Friday hi-larity

So I missed the deadline to entertain y'all in EST on a Friday afternoon, but there are still a couple of hours left on PST. Or maybe some of you are still at work at 6, like me. (Stupid company trip to stupid Las Vegas interfering with my time to get my stupid performance self and upwards reviews done. Stupid performance review season. Stupid self for forgetting about this deadline.)

Anyway. I recommend watching Flight of the Conchords. The clip is only 3 minutes, so you aren't committed to 20 minutes for the punchline or anything.



Plus, they're just these brilliant kiwis doing satire, and it makes me miss New Zealand a little. Not enough to move back, but I miss my friends there a whole lot (not that they'd know it, given how crap I am at keeping in touch, but they're part of the constellations in my frontal lobe.)

And I'll update about the other stuff later, I just tired of writing depressing whiny rant after depressing whiny rant. In a revolting metaphorical nutshell: gross stuff comes out when a boil bursts, but then it hurts a lot less and the site can heal.

I'm fancy like ketchup!

Y'all need to check out this comic called Cat and Girl. This one in particular is talking to me right now. Props to K for telling me about it. I'm so glad there are other people in this world who have super dark senses of humor and aren't afraid to show it.

Unfunny cat news:

Got Zoe the special diabetic catfood. She won't eat it. She's currently on my desk chair snoozing in the sun while I crouch over the laptop at the dining room table. I still don't really understand how she persuaded me to do that. I guess the mystery of Zoe is why I keep her at all, let alone feed her baby food and spend hundreds on vet care. (I will actually try mixing the new food with baby food to see if she'll eat more of it. Failing that, I'll have to mix it with water and syringe it directly into her mouth. I can't WAIT for that day.)

Inty is still barfing about once a day (which I guess is progress.) I'm changing their litter from Feline Pine to S'wheat Scoops in case the Feline Pine dust she inhales is what's making her barf. I love her too, even though there are two recent piles of puke under this very dining room table which I will clean as soon as I publish this post.

Unfunny wedding news:

My divorce is final. That's actually good news, because it means I can get remarried. Except I got home yesterday to a letter from the wedding venue informing me that they were grateful to know of my cancellation on the site and regretting to tell me that unfortunately the deposit couldn't be refunded. I DIDN'T CANCEL THE VENUE. Of course I got home at like 6 to this letter (and lots of barf, bonus), so besides leaving a disco-freak-out voicemail there's not much I can do. I'll be out of town most of next week for work, but Dave will handle this. I'm sure it's just a mixup, but what the fucking fuck?

Unfunny Dave news:

His back continues to be in spasm and he continues to be insane. He continues to not see a doctor for either of these conditions, despite currently being in school to become a medical professional. (Seriously, just get some vicodin or something, honey, because otherwise I'm going to have to put you out of your misery myself. I'm sure I'd go to jail but apart from the constant rape and unending boredom and the social stigma*, it seems like a nice way to get away from it all.)

Unfunny leaky faucet news: even turning the hot water off under the sink doesn't stop the drip.

Unfunny oil company news: Turns out I am still getting oil at a capped price, they just increased the price a whole bunch without letting me know. Fuckwads.


On the plus side: apparently I have a lot of compassionate friends, because y'all are very supportive with the comments and the emails and I do completely appreciate it.

* I'm sure I'd cope well with prison, don't you think? Seeing how well I'm coping with two cats and an oil bill.

Rant Ahoy

It’s like this: I got the oil tank filled at the beginning of December. That cost about $600. (because oil prices are so high.) Dave informed me last night that the tank is now almost empty again.

I still haven’t figured out how to pay the December bill. Actually, that’s not quite true. You wanna know how I’m going to pay it? It’s going on a credit card. This makes me crazy because it’s a giant no-no to put cost of living stuff on credit cards. But where else can I find another $600? Although by the time I’ve paid for it, it’ll cost 600 bucks plus 12% interest for however long it takes me to pay off. Not to mention a late fee. And I'll get to perform this enjoyable task on my lunch hour, right after I post this entry.

So yes, it’s winter in New England and I should expect to have some heating bills. But the supposedly fixed price per gallon I signed up for when I opened an account with this heating company had me paying 2.29/gallon, when meant filling the tank cost about $400. They changed the prices (without any warning to me) to 2.79. I’m sure the higher prices reflects the fact that oil is now $100/barrel.

Potentially I could call the company and argue the prices/bill since it wasn’t the original terms of service. That assumes I’ve still GOT my first bill from two years ago, and also assumes the bill/original contract has no clause about prices being subject to change without warning.

Plus, did I mention that I work full time? In a cube farm where there is an unofficial rule about not making any non-work related phone calls, except on lunch. Where am I going to get the time and energy to research this? I’m not; I’m fucked, actually. Hey, don’t forget I’m planning a wedding during my lunch hours too.

Hey, guess what I did spend about $600 on recently though? Christmas presents for other people. Jesus. If I could turn back that clock…

Wanna know why else the oil tank ran out so fast? Apart from the fact that Dave’s got bursistis, which is affected badly by cold weather (which means that he hurts less if we keep the house at 65 rather than 60), the hot water in the kitchen faucet is leaking. It has been since we moved in, but the landlady’s idea of her responsibilities seems to begin and end with cashing the rent checks. The house is also on the market and we are the only tenants left, so we’re not getting any residual heat from other people keeping the house warm. Since the house is on the market, the landlady REALLY doesn’t give a shit about tenant complaints. And no, I don’t know how to fix a leaky faucet (leaking from the tap end.) So maybe we’ll just turn off the hot water in the kitchen at the spigot under the sink. That won’t be inconvenient at all. (but at least it would save a little money.)

Why not just move, right? Because the rent at our place IS cheap, and also because – had you noticed? – moving costs a bunch of money. We didn’t pay a security deposit for our current place, which means we’d have to come up with one to move, not to mention associated expenses of van rental etc. And we’ll need to hire movers for at least the bed, it’s a king. So that would be an outlay of a couple grand. Which, in case you hadn’t been paying attention, DO NOT HAVE.

