MFA Mama

the one where I turn into no one from my family tree, apparently

   I was going to start this post out by saying that I've turned into my own grandfather, hobbling around nursing my bad back and carping at the kids that if I had a nickel for every time they opened the dadblamed door I could use that money to pay the power bill...except then I remembered that when my grandfather's back was acting up that was a euphemism for HEMMORHOIDS. I briefly considered who else in my family I might currently resemble...my father, for all that he has ninety-nine problems (of which a solid half-a-dozen involve bitches), never had a bad back. And while The Narcissist frequently SAID she had a bad back, that was usually a euphemism for GOT NEW TITS AGAIN and she never cared about the power bill anyway and I DON'T KNOW, OKAY, I AM LIMPING AROUND LIKE SOME WHOLLY NEW INDIVIDUAL RISEN FROM THE GODDAMN SEAFOAM, OR MAYBE AN AMALGAM MY BRAIN COBBLED TOGETHER FROM STOCK CHARACTERS ON NICK AT NITE.

   My back hurts and my kids will. not. stop. going. in. and. out. of. the. front. door. They even invite their FRIENDS to come over here and go in and out.

   But I actually came on here to tell y'all about a genius new time-saver I came up with for eating backyard salad.* All you need is failing vision, a devil-may-care attitude, and a peppermill. Ready? OF COURSE YOU ARE!

1. Go cut some salad.

2. Toss any obviously non-lettuce leaves, yellowed ones, and leaves with slugs attached into the compost heap. 

3. Rinse the salad.

4. Chop other things into the salad.

5. Make your dressing, and before you apply to your salad, coarse-grind some pepper in (rainbow peppercorns are the best for this).

6. If you see a speck in your salad? Just tell yourself it's pepper and keep eating.

   Trust me, y'all, this is MUCH faster than going through it a leaf at a time. 

   Now, what do I win?

 

*   Which, shockingly enough, IS NOT A EUPHEMISM FOR ANYTHING, GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER. Seriously, GAWD!

mfa mama and the very confusing sidebar ad

* Major deadline tomorrow.

* Also I am working back-to-back full days at PseudoCorp and Weekend Warrior Job tomorrow (the hell, WWJ? On a Tuesday?), which involves things like getting up before five and going to bed after midnight THE NEXT DAY.

* Plus I worked a super-long day today at PseudoCorp, because see first bullet.

* Then I came home and ate a delicious dinner and fired up the facespace and saw this:

Figure One: I blew it way up and took a screenshot; this was a sidebar ad. I do not understand what is supposed to be going on in this picture. The giant on the far left looks like a white giant wearing black pants and a red...wrap? Is he mocking the Masai tribesman to his left? What is up with the dudes (little people?) in the foreground? The one on the far right...what is a redneck (I'm guessing, since it's a white guy with a mullet) doing in Africa? Do the wee little legs between the two giants belong to children? WHY IS ONE OF THE CHILDREN MISSING A LEG? Also, what does any of this have to do with earning one's MBA on the weekends? I...have lots of questions about this.

* I'm tired and confused; I think I'll go to bed. How are all of YOU?

two things I forgot to tell you:

1. When Big Child pointed out "tits" on the WWF board he pronounced it "TIGHTS." Which means he only knows it from reading it somewhere, and I am calling that a win (plus also hilarious).

2. The Amazing Lip Balm giveaway will end Friday, 2/17 whenever I get home from work and fire up the computer. GET TO ENTERING!

BAKE. ALL. THE THINGS!

   Dang it, people, I really REALLY wish I could show you pictures of The Bakening, 2011 (now in progress). REALLY. But some of the recipients of Type II Diabetes cookiemail read this here website.

   This is why you don't mix blog-world and real-life, people. Well, that and what happened in the hot tub of the Rich Fancy Trophy Wife house where I used to live by the light of a menorah one time in like, 2007 (neither my ex-husband nor Hotter was involved).

   Aaaaanyway, back to tie-dying my hands with gel-based food coloring crafting homemade gifts for those I hold dear while channeling Lil Jon humming holiday songs.

inarticulate grunt

*   I'm still not particularly interesting, between being at work more than I am at home and being queasy/heartburn-y at all times from the GOT-DAMN clindamycin and being achy and swollen and blahhh from the autoimmune "we can't be arsed to fight off infections but here is what we'll do as a response INSTEAD" bullshit my body does in the wake of anything bacterial. SO lame, that.

