Based on a Facebook post...regional food names and a childhood memory

I have decided not to post about the trip to/from NC or the goings on at the funeral. I am once again making a concerted effort to cut some of the negativity in my life.

I will say that I decided it was time I grew up and paid for my own hotel room for the weekend. And it was nice to see my nephew/little brother who flew in from CA for the funeral- it's been nearly 20 years since we'd seen each other. Also, I ate FAR too much junk, but enjoyed every bite.


So, one of the things I did was post pics of some of the meals from my favorite hometown restaurants to a foodie group I belong to on FB. Another member of the group posted pics of her haul from a farmer's market she'd been to and then asked for a meal idea using the ground meat she bought in a moment of optimism. Another member suggested cabbage rolls, and gave a recipe for them. I got the giggles when I read it. For some reason, I've always thought of cabbage rolls as a bread product when I've seen written references to them.

Turns out that what they call cabbage rolls are what my family calls Pigs in a Blanket. Meatballs, usually studded with rice, rolled in cabbage leaves, and cooked in a tomato based sauce. We also call it Stuffed Cabbage. This confused the heck out of my cousin Melissa when she married into our family. I had to laugh because my one & only Girl Scout camping trip lead to the same confusion for slightly different reasons.

I am not an outdoorsy person. Never have been. I went on the trip because they promised we'd be sleeping in cabins, not tents. They failed to mention the lack of electricity, running water, and that we'd be using outhouses. Or that it was mosquito season. It was a horrible drive up- the leaders couldn't get the vans we were supposed to go in, so we wound up being crammed into 4 cars (25 kids with gear plus chaperones) and we got caught in traffic due to a festival in one town. We were all hot and cranky when we got there, not to mention desperate for bathrooms, and it degenerated from there.

The counselor was trying to cheer up 25 disgruntled little girls (we were Brownies) and promised us Pigs In The Blanket for dinner with a special surprise for dessert. "OH BOY!" I thought. I loved my mom's version, so I was expecting something really good. Imagine my surprise at dinner when I was handed a limp hot dog and an even limper piece of crescent roll dough and told to wrap my piggie in its blanket. I burst into tears and so did 3 other girls who didn't like hot dogs. We all refused to eat the things. The counselors had a hurriedly whispered conference and decided to see how we fared with dessert.

Dessert was great! MY first encounter with S'mores and I loved them. NOBODY cried or refused those!

The rest of the night was pretty rough. Some idiot told us ghost stories, so nobody could sleep. No one wanted to use the outhouses at night. (or during the day for that matter) We all itched from mosquito bites, a couple had found the poison ivy. Most of us were starving, and I just hoped we'd have something good for breakfast.

Nope. They planned cheese filled scrambled eggs for breakfast. At that age, I ate neither one. (still won't eat eggs) My mother HAD warned them that I couldn't wouldn't eat that and even offered to provide an alternate for me herself. The leaders foolishly assured her it wouldn't be necessary. Boy were they wrong. One of the other girls who wouldn't eat the dinner the night before and I both flat out refused to touch eggs. They hadn't brought anything else. Finally, one of them remembered that there were some graham crackers left over from the S'mores, so that's what we had for breakfast. Then everybody got crammed back into the cars for the drive home.

So there you have the story of one of my childhood traumas. LOL. Mom is STILL mad at those troop leaders, 30+ years on. I still hate outhouses. But we both like S'mores!

October and the Lack of Monthly Goals.

So last month's goals, as listed here should have been easy-peasy.

Short version of long story- they mostly didn't get done. Dad had several massive setbacks and I just plain couldn't cope with much of anything. The Shady-cuddling is about the only thing that I managed.

I'm not setting any goals for October. It's just not working right now. Actually, I take that back- my sole goal is to make it through October without checking myself into the local psych ward.

Happy Labor Day & New Monthly Goals

So last month's goals were set relatively low in the hopes of actually getting them accomplished. They're here if you need a reminder of what they were.

*hangs head in shame*

I only managed to get one thing done. We went to the tea parlor on my birthday. The rest of it? Zip, zilch, nada. I got some trash taken out and made piles of junk in the living room, but didn't actually get any cleaning done...or the DVD's watched. How bad do you have to suck to not manage to watch a freaking DVD?!?

I'm blaming the stress of dealing with family and Daddy's surgery. And getting sick again.

So this month's goals- hah hah hah- are:

1. Watch Thor:Dark World, Only Lovers Left Alive, and the Nut Job if it kills me. (You'd think a Hiddleston binge would be a no-brainer, but this is me we're talking about here)

2. Get 3 baskets of laundry put away.

3. Work on the Halloween & Christmas cross-stitch ornaments for the exchanges I've signed up for. (in a moment of lunacy blind optimism)

4. Cuddle Nightshade every chance I get. (I miss my cuddlebug Malkin)

5. Cook a real meal at least once a week.


Let's see if I can't manage to get something right!

