4 Foods I Can't Recommend Eating While Your Life is Dripping Out of Your Nose, One Sneeze at a Time

Would you believe it's been so long since I had a cold that I didn't recognize it coming on?  Sunday, I had this burning sore sensation at the back of my throat and thought, "Damn you, Prevacid!  You are supposed to have this heartburn WHIPPED by now!!!"  Monday morning I was a shattered wreck of a human being, held together by Ibuprofen and Claritin while I cursed in my bathroom for not being able to find the Robitussen behind all my bottles of perfume.  I rallied enough to make it to work, but that wasn't an option this morning.

So, on this sick day, I'm taking my mother's advice and feeding my cold.  I went to Wal Mart and found the grossest foods I could to try and outrage this virus into leaving my body.  At least, that's my excuse.  The truth is, when I get sick, it's disgusting.

4)  House of Tsang's Saigon Sizzle Chicken Noodle Soup 

What I want right now is a nice big bowl of Hot and Sour soup from the Chinese restaurant across the street from my apartment.  I settled for this, however, because reasons (It was 10:15ish and the place wasn't open yet).

It seemed innocuous enough when I opened the container to microwave it.  There was that layer of "solid" on top you tend to get with this type of "food", but I was pretty sure that would dissolve when I nuked it.

It didn't.

I was too horrified to take a picture of it, opting instead to mash it up with my spoon and stir it, all the while chanting that mystical phrase, "It's probably safe for human consumption."

It tasted like it had been put together in the factory by someone who had once seen a bowl of hot n sour soup, flavored by the tears that fell from his/her eyes as they imagined what it might feel like to be loved.

I can remember what it felt like to cry, but somehow no longer can . . .

3) Animal Crackers Dipped in Chocolate Frosting

You thought I was kidding about that whole me-being-disgusting-while-ill thing?  Aw, your naivete is sweet but will not save you from a life of disappointment and pain.

Animal cracker kinda have an almost-lemony flavor to them that mixes well with the chocolate frosting.  Then it makes me remember all those birthdays where I had requested a chocolate cake and got served a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  Not the same thing.  A yellow cake with chocolate frosting is like biting into a buffalo wing where the insides are somehow spinach.

Anyway, the sugar rush momentarily made me feel better, then gave me stomach cramps.  Also the frosting looked sort of like poop.

2) Chili Cheese Fritos

It's like a Frito pie, only in chip form, and you can't even pretend that this is real food.  This bag knows you want it.  It's sitting there in the chip aisle, going, "Silly mortals, don't pretend you want those cracked-pepper-and-olive-oil kettle chips.  Come on over here, let's do this."

So you do.

Or at least I do.

1) Grapefruit Juice

People always recommend orange juice to me, but I can only take that in limited quantities.  This is the good stuff.  You can tell because it says "All Natural" right on the bottle.  Sure, the only way it could probably be more unnatural is if they harvest it from a sleeping Cthulhu's testicles down in R'lyeh, but my colds respond well to both vitamin C and lies. 

My only complaint about this juice?  It didn't come with vodka, and Wal Mart doesn't carry Reyka.  Grrrr.

The Day After a Most Auspicious Birthday, In Which I Have Been Mostly Alive for Three Decades, And What I Wish to tell My Twenties Now That They are Over

Suck a dick.*



*Warning: this blog post contained Graphic Language. If you wish to complain about having been forced to read something you found on the Internet that you voluntarily clicked on that offended you, please see the above. Also note that I have not, in fact, disabled your Back button, & that you yourself can make the dirty naughty words go away by clicking it. 

My blog, deal with it. If I think of something really insightful about growing up I might update this post, otherwise the above sums it up. 

Randomness - May 19, 2014

This will probably be a light, fluffy blog post. I don't care if it seems out of place amid the other ones, I want to get into the habit of posting at least once a week, & if sweetness & light helps form that habit, sweetness & light it is. 

