Auntie Hexxa

I am working on something huge, boys and girls.  All my neurosis have piled up on each other like a big, squirmy pile of puppies...except without the cute.  And yet, they may one day lead me to happiness.  And pizza on Fridays.  Happiness is tomato sauce on bread.

Will report back when there is something to report.

And rock bottom looks like...blogging about nothing!  And my dog!  You love my dog right?  No?  Suck it up then.

I lied.  I will also tell you about food.  Breakfast food!

I work at a hotel that has a regular group in three days a week.  These lovely little military boys (mmm...jailbait!  Jailbait in uniform!) take a class that features both brekkies and lunch during which they discuss ethics and the joy that is their future career.  Not a one looks like they are over 15, but hey!  Go ahead!  Learn about defending our country when you should be experimenting with drugs and sex and having fun!  Like in a real college!

ANYWAY (point, what point?), once they get done with breakfast, the leftovers are divided amongst the staff.  (Quite normal hotel protocol, especially when you over-estimate the amount of food needed; like our kitchen does.)  (Side note:  Our potatoes...BANGING.  Yum.)  I have noticed on the days when I supplement my toast (eaten while applying mascara and walking the dog, because really, who needs to wake up with enough time to do EVERYTHING in the morning?)  with this breakfast I am a shiny happy person (for me anyway; whose standards for happy are lower than any one else) and am not chewing on my desk at 10.30.

It took me a few months to think I should be eating more at home in the morning.  I'm a little slow. 

On my most recent trip to Hippy Health Food Paradise (Cheaper than whole foods!  Truly local ingredients!  Actual Hippys!)  I purchased Oats at the ridiculous price of $.65 for a whole big bag.  Brought it home and discovered that the cooking instructions (1 cup oats to 2 cups water) makes a whole hell of a lot of oats.  Which I portioned out and kept in the fridge because, hey!  microwave!  Hit it with some life giving rice milk and some frozen fruit pieces and you have breakfast in the morning in a minute and a half.  If you hit it with some brown sugar and cinnamon at the same time, you can convince yourself it is a treat because...mmmm....sticky.

So!  This morning!  Nuked it and dolled it up with all kinds of yummy things!  Rice milk and brown sugar and cinnamon and strawberries and bananananananaanaa.  I sat down to enjoy with the book of the moment and started to enjoy when I noticed my water was still in the kitchen.  As I drink my body weight in water before 10 AM, this was a problem.  I jumped up to get it...and Specka stuck her face in the bowl. 

Her WHOLE face.  Not her nose.  Not her whole muzzle.  Her whole god-damned face. 

Go ahead...ask me how fun it is to remove oatmeal from your dog's ears before 8 AM.  I dare ya.  AND THEN she had the absolute GALL to be pissy at me for having an impromptu bath.  She kind of makes me want to have a child because, you know what? At this point an entity that understands me when I am telling it that it should not do X, Y, or Z would be nice.  Sure, the child might elect not to listen; but at least it would understand the words coming out of my mouth.

And hell, as long as we are fantasizing here, how about a partner around to hand the child/dog off to.  "HERE, you DEAL with it before I RIP IT'S FACE OFF."  That would be cool. 

(Edited:  I was however, not hungry until lunch.  So, experiment kosher.  It would be nicer to eat something that I DIDN'T have to remove dog hair and canine cooties from in order to eat it.  {Secret:  Scrape off the top and not think about it.  Works wonders.}  But we will work on that little pipe dream tomorrow, eh?)

Sometimes I love my job.  But mostly it is a complicated love/hate relationship. 

Best example:

We have hired Legolas.  No! Really!  Looks just like everyones favorite elf, only a brunette.  With facial hair.  Long brown hair with a goatee and really biiiiiig....feet.  And he is tall.  Like at least 6'4 tall.  I can even forgive the fact he may weigh 95 pounds soaking weight, and I am usually against a man who looks like A: I can break him and B: his pelvis will give me bruises.  Oh, my...the gorgeous.  The eye-candy, fantasy inducing gorgeous.  I love that we have hired him for my personal viewing.

I hate that he has been hired for night auditor.  Which means, unless I start working reeeeeally early; there will be NO personal viewing.  Those bastards.

I hate my job.

Oh.  My.  How I love this commercial.

But I am working on them.

