Oh Holy-Crap!

Good friends of mine know that I have an irrational and angry response to the music of the Beach Boys. For some reason, the sound of their music grates on my nerves to the point of making me desire to commit acts of senseless violence. I am only sort of kidding.

This time of year, I have been subjected to the song “Little Saint Nick” more times than could be considered tolerable. My eyelid is twitching and I feel like breaking stuff.

I have had a limited range of interest in Christmas music in general this year. It is really annoying me for some reason, probably because I have been trying to avoid it since before Halloween. Some of the classics are great, but the newer stuff is adding nothing to the tradition in my opinion, and mostly just sounds thin and over produced.
I have a few Christmas records that I like, and that represent Christmas for me because I listened to them when I was little:

1. Johnny Mathis: Mom loves that one
2. Christmas Sing with Frank and Bing: lots of references to drinking too many hot toddies, kind of quaint in that “alcoholic uncle” sort of way.
3. Glenn Miller Christmas: Old radio show recording with many artists of the day, with references to WWII troops overseas
4. Luciano Pavarotti, O Holy Night: Beautiful and operatic, it includes a boys’ choir.
5. “All I want for Christmas is you”- as sung by that cute little girl in the movie “Love Actually”
6. “Do they know it’s Christmas?” Band Aid. Ah, the 80’s at its most Bono-riffic and Boy-George-tastic.
7. “Oh Holy Night” as sung by Josh Groban
8. “Little Drummer Boy” with Bing Crosby and David Bowie. Weird but lovely combo.

Some that have notably been less enjoyable this year for me:
1. Any Christmas song sung by Gloria Estefan. I am just not digging it.
2. The Beach Boys tune mentioned above. Shudder.
3. Any super country-music version. I just don’t like country music much. Plus the French and Latin words that some of them have sound funny with a southern drawl.
4. I have a new dislike for “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Grandma got run over by a reindeer” for no specific reason.

What about you?

Dream-Spleen Cuisine

I have been pretty spot-on in the ESP department lately. Just weird stuff is occurring to me and then coming to pass, etc. Way out there stuff, too.

I had a totally strange dream last night that I was tasked with making a large pot of soup. and the only protein available to put in it was a large spleen, about the size of a football, presumably from a cow or pig. I didn't want to put it in the soup at all, but apparently I was obliged to. So I chucked the whole thing in the pot with the intent of cutting up after it cooked. I concentrated on making the other ingredients in the mixture taste good. I had to nudge the spleen to the side each time I stirred the soup or when I had to taste it to adjust the seasonings. The total focus I applied to the soup was very intense.

In the dream I had to defend making this soup that I really didn't have to make. These two young guys were making fun of me. I fished the spleen out of the soup and took my 10" chef knife (affectionately nicknamed my 10-inch Dick...long story) and made quick work of cutting it up before scooping the meat up and putting it back in the soup. When I walked away I mistakenly left my knife on the counter.

I have no idea what that dream means, but it turns out there is such a thing as spleen soup. It is a German dish called Milzsuppe. If you are into organ meat food like that, here is a recipe.

I also read a thing, while I was doing research to try and figure out my dream, that some cultures believe that eating spleen is a cure or a treatment for menopause symptoms. Hmmm. I seem to be in the demographic for that, but if eating spleen is the cure for my troubles, I am in for continued symptoms. I don't approve. At least, my palate doesn't approve of eating blood filtering organs. I like to think that this makes me an aristocrat by nature, that I eschew offal in general (with the exception of fine foie gras and the occasional plate of sweetbreads) in favor of the leaner and more palatable muscle meats.

Bizarre. Don't know what it means. If anybody has a guess, or wants to take a humorous, um, stab at it, feel free to leave a comment.

I Dissaprove-Mail Fraud?

Ok, so this is messed up. I got a handwritten letter in the mail addressed to myself and my husband by name. I didn't recognize the name or return address, but it came from someone with a Reno address.

Inside was an earnest note on loose leaf binder paper encouraging me to consider this person's offer to come to my home, for free, to study the bible with me. Hmmm.

Regular readers of this space will understand that this is not considered a valid reason to invade my privacy. Bible-thumping Apocalypse Cheerleaders give me the willies worse than just about anything else. All I could think was: how did these people get my name and address? Is this the beginning of a disturbing trend? And generally What the Fuck?????!!?!?!?!?

Is this considered mail fraud somehow? I have never filled out any kind of card inviting people to preach to me via mail. How did my name come up? We have an unlisted phone number, so it is unlikely we are in the phone book. Bizarre. I don't approve.

Rawr!

This is how I feel this morning.

I'm okay, I just have an exam today and didn't get much sleep last night and am running on adrenaline, pretty much. So I am roaring.

