What's up? I'm still sick. You don't want to hear about it, I don't want to talk about it.
Moving on.
Christmas! I spent it on the phone with my dad every fifteen minutes because Betty Ford doesn't come with a money back guarantee and my mom sort of locked herself in the guest bedroom to get all introspective with a jug of cabernet for three days. She came out yesterday afternoon. The last thing she remembered was making a cheesecake on Christmas Eve.
I talked to her this morning. "Hey! You came out of the guest room, nice job!" She laughed, so I know she's coming back up to normal. She had just come from an AA meeting and she was getting ready to go to another. If there's one thing I know, that woman does not lack for will or effort or good intentions. Alcoholism is an evil, nasty, lying motherfucking disease. It is demoralizing and dehumanizing on a level I never would have believed if I hadn't seen it. I make light of it only because my fear for her is overwhelming and crippling.
There are several things that consistently marathon through your mind when your mom has barricaded herself in a small bedroom with a large bottle of personal poison. The first thing-- and I'm going to shimmy out on a limb and call it the worst-- is the knowledge that your mother's brother, also an alcoholic, committed suicide. If you can somehow squeeze and fold that poisonous thought into a part of your brain that doesn't make you cry, the SECOND thing that inevitably occurs to you is that seriously, you have absolutely no business drinking.
Watching the progression of this disease, witnessing firsthand this snowball of addiction and misery and eventual death... I essentially feel like I'm wearing a genetic tag on my ear and it's got a vodka bottle and a gun on it. Like the universe just handed me a giant Magic Eight ball: A+B=C, SWEETHEART, the predictor bubbles up. DOESN'T LOOK GOOD.
The new year is going to be a year of recovery and healing for my mom, goddamnit, and if my part of that means I go to a thousand Al-Anon meetings and read a thousand books and pry the door off the guest room with a nail file, that's what I'm going to do. Coincidentally, it's also going to be the year I start drinking a lot more iced tea recreationally.
¶ posted by Erin on Friday, December 28, 2007
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Sunday, December 23, 2007
Entrenched in a cocoon of my own mucus. Every bit as pleasant as it sounds, trust. Earlier in the week, Randy would simply kick my snoring husk to roll me over in the middle of the night; he's since graduated to actually waking me up in order to deliver a three paragraph essay on how much worse my snoring is now than it was, and hence why I should start sleeping with bubble wrap in my mouth. Tonight I'm going to really turn it on, I've decided, no more Nyquil / Benadryl cocktails. Let's move this party in the opposite direction, let's see how fucking loud this shit can go.
And this morning Randy stopped me in the middle of pulling my green South District grocery store tee shirt over my head; apparently the amount of toothpaste smeared down the front was way past acceptable levels.
"Absolutely not," he said, kicking it into the laundry, "I meant to say something Friday at the Verizon store. And I definitely shouldn't have let it slide yesterday."
I still don't see what the big deal was, I was just going to the grocery store and the mall.
P.S. Fire everyone in your marketing department immediately.
I was sorting through something like ten days of stockpiled mail this morning when I came across a thin, legal-sized envelope sent from a local spa. I'd used a gift certificate for a service there months ago, so for once I let the part of my brain screaming COUPONS! overrule the bigger part of my brain screaming COLLECTIONS! and I opted to open it rather than tear it in half and set it on fire. It was a business letter typed on formal letterhead admonishing me for not having returned to the spa for additional services.
"At the time of your service," it read snidely, "We recommended you schedule regular follow up appointments in order to maintain a high level of personal health." Having failed to make said appointments I was now, apparently, in danger of being mistaken for mold.
Wow, they seemed pretty mad at me, the spa people, pretty harsh. I reread the whole thing to make sure I didn't owe somebody some cash. But no, they were really just scolding me for neglecting my aesthetic health.
The treatment I'd gotten at the spa was a Vanilla Rose Sugar Glow body wrap. It was nice and all, kind of like being scrubbed down with a cupcake, but I'm pretty sure it didn't add anything noteworthy to my overall life span. It's not like I'm missing chemotherapy appointments. Thanks for your tough love concern, Spa, but from here on out I think I'll just do the best I can with Lever 2000 and a washcloth. If it helps you sleep at night, just tell yourself it's like methadone.