Hey, guess what else? Zoe has diabetes. She needs special food, and she’ll need a blood curve every 4 months or so, and she’s going to need dental surgery when her blood sugar is stable. So all that will be, oh, I’m guessing in the region of $400-1000 over the next year. But! My company offers pet insurance (which I need to look into more, because does it cover preexisting conditions? The pet insurance only became available as of Jan 1 and Zoe was diagnosed in Dec. I guess I should research this during lunch.)

All of the vet stuff is a little bit down the road, since the vet has been out of the diabetes food for weeks and had it on backorder. (I need to call. During my lunch hour, I guess, which I am quickly using up by blogging.)

Other fun things: my company was acquired last year, and this month we are switching over to the parent company’s payroll system. The parent company pays a week in arrears. Fine, but the extra week is coming out of the January paychecks. For what it’s worth, my company did everything possible to ease the transition of the paycheck thing over, and I do get that January is

We both work full time, and Dave is going to school (not cheap, by the way.) We are not eligible for any kind of public assistance (which really I’d feel bad about taking. I am not the target for these social programs.) In a couple of years, when Dave is out of school and making more money as a nurse, this stuff will be easier.

But in the meantime, I’m getting squeezed in the poverty trap. I have a homeowner’s problem (leaky faucet) but no incentive to get a plumber to fix it (and also no tax break for home ownership.) If I owned, I’d consider taking out a loan for triple glazed windows or something else to make the house more energy efficient, but … I rent. I can’t pay my heating bill outright, so I’m going to put it on a credit card, which means I will pay interest on the bill.

You know what else is really super extra fun? I’ve gone crazy again. I need to see the doctor (another call to make on my lunch hour*) and talk about resuming meds, because the panic attacks, while always enjoyable**, are starting to interfere with normal life, and my anxiety is starting to paralyze me. Luckily, winter’s low light has made Dave crazy too, so not only are we both crazy, we’re BOTH CRAZY AT THE SAME TIME, which means that instead of being able to actually support or help each other through a bad spot, we’re trapped in our own private hells and usually just end up making it worse for each other. Fucking awesome.


Now, does someone want to remind me why I should keep bothering to put one foot in front of the other? Because right now, I’m having trouble remembering why I bother. And all the crap I’ve complained about in this post is the tip of the motherfucking iceberg, man – we’ve also got stalker problems and family feuds, none of which I’ll go into detail on for obvious reasons. Oh, and my migraines. Not better. That might be because THEY ARE TRIGGERED BY STRESS.


* I totally love calling the doctor’s office with everyone in a 20-cube radius listening in while I describe my symptoms of CRAZINESS. Also I'm 100% positive my coworkers want to know that level of detail about my mental health.

** who doesn’t like hyperventilating and sobbing for an hour? Come on, you know you do.

Of cabbages and kings

well, kings or Presidents. This is the first election I've been in the country AND of age to vote since 1996, so I'm following the primaries with some interest.

Not obessive interest though - I live in fucking Massachusetts, so by the time the primaries arrive here the matter will be decided without my primary ballot.* Similarly, Massachusetts always votes Democratic, so even if Romney does win, he won't win his home state.

Not that it matters, since the shrinking population of Massachusetts means we're about to lose another seat in Congress. Yay. Could it be the shitty weather, shitty roads and high cost of living? Or maybe it's the fact that Mass is 49th in the nation (right ahead of Michigan) when it comes to job creation and economic recovery.** I guess someone has to be last in order for a first to exist, though.

But hey, what are blogs for if not to pontificate upon politics that you wouldn't bore anyone with at parties? I'm not really interested in the Republican primaries, although I hope someone really dire and unelectable like Guiliani will win, because that would almost ensure a Democratic sweep in the White House.

I'm not scared of Romney since his tenure in Mass just seemed to show that he'll go where the prevailing political winds take him. Which is an opinion I also hold about Clinton. Both Clintons, in fact. But lots and lots of politicians are basically mercenary. I bet it comes with the job. Office politics is not something I'm good at (though I like to think I get by okay) but it's a really useful skill.

I don't really think H. Clinton would win a Presidential election; I think she's been smeared so thoroughly - plus people still REALLY REALLY hate her from B. Clinton's White House tenure - although I think she'd do a fine job. I also think Obama is more electable based simply on being a dude. Look at the historical facts: black men got the vote before women, there was a black male Supreme Court justice before there was a (white) female one. Okay, those are only two facts and I bet there are a zillion more facts in support of my case and a zillion facts against. I don't have them because I'm not much of a politics wonk.

Anyway. I'll be interested to see how it all shakes out. I'd most like to see a Democrat in the White House, even a mercenary one, and after that I kind of don't care. I think an Obama/Edwards ticket would probably work well, as would an Obama/Biden ticket. I would lovelovelove to see an Obama/Clinton ticket, but I don't think that would be very electable - a black person AND a lady, uh oh, that's super double-plus ungood for conservatives. It'd probably stimulate them to emerge in droves to vote for even a maximum wingnut like Huckabee. Bleh.





*In fact, can one even vote in the primaries if one is not registered with a political affilition? I'm registered as an independent because I just don't want to deal with anyone else wanting my details and money. Does that make me ineligible to vote in a primary? I know, I know, I'm on the internet ... I could just look it up.

** I work ni high tech, one of Mass's few growth areas, so this economic stuff doesn't actually affect me, except that I can't afford to move to San Jose - which has, not incidentally, better weather, high tech jobs and swing state status, so my vote might actually count.

Drinking the KoolAid, holy crap

(says she of the Blogger platform.)

Even though I love my job and this is the nicest company I have ever worked for, I can't imagine spending 4-5 hours every weekday weaving a chainmail banner with the company logo on it, like this Googler did. I notice the stats don't include a time estimate of how long many hours spent on the project.

the saga of my boobs, part one million

Sarah Hepola has a great salon piece on what it's like to have big boobs. She articulates everything I really minded.

I was in the middle of a semi-naked makeout session with the man I was (foolishly) dating when he interrupted to ask a question.

"What size are those?" He meant my breasts.

A sleazeball, right? Of course. But I've gotten that question, too. It's like kissing me is some kind of license to ask. Gee, why don't you ask how much I weigh, too?


A gajillion porno sites and essentially all of modern pop culture would suggest having big boobs is a wonderful thing, an aspirational thing; hey, people pay good money for these puppies. But for me, it's something I never wanted, something that never fit what I felt like inside, something I try badly to ignore. Unfortunately, most people don't return the favor.

