Riding the Bike with One Pedal.

Category: craziness (Page 7 of 9)

Plague of the Month Club

Apparently, I’ve enrolled in this fantastic offering from Time-Life, and it’s truly the gift that keeps on giving. Last month was rotovirus. This month?  I’d had a sore throat for a couple of days, to the point that on Friday, I had such difficulty swallowing, I was convinced it was strep. I availed myself of the latest in health care:  the MinuteClinic. It truly is convenient, and rather breezy in the approach. Within five minutes of checking in, I’d had my throat swabbed, and then just to be safe, she did a second one to send to the lab if the insta-strep-test came back negative. Which it did. Much to my disappointment. I know! Who wishes for strep? Well, I do, and have continued to rue the negative conclusion, as I’ve spent the past two days with a Head and Chest Cold of Epic Proportions. I wake myself up with my hacking, and I’m tired & sore from it all. And I have another huge week of work ahead of me, so I’m hoping the worst of it has been experienced this weekend.  At least with strep, there are DRUGS to KILL IT.

I tried to go to the KC Addy awards last night – well, I :did: go, but an hour into the event, the fire alarm went off and everyone was told to leave the room in an orderly fashion. What kind of amused me, in my foggy state, was that everyone just went to the various bars and none of the bartenders left their stations. So it didn’t SEEM like there was a fire or any imminent danger? But then the paranoid voice inside me said, “That’s just how it’ll read in the headlines chronicling the aftermath…..’Hundreds Die in Sweeping Fire, Most Taken By Surprise. Fat Girl Trampled to Death, Autopsy Showed She Had Terrible Cold That Must Have Impaired Her Thinking’.” You get my drift. I reclaimed my coat, got my car from the valet service, and went home. With the delay, the evening would be even longer, and I was already disrupting my table with my coughing & the drugs had worn off.

The funniest thing of the weekend was when I posted on my Facebook status that I must have enrolled in some Plague-of-the-Month club, and my husband replied, “for just 1 penny more you can choose 10 more maladies from our fabulous catalog of illnesses!” Never mind it made me laugh like a barking seal. It’s why I loves him!

No Patience For The Stupid. Or Zombies.

Actually, I have yet to see a horror movie where zombies really exhibit a whole lot of intelligence. I believe it’s inherent in the name …. a reanimated dead body, according to Merriam-Webster. And that says NOTHING about brains. For the most part, I think zombies just amble around in stiff, uncomfortable way, much like all of us over the age of 35 do in the morning. Just maybe not with arms outstretched, looking to kill you. Because that also seems to be their thing, to kill you.

Well, I lost a good chunk of time this week to the zombie, mostly because I got really really mad, and I posted on Ravelry under the title “SHE’S  NOT DEAD”. (that post is below). I ranted, like I did here earlier in the week, about this zombie faker and because most things in Lazy Stupid & Godless fly by at an alarmingly rapid rate, I thought it would be a nice cleansing post, I’d get about 8 replies, and we’d continue on with our lives. Yeah. I can be dense sometimes. I now know how the idiot out in California feels when she thinks it’s not too windy to make a little fire to cook some wienies, and suddenly half the state is on fire.I felt a little nauseous, because blowback is often what happens to people who do such stuff.

Whups?

Anyway, more proof is being gathered (though as someone observed, it’s very hard to prove a negative) – but if you can convict someone of murder without a body, I’m thinking we can find a preponderance of evidence that would eliminate any doubts people may still have. It will live on a website and will be fabulous!

What set me over the edge was that my friend told me that a knit-along was being formed in her memory for next month. And that meant… more people would buy her patterns that were still up for sale under the premise donations were being made to charity. The one I saw said it was going to the American Cancer Society, and friends, when you lose the one person in your life who’s always been there, taught you at least half of what you know and was the only source of unconditional love for 30 years – when you lose someone like that to cancer, and someone else uses cancer to make a buck? PlazaJen get real mad and blow up like Hulk.  And all the world fell away around me and I couldn’t see straight & my hair on the back of my neck went up and I think the air might have crackled a bit. So I pounded out a non-naming bitch slap, and discovered a whoooole lotta people who were hot on the trail & dug up more evidence and started tracking her on Ravelry, much the way the weatherman here tracks Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Change your name? Beep beep beep beep, seconds later it is announced to everyone and the private messaging exploded. Really, I was impressed at the sleuthiness of my fellow LSG’ers, because they were ON IT like beagles after a fox.  All of this will go to the joint effort that’s being amassed, for the evidence website.