Reads: I just finished Picture Perfect: The Jodi Arias Story by Shanna Hogan. It was a good read, she did a very good job capturing the "It's Complicated" relationship between Arias & Travis Alexander. What surprised me was that she made me feel sympathy for Arias without toning down the details of the crime at all. Briefly, Arias & Travis were in a relationship for about six months or so, then broke up but remained friends with benefits. The dynamic between them was that Travis did not see a future with Arias at all, but he was still willing to sleep with her, & Arias was desperately in love with him & willing to continue the sexual part of their relationship if she couldn't have him in any other way. Add in her sociopathy & a probable personality disorder & there you have the slaughter that occurred. I am DEFINITELY NOT SAYING that Travis deserved what happened, & I do think Jodi Arias is too dangerous to breathe free air ever again. It was more a perfect storm of different factors; had Arias been healthy mentally, she probably would have been able to let go of her obsession with Travis & walk away. It's hard enough once you're in the mindset of "This man/woman is perfect for me, why can't he/she see that?" to drop it even when you've got things together upstairs. Anyway, good book, I recommend it, the author is fair to all sides involved.

Fragrance: I've been alternating between Eau Sauvage, John Varvatos Artisan & Shalimar. Yes, the first two are men's colognes, why not? ES is a wonderful scent that mixes lovely, lemony jasmine with citrus notes & basil. Artisan is orange blossoms, citrus & herbs. Both of them are like a cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer's day. As for Shalimar, well, it's a beast that opens with a shotgun blast of bergamot, leather & powdery vanilla, but it's a beast that melds with my skin chemistry, so don't even think about prying the bottle away from me.

Watching: Nothing, really. I don't have cable so it's hard to keep up with new TV shows, & I can't say I miss it. I do watch a lot on South Park Studios though. "The Hobbit" had me ROFL'coptering. I did watch The Europa Report & The Last Days on Mars via Netflix, those were both decent enough.

Outer: Last week this happened.

I took off 8-10 inches of hair, the most I've had cut in almost twenty years, & it's incredibly freeing. My hair is fine & thin, so this looks way better on me than my limp, straggly hair used to. In other appearance news, I've been acne-free for almost a month(!!!). I haven't been able to say that since I was twelve. I'm not sure if my skin finally decided to settle down now that I'm almost thirty, or if the products I've been using did it. I stopped using any products that contain fragrance, & I also switched my sunscreen from one with avobenzone to one that has titanium & zinc oxide in it & I think that really helped. Here's my current "big guns":

Retinol serum to tell my skin cells, "HEY YOU! BEHAVE LIKE YOU'RE HEALTHY!", two different strengths of BHA to exfoliate (the stronger is for areas where I tend to break out such as my chin, & to fade the marks from past breakouts), a vitamin C serum to brighten & that wonderful jar of hippy Vaseline in case I go overboard & get chemical burns/skin flakes/leprosy. Apparently all my skin wanted was some beeswax & propolis to act happy. Either way I'm satisfied.

Resolutions: Work out, eat healthy, drink less, write more. I'm sure I can accomplish those ;-)

Choice or Life?

This post has been brewing for a little while now, and I feel I can put into words what my position is and the how/why it's changed. All right. Here goes.

Abortion. It's an issue that is almost guaranteed to stir up strong opinions. I can tell you by heart every conservative position regarding abortion, because I was once there. Now? 

Once upon a time, I thought the answer was simple: "Stop having irresponsible, unprotected sex and you won't have to have an abortion! What's so difficult about keeping your legs shut, you whore?" After all, I had decided to not have sex until marriage, and I wasn't having a problem keeping that. Why didn't everyone else make the only sensible choice?

I missed one simple thing when I made that argument: there is exactly one person on the planet who I can stop from having sex that I believe is wrong, and that is me. My neighbor? I can't stop him or her. My friends and family? I can't stop them either. Everyone else on the planet? Not a chance. I can control what I do with my own body, and that is as far as any argument about abstinence-only can go. I can share my beliefs with others, I can tell them that I think they would be much happier, but I do not have the right to slap a chastity belt on them and throw away the key. I have one body in this debate, mine. I cannot control what other people do with theirs.