...

But underneath all the good-natured self-mockery and the saucy, low-cut tops, there is something else: I am embarrassed by my knockers. And the fact that something I am embarrassed about is the first thing people notice about me? Well, that kinda sucks. I feel like I could save a baby from a burning building, I could cure cancer with glitter alone, and I would still be referred to as "Sarah, you know, the short one with the big tits."

Ditto. It's not really any fun. One of my first husband's best friends referred to me, for years, as "the lassie wi the big tits." Um, thanks. That was after the reduction, which, if you are interested, brought me down to a 32DD. My surgeon's response, a year after the reduction: "Huh. I thought they'd be smaller, more like a C cup." Yeah, I thought so too. But you don't need to slice me up again and cut off my nipples and reattach them again and leave big swathes of ropy scar tissue - it's okay, I'll live with it. It's certainly an improvement from the G cup or whatever I was wearing before. I was too embarassed to go to the old ladies in a department store who would have measured me, and it's uncommon to stock even a 32DD (which is why I often end up wearing a 34D and tugging at the back as it slides up all day). Never mind the 32G.

And not knowing your own cup size is another point that Hepola touches on:

I'll sum up my early adolescence like this: I wore T-shirts in the pool. I showered alone. I learned that clever ruse of changing clothes but never being naked. I tried to be terribly quiet about all this, because if I was terribly quiet, then all of it just might disappear.

Which is the kind of magical thinking that got me to the age of 33, not knowing the size of my breasts. I don't need an "Oprah" episode and a thousand women's magazine articles and the cast of "What Not to Wear" to tell me I'm in the wrong cup size. My breasts spill out the top. (I was horrified to discover the tabloid press had a name for this: quadriboobage!) My breasts spill out the bottom. They spill out everywhere boobs can spill out, basically.

It's been ten years since I had the reduction, and I still think it was a great decision. Even though my boobs, outside of a bra, fall about halfway to China, at least within a bra, I can look normal and wear dresses off the rack and stuff. Mostly because I am 5'7" and slim, so the boobs can get smushed into a sheath and look fine, as long as it's got some elastic.

But pre-operation, I was the object of admiration from my friends for how I could change without ever getting undressed. They also admired how well I hid my disproportion. And then they refused to let me borrow clothing, because it would get stretched. Which was true but annoying.


They look like I expect: Beige and giant, like you could parachute out of a plane with them. I try them on and she is surprisingly hands-on with me, running one finger along each seam, sticking a finger deep in the crevasse of my cleavage and rooting around, jiggling things unexpectedly. Even my boyfriend and my doctor aren't this thorough.

Yeah. How about the time I was getting fitted - bad enough to be topless in front of a bunch of strangers with your untoned stomach jiggling all over the place and muffin top seeping over the top of your pants with no sweater in place to camoflage it - and one lady commented on how saggy I was. Awesome. Why don't you also recommend aerobics so I can tone my thighs a little (as a waxer once did)?*

I'm sure she didn't mean to wound me, but if you're 21 or so and some white haired old broad is clucking over your tits and speculating that it's happened extra fast because of the reduction, that's no fun. Of course she's right; they are at my elbows and I offer proof:


I really should go braless less often.

versus:


I might be angry, but I'm supported.

it has always been my not-so-revelatory suspicion that this entire industry -- this luxurious, pink powder-puff, thongs-as-women's-empowerment industry -- is really just about pleasing men. Because let's face it: I am much more comfortable in a jogging bra and cotton boy shorts, and those don't run me $100 a set. It's all well and good to find a bra that fits, but the truth is that I wanted a bra that not only fit but could also be seen in daylight by the man I'm in love with.

Yeah. Except actually, a good sportsbra with an underwire seems to run me about 50 - 60 bucks. Worth every motherfucking penny.


* it's funny, I seem to mind the comments from other women more than men. Maybe because I expect that kind of bullshit from men, but when another woman - and one you are paying, who is seeing you vulnerable, in a state of undress - offers up her opinions about your body, well, it's like a double betrayal.

holiday cookies

as usual, I indulged my taste for the intricate and the macabre. I'll start you off slowly.


This took took like eleven hours to make. (See? slow!)


The gingerbread Lestat.


Lestat meets Akasha. Yum.

Even my precious snowflake is far less gorgeous than the one in the picture accompanying the recipe for roll-out spice cookies by Dorie Greenspan. The dough tastes delicious, is easy to make and roll out and the cookies are pretty damn good, too.

Everyone else is doing a year's best

so why not jump on the bandwagon?





So the other night Dave and I had a long stoned conversation* while he cooked dinner and I cleaned up cat barf about our picks for the year’s best album. Dave’s choice was, of course, John Davis’s solo album Arigato! (Davis is the frontman for Superdrag, one of Dave’s favorite bands ever. One of mine - now - too, if I think about it.)

Arigato! is straight-up rock but Davis is a born-again Christian and most of the songs are about God, which definitely sheds a different light on the “who sucked out the feeling” guy. “Sucked Out” was written by Davis when he was still all rock-and-rollerish and not sober; then his dad died and he quit drinking and converted. I don’t know why this background information fascinates me, but it does. (I allow the biographical information of authors to inform my reading, also.)

We saw a reunion Superdrag show this fall and no joke, it was the best show I think I’ve ever seen in my life, despite the presence in the audience of an occasional tiny fuckhead with a pierced neck. (Don’t worry, I elbowed her right back as hard as I could.) It was a reasonably small venue (the Paradise) and a sold-out crowd. (More trivia: the Paradise in Boston is where Superdrag played their last show before taking a break.) The opening acts were awesome and local to Knoxville, where Superdrag is based.

I have never seen such a high energy show for TWO FUCKING HOURS. I still feel guilty because I was sober and my back hurt from standing on a concrete floor for three hours during the opening acts and I was wearing earplugs the whole time (because live music fucking hurts) so I don’t think I looked very enthused, but I was. There inside my own head, I was thrilled. And they played all the greatest hits off the Superdrag CDs – I was surprised to find I knew every song – and a whole bunch of stuff off Arigato! (much of which I also knew, since Dave downloaded the singles off John Davis’s MySpace page (that link will take you to the page where you, too, can listen and download) and had been playing them ever since.