Monthly Goals- Utter Failure

So here were the July-recycled-from June goals


1. Move back into the main bedroom

2. still trying to excavate Laundry Mountain

3. clean out current bedroom

4. create order out of the 5 boxes & innumerable bags of stitch stash

5. take another box of books to Half Price Books

6. Finish the birthday card I started stitching for Uncle John LAST year so I can give it to him THIS year.

7. take 3 bags of culled wardrobe items to Goodwill



I didn't get a single damned one of them done.



Attempting a new list for August:

1. Watch Thor:Dark World

2. Get main bedroom vacuumed

3. Tidy living room

4. Watch Season one of Grimm

5. Go here: on/near my birthday

File Under Things I Will Never Try Again

1. Mikesells Smoked Bacon flavored potato chips
They smell like bacon. They vaguely taste like bacon & fake mesquite. Then the salt from the first 5 you eat hits and you drink a gallon of water in 15 seconds.


2. Angry Orchard Hard Apple Cider
I'm not much of a drinker anyway, especially now with my assorted cocktail of medications. But I do like soft cider and have had one or two hard ciders that I thought were tasty. This was not one of them. Now I have 4 bottles left in my fridge and no clue what to do with them. The 6 pack was too expensive to just pour them down the drain. I may try adding some to homemade applesauce or something.


3. Knitting
I suck so badly at it that even one of the hand loom things can't help me.


4. Dating anyone more than 5 years younger than me. Unless it's Tom Hiddleston.
Nothing kills a mood faster than hearing a song you loved in high school on the radio and hearing your date say "I think I was 3 when that came out." (Not a recent experience, but I'm still traumatized by it)


5. Streaking
My ex-college roommate/partner in crime & I streaked around the bell tower at UNC our freshman year. Only the friends we were with saw us, thankfully, and it was an unique experience, but NOT one I will ever repeat. Especially with my 40-something body. Things jiggle a bit more.


6. Almond Oolong Tea
Got to pick a free sample with my last Teavana order. I like almonds, so I thought maybe it would be good. It wasn't. I'm guess I'm just not a flavored tea person.

The Date That Wasn't

So, in a moment of insanity, I decided to give internet dating one final shot. I signed up on a different site than any of the ones I'd tried before, sorted through several likely looking candidates, emailed back and forth with a few of them, and finally agreed to meet one at the Barnes & Ignoble cafe on Saturday. Now, as per my earlier attempts at e-dating, I did not put a picture on my profile. I was VERY honest in my description of myself when he asked what I looked like because that's what I do. He apparently thought I was kidding or exaggerating, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Saturday rolled around and I made myself get up and get ready for this date. I didn't have really high expectations for it, but I thought it would be nice to get out and it might give me a confidence boost to try another one. That didn't happen.

I sat there in that damned cafe for 40 minutes before he showed up. He took one look at me and walked back out, not realizing that I'd seen him. I have to admit, I was a bit taken aback by that. I waited a minute or two, hoping that maybe he'd just gone back to his car to get his cell phone or something. Uh-uh. He'd left. I got a lame email excuse from him a little later that evening, which I took great glee in savagely responding to. Then I deactivated my account on that site and officially declared myself through with online dating. For real, this time.


The evening wasn't a total loss. I got myself a take-out dinner from a nice restaurant (I wasn't feeling cheery enough to sit in the place eating alone surrounded by couples on date night) and spent the rest of the night watching Tom Hiddleston movies at home.

Monthly Goals- sigh

These were the June goals:

1. Move back into the main bedroom

2. still trying to excavate Laundry Mountain

3. totally clean out my poor car

4. clean out current bedroom

5. create order out of the 5 boxes & innumerable bags of stitch stash

6. take another box of books to Half Price Books

7. Finish the birthday card I started stitching for Uncle John LAST year so I can give it to him THIS year.

8. take 3 bags of culled wardrobe items to Goodwill

9. create a packing list for the July family reunion trip (summer in the swamp...joy...)

10. get the window unit a/c re-installed in the living room.


What did I manage to accomplish? Next to nothing. I did numbers 3, 9, and 10.

So, the July goals are to work on the 7 items I didn't get done in June. And to start job hunting again.

February Goals, Update 2

Well, the month is almost over. I didn't do as well on my goals as I'd hoped to. I DID succeed in taking out the trash at least once a week. I washed some of the laundry, but didn't get anything folded or put away. Came nowhere close to getting Mom's present stitched (maybe by Mother's Day?) or cooking at home as often as I wanted to. We won't even discuss cleaning house.

