erisiansaint

I'm just heartsick over what's going on in Israel. And it's rather worse because the American Left seems pretty invested in a hell of a lot anti-Semitism masquerading as something else. Someone I've been friends with for years just put up something about how "if you support the Ukraine but not Palestine" something something something.

I told him I was done with his anti-Semitic ass and blocked him. He doesn't even know how it's anti-Semitism, but it is and I honestly do not know how to explain to someone that if you think NOW is a good time to be pro-Palestine, you might be FUCKING WRONG.

Netanyahu is corrupt as fuck and his entire administration needs to go. But it's my people that are paying the price. He's not the one being murdered, raped, kidnapped, held hostage, executed in front of their families.

Now is NOT the time to put up pro-Palestinian screeds. Not when Hamas is dedicated to the eradication of all Jews.

But I am SUPER bouncy.

So, my sister-the-Luddite was thinking she needed a whole new tv to watch Disney+ because her Blu-Ray player won't get it. (It's a Sony. There is no love between Sony and Disney.) So we went to Best Buy. They had NO tvs below 32 inches, which is rather bigger than she wanted and honestly, both her tv and Blu-Ray player are still perfectly good. And I wasn't thinking, "why worry about the tv, just get a new blu-ray player, it's cheaper."

But as we were walking around, I stopped in one aisle, struck by a call from a shelf. And I looked over. Google Chromecast. On the other side of the aisle, Roku and Fire TV were yelling at me. And it hit me: why not get one of these, which are MUCH cheaper, and mean she doesn't have to get rid of electronics? So she decided on the Google Chromecast. (She couldn't decide because the Chromecast was what gave us the idea, but the Roku comes in a purple box and we hadn't researched any of it.) Neither of them need a monthly subscription, though, so that's a plus. We decided...I decided to get the Google one, and if it didn't work, exchange it for the purple box. (Don't you love how we make uninformed decisions?)

Got it back to her place after grocery shopping, and I hooked it up and we figured out extension cords to get it plugged in, and turned it on. And waited while it downloaded updates. And got the Google Home app for her phone. And then I rearranged her phone desktop so she knows where everything she uses is. It was bugging me. And we finally got her all hooked up so she can watch the few streaming services she has on her tv instead of her computer. SUCCESS! (Disney+ took some finagling and she was so frustrated that she almost returned the damn thing but I wouldn't let her and just kept at it. And it worked!)

Then I came home and spread dropcloths on the floor and started painting my finally-sanded dresser after three effing months of rain after I bought it! I have it turned upside down so I can get the bottom without bending over, and I'll be installing felt pads on the bottom before I have my son turn it right side up so I can get the rest. (Side panels and drawers will be Unicorn Spit. Because I wanna.)

I have painted my hands and one of my arms and I'm happy as a pig dipped in shit. And I still have Sunday to play!

Also, that Meatball Master came, which means there may be meatballs sometime soon, or I might not because painting is consuming me.

Ok, so, my sister and I hit up Value Village and we each got furniture. Mine needs some love, but it was 20 bucks, so I'm doing the thing.

I now have an attachment to go in my drill and turn it into a sander. (I'm super excited about that. I have LOTS of sandpaper in a lot of different grits.) I also have a lot more Unicorn Spit than I'll likely use but it felt important to get it. And a set of stencils with various shapes, mostly stars, moons of various types, constellations, a few bears (Ursa Major/Minor,) etc.

The colors I have are flat black, copper metallic, and then green, blue and purple in the sparkling colors. And I have my sister's leftover blue stain from IKEA. And a three day weekend.

Friends, I was SO PUMPED about getting to play with the dresser this weekend. Three days off and plenty of time to fuck with it in the carport.

It's raining. All weekend. And the carport doesn't really protect from water a lot, since two sides are open and the floor is wet from the cars. Goddammit.

So, I bought a raw-wood box from Michael's so that I can do it inside anyway. I do need to pick up some Rustoleum for a gloss coat, as Unicorn Spit is water-based and you have to protect it or all your hard work will go away.

(Frankly, a lot of this is because I am a slow knitter who gets bored, so I have a number of projects that I got bored with, it's an issue. It's dumb, knitting is somewhat ideal for listening to podcasts.)

I don't know if I've said this before, but my morning routine on Sundays involves Casey Kasem's American Top 40 Rewind-the 80s Edition on 95.7 The Jet. (This can be listened to via internet, and indeed, I am.) And I drink coffee and eat breakfast and fuck around on the internet.

