A few tasty tidbits re: the town I live in! Tiny Batavia, Iowa! {cue applause}

I don’t believe our household participated in the 2000 census; we didn’t move in until November. But still, such a tiny little hamlet. I love it all the more.
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These are all too short to be their own blog entries:

1. I cut my own hair in the bathroom Monday afternoon.

2. I’m secretly in love with Bucket.

3. Brett sprained his ankle last Saturday.

4. I went to the demo derby at the fairgrounds last Sunday.

5. I made peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate frosting Monday night.

6. Brett gave Joe a porkchop last night.

7. The Jeep is pretty much turning into a beater. *sigh*

8. I am so into knitting lately, it’s geeky.

9. Brett is hoping to take a vacation in two weeks! (Finally!)

10. Joe said I make really good soup.
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You know who’s been getting on my nerves?

Brett’s dad.

Yes, yes, he’s dead. But he’s been popping out of Brett’s mouth lately. Take this morning, for instance. I did something Brett didn’t like – I put a blanket on his sprained ankle and made him holler with pain – but instead of saying, “Ow! That fucking hurts dude!” he told me instead that I’m stupid.

Much like he did the day I broke my rear view mirror. And once recently when he didn’t like something I did while driving. And it seems like there was another time but I don’t remember exactly what it was.

What with the sprained ankle and all I let it slide this morning. But tonight, I’ll say this: “I don’t think you know you’re doing this, so I’m bringing it to your attention. When you don’t get your way, or you’re tired, or you’re in pain, or whatever, you’ve begun talking to me like you say your dad talked to your mom.

“If I do something you don’t like, please let me know. But in the future, I need you to make an effort to stop telling me I’m stupid. It’s just not gonna fly with me, and I don’t care if it’s a sprained ankle or your whole foot’s been cut off: watch what you say to your wife.”

I’m actually kinda looking forward to the look on his face: Me? I’ve been doing that? No way! It’s just so not his style to speak to people that way; I think we all fall into bad habits sometimes. I know I periodically hear my mom or dad’s least desirable tones come out of my own mouth!

Ah, the struggle to be a better person never ceases!

This is the coolest tiled background I have ever seen in my whole life. See more tiles by the same artist… many of them are way cool.

Here is a picture of my boy-dog, Shiva. No reason. Just seemed like it was time. Isn’t he lovely? Such a Meathead, that Shiva of mine! Such a handsome boy. Now if he’d quit opening doors, breaking windows, chewing up socks, barking, and flailing all the time he’d be even handsomer!

I feel like I’ve been fairly busy lately, but whenever I want to blog I can’t think of much to say.

I got hired for another web gig; I’ll be building a site for Grand Orleans Hotel in Burlington, IA. I’ve already sent ’em my first invoice and am waiting on content – pictures and logo files and such – before I dig in. I was all ready to web my arse off last weekend but they hadn’t sent me enough to work with yet.

Friday I cleaned house like a machine. It was no more or less fun or rewarding than any domestic chore can be. The downside of cleaning house like a machine for me is that my house is vast and there is always something more to do, so no matter how much I do, I always feel like I should or could have done more.

A pet peeve of mine is to bust ass cleaning all day only to sit down after dinner and realize that the living room is dirty. Grr.

Last weekend Brett and I bit the bullet and cleaned the attic. It was basically full of shit – the dogs took to going up there a long time ago, and we didn’t notice it right away. Then the cat started using it. It was so disgusting neither of us could bear to attack it, but with the summer months upon us and the plastic divider half fallen down, we could begin to smell it. So up we went, armed with brooms and garbage cans and a mop bucket full of bleach. It was a nasty job, but we did it in the evening when it wasn’t too horribly hot up there and we just grit our teeth and busted through it.

Now it’s all cleaned and disinfected, and there’s a board over the stairs so no pets can get back up there. It’s really great to get a nasty job of one’s To Do list.

Saturday and much of Sunday I lounged on the couch and watched TV and knitted and took naps. It was wonderfully lazy. Brett didn’t do much either aside from mow the lawn.

