Dream a little dream of Chief?

I had some very strange dreams this past week. But first, here’s background, some of which you no doubt already know:

• I suffer from depression and mild social anxiety, for which I take meds. Yay meds!
• I had three holiday parties to go to last weekend, which is a pretty big deal for someone with social anxiety, even if they are on meds.
• Vitamin N’s lovely big eight-year-old border collie Chief died this week, from some type of aggressive doggie cancer. He was feeling ill on Saturday and they took him to the vet on Sunday, and surgery was scheduled for Monday (for his spleen which had burst) but he never made it to Monday morning. I loved that dog too, and he loved me. Boo doggie cancer!
• Her eldest son (whose dog it really was) decided to have Chief cremated. Yuck cremation!
• The crematorium does their service by the pound. Chief was 93 pounds. Wow bigdog!
• I am of the soft and cuddly body type, myself. Some would call me thick, some would call me fat, but I just call me pretty cute. Sexy, sometimes even! *winkwink*

Okay. Now for the dreams.

After the parties this past weekend, I had to attend three more parties. Then, three more parties. Three MORE parties after that. The parties were blending into each other. Were they different parties, or one gigantic never-ending, anxiety-inducing “party”? Suddenly, I was a veterinarian in an operating room. I couldn’t see my hands but they knew what they were doing. But it was super duper hot in my white scrubs and I could see worried people peering in the little window in the door. Then I turned into the pet! I was big, not like a cat, but maybe a cat. Or maybe a dog. Maybe a big, furry collie. I had long hair like Chief. I was in a metal cage and my thoughts were all muddled. I was really hot and breathing slowly, but not in any pain or anything. Then suddenly I was human and THREE MORE PARTIES!!! THEN THREE MORE PARTIES. THREE MORE THREE MORE THREE MORE… etc. etc. until I awoke. At 8:15. I’m supposed to be in the office at 8:00. That was Monday morning and quite a shitty day.

Monday night I dreamt I was going to be cremated and I was ashamed and felt guilty because I was going to cost so much. I may have been a pet or human. I just felt really big and I seemed to take up a lot of room. If I reached out my arms and legs a little I could touch the sides, but I didn’t want to for some reason. I was sooooo hot suddenly! I was in the oven!!! I woke up sweating unbelievably with Butch and Twinkie totally snuggled up around my top half, purring contentedly.

Tuesday and Wednesday nights, nothing. Alevai! (sp?)

Thursday night. Some worry dreams about money and the heat getting turned off. But I still had electricity so that was ok. I reasoned that I could just plug in the electric heater and make tea from the electric kettle.

Anyway, sheesh, right? All hot and cold and anxious and pets and money. You know what I miss? Sex dreams. Damn meds...

I love ornaments

I mean, really love them!  Especially the glittery, colorful, festive ones.  So jingly and jangly, sparkly and spangly, like gigantic exotic earrings from the Far East.  And I'm not the only person in my family who likes them.  My mom does, too.  I really like the ones that look like ice.  Some of the loveliest ornaments I have ever seen were fancy, long, hand-twisted, delicate, clear glass icicles that we bought for my grandparents’ tree one year as part of a house present.  I loved those icicles.  I wonder whatever happened to them.

Anyway, each year I try to put up at least a few ornaments on someone’s Christmas tree, or help them decorate.  This year I was quite pleased to have two separate opportunities - at both houses, indoor AND outdoor!  (Although I am totally uninterested in decorating the tree at work.  I am utterly unentranced with that tree.)  This is why I loved decorating the sukkah so much.  The wackier the better!  *smile* I just plain love ornaments.

But since I'm Jewish, it feels, well, wrong to hang ornaments in my home.  Don’t get me wrong - I decorate for Chanukah... with chanukiot, with dreidels, with kachol v’lavan (blue and white, for my readers unfamiliar with transliterated Hebrew), with boxes, with signs and with wonders (heh).

So.  What’s your take on the Chanukah bush?  Or maybe I should get a side job decorating trees for people who actually pay money to have someone else set theirs up.

