103 posts tagged “daily grind”
Even with headphones the hand gestures may well make it NSFW.
Yet, this bit is impossibly bubbly and very much a satisfying reply to all of those narrow-minded, judgmental, petty little jerks I (and everyone else with any character) has had to deal with over their lives.
I remember one particular group of empty little snots from high school who'd make a point of following my best friend just to call her names. That group also had plenty bad to say about me and anyone else they thought shouldn't dare to step out in public without their explicit approval.
Perhaps they've grown and changed and are now fit for society. Perhaps they never had to grow up and are still their uptight snotty little selves. Perhaps they went to seed soon after high school, and proceeded to lead bitter lives wondering what happened to when they were the arbiters of cool. I'd like to think that they've changed, but the main point is that it just doesn't matter. They have no more hold over me, and haven't for years. I hope my friends are over their bit of hell as well.
But...
I like to think that whoever is the current "cool" guard at whatever little social niche is around gets this little number sent to them, maybe with a little note saying, "they DO mean you, quit it!"
Meantime, sing along!
Girlzilla wanted me to make a sweater for her and we decided on the tubey sweater from knitty. This was started around Valentine's Day and it's been a pretty fast knit. Really the hardest part has just been taking the time to actually be able to knit instead of the work-teach-clean-cook-drop dead cycle that has been my life lately. The yarns we chose aren't quite like the original, though. The shrug-like top part is Caron Simply Soft in a sort of brick red and the body is most like the Angel Hair super-soft fuzzy stuff (lost the band, so sue me) in all sorts of beautiful reds and purples. The shrug seemed to take forever and now that I've started the body it seems to be going fastfastfast.
Doesn't hurt that I was able to watch Jekyll and knit.
Jekyll is Exhibit J in a series of infinity of why British TV rocks. It's one of those productions where you hope evrybody involved makes boatloads of money. (Except maybe the sound guy. The music gets annoying sometimes and sometimes the ambient noise makes dialogue really hard to hear. There's so much dark humor and wordplay that you really need to catch every bit.)
You don't have to knit, but certainly...watch Jekyll.
That is all.
So Benevolent Patriarch lost his job at the very beginning of December.
I've been trying my best to move forward, and some days it feels like swimming through murky waters against the weight of sodden formalwear. All my best efforts just aren't sufficient to make any actual headway and the slightest attempt to catch my breath sends me downward.
Yet life does go on.
Wolfman Dilbert has his college graduation in a month, and he (thank whatever powers may be!) is already employed. He'll be moving to another state and beginning his ludicrously lucrative job the first week of July. I can't help but feel that I've failed him unforgivably in all that I wasn't able to do for him. I certainly had planned on more than I did, but I honestly don't see what I could have done.
Le sigh.
This morning is my wedding anniversary, and Patriarch and I have been husband and wife for 18 years now. I love him dearly, but today I'm finding it awfully hard to believe that he appreciates me to any real degree. It's not something so trivial as "he forgot our anniversary!"-he hasn't- it's more about a constant need for him to remember that I'm not the maid nor his keeper.
There are certainly good times and great moments with me and mine, and believe me...I do appreciate and cherish those times when the world does turn smoothly.
And my thanks to all of you for letting me vent. I hadn't wanted to post a "poor me" laundry list of woes and I certainly don't want this space to become that. I'm well aware also that these times especially are rough and tense and that I've been sheltered from far worse than I've felt.
So this is a return. I want to reconnect to those I've met here, the people that I feel close to even though we've never spoken face to face and probably never will. I want to be there for ruiner again, instead of ignoring her in favor of my own problems. I want to ooh and ahh over Petra's new achievements, and use them to remember when my own children were so new and so changeable. I want to see what cool new projects knittycat has come up with. I want you all to know that I'm here, and that the more I'm here for you the better off I'll be. I'm already lucky, and complete, and rich and much of that is from you out there.
But, should Benevolent Patriarch ever read this,
(With apologies to Martha Quinn, of course.)
