Better than fruit salad

A BAD SIGN

I am, what, three weeks into the school year, taking Queer History (!) and I can NOT for the life of me spell “genitalia” in any consistent manner. We’re talking nothing spell check recognizes remotely. I have a similar problem with simultaneous. And miscellaneous, though as I am no longer in classifieds this word is no longer a daily occurrence for me. Nor is refrigerator, or engine, or chihuahua — all words I had on a sticky note taped to my computer monitor.

So I just need to come up with a sentence that combines these words into a nice word salad to write everywhere so I can remember. Simultaneous refrigerator engine (and) miscellaneous chihuahua genitalia.

Hi. It’s a new week. I’m still really sick although time doesn’t stand still for those plagued with infections, so I was the noisy loser carting around hankies and hand sanitizer to work and class. I spent most of the day in a Dayquil haze. I know I went to a meeting about my 401(k) plan, and that we watched a segment from a Lily Tomlin stand up in some class (why?). Everything is kind of hanging out in my sinuses and not really migrating down to my throat, so even though I cough more or less constantly, it’s not a productive cough that lets people know yes, you are really sick. Rather, this has been a dry tickle-in-your-throat kind of thing. It sounds like the biggest faker cough ever, like you’re just doing it to assure people you skipped class Friday because you REALLY WERE SICK, aheh aheh aheh see? I think I’m getting the black lung, pop.

Bah. It doesn’t help that I’m flat broke until Wednesday. That may not sound like a big gap to you, but a world without Vick’s when you need it and soup is a sad world indeed. Rice a soothing dinner does not make.

THREE OF THE MOST COMMON SANDWICHES IN MY LUNCH. YES REALLY

1. The Usual
(Salami and swiss with a bunch of sprouts and a hint of Dijon on Wheat)

2. Croque-Madame
(Ham and chive&onion cream cheese on an onion bagel)

So named because I based the idea from this recipe, although I’m pretty sure Clotilde isn’t married, and even if she were, well. What is the French Ms.?

Ack. Recipe is another one. Ree-cype is how that spelling looks. Does anyone have a recipe for miscellaneous chihuahua genitalia? (I spelled all those right, first try!)

3. Audibly Inappropriate PB&J
(Creamy PB, Jam, grape nuts on wheat.)

This was something a friend of mine and I invented in high school. It is way funnier than it should be. It’s like the foley artist for your LIFE is screwing up.

STRANGE YET REAL NAMES OF PEOPLE I KNOW

Cinnamon
Sunshine
Stelth
Astro

That last one there is essentially for-all-intents-and-purposes married to someone named Tato, although that is a nickname and not her real name, which is something plain and nothing like her at all. So I pretend it is her real name. I actually don’t know who people are talking about unless they use “Tato”. I have a similar problem with a guy I know, who was introduced to me as Judas. This was mostly a stage handle, and he made a big dramatic announcement on his myspace a year or so ago (I know.) about how he was no longer going by that name, and I had to message him and say sorry, thank you for playing, but there was no way in hell I could recall his image in conjunction with Jeff. Or Jake. Or whatever his damn name really is.

All of my nicknames are always derivations of my real name, which is fine I guess but kind of unimaginative. I burn with jealousy over handles like “Tato”. Senior year of high school I actually introduced myself as Joyce to an Drawing I class because I had that teacher about three times that day, and I was really there doing a Honors art 5 independent study, which was something we invented for me so I could have an art class that hour. So she knew me, and those kids didn’t particularly need to. I was Joyce all semester, much to mine and the art teacher’s mirth.

Sometimes I hate my slapdash style of blogging, because I always feel like I have to apologize and make excuses as to why I’ve been away. But then I think, hey. This is the internet. I’ve been all busy with REAL LIFE, you know? And it’s nice to be involved in stuff that matters, even when it brings me to tears with frustration sometimes*, or even if it gives me infected with PESTILENCE**. I know that here in a few years when I’m not living three different lives, there might even be moments where I think, Jesus what was it that I used to DO all day, back when I complained about never having any time?

* School has started. My schedule does not meld with my work duties gracefully, and most of the first week I had to go to work for two hours, leave and go to a class, work for an hour and a half, go to another class, and then go BACK to work until everything was done. There was a WHITE HOT EMERGENCY on Friday during this madness that was very hard to deal with becuase I wasn’t able to BE THERE for most of it. This week is much better than that, and that plus my liking my classes makes things better.

**Sick. I am sick sick sick. The plague swept quickly through my circle, and I am pretty much on the tail end. This is mostly an aggrivated chest cold thing, leaving everyone sounding grainy and sultry, although there is the odd fever here and there that makes dressing yourself very difficult. Thankfully (it pains me to be saying this) it looks like most of this will really hit this weekend, lessening my missed work/school time, and really forcing me to sit still and catch up on reading. So. Fun and excitement at my house.

