In which there’s 28 pounds of history.
My mother and step-father are leaving Wyoming, where they’ve lived for many years, to return to the Pacific Northwest for retirement. This means they’re going through all their shit as they pack.
My mom emailed me to say she’d found a box of my stuff that appeared to have high school annuals, memorabilia, and diaries in it; did I want it now or should she just put it with the moving stuff?
Box? What box? Did I leave a box there, somehow, when I passed through on my way from Iowa to Washington twelve years ago?
I said that, since I had no idea what it was (I got my high school annuals back years ago), it didn’t really matter what she did with it, but if she had time to ship it I guess I’d take it.
She shipped it.
Holy shit:
It’s a box I vaguely remember! My senior annual and scrapbook, sheet music, scripts from when I played Kate in Taming of the Shrew. Concert ticket stubs!
And Jesus, my high school diaries!
I thought I’d left my journals at my dad’s when I moved out, and that he’d gotten rid of them along with the other stuff I’d left when he moved into an RV back in the 90’s. I remember being pissed they were gone, but that was a long time ago now.
Seven volumes of teen writing. Ye gods.
There’s stuff from after high school, too. Choir certificates from junior college, clippings and pictures, even three cassette tapes I have no way of playing. A piece of art from a boyfriend I’d dated. My name tag from when I worked at 7-Eleven. Looks like there might be a photo album in the bottom, too, but I haven’t dug it out yet.
I’ve opened three of the diaries and glanced at single pages; it’s pretty much boring, awful teen girl noise. (One page I opened to said, “My mom turned 39 today!” That’s eleven years younger than I am now.) I have basically no desire to read them, but will probably skim them anyway for shits and giggles.
I have no idea how mom ended up with this box, nor how long she’s had it — they must have moved it to Wyoming with them, and then, what, two or three times since? — without ever bothering to open it. I must have left it with her in the 90’s, because I certainly didn’t have it in Iowa, so I couldn’t have left it on my way back in ’07.
It makes no sense that it’s shown up now, after being gone so long, nor that my mother has had it and moved it multiple times without even realizing it. I’m pretty sure it rematerialized itself, if I’m honest. Probably something evolutionarily interesting in it, somewhere.
I don’t really want or need any of it, as interesting and precious as it may have seemed in my 20’s or 30’s; I may go through it and take pictures of the more interesting stuff (there are a few items from MHCC that I might post on Facebook, and tag the relevant people) and then get rid of it. But wow, talk about a blast from the past, as they used to say!
In which there are eggs.
I woke up here in the new year, grabbed my phone, and searched ‘egg & chips.’ (Leftover fries in the fridge, you see.)
Found this recipe from The Irish Times and had all the ingredients on hand! Got up and cooked.
So, here’s eggs & chips with a green sauce and a pot of tea!
That green sauce is super easy and quite good.
The teapot is new-to-me; my aunt Kathy sent it late last year.
Happy New Year!
In which there’s a review! Of a year!
Started the year in a chat pilot program, which meant typing rather than speaking with people, which was so much better. The pilot was a success! It was approved, made permanent, aaaand given to another call center. In India.
So I got moved back to phones. They said it would be months, but it was barely a few weeks and suddenly I was back in the queue after being on chat for a year. The volume was fucking ridiculous, the policies were even more hostile, and everyone was obviously stressed as hell. An upper management-type made a video that said, in essence, thanks if your attendance is perfect, but we’re going to fire the rest of you if you keep calling out. Fuck that. You’re so understaffed you can’t afford to fire anybody. Your attrition in new hire classes is, what, over 80%? I get that you’re stressed, dude, and that you may not be getting your annual CEO bonus or whatever, but suck my dick. My attendance is exemplary, thank you very much, and what sort of moron broadcasts that level of obvious anxiety to the people in the trenches?
Working at a call center that contracts for Comcast fucking sucks: shit hours, shit pay, no bonuses, hostile policies, and (rightfully) enraged customers. Being back on the phones after a year just made it that much more obvious: while working from home is a benefit in itself, that job was awful.
So I got a job in a cheese shop inside a liquor store! Quit the call center with about 32 minutes notice (because seriously, what’s the point of notice in a job like that? It’s not like they want you to train your replacement; they don’t give a fuck about lost knowledge/expertise) and started my new job the following Monday.
It’s so great! I’m so grateful for it! Hours are great, people are great, the work itself is great. My commute is a one-block walk! I get an employee discount! I got a Christmas bonus! The owners are good people! It’s such a welcome change, to have a normal job again; to not work for evil corporate America.
And, as much as I’d like to bitch about it, the physical activity of the new job, the getting up and leaving the building, the talking-to-people and all: it’s very good for me. Very. Sure, I have the organization and self-discipline for a work-from-home job, but apparently I don’t move unless moving is embedded in some other activity, like commuting or working.
Aside: I now own several pairs of support socks! Standing up for hours makes my ankles swell!