Since we are at the time of the year where the veil between the world we can see and the world where the discarnates live thins to the point of easy crossover, I don't get much rest. I am extremely sensitive to the activity of the people around me that are without bodies. Most of the year I take it in stride or brush it back or whatever. October is always hard.

So, unless you fine people have the answers for my nursing school exam, kindly shut the hell up for a few hours. It isn't my fault that people on the other side aren't paying attention to you. I am not in the mood to perform parlor tricks today.

And if you don't know what the hell I am talking about, don't sweat it. I'm fine, just annoyed.

I Disapprove-Reno Edition

I feel like bagging on Reno today. I mean, I live here and have for a while now, so there must be SOME redeeming things about it, but today is not the day to talk about that. Let's trash talk!

• You have to water trees here: every damn thing has to be hooked up to a drip system because it is the desert. Not much in the way of rain.
• Tumbleweeds hitting my car: This is the time of year when this happens a lot because it is extra windy.
• Too damn hot in the summer: I just wilt like a damn gardenia. Yeah, I know. Then why did I buy a black car? I blame hormones. I was trying to get pregnant when I bought that car. I should have been able to use some kind of progesterone defense and get my money back.
• The Yee-Haw factor: Yeah, the whole red state thing gets me down.
• Taggers: I know every city has those. But ours don't even have much imagination. Lame graffiti is extra dumb.
• Casinos: I don't bother unless I go to Vegas. But if I want to play a slot machine I need go no further than my local grocery store. Who cares?
  
• Smoking: I can't get over how many people smoke here. Gross. And forget going to a bar. You will smell nasty when you get home from the secondhand smoke.
• The whole methamphetamine/trailer park/white trash factor: Do I really need to explain this one?
• The lack of cultural diversity: I really lament that there isn't a better mix here. Reno is such a white folk's town. I grew up in one of those in Ohio and look at how it warped me.
• Crap schools: Nevada rates very low for education. That is starting to really bother me now that I have a kid.
• The barest handful of good restaurants: Believe me, I worked as a food critic for both newspapers here, and you run out of awesome restaurants in about 2 minutes.
• Brown hills year round: Except when they are covered with snow. God, my eyes just STARVE for green sometimes.
• Weird concert choices: There are always some strange acts in town. Reno just isn't a good venue for the concerts I would be interested in seeing.
• Everyone thinks it is lame: I have some friends who totally won't visit. Even my mother won't come often-even to see her grandchild.
  

Why am I trashing Reno today? Mostly because I am contractually obligated to stay here for a few more years. I don't have the choice. That and Tony and I have recently been to San Francisco and got reminded of how much we miss it. That and I am thinking about the future, and I can see myself outgrowing this town, if I haven't already.

That is all.

Things I don't approve of-Road Trip Edition

We took a family trip down to the Bay Area this last weekend to visit my mother in Santa Rosa. Normally I am all for a road trip, but I usually take mine solo, and travel with Little A makes things much more complicated. It seems like everything takes twice as long with a kid. Before I dwell on the negatives, here's a list of the weekend's redeeming factors:

• Little A got some quality "grandma time"
• Highly gratifying cupcakes purchased at Dean & Deluca.
• Shopping for Little A's fall wardrobe
• Cool wildlife in the protected marshland next to mom's beautiful new house.
• Lovely scenery around the wine country, as pictured above

Now for the not so great stuff

• Little A gets bored in the car and keeps trying to get us to turn around and look at her, and gets cranky when the driver can't do it because they are, like, driving.
• Long drives and sightseeing schedule throw off nap/sleep schedules, making for a cranky kiddo overall. Various headbutting ensues. Adults get snappish. Kiddo engages in various acts of not so civil disobedience. Luckily no major public meltdowns, but every little thing was a battle of wills.
• Noisy geese among cool wildlife in protected marshland decide to honk up a storm at about 6 A.M. resulting in everyone getting up. I was the only one not really on board with getting out of bed that early on a Saturday.
• Possible food poisoning incident causes Tony to need the car pulled over by a busy freeway so that he could violently vomit on the side of the road, all over the lovely scenery. Then Little A started crying that SHE wanted to throw up. It took several hours longer than usual to get home.
• Roadkill-big dead deer edition. Bummer.
• Almost road kill-People edition. Big traffic backup and trying to assure Little A that despite the man on the stretcher and the crunched pileup of cars and the 4 ambulances and the fire truck, that everything was fine. She wasn't buying it.
• Getting home and needing to launch into massive loads of laundry.

That is all.

Things I don't approve of-domestic edition

I am not a happy housewife, by any stretch of the imagination. I like the house to be tidy and stuff, but I really hate doing housework. Here's a list of chores I disapprove of:

• Ironing: I consider it a mark of my feminism that I don't iron unless it is really important. Almost nothing is that damn important, and if it is, I get Tony to iron it. He's a whiz at ironing, and I just dissolve into cursing when I iron in more wrinkles than I take out. I will cook a Thanksgiving dinner for 15 without breaking a sweat over it, but burst into tears over ironing the tablecloth.
  