So Wolfman Dilbert came home and told me of his adventures in job fair turf. Lots of companies represented and lots of shwag, including and iPod Shuffle that he won in a raffle. Poor thing already has an mp3 player, and couldn't bear his new iPod to feel homeless so it'll be mine, mine, mine. (Yes, dears. I know only dinosaurs don't have sexy cute little mp3 players. Shut up.)
So I'm thinking that I can start cruising accessories to take care of the clutch of CDs in my car and have my own cute sexy little iPod to keep me in tunes.
Yay!
(With apologies to Martha Quinn, of course.)
So Wolfman Dilbert came home and told me of his adventures in job fair turf. Lots of companies represented and lots of shwag, including and iPod Shuffle that he won in a raffle. Poor thing already has an mp3 player, and couldn't bear his new iPod to feel homeless so it'll be mine, mine, mine. (Yes, dears. I know only dinosaurs don't have sexy cute little mp3 players. Shut up.)
So I'm thinking that I can start cruising accessories to take care of the clutch of CDs in my car and have my own cute sexy little iPod to keep me in tunes.
Yay!
For Wolfman Dilbert I've got planned a handmade ski mask-type hat.
With antennae, angry eye ridges, and gargoyle ears.
Viz:
For added bonus, I know it's going to be yet another thing that no one else in the family except for this in Chez Monster will actually understand. The big plus that knocks this into must-make-now! territory is that I love the idea of knitting and waiting somewhere and showing it to people who want to know what I'm working on.
Ask not of the Sphinx, she may answer.
Heh heh heh.
I got him some other stuff I've found, like a stuffed Taz that's just asking to supervise his Internet surfing, and today I found a pair of computer speakers embedded in a pair of stuffed penguins. Perfect!
Got home from work about 1:30 am with a bunch of CD's to clean and copy from a friend of mine. Found Girlzilla not only awake but busily making candles in a smoky kitchen.She managed not only to use quite a few candy dishes and bowls that I had plans for (some big family do next week, you too?) but also splattered wax bits over the entire floor, the stove, both counters, and a whole lotta cabinets.
I've been doing dishes (the stuff in the sink had to be hand-washed, and it was slow going with all the bits of wax crusted all over) and scrubbing counters and those took up an awful lot of time that I'd expected to sleep during before going to class and work tonight. Feh. I know I'm going to have her clean the stove and floor and hopefully she'll have more respect for the coating properties of reborn candles.
On the other hand, the cookies she made were really good. Really, really good. I'd forgotten how much I liked that recipes sheer fudginess and rich flavor. She insists that I make some (along with the mini eclairs, almond butter tarts, pumpkin pie, and cookie dough truffles already planned) for Thanksgiving. Hers were a bit gloppy and blobby but excellent aside from that. A noble first attempt, certainly.
I've shown her how to cook a few things, like scrambled eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches. She's done pancakes from scratch lots of times, but this was her first time actually baking. She had me put them in the oven and take them out, and I measured the things that were in teaspoons but all the other stuff was her doing and I'm really quite proud.
She's bright enough but her passion has always been making and modifying things instead of worrying about what other people think of her. Things that she's made entirely herself that caused lots of me-too's at school include an Obama shirt for their mock election, a Gir (in puppy suit) hat, and the stuffed Dalek that she made herself after I showed her how to do the bobbles. (And I did the bottom for it, and that's it.)
Le sigh.
Haven't been here for quite some time, but I'd still lurk around, oh, everywhere else. Commented about a bookofjoe entry and now have my laziness immortalized over there in my very own entry.
Not one that I actually had to write, mind you, but still about me, me,me.
Way cool.
I know afterwards I was paying attention to my painting stuff, and realized the original entry for a magnetic gizmo wouldn't have worked for me anyway. Lots of times I'm just doing a touchup job with just a small can and a brush made entirely from wood and foam and not a magnetic bit in sight.
Hope that my slacker army benefits from my unceasing laziness and tendency towards the cheap.
Most of today was spent in a seminar. A choi kwang do seminar. Grandmaster Choi was all of half an hour from my house and we had hundreds of people there to train with him and hear him speak. The first couple of hours had everyone, including kids, so there was some speaking time and some active time, in roughly equal measure. We had lots of instructors taking turns to lead everybody . I started off the round of kicks, and heard afterward from several people that I was easier to hear and understand than any of the others.
