Blogosaurus Vex

Good news: the dress was easily remedied.  This is why I am not a seamstress: all I saw was disaster, whereas they saw a simple adjustment of the breast padding and boom, the dress fits and I will look fabulous.  Er, as fabulous as one can look in a bride’s maid dress.  So I will look shiny, I guess, and vaguely uncomfortable.

Bad news: my internal female parts have gone back into revolt, which I assume is some kind of aftershock phenomenon from the IUD.  It’s been a week of feeling sometimes fine alternating with sometimes crampy after the total hell of insertion day, but right now I am back in full on pain.  All I want to do is lie in bed and, since sleep seems a remote possibility, allow my mind to wander.  Maybe watch some bad TV, maybe have a rye.  I would probably offer up my prized collection of Philip K. Dick books for a slow back rub.  But back in real land world, I will be hosting, cleaning, making dinner for guests, and doing girly nailpolish stuff with my neices.  Those are all good things, I just find it hard to enjoy them when I feel like I’m being stabbed in the guts.

So I am feeling rather sorry for myself right now.  Sulking is unbecoming but if you can’t be self absorbed on your own blog, then really, where can you?

Posted in Domesticity, Existential Angst | No Comments »

Remember my washing machine that I hate?  I guess it heard me bitching because it’s punishing me: it won’t spin right and the clothes are left soaking wet at the end of the cycle.  My effort to trick it into spinning and draining have failed and I have been reduced to wringing the clothes out by hand in the tub, which is really hard, and my hands aren’t really strong enough for it.  Nor my wrists.  In fact everything below my elbows is ready to fall off and I haven’t even gotten to the towels yet.

And we have company coming tomorrow and I assume they will want to bathe and when they do, that they will want to dry off after.  So it looks like I have a date with some soaking wet towels later tonight… I may try stomping them instead of wringing.

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I have a lot of shit to get done today.  We are having guests for the next week – Husband’s brother and his daughter, who are in town for a family wedding.  They arrive tomorrow.  My apartment is gross – there is literally a moldy tomato on my kitchen counter and the infamous pink scum is back in the bathroom sink, among other sins of domesticity.  The office, soon to be guest bedroom, still looks like hell but to hell with it – I’m going to shove all the debris into the closet and call it good.

So I am now going to buy some pop to fortify myself for the work ahead and dive into the cleaning….  Seems such a shame after such an awesome weekend!  I really had an amazing weekend and am not ready to be back in real life yet.

Posted in Domesticity, Existential Angst | No Comments »

Drinking rye, watching Big Bang Theory, and reading Freud – there isn’t much that could improve this night!

Posted in Domesticity | 1 Comment »

It is a measure of the narrowness of unemployment that I am about to write a post about my washing machine’s fluff cycle, an intensely annoying and idiotic feature of my front loader that makes me want to rip out my hair.  You have been warned.

My machine is, as I say, a front loader.  So it has a lock feature that prevents you from opening the door when the machine is in operation, presumably to prevent heartbreaking gushes of soapy water all over the foyer floor.  This is fine except that the machine was clearly designed for idiots and so you cannot bypass the lock at any point in the cycle.  Started the machine and realized you left out a single sock?  Sorry, Operator, there may be only 30 millilitres of fluid in the drum but you can’t open the door!  Handy lock feature!

God forbid you realize part way through the cycle that something red is in with the whites because you can’t open the door, at all, at any point, once you have hit “start” and before the machine decides to relinquish the goods after the full completion of all cycles.  Handy lock feature!

Most frustrating: at the end of the wash, after the spin dry, my machine has what I call the fluff cycle.  It takes about five minutes and involves the drum rotating slowly clockwise… and then counterclockwise… and back and forth until the clothes within are all peeled off the sides of the drum, where spinning deposited them, and nicely piled at the bottom for the grand unveiling.  I fucking HATE this cycle. I have never been a fan of superfluous cosmetic additions to appliances and cannot stand having my time wasted by a washing machine that is no longer washing or spinning but rather merely fluffing.