The crazy part is, she’s still on the site. Why, is beyond me. Talk about a pariah. To paraphrase the old saying, “Bitch – you’ll never knit in this town again.” RIP Momma Monkey, Confined2Me, Miss Cissy, GinaBlaq, Ginablackq, whatever you want to call yourself today, tomorrow, next week. Those eyes I saw peering out of my computer monitor have to look at themselves in the mirror, and I know. I KNOW. No matter how hard you try and mind fuck yourself, you will know, in the smallest. darkest, dustiest room tucked deep in your soul, that what you did was wrong. Might I suggest something for your next tattoo?

“I repent”

Backwards. On your forehead.

~~~~~ for the non-Ravelers, this was my post~~~~~~~~

K.
If you knew there was a pile of proof, pointing to the fact that someone who was a popular indie knitter/designer/purveyor of goods had FAKED THEIR DEATH, and you could hardly talk about it with anyone, because nobody knows what to do with this proof, or really, even, how to present it to the greater community? What would one do?
(Besides self-combust, of course.)

No, I am not referencing Teh Crazy that is MCY. This preceded MCY, but it parallels quite astonishingly. I did not uncover the proof, but I trust the person who did, who has, in turn, had numerous pieces confirmed by others close to the person.

My problem, as a member of this fabulous community, is that designs are probably still being purchased, because said moneys are now going to “charity”. People cried real tears over the individual’s death! This as nuclear as a FatBoy over Nagasaki, and yet, I can barely keep my ire in check, knowing that this individual is walking around – blogging and tweeting about what pants to wear – while the community at large has been duped – once again.

Therefore, I would at least like to petition the general knitting community that, from this point forward, some sort of newspaper death notice, or coroner’s report, or police blotter item be required before tributes, fundraisers, knit-a-longs or other fantastic acts of kindness are performed. I do not want to become a hard-hearted bitch, anymore than I already am, and I think this is the only way we can keep these horrid people from yanking the rug out from under us. Are we in agreement?

To quote my friend Willy, “Truth will out.”

Bruised Orange

Today was a …. “Meh” kind of day. Last night’s sleep was interrupted repeatedly by dogs, and today just was one of those less-than days. Rudeness begot irritation, and it’s like watching a snowball roll down a really big hill. You simply know it’s going to get bigger as it moves ahead, and you feel your powerlessness. There were a couple things in particular that crept under my skin, there were a couple other things that made me laugh heartily, but the undercurrent was always an anchor pulling downward, and if a fork in the road presented itself, I chose the path more irritated.We all have those days….

One of my favorite singer-songwriters, all the way from childhood, is John Prine. I’ve written about him before, but my devotion to him never wavers. His songs run the gamut, from sarcastic yet cheerful, to plumbing the depths of a depressed mind or situation. So, given the greyness of the day, the general sense of malaise, I wasn’t all that surprised to find myself belting out my go-to song of his on my commute home. I even turned down the radio, so I could hear my voice resonate around me, to be undistracted in my ennui. And, as always, I heard my dad, reminding me of the lesson in the song. “For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter. You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there” (and I see his eyebrow raise as he looks at me, knowing I know the words by heart, just as he does, knowing that I handle things the way he does, knowing that I need to remember I have a choice…) “wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrow…”

So, I guess I need a hacksaw tonight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)

My heart’s in the ice house come hill or come valley
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley
On a cold winter’s morning to a church house
just to shovel some snow.
I heard sirens on the train track howl naked gettin’ nuder,
An altar boy’s been hit by a local commuter
just from walking with his back turned
to the train that was coming so slow.
You can gaze out the window get mad and get madder,
throw your hands in the air, say “What does it matter?”
but it don’t do no good to get angry,
so help me I know
For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter.
You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
wrapped up in a trap of your very own
chain of sorrow.
I been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there.