Right now, it's 1984, Bryan Adams's "Run To You" is on, it was just Julian Lennon's Too Late For Goodbyes.

Yesterday, my sister and I went to Value Village, I've been looking for a bookcase for a particular corner of my room where I can put my game books, they're starting to add up and will only get worse once Old Gods of Appalachia comes out. I didn't find a bookcase.

I found a dresser. For 20.99. And it's one where I get to sand it down to take the finish off and use Unicorn Spit or stain, change the knobs, have a by-god PROJECT to play on, and then redo that corner of my room. (I have a few things to get rid of or move.) And the game books will live on top of the dresser. Maybe on a tray or a roll of felt to protect the dresser and the books. I'm super excited. My sister found a secretary, and she's super-excited, she gets to move around all her furniture and sort of redecorate. (The secretary needs no work, just a bit of a polish.) I also found some L.M. Montgomery short story collections that I didn't have, a copy of The Blue Castle since mine went missing, and a hardback copy of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. God, I love thrift stores.

But, it involved moving around everything in my car, putting down the back seat, loading up the secretary, getting it home and into my house, then going back for the dresser. And getting roundly scolded by one of the workers for peeking in a doorway and asking for help instead of going inside. (The people inside told us to ask the people outside, but whatever.) I was so excited about having a project that I didn't even care. Or think about it until just now when I wrote it down. I can't be arsed to care, though, I'm still too excited, I've wanted an excuse to buy some Unicorn Spit since I first heard the name of it. (It's a water-based gel stain for use on all kinds of materials, from wood to glass to metal to ceramic to...yeah, there's a long list.) PLUS. I'm going to have to buy a drill attachment that's a disc sander and HOLY SHIT, I GET TO BUY A POWER TOOL! (I don't even feel weird about buying all this stuff, I have cash to cover it.) Ok, it's not precisely buying a power tool, it's a ten dollar attachment for a power tool. Plus sandpaper. EEEEE, SANDPAPER.

Of course, I got home from all the errands and all the driving (because grocery shopping still had to happen, and dropping my sister off at her home) and promptly discovered I'd gotten my period. Fucking Freddy. (Ok, I admit, I almost don't mind getting my period now that I've named it. Almost.)

Today, I plan to drop my kid off at work, (can you believe he's 22? No, me neither,) get gas, and then go to Home Depot and Michael's-or-Joann's, (they're right next to each other at the mall closest to me, but Michael's is an outbuilding and where I plan to start), and also pick up cream for a soup I plan to make, later. I can handle all the errands, but I will not start sanding today. Especially since we're going to try to get the secretary up to my sister today.

(Funny note: she pulled out a certain amount to give my son for manhandling that thing up her stairs. I wouldn't let her give it to me because, and I quote myself, "He'd just try to give it to me anyway." He asked me in the car yesterday if she'd given me the money...because he planned to give it to me for gas money. I kind of howled with laughter, explained why and he was shocked that I called it so hard.)

Anyway, it's a lot planned for today, but there's naptime built in because...shit, I have to add in a trip to Target to get tampons. Unless I just spend the extra at QFC and skip the extra gas money. Probably equals out in time and gas to just get it at the grocery store.

Ok, so, the state of the me.

1) I strongly suspect my job is going away in a year or two.  I'm getting my resume ready.

2) Somebody I love and trust just threw me under the bus and I'm so angry I'm close to tanking a 20 year friendship over it.  On the other hand, she's also defending people that I think are some of the vilest people in my hobby and if I even discuss this with her, I will make her cry.  (In a year or two, I'll likely be sorry that I didn't discuss it with her, but I'm also a firm believer in "you're known by your friends" and if that's who she chooses to defend, fuck it.  I have one friend she doesn't like that I won't give up.  She's got about 20.)  I am not subtle when I'm angry and anything I could say would be truly hurtful to her and I know she's having a tough time mentally and emotionally right now so I'm trying not to make her more upset...but I wish she'd do me that same fucking courtesy.  Nor am I the only person she threw under the bus with that argument she made.  