So, March Goals:

1. 1 positive post of some sort on FaceBook everyday. (I can't get on the blog every day or i'd do it here, and it seems like cheating to schedule 31 posts in advance)

2. keep up with getting the trash out at least once a week.

3. the whole cooking thing (I did put a soup in the crockpot for tonight, so maybe it's the turning of a new leaf. And if it's good, I'll post the recipe for it here tomorrow))

4. Start AND finish at least one small cross stitch piece.

5. Tackle Laundry Mountain in earnest. I'm tired of hunting for socks & underwear.

6. Start cleaning. Seriously. I have just under two months before Chad & Mel get here. Yes, my house is THAT bad. I blame my CFS mostly, but have to start sucking it up and getting my flabby butt in gear.

7. try to blog a bit more.

Let's see how well I do this time!

Odds and Ends

Late post. At least there IS one this Monday...

Anyway, I seem to have hit a patch of writer's block, so here are some random reflections from my weekend:

1. Had lunch with my parents at Carabba's on Saturday. My father ordered a weird seafood canneloni dish that he didn't like instead of the shrimp fettucine we all knew he would, just to prove a point. No idea what that point was, but there you go. Mom had chicken fettucine and I had the steak marsala with garlic mashed potatoes and it was awesome. However, the best thing we ate was the caramelized onion and bacon flatbread! That's going on the list of favorites.

2. Went to Trader Joe's and, as usual, the parking lot and store were both a zoo. I grabbed the few things I needed for the mexican meal Mom & I planned for Sunday and tried to get out of dodge before I lost my mind. Got to the registers and they all had long lines. Several family groups were there, including one idiot woman who clearly believes in the free-range children version of parenting. Her children were doing some whirling dervish spinning/dancing, throwing things at each other, and being genrall obnoxious while she smiled beatifically at them. The cashier said something to her in a low tone and she said "They're free spirits!" Fine, ask them to be free spirits over there (pointed at the door) becasue they're in everyone's way over here. She huffily called them back to her side. About the time I made it through my line and tried to get to the door, the older child had once again left mom's side and was spinning in the middle of the exit aisle. I stopped and the brat crashed into me. Before I could do/say anything, Mom snarls at me. "You need to watch out for my child!" I favored her with my best evil, someone's-about-to-die smile and the cashier hissed, "No, your child needs to watch out for her!" The child was yanked back to her side in a hurry.

3. I attempted to leave the Trader Joe's lot and get to Whole Foods. 35 minutes later, I'd made it 20 feet. So what do I do next? I didn't stop at WF, I did something even more idiotic- went to Walmart on a Saturday afternoon. The geniuses at the Walmart by my house had filled that main aisles with displays that barely left room for one person with a cart to get by in either direction. they also decided that 5 p.m. Saturday was a perfect time to drag pallets out of the storerooms and leave them in random aisles so people couldn't duck down them instead of trailing along behind groups blocking the main aisles. Naturally, I got stuck behind Shamu's sister who was waddling along in 5 inch heels (yeah, those help with the mobility problems that go with obesity), leaning on her cart while munching on a bucket of (unpaid for) fried chicken from the deli and hollering for "Junior" to go get her some Doritos and Cheez Whiz (not making this up) while yacking on her cell phone. There were 10 people backed up behind me when I finally snapped and started screaming. One man whispered "Follow that lady!" to his wife. "We might actually get out of here sometime today."

4. Sunday stupidity was self-inflicted. I decided it was time to color my hair again. Have actually been meaning to do it for weeks, but decided yesterday was the day. Warm Reddish Brown is the color I was supposed to get. Warm Reddish Brown, my big fat ass. My hair is the color of burnt plum sauce. Or, as my mother said, "well....it's kind of purpley in the right light."

5. Dinner was excellent! We made Sausage & Potato and Spicy Fish Tacos. Topped with Creamy Cabbage & Corn Slaw or Citrusy Radish Slaw. I got to zing my mother with one of her classic lines regarding the fish tacos. "How Do You KNOW You Don't Like Them If You've Never Tried Them?!?" She tried one and allowed as they weren't bad, but she preferred the sausage.


So that was my weekend.

Oh, and today's moment of stupidity? Came from the officer who looked at me and said "Is your hair supposed to be that color?" I asked him about his limp. "What limp?" This one...and I kicked the crap out of his shin. (Relax, it was a friend and I was reasonably sure I wan't going to be charged with assault)

Not a Good Day- follow up to Odds & Ends

Managed to drag my butt out of bed early and met mom at Peking Bistro for lunch. I have been thinking about that Mongolian Bacon & the meat/vegetable buns for months now and was finally going to get them. Wrong. They’ve discontinued the buns (but they’re still on the menu) and they were out of the meat for the other dish. Seriously?!? Settled for Mongolian Beef instead, but it wasn’t what I wanted.




