MFA Mama

GrouponFAIL

Figure One: No. I just...no, no, NO. I can't even (click to enbiggen).

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!

plantorexia

*   I love my GP, y'all. Yesterday I started to panic about going into the weekend with my lungs sucking as badly as they have been (yeah, I haven't said much on here but...it's gotten bad, like "wake up in the middle of the night to use the nebulizer" bad, and asthma is an asshole, GAWD), and called to see if she or any of her partners could see me. They could not, but she had the front desk call me back and read me a note from her saying that if I was willing to come in it MUST be bad, she was leaving me a sample of Symbicort at the front desk, and we both knew that if that and albuterol nebs weren't helping then I needed the ER. LOVE. HER.

*   Yesterday I was able to do my run without having an asthma attack, which was a major victory.

*   After my run yesterday afternoon I planted ten feet of beets and ten feet of turnips. Whoo, root vegetables! Also a bed of beans.

*   Today? Oh my lands, y'all, today I planted fifty-three strawberry plants and many borage seeds before breakfast, then dug up a row, dug and hauled two loads of compost, planted my fertilized row with onions and bush beans, dug two wheelbarrows full of crabgrass from the front walk and garden, planted leeks, fennel, two kinds of shallots, horseradish, moonvines, and a triamble squash seedling, and my lungs finally let me know that they were DONE but holy cow I am pleased with the day!

*   There's also this:

Figure One: Tonight Hotter and I are grilling a couple of porterhouses and I am having some hard cider, and I am not going to feel even a LITTLE bit bad about that!

*   Speaking of weight and calories and things, MyFitnessPal is A-MA-ZING (you can SCAN BARCODES OF FOODS to enter them!), I am updating the weight ticker again, and I think the reason it's moving so slowly is that I'm building muscle like crazy as I lose fat, so that's all good!

*   Funny story: I am using kelp meal as fertilizer for the first time this year, because I have heard wonderful things about it. It has a tendency to make the yard smell like a fishmarket though, especially when I water things I've used it on. Hotter and I were standing outside on the porch and I remarked that the kelp meal sure was stinky in the manner of yucko rotten fish and he said "OH THANK GOD, I THOUGHT...well, you're really working up a sweat and...I didn't realize the kelp stuff...well. You just saved us a VERY awkward conversation, the end." So I punched him in the face.

*   How are all of YOU?

DRAW ALL THE THINGS

   If anyone needs me for the next week, I'm MFAMama on Draw Something.

 

P.S. It's about all my brain is or will be fit for, seeing as how Isis shook, whimpered, and twitched all night last night as the anesthesia wore off, and then I went in early today to make up for leaving early yesterday, and now Isis seems determined to whine, whimper, and grovel all night tonight because there is a cone on her head. Yes, I know YOUR dog adapted just fine to the cone. Want to trade?*

*  That's right. She is being SUCH a pain in the ass about the cone currently, what with the trying to shake/lick/scrape/paw it off and the whining that it only took us twenty-four hours to go from "DA POOR BAYYYBEE" to "is she better enough to kick yet?" SPOILED DOG DOES NOT LIKE THE CONE OF SHAME.

my new hero

   As y'all may have noticed, I sometimes have a little bit of a pottymouth. This past weekend, though, I discovered a profane turn of phrase that rather set me on my ear. Today I used it on k in g-chat and she exclaimed "GOODNESS! That one made me need my smelling salts!" So don't play this if you are prone to the vapors (or at work or around children, either):

Video One: This is what Hotter and I now say when an unexpected bill arrives in the mail or the MFA Minivan starts making a new and ominous sound. This guy has some FEELINGS!

the one where I try to focus on good and hilarious things

*   I think I am finally caught up enough on my sleep to be human. I spent all of yesterday On The Verge, and it wasn't so good. I seriously almost cried because Hotter said our beekeeping instructor's hives looked stupid painted the way they are and I had been thinking I wanted to do ours the same way. And also when I had a hard time finding the panko crumbs that I knew we had SOMEwhere, and...yeah, it was like THAT. I blame sleep deprivation, because this morning I am fine.

*   Teabonics in general, but particularly this:

Figure One: Oh, America.

*   Last night, I made this for dinner and it was DELICIOUS. I love the way Zany writes recipes. She is one of my very favorite people in blogland.

*   The package that got lost in the mail related to Fairy Sweatshop Job finally reached Fairy Sweatshop Boss (after traveling all the hell over the eastern seaboard--three cheers for delivery confirmation, or maybe not since I was tearing my hair out as my hard work got thoroughly abused by the USPS), and I am not fired from that job or anything. I HAD kind of put FSJ on the back burner of my brain, and am now more hopeful about my ability to raise the money for Hotter's dental work.