You can't expect an unbelieving world to act as if it believes. What if you had a Jewish friend who came upon you eating a BLT and immediately began to condemn you for not following kosher law? When you make the "Just keep your legs shut!" argument, that's what you're doing. Not everyone on the planet thinks exactly like you do, believes exactly what you believe, or follows the same religion. If we did, your argument might have a tiny grain of merit. 

What I found regarding my position in the abortion debate is that everything became simpler once I relinquished my Bedroom, PD badge. Accepting that people will have sex whether or not I give it my stamp of approval, I am in favor of increased access to contraceptives and maintaining the legality of abortion to ultimately decrease the abortion rate. The statistics are on my side here: legality of the procedure does not have any effect on the abortion rate. In Africa and Latin America, where most abortions are illegal, the overall abortion rate is 29 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age and 32 per 1,000 respectively. In Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds, the rate is 12 per 1,000 (see here for the worldwide numbers). If we could cut the abortion rate in the US by half (almost 20 per 1000), wouldn't that be a start? If you're going to argue for overturning Roe v Wade and enacting restrictive laws for abortion, please at least be honest with yourself that those policies have been shown to increase the abortion rate. 

What does decrease the abortion rate? See here and here. Increased access to reliable contraception, which oddly enough, many pro-lifers are also opposed to. It's the "keep your legs shut!" argument all over again. Just don't do It and you won't ever have to worry about an unplanned pregnancy, and since you're never ever ever doing It you don't need to know about contraceptives or worry about being able to afford them! What I would like to see is increased education, period. When people are educated about their options, they make better choices. Some of them, knowing the possible consequences of an unplanned pregnancy, might even decide that sex outside of marriage or a committed relationship is not for them. You can't make that decision for them, though. It's not your body.  

So what am I? I don't think I can retain the label of "pro-life" as it's currently used, since I'm accepting that other people will make choices that I don't agree with and I can't stop them. I'm pro-education: you should know about your body and its drives. If you decide to follow those drives, whether or not I personally approve of it is immaterial. I don't see the Amish out there slashing everyone's tires because they don't drive cars, or Jews campaigning for outlawing pork, or Muslims trying to re-institute Prohibition because they don't drink. I can't expect an unbelieving world to suddenly start acting as if it believes. If it really is all about saving babies for you, ditch all of the slut-shaming arguments. Start supporting initiatives that will actually help mothers, because three-quarters of women who are deciding on abortion are making that decision because they cannot afford to raise a child. If it's really about saving those babies, stop making judgements about how they were conceived. If it's really about saving babies, you should be supporting any health measure that drives the cost of pre & post natal care down, along with supporting mothers with programs such as WIC and welfare. If it's really about saving babies from being murdered, what cost is too great?

Culinary Catastrophes Episode 634.5

The following is my thought process while cooking a Moroccan Cottage Pie.

1) I'm going to have to touch raw meat, aren't I? So gross. No, wait, I can just use the wooden spoon to hurl the meat in the pot! SCORE!

2) Try & make me cry, onion? Huh? HUH? Who's tough now! Who's not crying & also not diced! That would be me, loser! Take that!

3) Oh crap, that plate I so carefully lined with paper towels isn't going to take more than half this meat! Crap, crap, crap! There goes another dish for me to wash.

4) I don't need measuring spoons, I know what a 1/2 teaspoon looks like . . . don't I? Was that too much ginger? Crap, it was! Maybe if I add more of the other spices it'll all come even.

5) "Add the tomato paste"? WTF?!? This recipe did not say I needed tomato paste! THERE IS NO TOMATO PASTE MENTIONED IN THE LIST OF INGREDIENTS, SO YOU CAN GO SUCK A FAT--oh wait, there it is. Lucky I keep the tube of tomato paste around in case of such emergencies.

6) OMG, when I added the red wine to the pot, the purple separated from the rest of the liquid! I am SO not drinking any of that. This bottle can stay in the fridge till we've moved out.

7) This pot isn't going to be big enough for the meat to soak in the liquid--no, just enough room as long as I don't need to stir. Who ever heard of stirring stew, anyway? Sounds like loser talk.