Do you know what is good though? Purple oatmeal. Do it this way: take some vermouth and sugar (1 part vermouth and 1/4 part sugar, don’t overwhelm yourself) and reduce it to a syrup over high heat. Take it off the heat and add some crushed cardamom pods and a squeeze of lemon (or orange). Take out the solids and then put it back on the burner. Add a handful of frozen blueberries and cook that down to a syrup. Make some oatmeal, mix the blueberry mixture into it.

I’d show you a picture but I ate it too fast. I think I covered some good fix-the-sick grounds with that one: blueberries, orange (from the juice but also the leftover slices I ate), oatmeal.

The shenanigans with the vermouth actually happened because I was trying to do this fancy fruit salad recipe with blueberries and peaches, only to find out that my peaches had gone bad. Very bad. As bas as peaches can go. So I kind of fumbled around, considered just chucking the whole thing (but it’s food!) and then decided on blueberry syrup + oatmeal.

LINKS THAT HAVE BEEN COLLECTING IN MY GMAIL DRAFT LABELED ‘HOLICS’

In case you needed another reason to love Al Gore

Beer bottle symphony

I WANT THIS PAN

I started one of these, and I don’t really know why. There’s a lot of problems with a website that sucks you into spending [x] hours in front of it under the guise of organization and self-fulfillment and doing more. I could go on but I think you can do so on your own.

Want to get angry?

Today Anthony absentmindedly slipped a used band-aid onto his finger. It was still sitting on the coffee table next to the laptop, becuase it had been on my thumb to protect a painful hangnail situation, but then it got annoying and I took it off. And didn’t throw it away. So then he was playing with it. He was very shocked when he noticed what it was he was doing.

There was a GIANT clothes pin at hobby lobby. I went there to get chalkboards and almost came home with that as well. The thing was bigger than my hand. It had a little hole in it, so you could mount it to the wall and use it to hold bills or outgoing mail or something. It was amazing, but my gift card wouldn’t stretch that far, so I’m just pining for it right now.

I am officially an idiot. Decor8. Decor-ate. Decorate. Get it?

Shut up.

I had some witty sort of interesting stuff to say about getting a panini and the relatively low quality to drivers in the town I live in, but all of this kind of gets put on hold for this: a friend of mine may or may not be going through a hideous break up.

I say ‘may or may not’, because the situation is very convoluted and strange, and the other person involved hasn’t really said much beyond “I think my feet are getting chilly” and “I don’t know” in the last four days. Which doesn’t help the pain, confusion, sorrow, loneliness and fear of my friend.

I didn’t really want to talk about this at all, but I need to unload somewhere. Anthony is around of course but he’s not really doing much grunt work in terms of Being There. And I guess I don’t blame him, because it isn’t the most cheerful thing to do. But what else is a human to do?

I hang out with her all night becuase I’d feel like a bastard not to, because she feels more alone than ever right now. Because I’d want her to do the same for me. Because I don’t know what else to do when I get a text message filled with ellipses and “I’ve been in bed since noon”, other than say “we’ll I’m coming over to do laundry and order pizza if you want to crawl out of bed and join me.” And I watch all the bad TV* she throws at me, becuase hey it’s not like I do this everyday. And we talk about possibilities and she tells me everything she feels, and we laugh and we get grim and quiet, and I stand out in the cold while she has a cigarette, and we eat pizza and irritate the cats, and just keep each other company while the storm rages on.

Then I get home and every bit of emotion I had been feeling that day sort of lets loose and I collapse on the floor howling my eyes raw, because I really hate this, why can’t everyone just get along, blah blah empathetic blah. The problem for me too is that last night, instead of going home and sharing what MY day was like, and what MY ideas are, and hugging someone who I HAVEN’T screwed things up with, last night I went home alone. That’s hard after spending time with someone who just wants a hug. A Specific Hug. Anthony stayed at his place so that the morning walk to work wouldn’t take as long, and I went home and had a conniption.

I was too tired to stay there, even though I really wanted to, and even that makes me feel ashamed a little when I see what I’m up against. These last four days have made it more clear than ever that it isn’t worth it to focus on being the right rather than focusing on affection and being appreciative.

Let’s all get our heads out of our asses, shall we? Let’s all make a fuss over each other, shall we? Because life is too short to say, well I need to figure this out. And life is too short to say, I can wait until next week to apologize.
Because what if you CAN’T.

So facing theses next, oh, eleven hours before I actually get to hang out with Anthony again seems like some kind of awful eternity.

