anagram of brat

My lord, what a week. I need to make a bigger catchup post at some point and I promised to elaborate on why the red and white = signs all over facebook and twitter a few days back made me hulk out with rage instead of being all happy YAY SOLIDARITY WHEE like it supposedly should have, but things have been kinda accelerating in the fucked up department all week and so... behind on posting. But I will say the following:

• A happy and blessed Easter, Passover, full moon, Spring, whatever y'all observe.
  
  
• I passed the halfway mark on the Tetris dance on Friday. Pictures and more elaborate yay bead post to follow.
  
  
• Hospitals remain dull and nervewracking places. (I'm fine, I was visiting.)
  
  
• Love and squee is amidst life suddenly going chaotic, your mother-in-law makes sure to tell you that the Easter bunny brought you a carrot cake. Damn.
  
  
• In TV news...
  
  • Doctor Who was pleasantly devoid of suck. Oh sure, it had to Moffat a little here and there, but thankfully it was merely an eye-rolling amount of Moffatting, not a "FUCK THIS SHOW" amount.
    
  • GAMMATRONS TONIGHT NNNNNNNNNNGGGGFFFFFFF WINTER IS HERE. No seriously, it is. New England is in some strong denial about the officialness of Spring. But still, ridiculously excited for the new season.
    
  • Almost caught completely up with Lost Girl and it still fills me with delightfully frothy silly squee even if it stretches my suspension of disbelief to snapping point.
  
  
• The plastics are down and there are cats in our windowsills again. Also cell23 has been walking Ash. Yes, he's been walking the cat. Think about this. Ash's transition into a small overly fluffy dog continues.
  
  
• head58 has lent me the complete scores for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Awyiss, I have something new to amuse me during data entry. I've been meaning to musically go through the original Star Wars trilogy (and maybe the score to The Phantom Menace, one of the few redeeming qualities of that film) because the scores are practically beasts unto themselves, and I am always kind of blown away by John Williams' work, his fetishistic worship for French horn and low brass aside. Plus I need to amass things to listen to at work when my entire music collection bores me to tears. May take up an audiobook habit. (Taking recommendations for that, btw.)

That's honestly about all I've got in the life of Andee. At least the public/nonpolitical post bits.

Oh man, I hate visitng Dad when the interballs is broken. Hence the no posting - while I had Squeee with me, there isn't any point in using him with no connectivity and it's annoying enough keeping up with FB and Twitter on Dad's iThings. I hate borrowing other people's computer type devices.

But yeah, it was a Thanksgiving weekend. Had it's ups, had its downs, had its surprises and moments of pure rage.

Thursday:

• Rode down with esotericscribe early in the morning, and took the train down from his neighborhood in Queens to The House (had about $25 worth of metrocards with me that had been sitting on my desk all year - glad I remembered them!). Dad didn't bother saying hello upon my arrival, but began fussing at me for breakfast and wedding pictures. Sigh. I made him breakfast after scolding him for being chauvinistic and lazy. I also managed to catch the last half hour of the parade so I didn't have to go into full on twitch mode, but I may well torrent it tonight and watch the whole thing tomorrow morning. Traditions must be kept however they can.
  
  
• Dinner with the family was small (half of us were missing) and by contrast quiet and civilized. It was good though. And the FOOD. Dad's housekeeper did 90% of the cooking for us, and wow. That woman can seriously make some collard greens. And turkey. And Ham. And them heathens ate an entire loaf of the pumpkin bread BEFORE we said grace.
  
  
• We set the table really pretty too:
  

Friday:

• Spent an hour on the phone with Verizon about the internet. Hopefully they send a new router this week, because that situation in there is untenable. To me anyway. Dad has cellular service on his iPad and an iPhone so honey badger don't have to care. Bah.
  
  
• Ruthy and I had to run some financy type errands for Dad in downtown Brooklyn. In the process I got to briefly reacquant myself with Mom's actual jewelry collection (I have a fair amount of her vintage costume jewelry). Damn Mom. That lady loved herself some jewelry. Ruthy offered to let me pick out one or two things, but honestly, I have no place to really wear any of that stuff, though if I had to pick she did have some rather gorgeous Iranian filigree pieces. Or her charm bracelet - I have pretty strong memories of playing with that as a small child.
  
  
• Ruthy also hooked me up with this holiday deliciousness:
  
  Sweet delicious pepparkakor nom nom nom.
  
  
• After dealing with that pain in the ass, we went to BAM to see Lincoln. I did enjoy the movie, but I have Opinions about it. They may have to wait until a long overdue Media Consumption Post.
  