I have lots of ideas for decorating.  Picture this: all green lights in a green tree with glittery golden balls of differing sizes.  Or all white lights in a green tree with shiny red and purple ornaments.  What about a white tree with colored lights and matching ornaments in tiers, rainbow-like?  Or a tree with all one color ornaments, but different shades of color?  Changing from either the top down, or interspersed.  Or, no lights at all!  Instead, vertical stripes of color!  Or all paper ornaments!  Or all clear glass!  Or!  Or!  Or...

Fashion strata

Tonight I cleaned my bedroom.  Well, actually, I cleared -- changed my sheets and remade the bed with an actual duvet and cover; cleared off the nightstand; returned items to the closet; and especially cleared off my dresser from its months of accumulated and laundered-but-not-put-away clothing.  The pile was was about four feet high.  Why?  I've been dressing out of the dryer.

I'm not ashamed of this, and I'm certainly not Foul Bachelorette Frog (though messy, my apartment is rarely truly dirty, and my body is always clean.)  But I do seem to have become a much less snappy dresser than when I first moved to Massachusetts.  What the heck happened?  But never mind that for now.

You know, dear Reader, It's fascinating to see what was stylish several seasons ago.  It's like geology.  Picking away at the earth's core.  Garment gravity.  Fashion sediment.  I realized it this morning when shifting occurred and re-orientation of the clothing strata took place due to tectonic forces as I joyfully attempted to free a certain pair of underwear from deep within the pile.  The original horizontality let go, and... AVALANCHE!!!  Butchie was nearly buried alive.

So I took action.  And I have been trying to get to it for weeks... ok, months.  But there's always something much more fun to do!  Can you blame me for putting this job off?  I can't.

There's still more to be done, but seeing the top of the dresser is a good start.  More cleaning tomorrow.  Ta!

Mighty Morphing Power Starbursts

New candy taste sensation!

Starbursts has come out with “morphing” candies – cherry morphs into cherry-lime and orange morphs into orange-strawberry. Worth a try, yes?

Unwrap a candy… it looks like a regular Starburst except for tiny little flavor-changing beads studded through. Chew enough and eventually you find one of the flavor bbs and bite down on it. It will pop and out comes a teensy bit of flavor.

I like the idea, but in half of the pack there were nowhere near enough bbs. Also, throw another flavor in there. 2 flavors in a whole pack is just not sufficient. How about lemon to lemon-cherry?

In a nutshell: these are interesting, but I prefer California fruits. And even better than California fruits are GummiBursts. Sorry, Starburst! I won’t be buying these again.

Tashlich cancelled

On account of rain!

Okay, I’m exaggerating a teensy bit. It was only postponed until 5:00 PM tonight. But, but… postponed? I thought it was to be done the first day of Rosh Hashanah, no matter the inclemency of the weather. You know, kind of like the mail. Jews don’t melt in the rain, so it makes no sense anyway to attempt to reschedule.

But no matter! Me and my fam went yesterday, traditional-style with umbrellas just in case. It was NOT raining, and in fact we saw an enormous egret, so still along the banks of Plug Pond that we thought it was a statue. Then it took flight and what a wondrous sight that was. They are HUGE! Like pterodactyls. So beautiful. We were all alone except for an occasional car and it was very nice.

After we finished casting away our sins, we sang a non-traditional song (Row, Row, Row Your Boat) round-style since we couldn’t remember the song the rabbi always makes people sing. We did NOT tell the overdone jokes about what bread to use for certain “sins” (i.e. For the sin of bad jokes, corn bread). Then we returned home to enjoy teatime with apple turnovers and honey cake with friends. A great start to a great new year. L’shanah tova, everyone!

Tuesday Muse Day

My lovely fog-blue la-dee-dah J. Jill button-down is made of the softest, most narrow-wale corduroy you could ever hope to wrap yourself in. However, it’s cut in a swing-coat style, and I resemble a pregnant blueberry. Adios, button-down!

How long is too long?

My great-uncle died last Thursday, September 1, 2011 in the Bronx.  He was old and sick, so not exactly a surprise death.  The wake is being held tomorrow.  That's ten days.  Ten days of laying on ice, only to have your wake held on the tenth anniversary of the Twin Towers Tragedy.  In New York.