*   That said, I am feeling much better than I was last time I posted. I did in fact feel like utter crap on a cracker last night at the banquet, but as it was another Republican Party shindig (the second I've worked for Temp Agency #2 in the past month!) I didn't waste any time feeling guilty about going to work sick, and it was so incredibly fast-paced that I didn't have time to feel overly sorry for myself (we had a NAPKIN EMERGENCY in that they were folded in thirds and artfully draped over the edge of the table at each place-setting and then with only an hour until guests started to arrive management decided they all needed to look like this instead, which is problematic when you've got 1,200 napkins to refold, place and fluff and you also still need to drop cream-pitchers, salad-dressing boats, salads, desserts, waters, and iced teas at each of 120 tables and yes, believe it or not the twenty of us did somehow get it all done with the help of some of the kitchen staff) (after that there were salad plates to clear, entrees to serve, coffee to fetch, and the room to break down afterward). Between being crazy-busy and a kind co-worker's suggestion to keep sucking bits of ice "to bring down yo culluh en hep yo throat" I got through it rather more easily than I would have predicted.

*   The virus is responding well to Dr. Anon and dulcian's advice in the comments section to drink, drink, and DRINK SOME MORE. I was trotting back and forth to the bathroom ALL DAY LONG at my six-day-a-week job today, but that's okay because there was NOTHING to do. Seriously, Sundays are dead there; on-site middle management let us leave an hour and a half early and in the nine hours and forty-five minutes I was on the clock (I take a forty-five minute lunch) I read one and a half books on The Precious with a Kindle app, played Words With Friends, shopped online, ate lots of snacks...and trotted back and forth to the bathroom a lot. So it's all good.

*   I'm even starting to deflate some, bloat-wise, which is a relief because a) I was on the verge of needing to bust out the maternity yoga pants I still have for such occasions, which is always particularly soul-crushing but particularly since my last baby is now in elementary school and I don't even have a UTERUS anymore and b) I was worried my body might just be a TOTAL asshole and hold onto the extra fluids I'm forcing down to flush out the virus. As the finger is now 95% improved in size and color I think the bacteria triggering that whole hot mess are mostly (if not completely) dead at this point, and hopefully you won't be able to see each stitch of the socks I wore in bas relief when I take them off for the day by the middle of this coming week. 

*   I seriously want to marry the iPhone and have its' user-friendly little babies, especially since Twitter told me how to disable autocorrect (on an iPhone 4 it's settings>general>keyboard>autocorrection - YOU'RE WELCOME!). LOVE The Precious. CAPS-LOCK LOVE. Today at one point I was simultaneously listening to streaming radio on Pandora through my earbuds, reading a book on Kindle, playing twenty games of Words With Friends and telling Twitter all about it and I realized that the iPhone is basically Jobs' gift to ADD. I really don't ever want to not have an iPhone again. MFA Mama + iPhone = true love 4ever.

*   How are all of YOU?

he's probably in the other room e-mailing the Dalai Lama to let him know he did his best

Hotter:  What are you doing?
MFA Mama: Sorting my Twitter-people into lists.
Hotter: Are you THAT BORED?
MFA Mama: Eh, it just needed to be done.
Hotter: Why?
MFA Mama: Twitter was getting too crowded since I started entering lots of contests. I was missing tweets from people I cared about and getting too many freaking commercials and coupon offers.
Hotter: So unfollow the spammers.
MFA Mama: I don't have a spreadsheet for end-of-contest dates to tell me when I can stop following them. Plus then there's the problem of people I really SUPER care about getting lost among other people I don't want to follow. So I made a list called "top dogs" to put them in if I only have a minute to check up on my peeps.
Hotter: How many lists do you have?
MFA Mama: Five. Funny is for the ones I want to see. Contests is for ones I'm just following for contests. Top dogs I already explained. Meh is for people who everyone follows so I followed them and then they followed me and now I don't want to offend them by unfollowing, and people who lurve me but I'm just not that into them and I don't want to HURT them by unfollowing. Also people who are kind of depressing who I might not be up to reading just any time. WTF is for people I don't really recognize by their profile or remember why I followed them, but usually I have a reason so I put them in there.
Hotter: Oh. That seems...complicated.
MFA Mama: Yeah like right now? The Dalai Lama.
Hotter: THE DALAI LAMA IS ON TWITTER?
MFA Mama: Yep. It's kind of a tough call, because--
Hotter: That can't really be him.
MFA Mama: It's a verified account.
Hotter: I didn't think they had electricity!
MFA Mama: Well, he at least has a cell phone, because he's on Twitter.
Hotter: AND HE TWEETS IN ENGLISH?
MFA Mama: Yep. He's the Dalai Lama, of course he knows English.
Hotter: I AM DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE.
MFA Mama: If it's any consolation he tweets really profound and thought-provoking stuff. He gets a TON of retweets. Aaaanyway. This is tough, because I like him a lot, but he's just not FUNNY. Sorry Your Holiness, you're going in Meh.
Hotter: YOU CAN'T PUT THE DALAI LAMA IN MEH!
MFA Mama: Dude, I'm not always up for the Dalai Lama. I don't think he's gonna hold it against me. Besides, I'll still read him, just not when I'm feeling shallow.
Hotter:  stomps off  

meme a la H

   Hello, lovelies! I didn't forget y'all, I just had a hella long day yesterday starting with waking the whole family at oh-god-hundred and taking them en masse to Transplant Clinic at Local Teaching Hospital (which on the whole? I'm getting better about that; I no longer want to rip my skin off and run screaming down the street to escape that venerable institution and actually credit working there quite a bit with helping to break me of my horror of the place) (that said, it is still Not My Favorite Place) and ending with working past midnight at the Top Secret Job of Legally-Binding Confidentiality And Nondisclosure.