This year I realized there’s yet another “two types of people” division: those having crazy-painful-insane relationship woes all the time on the one hand, and really nice, boring, stable couples who never have ANY drama, at all, EVER on the other. Basically two different species, and they don’t really inter-mix. I used to belong to the former group and belonging to the latter is much, much nicer. We don’t look cool, we don’t go cool places, but there’s zero goddamned drama. Whoo!
I turned 50 this year. I think a lot of my misery over the past few years was hormonal hell due to The Change and is finally tapering off; I feel like much less like shit these days, and last week I actually got up and left the apartment on all of my days off! Without, like, doing so being an intellectual choice to force myself not to lie around all day. Nothing major, just to the bakery or coffee shop or whatever, but that sort of energy hasn’t been mine since right before I moved to Minnesota. Past few years if there’s a choice between doing anything at all and just sitting around, I always chose the latter. Now I’ll just pop out like a normal person! It’s great.
Oh, and I’ve become so fat and old and slat-assed and droopy I don’t even notice my bingo wings anymore, so that’s nice! Whoo! I can, somehow, still get down into and back up out of a deep, flat-footed squat, too. Also nice. Benefit of short legs and a lifetime of sitting cross-legged even in office chairs, I suppose.
Didn’t read for shit in 2018 (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon Prime video, Netflix, and Plex got my eyeballs), but here’s what little I did read. There’s another probably ten books I started but haven’t yet finished.
My friends from the left coast called me last night. I MISS THEM SO MUCH. The call was nourishing and hilarious and wonderful. Later, I voice chatted with my brother. Being able to sit at your desk and still be “with” people is neat. Yay, technology!
I don’t do resolutions, really, but if I have any intentions it’s the same as ever: get out as much as possible during spring and fall when the weather’s not totally awful. Read more. Less fucking Twitter. Don’t buy any more damned fountain pens. You know, the usual.
In which there’s bread and soup.
I went to the bakery down the street today and bought bread (a baguette and a rye boule), and then I served some for dinner with a pot of yummy soup!
Saw a meatless pasta e fagioli recipe online that called for lentils, so I threw in some Beluga lentils from the pantry. Other ingredients were olive oil, onion, garlic, celery, carrot, garlic powder, water, vegetable bouillon, a can of cannellini beans, stracciatella pasta from work, tomato, tomato paste, sage, rosemary, and salt and pepper. Also used some leftover store bought vodka sauce from the fridge.
Really hearty and delicious!
In which I cooked a lovely meal.
I have today off!
Slept in, got up, took some saag paneer out of the freezer to defrost.
Made rice and dal fry in the electric pressure cooker. Made carrot raita.
Here’s lunch!
Considered making some naan or papad, too, but didn’t. Four courses is plenty.
Yum!
In which this is a pain in the arse.
I’ve been using Flickr for image hosting since 2006, and have nearly 14k pictures there.
They recently announced they’re moving to a for-pay model, and even though I do like their photo editor, I don’t know that I like it enough to pay fifty bucks a year forever when I could get an image editor for Windows and edit locally before uploading.
I used to pay for Pro with them, but then realized it didn’t provide me anything — I’m not a professional photographer and didn’t need the stuff that their Pro accounts came with. All I ever wanted was hosting and the editor. Which are now fifty bucks a year. Ugh.
Well, I already have free hosting at both Google and Amazon, so even though their image editors barely function, well: they’re free.
So I’ve enabled auto-uploading from my phone for both services, and now need to figure out how to make desired images public and find a plug-in to show them here.
I’ll miss Flickr, though. All the titles and annotations I’ve written over the years, the various vacation and holiday albums, all the links from here to there. Once they start deleting my images next year, hundreds if not thousands of images will break and I doubt I’ll ever care enough to fix them. (Not to mention the various CC images linked elsewhere, all those will break, too.) Sigh.
In which I had the day off and did a bunch of domestic crap!
My beloved got a new job, which he started today. So he got up and went to work early this morning, and my lazy ass slept until 10:30. Whoo!
Then I ordered groceries, made the bed, and tidied up the apartment — got a bunch of crap off the coffee and dining tables finally, so that was a small triumph.
Remembered to water the avocado tree, too. It dries out pretty quickly, now that the heat’s on in the building.
Also made a batch of salsa, because the cilantro was getting a bit old and I didn’t want to waste it:
I boiled half a dozen eggs and deviled them:
And then, I made a pot of potato soup:
I also enjoyed a giant latte, wrapped three Christmas presents, and watched 1.75 bad Christmas movies on Netflix — two of which I abandoned because they sucked!
Tomorrow I might get around to washing the sheets. How great would that be.
In unrelated news, I am publicly announcing that I don’t really like sharp cheddars. I mean, I’d like to, but I don’t. Brought home some Tickler extra mature for my better half and I just don’t really like it. Would much rather eat a mild cheddar, maybe a lovely double gloucester instead.
In which there are fountain pens!
Five fountain pens and five inks.
