Now with 87% more sacrifice

Current mood: carb craving

It wasn't supposed to be hard...

Every year since my honorary-Catholic schoolgirl days, I try to give something up for Lent. I never try for any dramatic change, because I'm not actually Catholic, so I don't feel the need to flay myself with guilt and penance (about Lent, anyway). It's always seemed like a moderately painless way to give up an inconsequential vice for a set period, and perhaps even permanently.

Most of the time, I give up a food item that I enjoy on a semi regular basis. Denying myself chocolate or noodles, for example, is just stupid. On the other hand, giving up food I don't actually like or regularly consume (I'll give up shellfish! And licorice! And let's throw in dandelion greens!) is pointless. One year I gave up fried foods and that was much more difficult than anticipated (duh, lots of really good things are fried!). The TV year wasn't bad, but I really missed watching movies. Other times I've abstained from non-chocolate candy or ice cream. Not terribly hard, but mildly punitive - perfect!

This year I gave up a loosely-defined category of "baked goods." It doesn't include breads and other savory bakery items, but it does include cake and cookies and everything else sweetly doughy. Not being a crazy carboholic outside the realm of rice and potatoes, this should not have been a difficult task. While I like brownies and donuts and tarts, I don't need to have dessert and I really don't need to munch on the junk that's lying about the office. I figured that giving up these snacks and desserts would be the route to relatively easy virtue.

Except, a few days into the Lenten season, we have the office brunch potluck, for which I'd signed up (before Lent) to bake banana bread. I made it through the baking without tasting (oh, it was hard), but being confronted by a dozen (fresh from Krispy Kreme!) varieties of donuts, danishes, coffee cake, pecan sticky buns (homemade! that morning!), cinnamon-raisin bread, cherry cobbler, and chocolate-frosted cupcakes was downright cruel. I almost wept (well, not really, but you get the idea) as I stood gamely in line, picking forlornly at the fruit. Stonyfield yogurt is gross!

And then today, these arrived:

I was only kidding when I said they might arrive during (and at the beginning, no less) of Lent! They will taunt me from the bookshelf for many, many days.

Oh, and this weekend? I am invited to a Purim cookie party.

*sob*

Happy belated New Year!

I just realized that this is the year I can legitimately say,

"my sister is having a golden pig baby."

(Fiery launch for Chinese New Year)

Hee! Now, that's worth celebrating!

The family you choose...

Current mood: Quiet house again

is the family you welcome into your home - and not just on holidays and special events.

fills the room with giggling and tickling and happy shouts.

drives you just a twinge batty during visits because your stuff is their stuff, right?

are those with which you want to run and jump and skip and play.

pig piles unselfconsciously on any lying surface.

leaves your fridge more full than when they came.

is the company with which you want to watch good or suffer through bad movies.

fulfills a visceral need for (good touching!) closeness and affection.

are people you miss (badly, immediately) when they go.

Dim sum at 1 PM on a Sunday!

Current mood: not dead and way full and generally satiated

With no waiting!

Score!

Thank you, snow, for not killing our car and keeping everyone else away from our wonderful food. Yes, we are stupid, stupid people, who left a pantry stocked with food and a fridge full of (steaky goodness) leftovers to venture out into the cold, slippery (dangerous!), wet to hunt for Taiwanese dim sum goodies. It was fun introducing our world of "proper" Chinese flavors and textures to a Fuchinese traditionalist.

New things tried at A&J:
potstickers
5-spice spare ribs
pickled veg
thousand-year-old-egg (black! icky! yum!) and tofu

Snow, part the second

Current mood: if you read below, you might have a vague notion

Even though I hugely dislike the eczema scales that form on my ordinarily pretty, pretty skin during the harsh days of forced-hot-air heating, the drying effect that I hate the most during the winter is itchy head. ITCHY HEAD. Sounds awful, no? Well, let me assure you, it looks and feels great. The unsanitary-seeming non-nit picking, the raised, red welts, the frantic scratching, and the subsequent flaky head skin are hott. (And when paired with black hair and a penchant for wearing all black? Awesome.) I especially love that there's no easy way to moisturize my head (slathering the conditioner doesn't seem to cut it) and stop the madness.