Kinda makes up for the short and stumpy.
Good stuff, seeing a school gym just packed with all kind of people at all ranks, and all fired up doing the same stuff.
Some of the kids were tiny too, with some that looked about four or five years old, and remarkably patient given that Sahjanim is Korean and can be really hard to understand and was speaking mostly in medical terminology and biomechanical theory. Lots of good info, but there was so much that I have to wonder how much got absorbed. Still, the best part for me was that here were lots of people who do what I do, because they like it. I didn't have to explain it, or have people mishear it as tae kwon do, or just drive myself to do it. Here there were people who'd come from Wisconsin, and Georgia, and further afield as well, coming from Australia and England.
Some people have families who train together, but I was the only one until Wolfman Dilbert started. He's been away at school for long enough that it's just me, and it's hard enough to do without support from my family. Today I saw my family support, and they all wear the uniform, and we all say "pil sung!" and help each other through.
Aaaaahhhhhh.
And we must never, ever be boring."
So says Chuck Palahniuk.
I found that quote when I found its mirror from Robert Frost. He said, "What I know about life can be summed up in three words: it goes on."
Between the two, just about everything can be dealt with.
At this point I feel lots better about blogging, which I avoided for a long time because I didn't want this space to be all-political-spew-all-the-time or venting about great pools of stupidity that no one had surrounded with cones. Amazing just how much annoyance can fit in small blocks of time.
Right now big swaths of my home look a lot more inviting from Big Cleans that I've actually been able to do before Thanksgiving. Wolfman Dilbert's going to be home for a week and change, and his birthday is Saturday before Thanksgiving. Girlzilla has a school project that involves making cookies, so I get to kibbitz and spread the gospel of sweet fatty carbs yea unto a new generation. Thanksgiving already is going to involve peanut butter chip brownies with chocolate glaze and pecan butter tarts and mini eclairs and pumpkin pie, as well as lasagna and all the rest. I've got a turkey that I'm pulling tonight to give it time to thaw, and once that clears out of the fridge I'll have room for the last minute salads and such.
Lots of extra stuff, and most of it freezes beautiful and/or will be packed to send home with people. Every year it amazes me the stuff that disappears, even though there's WAAAY much of it. This year we may have a few extra people, but I know no one will go hungry.
Benevolent Patriarch, Girlzilla and I even got to watch Dark Knight tonight (yay for dollar movies!) and yes, I must own this. Perhaps Wolfman Dilbert can persuade me to go with him to watch it again later in the week. I was working on way too little sleep and was dozing off in parts, so I'd like to see it again for that alone, if not that I love love love how the brothers Nolan took care of Two-Face and the Joker.
For the record, Girlzilla will be making (under my exacting Pai Mei-like tutelage)...fudge crackle cookies. For those interested in a Bake-Along (kind of like a knit-along, except so far only I do them), the recipe is as so:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees, and melt together:
1/2 cup ( one stick) margarine (and yes, margarine is better here for the texture)
6 oz unsweetened chocolate (you can sub 6 tablespoons oil and 1 cup plus two tablespoons cocoa for this, if you find that you're actually out of unsweetened chocolate and have resorted to Very Bad Words)
1/2 teaspoon salt
Add in :
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
big heroic dose of vanilla
And lastly add:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
A purist would then scoop these into balls and roll them in sugar before setting them onto a parchment-lined pan. I do that only if I've got time to yell, "Death from above!" and make bombing noises as I drop them in. Otherwise it's way faster and easier to scoop them and plop them down onto the parchment, and just sprinkle sugar on the tops. No one can ever tell the difference except me, and I prefer the texture of the bottoms without the extra sugar.
These bake for about twenty minutes, depending on your oven and the size of the doughballs. They crackle as the cook, but if you take them out when they're completely rugged-looking then they'll be hard little pucks when they cool. When the center cracks just begin to look dry, pull them out.
Yum!