*   This is pretty awesome.

*   Today I am repotting my seedlings and planting some new ones, and playing in the dirt always puts me in a better frame of mind, so I'm going to go and get cracking on that.

*   How are all of YOU? What is good and/or hilarious in your life today? I really do want to know.

for sale: two kidneys, as is

   You are bidding on two forty-two-year-old kidneys belonging to my husband.* They come from a smoke-free home although we do have pets. Must go ASAP as previous owner needs dental work amounting to greater than the bluebook value of my minivan. Thanks for looking!

 

* Yes, both of his kidneys. You can't have the donor one though. All sales final!

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.

an administrative note for those of you with mobile devices

   My dear friend Aurelia, who often reads from her Blackberry, pointed out that MFA Mama was not very easy to read that way. Something about the text column getting really narrow? I don't know, if she'd just get an iPhone she wouldn't have that problem, because along with every OTHER way they're superior to Blackberries* they're MUCH EASIER to browse the web with, but not everyone is a) rich** and b) discerning enough to have an iPhone and I like to include everyone whenever possible.

   Know who doesn't always think that way? TYPEPAD. It turns out there's no easy way to set your Typepad blog to display in mobile format when viewed from a mobile device, although you CAN accomplish that by adding /.m to any Typepad URL. Entering URLs is a pain in the butt on Blackberries too though, not to mention that /.m is hard to remember, so I've put up a link at the wayyyy top of the right sidebar where you can click to view MFA Mama in mobile format. I hope that makes it easier on those of y'all who like to read from your mobile devices of ALL kinds! xox

 

 

*   I'm not sneering at anyone who is without an iPhone either by misguided choice or out of fiscal necessity, y'all, I promise. That's mostly just smacktalk for Aurelia's benefit, because she's Team Blackberry and I'm Team iPhone :)
**   Yes, I know, I have an iPhone and am far from rich, as someone has already pointed out in the comments. So, you know, replace "rich" with "impulsive" if you like, or whatever. 

9-5

   Okay, technically 7-4, but that makes for a less catchy title.

   Or actually 8-4 today, because GUESS WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND SLEPT THROUGH THE ALARM THE FIRST DAY OF HER NEW! FANCY! JOB!? THIS ASSHOLE RIGHT HERE.

   Sorry. That needed the caps-lock outrage. Because OMFG whyyyyy? I also made sure to get the day off to an excellent start by skipping breakfast, wearing really tall shoes to go with my achy legs (I'm still hurting from the Run Of Suck when I was refusing to admit I was sick), and spritzing myself on the way out the door with perfume I'm allergic to. In my defense I had no idea I'd developed an allergy to my favorite perfume of over a decade; I guess that's just what you get when you don't wear perfume very often?

   Despite all of my self-sabotage, today was excellent. I arrived to a free employee breakfast being served right as I walked in the door, I continue to be VERY impressed with PseudoCorp's committment to sustainability on all levels of operations, and I really like my coworkers. They seem pretty impressed with my brainstorming/problem-solving abilities, too:

Co-worker #1: Hey MFA Mama, could you call the maintenance guy on duty to lift this giant suitcase full of books over the hallway to the carpet on the other side for me, please? If I drag it I'm afraid it'll scratch the hallway floor and The Boss will kill me.

Co-worker #2: He's REALLY busy. He says he's gonna throw something at the next person to ask him to do ANYTHING. Have fun with that!

MFA Mama: How about you just drag it REALLY FAST and if anybody asks we'll all say we have NO idea who did it?

Co-worker #2: MUCH better plan!

Co-worker #1: Ummmyeah except there's probably a camera that would capture my face.

Co-worker #2: Riiiight. Crap.

MFA Mama: You both give up too easily. Here's what you do, Co-worker #1, for occasions such as this. You carry a ketchup packet on your person at all times, and if you absolutely MUST drag something heavy across a freshly-polished floor on camera you squirt a little behind each ear and under your chin, make sure the camera gets a GOOD look, and then you call in and you have to sound really BEAT UP and you tell The Boss a masked assailant hit you over the head and STOLE YOUR FACE like in The Silence of The Lambs, and because he has that sense of context he'll believe you. But then you have to disappear for a few weeks, and you can pretty much only use this once.

Co-worker #1: Wow. I... *wanders off looking dazed*

Co-worker #2: You? Are brilliant. I bet she's going to the cafeteria to get a ketchup packet.