What do you think?  Here's what I think.

Gross!!!  It's tooooo long.  It's summer, the ground isn't frozen, and the people who would attend are basically local.  If they are coming from P.R., that's just a short flight.  Then he has to hang around another day and a half before being carted off to somewhere in Maryland.  Logistically, it's really nasty.

Finally, who deliberately schedules a wake in New York on a such a day?  Why my uncle planned things this ways I will never know.  I'm not complaining about the travel from Massachusetts, but come on!  What in absolute fuck was the reasoning behing this?  And it's not a safety issue, either.  Timeliness of the death process of my great-uncle aside, the people of New York can have their mourning day for the millions.  Alone, and in peace.

He was not Jewish, so no big rush about getting him back into the ground, but twelve days without a funeral is way too grisly.  The whole thing makes my stomach turn.  I'm so not looking forward to this...

Medicinal banana

I hate bananas. But I love the idea of a naturally creamy nutrient-packed fruit arriving in its own package that also takes care of flip-flop tummies and the result of said tummies. The flavor is what I can’t get past. Yuck! Bananas.

Anyway, I ate it this morning for its restorative powers. And it helped! Which is great. But inspecting the banana led me to ponder. What are those strings inside the peel? And why is there sometimes a “Y” at the end of the fruit?

I can remember my gramma telling me when I was little that the Y meant I would have good luck. But we never talked about the banana strings. So I looked it up. It turns out that the strings are phloem bundles, which carry nutrients and sugars wherever they need to go. Imagine the banana peel like the bark of a tree. Same thing.

So. I have decided that we should engineer a new fruit. It will look and feel like a banana, be nutrient-filled with the ability to grow in all regions and even in the home.  Even the shape is fine.  But the taste -- the taste will be of chocolate pudding.

Scientists, how about it?

My Review of High Definition Powder

Originally submitted at EyesLipsFace.com

The e.l.f. High Definition Powder is a translucent, versatile loose powder that creates a flawless, soft focus effect to the skin. Masks fine lines and imperfections for a glowing, radiant complexion. This incredibly soft and invisible powder is ideal for everyday wear, either alone or over your ...

High Definition Powder

Love it!!!

By tccat from Massachusetts on 7/5/2011

 

5out of 5

Pros: Easy To Apply, Silky Finish, Controls Shine, Lightweight, Blends Well

Best Uses: All Skin Types

Describe Yourself: Budget Buyer

This stuff is fabulous! I was skeptical but I did my research and decided to try it.

It's easy to apply and photographs like a dream. It's really lightweight though, and will pour out of the holes if you are not careful. I only pulled back the tape about 1/5 of the way but the stuff is just so soft and finely milled that it still pours out. Next time I'll poke a couple of holes in the tape.

The packaging is also nice. It's pretty and strong and looks a lot more expensive than it is.

What a great product at a great price! This is definitely a keeper.

(legalese)

New phone!

Would you care for a free meat package?

What would you do if a friend offered you some meat, for free? What if they asked you on the phone? And what if they were a total stranger, calling you up at random and asking if you were interested in receiving a free meat package?

Ugh. If you think it’s embarrassing enough to receive that call, imagine being the one doing the calling!

I wish I could remember what “company” it was, but one of us (my mom or me) had found the job in the paper, and I have to drive to… I want to say somewhere near Elmhurst, and I was in college and needed a summer job, and it was freaking hot as a roasting oven outside and just as moist, and I had gotten all dressed up in a skirt and blouse and heels, thinking I should look my best despite the strange job description. This was 1993, not the time of the GPS, and by the time I finally found the place I was ready to just turn around.

The sketchy “office” was in a house-like building, but it was definitely a place of business. Four or five cheap metal desks adorned the room with old-fashioned stenographer chairs tucked under. Discount carpeting abounded. I remember enough windows, but I was getting a weird feeling about the place. There was an adjoining room that I assumed was the boss’ office. I seem to remember a window in the connecting wall, but I could be architecturalizing.