I sat on a park bench, kissed the girl with the black hair
and my head shouted down to my heart

“You better look out below!”

Hey, it ain’t such a long drop don’t stammer don’t stutter
from the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter
and you carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go.

(P.S. When I was a little kid? I thought the words “Howl naked, gettin’ nuder” were absolutely SCANDALOUS and fabulous all at once. Now I just think they’re brilliant.)

Snake Oil and Cybercide

There’s been at least one incident in the knitting community of a yarn purveyor faking an illness, then death, in order to get out of her obligations and as a way of dealing with the complaints about the product quality. Ravelry folks know this is under the “Mystical Creations, Yo” group, and what a kerfuffle it was/is. Apparently this woman is perfectly fine, reportedly driving a new car, and was initially spotted at a Wal-Mart (isn’t everyone’s undoing going to be at a Wal-Mart?).  The announcement of her fraud caused an uproar, and mind you, we knitters have resources. It cracks me up to think just how mobilized we really could be, if someone would just stop distracting us with yarn sales – we truly could take over the world, what with all the various professions out there. Including lawyers, who know how to search legal databases and what charges should be filed in the case of fraud!  I stopped following the thread because, well, I have to work, and the conversation itself was rather life-consuming. But for an onlooker, what a rubbernecking train wreck, indeed.

Turns out, this is not the only death-faker in the yarn community! Another one has done this – did it before MCY, in fact, and was discovered through, of all things, a social networking tool. See, even if you successfully fake your own death online, and shut down your blog, your Etsy shop, all that stuff, if you DON’T CHANGE YOUR EMAIL ADDY, someone will eventually click that button on their Facebook/Twitter/Plurk screen that says, “Check to see if my contacts are on here!” And boy, will that person be shocked to see you alive & well, tweeting and blogging away.  With your same first name, and uh, pictures of your TATTOOS. Really? Have you not even heard of CSI? Or go to the post office and see the descriptions of the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted? Tattoos fall under “Scars and Marks”.   (Point of clarification: This discovery did not happen to me. Again, I’m just rubbernecking. But I got the account of this firsthand from a former defender & champion of the Undead Knitter, and she is rightfully fit-to-be-tied by this twist of events.)  Now Undead has slammed the privacy doors shut on those portals, because she realized she’d been found, but here’s what you didn’t think about, sweetie: we all have an IP address. And the fact that you opened up a second dummy account on Ravelry, three months before your  untimely “demise”, right about the time things started piling up? Oh yean,  and you posted from both accounts? Means the source of those account postings can be checked. And they will be checked.

And all those people who paid for things they didn’t get are going to be pissed. All the people who wrote heartfelt condolences will feel their hearts harden, just a little bit.  Which really sucks. Knitters are typically pretty generous, and unused to being scammed by con artists. They would have been upset, but far more forgiving of a straightforward atonement for your predicament, whatever it was that drove you to hoodwink so many.  Your karmic acts will need to triple, for the rest of your life, to atone for this.

There’s a sucker born every minute, as the saying goes. But it’s best to remember that sometimes the suckers carry really pointy objects, and have resources to even the playing field.  Stay tuned, for this essplosion has only just begun to erupt….

Douchebaggery…..

I have a short list of things that – just in the space of today – have made me utter or think the word “Douchebag”.

1. Waiting until you are at or near a complete stop to signal your turn. Hi. The rest of us are actually paying attention? And you are inconveniencing us. Especially if we don’t want to turn in front of you in your Beemer as you slowly approach the intersection, but oh, I see, it’s because you’re on your phone and drinking a coffee, so I get it, your HANDS WEREN’T FREE to turn the signal on. Fuck you. And you, the other one, in front of me later today, careening all over the place, unsure of where to turn.You are not the only one out here!