2a) Another thing about this situation that's upsetting me is this: a lot of the people she's defending got banned because the at-the-time admin asked a lot of people to stop talking about something to save my friend's mental health because she was not, at the time, able to handle the entire argument.  Even when these people were told, "this is the reason, without names attached," they wouldn't stop.  Even when my friend came on herself to say "this was why," THEY WOULDN'T STOP.  (It was a real howler monkey toddler temper tantrum going on.)  And she's still defending them. If I were to go to her and say, "Y'know, it was your mental health Gany was trying to save and you just lied and claimed that it was for some other reason altogether," she'd either deny it or feel shitty and it would send her into a spiral.  Which means, yet again, in consideration of her, I can't do that.  I can't even fucking defend myself and I hate this.  I hate it enough that I'm considering ghosting her because I've had it.  These people can't even name me, most times, they think I'm just someone's minion or sockpuppet and have no mind of my own.  But they'll certainly bully me and lie.  They're good at it.  (Really pernicious people.)

2b) This is having the consequence of me rethinking having Thanksgiving in a group setting this year.  I'd rather stay home and have it with my sister and roommate.Or just my sister, if my roommate wants to go see my friend instead.  Which has been a longstanding tradition.  And one I really want to skip this year, although I don't think I'll say that to my roommate just yet.

I'll talk about it with my sister on Saturday.  And she'll get really furious on my behalf and I'll remember that online isn't really very important but right now, I want to cry and I have a headache.

 

I've not been blogging because I don't know how to blog the constant state of "What did that stupid orange bastard do this time?" without ending up with ulcers.

However.

On Saturday, I went to Pike Place Market with Shaun and Dayna.  (It was supposed to be Shaun, Dayna and Heidi, but Heidi ended up not going.  Pity.)  And we're parking and get out of the car and while Shaun's putting the parking receipt on the dashboard, this one-legged Buddhist monk on crutches comes over to me and Dayna.  And he takes a wooden-bead bracelet off his wrist and puts it on mine.  Then he does the same to Dayna.  Then he joins our hands, and starts praying over us.  (I'm assuming he was praying, it was in another language, he might have been cursing us out more nicely than I've ever heard.)  Then he asked for a donation.

Dayna didn't have any money.  I only had a few twenties.  I caved nearly immediately and gave him a twenty and felt very karmically pure after.  And I gave the bracelet to Abby and shared my karmic purity.

I've had a lot of people inform me that they wouldn't have given him anything, but really, it was good payment for the story.  

After all, I now get to say I was prayer-assaulted by a one-legged Buddhist monk.  It's like something out of David Lynch!

Tuesday is the Tadlet's 16th birthday.  (Look!  Only two more years before I can tell the ex where to shove his head.  Ahem.)

The tradition in the house that I'm living in is this: whatever else is going on, whatever presents happen, on your birthday,  you get to request a particular meal of me.  For years, now, Tadlet's go-to birthday meal has been potato-leek soup with bread, and a cheesecake.  (Thanks to Chris for teaching me to make cheesecake, because seriously, that was one of the best things I ever learned!)

This year, it's maple baked beans (with onions and TONS of salt pork in) and a cheesecake.  The beans are easy: soak your beans overnight.  Drain them, put them in a pot on the stove, boil for 30 to 40 minutes, drain and reserve liquid.  Dice up a shitload of salt pork.  Chop an onion.  Arrange in layers in your cooking vessel, whether it's a slow cooker or a pot that goes in the oven, going beans, salt pork, onions, beans, salt pork, onions.  Take your hot bean water, add 1/3 cup of brown sugar, a cup of real maple syrup, a tsp of mustard powder, a little salt.  Pour that over the beans to cover.  Cook for a LONG FUCKING TIME until done.  For me, if it's a slow-cooker, then eventually I get fed up and shove it in the oven to reduce the liquid to a syrupy glaze.  It's my version of the Williams Sonoma recipe, so you can look it up on the internet if you want exact measurements.

They'll be a bit weird: I couldn't find my mustard powder.  I substituted rather less than a teaspoon of cayenne.  I'm not telling anyone.

Now, cheesecake...cheesecake is FUN.  Cheesecake has a basic recipe from Philly cream cheese, also available on the internet.  The first major tweak is that you want to put a pan of water on a lower rack to steam it.  Also, bang the pan repeatedly to try to get the air bubbles out, so that it won't crack.  (But really, who cares if it does?  It'll still taste good!)

The fun part of cheesecake is that you can mess with it near endlessly and it'll still be amazing.  I've done mango cheesecake, where I pureed frozen mango and put that in the batter and diced the rest of the mango and cooked it and then threw that in the batter as actual chunks.  (That's fucking amazing, btw.) 

