anagram of brat

I dragged out the breadmaker last night and cranked out three loaves of bread - one for us, two to take with us to NY. And I'm not done - some whole wheat and pumpkin are also planned. There might have been cackling and repeated exclamations of BAKE ALL THE BREADS while I did so.

Drew and I are heading down to NY with esotericscribe tomorrow. Prayer circle for us, lol.

Can't see the forest for the trees. And the glare. Taking pictures of this thing is a right bitch.

Seeing as November ends on Sunday and this weekend is bound to be nuts I'm revising my goal count down a bit - from half done to 45%. I probably could bang out 18 more rows by Sunday, but I'd have time to do nothing else. 10 seems a bit more reasonable, though what will probably happen is I'll land somewhere in the middle. I'd be ok with that. Regardless, its still going MUCH faster than the Tetris one did - I didn't hit 39% on that until February. I mean I started it a couple weeks later in the year than this, but still I'm kinda boggled that I've managed to do in a wee bit under a month what took me twice as long last year. What a difference determination and a few improvements in technique make.

Anyway, time to fill my house with the smell of baking holiday stuff.

Oh New York. Something special erupts out of you during the holidays that actually truly warms the hard to reach subcockles of my jaded little heart. I think it's gazing up into the face of a 30+ story high rise and counting fourteen visible Christmas trees, seven menorahs, sixteen atrociously lit up windows and nine balconies that have more lights and inflatables on them than entire neighborhoods in Massachusetts. Or maybe it's the inexplicably omnipresent tree stands every four blocks or so because some folks are crazy enough to want to haul a heavy ass genuine Douglas Fir up to a seven story walkup. No, really, I know people do it - you can tell by the garbage piles outside of said walkups the week after New Years. Or the people like our neighbors who manage to stuff lights and creepy motorized Santas in every front window, drape lit garlands from the roof and have a giant bright-ass train festooning their porch every year. (The punchline? They're Jewish.)

Seriously New York during Christmas, man. There are reasons why I'm incredibly happy to be actually home this year for it.

Needless to say I've arrived home safely. Actually the last bit of the journey was made nicer by sharing a subway ride with a Smith student I know from the store who happened to be on my bus down and who needed to get to Coney Island so I told her to ride with me since that's my line. Dad has done his requisite fussing, showing off of his new toys (he's finally replaced his giant ass flatscreen), and I in turn have teased him about catching him coming in the house from a date, impeccably dressed to the nines. The cat has not left me alone since I came in The House and is now curled up on the bed with me purring like an idling tractor trailer. I much prefer this to having a portly kitty trying knead my ass with sharp-ass feet. Ow. Stop loving me with pain. Or if you have to, take me out to dinner first! Sheesh. Also can totally hear the ghost of Mom's Bitching Past up in here because Dad got a real tree for the first time in about 20 years. It's gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but all I can hear in my head is "needles in the carpet" this and "fire hazard" that and "what did that mad fool have to get a real tree for anyway" blah blah blah. Rather than be annoying it's actually kinda making me smile. Dad always did love himself a real Christmas tree. Of course he never actually deals with putting it up or decorating it or taking it down, which is probably why. At least he got a reasonable height one and not a sticky seven or eight foot monstrosity like he used to insist on getting. If you have to get on a freaking ladder to put the angel on top, your tree is too damn tall.

I think Dad is happy to have Christmas at home as well. He's been making noise about restarting the treating the women of the family to brunch and perfume at Saks tradition again, which we haven't done since my second year at Smith because Mom got sick right around then. 'Course, I'm not a perfume or makeup person so I usually spent those trips finding about the least visibly feminine thing on the lobby floor as my treat - one year it was a teddy bear (which I still have) the next, bath gel, the next a cute Captain's hat from the menswear department (also which I still have). Not even gonna lie, I'm already scheming how to spin my girly treat into something else from the neighborhood - the American Girl Place is next door across the street (though after having experienced The Smell Of Pink last month with cell23, I'm a little wary of going in there) and the LEGO store is down the block. Jesus H, that's so me. 33, grown ass woman, and what do I want for Christmas instead of perfume? Toys. Le sigh. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever gonna grow up. Maybe I should bite the bullet and actually get makeup though. I am getting some kinda married in the spring and after accompanying various folk shopping for glorified face paint for the occasion I should probably take the opportunity to not have to pay for it. And I do like M.A.C. products. Preferred brand of drag queens. Or so I've heard.