Monday was errand day. I went to town and paid bills, did seven loads of laundry, bought household stuff from Walmart, bought groceries. It took me nine trips to unload the Jeep when I got home, and Shiva and Bindu had to be underfoot every single time I turned around. After I got everything in the house, I had to put it all away. Before I could put the food away, I had to throw old food out, but before I could do that I had to take out the garbage. I ruthlessly tossed anything older than strictly necessary out of both of the refrigerators and trundled the garbage out to the pile in the shed.

No matter how much I police, I’m always finding empty condiments and mouldy containers in my fridge! And then there’s always that half tomato in the bottom of the crisper, and the two bread bags with one heel each in them, and the ripped bag of lunch meat that Brett won’t eat and can’t seem to throw away either… and there’s always nasty shit rotting in the beer fridge. I don’t really know how it all gets in there, but I chucked it all into a big garbage bag yesterday.

The other fun problems of country living are humidity and mice. Humidity means that the granola inside an improperly closed tupperware container becomes like chewy, sweaty cardboard and has to be tossed. Humidity means that the salt turns into a brick and has to be sliced out of the container.

Mice mean that when I reached for the instant mashed potatoes the other evening (I use them for soup thickener), there was mouse turds in it. There were also mouse holes in two boxes of pasta.

In short, mice and humidity cause me to throw out a lot of food – it’s a waste of money. Generally I keep most things in glass jars or plastic containers, but some stuff is fine for a long time and I don’t bother. (Like the mashed potatoes. I’ve always kept a box of those, and never had any problems. Especially not in the summer!) So a good fridge and cupboard purge was just the ticket.

After the groceries were away, I had to put away the Walmart stuff, and then the laundry. Then I made dinner. Then Brett called from the shop where he and Joe were geeking on Joe’s bike. He said, “Did you already make dinner?”

I said, “Yep.”

Silence. Then: “Oh, well, then I’ll be home in a few.”

“Do you want me to bring you boys foodies, then? So you can nerd out on bikes some more?”

He thought that was the coolest thing ever, and asked me to bring his welder since I was coming, so I packed up sandwiches and stew and drove back to town to deliver them food.

They added a fender and fender struts to Joe’s bike and I sat in the Jeep and finished knitting a pair of wool slippers for Brett and then went home to do the picnic dishes.

I’d post newer pics of the transformation of Joe’s scooter but the flash died on my digital camera. This pissed me off to no end. I mean, I can still take pictures in broad daylight, but that’s about it. And since it was just a cheapo little $150 digi cam, I doubt it’s even fixable.

Since I’d bought a new shower curtain yesterday, when I got home I couldn’t stand the clean shiny curtain over my nasty dirty shower, so I cleaned it while Brett’s slippers felted in the washing machine. I didn’t really want to clean the bathroom last night, but the new shower curtain is clear and it just looked bad. Snort! I’m sure when I take a shower after work tonight that it will have been well worth it.

Since I spent so much time knitting lately, I accidentally did some knitting surfing this morning. I want a set of Boye Needle Master needles pretty awfully! I charged some yarn online this morning too – shh! Who woulda thunk I’d grow up to be a cheesy knitter?!

I’m sure other things have been going on more interesting than my housekeeping litany, but I can’t think of what they are, really. My life is a small place in my old age, really, populated with a small group of close friends and filled up with the endless toil of keeping house.

I’m reading the Sword of Shannara trilogy on my palmtop. It’s okay. I don’t hate it, but it’s not really rocking my boat too hard. It’s long, at least – that makes it fun! It’s nice to have a relationship with a book that lasts more than three days!

My dad continues his adventures; his house is sold and he’s buying an RV which he intends to drive to Panama. It’ll be really exciting to have someone to visit in South America!

Oh, and last but not least, Brett and I will soon be uncle and aunt: Brett’s sister is pregnant, due in mid-December! I guess I’d better work a bit, then surf for cute layette knitting patterns. Snort!