Anyway, the job was this: Cold call people to offer them a free meat package and attempt to enroll them in a monthly meat delivery. No cost to them. They could keep the meat if not interested in the monthly package.

I can’t make this stuff up.

So he interviewed me, and looked me up and down a few times, and tried me out for a few hours. I forget the hourly wage, but it was pretty low… maybe six bucks an hour, plus commission on the meat? I got a couple of people to accept “free meat packages” but wasn’t sure I wanted to continue working there. For one thing, the area was borderline dangerous and although I was young, I wasn’t particularly stupid. I wanted to ask for my twenty bucks but I also wanted to get the hell out of there. So I hung around a few minutes, sorta hoping he would offer it to me (that wasn’t going to happen), and then said to myself , “fuck it” and took off.

Later, my parents asked me what had happened and I explained as best I could. They didn’t understand why I left without claiming my wages, but I am sure I made the right decision. Who came up with the idea of free meat packages, anyway? The whole thing still makes me shudder.

Aaanyway, I have no idea why this popped into my head, it just did. Worst “job” ever! And my family still jokes about it. Oh, free meat package, I am wary of you…

Mousie, redux

Well, I never!

Something told me to check on the kitties before bed late last night after my relaxing shower. So I did. I saw Butchie drifting in dreamland on the chenille pillow on the leather chair, but where was Twinkie? I checked his favorite hiding spots – the acid green microfiber cube under my desk, the corner of the red sofa, behind the potted ficus, even the basement stairs. Finally I saw him, shadowy in the kitchen, staring silently at the narrow spacelet between the refrigerator and cabinet. He didn’t turn around as I entered and switched on the light, worrying about a water bug or spider with the cat food and water dishes at my slippered tootsies.

But all I saw was a small fluff of cat hair. I stood, motionless and mute. Twinkie sat, motionless and mute. I have never seen him so silent. Nary a meow nor a tail twitch graced his feline form. Then he twitched his whiskers, pulled back his ears, and got low. His head swiveled and he leaned ever so slightly forward, tensing his hind legs for the pounce.*

I still figured it was a small bug, and I was very tired, having watched Dancing with the Stars at my friends’ house, buying gas on the way home, and just taken that shower. It was almost midnight. I was about to say “forget it” and turn around and go to bed when suddenly, a brown MOUSE ran out from under the fridge! I peeped and it saw me and ran back under the refrigerator. I grabbed the garbage can, pulled out the bag, and held it upside down, waiting for the MOUSE to show its ugly self again and trap it.

But I waited in vain. Eventually I went to bed and shivered in my bedsheets, imagining I heard mice in my mattress and tiny creatures in my clothes… but not before frantically texting Vitamin N about the terrifying ordeal I had endured with Twinkie:

oh my god N I just saw a mouse in my kitchen
A brown one. I'm terrified! How will I sleep knowing there is a mouse terrorizing Twinkie? :-(
it went back under the refrigerator
Something told me too check inn the cats and I did and where was Twinkie? I finally found him in the kitchen starting at the space between the fridge and drive. But there was nothing there but a dust kitty
So I stood there Quietly and it came out and saw me and Twinkie and it ran back under
What a bold mouse. I'm calling the exterminator in the morning
I don't get it. My house is totally clean
especially my kitchen

In the morning, she saw me and laughed. And none of my coworkers seemed surprised! Turns out they all had them.

“Oh, it’s just a field mouse.” Well, if it’s in a house, it’s now a house mouse now, amiright? “Peanut butter in a trap will do it.” But then I will have to remove the trap with a dead mouse within. “Wasn’t it cute? ” No, it was certainly not cute. “Just put away the cat food at night, and it will probably move on.” But what if Big B and Little T get hungry? And "probably" isn't enough of a guarantee anyway.  “Mice only come out at night anyway.” But how is that any better? And my personal favorite, “Better get a cat!” Oh, rilly? Screw you, coworker!

