Maybe, but maybe not either

So I have this friend, and she told me today that if I just found a few craft fairs in the area, and sold my craft things there, then I could take time for myself and not feel guilty for it because it would be for work.  Now, I don't consider myself to be "crafty".  I can't make a wreath out of coffee filters and toilet paper tubes.  I can't decoupage a dresser to look like Dr Who's police box. I'm not Martha Stewart.  But I do sew, and I crochet, and I like doing it and often end up with a ton of crap and nothing to do with it.  Maybe I could sell it.  But I don't want to be the person who buys booth space for $20, brings in a bunch of stuff, and then sells only one or two pieces and makes, after the cost of materials, only half the cost of the booth.  But if I were going to make things, I do have ideas in my head.  I want to make something based vaguely on the ugly fringe bracelet on Project Accessory.  And I think I could turn my back pockets into little ID and phone pouches and maybe rig up some way for them to hook to belt hoops.  I think if I had the materials and the time, I could make decent stuff.  But I'm not sure if people would pay money for any of it.  I do purses pretty well

This year Ryan is very interested in Legos.  We got her a couple Lego things for Christmas, a Harry Potter kit and then just a big box of like 1500 pieces, but I wanted her tree ornament to be Lego too.  The problem is, if you start to look around, all the Lego ornaments kind of suck.  Either they're kits to make a Santa or a tree out of legos, or you can make a ball ornament out of legos, but those would be too heavy, and probably fall apart in storage.  So I made my own, which she seemed very pleased with.  First I found someone on ebay selling the 1x1 bricks in bags of 500 and ordered them in orange, because it was either that or blue.  Then I bought 2 (in case I screwed up one) clear plastic ball ornaments at Michael's. Then I sat down with my hot glue gun.  I did learn that it's hard to keep the line straight when freehand gluing legos to an orb, and also that the melting point of hot glue is very close to the melting point of clear plastic ornaments, so if you push them or move them too much you're likely to push a corner right through to the inside of the ball.  But in the end, I think I came up with something good, and not too heavy either.  I give you, Ryan's 2011 Xmas ornament!  I don't know why the color came out so yellowy. It's more true in the picture where I'm holding it.

Basically all I wanted was a porcupine ball made out of legos, and quite frankly I was shocked that there wasn't one you could just buy somewhere, but I think it turned out okay.

Xnax vs pot, the grudge match

I have some hippie friends.  I don't know, maybe hippy's the wrong word.  I have some patchoulli granola friends.  Some of them smoke pot, some don't, and one in particular who does smoke pot isn't hippy or granola at all and is in fact a total yuppy.  I, however, am anti-marijuana.  I don't like it, don't want to do it, don't want to be around people while they do it, don't want to smell it, and sure as Hell don't want it around my kids.  And I take Xanax almost daily, for the same reason most people smoke pot.*
It has been pointed out to me, that some people view this as a hypocrisy.  I've had the word "pharmaceutical" spit at me with a hatred I'd never really heard before.  As in, "Oh, so you'd rather take Xanax than smoke pot. Pot is natural and Xanax is a pharmaceutical, yet you trust it more."   Yep.  Arsenic is natural, too, and I don't want that either.   But for what it's worth, I do happen to trust medications that have been subjected to rigorous testing and double blind peer reviewed studies more than some potted plant from Joe Bob's double wide.  And I really trust that if I'm pulled over and the cops find a pill bottle with my name on it in my purse that it will adversely affect my family and me far less than if they found a baggie of dope.  And of course, I can swallow a pill while holding my son without him getting any sort of intoxication from it, Xanax is much less harsh on my lungs, and it won't cost me a job should I be spot-tested.  But also, I know a lot of people who live their lives like characters from Dazed And Confused, and they don't act that way from Xanax.  They have no motivation, no ambition, and are perfectly happy to just sit on the couch playing video games and eating Fritos all day.  These are people in their 30s and 40s, people with jobs and families, just floating through life contributing nothing and getting high.  Not that I'm the most productive member of society, and not that Xanax doesn't have its fair share of addicts, but I've known more potheads than I have Xanax addicts so I'll take my chances with my legally prescribed pharmaceutical.  And before anyone tries to tell me that marijuana isn't addictive, I'm going to step up and say that I think it is.  I think it's like cigarettes in that for a long time people insisted they weren't addictive either, and like alcohol in that some folks, the majority of folks, can indulge recreationally and be fine but some just get hooked and need it every day to get by.  Yes I think pot is addictive, and yes I think it's worse than Xanax, and yes I can consider myself to be a far-left liberal and still be anti-pot.  I'm anti-ketchup too, and it doesn't affect my politics.  I just don't try to legislate around my own personal preferences.



