That's What I Get For Getting The Free One

I had a lovely evening with Cita, and there are pictures to go along with my stories. Unfortunately, my digital camera and my borrowed laptop are having a disagreement, so I can't pull the pictures down and share. This means that this post will have to wait until tomorrow.

Not that I expect them to be friends by tomorrow, but I will get them while I'm at work and then email them to myself then write for you a scintillating post, accesorized by said photos.

Don't ever say that I don't work hard for you.

Ugh!

So, no date for me tonight. I've got a lot of thoughts about this, but they're so jumbled that I don't want to write about them tonight. Well, by tonight, I mean, right now. Maybe later. Maybe never. Maybe it'll all be OK.

But this is what keeps circling my addled brain:

I am neither your Madonna nor your whore.
I am neither the cause of your problems nor the solution to them.

I'm just a girl-person, doing the best she can with her limited resources and capabilities, trying not to cause harm and hopefully spreading some cheer. Perhaps a little grin on occasion.

Because I'm A Complete Dork

This is my new favorite song: Collide, by Howie Day.

The dawn is breaking
A light shining through
You're barely waking
And I'm tangled up in you
Yeah

I'm open, you're closed
Where I follow, you'll go
I worry I won't see your face
Light up again

Even the best fall down sometime
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills my mind
I somehow find
You and I collide

I'm quiet you know
You make a first impression
I've found I'm scared to know I'm always on your mind

Even the best fall down sometime
Even the stars refuse to shine
Out of the back you fall in time
I somehow find
You and I collide

Don't stop here
I lost my place
I'm close behind

Even the best fall down sometime
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills your mind
You finally find
You and I collide

You finally find
You and I collide
You finally find
You and I collide

And yes, I love my boy, endlessly, forever. And then over again.

I apologize to my friends who are dealing with break-ups.

The Usefulness Of Disagreements

I was thinking today about what could have been a pretty big blow-out between the boy and me last week. Luckily, it didn't become one, mostly because I needed to get to bed and it wasn't worth it. But still...while we agree on most topics, we pretty strongly disagree on the role of religion in people's lives and on the necessity of being right.

I'm sure I drive him crazy in my desire to see all sides to all stories, and my almost pathological need to avoid conflict. Yet he can get my cockles to stand on end, and finally did.

After he was going on about how he knew everything about the Bible and religion (he was raised pretty strictly) and how a friend of mine clearly didn't, I finally just snapped. "Jesus Christ, do you think I'd befriend an idiot?" I said. I know I completely missed the point, but still. I respect this friend's education and his knowledge and I don't appreciate the boy thinking he can denigrate that.

Which leads me to this: Like I said, I'll do almost anything to avoid conflict in my interpersonal life. I think this bothers the boy sometimes. He's alluded to that fact on occasion. Me snapping at him got him to calm down (and back down) and we were able to finish our conversation on a good note.

So, is there a role in relationships for disagreements and the occasional true argument? Does that make the other person realize that there could be an end to the relationship and work harder to stay close?

Maybe. Or maybe it's just true for the boy and me. This doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to pick fights, but it might mean that I don't back down so easily.

Tiptoeing Into The Top Chef Kitchen

In my efforts to save money and keep an eye on my waistline, I've been cooking as of late. While the recipes are all new to me, what I've been making are variations of foods I'm already comfortable with. Plus, they tend to taste better the next day and are readily portable to work. This week, I made jumbo stuffed shells with ricotta and spinach:



While the picture isn't great, it still looks pretty good, no? I'm going to enjoy that tomorrow for lunch.

Next, I decided to make homemade macaroni and cheese. This was my first attempt into making cheese sauce, and let me tell you, it's not as easy as it seems. I had to be super careful not to burn the milk-and-vegetable-broth mixture. And when finally all the ingredients were combined, it would have helped a lot to know that actually creating the sauce would take about three times as long as I anticipated.

Unfortunately, I am impatient, so the sauce isn't as good as it should be (and surprisingly sweeter than I would have imagined):



This picture is not at all good, but it is a decent representation of tonight's snack and Tuesday's lunch. Also, I used whole wheat penne, so it looks even browner than normal mac and cheese would.

Yes, I know that these are not the lowest-fat dishes I could have made, but they're still a whole lot better than what I'd have if I ate out.

Overall, I'm pretty proud of myself.

PS - Do NOT eat the sliders from Applebee's. Trust me on this one. It'll take at least two more days for my stomach to forgive me.

Late...Too Late...

And, of course, I cannot sleep. I was all set to settle in at about 10 or 10:30, but I couldn't keep my eyes closed and when the boy calls me, "Sweetie," I wonder, as this is only the second time he's done it, and the brain won't turn off...

Yes, I'm almost positive that that sentence had no predicate. Or point.

For some reason, I don't want to go to bed. I shouldn't worry. I was able to wake myself before the nightmare I began last night got into full swing. And the name of the "procedure" amused the boy very much. But the visual, and the almost visceral feeling, scared the bejeezus out of me.

I think I know why. One, because the winning designer on Project Runway All-Stars had a dress that looked like a suicide bomber's frock, and two, because I'm afraid that the conversation I need to have is going to sound more like the bomb and less like the dress.

Kisses, all.

My Coworkers Have Confirmation

Today, as I did my very important and serious work, I found another gem on those webs that we call Inter. You see, I follow a pretty nifty group of people on Twitter, and those nifty people have even niftier Tumblrs, and that's where I found this one.

Via, who got it via:

An anonymous customer, unhappy with his in-flight meals on a Virgin Airlines flight, has written a vivid letter of complaint, sending it directly to Virgin CEO and mega-kabillionaire playboy Richard Branson. Via.

Dear Mr Branson:

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:



I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:



I know it looks like a baaji, but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:



Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation:



It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:



I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel:



Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:



Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincererly

XXXX

* Paul Charles, Virgin’s Director of Corporate Communications, confirmed that Sir Richard Branson had telephoned the author of the letter and had thanked him for his “constructive if tongue-in-cheek” email. Mr Charles said that Virgin was sorry the passenger had not liked the in-flight meals which he said was “award-winning food which is very popular on our Indian routes.”

I kept the misspellings and like. And really, folks, when I got to the part about the hamster, I laughed so hard my coworkers had to check on me. So now they've got proof of my crazy.