I told my girlfriend recently that coffee has more caffeine than espresso. She did not believe me. I said, “A latte has a shot or two of espresso and the rest of it is milk. A cup of coffee has more caffeine.” She gave me a look. “Swear to God,” I said, and changed the subject.

Today I did a little surfing. Apparently the idea that coffee has more caffeine than espresso is looked upon by some as a net legend or something, while others confirm that espresso does indeed have less caffeine than coffee.

So I guess the measurements are wonky, depending too much on beans, grind, and preparation to really say how much caffeine a shot of espresso contains.

All I know is this: if I get a small or medium cup of joe and drink it, I’m more wired than if I get a tall or venti latte.

Generally, the serving size of a cup of coffee is 8-16 fluid ounces, while a typical espresso serving is only one or two shots (about 3 ounces). So even if the espresso itself has a slightly higher caffeine level, there’s still so much less of it in the cup that it’s remains milder than a cup of coffee.

So. My vacation.

I don’t know how to write about it. There was the surface stuff, i.e., We went out for sushi. And the non-personal stuff, i.e., I only slept 7.5 hours during the first three days. But so much of it was internal, interior. One doesn’t just go see her satguru and come back the same, you know?

One also doesn’t just say in public that her personal Jesus is alive and in the middle of a world tour, with a three-day break to visit the world parliament of religions thank you very much. It just isn’t done. Budda, Christ, they’re fine – safely dead thousands of years. But to admit someone a thousand years dead was cool is very different from someone “in this day and age!” wandering around being clearly better than the rest of us.

So I haven’t posted on my blog yet about my vacation, which was specifically and entirely for and about seeing Mother for as many minutes as I could.

Hmm.

The most important thing in my life, and I don’t even write an entry about it?

If you’ve ever seen a site run by Movabletype (uh, like the one you’re reading now), you’re probably familiar with the famous folks who built it? Anyhow, I was reading a post in Mena’s blog in which she talks about blogging “through the responsible lens of emotional and personal distance,” and realized all bloggers, no matter how trivial their audience, have to deal with these issues of self-censorship: How much do I say? and Who won’t get what I do say? and Am I willing to weather the storm the non-getters may cause me?

In other words, if you really want to know about the personal (read: spiritual) part of my vacation, you may, just this once, visit my very secret blog here. It’s been up a long time but I stopped linking to it because such a small percentage of my bandwidth would ever get it… and/or I’m afraid the people who might get it might wig me out if they decided to share. My post isn’t done yet, but it will be.

If the other girls on the trip had blogs I’d point you their way too, for a three-dimensional view, but oddly they’re all blog-free… even the geekiest one among them. I think it’s weird, considering that anyone can sign up for a free TypePad or Xanga blog in about 8.6 seconds.

Or maybe not everyone is ready for this new(ish) communication: once upon a time, a communication was less confusing. Either it was for a terribly small group (the person you were talking to, or the small group you were talking to) or a terribly large one (the great American novel) and it was directional: a letter goes to the address it’s mailed to. There wasn’t this stress of not knowing who your audience was.

Blogging’s a roulette: who’ll see this entry? And when? Can I count on it that s/he won’t see it until it’s become a cold potato?

Maybe being blog-free is the best approach to blogging. But I’ve had mine for so long!
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I just read this review of the remake of The Stepford Wives and just wanted to say this: I am so tired of pissed off bitches.

I am certainly against crimes being committed against women! Yet I’m also against crimes being committed against men. And until our modern day pissed off bitches (er, sorry: feminists) can stop seeing the world through the eyes of victimhood, we’re just going to keep turning men more and more into what we’re accusing them of: shallow, simple, selfish jerks.
Continue reading Spare me the alpha females →

Today is the first day of my vacation!

Well, actually I had Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off just like everyone else, but I spent that time doing every chore I could think of so Mr. Brett won’t have to, you know, like, think or do anything for himself while I’m gone. (Snort!)
Continue reading Vacation →