ITCHY HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gingeriffic

Last week's mood: Patooey! And ahhhhhh.......

Last week while I was miserable and coughing and generally sounding like the plague on wheels, someone left out a bag of fancy treats in one of the office kitchens. I gazed longingly at the sugary confections, knowing that fruit drops and biscotti and crunchy chocolate bits would feel like death on my throat. However, there was one item that I felt justified in taking:

a packet of Reed's ginger chews.

Even though I'd never tried these candies, everybody knows that ginger is good for you! Is healing! Thus, sucking on a ginger candy must be one of the most permissible treats during an illness! (My thought process may have had something to do with a nearly unreasoning sugar craving midway through a week-long deprivation.) Never mind the fact that I don't really care for ginger or that the package felt like it contained small rocks.

I ripped open the paper and unrolled a ginger chew. The wrapper stuck to the candy and I had to pull it off in pieces. I contemplated the pretty amber for a moment and popped it into my mouth.

GAH!

The shock of the ginger was overwhelming and unpleasant. The sticky coating around a hard center (isn't that backwards?) felt like it was trying to pull out my crowns. The realization that ginger is a spice and this spicy candy was hurting my mouth (yes, I'm a weenie. What of it?) made me try to spit out the offender, but it clung tenaciously to my teeth and gums.

P-teah! Ack! Hock! Patooey! (Hee. Ladylike, am I! Just picture my face!)

I tried a second chew, thinking the first might have been the lemon of the bunch, but, ah, no...and spit that out as well.

Not to be defeated, I did what any civilized and enterprising sick person would do with what they considered to be their only permissible-and-yet-overpowering candy source.

I made it into a tea.

A light tea.

Yum.

The End.

Behold my dominion

Last week's mood: veni, vidi, vici

Ach, no! Indicator lights are never a good thing. My car, she speaks to me, and tries to tell me of her pain...

Diving into the owner's manual, I puzzle, scratch my head, cross my fingers, and diagnose.

Click, click, click.

Exactly three driving trips later, the light is gone! Look, I healed my car! Am car genius! (Or, you know, can match a symbol, much like a rat.)

***********************
Bad washer, ate all of my quarters except the last (naturally). Damn you, I want clean sheets!!!

Shake, shake, shake of the big metal box, to no avail. Slight tipping, lots of begging, no dice, baby. I bow my head in defeat and walk away (to the tune of a lot of swearing. And maybe some kicking.).

Later, when checking on a nice, working machine, I try, one more time and...success!!! It totally loves how I jammed my quarter up its stupid, dispenser butt. Violence is the answer. I race up the stair to get my laundry before someone else tries to abscond with my hot water. (In this case, possession really would be 9/10s of the law...)

Of a thousand suns? How 'bout a billion!!!

I have searing hatred of:

Being lied to. I understand - I'm a trusting, doe-eyed creature, so it's really tempting to lie as the easy way out, since I will believe you until otherwise proven wrong. But once you are proven wrong I will hate you forever and also write angry letters to your superiors.

Being sick. Until this recent bout, I'd been bouncing back within 1-2 days of any minor ailment (FRANTICALLY KNOCKING. On the wood.) for as many years back as I can remember. Of course, I've got a short memory, but I think this time around I'll try to remember and be more sympathetic towards sickly folk, as I can now Technicolor-vividly recall the feeling of a body that protests, "but we just got up yesterday!"

Being thwarted by weather. Which includes travel and work plans, attempts at gathering food, and flying and otherwise inconvenient pieces of ice.