So tonight I get to go to Target yet again and pick up traps. Add my special Teddie pb to them, and slide them into the space I found Twinkie staring into. I am so not looking forward to this…

*It was shades of Maxie Paxie. If he were alive, Max would have definitely gotten that mouse. I miss him!

The Secret Pisser strikes again

I think Butch is sick again.  But the only proof I have is occasional pissing on the bed (twice in the last 2.5 weeks, but nothing before that), and more bathing than I remember when he was younger.  Is he sick, or does he have kitty dementia, or is he just getting old?  He's been sweet and not acting strangely in any other ways.  I tried palpating his tummy/liver area to see if anything was swollen, but I couldn't feel anything unusual.  He just kept purring.  Now I'm sad, and I have to lock them out of the bedroom again, so no nighttime kitty heating pads or musical purring tonight.  Sigh.  Watching pets decline sucks!

UPDATE: He has also been spending a lot of time in the bathtub.  Sitting in it, walking in it, and playing peekaboo using the shower curtain.  Wtf?

Apps! Apps! Apps!

I'm a little app hound now. A-rooooo!

Three I have been messing around with (yup, all free):

AudioBooks. I've taken to listening to books during my commute. I'm going the science fiction route. I find it keeps me calmer than just being stuck in traffic, and I don't get all bent out of shape because of idiots on the road. In just 3.5 commuting days, I'm almost finished with chapter 12 of the The Coming Race by Edward George Bulwer Lytton, having never gotten to the print copy. I'm at the point where the linguistics are being explained, and it's a good thing I only hear it in half hour increments, because this part is long and drawn out. Darn his multisyllabic writing style! No one better get on my bad side, or I just might abuse my vril...

Jango. It's a music service similar to Pandora, but better (in my 'umble opinion). It features unlimited skips and only ONE ad a day. Take that, Pandora! And you can customize faster than Pandora. Listen from your computer, too, natch. The one down side is that you are asked to rate new artists' music -- thumbs up, or thumbs down to control their airtime. If I feel it's thumbs down, I'll just close the box since I don't consider myself qualified to grant someone else airtime. But I did find one song I liked from some unknown, and rated it favorably.

And finally, Thinking Space. Mind mapping! This is such as awesome tool and I use it to organize writing thoughts. I am actually thinking of buying this program! It's really slick, pretty, and useful. Your maps are saved on your sd card, but they have a Cloud server that can synch your maps. Use FreeMind on your computer to revise, if you prefer.

Find them in the Android Market.  More to come.  Stay tuned!

Gloat? That's a negative, you

To me, it feels like this “Osama is dead” thing dropped out of the clear blue sky. Like a house! By a tornado. “Ding dong! The witch is dead.” Really? Ew. Thanks, memes.  How about growing the fuck up and realizing that we still have miles to go before we sleep?

I find it repulsive that Americans celebrated in the streets when the megalomaniac known as Osama bin Laden was killed. Ok, we got him, that's really great… but we’re also not uncivilized. CNN has stated that Washington told our military, “No gloating”. And I really believe that no soldier would disobey an order from Washington (at least, in public).

And if our military, the toughest, proudest, and most compassionate military there is, can manage to contain gloat, then our civilians (despite any differences) should manage to contain theirs too…

Fish marshmallows

I hate onions

Hate, you say? Hate is such a strong word. CC, what did onions ever do to you?

But I do hate them, and I'll tell you why. It's because they stink! They leave such a stinky skunky smell on my hands I can't stand it anymore. I sliced half an onion on Monday night and my fingers still freaking stink! My stainless steel "soap" didn't seem to help, either.

But thinking about it, now I'm not so sure. At this point I don't know if it's my fingers that take on odors, or my super sniffer. I think it has to be half and half because I have, I don't know exactly, but let's call it... caustic skin. My skin eats directly through gold rings and it takes on smells. But my nose has its own super strength and I can smell things that other people can't.

I guess those must be my superpowers, then...

Haunted bathroom?

Yas, dis iz path

Multiverses!