• Vacuuming: I really hate the vacuum. I will do it under duress, but if I can trade for cleaning the bathroom, I totally will.
  
• Windows: Is that smear on the inside or the outside? After 2-3 passes on each, I will blow it off. But it will really bug me if I can't get it totally clean. And that is just one window. It is just too frustrating.
  
• Cleaning off my desk: Oh my god, my desk at home is a disaster right now. I tore it apart last week to look for something, and still haven't fixed it. I just don't have the space for all that paper! Gah! In fact, by writing this blog right now I am staring at my monitor and not all the paper that I need to sort through that is on the side of it. Yay, blogging!
• Dusting collectible crap: I solve this one by not collecting stuff. Oh, I have had a few half-hearted attempts to collect various things, but as soon as they start collecting dust and I have to clean them, I pack them in a box. There are a lot of boxes in my garage. I used to collect kitchen gadgets, but I can argue that that stuff is like, totally useful. Especially that giant hook I use once a year to lift the turkey out of the roasting pan. But that goes in the dishwasher and I don't have to dust it.

There are surely more chores I don't like, but those are the ones that, ironically, need to be done now. Feh. I guess I had better do this stuff before school starts.

World on Fire

I should really post a picture of my sexy new glasses, with frames picked out for me by the sweetly flaming boy at my eye doctor's office. I told him I was going for a "funky, naughty librarian" look and he delivered it in spades. What does that have to do with the fires that are raging in California? The smoke has travelled over the Sierras and into the little desert valley where I live, making everything smell like an acrid campfire and making contact lens wearing impossible. The way my eyes felt this morning, I didn't even want to try to jam my finger in there.

I hate fire season.

• My lungs get really unhappy with the smoke, and I feel more inclined to keep Little A indoors, which makes her cross.
• Sometimes the fires are caused by lightning strikes, and we never get enough rain that falls all the way to the ground to put them out.
• But some fires are man-started. Seriously, who lives in the middle of a bunch of sagebrush and decides to flick a lit cigarette butt out the car window?? WHY??? I was benind a guy in a Jeep who did that yesterday while we were at a red light. I very nearly got out of the driver's seat in my car and brought the burning projectile back to him. I wanted to flick it at his crusty gray mullet and say sweetly "Excuse me, sir. You dropped this..."
• Likewise, who goes camping and doesn't adhere to the basics of fire safety, or learn how to properly extingish a campfire? I learned how to do that when I was about six. I also learned to not feed wild animals and how to secure my cooler from bears, although I would say I have a more than passing interest in camping issues. People do a lot of things wrong when camping, in my opinion.
• I like taking long walks outdoors, but my lungs really can't take this. Yuck.

Things I don't approve of

Sometimes I love being a misanthrope. Some of my cranky reactions to the world make me laugh.

I am a judgmental, disapproving little thing. Some Examples :

1. Strawberry-Banana flavored stuff: Strawberries are great and bananas are great, but why mix them? Actual fruit strawberry-banana smoothies are pretty good, because they taste like actual fruit and the banana gives it a nice texture. But candy, yogurt, or other stuff just tastes fakey-fake and nasty.
2. People who spoil the endings of movies and then ask "Oh, were your going to see that?" *slaps forehead*
3. People who laugh at my joke and then say "I don't get it." Conversely, those same people tend to start off telling a joke and then forget the punchline midstream.
4. Walnuts in brownies. I would think that was gross even if I weren't drop-dead allergic.
5. Why do so many products that are ostensibly for children have to be filled with food dyes and high-fructose corn syrup? I don't buy that stuff, but sheesh, it sure takes up a lot of room at the store, and Little A sure sees it where it is placed at her eye level. Then I have to be the bitch mommy who says no all the time.
   
6. Mixed bags of jelly beans. Who the hell takes a random handful that would have possibly cherry and lime and black licorice in it? Then again, my OCD forces me to sort even my same-tasting M&M's by color.
   
7. Companies that market padded bras and thong underwear for six-year olds. Oh, google it yourself.
8. Companies that think it OK to give growth hormones to cows, causing 6 year olds to need bras.
9. Parenting magazines. For the most part they are just the same as Cosmopolitan is for single people: bad advice and stupid ads to make you feel guilty/insecure/vulnerable to sales pitches for cellulite cream and children's lingerie.
   
10. "Womens'"magazines. I didn't start having a good love life until I gave up on reading Cosmo et al. Besides, I don't need the "20 tricks he wish you knew in bed" article. Here's the gist of it. Guys like more head. That's pretty much it.