First Day Jitters

I’ll admit it- I’ve been bad. I haven’t updated the blog in FOREVER. But let me explain myself. See, the last post I wrote was about the job I had working in retail. And I chalk that experience up to one of the worst months in my life. So why on earth would you want to read anything from grumpy old me? Okay, I forgive myself for being complacent with posting now. You should forgive me too.

But all’s well that ends well! I left that job in retail for a much better one! I am now a secretary! I have always wanted to be a secretary as I like anything to do with organization and customer service. Plus it is at J’s school. So I cut my commute time and cost by a lot. We’ll carpool, and we’ll be able to have lunch together on campus once in awhile. The job is OFFICIALLY full-time. No 37 hours a week here! And while I’m not swimming in piles of cash, the pay is a way better reflection of my abilities and education.

Needless to say, I’ve been in a much better mood since I left that job-that-shall-no-longer-be-named-after-this-sentence 11 days ago. Those 11 days have been almost blissful. I’ve read four books. I’ve watched a movie (Stranger Than Fiction). I scrubbed my porcelain sink and tub clean. I did laundry. J and I swept and mopped the floors. I’ve been able to keep dishes out of the sink. I’ve actually MADE dinners instead of just assembled random foods to munch on. And I’ve not had to worry about driving to work or being under appreciated.

The last night of work I had was rough (okay- I mentioned it one more time) and it was made even worse by the fact that I was coming home at 11 PM (I said it was ROUGH) to grab my stuff and leave the apartment for 48 hours which actually turned into three nights and four days. Our landlords told us that the apartment was going to be fumigated for termites. J and I were in a tizzy- we had never had a home fumigated before. The chemicals they use are odorless and colorless and LETHAL if you come in before they air the place out. Your home is covered by a circus-like tent and everything that can be consumed must be either taken with you or stored in these bags that rip really easily. Pillows needed to be placed in bags and I took the extra precaution of taking almost everything off of horizontal surfaces. We were lucky enough to be able to stay with one of J’s classmates. There is no way we could have afforded a hotel for that long with two cats. (Speaking of, they hated us for days for disturbing their peace and moving them…)

The time at J’s friend’s apartment was actually pretty good. It was nice to talk to someone normal. We had dinners together, went grocery shopping at Whole Foods, she introduced us to a U-Pick Farm with the BEST strawberries, tomatoes, and peppers, and J helped her start an herb garden. I was anxious to get back home though to clean and re-organize my life. All of the plants that were around the apartment building turned black and withered away. A poor little lizard was a victim of the gassing and limply hung from the laundry door. I was grossed out, but luckily our neighbor removed his corpse so when I did my laundry I didn’t have to work around it… Ugh.

J and I got back into the swing of things now that we had a normal schedule again. We tried two recipes in addition to our usual menu. One was stuffed green peppers (stuffed with hot peppers quickly pickled in Red Wine Vinegar) topped with bacon. It was pretty good, but cutting the peppers set my hands on fire, so I was mostly angry eating them with the fork barely in my hands. The second recipe we made tonight and it was a big success: English Onion Soup. It’s like a blonde French Onion Soup. We used onions from the U-Pick Farm and chicken stock that we had made from a previous meal. We made our own croutons by broiling them in the oven, some we covered with a sharp Irish Cheddar cheese. I’m getting hungry for it again just writing about it.

The only sad news is that getting a puppy is set back by a couple more months. My car decided to take a turn for the worse. After $500 of preliminary repairs that we hoped would solve the problem, I noticed the car was misfiring after I started it on a chillier morning. Turns out three of our four fuel injectors were cracked and one was almost completely black. That was $1000. Well, at least my car runs much better now and I get even better gas mileage. But .:poof:. there went the money for a puppy. I’m glad we were able to cover the cost of the car. We’ll just have to keep saving those pennies…

I’m sorry the posts have been few and far between. Now that I’m on a regular schedule I won’t be so exhausted. Wish me luck for my new job tomorrow! It feels like the first day of school. I’m excited!

The Cheese Grater Incident

J and I have been going about our usual business. He has been busier recently with finals and research. Every week goes the same: Friday night we go grocery shopping, Saturday J watches sports and I try to ignore them, Sunday we end up doing a crazy amount of housework and he does homework, Monday I begin the job search again and J goes back to campus all day-every day. I like Friday nights and Saturdays the best because we spend the most time together.

Except this Friday. This Friday stunk. I started to grate cheese for a home-made pizza. I got a cup or so done before I did a nice little number on the knuckle on my thumb. The shock set in immediately and I shouted to J, “Band-Aid! Band-Aid!” But he didn’t take me seriously at first because I was doing a little jig at the time… it was a nervous jig and I was holding my thumb and when I let go I left a nice little trail of blood. It is not that the sight of blood bothers me. It is just when my blood leaves my body in large quantities does it bother me. I usually faint when I have blood tests done. So I knew the feeling that was coming- my face was losing color, the back of my neck was sweaty, and my knees were giving in. Luckily I didn’t faint. I just cried. And J just watched because he wasn’t sure where the Band-Aids were and he wasn’t sure what to do. He eventually handed me some cotton swabs which I promptly bled through. Long story short, my thumb still hurts pretty bad. Typing is tolerable but holding a pen is quite painful. Inconvenient. This morning I called my parents because J wasn’t being very sympathetic. :) Hey mister- that pizza was dinner for you! Upon their suggestion I got myself to a pharmacy for proper first-aid items. $11 later I cannot tell if it is working.

This is almost as bad as the time when I stuck my hand on the stove burner to prove it wasn’t on when it was. I had a nice spiral burn the next day. Or the time when I accidentally kicked the paper cutter that was on the floor with the blade open… but those are stories for another day.