8) Now for the mashed sweet potatoes to go on top. I totally got this. Mashed potatoes are impossible to screw up.

9) !#%&, how did Wook-Wook separate the egg yolks out last time we made this? I wasn't paying attention. I need them now, what to do, what to do? Wait, I have fingers! Genius!

10) Idiot.

11) So gross.

12) Where the !#%& did the soap go? I need to wash my hands five minutes ago!

13) All right, we're on the back stretch now. The stew is in the casserole dish, now to spread the mash on top & throw it in the oven to have some alone time.

14) F*CK! $H*T! F*CK$H*T!!!! THAT WAS TOO MUCH NUTMEG! NOOOOOOOO!

15) No, wait, it looks just like the picture, aside from the fact I didn't pipe the potatoes on top of the pie. What am I, British? I ain't got time for that.

16) Damn, this smells good. But now I'm not hungry . . .

Stay tuned for my continuing kitchen adventures! Next Episode: "Bread Without a Maker".

Perfume, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Cat Piss

Any of my Facebook friends could tell you that I love perfume. It will pop up in a status at least 2-3 times a month, depending if I've discovered a new scented gem recently. It's been that way for a long time now, and I am not afraid to let my Freaky-Fragrance-Flag fly!

Some of my earliest memories are of being at my Grandma Rachel's house, playing dress-up with her clothes and clip-on earrings. She always had a bottle of Avon Charisma, along with samples of others. I can't remember how it smelled, not precisely. A quick Internet search will yield a list of notes: top notes of aldehydes, bergamot, coriander, heart notes of carnation, jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang and a base of sandalwood, amber, civet, musk, tonka bean and styrax. If we were to be able to smell this now, the typical reaction would be "Uck! Old-lady perfume!" I certainly would have had that reaction a few years ago, my nose having been trained to love CLEAN! fragrances, fruity-florals, and big gourmands (think cupcakes). We'll come back to Charisma a bit later. For now, step forward to the late nineties.

Green tea perfumes were big. Calvin Klein's One was the big unisex scent, and it was a breath of fresh air after the 80s Poison, Opium and Obsession. If memory serves, Cool Water also debuted during the nineties, but I could be off there. I was sixteen and just getting into makeup when I received a sample of Clinique Happy from somewhere. If you haven't worn it or smelled it, I can tell you it's a bright citrusy-floral fragrance, perfect for spring and summer since it has no "dark" notes to it whatsoever. I still have a bottle today, half-used, and it still reminds me of being a teenager back before the Internet got big. I also loved Tommy Girl, another fruity floral that also had a nice spicy tea note to it. Those were my go-tos for many years.

"But where is the Cat-Piss I was promised, O Great and Powerful Blog-Mistress?" I'm getting to it, Hypothetical Readers. To get there, we have to enter the world of Niche Fragrance. You can only rarely find Niche perfume at department stores, so not many people even know it exists. It's not just expensive perfume, many of the lower-costing niche perfumes are comparable to what you'd pay at the drugstore or department store. Anyway, I discovered it when I was trying to find perfume reviews online for Charisma. I was missing my grandmother and trying to figure out if I could snag a bottle of it somewhere still. Sadly, it's discontinued, but what I did find was reviews of fragrances I had never even heard of, along with links to online stores that I could buy samples of them from. Now we are talking!

Two full bottles I purchased right away were l'Heure Bleue and Mitsouko, both very old-fashioned perfumes by Guerlain. To give you an idea just how old, lHB was first released in 1912, Mitsouko in 1919. Neither one of them smell "old lady" to me in the least. I loved Mitsouko right away: on me it opens up with a nice spicy blast of cinnamon, pepper & some anise (think black licorice) and goes on to luscious ripe peaches. If I had to wear one perfume only for the rest of my life--wait, hold on, that's just crazy talk. Not happening. But I can say that it is an awesome go-anywhere perfume.

l'Heure Bleue was much more difficult. It also opens up with a spicy note, but it is much more medicinal, sometimes reminding me of Vicks. There's orange blossoms, iris, jasmine and vanilla along the way, but the opening just about does me in. It's much better to wear in very cold weather, that way I don't feel suffocated.