Being woken up. I fight it with every fiber of my being, which includes my limbs. That's why my sister devised ingenious methods of waking me up that incorporate thrown objects (including water), jumping nearby or on me, and alarm clocks that dodge attempts at shutting them the hell up. However, the easiest way to wake me is simply to call me in the middle of the night. I will ignore calls made at a reasonable, daytime or morning hour - that's what voice mail is for. However, I can somehow sense when calls are being made at a completely inappropriate hour of the night (say, 3 AM) and then I rush, adrenalin pounding, fear immediately mounting, to answer the phone call the surely means someone dear has been horribly mangled, sickened, or lost. (Guess what? If there isn't blood on the ground, lights flashing, general rending of garments/gnashing of mine or others' teeth and/or imminent rescue required of me, there's simply no way I want to hear from you at this hour.) And regardless of whether I am required to perform heroics, I will not be able to fall back asleep because fear and hate are both leading causes of wakefulness.

There are many other objects of my mind-numbing hatred, including rapists, cruel parents, and all things Barbie (the last two are not related), but these are the ones on my mind at the red hot (a billion suns!!) moment.

Despoiler of virgins

Last week's mood: Hee!

Snow, that is.

Crisp, innocent snow. Perfect white blankness (watch out, I might feel a haiku coming on...)

I kill you!!!

Gotta make your own brand of strange fun. The outcome is even more satisfying if you take a running jump and land on two feet in a big unspoiled patch (hard to do without the skid marks of sloppiness), creating the footprints of (well-shod) angels fallen from heaven.

I think if I were a boy I would enjoy practicing "writing in the snow."

Hack. Cough. Ugh.

Still sickly. Enjoying the comforts of Not My Home, attentive pampering, soft foods (so tired of the bland! Give me sugar!!!), and the dulcet and soothing tones of United and USAir customer service representatives. Yes, thank you, I did want to get home sometime this century, you lying sack of BLEEP. Actually, being on hold for large portions of my day is fun and exciting!

Gah, no wonder why I'm still sick. All my healing energy has gone towards the hatin'.

When I'm sad

I always have somewhere to turn for a pick-me-up.

In the beginning, there was Hamsterdance:

And lo!, the eternal comfort of the glow worm:

(prominently posted in my office)

Then, this telling of the End of the World made my life seem just a little bit better:

The End of the World

But now...but NOW, there's:

Go Fug Yourself

Thanks, girls! You nasty bee-yotches totally make my day!

And if that doesn't work, then the last resort is food porn. (Not porny food or porn with food. Food porn is kind and pure and good for the soul, you dirty guttersnipes.) Looking at beautiful pictures of food I would like to eat (you know, aspirational food, which I guess is in many ways like real porn, so, hence the name) solves many, many ills.

Not the moldy kind

Before:

And then:

Cute!

But after:

Sadness. Not so much with the hearts. I guess oatmeal-raisin really isn't the kind of dough that holds its shape. The molds seemed like a good idea at the time...Too bad I forgot to take a picture once they were drizzle-iced. My first attempt at making icing wasn't half bad. It dressed up the distressingly circular cookies and made them closer to gift-worthy.

So, my Valentine's cookie fantasty, in which the mailmain brings a beribboned basket to the stoop (on the day of, not Monday. Why is it that 2-3 days for delivery means 2 days when I have 4 to spare and 4 days when I only have 2?) and the recipient, who has just woken up, finds a pile of freshly-baked, freshly-iced (you're just lucky they weren't iced in pink. I have food coloring and I'm not afraid to use it!!) perfectly-heart shaped treats wafting out a delicious aroma...isn't exactly going to happen.

Eh, whatev. Happy V-day.

I must have skipped an apple

Currently: BLEAH!

I come bearing pestilence.

That's how I felt when I walked into work today, sometime in the afternoon, glaring at a coworker who judgingly observed my extremely late arrival. Hey buddy, want to wear some lung?? It's a lovely shade of brown-green and will match your eyes, especially once you've contracted the plague.

I was doing so well! Lots of vitamins, exercise, and decent food, so what went wrong? Of course, I'm continuing my ab exercise. I should come out of this sickness with the best.abs.ever, due to the extreme workout that is the coughing. Coughcoughcough. Hackhackhack. Ughllllllll. The crunching motion is furthered by my doubling over every time I cough. The shards in my throat are angry and protest vociferously whenever I have the audacity to try and expel them. Hence, a full upper and lower ab crunch. Joyeaux.