2. Leaving someone no room to get out of a parallel parking spot. Here’s how I know (this was once again, a Beemer, but I will not jump to conclusions): the big ol’ Land Rover was there when I parked. We had lots of distance between us, but you chose to kiss my bumper and leave him three feet. Fuck you. I hope the next time you’re at the grocery store, someone parks so close to you, you have to get in from the passenger side. Careful not to slip when you go over the gear shift!

3. When someone has nearly finished Austin-Powering her way out of a tiny fucking parking spot, just keep zooming around her so she can’t complete the extrication, despite having half a front end of a Murano sitting out in traffic. Interesting Trivia: if you slow down and read her lips, she’s screaming “Fuck you! And you! And you, too!” Please note, she smiles and waves if you let her in.

4. This douchebag takes the cake and the crown from all the bad drivers & parkers I encountered today. He makes me physically sick to my stomach. People want him to get the death penalty? But I think someone like him should go away to a little cinderblock cell that he’ll share with someone he’ll have to call “Mr. Sweetums” for the next 30-50 years.  Douche. Bag.

This has been your public service message, you may resume your regularly scheduled knitting, working, happy houring or sleeping. Thank you.

Veectory ees MINE!

Well, I can’t take any credit for the negotiation process, it all goes to my sales rep, who may be petite, but can also be quite fierce.   She was rather astonished that the person who first responded to me only cut our bill back by $25 (taking the rate hike to 40%, vs.  60%). So she found the right person, and from the results, I can see she went in swinging.

I got off the phone this morning and this is where they stand, my new long-term friends at Time Warner Cable: I get my old, nice, shiny, cheap rate back. For a whole ‘nother year. And then I have a $5 increase. (Plus a 30-day window in which to change my mind & go with someone else.) This happens for the next FIVE YEARS. Always one to boil it down, I said, “So, in five years, my rate has increased only $25?” “Yes.”) This I can live with.

Oh, and you bet your ass I asked to get credited for December’s overages.  I was all ready to pull the plug on them (and to see what their best offer to keep me would be), which is necessary if you’re going to threaten them.  That they fixed it didn’t completely surprise me? But that they fixed it for five years did, so, with that, I grudgingly give them some props. (And await my credit, kthxbai.)

Walking On Broken Glass

Wow, two days back into the work routine and it’s Hello Stress! Good thing I didn’t resolve to give that up….

Anyway, last night, I was downstairs & had opened the pantry door where we have stored an interesting mix of sundry appliances, canned goods, annnnd the paint that came with the house. The  items are grouped by shelves, at least. Anyway, an empty mason jar fell, and instead of hitting the carpet, it hit the inside edge of the wood cabinet, and shattered. Lovely.

You know how sometimes your brain is just set to “Ricochet”? Well, mine was, as I was picking up shards of glass and thinking about how I really should bring the vacuum down and yet I knew I wasn’t going to, and the rest of the process went something like this:

So, this obviously isn’t tempered glass. Or whatever sort of glass they make that isn’t supposed to shatter into really sharp pieces.

I wonder who invented tempered glass. I wonder who invented GLASS?

Probably some pyromaniac motherfucker, since don’t you have to melt things to make glass in the first place?

So, hell. Is that all of it? I think so. Huh. Well, let’s see. Would I walk on this strip of carpet barefoot?

Yes.

That’s not a good answer, Jennifer. You grew up walking on glass shards.

Hell. I did.

Well, I’ve gotten nearly all of it, and the only way anyone’s going to step on it is if they shimmy alongside the cupboard here, clinging to it like those Indiana Jones Lego characters do on that Wii game. Which would actually be pretty funny.

/end brain ricochet

After that, I went off and did some laundry, and forgot completely to tell the Wo about the breakage. (In fact, he’s learning about it through the blog.  Now he’ll go and shimmy alongside the cupboard, just to prove I missed a piece.)  And yes, I did grow up picking glass out of the bottoms of my feet – my father’s glass studio was just off the kitchen/dining room, and I would often walk in there barefoot, and pieces of glass often made their way out into the house. I still recall being about ten, dancing wildly to a Beatles album and landing hard on a large piece of glass, way out in the living room. Oof.  That’s the only memorable gouging I recall, in fact, but the sudden sharpness cut me to the quick.  And I did learn how to walk into a room with broken glass on the floor. You step carefully, you disperse your weight consciously, and if a piece of glass pressed against your skin, you instantly recoiled, to minimize the depth it would penetrate.

