Outside Over There

I wrote checks for all the bills this morning, for car insurance/phone/credit card/PG&E, and tonight I'm going to pay November's rent. Basically that's going to be my whole paycheck. I haven't even paid the Amex card yet. And there's a big bill looming for the Christmas-time plane tickets, too. I am really worried about money right now. How can I afford a deposit on a new apartment? I have no idea how this is going to work. I hate being an adult! Hate hate hate.

Also I am dressed like a bee, with gold antennae that boggle around and dust me with glitter every so often. I am a very cranky little insect.

I have not been writing as much lately. This is in part because I have actually been doing work at work (imagine that!), and also because I don't always have things to say. I'm gestating now, which hopefully will mean good things for the novel, but means that I don't want to waste words on daily minutia. But of course I'm going to give you some daily minutia right now.

My apartment is a disaster. Usually I clean it before Royce comes for the weekend, but this weekend I went to see him, so I didn't clean. Hence sinkful of dishes, knitting strewn over floor, mail everywhere, and cat puke on the chair. I have to wash the slipcover, and if I take it off before washing, they'll just puke on the chair underneath, so puke + slipcover remain on chair until tomorrow, when I will wash. I WILL WASH. I planned to do it today, but I was afflicted with a splitting headache and that was all I could manage this afternoon.

I made a much-needed trip to the drugstore, as I was all out of ibuprofen (this was made more exigent by aforementioned splitting headache). Initially I was afraid that this was one of the horrible premenstrual migraines that generally lead to vomiting and cannot be cured by any means, but thankfully this was just a run-of-the-mill splitting headache and was quickly vanquished by a measly two regular-strength fake Advil. I also picked up some excellent conditioner made especially for "combination hair." That would be oily scalp, dry ends, which is exactly what I have, but I've never seen such a thing! The shampoo came free with it, so I have especially-for-my-hair hair products. This is thrilling, let me tell you. All the shampoos and conditioners out there are for dry, flaky heads. I do not have a dry, flaky head, and still I would like my hair to be smooth and shiny and tangle-free. Finally someone understands me! Who needs a shrink when you have the right shampoo? I also got some Flintstone's chewable vitamins, because my grown-up vitamins give me a stomach ache when I take them, even if I take them with meals. Plus these taste better. I think I could spend a million dollars at the drug store.

So I've spent this evening laying on the couch waiting for headache to go away, glaring through wall at new (louder) neighbors, reading magazines, petting cats, talking to my mom on the phone about Christmas plans, and making myself some lemon pepper chicken. Yum.

I saw Bowling for Columbine this weekend, but I am too tired to talk about it any more. I'm pretty much exhausted of talking/thinking about the myriad ways that the United States is not a good place to live. I also did laundry, though not all of it, and managed to have some good relaxation time. Also had egg fu yung for the first time in practically forever. I didn't roast a chicken, though. I have to do that kind of thing when I'm in the mood, or else the motivation fades rather quickly.

Good news for Royce: his check will keep arriving for another 13 weeks or so. This is good news for moving-in-together-ness. Also good news for not-panicking-ness over job situation. I'm happy to support him as long as he need supporting, but it'd be nice to move into a 2-br, just for the sake of our silly cats.

Projects I need to start and/or finish:

• Royce's scarf
  
• Slipcover for Couch + Ottoman
  
• Cat playhouse
  

Things looming:

• NaNoWriMo (you can do it!)
  
• Guidance web page (Royce dealing with this, and we love him for it)
  
• Financial Aid Night (breathe.)
  
• Thanksgiving (where are we going to have it?)
  

Geez, that was boring. Basically this entry is to report that I have nothing to report.

Have I mentioned that I am in love?
Also, highly caffeinated?

Typical mundane update.

Things I want to do this weekend:

1. Roast a freakin' chicken. I have never cooked a whole one, and I want to, goddamnit. I am a fierce homemaker, grrr!
   
2. Do laundry. I am hauling it all up to Sacramento to leech off of M + L + R. I don't know why I put off laundry so long. I just hate doing laundry in public space. Why is it that I will resist walking 200 yards to use the local facilities, but will drive 120 miles to use someone else's?
   
3. Relax.
   
4. Make a writing schedule for upcoming novel-writing madness.
   
5. Find a pair of stupid wings. I have been bullied into dressing up as a bumblebee for Hallowe'en. Everyone else at work is doing it (we are "busy bees." I know, I know) so I am, too. It involves a huge striped tshirt (one size fits nobody) and boggly headband. Wings will give me dignity, right? So I am not just some kind of striped baggy worm.
   