Thus, tea, and lots of it.(= PEE!! All the time!!) Attempts at sleep. And unlimited smoothies and trips to the pho shop. When sugar stops burning my throat (it hurts us!!), then comes time for the popsicles and ice cream. Hmmm, I'm almost looking forward to it.

Army of one

Currently: ready to butcher

Sometimes I think I'm just waiting for a family to cook for. Of ravening carnivores.

Hairy Tea- erm, I mean, Harris Teeter has great BOGO sales! And I know how to use my freezer! I'm like the mighty hunter that brings back enough meat for an entire season. In Oregon Trail hunting terms, I got a buffalo! Or three!

This really is enough meat to last me through the season - at least. If I cook a LOT of meat, I'll probably get through the pile sometime in the next quarter. The turkey breast? I'm not sure, but it might be from last Thanksgiving's sales...

(Yes, my freezer is full. And must be very neat to accommodate all this fullness.)

Let's take a moment

Current mood: wah!

They no longer make rainbow chip frosting. I can't find it anywhere. The world weeps.

Well, it should!

Grrr. Argh. Hah!

Come on now, an hour or so before COB is a good time to find out your travel plans for the next two weeks (starting tomorrow) are cancelled.

Oh, and since you've cleared your work schedule for this trip, there isn't anything for you to do, so why don't you take a few days of precious, precious, vacation? Mmmm-kay?

****************

On a significantly less bitter note, picture this:

(click) WATCH THIS MOVIE (Numa Numa!)

except with a whole room full of sweaty girls, standing up, plus some aerobicizing foot movements.

Also, in the same group: the chicken dance!

It's about d*mn time they thought of me

Finally!

Metrorail Car's Trial Run Lets Short Riders Get a Grip

Though they don't mention the worst part about riding the metro as a short, ahem, vertically challenged, person - you're right at armpit height!!!

Friendus, interruptus

Current mood: contented glow

The adult friend-finding process (the non-Craig's List kind) is becoming more difficult as I get older. Finding people I like for extended periods of time that I'm willing to make time for? Perhaps I've gotten more discriminating (crabbier) with age, but it's a daunting prospect for a busy homebody. Making new friends requires a challenging time and energy commitment without the slightest BFF guarantee.

This state of affairs should mean that I treasure the friends I already have. I do; believe me, I do, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm not the most conscientious of correspondents. Even with the advent of email and free night-time minutes, I have trouble keeping up with the lives of my favorite people. Christmas cards and newsletters? Far from being despised, they are something that I actually aspire to.

Thus, it is heartening to be able to fall back into the rhythms of an old, easy friendship after a long hiatus. It's wonderful to be around people you really like, who like you, and who are just...simple to be around. Acquaintances might be surprised to find that I am extraordinarily gifted by the gab once I am comfortable.

Recently, I was very happily reminded that I can still do the friendship tango. A friend came to town and the years of intermittent contact quickly fell away. We talked voraciously, ate, laughed, commiserated...the topics changed (who knew mortgage talk would ever be interesting?), but everything else was the same. The same day, I got a worried call from a friend who was checking to make sure I hadn't been eaten by wild dogs. Apparently, I will not have the opportunity to collapse ignominiously on my bathroom floor for long before someone sends out the Mounties. Those friends from my impetuous youth? Turns out, I chose wisely.

Well done, younger self.

(It's reassuring to get confirmation that I once had good taste. It affirms that the choices I make today might actually be based on reasonably accurate projections for the future.)

We should give them all our money

for the brilliant inventions that improve daily life:

• Fat separator: just throw your broth in and only the good stuff comes out! Which part is the good stuff is entirely up to you.
• Splatter guard: protects you from the ow! ahhh! ravages of frying pan cooking. Now you can cook bacon naked without fear!
• Microwave popcorn - What's an office without the maddening, tantalizing smell of popping corn? And burnt popping corn?
• And, my newest discovery - graham cracker pretzels! Everybody loves graham crackers, without loving their too-easily shattered structure. Why pretzel-shapes? Who cares - they are now dippable! (And therefore can be used as scoops for chocolate-caramel-cream cheese concoctions. Ummmmmmm.)