Sure, I could’ve put on shoes. But I didn’t. Some things I just liked to experience the hard way, I guess. It was kind of a personal challenge, to be tough, to not bleed or cut myself. I guess I still do this brevity thing, just not always with broken glass….

A Sprinkling of Random Orts….

1. The Crazy Cat Lady across the street is having a new roof put on. I thought that was odd, and the Wo confirmed it. There’s a reason you do roofs in the blazing heat of summer, because shingles have a sticky strip that needs to melt & adhere to the one below it, and if they don’t seal, all kindsa crap can get up in there & then the next big storm comes along and poof! The roof! The roof! The roof is in your yard! But anyway, she parked herself out there in a lawn chair, behind the big-ass dumpster with a beer, and was having a cackling ol’ time with the laborers. God, she is so crazy. We are just hoping that the enormous satellite dish that came off the roof goes INto the dumpster. Seriously. It’s like the size of the ones they use to talk to the moon. You stay classy, Crazy Cat Lady!

2. The dogs are not happy with the laboring going on across the street. Nor are they happy with the new neighborhood scallywag dogs, which seem to be a pair of mutts, one resembles a pit-bull-hound-somethin’ or other, and the other looks like the progeny of an overgrown long-haired dachsund that ravished a chihuahua one late summer afternoon. Good lord that little dog is a shit, running everywhere, barking this high-pitch trill the entire time, and his ears and tail stand upright (like a chihuahua’s) but they’re fringed with long fur, so this thing just looks ridiculous. Tripper tried to clamber OVER the fence to get at it, and boy am I glad we caught him in the act, because that would have just been awful. I think he was under the impression it was new, mutant breed of squirrel, and it HAD TO BE STOPPED.

3. The Great Kitchen Re-Organization was finally completed this afternoon. There are still portions that need cleaning & sorting, but the back breakfast nook/pantry area is clean, organized and whittled down. It is beautiful.  I threw away some old canisters that I liked, but knew no matter how much I lied to myself, just weren’t going to be used. And I sort of chortled nervously, like the Hoarding Police were going to come along and ticket me for Wastefulness. Now we have all the items we use the most in the most accessible places, and I discovered I have three (3) springform pans, none of which were thrown away, because they are all different sizes and they are each extremely beautiful. They’re next to the two different bundt pans, not to be confused with the mini-bundt pan muffin tin, or the daisy-cake pattern pan.  I love all my unitasking pans equally, yes I do. I stood by the back door and admired my work for several minutes tonight, because it was a lot of dirt, sweat & pitching out of things.

4. Speaking of stopping to admire your work. When I taught Amy to knit, I told her that when she came to the end of the row, to stop and admire what she had done.  A little bit later on, she asked me why I said to do that. I tell all my knitting students to do this, as they’re trying something new. Even though it’s just a row, it’s progress, often combined with an advancement of skill, and it should be recognized and rewarded. Even after all these years of knitting, I still love to stop and look at the fabric, hanging from my needles, to see what I have created with sticks and string.

5. The black-eyed pea dish from yesterday? Beans were still crunchy this morning. After 24 hours in a crock pot, on low. So I cranked it up to high and hoped for the best. They did finally cook, and were spicy & savory, but man, there was a lesson learned there, not a day into the new year: BUY CANNED.  Or at least do the boil-soak-overnight thing.

6. I’m going to try and tackle a little bit of organization up in the craft room this weekend; that was my original goal for my vacation, but with the acquisition of the fryer & french-fry cutter, the mess off the kitchen got bumped up the list. I’m glad it worked out that way, because the craft room can still be attacked in smaller chunks of time, but the kitchen area, with the dogs going out into the yard, needed to be finished – and gives me great satisfaction, since I do see it every day. Sigh. I don’t ever get as much done as I hope I will.

