in Seattle, and tried to sell Andy a kilt.  We took the tips but regretfully declined to purchase a kilt.  That guy and that store were a huge factor in my burgeoning love of Seattle.

Just when you thought Oprah couldn't possibly bring any more goodness to the world without exploding into thousand baby unicorns, she got better.  She squeezed little bit more exercise out of my tired bones and pumped a little bit of joy into my frozen, glaciated heart.  Thank you, Oprah.  You're a doll.

Oh, also - wrote this post while watching Oprah.  She's just knocking 'em out of the park all over the place these days.


*Disclaimer:  If you don't know me in real life, I probably sound like I was once a 600 pound behemoth.  I was merely a 14 year old with a ridiculous metabolism.

Still Here

Mercury fume death crisis averted.  Who knows, though, I may end up producing a two-headed child someday.  Then again, one broken fluorescent bulb isn't going to do any more genetic harm than a lifetime in New Jersey.

In a celebration of life, I took a bunch of pictures of my cat today.  I downloaded the Instagram app earlier in the week and it's pretty much my new favorite thing.  Ajax is the most photogenic guy I know, and a willing subject, so we've been having some good times together.

I walked into the bedroom this afternoon and found this little nugget:

Kitties and clean laundry.  Aw.

If this had been my laundry, this picture wouldn't even exist, for a few reasons.  My laundry wouldn't be hanging out getting wrinkled, because I fold it the instant the dryer buzzes.  If by some lapse of Katieness, I neglected to fold my laundry immediately, if a cat, however adorable, was getting his hair and dander all up in my delicate business, I'd be tossing him out by his scruff.  Not gazing fondly and snapping photos.

After taking this photo, we went across town and walked a few laps around a "scenic trail" which was really a path littered with land-mines of dog feces surrounded by a bunch of dried weeds and gnarled trees next to a swamp.  It was nice to get outside in the fresh air and sun, though. 

We came back to this literal 180:

About face.

Aaand Andy's laundry is still sitting in that pile, hours later.  Before you think I'm a horrible, lousy, mean wife (even though I am...my feet are huge so I really have difficulty standing sufficiently close to the stove) for not washing or folding my husband's laundry when I obviously do such a thorough job with my own wash, we do separate loads of wash because our washer is tiny.  It just makes more sense that way.  Or maybe I just made that up because I didn't feel like doing so much laundry. 

For your further titillation, I submit:

I look like I need a drink

Really.  I do.  Just glanced in the mirror.  Awful. 

Funnily enough, though, I never get beer goggles for my own reflection.  I'm usually painfully aware of what a greasy, red-eyed hag I become when I've had too much to drink (which, for me, is more than half a glass of wine).  Really, I'm only a mental binge-drinker.  In reality, I'm a total teetotaler.  Super lame.  But only because I hate that my payment for a night of fun is a full day with my head in the toilet.  If I didn't have the alcohol tolerance of a Chinese toddler, I'd probably be a lot more fun.

But I digress.  I didn't set out to talk about booze, even though the day's events make me want to jump face-first into a bathtub full of grain alcohol.

My intended topic was to communicate an impromptu last will and testament.  I may or may not be dead by tomorrow morning from inhaling mercury fumes.  Can that sort of thing kill you?  If it can, I'm a goner.

The day started off innocently enough, even pleasantly.  I was asleep by nine last night, and awoke with the sun just before seven.  I was sick all week and then I stupidly gave blood at work yesterday, so my body used those ten hours for some hardcore recovering.  Feeling refreshed, I made the bed and did a little straightening up before I made my most favorite breakfast of all time.  Oatmeal with diced apples, raisins, and walnuts, topped off with a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon, ground ginger, and a splash almond milk.  A nutritional powerhouse, but so good you won't ever want to taint your mouth with anything else. 

Things went a little south after that.  The gym was crowded, and I had to alter my intended workout because a lot of the equipment I wanted was in use when I needed it.  Fart-balls.  I also had to listen to a couple of ham-bones bloviate about these expensive cigars they were going to buy this summer.  After repeating several times that he was going to 'buy the whole box, not just one, but the whole box,' the one guy went on to describe how he was going to enjoy his stogie.  "I'm gonna get some nice rum, throw down some rocks, splash some diet coke on top, and light that baby."  First of all, no one cares, guy.  Second, I wouldn't go around bragging about your little splash of diet coke like that makes you classy or masculine, because I'm pretty sure it is the opposite of both.

Finally, I could abide no more.  I went home and resolved to clean a little before lunch, and then go for a run.
I started in the kitchen by taking out the recycling.  When I returned to start vacuuming, I noticed a quivering black ribbon on the floor where the bag of recyclables had been sitting.  A mass of little tiny ants running to and fro.  I don't like to spray poisonous chemicals around, especially because of the cat, so instead of running out and buying ant spray, my first idiotic reaction was to vacuum up the ants. 