The drive back across town took forever because there are snow flurries and everyone was acting like they’d never seen them before. I got to Starbucks at 2:10 and it was 2:22 before I got my drink. Luckily it was the one close to the office.



Got to work and the lot was full and it took me 5 minutes to get around the building to my usual spot because people parked like idiots again. As I’m pulling in, a police car coming from the other direction at full speed almost hit me. We got out of our cars at the same time and he started yelling at me about how I couldn’t park there because that spot is a loading dock. I said it used to be, but that door is now the back of the elevator shaft & doesn’t get used. The sign is still there, but it’s rusty and hanging by one nail. I park there every day. He said he didn’t care if I usually parked there, he was telling me I couldn’t park there now. I said fine, but kept going to the building as I was almost late. He followed me and said “Are you going to leave your car there?” I told him I needed to go in and let my boss know I was there. (didn’t mention that I was going to have my boss go tell him to leave me alone) He said “fine, but if it’s still there when I come back out, I’m giving you a ticket.” Then he pushes past me to get into the building first, walks into the officer room and tries to pull the door shut on me when I reached for it. I let him shut it and then badged in and walked in behind him. Claudia was in the lobby and said to him “Um, she actually works here, so you didn’t need to do that.”



I walked in past him and went to get my Sgt & Lt. I told them about his threats and they went out to deal with him. Well, he ran out the door after Claudia told him I worked here, leaving his rookie that he’d come down with standing there with his mouth hanging open. They caught up with him in the parking lot, told him that I park there and have parked there 4-6 days a week for the last 6 years and they’re fine with it. He then told them that I got nasty and swore at him and that’s why he threatened to give me a ticket. So then they had to come in and yell at me- they did admit that they think he just said it because he knew he was busted for being an ass, but they had to act on it since he DID say it. I wish I’d thought to point out that HE was parked in front of a sign that clearly said NO PARKING.

Odds & Ends

No review this week- am quite a bit behind on everything. So here's a list of things that have kept me from reading or are just cluttering my brain.

1. The IRS strikes again, so I won't be going to BEA this year after all. They claim I still owe them money, despite documentation to the contrary, so I expect we'll be fighting that out for a bit. Yay.

2. I have had more migraines in the last six months than I have for six years. Am not enjoying them at all and they can go away at any time. The smarter officers have learned that if I'm wearing my sunglasses in the office, trying to be funny is NOT a good idea. (today's symptoms include light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, dizziness, nausea, and unrelenting pain. This is a step up from Monday, which included auras and fainting, yet my boss still tried to make me come in until it was pointed out that he'd be violating our union contract by denying my sick day request)

3. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (on top of migraines) seriously sucks. My house is in desperate need of cleaning/organizing and I can't get it done. I'm almost to the desperation point of asking my mother to help me.

3a. Laura & I went to the Needle Nest on Saturday to check out the new patterns from the Nashville Needlework Show. We had lunch & shopped, and were gone for maybe 4 hours. That was enough to wipe me out until Sunday afternoon. (The migraine kicked in late Sunday night) However, I did get some fun new stitchy stuff, including this little guy for keeping track of my needles:

3b. As a result of being worn out from my brief excursion, I still haven't gotten my Mongolian Bacon. Waah. Mom has promised to get me some for lunch one day this week IF I can drag myself out of bed early enough to meet her there before work.

4. My beloved high school BFF, Drew, signed me up for a Facebook group for our 25th reunion. OMFG- 25 years. What amused me is that most of the people listed on the group page were in the class before us or didn't go to the school at all. Too bad that I still don't give a shit about most of those people. I kept in touch with the small handful of people that I cared about and have NO intention of participating in this lunacy. Remind me to kill Drew later...

5. Got these t-shirts in the mail this week:



I love Woot Shirts and it had been almost a year since I bought any. These 2 were too good to pass up.

I think that's about it for now. More later...

Disposable Girl - or - My Anti-Valentine

Welcome to Worldwide "Make Lonely People Feel Like Crap" Day, or as it's more commonly known, Valentine's Day. The day that scars children for life when teachers have to institute the "bring everyone in the class a valentine or don't particiapte rule" and they still wind up with a small handful of the ugly valentines left in the package. (true story. 35 kids in my class one year and I got 7 valentines despite the teacher's rule. 6 of them were the same missprinted, off-kilter one. Not only did we all buy the same assortment, but they apparently came from the same batch. The lone halfway nice one was from my teacher) The day that makes grown women take to their beds with a migraine when they listen to their paired-up friends gush over their romantic plans. The day that none of the lousy bastards I ever dated wanted to celebrate if we were dating at the time it rolled around. I would have settled for a lousy card and a hug and didn't get either.

Not that I'm bitter.

Ok, I'm bitter.