¶ posted by Erin on Wednesday, December 19, 2007
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
I've sucked back so much Nyquil over the past three days, the whites of my eyes are tinged green. One day the superbugs will come and wouldn't you know it, the only pharmaceutical agent in our entire human arsenal capable of fending them off will be the Nyquil Liquicap. Roughly sixty million of us will roll our overly saturated greenish eyes and prepare to be conquered, then, mumbling in hindsight how we knew we should have stuck with Benadryl. Everyone else will smugly pat themselves on the back, fighting a month-long sniffle but satisfied, finally, that their goody two shoes refusal to abuse over the counter cold medicine has paid off. But then all those people end up dying, too, because the superbugs are swift and fast-acting and no one can find a goddamn letter opener or a grenade or an acetylene torch to open the stupid liquicap packet.
¶ posted by Erin on Tuesday, December 18, 2007
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Sunday, December 16, 2007
Mostly Finished.
I am sick, sick, sicky. I started shotgunning Nyquil at the tail end of the party last night, and I coasted into bed on fumes. I fell asleep with a cough drop in my mouth, so now my tongue is roughly the size and texture of a raisin.
I finally took some pictures of the (mostly) finished patio:
One kick means it's all clear, two kicks means "do you have a flashlight or some candles".
Before hosting my brother's wedding reception or Thanksgiving dinner, I volunteered to cohost the annual Christmas party for Randy's fundraising group. Randy's the chair of the social committee this year, and with one of our neighbors also in the group and volunteering their home, it seemed like a natural at the time to split the party down the middle and open our house as well. Of course "at the time" I hadn't already spread myself and my brittle hospitality so thinly that I was in danger of moving full time into a big hole in the yard and covering myself up with leaves. One of the many times I wish I had a time machine solely for the purpose of going back and punching myself in the face.
Randy, almost always not as stupid as I am, immediately realized the fallibility of this plan; he actually got in touch with our neighbor and backed out of the deal. But I, in my infinite belligerent wisdom, insisted we go forward with the original plan. If I had a time machine I would totally have black eyes all the time.
So the party's on Saturday. A hundred and fifty people. Randy and I are slowly marinating in our own delicious stews of denial. Randy wants to lock all the doors and put a handwritten sign on the door: "COME AROUND BACK". I decided to pass on renting tables and chairs-- at some point people will get tired of standing around freezing in formal wear and they'll wander across the street to the other house.
Each new realization of shit we need to do is like one more reason to take a nap. Last night Randy mentioned that I need to get the portable crib out of the family room and all I could do was throw my head back and sleep it off. When I woke up, it occurred to me we should probably get a CHRISTMAS TREE, at which point Randy curled up on the floor with a bag of polyester fiberfill and started snoring.
Another example: I've been fighting with all of the exposed cords in the office. I hate exposed cords. It's a genetic hatred handed down through my mother's side. I've spent hours trying to twist-tie the cords back, I've run cords under the baseboards, I've hidden cords with plants... none of it works. So I decided on a plan this morning: I'm going to unplug everything and throw it all in a closet. Fuck this, seriously. What are the odds someone's going to mosey into the office and want to shred something? Or turn on a lamp? You know what lamps are? They're distracting, that's what. It's still light outside, stranger, get back out in the yard.
As a timely bonus, Randy has recently contracted some kind of unexplained illness that is apparently only cured by changing all the light switches and outlet covers in the entire house. Some of them are bisque, you see, while others are ivory. Personally, I'd like to know where exactly this keen sense of color hibernates on mauve shirt / green pants day, but hey, if he wants to take the time to change them all out, it's his exploding cerebellum. I think the bulk of his motivation is knowing the electrician charges fifty bucks per outlet, so each time he finishes one he adds that to the total amount of money he hasn't handed over to the no good money grubbing idiot who punctured our water heater. Look, Erin, I'm up seven hundred dollars! Awesome, babe! You're five hours late for work and we can only turn the bathroom light on from the garage, but yee haw! Fuck that guy!
Hey, somebody do me a favor: go to this party and tell me how it went. I'll just be in this hole over here. Kick some dirt on me when it's over.
¶ posted by Erin on Wednesday, December 12, 2007
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007
It does explain all those copies of L.L. Bean under the mattress.
Randy was watching TV in the family room last night while I made chicken tacos. I heard him fumble for the remote to stop and rewind what he was watching, and then he called me.
"You've got to come see this!" He was jazzed enough that I, concerned he might exceed his nightly excitement threshold, stopped shredding chicken and went to see.
"Look! It's porn!" And before I could realize he was watching NBC, he replayed this:
It's an Old Navy Christmas commercial.
I think somebody just earned a raise in his excitement threshold.
We're going to start taking Maxim again, for starters; in hindsight, he's been spending way too much time reading the J. Peterman catalog.