So we bought the album at the concert and it’s really good. It’s not Christian-christian, in that kind of safe-pop way that I think Christian rock tends to get categorized as; it’s much closer to John Donne’s gripping raw struggle with God. Which is cool to see – at leas faith works for someone, even if not for me! And while the message isn’t doing it for me, the rock does. It’s straightforward and sincere, which is Dave’s thing – he really values authentic emotion. It’s also a very skillful album – the songs are well-thought out and well crafted, without the craftsmanship ever actually taking over. A terrific balancing act.

So I liked the album a lot, but it wasn’t my pick for year’s best. Probably my personal favorite this year is Andrew Bird’s Armchair Apocrypha, which is clever and a little goofy and kind of experimental. And not quite insincere, but there’s no raw emotion, everything is polished to a high gloss. It’s very cerebral and a little cool, if you consider that a flaw, which I don’t (not for this album, anyway.) Those things are all the things that I dig, though, and that link above to the John Donne isn’t an accident – the metaphysical poets are my favorites because they take this emotion and compress it really tightly into tightly constrained boxes of metaphor and rhyme scheme and when it works, it gives me goosebumps. Andrew Marvell’s bracelet of bright hair about the bone, oh my! The risk with doing that kind of thing is that you can slide into insincere artifice (see: the later work of They Might Be Giants, or some of Pope’s poems) and just play by the numbers, which is boring and sneery.

Bird doesn’t do that, though. Imitosis is probably my favorite song on the album. I mean, how can you not love this?
“despite what all your studies had shown/
What was mistaken for closeness was just a case for mitosis”
So smart! The internal rhyming, the pun! And it’s a fucking peppy salsa number with violins! And then the chorus “we were all basically alone” is haunting. Not all the songs are that good, although I also love "Plasticities" (guaranteed to get me bobbing my head at my desk at work like a looner) and "Fiery Crash" and "Dark Matter" and ohhhh, all the songs, really.

So what I think it comes down to for year’s best is really a matter of taste. I feel kind of fraudulent professing any musical taste at all since I’m unable to create music myself (no, can’t carry a tune or keep a beat, it’s sad for me since I LOVE to sing). But I guess a lot of critics don’t necessarily produce. (Theoretically critics are well-educated, though, and my musical education is suckola.) I don’t think either of these albums is obviously head and shoulders above the other; I don’t think either album will go down in history as much more than a footnote, not necessarily because of the quality of the work but because neither is well-known.

So, blah blah blah, here’s some other stuff I found this year.

Best Album to Play When Parents Come Over: Amy Winehouse, Back to Black. Yeah, I’m sick of her tabloid antics too, but your parents will love the Phil Spector 60s heavily-produced orchestral sound. And maybe you’ll get a secret thrill from all her swearing which your deaf parents don’t notice. But although I still like the album, there’s not much more to it than what you hear on your first listen, which means I don’t listen to it very often. I bet it would be great for a party, too.

Best Guilty Pleasure: Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit It can be totally twee but The Blues are Still Blue is a fucking terrific track. Plus, soft spot for the Glasgwegians singing about cups of tea and Morningside because awww, net curtains and sweetness.

Best New-To-Me Discovery That Was Not New This Year: Butch Walker, Letters. Dave’s drummer gave him a copy of this album and it’s awesome car music, kind of sunny-yet-melancholy sensitive-songwriter boy pop. Yay! Also in the category is The Pernice Brothers, Yours, Mine and Ours.

Most Flexible Album: Fiest, The Reminder. 1234 made it into an iPod commercial, but don’t hold that against the band, because the singer’s voice is terrific and out of 14 songs on the album, there are only a few that I skip. (“Sea Lion Woman” sucks, but “My Moon My Man” more than makes up for it.) But you can totally play it with kids in the room, or parents (and no worries on the swearing), or as background music in the car, or just sit down with a drink and listen to it, and it holds up to all that stuff. Sometimes innocuous can be a virtue.

Best Pop Album: New Pornographers, Challengers. I have a feeling this album will come to mean “fall of 2007” to me, it feels very specific like that. I will note that after seeing them play in concert in bored fashion, I lost interest in this album and now only play it sporadically. I think I overplayed it, actually; my lack of interest might be due to user error and not the album. Whatever. It’s still a great poppy record, and shit, it has a LOT of really great songs on it – it would be shorter to list the tracks that suck (“Failsafe”, “All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth” and “Adventures in Solitude” is iffy) than to list the super rad awesome tracks (“My Rights Versus Yours”, “All the Old Showstoppers” – the best track on the album, I think – “Challengers”, “Myriad Harbour”, “Unguided”, “Mutiny I Promise You”, “Entering White Cecilia”).

Most Overrated: it’s a tie between Rilo Kiley’s Under the Black Light and Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. The Wilco album has a few good tracks (“Either Way”, “You are My Face”but it seems self-indulgent (Impossible Germany is like, skippable Germany); if this was a book I’d say it needed another round of edits. The Rilo Kiley is interesting and experimental and plays around with different genres a lot – something I appreciate (see Andrew Bird) but in this case, it’s mostly not a success. Standout tracks include “15”, “Smoke Detector” – heh, I smoke in bed too - and “Silver Lining”, although I’ve got a soft spot also for “Breakin’ Up” – one of the songs where the experimentalness works. Moneymaker, on the other hand, sounds like a cover of an obscure disco song, and not in a good way. And that was the single they chose, too. Bleah. Why didn’t someone ask ME?

* all I really needed to say was stoned, huh? length is kind of implied

I love this picture

It's not the most flattering picture ever taken of me (although the haircut looks terrific, thanks to Matthew-the-genius-hairdresser) but I really like it because Zoe is looking straight at the camera (Dave's cell phone) and I'm not. So - a nice picture even if it shows my nose in profile, which I don't like.

Plus this picture is really typical of Zoe and me - she sees the laptop come out and climbs right into my lap, giant Campbell's-soup-kid-eyes alight, and then sort of burrows in. She is warm and cute but uncomfortable, so I end up hunched over the (warm) laptop losing the battle with Zoe's fur which is oozing onto the touchpad. You can like, see how soft her fur is, though, and how sweetly she rests her chin on my (typing) arm.

