Thursday, April 28, 2011

Sometimes you just never know.

The other night, my Siamese cat jumps up onto the part of the kitchen counter that's open to the living room, shivers a couple of times and lets out a rainbow of barf right across the Kid's backpack.

"See?" says the dude. "That's why I tell you not to leave your stuff on the floor."

The Kid stops looking grossed out and looks confused. "Because the cat might some day projectile vomit on it?"

"Exactly."

~~~~~

And today I found out why it's important to always clean up the dinner pans right away - because you might be washing a pan from the previous night's chicken piccata and and a dried up piece of angelhair pasta will jam its way deep under your thumbnail and make you drop the pan and yell "MOTHERFUCKER" right by the open kitchen window.

Labels: adventures in shitty parenting, suzy fucking homemaker

Monday, April 25, 2011

For as long as I can remember, I've been crazy about books.

When I learned how to read, I used to stay up for hours after my designated bedtime, huddled under the blanket with a flashlight. Whenever I was going somewhere, I'd take a book with me*.

After my parents got divorced and I'd get shipped off to my dad's for the summer, half of my luggage would be books - it didn't seem weird because my dad's house was always filled with books** &***.

My mom was pretty cheap so a ton of my books came from thrift stores so I didn't always read the "popular" books - when all of my friends were reading Little House on the Prairie books, I was reading anything but - I was reading biographies of random people and old books with delicate, musty pages. My collection wasn't pretty, but it was mine.

Even now, I have 2 big old Ikea bookcases packed full of books - the bookcases were perfect in the mostly unused dining room in Savannah, they were at opposite sides of the living room in Texas and here they've been relegated to different rooms (although I've got a giant pile of waiting-to-be-read on the fireplace) - my ideal house would have 97 kajillion built in shelves, all full of reading material that I'd never have to get rid of.

A couple years ago when e-readers first came out, I scoffed -

"gross, who wants to read something on a weird flat screen? It's not a book, it's not pages, it's not a tattered dust cover that serves as a bookmark. I don't care how sleek and sexy it is, it's not a book."

And then I got an iPod Touch for my birthday and, among the 14 trillion free applications that exist, there are several e-readers. So I downloaded one and it came with some free books... And I read it and it was kind of cool to use a touchscreen to flip pages.

And then I found... other ways to find books online and before I knew it, my sexy little iPod was a bookshelf and I've even found myself looking wistfully at the one bookshelf that's in the living room and wishing that I could just scan those books and make them digital and then read them without even getting up from the couch.

It's like having to buy all your favorite movies on DVD/blu-ray/whatever all over again, but dammit it, it's going to make my carry-on baggage so much lighter - not like I'm going to become one of those creepy people who get on the plane with nothing (sorry, that's just weird)

aaaaanyway, because I don't have nearly enough passwords to remember, I've also got an account on GoodReads - so... go there and friend me or make fun of my reading choices - whatev.


* except for car trips because I get carsick like WHOA, especially if I'm reading.

** still is - if you walk in to his house today, there are books on almost every surface and bookcases in every room. And that's just his books, he converted a whole bedroom into a library for my stepmom's books

*** even now, whenever I travel, I carry at least 3 or 4 books with me.

Labels: kind of a dork

Sunday, April 17, 2011

what kind of a parent forces her child (who doesn't love scary movies) to spend a Sunday night watching the Scream trilogy?*

The same kind of parent who bets her child he won't take a big drink out of the jar of jalapeno slices for $2***.

And to think I was worried he'd be missing out on something by not having siblings...



*In my defense, we were originally only going to watch the first one, and I thought that Timothy Olyphant** was in it, but he's in the second one, so we had to watch that, too and once you've watched two, you might as well watch the third one, too, right?

**that man is just a stupid amount of hot

*** he totally did!!!! 

Labels: adventures in shitty parenting

Saturday, April 16, 2011

list of things that the elves living in my house regularly pilfer

nail clippers
spoons
one sock
scissors
my embroidery scissors
hair clips
spatulas
cat toys
blue or black pens*
lids to plastic food storage containers
the lid to the saucepan I use to cook rice
1 cup measuring cups






* red pens, though, seem to multiply, seriously, it's like a fifth grade teacher lives in the house, there are red pens on every damn surface of the house

Labels: and I'm not even on Ambien

Monday, April 11, 2011

Pop Quiz

The best time to introduce yourself to your neighbors across the street is:

a) the day you move in
b) the first time you see them out in front of their house
c) a year or so after you move in, the day after you've kicked out your husband who has been having an affair with a member of the church of which he is the pastor.* & **

three guesses which one I got to experience today.