Anyway, my last long-term relationship ended a couple of years ago. Beast & I were sort of together off and on for a dozen or so years. During which he married 2 other women. We'd stop speaking altogether while he was married, he'd get divorced, and we'd pick back up where we left off. Both times I found out about the marriages from his company's website and/or mutual friends who were surprised I knew nothing about it. Yes, I was that stupid, naive, and thought I was in love. I finally walked away after the last marriage, depsite reports from friends that the marriage was in trouble almost as soon as they said "I do." Because even if he decided he didn't, he'd never commit to me. And I finally realized I deserved better than that.

So here's a poem/song I wrote last year after he called me. Just to say hi, you know. For the record, I hung up as soon as I realized it was him.

Disposable Girl

I'm just the poor girl who begged you to stay
I gave you my heart and you threw it away
You laughed at my tears, as they shimmered like pearls
There's no room in your heart for disposable girls...

I'm a no-one from nowhere, who didn't understand
That the cool ones like you would never take my hand
If I stayed in the shadows I could bask in your light
But you'd never say you loved me because "It wouldn't look right."

I'm just the poor girl who begged you to stay

I gave you my heart and you threw it away
You laughed at my tears, as they shimmered like pearls
There's no room in your heart for disposable girls...

Too tall, too dark, too fat, and too loud
I didn't belong with your privileged crowd
I was your dirty secret, tucked safely away
A bird on a wire, waiting for 'someday'

I'm just the poor girl who begged you to stay

I gave you my heart and you threw it away
You laughed at my tears, as they shimmered like pearls
There's no room in your heart for disposable girls...

Oh the lies that you told me and the promises never kept
Did you ever consider the tears that I wept?
The love you held back from me, for which I so yearned
Was a flame for this moth, and oh did it burn...

You chased after others and still I remained
Waiting in the darkness with the heart you disdained
But nothing is forever, and I took a chance-
When given the choice you left with no backwards glance.

I'm just the poor fool who begged you to stay
You crumpled my heart & threw it away
You ignored my tears as they shimmered like pearl
Now there's no room for you in the life of this disposable girl.

Jamie Oliver's Great Britain

I've never been a big fan of Mr Oliver's, but I thought I'd give him one more try since this is supposed to be his take on classic British dishes. Bleh. The non-recipe pages are hard to read with their multi-colored print, and the recipes themselves are crammed onto their pages with small print. And the smugness I've always perceived from him just flows. I agree with Gordon Ramsay- "Every time I see him, I just want to hold him down and give him a good wash!"

Reading it was an interesting way to spend a few hours, but I wouldn't want to cook anything from it. (for the record, as much as I like Gordon, I don't want to cook any of his recipes either)

Bad Dates- Story 1

Part of the "Why I Am Still Single" series, here is a look at some of the worst dates I have ever been on:


One outstanding memory is from my time working at Books-A-Million, back in NC. We had several  semi-creepy regulars, some of whom kept trying to get dates with the female staff. (And on one memorable occasion, one of the male staff members) Two of them were good matches for me IN THEORY as we had several interests in common. However, they had zero social skills and as superficial as it sounds, were both kind of odd looking. (Like I'm a real prize, but still they just didn't do it for me)

Anyway, one of them, who I shall call Wolfie (as he was on a werewolf kick when we met), came into the store a lot. One of my coworkers, A, warned me about him. She'd given in and gone on a date with him shortly before I started working there and said it was the longest night of her life. So I made a point of keeping our conversations brief, yet friendly, and heading him off at the pass whenever he started veering into "will you go out with me territory?"

We were doing a scanning inventory of the store, which meant going shelf by shelf, scanning barcodes, and pulling out any titles the chain wanted to discontinue. It was my turn to scan and I was on my knees working on a low shelf of art books. (and cursing a blue streak under my breath) Wolfie came in, asked a coworker where I was, and proceeded to come stand over me as I worked, yapping away. I wasn't entirely paying attention to the conversation as I WAS WORKING, so my end mostly consisted of the occasional "uh-huh" and "Sure." Until I heard him say "Great! When should I pick you up?"

WHAAAAAAA? I looked over at the service desk and 3 of my coworkers were doubled over laughing. Apparently one of my absent minded "sures" was in answer to the date question. DAMN.

Since there was no graceful way to get out of it without being an utter cow (I am sometimes a nice-ish person), I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead with it. Also, I knew I was moving to Kentucky in a few weeks weeks, so it's not like there was a chance of any further dates. I flatly refused to give him my address- I told him I'd meet him at the store- but relcutantly gave him my phone number.

When he called later, we discussed ideas and went with the classic first date combo of dinner & a movie. We both liked Chinese, so I said any restaurant but the one where I'd gotten my first (and worst) case of food poisoning would be fine. We were both Godzilla fans, and he wanted to go see that, but I told him I'd already seen it with my brother (true) and didn't like it enough to go again, so we agreed on something else.