Household Chore Horror Story

I haven’t written in awhile mostly because there hasn’t been anything to post, really. We are still plugging along: J with school and me with looking for work. I’ve still been cooking and other than successfully baking a pumpkin pie (I wanted to practice before Thanksgiving) and totally mucking up my grandma’s recipe for gravy, there haven’t been any kitchen adventures. The practice is helping. I’m learning to preheat the oven before starting with the food. I am also learning to streamline some tasks to make my culinary life easier. Lately I have been bored with Food Network or Cooking Channel. I’m more interested in “stories” as my grandpa called them. (He pretty much only watched PBS informational programs, including cooking shows.)

As I look for work, I realize that every day I DO work. Not only is looking for work a job, but keeping a home in a Becca-worthy condition is a job too. So, I guess I am a “home-maker” or “housewife” (gag me). I NEVER thought I’d be a housewife, but then again, I never thought I’d be unemployed for so long. Now, please don’t get me wrong… to be a home-maker is a ton of work and I completely support any woman or man who would like to take on that role. Its valid work and its worthy work, I just never thought it would be my role. This is our biggest apartment. It is also the first time that my “roommate” (or husband) is completely engrossed in school/work more than 75% of the time. We still split chores like we did in the “old days”, but I take on the majority of them considering that I do not have a place to be or projects to turn in… I also know that I am a smidge of a clean freak. Oh, okay, I’m a complete raging clean freak. There are things I’ve learned to let go: no longer do I hunt dust bunnies under the bed on a weekly basis and six out of ten times I will let our dishes air dry instead of drying them by hand and putting them away immediately. But I still dust and sweep every other day. The kitchen counter and stove gets Windex-ed twice a day. And towels are always folded and hung up nicely. (Among other things.)

Still, I do not consider myself to be “domestic.” While I may channel Martha or Rachel Ray from time to time, I don’t carve pumpkins or bother to decorate my food beyond sprinkling it with a bit of Kosher salt. On Sundays I tend to be my “homiest.” Perhaps that is because J is so engrossed in school or sports (gag me again) that I try to occupy my time with small tasks that I let build up during the week. And thus, I come to the real point of this post: I HATE LAUNDRY.
Now, I have always hated laundry. I hold off doing it until I run out of under-things. I have been trying to do it once a week so it doesn’t pile up to the point of becoming a stinky sock monster. But ever since we have moved to Miami, I hate laundry so much more. Now I’m exposed to the elements. I actually miss the creepy basement that resembled a psycho killer’s lair at my old apartment. And I really, really miss the two years that I had laundry capabilities IN my apartment. I haven’t done my laundry in the rain recently. But now I am contending with wildlife problems and fear that the people in the condo behind our apartment building can see all of my… well… dirty laundry.

I guess it is the wildlife that bugs me the most. That damn cat is still hanging around. I feel bad for it. But I’m pretty sure saw it go into our neighbor’s house once, so I don’t think it is a stray. Also, it is too too friendly to be a stray. It constantly wants to touch you, which, I do not like being touched by mangy things, so I have to shoo it away. It doesn’t respond to a firm “NO” or “GO AWAY” so I usually have to wave my laundry basket at it, or a dirty towel. J once had to fend it off with our recycling. I also suspect the cat is sick. Right outside of our “laundry closet” is a pile of cat puke. Now, being the owner of two cats, I know what cat puke looks like. Our fat cat inhales her food so fast she doesn’t chew and sometimes it just comes back up. And our old cat is senile and does nothing but clean herself, so we have hairballs galore. The puke has food in it, and it is so old it’s actually hairy. Not like cat-hairy, like mold-hairy. I shuddered when I saw that.

When I left the apartment to do the laundry I had a huge basket of clothes, my detergent, and I was opening our kitchen door to walk the flight of stairs down to the closet and that cat was sleeping right there. I could have stepped on it. Or worse, it could have bolted into the house to give our cats and us who knows what: ringworm, mites, worse… Here I am, in broad daylight, talking like a crazy person to this cat, “Go away!,” and trying to side step puke while loading my laundry. Then, it gets worse. How much worse could a three hour ordeal of two loads of laundry that makes me $8 poorer get? I saw… the bodies.

BLECH. So, remember when I told you about those lizards that dart all over the place. (I still jump when I see them move out of the corner of my eye!) Well, one darted under the door and somewhere in the laundry closet (probably under the washer) when I started my first load. “Ugh, whatever,” I thought. I had to contend with the cat who wanted to rub my leg. But, the next time I went down to switch loads, I saw this crusty little thing on the door frame. It was the outline of a lizard body. I bent closer to look at it and sure enough- some lizard had been smooshed between the door and the frame and there it was- crispy little fingers, eyeballs, and tail- all intact. Just below that body was a fresher one. Its skull had fallen out at some point and was lying in the corner. All of this, just above a pile of furry puke and just as I was about to stand up, something smacked me on my behind and I screamed.

It was just the other door (the laundry closet has French doors- it’s a “classy” laundry closet). I was foolish enough to think it was the cat that pushed the door on me, but it was the wind. That cat magically appeared on the other side of me and I had to shoo it back again. “Doing the laundry is going to give me a heart attack… or fleas,” I said to myself amid a stream of PG-13 rated curse words. I hoped I was putting on a good show for the guy sitting on his balcony at the condo. I stomped back up to the apartment, ranted at J about how inconsiderate it is to neighbors to have an outdoor cat that is too friendly (what if I was deathly allergic?) and by the end of my rant I had placed us in the hospital with nasty cat-borne illnesses and our cats at the vet with more illnesses with our bills piling to the ceiling, and then I sat down to blog about how much I hate laundry. The only problem is, I still have a load to dry and both to fold and it means two more trips out THERE. Sigh.