6. See Punch Drunk Love and/or Bowling for Columbine. I don't know if the latter is playing in Sacramento though.
   
7. Finish Royce's scarf so I can start on something that isn't so boring.
   

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention that I finished my first knitting project, the bumpy purple scarf! It's lovely! I am so proud. It only took one ball of yarn, as it is rather airy, so I have two bumpy purple balls of yarn left...I guess I will be making a bumpy purple hat now, and maybe some bumpy purple mittens.

Prayer to the Big Ass Volvo: Please do not break down this weekend. I cannot afford to get you fixed. I promise it will rain soon and the dirt will all wash off. Thank you.

This tea is supposed to taste like oranges, but instead it tastes like flowers. I've had two cups. I'm very content, and flutteringly happy. I'm not sure why, as I am also very lonely, with Royce off at the U.S. Open. I think I'm so happy because I'm genuinely enjoying the time alone to do whatever I like. After I got back from proctoring the PSAT this morning I ate crackers and cheese and pickles, and then sat around knitting and listening to This American Life for three or four hours. When I got sick of that, I took a dozy nap, got up when it was dark, ate noodles with mushrooms and seaweed, and now am fiddling around online and drinking tea. It's really pleasant. Even though it's strange not being with my love, it also gives me time to appreciate him, to think about our life together, and to remember all the reasons he makes me smile. I feel blessed.

I'm having more tea. I'm going to be up late anyway because of the nap.

I had been hungry all the years;
My noon had come, to dine;
I, trembling, drew the table near,
And touched the curious wine.

'T was this on tables I had seen,
When turning, hungry, lone,
I looked in windows, for the wealth
I could not hope to own.

I did not know the ample bread,
'T was so unlike the crumb
The birds and I had often shared
In Nature's dining-room.

The plenty hurt me, 't was so new, --
Myself felt ill and odd,
As berry of a mountain bush
Transplanted to the road.

Nor was I hungry; so I found
That hunger was a way
Of persons outside windows,
The entering takes away.

[Emily Dickinson]

I will not bore you with too many genealogical details, as I think I have moved into a new plane of obsession. However, some nice things have arisen from this new interest of mine.

1. I learned of the existence of, and then contacted, one of my father's half sisters, who was extremely receptive and wants me to call her. This is weird and pleasant all at once. I'm nervous about calling, however, as I dislike telephones to the nth degree. I may just stick to email.
   
2. With minimal research I came up with a plausible and probable explanation for an annoying family legend that involved the daughter of an illegitimate daughter of Queen Victoria running off with her one-legged stepfather. Needless to say, I have no blue blood, legitimate or illegitimate...but apparently the one-legged stepfather thing is true. Scandalous! We love scandal.
   
3. I am really excited about this early California newspaper facsimile (see previous post for title) because I think a lot of genealogists will be interested in it, as it's not widely available. In fact, most of the information available about the book online is from auction listings for California history books. I'm not sure why the library discarded the book, except that the library technology coordinator was frantically cleaning out the reference section to make room for more computers. Yes, it was published in 1965, but it was the first and only edition of an important work. Sigh. But now I have it! And I can share the wealth. I think I'm going to put the index online (which isn't very exhaustive; I'm working on that) and see what kind of bites I get.
   

In other news, I am knitting a big bumpy purple scarf. It's turning out much bigger than I thought it would be, more of a bathmat than a scarf. I don't even wear a scarf during the winter here, so I may have to give it away. Since knitting is so new for me (just learned this past weekend), I have been having knitting dreams, even knitting nightmares about dropping stitches. I'm not sure whether it means I should knit more or less.

My honey is coming to see me tonight, because he's leaving tomorrow for the U.S. Chess Open in Reno. This will be the first weekend we haven't spent together since we started dating. I don't know what to do with myself! I will probably just knit.

The library at the school where I work was discarding books today and I came home with a boxful:

a Russian-English/English-Russian Dictionary for Royce and his chessing
Gentle Wilderness: The Sierra Nevada, Photographs by Richard Kauffman, Text from John Muir
Contemporary Poets, edited by Rosalie Murphy (1243 pages!!)
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, second edition
A Shakespeare Glossary by C.T. Onions
The Concise Encyclopedic Guide to Shakespeare, by Michael Martin & Richard Harrier
The Standard Book of Shakespeare Quotations, by Burton Stevenson
The Forms of Poetry by Louis Untermeyer
Encyclopedia of the American Revolution by Mark M. Boatner III
From Lexington to Liberty by Bruce Lancaster
The Oxford Companion to American History by Thomas H. Johnson
The California Star, Volume I, 1847-1848, a Reproduction in Facsimile
Navajo Wildlands (photographs with poems, stories, essays)

You are so jealous.

I had a very good weekend, both gastronomically and otherwise. I cooked more than usual, including a decent lasagna that will probably hold me for the rest of the week, although it gave me bizarre dreams last night.