  
• In the spirit of AAAAGH QUIT BORROWING MY PHONE Dad straight up offered to frog march me to AT&T to buy me an iPhone5. After being utterly floored by this offer, I asked him to delay it until January when I have a regular paycheck and can support a data plan. So that's gonna be my Christmas present, which means soon The Precious can finally go quietly into her retirement. I may wipe and jailbreak it and give it to Kidzilla as a music/game player. Also, I CAN GET ME ONE OF THESE SEXY SEXY CASES. Because my wallet is my ipod case and that very badly needs to be retired as well.
  
  
• Went to sleep aggressively snuggled by Dad's cat.
  

Saturday:

• Got up early, went to the store, and got eggs and potatoes for Dad's breakfast. There was one spoiled West Indian afterward.
  
  
• Was considering going up to AMNH to visit Alejandra's spider exhibit, but couldn't get a hold of either her nor her mother in time, so instead I went up to the Garment District.
  
  So glad Tohoshoji is still there!Amanda (who got me into beading) and I used to go up here and get bulk bead stuff all the time. They still have decent prices too - not as much markup for a 20g box of delicas either. So now I have all five of my main colors plus a few others in good supply for now.
  
  
• Watched Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) on Spike. It had been long enough since I'd seen it that watching it again was actually fun. Kinda striking how different Mark Hamill looked between Star Wars and Empire, but car accidents'll jack your face up, alas.
  
  
• More kitty sleeps. She snores. And kicks.

Sunday:

• I'm usually tired of being back home after two days, let alone three, so you can imagine I was rearing to get back to MA. Except that didn't happen - I showed up at Port Authority two hours before my bus was to leave expecting some holiday craziness, but not the magnitude of crazy that greeted me there yesterday wherein no tickets were being sold or printed "until further notice" police were trying to control fourteen lines of very annoyed people and apparently none of the buses were leaving on time. I later found out that all carriers had massively oversold almost all of the departures out of new york. I waited for about four or five hours, gave up and went back to brooklyn in a state of massively thwarted anxiety. Note to self - always buy my tickets ahead of time from now on. Seriously I've travelled through Port Authority for many a Thanksgiving weekend for almost 20 years now, I had never seen or experienced anything like the zoo that was yesterday.
  
  
• Least dad and the cat were glad to have me around for an extra evening.
  
  
• Did laundry and watched horrifyingly bad TV while doing so, including three minutes of Liz and Dick than made me run screaming like I'd seen a moldy sandwich.

Monday:

• Took NO chances and bought a Megabus ticket this morning. Mostly becuase they only require a confirmation number to board and you can wave an iDevice at them with it showing on the screen even. Wasn't risking having to buy OR print a ticket at Port Authority. Fuck all that noise.
  
  
• Spoiled Dad with breakfast. Again.
  
  
• Rather more successful in making it home this time, and while Manbeast was quite effusively glad to see me, the cats are still being hard to get little fiends. They'll forgive me eventually. I was, after all, cavorting with GASP another cat all weekend without their permission.
  
  
• Left my iPad charger in Brooklyn. Dang it.

In beading news:
No internet in the house == I BEAD LIKE A FIEND. It's also an excellent thing to do while waiting in line for a bus ticket line that's never going to move, but hey.



It's starting to actually look like something now. And you can almost read the badge on the right.

Still got a loooooong ass way to go though. And there was a copious amount of swearing this morning when I dropped a container of beads on the dining room floor this morning. Le sigh.



And that's my weekend.

Finally got enough tomatoes and the time/wherewithall/rest of ingredients to try out this tomato basil bisque recipe.

Before putting it the blender:


After blending it and adding cream and cheese:


Verdict: is pretty damn yummy, I won't lie.

One kinda funny note - I'd forgotten to gather the basil out of the back pots before it got dark* so I had to tromp outside to get some in the rain. Since the back yard is dark as fuck and our back outside light has never worked, I opted to clip some of the basil in the boxes outside of our front window as those plants were marginally easier to see.** Ya know, thank fuck for Squire Village, complex of weirdoes. Anywhere else, I'm pretty sure a black woman skulking around in the dark in front of someone's living room window brandishing sharp things would be grounds for a suspicious 911 call. But no, the only suspicious witness to my 9pm basil clipping was Ash, who kept meowing crabbily at me because I am SO MEAN and won't let him OUTSIDE and he thinks this is TERRIBLE and CAT ABUSE and such, never mind that he's already proven he's too dumb to remember which door is his own the one time he escaped for an extended period of time. Cats, y'all. smdh.

But I digress. Soup is a success, most of it is now either freezing or just chilling in the big white box of cold downstairs. Between cell23 making colcannon earlier and me finding cherry slurpees at Sevs, not to mention yummy soup stuff, it's very much a comfort food night up in House Browne-Tatro.***


* this was a late night food experiment - we'd had dinner earlier.

