In which I’ve gotten up from a nap hungry.
Apropos of nothing, I have a sudden and intense desire for a fish sandwich from McD’s?!
What the hell! They’re terrible! Every time I eat one (this happens once or twice a decade, on average) I regret it.
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Update: For the record, I settled for an open-faced tuna salad and tomato on toasted Ezekiel bread. It was delicious.
In which the internet is stupid. But it’s also awesome!
Made the mistake today of looking the house up on Zillow, and that bastard of a site had the nerve to estimate the value under what we paid for it only eleven months ago!
Well, I looked at recent sales of similar houses in the area, and they’re going for, like, $313k, so prices are still high and people are still paying them, which means their estimate is garbage. So screw you, Zillow!
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Everybody at work thinks I’m some sort of diva for being afraid I can’t pass a test with no official text books, practice tests, or sanctioned goddamned course of study, and which features a pass rate of under 50%, but I know I can’t know what I don’t know I don’t know.
So I went online and asked r/cheese about study groups, and through the kindness of a stranger and a circuitous route of emails, I got admitted to an official STUDY GROUP for the Certified Cheese Professional test!!!
It starts a week from tomorrow, is conducted over Zoom, and is free. And now I think I have an actual chance to pass the test.
It turns out I’ve already read, or own and have begun to read, all the books the teacher recommends in the welcome email. So that’s a relief!
I did no studying at all this weekend. A mini-break before class starts!
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I just can’t keep my nails done now that I’m menopausal.
I don’t know if it’s lack of collagen or what, but whenever I try to wear press-on, or even gel, nails, any moisture whatsoever that sits anywhere near the nail plate (which always happens at work, primarily because I have to wear gloves all the time) makes my nails lift. They just separate from the nail beds! It’s gross! And it takes months to grow them out and it sucks. I love the occasional manicure! And now I just… can’t have them anymore?
It’s bullshit.
And they’re far too thin for old school acrylics. If anybody took a Dremel to my nail plates it would go right through and hurt like hell.
Plus I’m terrified of what would happen if I smacked an acrylic nail against a cheese rack or something real hard. What if the entire nail came off instead of just the acrylic overlay?! How gross would that be?!
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The Pendleton blanket — well, throw, really; it’s not a whole blanket — has arrived, and it’s glorious and beautiful and I love it. Here it is at the foot of the guest room bed.
I also got a Pendleton wool scarf, and it too is fantastic.
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The diet is tedious and a pain in the ass, and I ate 2,607 calories on my cheat day because I was fucking starving and just wanted to be able to eat freely.
I managed to give up cocaine overnight but not eating food is a whole ‘nother level.
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I suck at anniversaries, but I do have a basic understanding of the passage of time and it occurs that the Yeti and I have known one another for a decade now.
And we’ll have been living together for nine years on April 16th. Really doesn’t seem that long at all, but time contracts more and more the older I get. Still, I begin to suspect that he’s a keeper!
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I’m having the kitchen painted semi-gloss white on Friday.
Life is too short to hate your kitchen walls just because you chose a stupid matte color last April.
In which it’s the Super Bowl.
Let it be known that three o’clock this Sunday was the first time I’ve seen rainbows in my living room in 2023. Window prisms are the best!
I made my TV re-scan for channels, but we don’t get Fox in this house so I guess I’m not watching the Superb Owl ads this year. I could probably find some way to watch online, but I don’t care that much*. We did get Fox in the house across the street, so a slightly bigger antenna would probably work, but I don’t think I ever watched anything but football on Fox anyway.
Slept until two, had beans on toast** and a latte. Considered going out, if not to watch the game per se but more to just be around people, to participate in the holiday: the neighborhood bar with the cheese tots? A tasting room, maybe? Los Rocosos or Watermill? La Ramada?
. .. … …. ….. …. … .. .
Spent, oh, much of an hour looking at stuff to make boba tea. Tapioca pearls. Recipes. Fat straws. People, I very nearly bought a bunch of stuff to make 30 glasses of a drink I’d only want one or two of? This happens a lot. I frequently take deep dives into stupid things like bubble tea, learn all about them, fill a cart someplace, and then very nearly drop the hammer on the purchase… and then I don’t. It’s basically a hobby? Almost spending money on things? I guess it’s the internet form of window shopping, without the leaving the house or all the healthy walking and fresh air.