The casual nature of digital camera photos is fantastic. You can take like a million versions of a picture, or the subject doesn't have to bother to look at the camera, and whether you choose to use the picture or delete it, it's free. I feel less compelled to smile for photos because I don't have to pay to get them developed and if it's unflattering, I can delete it, instead of thinking, "that was a waste of film". (The challenge now is to make sure I'm not wearing the exact same flattering-photo-smile-face in all my pictures.)

Anyway. Happy me and the internet and Bobo and her Campbell's-soup-kid-eyes (which I suspect is maybe due to diabetes vision problems. She did turn out to be diabetic after all, but so far it's minor and might be controllable with diet for a while. And as long as her quality of life is good, I can handle committing to an insulin regime, even if it does mean we can't just pile up the Meow Mix and take off for the weekend any more. Not like we do that anyway, I just cling to the idea that some day I'll take advantage of the spontaneity available to me. Also someday I will make our Christmas stockings.)

Internet roundup

News of the Weird:

MSN’s Bad Santa. Just in time for the holidays, MSN created a “Santa” you can chat with. But apparently this Santa has a dirty mouth. Check out the transcript from the register. My favorite part is when Santa calls the children dirty bastards, but second-favorite is the tone of outrage in the story, since I don’t really believe that the “children” in the story were actually children. Anyway, if your kids are IMing with strangers, a Santa-bot with some bad code is not great but isn't the most harmful thing they could run across. But still not good news for MSN's already greyish public image.

News of the Depressing:

Credit card interest rate rise up to 30% triggered if your credit score changes. (A change in credit score can be triggered just by opening a new credit card, or enquiring in a couple of places about opening a new credit card. Awesome!) See Pandagon for the full story. I knew there was a reason I was working on getting my credit card balance to zero. (Apart from moral satisfaction, of course, which is not that much of a motivator when confronted by the shiny and the pretty.)

News of the Cuteness:

As long as we’re talking about pandas, check out this video of a baby panda sneezing. It’s only 14 seconds long. (I hate embedded videos – normally - they take forever to load and you don’t know if they’ll last ten seconds or 10 minutes.)

Bits and bobs

There's a scrap store called Bits and Bobs in Edinburgh, although when I clicked on the link to see if it was either new or if I just didn't remember it from when it was there, it's not really in the city, it's outside. Edinburgh is a funny city in that about 5 miles outside the city center, you hit farmland and start to see cows. That was always surprising to me, that country and city rubbed shoulders so closely like that without any surbuban strip malls to ease the transition.

This is really a follow-up post, anyway.

So I changed the sheets last night, with Inty "helping", which means she kept jumping up on the bed and trying to settle and then acting all surprised when a blanket landed on top of her, then attacking the sheets from the inside out, frightening herself and running away, and then coming back to yell at me before the starting the whole cycle all over again. It was annoying-cute, like Winston is ugly-cute.
A friend suggested I get some baby food since Zoe's lost so much weight, and Zoe fucking LOVED that shit. It smells, if possible, grosser than wet cat food, and I really can't wait to clean up the inevitable baby food cat barf, but at this point, I'll do anything that will get some calories into her. Her spine is all knobbly, it's just like I remember from Vince, who I can't link to because I can't figure out how to get my pictures from iPhoto onto the internet because I can't figure out the file path. This whole Mac OS baffles the crap out of me, which makes me feel stupid and lazy for not trying harder to learn it but also impatient, because I need my brain for storing information about Britney Spears's latest driving infraction.

Anyway. Vince got a tumor and died. I don't feel ready for the same to happen to Zoe. Also it's really cold out and I think the ground might be frozen by now and what do you do, pay a hundred and fifty bucks to get the cat cremated or put the cat in the freezer until spring when you can bury it for free? That's a dilemma I don't want to have. Another thing I don't want to have: migraines. Since this recent low, I've stopped drinking in an effort to limit the frequency of migraines, but so far no go.

And as long as I'm talking about how cheap I am, I just one minute ago caved and turned the heat on. It was at 61 and I'm boiling it all the way up to 66. I know how to party. But we've got a quarter tank of oil and it will probably cost about half a month's rent to refill it and I'm trying to put off that moment as long as possible. I may be cheap but we're also legitimately broke, although hopefully Dave's new job will go some way towards easing that pain. In the meantime, I'll continue to wear my fleece indoors over three layers and a blanket, thanks.

Since I wrote this, I seem to have magically lost about 10 pounds despite not making any changes to my eating habits. Which just makes me think that body weight is at least 80% genetic. Also it reminds me to point out an interesting response to that post from a friend, who confessed she hadn't taken my talking about compulsive eating completely seriously because I'm not overweight. I'm not - I'm 5'7" and usually weigh about 135 pounds. This means I don't suffer any social disapproval or other prejudice based on my appearance, which is nice, but since I'm of a normal weight I can't really complain about how fucked up my body image is without pissing people off (which I understand. It's like saying, "Darn! My eyelashes are so long they brush my sunglass lenses!", you know? Cry me a fucking river.)

And oooooh, Dave just came home with flowers. Just because. Yay! I'm off to make vodka cupcakes and put my flowers in a vase. Man, I love flowers but never want to spend the money. I can already smell the lilies, I should remember to spoil me more often.

Disgusting Friday Surprise

This is just going to be a gross-out post. I'll put the really super TMI information in white font (so hold down your mouse's left button and run it over where the words ought to be, and they'll show up) but it's all kind of awful. Because that's the kind of week this has been. If your week been good or even moderately okay, CLICK AWAY NOW, because this story might ruin it.

So Zoe has been sick for a while - maybe a month - and losing weight and barfing a lot. A lot. Like, daily. Or thrice daily.

Yes, I took her to the vet. X-rays and blood tests showed nothing abnormal. It might just be that she's 13 and her long dirt nap is en route. Of course I'm sad even contemplating this, not to mention sad that I might not get much more than two years with her, and we love each other so. Dave says my armpit is the only one she's ever stuck her face into, which I guess isn't big news unless you're a total pet person and get what it's like to have an animal develop special affectionate behaviors for you specifically, because they loooooove you.

I do realise that burrowing into my armpit doesn't sound quite so magical once it's all typed out. You'll just have to grant me some slack here if you aren't an animal lover. She's just so damn cute when she burrows under the covers to get warm, for instance. Often I find a deflated little lump in the bed where she's been sleeping all day when I get home at night and it makes me smile.