7.  I always have over-ambitious (unrealistic) goals for what I’ll accomplish – I’ve done that with knitting projects, too. Going out for dinner & hanging with friends? I simply must bring at least two projects, and perhaps a third, JUST IN CASE. Just in case we’re held hostage? Or snowed in? Or perhaps I fall headfirst into a large pile of cocaine, and consequently find myself knitting at warp speed, confused (but delighted) by my pratfall. I have, at long last, resurrected the Rambling Rows afghan – I’m on block 30, out of 46, and I realized from my Rav queue, I started this sucker over 2 years ago. So I’d like to finish it up while it’s still chilly in the house (it’s very cumbersome as a take-along project, and it’s also made of wool, so summer knitting on it doesn’t fly). Of course, I’ve also started a scarf, and committed to starting another one (and finishing it by the end of the month) in a Loopy Ewe KAL. Suddenly my Scarface scene doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, does it? (J/K! No-no up your nose.)

Tha’s all I’ve got for now! Enjoy the weekend!

Pardon My Twang….

…But I keep hearing an old-timey version of a Ralph Stanley song running through my head, specifically the refrain, “The darkest hour is just before dawn”.

Now, those who know me, and even those who don’t, yet come here for all the sparkling Grief Blogging might worry that I’m in a depression. Fear not. Well, I am, a little, but really, anyone over the age of 14 is bound to get the blues this time of year, what with all the manufactured joy and pre-packaged expectations that come with “The Holidays”. Nope. I’m in the darkest hour because I am cleaning and reorganizing all the kitchen accoutrements. Holy shitballs, Mabel, this is a Task and A Half! And basically, with most un-cluttering and organizational projects, you have to explode the whole thing before you can put it in order. Right now, Houston, we have esplosions.

This morning, I moseyed down to Index, a restaurant supply store in the River Market, and boy, it’s easy to drop your whole wallet there. It gets hypnotizing, as you walk around looking at all these…things… you start to think, “Well of COURSE I could use a dozen of those little stainless cups they serve ketchup in at McCoy’s,” and you catch yourself mentally visualizing and measuring your oven, just in case this enormous cookie sheet could fit in it. And of course you’d need the matching Silpat. I caught myself eyeballing a sugar pourer. It was only $1.50. I was certain that would be useful. I could throw the old one away. Update the sugar pouring aspect of my life.  You wouldn’t believe the siren songs I hear in my head in that store.  Anyhoo, I did NOT buy anything off my list, my goal was to get some large foodservice-grade containers to put baking supplies in (flour, sugar) and then at least one more big one for rice. This is the downside of the CostCo shopping – enormous bags of flour and rice, and where in the hell do you put them? Shove ’em in the back room off the kitchen, that’s where. Alongside last winter’s birdseed, which, upon unearthing, I later caught Tripper EATING. He is such a motherfucking black lab it makes me crazy. Birdseed. To him, it must have been some gourmet trail mix. (That is going out to the greenhouse. I did not buy a tub for it.)

So now my fantastic birthday-present-to-myself from this summer, the KitchenAid 6, sits on top of a chrome cart, and stacked in glorious organization under it are the flour, sugar, powdered sugar and on the bottom shelf, rice. I will be able to just pull the cart in to the main kitchen area & use the mixer on the cart, instead of having to lift and move the beast onto the countertop (because it’s so tall, it blocks the cabinet doors. Yep.)  And this one beacon of organization and containment is in the middle of the dining room, and its strangeness is making Suzy crazy, so she’s been lying here GROWLING at it the whole time I’ve been typing. Dogs. Thank god they can’t drive, they’d lose their minds.

OH, but see, there’s more. There’s a huge big ol’ reason all of this is happening, besides the fact I’m on vacation, and alternating between lolling about & knitting and being productive. I got a really kickass Christmas present. Two, in fact. One from my MIL (Momma Linda) and one from my husband. We draw names in his family, and she got mine. And she has heard me bitch and pick fights with said husband over …wait for it…. a french fry cutter. He has refused to buy it for me because it is…impractical. A unitasker. No. I am not married to Alton Brown, but sometimes it sounds that way! I wanted one because the cheapy one I  had broke, and I wanted a solid, restaurant-quality, never-gonna-break sort of french fry cutter. DO NOT ASK ME how many times a year I make french fries. Because that is not the point. Here was something I genuinely wanted. For years. It started to take on a lifeblood all its own.  