Tomorrow Dad is monopolizing my day, but since we're going downtown to the financial district and then to J&R like we used to when I was a kid, I don't mind. I won't ask him to take me to Burger King though. Even if the same one we used to go to all the time is still there. J&R though, uh oh. Taking me to J&R is like giving a small child four double espressos and turning him or her loose in Toys R Us and/or FAO Schwarz. Seriously between the computer/electronics, movies and music departments (both as in recorded music and as in instruments and accessories) that place is a block of nothing but pure retail Andee-crack. NNNNNNNGGGGG.

*sigh* it's gonna be a busy week.

Because some days I freely admit that most of my brain never matured past the sixth grade:

bottledgoose: as an aside, your ice cream spoon is positively festooned in vulvas
cell23: it's not like i'm making a mask out of... what?
cell23: that's... how?
bottledgoose: FESTOONED.
cell23: i don't have an ice cream spoon.
bottledgoose: in some seriously vaginal flowers
bottledgoose: yeah you do
bottledgoose: its the spoon with the really long handle. For ice cream floats.
cell23: ah
cell23: also called "just another spoon"
bottledgoose: so much for being specific in regards to which spoon is vaginariffic

And to think, that snippet came AFTER the more disturbing part of the conversation involving elves murdering people with candy cane shivs. But seriously, I'm not making this up:





To be fair, The House has an equally "floral" shower curtain in the upstairs bathroom that makes me *snrrrk* all the damn time. I mean, I get the whole flowers=vaginas imagery but sometimes I want to walk up to people that design this stuff and be all like "HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THAT???"

Can I come home yet? lol.

I kid. But I've been in the city for a day and I'm ragged. Mostly because the major house cleanout is in full swing and even though I helped Nuke with it this morning and most of the afternoon, it felt very much like a drop in the bucket. There is just so. Much. Stuff. It's everywhere, tucked into all the closets, back corners and drawers of all the furniture. Clearing out 40+ years of two people's packrattitude nigh unto severe hoarding problems is not an easy thing, y'all.

It's funny how dredging through all this stuff also dredges up associated memories and emotions as well... in a lot of ways, we are only just now getting to the cleanout that probably should have happened right after Mom died six years ago, so in a way, going through all these bins and drawers and closets with the realization that the last person that touched any of this stuff was probably Mom herself was... rough. It's like there's a pocket of mourning that was neglected and after all this time, here it is. At the same time, a lot of stuff was found that made me smile - a random hat I wore all the time when I was 12, boxes upon boxes of dollhouse furniture, a genuine American Girl outfit I wore like twice (back when AG did actual outfits for girls from the historical lines), Roy Jr's baby bib with the airplane on it, a couple crates of LEGOs, several photo albums of the siblings when they were wee and adorable, and in one instance a porcelain figure of a girl on a carousel horse Mom gave me a long ass time ago, carefully packed away in a padded envelope and marked "For Andee" in Mom's extremely loopy handwriting.

All of this also kicked up a cubic fuckton of dust and I've been a walking cough and sneeze since about 12 o'clock.

Dad's cat is, for lack of a better word, obese. I mean, Moonbeam's always been a chubby cat but two months of free feeding hir Meow Mix has rendered this poor cat positively rotund. Gonna see what I can do regarding getting hir some kind of diet indoor kitty food instead that doesn't have as much corn filler, cause wow, fuzzy pillow with legs is bad. Course all cats look so much bigger/fatter now compared to Lily, who is like, dwarfkitty in comparison. Also kind of annoyed that the only place to find Nature's Miracle in NY is at the Petco in Union Square, but there you go.

Oh SPEAKING OF HARD TO FIND THINGS. I was apparently unaware that there was a shortage of o.b. tampons happening until now. I finally ran out my little cotton vag bullets this cycle and I swear I walked into four or five drugstores between 72nd and York and 68th and Lex, and these things were nowhere to be found. I came home with a very O_o opinion of the period habits of the Upper East Side woman until someone let me know that o.b.s have been rare commodities since at least November (which was about when I bought some last). Grr. It always has to be my damn brand that gets interrupted/discontinued. Though I am amused that a tampon black market has sprung up in o.b.'s hopefully temporary absence. Crazy ass world we live in.

I spent the rest of the evening visiting with Dad, who was tranferred back to Mary Manning Walsh a couple weeks ago. He's doing far better than the last few times I've seen him - he's apparently up and running around the building unassisted these days and there are barely detectable pauses in his speech now. He is VERY MUCH rearing to go home. I can't say I blame him.

Wow. I tell ya, though, I am NOT used to New York anymore. After a day of running around and walking everywhere and running up and down subway stairs, I am positively nonfunctional from the thighs down - in fact I'm about to go hunt down some ibuprofen so I can sleep. Ow. The sore. It burns.