Back to the barfing: cleanup has been fun, of course. Most nights I get home from work and do a run-through of the house to try to find the barf before I step in it. If I've got time, I do a quick run-through in the morning before work, too. Because she hasn't been eating, mostly it's thin watery yellowish barf (bile). Poor baby. She does have an appointment coming up to go see the vet again. A frequent thrower-upper myself, I feel her pain.

So, this morning? While I was making the bed? Guess what I found? ... yeah. A little oval yellow-ish stain on the bottom sheet. What the hell?, I thought, I don't remember that being there when I put the sheets on last week.

That's because ... it probably wasn't. My guess is that one of the days this week when she was sleeping under the covers, she barfed in there. Yeah. On my side. I found it this morning. I slept on barf-sheets last night, in a barf-bed. Ew ew ew ew ew. It's possible I've been sleeping in that since Monday night. Ew ew ew ew ew.

So, what with Zoe's sickness and my own previously-unmentioned medical stuff, it's been a bad week for pussies around here. (I admit it. I totally wrote this whole post for that single whited-out joke. Now go bleach your brain.)

oh hai, teh funny!!!1!

There's a lolcat wiki to translate the Bible into lolspeak. It is fucking hilarious; check out Genesis 1, 1:

            Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs


1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1



Of course, to enjoy this you have to be okay with thinking about teh Bibble as not-the-literal-truth, and you have to be okay with God = boreded ceiling cat. So, my mother? Would not think this was funny at all.

Just like that Christmas that my sister and I kidnapped the baby Jesus from his manger in our dime store creche. So that she wouldn't notice the absence of the tiny baby doll immediately, we subbed in a little pink pig (from our Pass the Pig game). We tucked a little ransom note (demanding, I think, "100 sheep by sundown or the baby gets it") under the piglet and sat back to await the fireworks.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Finally during Christmas dinner all the kids (all-bar-parents were in on the secret by now - you should have seen my brother turn red and cackle with suppressed glee when we told him) made a big fuss about "checking in on Jesus" and Mom eventually got up to look. Well. She was Not Amused. Especially the pig part, maybe more so because it was such dead ringer for the bebbe jebub.
Mmmmm, sacrilicious. I've never enjoyed brussels sprouts more.


... oh, and if you don't know what lolcats are, they are "poorly spelled human emotions ascribed to pictures of animals" (That's the most concise definition I've ever seen, and it comes from the terrific and even funnier lolsecretz blog.) Or you can just Google the phrase "I can has cheezburger?" and you'll pull up a ton of information. PWN!


(I don't really know what PWN means. That's okay, because judging by the way I keep this video all over the interwebs, no one else knows what it means, either.)

Not just a river in Egpyt

I am so happy the NYT is now free all over the place, all the time. Check out this fun pop-psych article: Denial makes the world go round. (I can't say I'm super-psyched that the opening and closing example of the article is a woman whose shopping is out of control, who didn't feel able to tell her husband about it. Couldn't they have used a scenario about an affair or something not related to the duplicitous-female-likes-to-shop stereotype? But whatever, it's still worth the click.)

“There are lots of way to think about this,” said the lead author, Daniel J. Hruschka of the Santa Fe Institute, a research group that focuses on complex systems. “One is that you’re moving and you really need help, but your friend doesn’t return your call. Well, maybe he’s out of town, and it’s not a defection at all. The ability to overlook or forgive is a way to overcome these vicissitudes of everyday life.”


I've seen that. Aren't we way harsher about other drivers than ourselves or the trusted driver of our car? God, if I held myself and my friends and my family to the same standards I hold stangers and theoretical people to, I'd be friendless, alone and probably be planning my suicide, unable to live with myself.

Nowhere do people use denial skills to greater effect than with a spouse or partner. In a series of studies, Sandra Murray of the University of Buffalo and John Holmes of the University of Waterloo in Ontario have shown that people often idealize their partners, overestimating their strengths and playing down their flaws.

I can think of a zillion real life examples where I've seen this happening. I'm sure my own relationship is included.

This typically involves a blend of denial and touch-up work — seeing jealousy as passion, for instance, or stubbornness as a strong sense of right and wrong. But the studies have found that partners who idealize each other in this way are more likely to stay together and to report being satisfied in the relationship than those who do not.

So ... denial = neccesary coping tool for functioning in society. It's just when there's too much that there's a problem. Like drugs or alcohol! Whoa. Heavy.

O I am a bad cat mother

A new low in Friday cat-blogging, hein? I'm pretty sure she spent a while last night deciding what part of me to eat first. And yes, that's a little Yahoo! t-shirt she's wearing. I bet you didn't know brand marketing schwag went all the way down to the pet-apparel vertical. (FYI: I think she had the shirt on for about 5 minutes in total. Just long enough for me to get the pictures. And no, I didn't get scratched or bitten. She was mad but apparently not mad enough to resist.)

Exciting Text Fight

Exciting for me, anyway. If by “exciting” you mean “now I feel shitty”, which I do. Verbatim transcript below.


Me: I feel bloated and tired of boughten food.

Dave: Didja grab a burrito for lunch? Tasty, homemade. Like mom used to make.

Me: No, it’s the company lunch today (chili cookoff, which is actually cool.)

Dave: You’re going out to dinner tonight for the third time this week. May i suggest moderation?

Me: You can suggest anything you fucking want. I have been moderating.

Dave: Just saying.

Me: I’m in a pretty bad mood today and i miss exercise and fresh vegetables. I know you were trying to make a helpful suggestion but your advice seemed obvious and condescending to me, like my [redacted relative].

Dave: Jesus. Forget i said anything.

[this response crossed with my followup text, below]

Me: I am also extra sensitive due to compulsive eating issues. Like when someone asks you how come you have to get so mad all the time and suggests you chill out

And that is where things currently stand. Ain’t love grand?

Re-reading, it seems obvious to me that we’ve both got a point. My life has been hard and shitty lately (Dave’s has too), so anger is bubbling out all over the place – as you can see above, somewhat inappropriately. At the same time … we’ve been dating for two years, during which I have struggled with compulsive eating. Telling a compulsive eater to moderate is about equivalent telling an alcoholic that it’s fine to drink, just stop after one or two. They already know that, trust me.