*She watches TV. I don’t. But again, I watch it when she is there, beuause it’s her house and she can veg if she wants to, and frankly at this point anything other than stewing is good. Yesterday Anthony hitched a ride with a guy we’ll call S, for Swine. S ambled in and stood near us for a few moments before making some loud noises of disdain, and then turning on his heal for the kitchen, saying “oh. oh. Sorry. I just *can’t* watch television…” and then he and Anthony proceeded to go into the kitchen to talk about How Anything More Than Two Hours Of Television And I Get Nauseous and all this bullshit and it took every fiber within me to keep from drop kicking his ass out through the glass door. First, you have no idea how long we’ve been sitting here watching TV, moron, in fact we had only just turned on American Gladiators moments before because someone eeled Dani about it. Second, consider the situation. I know he knows an annotated version of her life lately, so I don’t know that I’d be walking around spewing judgment about it on top of everything. Of course, it’s hard for me to say YEAH I DON’T EVEN HAVE CABLE YET I SOMEHOW MANAGE TO NOT WAX PRETENTIOUS ABOUT IT WHEN I’M A GUEST SO BUG OFF I’M BEING A GOOD FRIEND HERE without sounding, well, pretentious. And evil.

Roasted Chestnuts! Perhaps you were more fortunate than I, but my pathetic American version of the yule never incorporated roasted chestnuts, much to my prepubescent chagrin. (It’s in the song! It means Christmas to EVERYONE ELSE. Why don’t I know what it tastes like?) So I won’t be able to indulge in time for Christmas, since I found this the day after when Googling “roasted chestnuts,” but we have plenty of winter months ahead of us here in the Arctic Circle of Northern Colorado, and the stores are filled with BARRELS of the things. So, tomorrow! Let’s get roasting!

THE PART ABOUT CHRISTMAS

So much better than Thanksgiving turned out, thanks for asking. I had a chance to sit and have good long talks, there were good stories, and I did well in the gift department*. One (rhetorical) thing I ask you: how did I end up with such flaky friends? Particularly the Colorado Springs strain. If I crossed an ocean teeming with beasts and maelstroms these people would sniff the breeze half-heartedly and yawn, saying you know, I’m not sure I can meet up with you after all.

THE PART ABOUT NEW YEAR’S

I am listening to Afrocelt but also Yusuf Islam (from when he was Cat Stevens) eating waffles and bacon and thinking about last night. I am existing in this warm, fuzzy, muppety happiness which is probably partially thanks to my recent purchase of the Old School Sesame Street (Vol. 2) and my subsequent dive, head first, into memory lane. Yes, nostalgia is icky and and not good, but getting a lot of what makes you happy — and what made you happy in the past — certainly couldn’t hurt, and as the Year of Pain comes to a close it has been nice to indulge myself in this.

I had forgotten about the human characters a little, even though I have a friend who reminds me of David, another friend who looks remarkably like Maria, and I used to pretend to be Bob. And is it ridiculous to be totally in to little vignettes of old men delivering the mail in the Appalachian mountains, or of a bunch of kids visiting a petting zoo? To actually get choked up when Guy Smiley sings his seasons song? Is it weird to then walk to your friends house for the New Year’s Eve party, buzzed on a Mint Julep and happy, looking at everyone sitting around the table thinking, we’re all friends. We’re all neighbors. We all have jobs and can read and smile and laugh together. I am living the dream of Sesame Street.

I always think fleetingly about a resolution, the same way I think fleetingly about squeezing the bottle of contact solution in the bathroom to make a tiny fountain. A bunch of people are putting up little lists about the year, and I think that’s very sweet and inspiring but I just cannot bring myself to. There are some fairly horrendous statistics for us. (Dani’s parents both died, Anthony rejected from 5 grad schools, Brother admitted to mental hospital and put on suicide watch, and so on). As far as resolutions go, this year I’m kind of well on my way to being better without even trying. I started to eat way healthier than I ever have, I’ve been remembering my cloth grocery bags, I have a nice consolidated recycling system going, and I’m starting to do better in terms of routine and getting stuff done when it needs to. So I think I’m good there, which is nice.

One big scary thing about the new year: Anthony will probably be moving in here full time, because really who are we kidding. Only scary in that I have to notify my Mom, probably will not get around to notifying my Father at this point, because I am a chickenshit. This needs to happen sooner rather than later, because of his rent mess and a whole lot of unknowns. So STAY TUNED!

*I am usually not one for bragging about swag, but I did score a digital SRL camera, and oh my God the hotness. The second I got it out of the box and scrounged some batteries and a SD disc, I assumed my post by the back door and took countless pictures of birds and creatures in my Mom’s back yard.

Here is the very first picture, ever.

Obviously there is a lot going for this, like manual focus.

And now I can be like everyone else. Breakfast is the new cat.