Decided I can’t be bothered to go out. He won’t go because he’s an introvert who won’t go anywhere (well, anywhere that isn’t a quick errand) without being strong-armed into it, and going alone sounds meh. Sometimes I really enjoy going somewhere alone, with my traveler’s notebook and maybe the Kindle or some cheese test stuff to study, to sit and eat and drink, but I guess I’m not feeling it this afternoon.
. .. … …. ….. …. … .. .
We lost our manager at work; her husband got laid off and they’ve moved to the Southwest to chase jobs. Another manager had been hired to replace her, but decided to take her previous job’s apparently generous counter offer, so now we’re short a fully-trained full time worker. I fully expect the place to descend back into the kind of chaos that results in regularly running out of mission critical items (because nobody’s in charge of ordering them and everybody else is part-time and under-trained). I offered to work F/T until someone can be hired, but so far my schedule’s the same. Guess the cheesemaker’s gonna wing it for the time being.
I do have to go in tomorrow morning to make and give out a pre-ordered cheese platter, but it’s always me when there’s a pickup outside regular shop hours, so that’s not unusual.
. .. … …. ….. …. … .. .
On the subject of the en suite bathroom, which we totally weren’t discussing: it’s less drab now! Yay! Entirely by accident, I found wall decals on Temu [basically an Amazon-killer superstore site and app, it sells everything cheaper because it ships directly from China eliminating the Amazon markup] that, amazingly, match the colorway of the en suite’s floor, baseboard, and trim, not to mention the bedroom itself’s lavender walls!
They’re abstract shapes in various shades, the exact same semi-gloss as the extant paint somehow, and installation took only minutes.
I bought two sets of decals at $1.68 each, plus a couple of small fuzzy rugs, and a matching set of wash cloths small enough to fit in the weird hanger next to the sink, and now the room no longer strikes me as cold and ugly.
Been struggling since last March trying to figure out what to do with that odd bathroom without having to invest much time and money, and it turns out to be a cheap-ass sticker set that I bought on a whim, thinking it was a different colorway entirely because the images on the site aren’t terribly accurate?!
I doubt it’s cool, using cheap and tacky stickers to make an accent wall, but hey! Because of them all the disparate features match now, and I like it! (I’ll never know why there’s gray and black tile in an otherwise entirely cream and sand brown room, but whatever.) Much better than ripping out the tile around the sink, which is what I was considering before. The same flooring and baseboard run throughout most of the house, so they weren’t gonna go anywhere. But because one of the shades of the decals is marble grey, and two more match the floor and baseboard exactly, IT ALL MATCHES. Sticker-covered accent wall! (“Wow. It looks like wallpaper,” he said.) Fucking amazing! Who knew?
*Turns out that Fox lifted the paywall this year, so it was easier than expected to find the game.
**Not English-style beans on toast; I don’t like baked beans. (Nor white sandwich bread, really, for that matter.) I eat this weird dish of generic canned (meatless) chili beans over toasted, buttered Ezekiel bread with grated cheese. It’s cheap, quick, and filled with fiber and protein! Yum!
In which there’s a soup tureen.
I keep my garlic in an old-ass soup tureen my aunt shipped us, along with a teapot, teacups, and some antique lace, when we lived in Minneapolis. It’s a great garlic keeper because it’s dark inside, but it doesn’t match my kitchen (it’s green) and takes up a bunch of counter space (it’s heavy stoneware).
So I moved the garlic into a stainless container (a tiffin, actually) and then thought, I don’t think I have ever, in my entire life, eaten soup that was served out of a tureen?
Why do I even know the word tureen? When have I ever needed to know the word tureen?
I make and eat a lot of soup, but even when I take it to the table, it’s still in the pot it was made in. I mean, a heavy stoneware tureen would probably keep soup warm a few minutes longer than a cooking pot, but, like, tureens are even sillier than gravy boats.
Tureen!