Pens are:
– Wing Sung 3008 (color: green-tipped demonstrator*)
– PenBBS 266 (color: sherry)
– Moonman Wancai Mini (color: teal swirl demonstrator)
– Hero 1309 (color: orange)
– Moonman M2 (color: demonstrator w/red band)
Inks are:
– Seitz-Kreuznach: Tundra
– J. Herbin: Rouge Opera
– Diamine: Teal
– Noodlers Ink: Apache Sunset
– Diamine: Syrah
Paper is a blank page in the back of my 2018 Hobonichi Weeks annual planner, which is inserted in a spendy-but-worth-it Galen Leather wallet I bought with birthday money from my dad.
* a “demonstrator” is a transparent/clear pen
In which I found this recipe online somewhere and it’s fantastic.
This is the red sauce Taco Bell uses in their bean burritos and on their enchiritos.
Copycat Taco Bell Sauce
1 8-oz can tomato sauce
1/3 cup water
1/4 tsp chili powder
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
Combine and simmer for 15 minutes.
It’s delicious.
In which I got sick as hell.
Sunday I got off work, came home, had some cape cods, Skyped with my friends, and went to bed. Monday I woke up late morning feeling normal, and within a couple-few hours I was sick.
I thought it was influenza. Fever, cough, aches, pains. Exhaustion.
Oh, it was nasty. And it kept getting worse: night sweats. The fever would break, then it’d come back again. Temperature was between 99-102F. Chills, then too hot, then chills. Kept waking up drenched and then freezing immediately.
Also had a number of really esoteric fever dreams, so that was cool.
Friday I made S. take me to urgent care because it was my 4th day in a row to wake with a fever and I felt sick as hell. So he drove me out to Saint Louis Park, the nice place he goes with his insurance, but they don’t take mine. They had a nurse see me real quick to make sure I wasn’t dying and then sent me to my own network.
I wasn’t dying. Temperature was down to normal (my fever had broken just before we’d left), blood oxygen was in the low 90’s, blood pressure excellent. He told me it could be the flu, or maybe bronchitis or pneumonia. So we drove back to Whittier clinic, which is literally four blocks from our apartment, of course, and I went in a made an appointment for 2:30 that afternoon.
Then back home, bed, and back to sleep for a few hours.
Then up, teeth brushed, back for the appointment.
Nurse got me from the lobby and took my vitals. Great blood pressure (everyone who takes my blood pressure tells me it’s “great,” so apparently my fat ass looks like she’d have high blood pressure), five pounds down (hadn’t eaten for shit in days), please wait here for the doctor.
Doc came in, asked me questions, looked in my nose, looked in my mouth, felt my throat/lymph nodes. My tonsils have disappeared sometime in the past few years without my even noticing, which is WEIRD AS HELL (doctor asked if I’d had them out. I said no, and later, at home, when I remembered, I stuck my fingers into my mouth and they’re just gone).
Flu swab came back negative, so diagnosis is acute bronchitis. (“You’re literally wheezing,” she said.) Doc gave me two painkillers (Advil and Tylenol), an Albuterol inhaler, and Tessalon (apparently a cough suppressant). They didn’t do shit. Well, other than the ibuprofen; that did help with pain, but my lungs were still super fucked and I didn’t understand the point of a cough suppressant when all I really wanted was a productive damn cough. Acetaminophen doesn’t do shit for pain, apparently? I’d never taken the two back to back while experiencing pain, but only the ibuprofen worked for me.
The Albuterol appears to be packaged for non-asthma users. I don’t know enough to know if it’s a different product or if it’s just like a regular inhaler, but it offered no relief, which was disappointing as hell. I took the meds for about 24 hours, then just dropped it all because fuck it.
So, more sleep, more aches and pains, more wheezing; more dry, unproductive cough. I ended up calling out for four shifts at work (luckily, they were fantastic and supportive, bless ’em) and was seriously considering another appointment on Monday because shit was not fine.
Oh, and five days of constipation, too, because no nicotine-via-vape, but that was really the least of my issues.
Finally, Sunday night, the cough came. Well, shit started coming up, finally, and that horrible tight, dry feeling began to ease — I’d been coughing the entire time, of course. But finally, after an entire fucking bedridden week, some progress! It was glorious.
The evening before last, I got hives. On my lips. My lips swelled up like fucking crazy, like Botox crazy. I don’t know if it was a drug reaction or just more Aging While Female, but it was weird as hell. I sat on the couch for an hour checking my tongue to make sure it wasn’t going to kill me and then gave up and went to bed. (Most of the swelling was gone in the morning, but it took all day yesterday to go away completely, and then last night I had two more hives, both small: one on my right index finger, and another on my right foot. Then I remembered I’d had one the week before, on my right wrist. So maybe not meds-related.)
Sunday I managed a couple loads of dishes, with lots of resting. Monday I actually cooked a meal for the first time in ages. Now it’s Tuesday evening and I’m feeling much more human; the tree is up, there’s a string of lights around the living room window, and I’ve made the bed. Still wheezing and coughing, but much, much better than Friday.
Long story short, BEING SICK SUCKS!
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4 random books from my Library!