I’ve been fighting compulsive eating since I was about 14, my first year of boarding school. That’s when the first eating disorder which had been carefully nurtured by the media and my fucked-up elementary school really took root and blossomed, helped greatly by the 32F breasts which had arrived with puberty the summer before I started high school. (No, they aren’t still that size. That’s another story, though. Insurance paid for the surgery, because I had back problems. At 17. Back problems.)

Sometimes people (men) have trouble understanding why a woman wouldn’t want huge tits. For men, bigger dicks are better, right? And big boobs on women are often a huge (heh) plus. Except a big dick is like a secret weapon, whereas big boobs are pretty much impossible to hide. I won’t even get into what a pain in the ass it is to try to find dresses when your top is a size 14 and your bottom is a size 6, or say much about how with really big boobs, all you can hope for re: tops is to find stuff that drapes nicely. Like, you know, a tent. Tents also don’t show “too much” cleavage (don’t want to look slutty!). Not showing cleavage, when you’re stacked like I was, pretty much requires a turtleneck.

Also, I gotta say, the summer I grew boobs was a pretty vicious induction into puberty. Suddenly construction workers were hollering at me from across the street, based on my new silhouette. (They probably had children my age.) Fathers of the children I babysat for showed new interest in my life, asking how school was going for me and casually asking if I had any boyfriends. (I know: predatory and disgusting.) Boys were talking to me, but not looking at my face while they did so. It didn’t help that my group of “friends” freshman year included some sharks who saw my weakness, smelled blood and drove in for the kill. I’m sure those girls had their own issues driving them, but that doesn’t mean being bullied doesn’t suck a lot more for the victim.

I was desperately lonely and wanted nothing more than a boyfriend, but I was so suspicious and terrified of sex and my new body that I couldn’t do anything but shoot them all down. I would spend hours and hours obsessing over one in particular and thinking how cute he as and how great it would be if he talked to me, trying to sound smart in English class so he would notice and then … if he did talk to me, I shut down completely. In retrospect, not ALL the boys were talking to me just ‘cause I had a pair of industrial-strength floatation devices on my front – the English class thing worked! – but I was too uncomfortable with myself to be able to tell that.

So I decided I didn’t have a boyfriend was because I wasn’t attractive enough. I couldn’t do anything about my face but my body, that was under my control, right? And I started trying to really control my food intake, which led to restricted eating and then binging and purging and what I eventually learned to call compulsive eating.

Because here’s the thing about eating for emotional reasons: it works. Your serotonin levels do rise. You feel worse about it afterwards but that temporary relief from pain is like a fucking drug. It’s a little worse, actually, since with a drug you can quit. With food you have to re-learn how to eat. You need to create a new relationship with food. You can’t get away from it. On bad days, well meaning friends will tell you that you “deserve” some chocolate. And I really LIKE to eat, it is a sensuous pleasure for me. I can’t just regard it as fuel.

I am 29 now. The battle with food has been going on for more than half my life. I mentioned in my comment on a previous post that I’d quit drinking to try to help my migraines. So far teetotalling hasn’t helped with the migraines (except that I can feel morally superior in knowing that a particular migraine is not my fault) but it’s been pretty easy not to drink at parties, dinners out, shows, home after a tough day … I have an initial desire for a drink and then after about 30 minutes I relax and watch other people get loaded. No big deal.

Similarly, I’ve never been able to cultivate a long-term relationship with cigarettes, and believe me, I’ve tried. (Yes, I know the physical downside. No one wants cancer. What no one seems to acknowledge is that cigarettes are hugely helpful emotionally – a built-in excuse to take little breaks throughout your day with a relaxing/stimulating legal drug which doesn’t impair your work performance. And smokers usually develop their own little relationship networks, which is another reason to smoke.)

No other drug has ever really gotten its hooks into me (except pot, but even that relationship is less problematic for me than food.) I think it’s probably because I’m already fighting an addiction battle, it’s just with food, and there’s not really room for anything else in there. (Plus I am just not THAT self-destructive, and know better than to keep a bottle in my desk drawer or hit the bong before work.) Food is different, though.

So: who wants leftover Halloween candy? Because my office was SWIMMING in the stuff last week. Of course, I ate my way through it, disgusting or not. (Runts: much less delicious than I remember.) Because – did I already mention? – last week was wicked shitty, this week is shaping up to be another crapper and there was all this serotonin-stuff lying in piles on tables. I found it impossible to resist, grabbibng handfuls whenever I went by and unwrapping as stealthily as possible so no one would realise what I was up to, how greedy and piggy I was being. My strategy became to just eat it as fast as possible, so it would go away. I had help from coworkers, of course, but I’d like to think that if we’d all saved our wrappers and counted them up, I’d have finished first. By a mile.

All of which is a long-winded way of explaining why I was so mad when Dave suggested (reasonably, if a little insensitively) that I moderate my food intake at lunch today and tonight at dinner. Thanks for the tip, hon.

Not that you asked but yes, my pants are a little tight this week.

love

change of subject

I was going to write about how I'm all depressed and stuff today, but then I got into work and there was Halloween candy everywhere, a tidal wave and all the good kind, too: whoppers and skittles and rolos and reese's cups (those singleton packages. I love those fucking things.). Anyway, the sugar high has made me unable to think about depression (what's that?) and also, unable to see straight but never mind. I'll probably get back to the depression in a couple of hours.

So instead I'm just going to mention that Jaden's Steamy Kitchen is doing a vanilla bean giveaway. Eight people will win half a pound of beans each. And if you mention this contest on your blog, you get an additional two entries. Also Jaden's blog is so fabulous - she has awesome, accessible recipes and she's really funny, so it's worth reading anyway, even if you don't cook. (A certain regular reader will know that I'm squinting west, in her direction, with a meaningful westerly squint.)

That photo there on the left is what half a pound of vanilla beans looks like. A lot of damn vanilla beans. (Photo credits to SteamyKitchen. Hope it's okay that I republished the picture.)
And if you've ever bought one or two sad looking beans curled up in a McCormick's jar at the supermarket, weeping little vanilla bean tears because they have been separated from their beanly brethren then it's hard not to weep in sympathy. Particularly because those jars seem to go for 6 - 9 bucks, which is HIGHWAY ROBBERY for one measly bean. So, uh, I'm kind of interested in winning this contest, not that I ever win anything (curse you, Popgadget, for tempting me to sign up for a pink Dyson giveaway which OF COURSE I did not win and now they've sold my fucking email address and I get lots and lots of shitty spam, all of which would have been totally worth it IF I had won but since I didn't win now I'm just bitter. And now you can see what I have to be depressed about.) Anyway. I'm pretty sure Jaden doesn't sell her email lists. I can has beans now?