Date night came, and I reluctantly went to BAM to meet him. I got there at 6 on the dot. Wolfie was on the payphone as I walked up to the building. He saw me, hung up in mid sentence and snapped "You're late!" Um, we'd agreed on 6. (I found out later that he'd started calling my house at 5:45 and was arguing with my dad about my whereabouts until I got there & he hung up) Not a good sign.

We went to his car, and the first issue came up. We had driven past 2 very good Chinese places and I realized we were heading toward the ONE restaurant I had said I would not eat in. I tried to tactfully make that point, and he said "But it's my favorite place and it's cheap!" Um, oooookay. Sure enough, that's where we went. I had a glass of terrible iced tea and watched him eat. No conversation, just him shoving food into his mouth like he hadn't eaten in a month. Our server came over during one of his 6 trips to the buffet and whispered "Good luck honey, he's a cheap bastard that doesn't tip."

He didn't tip either, despite the fact that he kept our server busy refilling his drink and demanding she go tell the kitchen they needed to add various dishes to the buffet. I surreptitiously left a couple of dollars on the table and he actually picked them up and pocketed them.

Issue number 2 came up in the parking lot. He said "We're going to see Godzilla!" I said no, I'd seen it and would prefer to see almost anything else. "But I had my heart set on that movie!" I suggested that he drop me off back at the bookstore and go see it himself. I mentioned that I'd rather see King Kong Vs Godzilla than the movie in theaters at the moment. He accused me of making the movie up. I told him it was a real movie, and he should look for it at the movie section of Wal-Mart the next time he was there. So he insisted on going to WallyWorld right then to see if I was right. Bought himself a copy, and then he wanted to go back to his place and watch it. "And my roommate's gone, so we'll be alone!" Oh no. Not me, not tonight.

Issue 3- Since I wouldn't go to the movie he wanted to see, and I wouldn't go back to his place, we needed to find something to do. (I was mentally pleading with him to take me back to my car) So off to the local indie record store we went. Just my luck, a former coworker was working there and was on duty when we dropped by. J grabbed my arm and hissed "What are you doing with that freak?" I hissed back that I was on the date from hell and would appreciate any assistance he could offer to get me out of it. We were in that damned store for 4 hours. Wolfie had to look at EVERYTHING. And criticize the music I was looking at. The only reason we left is becasue they were closing.

At that point, I thanked him for an interesting evening and insisted he take me back to my car. He said we should go clubbing since it was too late to go to the movies. I told him I needed to be at work early the next day, so I really needed to go home. (not a lie, actually)

He tried to follow me home- I shook him off in a residential area that was maze-like and hard to get out of unless you knew where you were going. I walked into the house and my dad informed me that if that fool ever called and argued with him again SOMEBODY was going to get their feelings hurt. I told him that I wasn't going out with the fool again and he could feel free to make things up if he was insane enough to call.

Don't you know he called 3 more times that night? 2 in the morning and he calls. (Dad had a great deal of fun with that) Then he showed up at the store when we opened to ask when we were going to go out again. Never, that's when.

The Casual Vacancy- J K Rowling

I can sum this book up in one word: Blech. Rowling succeeded at one thing- this book is nothing like her Harry Potter series. I didn't expect it to be and was quite hopeful when I heard it described as dark humor. There was plenty of darkness, but very little humor.

 The premise is that a man drops dead unexpectedly and leaves a vacancy on his town council. The surviving councillors are engaged in a war for supremacy for their group's views while trying to get a replacement. The story focuses on their internal warfare and the crumbling relationships with their children, class war, and how people cope with loss.

There wasn't a single likeable character in the book. Not even the teenagers were tolerable. I was slightly amused at them taking metaphorical potshots at the adults around them, but overall, this thing left me cold. One character is vaguely interesting- the sterotypical bad girl who has a horrible family life but is recognized by an adult as a diamond in the rough. The problem is that the adult in this case drops dead at the beginning of the book, nobody else cares enough about this girl to try to keep her going, and she winds up committing suicide at the end.

I'd like to thank J K Rowling for one thing. It's said that all fiction has a base in fact. If life in a British village is that dismal, with politics that pervasive, I am changing my future retirement plans to live in a flat in London!

Craft-A-Day: 365 Simple Handmade Projects

I was really hoping for more than I got from this. I sporadically get bitten by the craft bug and decide it's my mission in life to make goofy stuff. The projects included in this book are cute and definitely simple, but it's rather repetetive. This would be a good book for parents with small children who need indoor projects on bad-weather days, teachers, and others of that ilk. I needed just a little bit more.

I will admit that the cat, lion, and bird projects were all tempting, despite the repetition. I may give a couple of them a try.