Who the fuck came up with that idea, anyway?

I wouldn’t even mind if I could open the door during this entirely water free process – maybe I am in a hurry and want to get the clothes into the dryer.  Maybe I am just an autonomous adult and don’t want my decisions made by an appliance.  The possibilities are endless.  But no: not an option.  I am left hopping from foot to foot in anguished impatience as the machine leisurely rolls back and forth, tormenting me.

And the final insult: after the fluffing is over, there is about a thirty second wait between cessation of movement and the click of the lock releasing.  Why, I ask you?  Why is this necessary?

Posted in Domesticity, Ranting | 7 Comments »

Holy mother effer.  I just went out to the liquor store because somehow all the rye disappeared (what’s that you say?  The only one in this house who drinks rye is ME?  I am offended that you could even suggest such a thing!) and I thought, well shit, as long as I’m going I might as well stock up on all the stuff we’re low on.  So I bought rye for someone (who is not me), Johnny red because it’s the only scotch I feel safe buying (Husband requested Auchantoshan but there are several “ages” of it and the prices were wildly disparate and I sort of panicked), Alexander Keiths, and Coronas.  When it was all stacked in my rolling cart it weighed approximately five thousand pounds, but no worry!  I will take the skytrain!

This is only a clever idea if you bring your bus pass (I didn’t) and if the elevators are working at the stations (they weren’t, both at Burrard and Granville).  So I had to drag all that liquor, plus their glass holding vessels, home from downtown.  By myself.  In the heat.

All I can say is, I really earned this beer I am drinking.

Posted in Domesticity, Ranting | No Comments »

I hate lending my books out because usually I don’t get them back, but sometimes I really want someone to read something because I just know they’d love it and sometimes I have a hard time saying no.  But I just read someone’s offhand comment on their blog that they don’t lend books because they never get them back and… boom!  A light went on!  I could do that!

So you are all on notice: I’m not lending my books out any more.

I should also add that I never borrow books and in case I suddenly lose my mind and ask to borrow one of yours you should say no because I will destroy your book.  I will read it in the tub and get smudgy, tomato sauce fingerprints on it and I will rip out the rearmost pages for grocery lists.  I will let it warp in the sun and I will sit on it and I will underline the best parts and write crib notes with page citations in the flyleaf.

So there is now a strict no-sharing policy, yes?  We agree?  Good.

Posted in Domesticity | 5 Comments »

I’m having my two cousins and a new cousin in law over for dinner.  This morning I decided on a simple meal which somehow spiralled out of control – I ended up preparing several dishes from scratch and cleaning the entire apartment (minus the office, which despite my best intentions always looks like hell) and doing all the laundry.  As usual having guests turned into a full day of preparation for me.  Now I am tired but I have the following ready to serve tonight:

Spicy garlic and cauliflower soup with flat leaf parsley

Roasted tomato, onion, garlic, and artichoke sauce for pasta

A green salad

Chocolate raspberry mousse.  This started as chocolate mousse with a raspberry coulis topping but somehow when I poured the mousse into dessert cups I poured for four, when there will be five eaters.  I tried redistributing the amounts to a fifth cup but it looked messy, and in the process I tasted it and decided it wasn’t chocolately enough.  I scraped it all back into the blender (coulis included) for more cocoa and another round of blending.  I washed the cups and repoured the redone mousse, this time into five cups, and now I am hoping it sets up properly.  No egg whites, of course, so who knows how it will behave?  It may be loose but it tastes good.

So that’s been my day.  I intended to do a lot of reading but didn’t have any time for it between grocery shopping, bathroom and floor cleaning, laundry, dishes, and cooking.  You know, my experience of being a stay at home wife has taught me that it’s not hyperbole when they say properly caring for a home is a full time job.  It really is – and I don’t even have kids!