And to think, two and a half more days of this. *whine*

In addition to various work related CSS woes and casting a very dubious eye on the OMG ITS GONNA WHITESHIT TOMORROW reports, I have spent much of today emailing two of the Valkyries regarding FINALLY getting some broadband internet of our own at The House. It's one of those things where I'm psyched it's getting done, but sad about the circumstances spurring the action, and somewhat panicking about the implications of it, as, though it hasn't been explicitly said, I know a large portion of why this is being done now is to get me specifically down to the city to look after Dad more than just an errant weekend here and there. Which I'm fine with, honestly, and having internet WILL help me go home and not have to leave in 24 hours because I feel cut off from everything and everybody there. I'm just stressing about the rearrangement to my schedule and plans for the year this will entail, because I highly despise sudden changes like this, even though I know they will ultimately be for the better or had to happen anyway. But yeah, long story short, a lot more time spent in New York is in my immediate future, and I'm honestly unable to get a handle on how I feel about that. Well, if anything, it will make getting my car back on the road a priority, as having to do this sort of thing around Peter Pan's schedule is going to kill my soul.

This is also dredging up some leftover angst from Christmas about the dissonance between what I consider priorities and what The Fam does - 'course they're all pretty heavily old school in their blood being thicker than water mentalities and never really could get their heads around my commitments to other people outside throughout my life - it's one of the major reasons why there is a very clear divide/distance between what goes on in MA and what goes on in NY and why I'm pretty disinclined to let them mix much. The events of 2007-2009 have not helped in that they've quite thoroughly underscored their point that it is worthless considering anyone other than blood "family" as despite what people profess, they always have the option of leaving and "real family" doesn't, and they are on some level quite confused as to why I haven't gotten that message after the Amoeba melted down. Meanwhile I'm over here thinking "why the hell do you think I'm still having fucking issues over it?" This sort of thing wasn't helped by Dad making a tactless comment during Christmas about the amount of time and energy I'm currently spending on "a couple of people that aren't your problem," which is something that continues to fuck with me three weeks later, because that sort of shit hurts on a level I can't shake. I realize his greater point was to focus on getting my own ass together more until it happens, but he has this way of expressing things in the most damaging way possible sometimes.

So yeah, I mean, you guys know about my problems with measures of life success and my own feelings of coming up short no matter which one I use. This is never more true than with dealing with them, so I generally don't unless, to be completely frank, I need something. Unflattering and pretty selfish, but true. So it's kind of little wonder that the prospect of having to "go home" more this year is kinda making me want a nice large bottle of vodka and a 20 piece box of McNuggets.

Was there a declaration made somewhere that this is apparently Family Angst Season? because wtf, seriously, you guys, it's not just me.

Oog ten hours of sleep later and I'm still overstuffed.

Yesterday was good. It started when Nuke called me at 6 am to come let her in so she could get her cook on before running off to the parade with the kids. The parade for me fit standard parameters (Hess commercial, hersheys kiss bells commercial, corny broadway numbers, al roker being al roker, casual insensitivity towards native people, muppets, balloons, snoopy, Santa), and no one disturbed me for the duration of it so no one had to die. I also made it my first experiment in livetweeting, which turned out to be surprisingly tiring. I'm sure my followers found it so, lol.

Food got done around 1, family becan trickling in around 130, and after hanging out and being goofy while setting up (there may or may not have been a half hour before and another one after where various iPods were fired up and the women and kids in the family danced around the dining room table) we did the family prayer and the noting of milestones in the past year. And then holy god we ate, and talked and laughed and roasted the hell out of each other (Smith is NOT a finishing school, people! And I am NOT addicted to the Internet! yes I am). And then there was food coma and football and then Ruthy had this game where we all had to tell stories about ourselves and it of course turned into the usual tongue in cheek political and racial discourse that the family continues every holiday. Overall pretty great.

Spent some time catching up with Roy Jr after I'd fled the downstairs to avoid the cleanup an the onslaught of Nuke and D.J.'s iPods. How is this kid 19 already? And six four? Man, I swear he was an angry 2 year old yesterday. *shakes head* kids man... Physical reminders that time slides by faster than you think.

Plan for today - gonna shower up, put some more laundry in, take a walk around the park, pack up leftovers, and head back north sometime this evening. Trying to figure out how late I gotta leave to beat the Black Friday traffic... We'll see. Hopefully it won't be as bad as the drive down - got held up in Stamford, the Bronx and queens for almost an hour apiece. Anyway wish me luck.