The Fashion Industry is NUTS

So, thanks to health issues and my back & knee problems, my doctor has been really getting after me to lose weight. While I haven't lost as much as he'd like, I HAVE managed to lose 47 lbs in the last year. I'm still a big old heifer, but I'm working on it. Most of my weight loss is due to changes in diet- I don't like exercising, especially when I'm in chronic pain. I think it's a mental block, remembering how mean the other kids were in gym classes back in my younger schooldays, but I digress.

I had established a clothing moratorium for the year a few months ago, when I was trying to start decluttering and realized that most of the clothing piled up in the laundry room & spare room was stuff I either stopped wearing because I had gotten too fat for it, or was stuff I had simply forgotten I owned. There were also a lot of things that were basically duplicates- how many versions of black & purple t-shirts are there, and did I really need to hang on to ALL of them? So a LOT of stuff went to goodwill.

Just for giggles, I tried on a few of the things I had outgrown. Holy cow, they fit again!  Some of them even better than before! I still gave a fair chunk away (mostly things I wore when I worked in retail and/or used for LARP costumes), but kept some of the things I'm still likely to wear.

My current job is techincally clerical, but it's in kind of a warehouse environment. We can, and often do, handle large/dirty items, so jeans are the best clothing choice. Here's where things start getting a little tricky. Because I'm so tall AND fat, appropriately fitting pants of any style are hard to come by. And due to the occasional roughness of my job, I've had to throw away some damaged pairs. Even worse are the pairs I had to toss after my weight gain caused them to explode in ways that could not be repaired. I managed to find some replacements in the larger size- even though I was working on weight loss, I still had to wear something to work.

Well, now I've lost this weight, and my 'fat' jeans are WAAAAAAAAY too big. The pairs of jeans I had outgrown are all either about to fall apart from forcing myself into them even when I was too fat, or are actually slightly too big. *happy dance* So, since a nearby store that carried plus sizes appears to be having a going out of business sale, I thought I'd treat myself to a couple of new pairs of jeans. Not buying anything but jeans- the moratorium on everything else stands until I lose more weight & keep it off.  (Well, maybe a tie-dyed t-shirt or two. I've worn most of mine to bits)

So I went to this store- let's call them Mashin' Mug instead of giving them a plug- and hoped for the best. I've found good things there in the past, but there's also a lot of drek, and their sizes are fairly inconsistent. Also, WHO decides what is stylish? Weird colorblock combinations might pass for ok on a skinny girl, but don't work as well on Ample Annie. Not all fat girls want to wear clothes with sequins & beads, in eye-popping prints/colors that call attention to our figure flaws. NOBODY looks good in Capri pants and I'd give thanks daily if that look went away forever.  AND booty shorts- you know the ones that are so short & tight that they're basically glorified underwear- need to go away. Preferably for everyone, but especially plus sized versions. Just because you CAN make something, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Ditto for wearing it. Remember the eye trauma caused by biker shorts in the 90's? Same thing.

Where was I? Oh yeah, jeans. Nobody makes plain simple jeans any more either. You have to decide between skinny, boot leg, low waisted, wide legged, studded, embroidered, beaded, straight legged (as rare as intelligible lyrics in most rap ditties), acid wash, indigo, stonewashed, button-fly,  decaf, mocha, and whoops, I just took us to $tarbuck$. There are too many choices. Unless you're built like me, in which case you pretty much are stuck choosing whatever goes over your butt and can be zipped over your gut. Bonus points if they're miraculously the right length and/or you can bend over without mooning anyone, the pants exploding, or having a permanent zipper indentation on your stomach.

So, knowing the store's tendency to have erratic sizing, I found several styles of jeans to try on, and managed to get most of them in 3 sizes. My former fat size, the size I'm currently in which is a little loose, and a size down in a rush of optimism. I even managed to score a couple of pairs of Tall plus sizes which is as rare as a drama free day in the life of Lindsay Lohan. The lethargic dressing room attendant looked at the 12-15 pairs of jeans I was lugging and waved me in. So much for 5 items or less.

Anybody want to guess what happened next? No? Well, I'll tell you- NOTHING fit. Not one single frigging pair, not even in a 'not quite right, but I can make do' kind of way. The size down were WAY too small. The size up- aka fat me- were WAY too big. The size I currently wear were either too big or too small depending on the style of the jeans.

Do I need to explain how demoralizing that is? I walked into the store feeling good about myself for having lost 47 GADDAMNED POUNDS, and walked out feeling like a circus fat lady. Seriously, I was almost in tears. And the urge to go eat my way through a buffet and then a bakery was strong. Sanity, and sympathy from my mommy prevailed. I did have a bowl of ice cream, but just one, not the size of a soup tureen, and with no garnishes of any sort. 