I have been sicker than hell lately, culminating in a fever so high, I had little pink spots on my cheeks like a very un-happy clown.  It was attractive, I tell you what.  So I elected to stay home with my misery and my puppy, both of which were thrilled for the company.  The puppy especially, she doesn't get enough Sitting-on-Mommy time and is a brat until I spend a day in front of the telly with her on my lap.  Unfortunatly, I also had to share with the other guest, Self-Hating Guilt, who only shows up when I miss work.  My work ethic...she blows when I am under the weather.

So, I truly am in the process of acquiring a new camera battery and when that occurs THERE WILL BE PICTURES.  Oh yes, pictures of food, pictures of my dog, pictures of those who should know better.

In fact, I have been holding off on making certain things because I know, deep down in my tiny little heart, how fun it would be to put the recipe and step by step pictures of me fucking it up online.  Also, a picture with the puppy standing in something.  "Ack!  Schip in my pad thai!"  My life, it be dull.  But at least I entertain myself.

I did desperatly wish I had bought the damn battery last night however.  This restaurant in Burlington, VT has on it's menu a vegetarian rueben that is absolute mana from heaven.  The meat is replaced with big juicy slices of portobello mushroom and the whole thing is smothered in 'kraut and cheese and...this orange sauce.

"WTF is that orange shit?"  I asked the puppy, who gave me her trademarked response...she turned around and wandered off to play with her bloody annoying toy*, leaving me alone with my dilemma.

I had to google it.  (1000 island dressing...your welcome.)

Knowledge thus acquired I set about replicating.  I certainly wasn't going to BUY a canned dressing.  What the hell would I do with so much?  We are talking one, maybe two, shroomy ruebens.  That is all.  Thank-fully the Veganomicon has a recipe in it for just such an occasion.  I halved the base recipe (where-in you basically make your own mayonnaise) then got out my ketchup, relish, etc.

I was unprepared for the colour.  The restaurant in Burlington is dark, ok!  I knew it was orange...I didn't know it would look like something Mattel would manufacture for Barbie's First Night of Binge Drinking!   Seriously...I made the dog taste it first, then followed her around for an hour making sure we didn't need to go to the vet! (The fuzzy middle finger was TOTALLY deployed on me.  That bitch.) 

Any-way.  It was not bad.  In fact, it made the sandwich what it needed to be for me, in this dark moment of craving.   However...I still made to much.  There is now this...glop...hanging out in my fridge and my reuben hole has been filled.  Now what?

*The Cowboy has found the way to my heart, and it is through my dog and her happiness.  Also, pretending to like my food gives him big bonuses.  Any-way, for Valentines he made sure to purchase pressies for Mommy and Baby, so while I got wine and movies, the Baby got a toy.  A chicken toy.  That makes noises.  Like a real chicken.  REALLY LOUDLY.  There is nothing like standing naked and dripping in your bathroom at 5:30 AM, doing the best you can with your make-up, and listening to the Doppler effect of a chicken crowing from one end of your apartment to another accompanied with the noise the Baby makes while galloping (the thump-thump-THUMP of her feet and this weird grunting noise she makes when she takes a corner).  Truly endearing.  Especially to the neighbors, I'm sure.

*Edited*

I found someone to eat it!  The purchaser of the bloody annoying dog toy has admitted that this horror in my fridge is his favorite dressing!  I must now re-evaluate our friend-ship.  But not before I feed him the rest of it.  On a salad.  Accompanied with some sort of homey-type food. 

It is the end of winter and I am EATING everything and craving things with sides and gravies and things.  Everything I cook is veggie and low-fat, but still!  Spring can not come fast enough!  Outside, walking and running...be just the thing to take care of the hibernation weight I put on every November and keep on through April.  I cannot wait to get back to craving salads and small plates.

Very first driving experience:

My fathers truck at 15.  Came around a corner to fast and flipped us into a ditch.  Even though it turned out to be the fault of poor manufacturing (Honest!) I am forever surprised that not only did he continue to teach me to drive, but let me drive home after the car was removed from the ditch.  He took his life in his hands teaching me, and he is to this day not sure why.

Very first car:

Little white sports purchased for $4000.  I felt hot as hell in that car.  Drove it fast, drove it stupid.  No wrecks.  Slid around on the road for a bit in the winters, but all in all that car was a very good two years for driving.  Good car to own as well.  Shattered one window and had the brakes replaced.  Also got the lecture about "The time to replace your brakes is not when they stop making the car stop.  Try to do it before that point."  Oh.  Ok.  Sold Luna the Car to my little brother when I was done with it, and she promptly jettisoned most of her parts along the road.  She liked me more than him.