   Also, I still can't tell you about The Greatness, although some of the guesses are amusing the HELL out of me, nor can I sleep. So instead, upon noticing that the wonderful May's husband H wrote on her blog and did a meme (but, bless his cotton socks, forgot to tag anyone) I decided I'd try and encourage him by tagging mySELF. I've done some variation of this one before, I think, but it's fun so here it goes again (I don't like to tag people in case they don't want to be tagged, so if you WANT to do this, then pretend I tagged YOU):

You.
Can.
Only.
Type.
One.
Word.

No.
Explanations.

Not as easy as you might think…

yourself: multifaceted
your boyfriend/girlfriend (husband, whatever): loving
your hair: long
your mother/stepmother: sinister
your dog: two
your favorite item: laptop
your dream last night: terrifying
your favorite drink: margarita
your dream car: hybrid
the room you are in: bedroom
your fear: loneliness
what you want to be in ten years: comfortable
who you hung out with last night: Isis
what you're not: conformist
muffin: top
one of your wish list items: home
time: ungodly
the last thing you did: snacked
what you are wearing: jammies
your favorite weather: Fall
your favorite book: many
the last thing you ate: cheddar
your life: full
your mood: sleepy
your best friend/s: husband
what are you thinking about right now: classified
your car: decrepit
what are you doing at the moment: blogging
your summer: austere
your relationship status: enviable
what is on your tv: huh?
what is the weather like: bipolar
when is the last time you laughed: always

a funny, courtesy of Hotter

   A friend called something to my attention on the Twitter the other day that culminated in my sharing this with Hotter:

Figure One: Click picture to view source article. 

   His reaction? "That's HORRIBLE! They need to get those poor bears some merkins!"

Figure Two: Scary Bear says "see you in your nightmares!"

Friday is fired

   So I'm not thrilled with the Anthem situation, but honestly I probably agreed to let them do all of that crap and more when I signed up for the policy and it's not worth raising any real hell about. Right now I'm just kind of whipped. Beat-down. DONE. Like remember how I said I was a little short but could fix the Anthem situation after I get my next unemployment disbursement? Yeah, well, that was when I thought all of my online orders from the week previous had already hit the bank account. Turns out the drugstore.com one (for stuff like plastic wrap and toilet paper and snack bags, nothing frivolous) hadn't, and gahhhh. The unemployment disbursement AFTER the next one won't hit my account in time to fix Anthem, and MAYBE the four-hour paid gig I have tomorrow night will (barely) solve things, except I have to put some gas in the MFA Minivan to get there and back, which might make the difference between "covering it and having nothing to spare for the next two weeks" and "geez, another three bucks would have done it, DAMN it," and I AM SO SICK OF THE CONSTANT SHELL-GAME. I'm sick of eating the pantry. I'm sick of covering my mouth when I laugh in public so people won't see the missing front tooth. I'm sick of telling Hotter and the kids no every time they want something, and second-guessing every yes, and feeling like relaxing in any little way is going to upset the apple cart (and being right about that).

   A lot of my frustration stems from the fact that this is largely my own damn fault. I didn't open mail from Anthem because I thought it was the usual "pay up, loser!" that I get every month for paying during the grace period instead of "on time." I'm the loser who can't manage to support her family with a frigging Master's degree. I'm the one who married poorly the first time around and had the three kids with the jerk who doesn't pay enough child support, and the one who doesn't make treating her ADD a priority thereby increasing the FAIL-factor exponentially, and the one who didn't live up to her potential; I'm the one who could teach a Master's-level course in Shooting Yourself In The Foot. I'm doing all of the right things that I can for right now. I'm applying for every job within reasonable driving distance that I'm even remotely qualified to perform. I'm eating, sleeping, and exercising as I'm able, and after the first of the month I'll even call my shrink and make an appointment to get back on the ADD meds. I'm still failing, HARD, but I'm trying to fail better.

   Somebody tell me a funny? I could use a laugh.

shriek of outrage

   Noisy ads. ON MY BLOG. 

   My deepest apologies, until such time as I figure out how to kill it with fire.

Figure One: MFA Mama wrestling with the control panels of both Typepad and Adbrite from Hotter's desktop. Because that's how much she loves you!