When it rains…

Just a quickie.

While we were in intermission…..

I wrote a long letter to my landlord begging, in a very polite, controlled adult way for him to change his mind about letting us have a kitten. It did not read like begging, but let me tell you… it was. So, after seven years, this cat person without a cat now has cat.

Meet Mojo.

Little did I know just how much I would need her.

Shortly after Mojo came into our lives, an old friend left them.

On May 1st we lost a very close friend of ours to cancer. On Wednesday evening we attended her memorial. She deserves more than a few moments in this post, and I’m sure to write a better one about her soon… Sometimes putting words together is just… hard.

Our transmission blew up the day after Deb passed. So we’ve been carless.  And don’t even ask about the computer issues. All these things in a short little compact bit of time.

I guess if you’ve been following me for a bit, you can see why I’m having a problem with words for all of these things. I think thats exactly why I’m back here, scribbling. So I don’t go back into lockdown like last summer, where it hurt too much to breathe.  Now, everything still hurts but, I’d rather keep scribbling than living inside my head with all that foam and fragments.

 

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Corned beef…….

I was going to actually write a post post, but for now… a snippet….

You might be staring into your fridge forlornly thinking of how fast that Corned Beef is disappearing.

You might only have one kind of cheese for a sliver/scrap CB sammich…

“But Fresh Mootz doesn’t go with Corned beef!” You might say.

(caps intended – Fresh Mootz is important.)

Let me assure you – Corned Beef, a slab of Mozzarella on an onion roll? Heaven.
This is the kind of thing you sit with – eating slowly and then sitting sad and awed all at the same time, because it was so delicious – and then the mourning…. because said sammich is gone and is now only a memory of amazing.

-sighs-

 

(Edited) Ninja Chicken

Only I would somehow manage to cut myself on a chicken.

Yeah.

I just read that, and it happened like an hour ago, and I am still re-reading that and shaking my head at myself in disbelief.

A CHICKEN. THE CHICKEN CUT ME.

Side knuckle, middle finger, left hand.

F*ck you too, Chicken.

 

 

edited: I don’t care, and thats okay.

I’m editing  I edited (adding bitching bitched more)  this – you should probably come back in a little while to read it, and tell me what food you hate, and we can grumpyface together. Or something.
————-

It’s cold.

It’s cold, it’s not even snowing lately, but it’s cold.
Yes, I know, I live in Connecticut. We have winter. If I don’t like it I should move. Blah blah blah. I’m allowed to be tired of winter. Winter is like half the year here. Its annoying.

Most of my RSS following is about food. How to mangle it, heat it, combine this with that and make food matter stuff for the eating of.  Or something. 98% of the blogs I follow? Food.

Oh look, Waffles, bacon and muffins. Meats.. a plethora of fantastic meats roasted/stewed/braised and Oh look – Gravies and soups and…… pie and cake…. and …

I love food. But we have a major economical problem that is forcing me to eat entirely way too much pasta. Did you know that I pretty much hate pasta? No? I do. I associate it with desperation, hunger and “I-had-too-many-carbs-without-protein” sickness.

The only time I enjoy pasta is when its coated in ingredients that I can’t really afford at the moment.

So. Pasta hate.

I think I might need to adjust my feed to exclude all the foodie blogs for a while lest I have bouts of ugly crying.

Also – Why is Pandora insistent on telling me I need anti-depressants and why is it forcing me to listen to break up music? (I think its a PLOT)

I blame the pasta. I should just break up with Pasta. Its you, its totally not me. I want to see other foods.

I SAY that I don’t care about the food posts, and then I saw bread pudding with salted caramel over on Smitten Kitchen.. so.. I’m lying. I totally care about food posts. I really, really care. They are just picking fights with me and turning me into a crazy, cynical brat today.

I’m trying to be okay with this. I am learning that it’s okay to forgive someone and totally not want them in your life for a little while. That you don’t have to save all the wounded little birds that come careening into your windows again and again.

Boy am I a magnet for wounded little birds.

Maybe if I start throwing the birds in with the pasta they will stop that.

 

And it started like this….

“Blah blah Middle School, Gold House. How may I help you today?”

“Um, Yes…. I am Kenny (somethingsomething’s) mother? I just wanted to call and give a heads up to his teachers this morning…”

(Everyone knows who Kenny somethingsomething is, Most days he is impossible not to love, he’s funny, kind, caring, etc. Not this morning.)

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah… you see – this morning he is really in rare form, I haven’t seen him like this in a really long time. He’s upset about the weather and was very angry… yelling, muttering, he slammed the door on me and then was yelling at me from the front yard that he was really sorry…….”

“Oh… Oh yes, I’ll tell them.”

    I’m not sure if you remember, but Ken has Autism.  This means sometimes he is just not capable of letting things go. For the most part I can try to deflect his frustration and calm him down a bit or distract him to cheer him up. Sometimes I shamelessly bribe him. This morning nothing was working. He refused to eat breakfast, Every article of clothing he had to put on became an argument.

When the bus got here, he yelled at me, slammed the door so hard that the lamp fell over, then he ran up the stairs and out the front door to yell at me.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” like a really cold teenaged Marlon Brando… only… its freezing out, and obviously my name is not Stella.

So.. That was my morning. I’m sitting here hoping he didn’t wake anyone in the house up and that he goes to school and …. and the school just called, and they have managed to calm him down and gave him a granola bar.

Phew.

 

 

 

“And then at long last…. Blue.”

I have been missing. I am sorry.

I could predictably tell you that everything went awry. Ha.

It did, I wouldn’t be lying. Lots of crappy stuff happened, I was spread too thin, I was depressed and overwhelmed.

And I was hungry.  To look at me, you wouldn’t know it, but I am hungry … a good percent of the time.

Right now I want to tell you I am ok.

Right now, I want to tell you that I am doing better.

Right now, I want to tell you that I have been hiding out and gathering myself together after giving too much of myself away for too long a period of time.

Pastel and Charcoal on Canson paper

And… I started creating art for the sake of itself again in the real world.
Just because.
I will tell you more when I can gather together the words, but right now – I wanted to say Hello.

 

The Self-Cleaning oven

I am sitting in my living room running a fan by my head in the window – blowing cold 43F air in.
In the kitchen, I have put bath towels along the bottom of the door and after awkwardly climbing up onto the sink counter, have managed to put an exhaust fan in the window back there.

On high.

On the stove – I have cinnamon and cloves bubbling away in plain water, and on my desk a rather gloriously potent Fraser fir candle flickering away.

The oven door is still in lock down mode, eventually it will allow me to unlock the door and open it again.

I knew better. I totally ignored the inner voice that said…

“You know – you should have run the self-cleaner when it was warmer…..”
“You should really put the fans in the window before you run the self-cleaner… “

Yep. Shoulda.

Why does the self-clean cycle always reek so terribly even if you do it often?
(My inner finger pointer would like me to tell you that I have NOT run it since early spring.)

 

In other news, I did try to contact someone and am now having more problems finding anyone that accepts my insurance than anything else. On the whole, I am doing quite a bit better than I was, having knocked out three deadlines that were really close together and causing a good deal of ridiculous stress. 

I can do deadlines, that usually isn’t the problem. I think the problem is mostly that it depends on who they are for that causes my anxiety to skyrocket.