In so doing, I knocked over a burned-out fluorescent tube (that should have been put in the damn dumpster two weeks ago).  It splintered into an infinite number of pieces that shot across the kitchen floor.  After screaming a lot of obscenities, I started vacuuming up these shards of glass, for lack of any better ideas.  When I was almost finished, I was informed that I was going to kill us all and ruin the vacuum by sucking up and spreading around the copious mercury fumes.  Would have been nice to know that before I signed my own death warrant with frantic cleaning, but such is life (and death, apparently).

After sweeping up the remaining shards with a dust pan, wiping down every surface including the floor, and throwing out the vacuum filter, I wanted to punch someone.  Anyone.  I couldn't finish cleaning because my vacuum is now unusable until I have the time and money to buy a new filter.  I was so dejected and defeated that I never did go for my run.  Instead I spent most of the day wallowing in self-pity on the couch, intermittently reading (Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer) and watching On Demand TV shows (Sister Wives). 

At least I got to indulge my morbid fascination du jour - scary religious fundamentalists.

Oh, but we still have ants.  Any ideas for non-poisonous ways to get rid of ants?

A Love Story

When I was young and naive, I took for granted the comfort and convenience that come with living in a first-world, middle-class dwelling. 

Eat food at a table?  Yes, don't mind if I do!  Why would I eat anywhere BUT at a table? 

What shall I do with my used dishes?  Why, I will put them in the dishwasher!  Why would I bend over the sink and scald my delicate fingers washing dishes by hand?

I have worn my clothes and now they are dirty.  Must I beat my clothes against rocks in the stream?  Nay.  I will deposit them in this washing machine, followed by a dryer, and my clothes will appear clean and presentable once more.

And then we moved to Idaho, and none of these wonderful contrivances, which many people in the post-industrial world enjoy, were available to me.  Many a meal was served atop a cardboard box before we found a steal of a deal - $50 for a third-hand table and chairs on Craigslist.  To this day the only normal transaction I've ever had on Craigslist.  But I digress.  The unfortunate syndrome known as Dishpan Hands quickly withered my fair digits.  If not for my lack of liver spots, my gnarled paws could have passed for those of a grandmother.  Latex cleaning gloves ameliorated some of this problem, but did nothing for the hunchback I was developing from spending so much time bent over the sink. 

And then there was the problem of the laundry.  I have previously chronicled my laundromat trials, as they were many and harrowing.  I yearned for a time when I could spontaneously throw a load into the washer and go about my business, pausing only to transfer the load into the dryer and continue cooking, or reading, or blogging, or generally being unmolested by unsavory strangers.  This minimally disruptive laundry affair would capitulate with me sitting on the couch, folding laundry and watching TV.  That little act of comfortable domesticity, in which I pair up my socks and put my underwear in a neat little pile while Oprah drops wisdom in the background, loomed at the forefront of my desires. 

Behold, my current living arrangement.  We have managed to secure all the comforts of civilization.  Well, not quite.  A dishwasher.  A washer, a dryer.  A real TV with CABLE!  But yet, no table.  We passed our now-fourth-hand Idaho table on to our deserving diagonal neighbors, allowing it to continue on its journey in some sort of sisterhood of the traveling table.  I'd like to think that no matter how large or small your family, if it's just you and your cat or 19 children, the table can accommodate all.

But the table is really not the point here.  The point is, for the past month, I have been falling in love all over again with modern convenience.  As a girl, I regarded these appliances in much the same way that I regarded my mom and grandmom.  Sure, I loved them very much, but in my juvenile selfishness, I kind of just expected them to be there and do stuff for me.  After suffering without them (all of them...mom, grandmom, washer, dryer, dishwasher...the whole gang) I appreciate them so much more. 

But we're not getting all sentimental here, we're still really talking about machines.  Machines that I now feel I could not ever again live without.  Everything is so much easier with them.  At least, I felt this way until I discovered there was a catch.  My love affair comes at no small price.  And that price is $241, apparently.

TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY ONE DOLLARS.  SWEET FANCY MOSES that is a lot of money for electricity for a one-bedroom apartment.  My tight-fisted little heart is weeping.  There is loss, there is betrayal.  How could a relationship that seemed so pure and beautiful in the beginning sour so quickly?  I should have known it was too good to be true.  It wasn't magic that was making that washer spin, making that dryer tumble.  It was science.  And science costs money.  If I could power my apartment with unicorn farts, I would.  But I can't. 

I have a feeling this is the start of a long, abusive relationship.  I just don't know how to quit you, PSE&G.