First very bad driving experiance:

Driving home from college in the boyfriend's truck (what is it with me and trucks?).  Snowy going down the mountains, driving nice and slow, when the boy decided to pick a fight.  I am not one to turn down a fight, especially after a long day of work and school followed by driving FOUR HOURS to his parents house starting at 1 AM.  Anger makes me go faster.  Not a good thing.  Spun the truck around a corner and sideways into a long line of oncoming traffic.  Missed all the cars somehow and wound up having one hell of a row in the snowbank we landed in. 

He didn't last very long after that.  Also appearance of very first driving charm:  small white rock with a spider on it.  I can't tell anyone why (vaporous reasoning in my own head being rather hard to explain) but I refuse to drive without it in the car.

Second car:

Claudette, the burgundy Rav4.   Very nice and reliable, her only issue was when it got to cold, all of her locks froze.  There is nothing like breaking into your very own vehicle at midnight in a dark alley outside of the hotel you work in to consider purchasing something else.  I lost count of how many times it was only the very back door that would ever open, forcing me to rock climb through wearing a very tiny skirt. 

I also spun her into traffic.  This time on a highway.  Cars all around, I was in the passing lane when I got caught by slush.  Spun completely around while still traveling in the same general direction and wound up facing north in a snow bank.   I don't know how I didn't hit any other cars, my eyes were sensibly closed at the time.  I went home and blubbed for about a day because, Bright Lady, that was close.

Had a whole 'nother boy in the car with me for that one.  He had the sense not to row with me until a week later, at least.

For that wreck, I had my Skinny Puppy CD in.  Given that the soothing sounds of Ogre seem to have saved me from certain doom, I give you three guesses what CD is in when the weather is bad.

Third car:

Cherry red Toyota Matrix with a red interior; Lucille.  That car was MADE for me.  Wonderful controls, it walked and talked all over the road baby.  That car took me all over New York and Canada with no issues at all.  And then it was time to go to Colorado and it was like Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

We almost wrecked in Ohio.

We VERY NEARLY ran out of gas in the middle of the toll road somewhere in Kansas.

I personally almost wet myself when we just about took out a Mercedes in Topeka.

And then we underestimated a stoned rabbit in Boulder.  Bits of poor Lucille are probably still in that intersection. 

Stoned rabbit was friends with Boy #...something.  Turned about to yell at them both for not giving me directions, instead doing their best Beavis and Butthead impersonations, and blew through a red signal.  Totaled my one true love and gave myself a concussion so bad I was in and out of consciousness for a week and a half.   What did the boy do?  Played Warcraft and ignored me.  Stoned rabbit?  He made fun of my driving ability from that point onward.

Primus was playing for that, and as such, is no longer available for in car listening.

Which brings us up to present day:

Little blue Kia, Caboose.  Caboose is the same shape as Lucille, a transparent band-aid on my horrible loss, but doesn't handle at all well.   Refuses to do most things unless I apply a lot of force and pressure, and bits randomly malfunction.  I have yet to wreck or even offer to wreck him however, and it is now his second Colorado winter.  With this being the first male car I own, I am also treating it differently.  Lots of encouraging words, offering pleasant things like oil changes if he gets through the snow and ice efficiently, things like that.

So, if you see a little blue car whose driver is muttering to her self and holding a small rock, and the car is positively vibrating from a techno-goth beat, please stay out of it's way.  And if you are dating the poor girl, for the love of anything holy, please offer to drive.

I hate, hate, hate meeting new people. 

I hate how easy it is for people to say "Hey, why don't we just pop off and hang out with these guys?" and not hear the unspoken "...and prove you are intelligent, sort of funny, and worthy of talking to?"

I would rather meet new people in a highly controlled, alcohol soaked environment where I can do my silent smile thing for the better part of an hour while they get progressively more and more liquor soaked so I have some sort of confidence that I can let a wee bit of my personality out and they will not:

A:  Give you THAT LOOK.  That one that screams "dear god, she is insane isn't she?"

or

B:  Poke and poke with questions.  I just met you, hell no I don't want to talk about me!  How about the weather?  The latest celebrity train-wreck?  Sports?  Hell, I'll talk about sports if it will get out of talking about me!