New Pornographers in Boston

We went out with another couple to see the New Pornographers play at the Roxy in Boston last night. We went for shabu shabu for dinner first - it's this thing where they give you a bunch of vegetables and meat and a pot of boiling broth or water to cook the veggies and meat in. It was fucking delicious and affordable. I heart Chinatown. Also, despite the fact that there were nine million people with individual pots of boiling water, the windows weren't even steamed up, because they have the most hardcore, efficient and quiet ventilation system I've ever seen.

Anyway, the concert.

That was what I could see. Thanks, Roxy, for not allowing people upstairs to the balconies.

Admittedly we didn't arrive as the doors opened and scooch down front or anything. In fact we skipped the opening act (Emma Pollock, who is from Glasgow and seems to sing innocuous folky stuff, judging by the songs on her myspace profile and by the last half of her last song that we arrived in time to hear.) So no loss on the opening act.

The band themselves were good, although man - despite not being able to see, there were crazy bright horrible floodlights that were flashing in time to the music, directly in my eyes. I saw a lot of people wincing every time the floods got started. I swear it was like the Battle of the Seizure Robots in there. (I always thought that was just a Simpsons joke, but it turns out that the joke is based on a banned Pokemon episode whose bright flashing lights really did induce seizures in epileptic viewers. Fucked up!)

But no complaints about the playing - totally professional and tight, which I would expect from any supergroup and especially this one, which has been around for a while and has been touring Challengers extensively. I even got chills during My Rights Versus Yours, although that might have just been the garlic from dinner making itself at home in my digestive system.

One of the Pornographers (heh) was holding some kind of round object up at one point and we all compared notes.

"Is that ... an orange?"

"I thought since the lyrics were talking about the sun, maybe it's some kind of model..."

We eventually realized that it was a shaker. We realized this when he started shaking it near the microphone - to absolutely no effect, since you couldn't hear anything over the electronic beeps and clapping and shit that another dude on stage was putting out with his laptop. Seriously, in the front lineup were people singing, playing guitars and keyboards and one dude with a mike and a laptop. The hilarious thing about the guy with the laptop (Mac) was that he just stood absolutely still for most of the show, like he was watching paint dry or in a catatonic trance.

Anyway - we all agreed that it was a good show and also that it was a lot of standing up and that we are all old (even though the people we were out with are, I think, both 27. Le sigh.) Most of the audience looked like they were in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, and I'd say the four of us covered that demographic pretty well. The rest of the audience must have agreed with us on tiredness, because the crowd was a lot more subdued than I'd expected - I'd attribute that to Boston stuffed-shirtness, but I've seen crowds go batshit for Weezer and Iggy Pop. (Weezer was younger than last night's crowd, and Iggy's audience was mostly older.) Maybe it's just that young professionals work harder? (... not that you could tell from my workplace.) Maybe it was the band's fault, I can't say they bothered with much patter (and what there was was completely mumbled into the mike, so even if songs were announced beforehand I had no idea what was coming besides another song, named something.) Also, I wasn't actually wearing my black rimmed cat's eye glasses, but plenty of other people were wearing glasses like that so the hipster quotient was fulfilled, I think.

During the post-mortem afterwards, one person observed that it was good, but only with about every third song was she all, "hell YEAH! This song rocks!" ... to which Dave responded, "That's because they only write four kinds of songs." Which I think is fairly accurate. They played about 50% from Challengers (the only album I really know well) but I could peg where their other songs fit into - "oh yeah, that one's like "All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth". I wish I knew what the name of the last song before the encore was, because it was fucking AWESOME. (And in the same vein as "My Rights Versus Yours".)

Nico Case has pipes though, I'll tell you. She was so loud (I think - maybe too close to the mike?) but also so perfectly on key that it kind of maxed out the equipment. I don't really know how to describe this effect, except to say that it's the same thing you hear when you've got an old vinyl copy of Fleetwood Mac on the stereo turned up pretty loud and Stevie Nicks's voice kind of blats out of the speakers, as if when they originally recorded it in the studio she overwhelemed the recording capabilities of the equipment. I'm not a huge Stevie fan but last night might have converted me to Nico. (Sniffle ... wish I could sing like that.)

Final thought: last night I didn't think the live versions of the song were super different live, but while writing this post I looked up and accidentally clicked on Challengers in my iTunes liberry and they really did rock a lot harder live. Plus my earbuds that live at work suck ass.

There you have it, my not very profound (but long winded, as usual) thoughts on the show last night. I hope you enjoyed it, because I usually average about one concert a year (and even then I often fall asleep. Sorry 'bout that, Iggy. And Death Cab. But especially sorry to Iggy, who put on a fucking great show and was like this crazy flea hopping up and down, all old and wiry and full of energy and muscle tone. My celexa-induced somnolence was stronger than your manic vibes.)


...and here's where I should apologize for stealing some of Dave's best lines in this blog post. It's why I love you though, because you're funny. And also because your knowledge of Simpsons is better than mine. Thanks, doll!

No Pictures, Thanks

Yeah. You really don't want to see a picture of what I'm about to write about.

Long story short, a weekend filled with much eating, drinking and socializing backfired and I felt really queasy and hungover, not to mention migrainous, all day today. So nice out, too. So we went for a walk just now, partly to get some ginger ale and saltines for me. We sat down outside the store so I could eat some and try to settle my stomach.

I guess that's just what my stomach was waiting for, because almost as soon as we started walking again there I was, crouched ignominiously on the sidewalk, barfing into the gutter. This will tell you how fast the ginger ale came back up: my barf was fizzing.

On the other hand, that IS why you eat saltines and ginger ale, because they're so bland and easy to throw up. And if I'm interpreting the messages from my stomach correctly, I'm not done yet with the barfing. My life is so glamorous.

Next time: why moderation appears to be an unlearnable skill for me.