¶ posted by Erin on Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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Thursday, December 06, 2007
I Hate My Cheater Boss Chili.
I used to work in the training department for a national grocery retailer. I wrote about it a lot-- it was a horrible job and I was a ridiculous employee who clearly didn't care about getting fired, so there was a lot of material there. One example: You can usually judge the fundamental misery of a workplace by how many mandatory participation contests and pot lucks it orchestrates, and we had something mandatory and unpaid happening around every three days. You barely had time to recuperate from "Homemade Christmas Hat" Tuesday before you were getting busted for not bringing that head of wilted lettuce for "Somebody's Terrible Variation Of Tacos" Friday. It was infinitely worse around the holidays when our calendar of events reached a forced joviality crescendo, requiring every employee to prepare marginal, unrecognizable, and borderline unsanitary baked goods and bring them to work every single day for a solid WEEK.
Seeing as how this was December, right, and I quit that hell hole the following February, I wasn't really feeling the philanthropic baking vibe. But with fifteen "100% participation" emails in my inbox staring me down like a human resource guillotine, I had to do something. So I signed myself up for the end-of-the-week chili cook-off.
The head of my department, Lisa, had won the chili cook-off every year for three years with her famous green chili. It really was delicious; slow cooked pork and freshly roasted green chilis... it deserved to win. But Lisa didn't make that chili-- every year before the contest, she'd strong-arm one of our company's in-store deli managers into making the chili for her. Using his own personal recipe. So while I was home Thursday night, slaving away over the stove, Lisa was home relaxing, breathing on marshmallows and making smores.
Friday morning, I got up early, duct taped my crock pot shut, and drove to work at twenty-two miles an hour. I plugged it in on my desk and stirred and cooed and stirred and cooed until contest time. Lisa sat in her office, shopping online and making fun of my pants, waiting for the deli manager to get his lunch break so he could deliver her chili. When another employee happened to spy him in our parking lot, lugging a crock pot to the door, Lisa avoided disaster by introducing him as her husband.
Well, I'm proud to report I won the chili contest that day. I don't remember who came in second. But Lisa came in third. She didn't speak to me for days. Just so it's clear-- my boss was so angry I had won a contest that she had entered and CHEATED in, she refused to say hello to me.
I Hate My Cheater Boss Chili
2 Tbs. olive oil 2 cups chopped onion 10 garlic cloves, chopped 2 lbs. hot ground sausage (I use Johnsonville) 2 lbs. ground beef 5 Tbs. chili powder 1 T. cumin 1/2 tsp. oregano 2 28-oz cans crushed tomatoes 1 6-oz can tomato paste 14 oz. chicken broth dark chocolate to taste (I use about a 1/4 - 1/2 of a bar-- a normal sized bar, not a crazy person sized bar) a bottle of Guinness (a normal sized bottle, not a crazy person sized bottle) 2 cans chili beans salt and pepper to taste
Heat the oil in a large dutch oven; cook the onion and garlic until transparent.
Add the ground beef and the sausage and brown, breaking up any clumps that form.
Pour the extra fat off the pot, add the chili powder, oregano, cumin-- stir.
Add tomatoes, tomato paste, broth, chocolate, and beer-- stir.
Cook for a totally indiscriminate period of time. Preferably a couple of hours or more.
Add the chili beans-- cook another thirty minutes.
It's not even that great, as far as chili goes, but it's deeply, deeply satisfying. Don't burn it. Serves thirty-two. Hundred. Thirty-Two Hundred.
¶ posted by Erin on Thursday, December 06, 2007
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Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Captain The Jake Actually GETS The Horse
--as told by my dog, Jake, and the horse next door
Jake: You know, a lot of people go their whole lives without ever getting to live at maximum potential, and I personally count myself privileged to now be among that chosen class.
Horse: You're not a person.
Jake: Okay, well, a lot of humans, then.
Horse: I think you're making too big a thing out of this.
Jake: [winks at interviewer] Says the guy who's never gotten anything, ever. It was beautiful. A thing of beauty. A beautiful thing carved from a beatific mountain of beautifulness. I still can't figure out how it happened. I mean, I know I rocked it, but--
Horse: Your electric fence was down.
Jake: What? I don't know. I just know things stopped beeping. Usually when I try to get Horse there's this terrible beeping that happens when I get close and I stop. It's awful, the beeping.
Horse: It was down for like six weeks. [Turns to interviewer] I'm not kidding; it took him a month and a half to figure this out.
Jake: But it stopped! Beeping!