*I'm not counting cancer patients or AIDS patients or whatever, just people who get high to relax or unwind when they're wound too tightly.

I have the most boring case of multiple personality ever

Deep down I want to be  Sikowitz from VicTorious. Or Spencer from iCarly. Or Phoebe from Friends.  Or  that weird guy from Taxi who became Doc Brown in Back To The Future.  I want to be the funny one who sees things differently from everyone else, a creative person, artistic.  But there is a very, very large portion of my reality that is Bev from Roseanne, and maybe on a good day, when I'm particularly funny, Sophia from Golden Girls.  I'm a fuddy duddy who dreams of being a freak.  It's an inner conflict I fight all the time.  I always see cute little floral wallets and think, "I should buy that to replace my old worn out wallet."  But my old wallet is punk, with nautical stars and crowns and handcuffs all over it.  My mid-thirties is like a second puberty, in reverse, and I have to find myself all over again.  It kinda sucks, in a way.

I feel so bubonic

Ryan was sick on Wednesday with some 24 hour thing, and better by Thursday. Danny puked all over his bed last night and will be better tomorrow. Now I'm having issues too.  So if anyone out there ever sees pictures from my Xmas and wonders why I'm wearing a plague mask- that's why.  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to write plague mask on one all of Tom's paint-fume masks while he isn't looking.

Even though I aced the interview...

I wasn't promoted. It was a pharmaceutical error. I traded in my pentagons and got my ovals back. No pay-raise is forthcoming.  And, despite having already taken 3 or 4 of the pentagon pills, I still received the full prescription of correct non-XR pills. Because I am that awesome! Yay for free xanax.

Mommy number 2

ME: Danny, what are you eating? Oh, just a crayon? Well, bon appetite.
TOMMY: No. Mommy, Danny not eat crayon. It not nummy, Mommy. It not food.

He's a much better mother than I am sometimes.

Happy Hanukkah!

Tonight, for the fist day of Hanukkah, I made latkes.  Ryan told me she looks forward to this all year, which made me all warm & fuzzy.  Since latkes do not a meal make, I made mac and cheese too but I made it from scratch, with roux and grated cheddar, just to try a new recipe.  Still a little grainy but so yummy!  Even Tom ate latkes and he's always told me he didn't care for them.  Tommy of course at nothing and yelled "I want circle crackers!" at the top of his lungs because he's decided to live off of Ritz crackers for the rest of his life.  He got no circle crackers, poor kid.
I love when I actually cook something people like.  It's so rare.

So it's like a promotion, right?

I refilled my Xanax yesterday and Tom ran up to the pharmacy to pick them up for me. My pills have always been little ovals scored down the middle for easy breaking should I only need half but this time they were pentagons with no such score. In fact, they bubble out in the middle which would make breaking them impossible without a pill splitter.  So I googled and found out that I now have extended release Xanax instead of regular Xanax, but in the same dosage. But I don't know why my prescription got changed.  I am choosing to take it as a good sign, as a progression. I've been bumped up, like a promotion at a job. I expect a raise in pay to come any day now.

Merry Christmas, with Rum!

I have, on my mother's side, eight first cousins. Of those eight, two are genuinely nice to me.  Last year I mentioned on facebook my (then) newfound love of rum balls and one of my genuinely nice cousins posted a quick "Feel free to bring me by a batch. lol"  And so I did. This year I am making him some as well.  The thing is his sister, the second genuinely nice cousin, is a recovering alcoholic so she can't have any. In fact, I don't know if there will be any alcohol at all at my extended family's Christmas festivities this year and I don't want to be responsible for some showing up. (I never attend the festivities because of the 1-4 ratio of genuinely nice to me people there so I have no idea what's there or not.)  So now I have to smuggle rum balls to my cousin.  This has become so much more complicated than I thought it would be. 

Plus she's a coke head, which totally kills the appetite anyway.

Kate Moss once said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. But that bitch never tasted my mom's fudge, which I have recreated. I still swear it's a slightly different shade of brown, but it tastes the same. Yay for mommy fudge!

My husband's ass is a WMD!

My husband ate chilli today. He likes it; I hate it, but he did agree to take his Beano before eating it. Apparently his colon saw the Beano as a challenge, a challenge it won. My house not sounds like a frog-squashin and smells like somebody backed over the gas meter. (I know because I've done that before. You get to call 911. Weeeeeee!)  I think Tom is getting more Beano in his Xmas stocking this year, and maybe some Gas-X too.  Does Gas-X stop the farts? Something needs to stop them. We can't live like this! We'll all need respirator masks!