But anyway dinner is going to kick ass.

Posted in Cooking, Domesticity, Veganism | No Comments »

Today was worm class and I am now the proud mother of half a pound of red wigglers.  I will set up their bin in a little while and start feeding the little guys my kitchen refuse so they can start making me compost.  But I can’t start on that yet because I am plum worn out.  I had a late night last night and this morning the sick bird escaped my clutches during medicine administration and I spent a harrowing fifteen minutes chasing him around the bathroom.  I think it is safe to say we both hated it, though only one of us nearly died of terror and exertion.  I am telling you, I could hear that bird gasping from across the room.  Which is a tiny room, okay, but the bird is also tiny – he fits easily in my curled palm.  So you should not be able to hear his lungs working.  But I could!  So there is that.

Worm class was fun even though the group work sucked.  (Doesn’t group work always suck?)  The leader of my group was an idiot who couldn’t follow instructions and I, personally, really like to follow instructions.  So we were not destined to become best friends.  It wasn’t even clear that we were destined to leave the class without bloodshed but in the end I kept a lid on it and no one was harmed.  But really… when the teacher tells you to move the straw aside and bury the food scraps at the bottom of the bin in one corner, and your response is to sprinkle the food all over the top of the straw, I think it really is appropriate to mentally sort you into the “idiot” category.  I wish her worms well but don’t have high hopes.

Also, I walked to class  because I like to walk and I am, as you know, constantly fretting about my level of fatness.  But when burdened with a 53L worm bin plus acccessories, it was not practical to walk home.  And now I will indulge in a favourite Vancouver activity: bitching about the busses.  It took me about 70 minutes to walk to class – and 90 to bus home.  That just shouldn’t happen.  I also shouldn’t have to stand next to the chatty bigmouth at the bus stop but life is not fair.  I now know more about the Translink dispute resolution system than I ever thought I would (did you know priority is for seniors and wheelchairs, and women with baby strollers can be asked to get off the bus if their stroller is preventing one of the former categories from boarding the bus?  It’s true, the bigmouth said so!).

So now I am working myself up the energy to walk from here (the dining room) to there (the bathroom) where I will lie in the tub and read my book and fantasize about how nice it would be if someone else made dinner tonight.  Considering I am unemployed and Husband is working something like 90 hours this week my odds are not good, but as my beloved grandmother used to say, it’s healthy to want.

Posted in Domesticity, Garden, Personal | No Comments »

Tonight my most fashionable friend came over and helped me vet my wardrobe.  I culled about a cubic metre of ill-fitting or unflattering or stupid clothes from my herd (stupid characterizing, for example, the shirt that made a plasticky “zip” noise when rubbed against itself or the dress with ribbons coming off the nipple area), and now have a huge pile of stuff to donate.  I also succeeded in persuading Husband to get rid of the ugliest shirt he owns, a personal favourite of his, which is (to its credit) impervious to wrinkles… and to looking good.

I also decided to get rid of a bunch of old underpants, making room for new pairs that are not all wrecked by uncountable trips through the washer and dryer.  You know, can I say here, that the only thing better than new underpants is virgin socks?  My god, don’t you love the feeling of putting on a brand new pair of never before worn socks?  Magic!

But I digress – here is my question: Is it okay to donate your old, used underwear (and bras) to good will?  I figure poor people need underwear too but there is something about used underwear that is just… well.  Let’s just say I would have to be well and truly without options before I would buy used underwear.  But the world has people without options!  Also, I think I would feel sort of embarrassed to drop off my old underwear for some Salvation Army volunteer to sort.  That’s not a good reason to fail to donate but still, it is a concern for me.  So what would you do?

I also would not buy used shoes.  But, I can be a little anal so maybe other people do not have this problem?  I have bought used clothes many times and just ran them through the washer before wearing but somehow my undies seems different.  Please to advise.

Posted in Domesticity | 8 Comments »