I hate meeting new people.  I hate crowds.  In fact, I kind of don't like going new places.  When I was younger I was a drug/alcohol fueled club kitten.  I can't even look at those places now I'm clean and sober-ish. 

My head is completely fucked.  Because of what, I don't know.  Nervous Nelly Syndrome?  Bad associations from my not intelligent at all youth?   Mildly closet-case agoraphobia? 

Maybe I should embrace the situation.  I'll just show up with vodka and a note.  "Please do not talk to me until you have finished at least half of this bottle.  Then, maybe, we can chat.  About the weather."

(Quickie back story: I celebrated my winter last Saturday.  Pagan and Proud, natch.)

Get off of work on Friday.  Be jubuliant!  You spent all day watching Family Guy with your cube-mate and comparing ideas about the length, breadth, and enjoyability of some of you clients' wedding tackle.  Decide the perfect thing to do would be to stop off at the shops to purchase groceries for your holiday as well as a dinner for the 25th.  You are going to be home anyway, since the office is closed.  Might as well cook something complicated!

Walk into the shops.  The horror.

Get home and hour and a half later with $30 worth of food.  Marvel that it took that long to accumulate $30 worth of food, food that has been fought for and won by you versus shrieking woman in fur coat with entire extended family crowding around her and THREE FULL shopping buggies.

Apologize to the dog.  Give dog treat.  Take outside and marvel at the lake effect gotten from locking a thirsty schipperke up in a house with a full bowl of water for 10 1/2 hours.  Escort dog around neighborhood for a half-hour while she sniffs and/or pees on everything that doesn't move away fast enough.  It is the least you can do to make up for being a BAD dog mommy.

Come inside.  Thaw nose.  Put the groceries away.  Trip over the dog.  Cook dinner (boring, rice and bean burrito.  Working on being veggie again.).  Trip over dog.  Wash dishes.  Trip over dog. 

Explain to OFFENDED animal that the middle of the kitchen is not the place to nap.  Marvel that those six pounds get in the way SO DAMN OFTEN.

Play Warcraft.  Follow friend around helping him level. 

Saturday!

Wake up with GOOD INTENTIONS.  You need to do laundry.  You need to vacuum.  You need to do the voodoo that you do for the holiday.

Make coffee, turn on video game. 

Ah hell, it is three in the afternoon. 

Look at what you bought for dinner.  Look at it some more.  You don't really want to cook it today, do you?  It is still frozen and everything.  You would have to thaw and then it would be late and...hey!  Look!  Shiny!

Decide to save it for Tuesday.  You will be bored on Tuesday.  The Gods don't care what you eat.

Nutritious dinner of pop corn and cheese.  Feast just like the ancestors would have had...had they not given a damn.

Sundown.  Light candles.  Do the voodoo that you do.  Reflect on the year you have had.  Marvel at the sheer magnificence of how badly it sucked.  Try to stop yourself from saying it can only get better.

It can only get better.

Tell the dog "It HAS to get better."

Resolve to make it better.  You are your destiny after all.  You hate it when things happen TO you.  Make things happen FOR you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Happy Holiday, whatever the celebration.

A conversation with a girl friend has me thinking on mental stability.  How it goes away, how we get it back, and how we deal with it in the mean-time.

I lost mine a long time ago.  I used personal destruction as a band-aid, how common-high-school-goth of me. 

Listening to her speak about her issues, dealing with my recent betrayal (no matter what the boy says, that is what it was.  I put my heart and trust in his hands, told him my secrets and demons, and he rewards me by revealing himself as tormentor most foul.) has brought me back there.  Back where I want the drugs that chase the demons, drugs that are most certainly not given out by qualified doctors.  Back to where the alcohol drowns and pain clears the mind.

It is very hard to not give in.

It is hard to remember I am not the girl I was.

Hard to be the woman I want to be.

I have friends, where in that place before, I did not.  That helps; I just hope it is enough.  Hope they can give me the strength to chase the demons by myself.  Strength to not fall quite as far as I fell before.  I hope I do not burden them with my need. 

In a perfect world they do not know my need at all. 

And I hope I can find that stable place myself.  To help my friend and my heart's sister.  To help a woman whose desperation leaks from her whether she knows it or not.