It's my birthright not to screw this up.

My mother makes fudge every Xmas. My whole life she's been trying to show me how so that when she's gone someone can carry on the tradition, but I never paid attention. Tomorrow I am going to try my hand at fudge, because chemo has made her too tired to do it.  I'll need to borrow her heavy pan, and maybe the plastic cake pans she uses for it to cool in.  Wish me luck, because I heard that if you screw it up you get grainy fudge that never sets up.

I'm not rich, so time passes for me

I think if I had enough money, I might try to stop aging. If I could afford botox and face lifts and eyelid surgeires, I might do it. It would be a battle I could fight. But I'm not a Kardashian, or a Real Housewife of some rich people city, so I don't.  I just hope my hair grows out soon. These orange tips are embarrassing!

Phrases/words that drive us nuts.

Everyone has them, so add yours in the comments.  Please.

1. Anywho.
2. Anyways
3. Irregardless
4. water over the bridge (my mom says this all the time, and the phrase is water under the bridge. Water over the bridge would actually wash out the bridge, making my point that whatever we're talking about was a big deal. Bridge collapse isn't a good metaphor for overreaction, Mom.)
5. It is what it is. Um, what else would it be?
6. Ima, to mean I'm going to. As in, "Ima let you talk in a minute."
7. Innit, to mean isn't it. As in, "It's nice outside, innit."
8. Shabby chic. It's like trashy classy; it's oxymoronic!
9. African American, when speaking about people who aren't, in fact, American at all.  For instance, black people who live in Europe aren't generally African American.  Haitians aren't African American. Black people in Africa aren't African American.  Unless they're tourists, from America.
10. Up Chuck, for obvious reasons.
11. Grammar nazi.  Have we really forgotten the horrors of the holocaust so much that knowing the difference between saw and seen is up there with furniture made from human skin?
12. Breastfeeding nazi. Hmmm, one wants babies to get full nutrition, the other skeet-shoots them. Where's the similarity, there?

I just can't keep track anymore!

I try to be a good liberal.  I care about the environment, and human rights, and the little people.  I don't use slurs, I'm politically correct (although I refuse to give the janitor an honorary degree in engineering just because he likes the title "maintenance engineer" better than "janitor"), and I really do want to do my part and help throw my weight behind worthy causes.  But there are so many of them! I get it, I get it; Walmart is evil.  And then so is Amazon for the same reason; they both kill small businesses for sport.  And Target gives large chunks of its profits to horribly anti-gay political campaigns.  And I'm not supposed to drink Coors because they used to fire people for being gay.  And farm fish are bad for fishermen and the fishermen business, and corporate farms are bad for animals and independent farmers, and ADM pushed high fructose corn syrup on us all so we should boycott them, but they make the corn meal for the dog food so what do I feed my dog?  I could pick the exponentially more expensive meat-based food but I think the meat in that is from corporate farms and even if it's not, is it grass fed or corn fed because apparently grass is better for cows (although have you seen a grass-fed cow? They're scrawny!) and if it is corn-fed is it corn from ADM?
And I'm sorry if I shop at Walmart, but they've screwed the economy to the point where frankly, I can only afford to shop at Walmart.  Or at least, "living within my means", which I try to do, means a far different thing if I never shop at Walmart. Especially since Target isn't an option.  At least I can keep buying my horrible diabetes-inducing dog food at Farm & Fleet, right?

I'm too jaded, I guess

This week's Postsecret has a couple postcards about people feeling horrible about not being able to afford gifts for their kids, and people secretly giving money to people who can't afford gifts for their kids, and I never realized until today just how cynical I am.  I used to have a friend, let's call her Mildred for privacy, who could never afford gifts for her kids.  She worked factory and retail jobs but the sitter took a chunk, and car insurance took a chunk, and rent and bills. But, and here's the thing I always think of when I hear about the poor (and I don't like that this is what my first thought is), she smoked the most expensive brand of cigarettes, and she went to the tanning parlor, and had her hair cut every 5 weeks, and colored, and she always had make up (and make up, in case you're a dude, is NOT cheap) and nice clothes. Or at least, expensive clothes. Leather coat and Harley boots and Victoria's Secret bras.  But her kids got gifts off the charity tree at the bank, assuming people pulled the ornaments with their names on them.  And they couldn't join clubs because the $1 a week meetig dues was too much, and their school clothes came from yard sales.

The economy sucks, and a LOT of people who need help are actually trying to not need help.  But I know more than a few who pay for themselves first and their kids second, who budget out luxuries because they know that food stamps and charity will take care of the rest.