Then I started thinking about the issue. I am NOT the problem. (not entirely) The fashion industry, who consider anything over a size 4 to be obese, is the problem. So I mentally composed this letter to Mashin Mug:

Dear Jackholes,

Sorry to hear you're going out of business. Actually, I'm not surprised. Your sizes have always been off, no matter what you claim, and you never stocked enough of the larger sizes to make it worth coming in and trying things on. Your failed experiment of mixing the plus sized items in with the juniors a few years ago did nothing to help. In fact, it made me homicidal to see a cute top in a size 2, only to discover the largest size you had in was a 16. It appeared to have that effect on a LOT of women, because that project didn't even last 4 months, did it?

I went in to your store hoping to spend a fair amount of money on some new jeans. What a shame that the same pair of jeans in 3 different sizes didn't fit. None of them were close enough to buy, even with your advertised 30-60% off sale. Oh, and one rack of t-shirts from the 70's marked 60% off isn't fooling anyone.  May I suggest a sign that says "These are crap, but they're cheap, so you know you'll buy some?"

I'm sure I'll run into simliar problems in other stores. But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I'll never have to deal with YOU again.

Enraged, and decidedly not cordially yours,

The Amazonian Liongoddess 

Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery - Chrystle Fiedler

Ok, I get it. The author is REALLY into natural cures, etc. That must be why the entire book read like an advertisment for the naturopathic industry with a plot that was rushed at the end to wind things up. There was an awful lot going on for not much of a payoff.

Very Fond of Food- A Year in Recipes by Sophie Dahl

What can I say?  I *REALLY* wanted to like this book. The photographs are beautiful. The recipes, however, mostly fell into the category "pretentious crap that neither I nor anybody I know would eat" and left me cold. Speaking of cold, the one recipe I'm mostly likely to consider trying was one for Earl Grey/Lavender ice cream. That wasn't enough to give it a glowing review, though.

Monday Musings- When Do You Declare a Friendship Dead?

How do you decide when/if it's time to end a friendship? I've ended two in the last few months, although one of them doesn't seem to be aware of the fact.


Former friend one: totally overreacted to a post made on Facebook, that alluded to something he'd said that I found to be insensitive but did not mention him by name, and proceeded to spew venom and issue veiled threats on my wall as well as attack other friends who tried to point out to him that he was acting like an idiot. I let him rant for a day or two and then quietly deleted the post, and then deleted him from my friend list. I rarely see/speak to this person in real life anymore, though we used to be quite close, so he probably isn't even aware that he is no longer someone I wish to be associated with. I do know that he has told mutual acquaintances that he thought I'd "learned my place" and they just shook their heads at him. Most people who know me, know that I am not a "forgive & forget" person, and there are some things that I refuse to accept from so-called friends. He crossed the line and I'm done with him, whether he knows it or not.


Former friend two: a former co-worker with whom I'd bonded over pop culture and a shared sense of amusement/horror/disbelief at some of the goings on in our office. Like me, she has had a fair amount of nearly unbelievable crap happen to her in her life, only she's had more and worse. The problems in our friendship stemmed from her wallowing in the toxicity of her life and the world and my inability to encourage it. There are so many things wrong here that I could probably write a book on it, but the short version is that I just can't keep dealing with her drama and inability to actually work on her problems, rather than just claim she's going to. She had treated a mutual friend so badly that the friend got fed up and dropped her like a bad habit and then sent me a passive-agressive email 'apologizing' for her behavior and saying WE could still be friends if *I* wanted to. I told her that I needed to think about it and honestly wasn't sure if I did, but I would contact her after a week and decide then. It was one of the most peaceful weeks I'd had- no drama filled angsty emails, no floods of emails with links to every "ain't it awful" story she could find, etc. I realized at that point that our friendship had turned into a toxic energy sink and that it wasn't in the best interest of my emotional health to continue it.

I'm not saying I didn't do my share of angsty emails about things. But I would actually work on my problems, whereas she didn't/wouldn't. If our mutual friend and I sent emails about positive things, 90% of the time she'd respond with a vague "that's nice, but let me tell you about this drama in my life..." type message, which then turned into all of us dwelling on negatives instead of being happy that something was going right. Or she wouldn't respond at all.

However, when I went back to respond to the situation after the week was up, I discovered an 2 emails from her that solved the problem for me. The first was informing me that she was dropping me from her Facebook friends because "it was too painful to see my posts and know she wasn't welcome to respond."  I never said that. I said I didn't want to hear from her at my work email for a week. (I only check FB on weekends and she knew that) I have mentioned in the past that if she adds one more damned petition to my wall, I'd drop her. The second? Was basically an "I don't want to wait for your decision because I already know what it is so I'm going to drop you first" email from her.  Ok by me.

So, I'm "down" 2 sources of stress and aggravation. Excuse me while I go cry quietly to myself...NOT.