James would complain about how hard I am to buy for, and I would always look at him and say, “French fry cutter.” Yet he refused to get it. (There were arguments made about our walls and the fact it has to be mounted to one, blah blah blah DETAILS, people. Trivial details.) So, since my MIL and I are not unlike each other, she went and ordered me the mac-daddy french-fry cutter to beat the band. Doesn’t have to be mounted on a wall, either. And when she informed my husband of this gift, he knew his goose was cooked. Or tater was sizzlin’, whichever metaphor you prefer. Because in the past – and as recently as last week – others had offered to pool resources, to go around him, to buy it for me. I refused. I purposefully never told my father, because he would have had it shipped express the next day to make a point.  This was my lynchpin. My sand in his Vaseline.  So the Wo knew he had to do something. And he ordered a twin deep-fat fryer from CostCo. Yes. That clanging noise was everyone’s arteries slamming the doors on crazy. CRAZY. But he had to get with the program or have it forever held against him, and it has made me laugh repeatedly since Christmas day, because it’s partly an O’Henry short story, partly a clash of personalities and priorities, and through it all, completely filled with love.

Anyway, now, all this stuff has to go somewhere, and some things need to be removed, since they are ever-so-rarely used. And I’m taking FULL advantage of the no-limit-on-trash-bags opportunity this week, going a little crazy with the tossing, but it feels good.  With the bonus that now I can have my very own State Fair in the kitchen anytime I want.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sun is slowly sinkin’
The day’s almost gone
Still darkness falls around us
And we must journey on
The darkest hour is just before dawn
The narrow way leads home
Lay down your soul at jesus’ feet
The darkest hour is just before dawn

Like a shepherd out on the mountain
A-watchin’ the sheep down below
He’s coming back to claim us
Will you be ready to go
The darkest hour is just before dawn

The narrow way leads home
Lay down your soul
Let jesus in
The darkest hour is just before dawn
The darkest hour is just before dawn

For everyone who found their heart aching over the holidays, just remember…. you are not alone.

Taptaptaptaptap….Yes! There’s a Pulse!

Hi.

I wrote this great post on religion and I still need to proofread it & edit it, because it was in the midst of having some hideous short-lived bug attack me and give me stomach cramps that felt like being belted across the midriff with a baseball bat. Good TIMES! It’s just about gone.

So, the snow! It’s practically all gone. But so fun to watch falling, and really not all that bad to drive in, of course, we have a joke at the house that I fight the urge to become SUV Bitch, ever since I got the Murano. And I try really, really hard not to be that beyotch, blowing by you, but I’m sorry. When the roads are only as wet as if it had rained? And all the snow on the road is melted? You DO NOT need to drive 15 mph on a major street.

But there is still knitting. And yes. I’m behind on photos. So behind. Story of my life.

Work? Busy. Lots going on. It’s good, there are parties and plans and all sorts of things, new things, new projects, all of it. I need to remember what day it is, on almost an hourly basis, and then when I realize what day it IS, in relationship to the holidays, I have a little special panic attack.

Like a minute ago, I remembered the cookies. And that I need to make 72 cookies. So I’m going to sorta cheat, and make bars. Iowans, we love bars. And the recipe is even FOR bars, and I have the Largest Calphalon Pan Under The Sun, so I have confidence I can knock them out on Saturday. (That’s six dozen for those pondering at home. SEVENTY-TWO.)  I’ll share the recipe & pics once they’re made! The ingredients include caramel, cashews & chocolate, so seriously, how can they not succeed? (OK, note to self, don’t burn them. That’s definitely one path to FAIL.)

We Kansas City residents have the odious joy of daily ridiculousness, courtesy of our Mayor & his wife; lawsuits, now ethics investigations, he continues to office from home because he refuses to work without her by his side, constantly – I definitely feel like an old lady, caught up in local civics, all frothing and irritated with the utter stupidity and ridiculousness of it all. At least Illinois’ taking some of the heat off us now. But still. It just doesn’t end.

OK. I’m guessing your plates are pretty full, too. At least put a cookie or two on it to sweeten the pile!

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