Example:

I am marching through the desert with my people. We call ourselves the Seraphs, and we are quite obviously a middle eastern fundamentalist stereotype. Swarthy, turbans, etc. We are going to fight Napoleon's army. I am the chief war strategist. I recommend to the leader that we avoid fighting the infidels on flat ground, as they have superior fighting ability there. We choose a location, a hill overlooking another hill, to stage the battle. To really humiliate our enemies, we plan to play music as they are slaughtered. We build a plywood platform and set up a funky old piano and various ethnic instruments. My leader sends me ahead to scout the enemy's location. They are not where we expect. I scout further down the hill, to the plains below, and see vast numbers of troops stretched out over the flats. They knew our strategy! They are waiting for us where they have the advantage! I notice, also, that the enemy has built their own platform for music, but it is sumptuous: red velvet, a white and gold grand piano, and crystal chandeliers. How can I call myself a war strategist if the enemy knows my thoughts? I am too ashamed to go back to my leader. I throw myself on the "efraim" (a fire built in the center of a huge metal bowl that is set into the earth). I can feel my skin burning. I wonder how long it will take the fire to burn through my skin and skull and end my life. It is taking too long. I worry that the enemy will see me and pull me from the fire. I must use other methods. I get out of the efraim and put drops in my ears that I know will burn into my brain. The pain is excruciating and I look forward to it ending, but the pain begins to subside. An old white woman shows up, the creator of the drops, and warns me that they are wearing off. She offers to stick a long needle in my ear, but I am afraid. She tries to put a pair of long sharp scissors into my ear, but I run away from her, into a bathroom. I fill my ears with the drops, and although the drops are no longer burning, I can tell they are working and it is only a matter of time before they reach my brain. I feel peaceful and watch myself in the mirror.

I was very disturbed when I woke up. I wrote the dream down in my journal, in the dark, so that I wouldn't forget. I had another dream afterward that people were running around trying to hack me to bits. I discovered I could swordfight ("Wow, hey, I can swordfight. I think. At least what I'm doing is working right now!"), but eventually got hacked to bits anyway. Then I found out that I was already dead and that I had to re-enact my death every night. So all that terror and swordfighting for nothing! Totally sucked.

Anyway. Among the other good things that I made was my super-easy salady type thing because Royce loves it. This is the recipe, if it can be called that. The amounts of ingredients can be adjusted anywhichway, because that is how I cook. It is not terribly original but it is terribly good.

A can of black beans, drained, rinsed. You could cook these yourself if you are ambitious, but then it wouldn't be a super-easy salady type thing, it'd be a slightly-pain-in-the-ass salady type thing.
Approximately the same amount of corn. Off the cob. I use frozen and thaw it by running under hot water in a colander.
A tomato or two, diced up.
A cucumber, peeled and diced
Vinegar of some sort. I use rice vinegar. It's also good with plain old white vinegar or red wine vinegar. Alternatively you could use lime juice. Basalmic vinegar tastes good but it turns everything brownish purple so I don't recommend it in this case.
A wee bit of olive oil.
Salt, Pepper, Cumin, Cayenne.

MIX IT ALL UP IN A BOWL. I eat it with a spoon. Royce eats it with tortilla chips. It would be good inside a pita or tortilla, especially if you added some chunks of cheese. Feta maybe. Or cotija, to keep with the Tex-Mexiness of it all. That is all the recipe you get for today.

The rest of the weekend was good, too. Royce and I are all lovely-dovely lately. Not even lately, just in general. Smooch smooch smooch. You are the funniest person ever! No you are! No YOU are! Actually we both are. Witness:

I was trying to get his attention, so I said: POKE
Failed to get his attention, so tried to impress him by rhyming: SMOKE. TOKE.
CHOKE, he said. I cracked up and snuggled his arm.
STROKE, he said.
BLOKE, he said, pointing to himself.
BROKE, I snickered.
He pointed at me and growled: CROAK!
and I said: JOKE!

Don't you wish you were us? Smooch smooch smooch.

Oh, and I even played chess. Lost of course, but he said I didn't suck as much as he expected. Yay me!

"Ozzy Osbourne used to snort ants. Led Zeppelin had sex with hookers on private planes. And I start a book club. Because one can only snort so many ants and have so much sex before one starts to long for the comfort and companionship of a book."

Moby on why he's decided to start a used-book exchange on his world tour, in the U.K. Sun.

On that note: what I am reading right now.

Broke Heart Blues, Joyce Carol Oates
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (still), Italo Calvino
October issue of The Atlantic Monthly
Stupid catalogs that arrive in the mail every day. I mean, really, Brooks Brothers? Since when do I buy things from catalogs? I buy things from websites, O Catalog Sender. Please take me off your List. Especially whatever List includes that underwear catalog with the giant underwear that has descriptions like "Extra full cut ensures a generous fit, with ample fullness in back seat area." The back seat area? Like this underwear is going to fit over my whole car? Not just me and the front seat, but the back seat, too? I do not want underwear that generous. Yes, give me stingy underwear that wouldn't hand a dime to a bum, let alone give a hitchhiker a ride in their back seat area.