Say what you like about the royal funeral, but there are a lot of cool outfits and weird rituals.
dudes i’m gonna put sage green sheer curtains in a bedroom with mint green walls and i will not be taking any questions
but if you have any opinions about holdbacks i’d like to hear them
in which there’s an observation
nobody else could have played greg house because the character is a complete, irredeemable fucking asshole as written, and the show only worked because laurie’s intrinsically as soft as a lop-eared bunny yet obviously brutally intelligent
the show never would have gotten a second season, or possibly even past the pilot, if they’d cast literally any other actor in the role, because house is SUCH a total dick no viewer would have warmed to him without that inherent compassion
you notice on re-watch that laurie almost always plays house against the script, making him gentler and more internal than the plot suggests through the character’s actions and behavior
(yes, i’m watching ‘house’ in the middle of the night again, it’s a pandemic, wtf do you want from me)
for the record, both laurie and house (even though the former is probably passive-aggressive af and the latter’s a drug-addicted sociopath) could totally get it, i’m not gonna lie, and furthermore this is based entirely on closeups of those eyes and the scene where house is seen chopping up a line like a true partier lol
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in news unrelated to ‘house’, i’ve been having actual hot flashes lately, like genuine full-fledged ones, and HA HA HA they really DO SUCK, and also The Dread returned a week ago and i’ve had two or three utterly shitty episodes, so if you’re thinking of developing a panic and/or anxiety disorder may i suggest you absolutely really just DON’T
did some very gentle isometrics the other evening — because i was reading a book about menopause that told me all about muscle loss (muscle mass peaks in your 30’s and then it’s all down hill from there) and how to maintain bone density — and fucked up my left knee for the next three days, and it’s still tender and weak, goddamn it
fucked up my right arm while sleeping last week, too, and it remains sore, but at least i can still wrangle throughout the day multiple 20-pound wheels of cheese at work like i’m supposed to
keep resolving to bike more but then i don’t like the weather so i don’t, need to just make myself ride anyway, keep my quads from dissolving
aging while female is serious business, bitches, i swear i never realized how robust i’d always felt until i got this old and menopausaly, it’s a fucking racket
~+~+~
I MADE VEGGIE PULAO, DAL MAKHANI, AND TOMATO & ONION RAITA TODAY and it was yummy, and i also did a ton of laundry because the bedroom smelled like sweaty socks
paid the bills, did the dishes, and mended a favorite dress and a favorite tunic today as well, felt so productive!
we’re gonna walk through the house across the street tomorrow, hoping to buy it, i am dying to see the weird built-in china cabinet i saw on zillow
in which it’s a random brain dump! because that’s what blogs are FOR!
– my sleep schedule is WHACKED, with various levels of exhaustion and insomnia, i’m either sluggish af when i should be awake or wide awake when i should be deep in a REM cycle. was a few minutes late to work every day this week, boo
– it’s been 112 days since my last period, so in another 253 days (if i don’t bleed) i’m officially menopausal!
– i can’t regulate my body temp for shit when at rest (i’m fine at work, still), so i keep a pile of items next to me when i’m studying, reading, or watching movies: a pair of wool socks, a sweater, another sweater, and a shawl, and all these items come off and go on in a never-ending shuffle, plus when i get hot i get SO HOT it feels like prickles all over my skin, which is like a hot flash but also not like a hot flash
– 34,000 americans died of covid over the past 28 days; the government is weakly recommending boosters but is otherwise doing nothing. THIRTY-FOUR THOUSAND PEOPLE DIED IN 28 DAYS, nobody’s doing anything of note, it’s literally fucking insane
– two of my co-workers are traveling for christmas, and no one is still in a bubble as far as i can tell. if anybody brings back covid i’ll be PISSED OFF
– i had an egg this morning and then didn’t eat again all day, so was starving when i got home. made myself a burrito out of various orphaned items from fridge and freezer and IT WAS AMAZING. so yeah, i do recommend you try putting a chopped-up tamale in a burrito with rice and beans, lettuce and tomato and onion, salsa and cheese guac, it totally works!
– i couldn’t finish the awesome burrito; ate a little over half and gave up: i can’t finish anything these days. i remember ordering and eating (!!!), a decade ago, entire mexican platters and it just seems impossible now, like, where did it even FIT lol
– yesterday someone asked if my nose ring “was a snowflake?” (my mask was low, oops) and it made me super happy because it DOES look like a snowflake and i’ve worn this thing three winters in a row without anybody noticing! yay!
– i watched die hard last night because it’s christmas movie season. hadn’t seen it in so long it was like seeing it for the first time (save the stills used in memes). fun!