NPR Sci Fri brought this:

http://hw.libsyn.com/p/8/f/a/8fab16c6d6eb895c/scifri20110304-hr1.mp3?sid=2ae3eb746d64a969a9916ef00945bbfb&l_sid=18801&l_eid&l_mid=2473204

The existence of multiple universes. I've always believed this (albeit abstractly and philosophically), and it turns out that some physicists do, too. Brian Greene, professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University, claims to prove it mathematically. The link is for the podcast (31:18 - 43:15); open your mind first, though... string theory and black holes ain't exactly easy stuff...

Incidentally, it's from my absolute favorite publishing house - Knopf!

Thanks, but no thanks

I had planned on posting this the night it happened (the Friday before Valentine’s Day), or on Valentine’s Day itself, but never got around to it. But it’s been bothering me, so here goes.

Remember those guys who kept emailing from two different dating sites and four different meetup groups? The twins? Well, one of them wrote me again. What is WITH them? It’s not like I had changed my picture from meetup to meetup. Or my name, duh. I complained to my mom and she said again, that I fit a profile and “can I really blame them? They see a beautiful woman and want to get to know her.”

Ok. I can’t blame them for wanting to get to know someone attractive. *smile* But, yeah, I can blame them for not paying attention to the people they email. If they are emailing so many women that they don’t even remember faces, that grosses me out. I can also blame them for not being alert enough to even write a two-line “hi there” email without a number of grammatical and spelling mistakes. And uncomfortable enough as it was for me to return email the first time with a “no thank you”, it was even worse to do it a second time. (I didn’t want to, but my mom said it would be bad form to not acknowledge his writing me.)

It’s not that I’m fundamentally opposed to twins in general, or the idea of two people born from the same person at approximately the same time, or even the idea of dating ONE of a set of twins. I actually think twins are fascinating and even kind of cool. But icky, careless, argumentative twins? *shudder* That gives me the willies.

Ok. Done. Thanks for listening!

Do plants scream?

I can't get the sound of cracking bones out of my head. Crack! Crick!! Crii-ickity crackle!!! CRAAACK!!!!

No, that’s not it. It’s almost like a bunch of small zippers of different lengths being opened all at once. Zip. Zipziipziiip!! Zipitzipitzipit!!!

Hmm. Still not exactly accurate. It's actually more of a ripping sound, like fabric being shredded by hand. Rip! Riiip!! Ripripriprip!!! RIIIIP!!!!

Gosh. Close, but not entirely right. Has anyone else heard the roots of a root-bound plant being deliberately torn during transplant to a bigger pot to allow it to grow larger, live better, and be free? Because it’s awful, and it’s haunting me, and I won’t be able to leave it alone until it’s described properly.

And all anxiety this because of two of the plants I received from a thoughtful five-plant sympathy basket from my office from when my Grampa died. I kept it, because the plants were so beautiful. (Not very Jewish of me, but it was my decision, after all.) My brown thumb managed to kill the other three, but the peace lily and a lovely type of delicate, smooth, frond-y fern had been coming along fairly nicely.

Anyway, they both became root-bound and needed to be repotted. I employed the help of Vitamin N and we had a planting party. I used pretty green ceramic pots I bought at Ace and brought them back into the office. Within a week, the fern was entirely happy, but the peace lily was half happy and half sad… the stems bright and perky through half the leaf, and the end half of the leaf droopy, looking weak and arthritic. It made me sad too.

So when our landscape architect colleague stopped by, I questioned him. Why so droopy and limp? I watered it plenty. Well, it turns out I had overwatered it. And placed it far too low within the pot. He showed me how to “free” the plant by disentangling its roots. Then this kind and gentle man proceeded to smilingly riiiiiiiiiip the pale and stringy root ball until it resembled a shallow, upside-down bowl. And he really had to work at it, they were so tightly intertwingled.

I gasped. And shuddered. All I could think of was chicken bones being rolled over by an office chair. Or potato chips crushed by a rolling pin. Maybe eggshells screeching? This was Monday, and I’m still thinking about it. I told him about it and he said, "But now it's free!" I believe him, but it's like the sound is just stuck in my ears. Yuck!

So, if anyone can think of a way to describe this sound so I can put it to bed, please comment. I’ll be forever grateful…