Yay Pat Stark.

excerpts from my fifth grade diary

I was standing in the mall this past weekend waiting for Royce to come out of the bathroom, when a women walked by me pushing a stroller full of four screaming little girls. She started talking to me and I was barely listening because I was so mesmerized by her scars; she'd obviously been burned over a large portion of her body.

"I have been watching you and sensing your energy," she said mechanically, as if she'd rehearsed it many times in the mirror. "I can see many good things happening for you. Would you consider having a palm or tarot reading?"

I said no, but was secretly pleased that good things will be happening for me. Who needs to hear more than that?

One of my co-workers is always sending forwards warning against the health risks of microwaving tupperware, warning people about bogus computer viruses, circulating a petition to stop Sesame Street from being cancelled, and various other urban legend forwards that have been circulating for years. Every time she sends me one that's obviously untrue, I write her back with a link (usually to a snopes.com page) that debunks the story and suggest that she check the site before she forwards information to people at work.

After ten or fifteen of my replies over about a year, she finally stopped forwarding things. Or at least I assumed she'd stopped, but on Friday another co-worker said to me, "J--- sent me this email about how Bill Gates will pay me if I send the letter to ten people. Is it true?"

Now, obviously she didn't forward it to me because she knew that I would send her a link that explained why the story wasn't true...which means that some part of her also knew that the forward was a bunch of bullshit. But then why did she persist in propagating misinformation? In this case it wasn't even entertaining. I am baffled.

Tonight, because I can't sleep (due to three hour nap after work), you get my grocery list! I went shopping while hungry and did what I always do in grocery stores and never in other kinds of stores: bought whatever I felt like buying. I never go to a store and thoughtlessly drop $122.80...unless that store is Safeway, and I am hungry.

extra-sour sourdough bread
extra-sharp sharp cheddar cheese
some of those tiny round cheeses
1% milk
grapefruit juice
cage-free organic eggs (I am a friend of chickens)
lemon yogurts (4)

salad-in-a-bag
2 lb. of baby carrots
2 big cucumbers
1.78 lb of tomatoes
lemons (4) and limes (5)
Jona Gold apples (4)
shallots
tofu

bottled water (lots)
various kinds of chicken soup
couscous
cereal (honey bunches of oats with strawberries)
buttload of ramen
extra-virgin olive oil
clover honey
whole black peppercorns
freezer bags
kleenex

Guilty pleasures:

frozen happy organic burritos (2)
Starbucks "double-shot" canned coffee stuff (2)
big jar kosher dill pickles
lime-flavored tortilla chips
marinated artichoke hearts
Real Simple magazine (which is code for Real Snazzy Marketing of Same Old Crap)

About midway through my shopping extravaganza, I decided that I'm going to make lasagna this week, so I bought:

ricotta cheese
"italian" tomato sauce
mozzarella cheese

But forgot to buy:

lasagna noodles. Duh. Have to go back to store again.

However, I did remember:

three other kinds of pasta
two other kinds of pasta sauce

I bet you want to know what I made for dinner, don't you? Well, I'll tell you: it had very little to do with what I just bought at the store. Lemon-spinach couscous with prawns and parmesan and green peas. All the food groups in one pot! Woo!

I can't breathe through my nose. I feel like a zombie.

If that tickles your fancy, you might be interested in the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency's (<--based in Albuquerque. Why are all the weirdos in New Mexico?) SCIENCE OF ZOMBIES.

"Because of their catatonic state, zombies have been unable to offer any personal testimony to augment scientific research."

Because of my own catatonic state, I am unable to offer any personal insight to augment your journal reading experience.

The ants came back. I guess they are not making a MacGyver II, starring me as the MacGyverette, handily solving all the world's problems with creative vacuum cleaner attachments. Bummer.

I was talking to my mom on the phone tonight and whining about how I have no long-term goals and due to this I feel like a slacker. She said it is a genetic problem, and that I'm not likely to find two less motivated people than my parents. She went on to assure me that if you replace "lack of career ambition" with terms like "independence and self-determination," it sounds better. Let's face it, comrades, in another life I was a Communist. Maybe even in this life. Just call me pinko bastard.

Speaking of pinko bastards, my sister is still on the road, now in Chicago visiting Mathieu and Kareem. Let me just step back from this a minute and say THAT IS SO FREAKIN UNFAIR. I want to travel! I want to mooch off of people I barely know to facilitate my transient punkrock lifestyle! I want to don sensible footwear and get free food out of dumpsters! This job, though, and these bills...they are just too good to give up.

We are thrilled about the new look!