Horse: Our little Albert Einstein.
Jake: And it was like... it was like the skies parted and... and suddenly Horse was there, and I went for it!
Horse: Our little Stephen Hawking.
Jake: Hey! I don't remember you being quite this droll when I was GETTING YOUR ASS.
Horse: [snorts] Hay is for horses. [high-fives himself]
Jake: Dude. Come on.
Horse: Alright, yeah. You surprised the hell out of me, what can I say. There I was, standing by the fence, hoping for Apple Time--
Jake: Apple Time?
Horse: Yeah. Sometimes when I stand by the fence someone'll bring me an apple. Or they'll bring a skittish little kid over with an apple. I like it better without the kid, but hey, Apple Time.
Jake: I didn't know about Apple Time.
Horse: Well do you stand by the fence?
Jake: What the fuck do you MEAN 'do you stand by the fence'? You fucking KNOW I stand by the fence, I spend like forty hours A DAY by that fence!
Horse: Look, do you want me to tell this or not? Do you want me here or not?
Jake: Well, it's bullshit, is what I'm saying.
Horse: So I'm standing there.
Jake: Goddamn 'Apple Time'.
Horse: ...
Jake: ...
Jake: Yeah. Okay.
Horse: I'm standing there, right, waiting for someone to drag a scared little kid over with some fruit, and suddenly there's this giant, hurtling, hairy, black and white thing lunging at me. And I was all, "Hey. Wait a second-- that's not an apple."
Jake: HA HA HA DAMN STRAIGHT.
Horse: It took me a minute, it really did. I mean, for years we've had this arrangement: Jake runs toward me as fast as he can, stops ten feet away from the fence, and barks his head off.
Jake: Sometimes I kick.
Horse: [nods] Sometimes you kick, true, [to interviewer] sometimes he kicks.
Jake: And I growl and stuff, man. I feel like you're selling me short, here.
Horse: Bottom line? Whatever he does, he keeps it ten feet away from my ass.
Jake: But then suddenly the beeping stopped!
Horse: [rolls his eyes] Yes. The beeping gods deemed you worthy.
Jake: The beeping stopped, and I saw my chance to bring the fury. The fury that is THE JAKE.
Horse: Dude, please-- you brought it for like eleven seconds. I was surprised and all, don't get me wrong, but it's not like you hung around long enough to knife fight or anything.
Jake: Yeah, so here's the thing about horses? They're friggin' GIGANTIC.
Horse: There's a reason they don't call me Goat.
Jake: Just really, really unreasonably large.
Horse: You're not tiny yourself, there, Fatty. And you're not as quick as you used to be, either.
Jake: Well...
Horse: [pulls a crumpled pack of Camels out of his left flank pocket] You should get some exercise. Start eating better...
Jake: I... try, I mean, I eat everything I find on the floor...
Horse: ... Maybe start eating more apples.
Jake: I should get your ass right now, you apple holdout son of a bitch.
I've been neglectful in posting pictures of the completed patio project because it's not quite completed and when I post the pictures, I want to post them of the finished-finished product. I have a ton of planting to do, there are some trim pieces for the firepit and the BBQ that need to be chosen and inserted, and half of the granite on the BBQ counter has to be recut. The installers blew the cut the first time and it doesn't fit right so the tile company is paying for an entire new slab. That should all be done by the end of this week, and when it is I'll post a before-and-after photo extravaganza.
On a completely different subject, I quit my job in October because I somehow landed the job I never dared even dream about. Sometimes in my dreams, my dream-self would fantasize about it, but then I'd immediately jolt awake, laughing at the implausibility. But I actually got the job, right, and I signed a contract stating I would write a 170-page book over the course of the next year with the initial research and interviews to begin mid-October / early-November. But it hasn't started yet. And that makes sense, really, considering the way the world works; it's a giant project with a lot of money and a lot of people involved, so I should have planned for a delay. I thought about the possibility at the time, but I also wanted to make sure I gave my current employer enough time to hire and train a replacement in the event that the project did start on time, so I gave my notice.
Word on the street is that we'll be starting sometime in the next two weeks. That's a lot of time I've spent out of work. Even when I was doing accounting, I usually had some freelance technical writing work to do-- safety manuals, employee handbooks, other projects outsourced by various human resource departments-- but again, I made sure I wrapped all of that up in anticipation of this.
So! Two weeks! Until then it's me and some socks and buttons and more socks and some other socks. And that sock over there. Yeah, bring me that one.
¶ posted by Erin on Monday, December 03, 2007