Today's cheesecake is as follows: 3/4 cup of white sugar, 1/4 of light brown in with the cream cheese.  Then I added some mulled cider that's in my fridge to flavor it instead of using vanilla.  (If I'd been thinking, I'd have reduced a cup of it down to a few tablespoons, that would have been muuuuch better and stronger.  But there's been a lot of cooking today.)  I chopped up three apples and cooked them on the stove with butter, cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice.  And I made dulce de leche, as it's a caramel-apple cheesecake.  (To make dulce de leche in the oven: take your 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk.  Pour it in a deep dish pie plate.  Cover it with foil.  Put that pie plate into a roasting pan and pour in water halfway up the side.  Bake at 425 for 45 minutes, refill the water if necessary, bake for another 45 minutes.  Let it cool.  Next time, I'm salting it a bit, because sprinkling salt on afterwards took it from Amazing to Orgasmic.)

To put the cheesecake together, I put in the graham cracker crust, sprinkled it with some of the apples, poured in half the batter, put in a few chunks of the dulce de leche.  Then I put in some more of my dulce in with the rest of the apples and heated it just enough to coat the apples.  I put those in as a layer, put in the rest of the batter and tapped out as many bubbles as possible.

Updates later on how it turned out, it's in the oven now.

Well...I am.  Alive, I mean.

I'm going to write a longer post about this, but the short form is that my dad died exactly one week ago.  The funeral was on Friday.  It's...rather harder than I expected it to be, given our relationship throughout most of my life, but it's back to having to be an adult and cope.

More later, with anecdotes.

Ok, first of all, I interviewed for my job yesterday.  (That's not as weird as it sounds: I've been temping at this place for nearly a year, so yesterday, I interviewed to go full time.)  There are three other candidates, so I'm not counting on it being mine.  Just really hoping.  There's a few more interviews to go, however.

Today was "Culture Day", which is kind of like orientation, except it happens a month to three months into the job.  It's not about your job skills, it's about the company and the mission statement, etc.  Since the department I'm temping with is HR, we're the ones who run it, so on Culture Days, I usually set up breakfast and lunch.  On Culture Days, I try to get in early.

Today.  Forgot my ORCA card at home.  (For you non-Seattleites, the ORCA system is this interestingly computerized system that means you tap an ORCA card on the reader and it automatically deducts money from the account.  You don't have to have an account by name, you can stick your card into a specialized machine and put money on it.  A lot of bigger companies will issue these cards, too.)  Dayna kindly ran it out to me, as I'd already made it to the bus stop.  (The bus stop is only about 3.5 blocks from the house, but it amounts to about half a mile and it's mostly uphill.)  The bus left as she was handing me the card.

Then, I got to the transit center, got my bagel, and made the second bus with about a minute to spare.  Great!  I missed my stop.  Not great.  I ended up at a Park & Ride not close to my job.  Also not great.  There's another bus that'll get off at the bus stop right by my work.  Great!  I got on the wrong bus.  (550 instead of 560.)  Not great.  Get off the bus on the first stop post-Park & Ride.  This wrong bus is the only one on this route.  Not great.  Walk an extra mile to work.  Very not great.  Get there 15 minutes early.  Great.  This is instead of 45 minutes early, which would have meant time to eat my bagel.  Not great.  As soon as I walked in, after walking over a mile and a half this morning: have to do more walking/standing to set up the breakfast.  Siiiiiigh.

I finally did get to sit, eat my bagel, try to drink some coffee that was SO BAD that I gave up and bought a bottled frappuccino out of sheer self-defense.  (I was so tired after all that, that I nearly fell asleep at work.  Even after the coffee.)  I also got to set up lunch later, no problem.  All of HR eats with the students on Culture Day.  It's fun.  Some of the executives join us, too.

Halfway through lunch, my back (left side, the cluster around the bottom of the rib cage,) clenched.  Or seized.  Clenched up was how it felt.  FUCKING HURT.  After lunch, I managed to swallow two ibuprofen.  By an hour later, they'd only put a dent in the pain.  (I carry stress in my back.  After months of not knowing if I'd even have a chance at a job, and then finding out I have a chance, but if someone else is a better fit, they'll hire them instead, my back decided that it had had enough.  Ow city.)  I ended up taking a taxi home because I couldn't have borne the bus.  (Luckily, that turned out to be 9 dollars, pre-tip.  As a once-in-a-blue-moon thing, that's affordable.) 

And now, I'm stressing about whether I'll even be able to make it to work tomorrow.  Did I mention Ow City?  Because really, the pain is quite intense, given that my natural state is to have a backache.  (Stupid large boobs.)

Dreamt that when I went into a temp job this morning, I was working for a guy who was directly working for Jim Henson.

I was very sorry to wake up from it.