** The cats love this, by the way - the plants have grown tall and bushy enough to allow them to observe the complex in stealth mode. When we come home cell23 and I often jokingly ask each other if the basil has eyes. Very often it does - and ears.

*** possibly also a fart like a muthafuckin' BOSS night. Cabbage'll do that.

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Dogs by default make me very nervous unless i know them already, and then i tend to find the constant attention seeking and drooling more irritating than endearing. Cats have a different style of personal space invasion that i'm more comfortable with. And they don't drool.

Kids are both asleep, and cell23 is across the yard socializing with people over 6 while I hold down the fort. The kiddos were both pretty exhausted after a very busy day visiting their grandparents and attending Athol's River Rat Race festivities (I'd comment on the wacky weirdness of small town annual traditions, but New York has its own annual wackiness like the Village Halloween parade and the No Pants Ride so I will wisely shut up) plus both of them are still getting over yet another "developing immune system ahoy!" bug, so they are so profoundly out cold it's not even funny. Kidzilla didn't even make it to dinner, much less Saturday movie, she came in from the car when we came home and has basically been asleep since. Which means she'll either be bouncing off the walls at 2am or hopefully she'll be able to sleep off the remains of the ick and the mysterious leg cramps she's been having since last night. Six year olds are too young for blood clots right? :/

Late this afternoon as I was recovering from a severe spoon crash from the events of the afternoon, I determined that three year old boys are much like cats: most of the time they're self-centered jerks that want you to do what they want you to do and act weird after they poop. And sometimes, when you feel kinda super crappy, they'll come up, curl up next to you and do something quiet and soothing, like purr/play iPod games with the volume down while you read, and occasionally make sure you're okay by either asking if you feel better or by curiously sniffing your nose and then headbutting you. (Not that I would put the latter expression of concern past Lovebug.) But yeah, it was a lovely calming way to spend the hour between coming home and dinnertime, and I rather deeply appreciated it, especially as there were a few minutes when cell23 and later the cat briefly joined the snugglefest.

Off to check on snoring chilluns, then continue my spoon regen with pjs, a book, and a warm cozy bed.

Had an interesting twist on the old dream where you show up to a final exam to a class you never went to, in that I was preparing for a trip overseas that was happening in a few days and only just realized I never got my passport. The part where it got weird is as I tearing about The House frantic about this my mother (who often shows up in these dreams alive and well) calmly told me to stop freaking out and go look in the freezer with the rest of the Important Papers. Right, okay. Not sure what all my subconscious was trying to impart to me there, but felt it was just off the wall weird enough to note for posterity.

I've never had a passport, incidentally. I should fix this. I'd like to GTFO of the US for a while someday. Still unsure as to where I'd go, but it'd be nice to go somewhere.


I have solved the mystery of why I fell out of the habit of getting up at the ass crack of dawn, seeing as I have started doing it again. Hungry cats. Lily has figured out that the quickest way to wake up her humans is to kick my glasses off my nightstand, the sound of them falling to the floor instantly rouses me. Dick. Also the soporific effects of warm glomphy bedtime companion do nothing for my early rising abilities, especially as he routinely fails to get out of bed until fifteen minutes before he has to be at work. But yeah, apparently kitty needing foodins is a far more effective alarm clock than anything else I've tried. We'll go with that.

I started watching Community with the boy last night finally. Two eps in and it is cute, snarky fun, not to mention another opportunity to ogle Joel McHale. I can't get over how old Chevy Chase is. My mental picture of him is from Christmas Vacation, what the hell happened? Oh, yeah, 20 years, right. I'm still a little O_o about that, honestly, that it's been almost two decades since a whole lot of random pop culture and music I remember loving/watching/listening to. And then I remember I was a kid 20 years ago. And then the whole "20 years ago" thing hits me and my brain just kinda melts a little around the edges. I'm not sure how/when I got old enough to say "20 years ago" and have that refer to an actual period of sentience in my life. What. Just bring me the Geritol and Dentugrip now.


Today is Stan's birthday. Also today is when Dad gets out of rehab and goes home with Ruth thereby to terrorize her for a couple months while we all finish tending to The House. Looks like phone calls will make up a significant portion of my day.

I've been all thinky this week. Some good. A lot bad, honestly. Mostly neutral. And deeply thankful for the handful of things in my life that are going very very right and keep me going through the rest of it. One of which is STILL ignoring his alarm clock and snoring behind me, lol. I should go kiss him before he lumbers out of bed.

Um, cat? that's my desk.



Seriously, she jumped into my lap for pettins, climbed from my lap to the desk, flopped over and went LOVE MEEEEEEEEEEE.

IDEK.