Because I look jaundiced in that color

Green on green. How did that happen? If you'd asked me, I would have told you that I don't own enough green clothes to end up in a leprechaun getup. I'd packed what I thought were black and tan workout clothes. Instead, I went the to gym dressed as the (mini) Jolly Green Giant, looking like a (boring) salad. That'll teach me to prep my bag in the morning...

All during class I had to fight back the urge to shout out, "ribbit!" and "lay off me Lucky Charms!..."

Resolutions redux

Resolutions I probably should have made (or, other people might have suggested):

• DIET
• Early to bed, early to rise, make a person healthy, wealthy, and wise (HAHAHAHAHAHA)
• Buckle down and stop procrastinating at work, so I can come home at a reasonable hour instead of dragging out both work and web surfing all day
• Try to grow a plant, keep a fish alive, anything that demonstrates I can perform a caretaking role
• Practice saying and thinking, "Yes (Mom/Dad/dear), you're right."
• MORE FIBER
• Get back on the glass horse. I've got over $500 worth of materials just sitting, patiently, in the corner of my dining room, and living room, and bedroom...
• Stop saving grocery bags
• Eat out less
• Practice piano. I now have exactly zero excuses not to play. First the piano was across campus, then over in the next building, then actually in my living room. Then it was too loud so I had to turn it down and I couldn't hear the sound well. Now I have studio-quality headphones and pile of lonely songs that miss me. Maybe I should book a gig (if someone would have me). That tends to be motivating.
• Go to church
• FINISH UNPACKING
• Don't fear the vaccuum. Love the vaccuum. It is your friend.
• Less sugar
• Save $ (which would probably be much easier to accomplish if I stopped eating out...)
• No more nail chewing
• Less TV, or at least stop reading about said TV once I've watched it
• Read more nonfiction
• Read less smut
• There's this thing, it's called a duster...
• If you can file at work, you can file at home
• Practice/use my mandarin so it doesn't disappear entirely, and food Chinese (i.e., ordering at restaurants) is not enough
• Sleep clinic!!!

On the other hand, I'm a realist, which is why I did not make any of these my resolutions this year. However, having written them down and letting them accuse me of stubbornness and sloth (after all, some of these are not exactly hard or labor-intensive), I might be more inclined to at least consider giving some of 'em (ahem, easy ones!) a try...

Wordplay

Tom S. was collecting annoying words on his chat the other day and I have to agree with some of the peanut gallery suggestions. I note that many of these painful-to-the-ears-and-hurting-my-heart words have risen in use approximately in proportion with the unfurling of the Evil (yet unfortunately snub-nosed and adorable) Ray (as in Rachael) Empire.

Words I hate:

• delish
• foodie
• tush or tushie (i.e., if that yoga instructor talks about “holding in our tushies” one more time…)
• hubby
• EVOO (fine as an acronym, but not okay as a spoken word. Eeeee-Voooo. Blech.)

Words I love: (fun to say, fun to use!)

• zamboni
• switcheroo (which is, apparently, now a legal term that can be used, multiple times, in published court decisions)
• discombobulate
• Massapequa (town in Long Island, the passing of which lets me know I’m more than halfway up the Southern State Parkway; also, I’m usually really, really tired by that point in the drive, and it’s a fun word to say aloud. Several times. Fast.)
• onomatopoeia
• caesura

Words I tend to mispronounce: (even though I know the correct/American pronunciation)

• medicinal (med-ih-sin-ul)
• hippopotamus (hip-po-po-tam-us)
• advertisement (ad-vert-hiss-mint)
• Himalayas (him-mah-lee-yas)
• subtle (sub-tull)

Words my mom still can't pronounce after 20 (no, wait, how old am I? So, 30) years in the States:

• sweater (sweh-ther)
• choir (kwy-russ)
• bullshit (boo-ship) (not sure this a mispronunciation so much as habit for the kiddies...)
• subtle (sub-tull) (heh, I wonder where I got it...)

This is fun! To be continued whenever I think of more...