life

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Spaz.

DSCN0124

On Sunday night I had a fall (we won’t talk about how it happened).

This isn’t unusual (Great Subway Stairs Tumble of 2008, anyone?).

But I landed on my tailbone (actually, I landed on my ASS).

Hard (really hard). 

The result? 

I can’t sit (or stand).

Run (or walk).

Lay down (back or stomach).

Climb stairs (or bend over).

Or especially, ESPECIALLY sneeze or cough (unfortunate, since it’s allergy season).

Without  some serious pain

(in the butt).

 

Taking the night off to watch some teevee. Send me love.

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Oh yeah!

dscn1082

Now I remember why college was sometimes annoying to me: I don’t like loud noises, big groups of people, or girls who act skanky when they’re drinking. 

I do, however, like my boys. 

So that was my weekend in a nutshell. 

Also, I made baked ziti, and it is delicious!

 

PS: Turns out Boss is fine. Let’s hear it for good news.

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Treats for Busted Friends

Our friend A took a nasty spill outside of work on Monday and wound up with eight staples in her pretty head. Since I am neither a doctor nor a maker of helmets, I whipped her up some cinnamon raisin bread instead. From Allrecipes:

  • 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
  • 1/4 cup warm water (105 degrees to 115 degrees)
  • 2 cups warm milk (110 to 115 degrees F)
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 5 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups raisins
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon water
  1. In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add milk, 1/3 cup sugar, oil, salt and 2 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Add raisins and enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1-1/4 hours. Punch dough down. On a lightly floured surface, divide in half. Roll each into a 15-in. x 7-in. rectangle. Combine cinnamon and remaining sugar; sprinkle over dough. Sprinkle with water. Starting with a short side, roll up tightly, jelly-roll style. Pinch seams and ends to seal. Place, seam side down, in two greased 9-in. x 5-in. x 3-in. loaf pans. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool completely. 

 

This actually rose beautifully, which I was not expecting because my bread never rises beautifully, even when I make Ina’s version which uses 2 yeast packets. If I had it to do over again I would add more cinnamon to the actual dough, and also probably put some butter in the cinnamon sugar filling. 

 

Other Friday randomness:

Craigslist Killer: HEY STOP KILLING HOOKERS. They have enough problems already.

We’re dogsitting Frankie this weekend! Expect lots of slobbery photos. Also, some work-in-progress pics of the roof deck. Last night Tom blasted the rust off the steps with a special rust blaster. You’re very manly, Tom!

Is it nerdy to like OneRepublic? I think it is. Oh well. There basically is no band I like that is not nerdy, so. 

I am planning a lot of trips. Want to hang out this summer? Give me a holler. 

Agent rejection count: 4. 

Tonight I’m going to open every window in my apartment. 

I have had two large cups off coffee. Coffee makes me chatty. I’ll stop  now. Have a good Friday.

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Sister Eugene, Wherever You Are, I Owe You an Apology

To be cross-filed under “Things the Nuns Said That Were Actually True” and “Things I Did Not Believe Five Years Ago”:

It does make you look skanky, and fatter than you actually are, if you roll your uniform skirt up three times before you leave the house. 

It’s funny to ride the public bus at three in the afternoon. You run into a whole different cross-section of the neighborhood.

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Condo

Condo is our betta fish. We used to have an excellent and mentally disturbed betta fish named House, but he died of shock after Tom transferred him to nicer digs. Anyway, we got a replacement who was noticeably smaller: thus, Condo. God forbid he dies, too. We’ll have to call the next one “Tenement”. Or “Van Down by the River”. 

Condo isn’t particularly hardy. He gets tired easy. He doesn’t like to eat very much, or follow your finger around the tank. If you change his water he gets cross and sulks for a day or two. Mostly he hangs out at the bottom by his rocks, chilling and observing the world outside his bowl with palpable disgust. 

Condo’s apathy makes me especially nervous when Tom’s away–I don’t want to be the only hand on deck should his ennui turn to suicidal ideation and a necessitate a burial at sea. “Swim, buddy!” I shout at him every once in awhile, tapping rudely on the glass. “Time’s a wastin’!” It’s important to me that he finds the will to live: I don’t think I’m up to flushing our only pet on my own. 

Hang on, Condo. 

Our guy will be back soon.

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Break’s Over.

dscn1177I was all over the Northeast this weekend, down to New York for a quick and dirty visit with some lady friends and back up to Mystic for a couple of days with Leprechaun, then home to Boston for an Inauguration brunch complete with lots of cheering and high-fives.

Also lots of bacon.

Nothing like a little travel for head-clearing purposes, and now that I’m back I feel super psyched to take on whatever’s next. So keep an eye out for some new recipes in the next few days, plus some cash-saving tips that are working for me right now. And a gander at my new curtains. That I sewed. 

Watch out, world.

I’m just saying.

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Road Not Taken

I had my grad school interview on Monday. It didn’t go how I thought it was going to go. That isn’t to say it went badly. I didn’t trip or pronounce banal incorrectly or make a fool of myself in any obvious way. It was fine. I think I might get in. 

I just don’t think I’m going to go. 

One thing about me is I’m good at school. I’m not trying to be a snot or anything. Some people are good at driving race cars. I’m good at school. Give me a book and a set of instructions and the promise of some positive reinforcement if I do it right, and I’m happy as a lark. I like order. I like reading. And, frankly, I like being told how smart I am. 

The hardest part of the transition to adulthood has been the openness of it all: with no report card every semester, I’ve had to create my own rubric to measure my progress, whatever that means. And since I’m not flying to the moon or publishing wildly successful vampire novels or saving the world, I tend to be sort of hard on myself. You should be doing more, I tell myself constantly. More, more, more. 

I think grad school seemed like the perfect plan because it would have hit two buttons at once: the school thing (have I mentioned I like school?) and also the life thing. “I’m in grad school,” I could say when people asked what I was up to. “You’re in grad school,” I could tell myself on all those nights I couldn’t sleep from wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. Never mind that I wasn’t so sure anymore that I was actually interested in the field I was planning to study: the studying itself was a way to buy myself some time before I had to make the big decisions. A way to feel like I was doing something without actually having to commit. 

Except it is a commitment. A huge one, in time and money and effort. And as I listened to the assistant dean explain the program–and it is a good program, I think, full of the order and reading and discussion I like so much–and wondered why I didn’t feel more excited, a thought occurred to me:

this is too high a price to pay just to stave off the fear.

And so I’m going to tread lightly in 2009. I’m going to learn to live with the uncertainty. I’m going to write and cook and love my family and wait until the next step is presented to me. 

I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with my life.

I don’t know. 
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
And that’s enough for now. 
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