Also I'm never as aware that there's always a collection of random ass shit on my desk until I take a picture. And this is with it relatively clean.

Anyway, time for kitty and I to go to bed. 'Night, LJ.

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Best:
I'm very good in a crisis. Generally shit hits the fan and my brain goes into overdrive, my wibbly jello core hardens into cold determined steel, and usually I can have whatever problem has come up solved or handled if not immediately, within a few minutes. It feels a bit like hitting a star in Super Mario - I briefly become impervious to all things that would squick, rattle, unnerve or otherwise freak me out. It usually comes at a very high cost though - generally after crisis is managed I have to go away and recharge my spoons for a while.

Also, I am easily amused. Yeah, when people tell me that it's usually pejorative, but it's true. I can literally find some way to entertain myself or have fun/interest in just about any situation. This makes me really good to have adventures/watch obscure series/anime with or get me to read a book.

Worst:
I have no focus or really much ambition/drive to do anything with myself. This is frustrating. I'm also kinda lazy and tend to procrastinate on everything. A lot. I also hold terrible, hate and vitriol filled grudges.

Would my friends agree?
Yeah probably.



LAST CHANCE TO LOVE ME!

I'm mostly just posting to kill time until midnight, when I plan to go hunting for this year's Valentine eggs. Yes I'm a dork and obsessed. Bite me.

Today was kinda rough for a few reasons, but mostly because Little Beast was having another day of not feeling well. This manifested in the second worst tantrum I'd ever seen him throw. Half an hour of piercing "SOMEONE IS CLEARLY MURDERING ME CALL THE AMPERLAMPS" level screaming all sparked off because he did not want his clothes changed, and then when we got to the Chiasson's today, he was wobbly and listless and cranky and fevery and then right before he left (thank heavens we hadn't made it to the car yet) his breakfast and lunch made a violent reappearance, so we ended up staying there to wash his clothes and coat up. Oyyy. Poor little guy. He spent a good portion of today curled up in a sleepy daze on various laps. I hope his tummy feels better soon.

KITTY! cell23 and I returned with trepidation after leaving Lily in the house alone all day, but apparently she'd just spent a quiet afternoon sleeping under various beds. We've been playing with her all evening to make up with that, she is ridiculous when after toy mice or anything with tails. Plus the usual lulz of cat unable to brake on linoleum floor. She is currently curled up asleep near cell23's feet... who, in the rare instance of him collapsing into bed before me, is also pretty much passed out. My bedroom is full of cute right now. AND WE HAS A KITTY. EEEEEEEEEE. Not going to lie, she seems to have settled on cell23 as her designated hoo-mon and mostly only shows an interest in me when she wants to play or shove her entire face in my dinner bowl (yes she did that) but I'm rather well used to that, and she seems more than willing to play when I offer, so it's cool... and it's nice having a cat around again. I didn't realize exactly how much I missed living with the bitsy assholes. :)

Gotta get my Valentine dragon-snagging on in a few. 'Night LJ.

ETA: Mission accomplished! Love my dragons?



And Kidzillas, too:

This is "Lily." It's in quotes cause we've only 95% decided on her name. Mostly cause Lovebug still wants to call her Molly. (She was Sadie at the shelter.)

So far she seems super chill - settled down in the carrier for the car ride home like it wasn't no big thing. And after the initial OMGHIDEUNDERBED (which only lasted about 20min) she's been exploring and begging for pettings from all of us. Yes, including the kids. She's been pretty chill with them. Also she jumped in my lap and put her paws on my keyboard as I was trying to tweet about her arrival, so... :) I think we found a good match.

Pretty much what instantly sold me on her was that I walked into the colony room at Dakin and I put out my hand for her to sniff and she sat up on her hind legs and headbutted my hand to get lovings. I was pretty much done, I love cats that do that. So far the only problems we forsee happening is that she's a very athletic jumper (her sheet said "counter surfer") and has apparently a bottomless stomach and an affinity for people food. Oh also, she sheds. We'll have to find a kitty brush soon. Meanwhile I need to mainline loratadine until I get used to her.



cell23 is on cloud >9000 and the kids are happy, even if Lovebug spent the majority of the shelter trip tantruming about how he wanted to go to the library instead. Orz.

Oh local peeps, there's a segment on Dakin airing on abc40 tonight at 6. You _might_ see Kidzilla getting a butterfly painted on her face. :)

This probably makes me a horrible person but a frustrated declaration of "THIS REALLY SUCKS!!" is fucking adorable in a three year old lisp.

He had legitimate reason to be upset; both kids are on the tail end of a nasty stomach bug and Little Beast made this statement right after puking up his breakfast. Poor kiddo. Puking really does suck.

In other news, we're off to Dakin with them. WE'RE GETTING A KITTY. More on that later.