*fun anecdote, when she first busted out "my husband is having an affair", I was thisclose to blurting out "it wasn't me"... it's probably a good thing I was too flummoxed by her tears to say it.

** also, how... not unexpected for a dude who's supposed to be a "man of god" to not be able to keep it in his pants. Way to represent, dude.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

8 words that made me almost pee my pants today?

"Emilio Estevez is now following you on Twitter"

Labels: random pop culture reference, squeee

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Last week, after I finished my photo blog, I decided I needed another fun project, so naturally I decided to dye my hair.

For the past few years, my hair has been super dark brown (a color which compliments my alabaster skin and makes my eyes look really green, but it's kind of difficult to keep up and it's hard to find a really good dark brown). Last summer(-ish, I'm not really sure when), I decided to go red, which meant bleaching out the brown and covering it up with red. And red is great, but because my hair is not naturally red, it fades super fast and looks kind of gross when it starts to grow out - so I decided to maybe see if I couldn't maybe venture back towards my natural haircolor (which, of course, I haven't seen since I discovered Sun-In in fifth grade).

In my head, my natural color looks something like this:

(except minus that braid because I've tried to do that but I can't make it work)

but most likely my natural color is closer to that of The Kid


Or maybe a teensy bit darker, either of which would be fine.

So I figured I could just bleach out the red, then cover it with an ash blond and I'd be good to go.

After the initial bleach, my hair was approximately this color


which is fine for flowers, but not so much for me. Oh, and it felt kind of straw-like. So I conditioned it like crazy and then dyed it some "champagne blond" which left it looking like the flower, but just the tiniest bit muted. So I continue to condition the crap out of it and I'll probably dye it again next week, or just use a toner on it*.

And, you know, worst case scenario:

 I could rock the Sinead look. And I've been considering shorter hair** for a while anyway.

*apparently, there's some purple toner you can buy that will tone down brassiness, but it's also possible to use grape Koolaid... guess which one I'm more likely to use first



**I actually love longer hair, but since I don't have an Aniston-esque team of stylists available to tend to my usually-wavy, but sometimes straight-ish locks, I usually just put it up with pins or a ponytail and shorter hair might be fun for a while

Labels: first world problems

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Can you hear me now?

So, the dude is out of state on a job interview* and, being the super duper nice person I am, I made the ultimate sacrifice of loaning him my precious iPod Touch (loaded with a bunch of super duper fun games, music and books) for the trip.

He calls me during his layover to ask how to turn it off.

me: There's a button on the top

him: on the side?

me: on the top

him: on the bottom?

me: on the top

him: there's no button on the top, do you mean on the side?

me: On. The. Top.

him: underneath? 

me (staring at my phone): ...

him: there's no button on the top.

me: ...

I mean, it's a fucking iPod, not fifty acres of land, there's not that much space to cover. Of course, this is the same guy who practically needs a road map when I tell him the new bottle of ketchup is in the door of the refrigerator. No, I don't know which damn shelf, it's in the door of the refrigerator, you're not having to excavate an Egyptian tomb...

him: The one on the front?

me: ... 

him: ...

me: it's... on the top

him: ...

me: okay, if you're holding it on your hand, like you're playing skee-ball on it, there are two sides, and a top and a bottom...


him: ... oh, okay, I found it

me (looking around for the hidden cameras): ...


(it could be noted that I personally didn't know where that button was until a week ago when The Kid showed me... but that was just a simple "there's the button", "oh, okay, thanks", not some entire Laurel and Hardy spisode... he also had to help me beat a couple levels of Angry Birds, but that's neither here nor there)

*not that we don't love love love this place, but defense cuts don't make for a whole lot of job security

Labels: first world problems

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Hey, remember my photo-a-day blog?

I finished it today.

Go, me.

Friday, April 01, 2011

I've finally broken the bacon dessert barrier

I've finally figured out a way to incorporate bacon into dessert.


vanilla ice cream, caramel syrup, whipped cream and bits of candied bacon scattered throughout.

(inspired by the bacon sundae that Denny's is offering, except that has maple-flavored syrup on it and... no, Denny's, just no. Maple is for breakfast, caramel or hot fudge are for dessert.) (Also, Denny's is calling this celebration de bacon the Baconalia, which is a play on the word bacchanlia, which refers to drunken Roman orgies, and... while I took Latin for 3 years in high school [and had my fair share of drunken times at Denny's in my younger days] and can appreciate the reference, I'm wondering whether or not the average Denny's customer will get it.)

*this picture is reason # 90 bajillion why I don't think I'll ever have a food blog, a lot of the most delicious food in the world isn't much to look at and is even less impressive in a picture. Also, my kitchen has shitty lighting.

Labels: suzy fucking homemaker