– seriously considering (once my dental work is paid for, UGH) getting myself a Real Bike next year, maybe an e-bike, something with assist for longer trips? they’re expensive [well, expensive compared to $100 walmart bikes, but cheap compared to cars, of course] but the weather’s SO mild out here it’s always possible to ride, and maybe i could get a true step-through because (a) i wear long skirts more often than not and (b) i’m old, so getting on my bike is rough on the hip muscles when i’m tired after 6+ hours standing on concrete floors at work hauling 20-pound wheels of cheese, crates full of milk, and loaded delivery coolers
– speaking of which, some areas of the creamery are clean rooms, so i keep a pair of crocs at work. i wash and sanitize them at the end of every shift, and those shoes never leave the building, so this way i don’t have to put on slippers ten times a day to walk briefly into the creamery or the cave. the other day i took them off to wash them, and then walked around in my sock feet emptying all 7 trash bins, and HOLY SHIT IT HURT! age-related collagen loss is a bitch, i can feel the bones of my feet in ways that i never could have imagined twenty years ago, when the flesh on the heels and balls of my feet was so thick and plump. omfg those bouncy shoes are a BLESSING, i kid you not. bouncy and sanitizeable!
– my better half got a new job, he’s at whitman college now! likes his new pay rate. wants to buy a house. we’ve been looking, but goddamn the market is blown. reesty shacks are like a quarter of a million dollars?! insane.
– i knit a hat last month but it was too short so i had to pick up the hem, which i did half-assedly, to knit another couple inches so it’ll fit. still in progress, will look like hell
– my potted avocado, which i sprouted from a pit when i moved in with my beloved 8 years ago, seems to have died, and i think this SUCKS, but i’m keeping it inside and not letting it dry out in the hopes that maybe it’ll sprout again in the spring?
– i made cute little PROSCIUTTO-WRAPPED HALLOUMI kits at work: halloumi, prosciutto, a printed recipe, and a custom olive & cornichon mix, all in a little box, and people keep buying them and it pleases me a great deal to think of someone getting one as a gift and really enjoying it
– one aspect of studying in earnest for the CCP next year, which i am half-but-not-fully committed to sitting for because it costs a lot, is that i keep buying CHEESE BOOKS, so now i have a bunch of really cool CHEESE BOOKS in my house
In which it’s perfect and I love it so much!
We got a kitchen table (from an old BMI co-worker of mine, who offered it via Instagram when I posted we’d gotten this house to rent and needed furniture — thanks, Mike!) and it’s in the kitchen now and it’s exactly the right size and shape and it’s so great.
Like, I couldn’t have gone out looking and found a table more exactly what should be in this kitchen. It fits the space perfectly. It’s sturdy and rectangular and comfortable and not too tall.
This kitchen is ideal. I don’t know if I’ve ever liked a kitchen as much as I like this one, even if the fridge is in a sort of weird spot. There are windows, and soon there will be a washer and dryer (thanks, aunt Sue!), and there’s tons of counter space and tons of cupboards and it’s both big and cozy, and there’s a dishwasher!
And over the table is a bank of daylight ceiling lights, so it’ll be a perfect place to read and write or watercolor or knead bread or mend or sew, even at night.
I ate Sunday brunch (pot of tea, oven roasted potatoes, and a broccoli & cheddar fritatta) at the table today! With place mats and dishes and everything! Hurrah!
The table is used and worn, but I fucking love it, exactly as it is. It’s like it was made to be in this house!
The only problem with this house is that it’s too great. Next time we move will be a disappointment no matter what, but hopefully it won’t be for years.
In which I just don’t enjoy Facebook anymore because it’s full of disinformation and depression and conspiracy theories and none of that’s any fun.
Just logged into FB for the first time in a couple of weeks and my last post turned into the biggest conversation on my page in years.
I find this funny, for some reason?
And no, I don’t think you suck, babies. You’re all welcome to post whatever comments you like here, no censorship, or, hell, I’ll even give you a login if you want to post actual entries, I don’t care, but I do think Facebook sucks and fuck their AI and their algorithms and their entire whatever!
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Update: scrolled the main page for half an hour and it’s still a dumpster fire. Headlines that are immediately seen to be garbage if a person’s even mildly rational. “Rifles” are not the problem in mass shootings, mammograms do not “cause cancer,” and no, CBD oil doesn’t “cure” autism. I wrote and deleted three replies, because “this is demonstrably untrue” isn’t fun or interesting and just ends up making everybody butthurt.
Delete the internet, it’s stupid!
Oh, AND I found out my college roommate has died. Facebook is depressing, y’all.