1) The Preciousssss has gone AWOL. And before you go all whatever, no. My license, bank card and credit card are in the case. Not to mention my current Bookworm addiction, and my primary method of jacking into the Metaverse when I'm on the road, so finding it is a pretty high priority right now. I have this paranoid fancy that I left it in a pants pocket and now its currently spinning in the dryer. Never mind that I already checked to make sure it wasn't in there. Washed your iPod? Well, there isn't an app for that...

ETA: found it. It fell under the bed.

2) The work is never done. I'm starting to feel like the damn bird that supposedly sharpens its beak on a glass mountain once every hundred years and the time it takes to wear the entire mountain down from doing this is like the first second of eternity or some shit. I really have to wonder at what point does the bird say "fuck this" and find the nearest jackhammer or a truckload of TNT or something. Course, this is coming from me - you're damn right I skip the whole licking nonsense and just bite my tootsie pops.

3) Various bits of The House are filthy, and considering how long I'm probably going to be away this time, I'd best clean them before I leave.

4) Speaking of the pre-trip laundry, I had to crank at Dad for the umpteenth time to get the dryer serviced because at this rate it's probably costing him more money in electricity to do wash the way it is. seriously, it takes like three runs to get clothes dry. It's gonna be like 3am before it's done.

5) mildly freaking out about things like MA resident guarantors, which I don't have. I don't think I need one, but considering this summer, and indeed just this whole damn year has been pretty much FAIL in the money department, I have no idea.

6) Was supposed to connect with Nuke about the catbus today but it didn't happen due to various busy.

7) Really glad I'm going to the doctor on friday because this swelling I've got in both legs below the knee is fucking ridiculous. And by ridiculous I mean *cry* a) it hurts when my feet swell up to stay-puft marshmallow standards - the skin gets all tight and ow, my knees and ankles hurt when I bend them and it just sucks. But also b) I like my little bony princess feet, they're like two of a very small number of things about my body that I'm actually vain about so seeing them all swollen and icky looking makes me want to cry. Of course what's very likely to happen is that I'll get to MA and start running hither and yon nonstop and my legs'll go back to normal cause that's what always happens. But yeah... ugh. And I swear, it's only gotten worse since the surgery... and now my feet have stretch marks when they go down to normal. Stretch marks, I tell you...

8) just generally being hot and tired and stressed and worried about money and moving and everything that has to be done in the next few weeks and wanting to just lay down and sleep for a week instead of deal with all of this. But... that's what I've been doing all damn summer, and it's probably the reason why I have to deal with this whole heaping mess right now. No worries, it will get dealt with - every day I wake up in NY it's like a little bit of my spirit disappears, I've got too much waiting for me back in MA to stay and the only things keeping me here are my own lazy and fear. So it's all about keeping my head down and making it happen, and remembering that the Evil Season is almost over (seriously, summer can go fuck itself, I can't honestly say I've ever had one that wasn't mostly made of emo, heat and fail) and I've got a very very good feeling about the fall. I just have to get through the next three weeks.

Me: [bored, waiting for pot to boil so she can make pasta]

Tarnished Antique Silver Serving Tray: Pssst! Lookit me! I'm pretty! Or I was. I will be pretty when you polish me. You like to polish the pretty things. Make me pretty!

Me: Hmm, okay. I need something to do while the pasta cooks [commence hunting for silver polish] Aha, There you are!

Silver Polish: Avast! You have found me, you scurvy dog! *

Me: Now I can polish the tray!

Tarnished Antique Silver Serving Tray: Hooray!

Me: [opens the silver polish]

Gigantic Long Dead But Still Magnificent Black Spiky Fuzzy Mold Thing: BOO! **

Me: OH MY GAWD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! [drops silver polish in trash can and flees kitchen]

Gigantic Long Dead But Still Magnificent Black Spiky Fuzzy Mold Thing: [cackles]

Silver Polish: Yarr!

Tarnished Antique Silver Serving Tray: [pout]

Me: [goes upstairs to post to LJ and attempt to calm down]

Pasta Pot: [boils]

FIN.


...OKAY SERIOUSLY? IS THERE A SUBSTANCE THAT WILL NOT SPROUT INTERESTING FUNGI IF LEFT ALONE LONG ENOUGH???? HOLY JESUS CHRIST ON A POTATO CHIP.


* yeah, I don't know why the silver polish can has a pirate accent either. It just does. Deal.

** Acceptable alternate dialogue: "SURPRISE!" or "O HAI!"