Now we come to the Cat Piss--er, Musc Ravageur by Frederic Malle. If you google this one don't blame me for the sticker shock, I didn't price it. This was among the samples I ordered, and it is a dark little piece of animalic notes. The opening is bergamot and cinnamon and I swear they snuck cat piss in it too. The drydown is a lovely growl of dark vanilla, musk and amber, but that opening! I couldn't deal with it when I first tried it, plus the price tag for a full bottle put me off, so I told myself I'd be happy with Vanilla Musk (Yes, that's the drugstore fragrance by Coty that you can get for under $20. See, I can be economical).

The perfume that sent me over the edge, though, was Rien by Etat Libre d'Orange. Think musty old lady perfume with all the florals stripped out and there you have Rien. Spicy, mossy, leathery, it is a cheerfully insane challenge to every bubblegum celebrity fragrance out there. It refuses to play nice. I love it and so does Wook-Wook. Unfortunately, whatever it did to my nose means I now love the expensive Cat Piss perfume as well! Did it hit the reset button or something? I would really rather not pay $250 for a bottle of perfume, no matter how insane I get about it.

Anyway, I need to wrap this one up (that's what he said). It started out as a journey of remembering my grandmother, and while I haven't found a bottle of Charisma at a thrift store yet, I did come across a perfume I swear smells like what I remember it to be. Another vintage, discontinued fragrance, Intimate by Revlon, it opens up with coriander-spiked white florals with a nice mossy-murky drydown. I wear it and remember Grandma Rachel puttering around in the kitchen, playing ragtime piano on her spinet, or walking around her small-town neighborhood.

One Year Later

I keep tripping myself up, trying to get this entry written. I've tried to get it all down before, but the words twist away from me, and the meaning is never as plain as what I see in my head. It's gotten to the point that the title should actually be "One Year & Two Months Later", but I'm not one for splitting hairs. So I decided to just type until I think I'm done.

In July 2012, my most recent attempt at a relationship had fizzled out. The last couple of times this had happened, I had turned into a pathetic puddle of tears and spiraled deeper into depression ( a post for another day, trust me). I lost weight and sleep and withdrew further into myself till I was sure no one would ever be able to coax me out. Then someone would come along, dangling more empty words, only seeing me as a body or pretty face, and I would be naive enough to fall for it. 

This last time? It may have taken 28 years, but I finally had some steel in my soul. The closest I got to crying over him--let's call him Slimey McDoucheFace--was when I took myself to Olive Garden for a birthday lunch. I'm bad at keeping friends, so it was lunch alone. I ordered wine, so the waitress carded me. When she saw my birthdate, she immediately said, "Oh wow! It's my son's birthday today too!" She brought out a mini dessert for free after I was done with my pasta, and I just really appreciated that she was nice to me, because I was a bit miserable despite my inner monologue stating "Fine, then, if that's how it's going to be, f*ck every last one of you mother's sons!" and my heart agreeing rather than wanting to weep. After that, I felt like a kite with its strings cut, and rather than crashing back to Earth, I was realizing I could fly on my own the whole time.

Next:

SCENE CHANGE: BASEMENT OF LEGEND COMICS AND COFFEE. WEDNESDAY NIGHT. DnD ENCOUNTERS

Enter the Wook-Wook. I first met him at Krypton when he showed up for Encounters one day, playing as a halfling named Kibbles n Bits. About my height, dark hair and eyes, epic beard. I had invited several Facebook friends out for birthday drinks the previous Saturday since my birthday was on a Tuesday. He hadn't shown up and I didn't think anything of it. He walked up to me after the game and asked if I wanted to grab a drink at the Library. He claims I immediately turned bright red and I have no photographic proof to say otherwise. I stuttered out a "Yes" while the DM smirked and one of the other players chanted "DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!" Thanks guys.

Nothing stands out to me too much about that drink. It was a milk stout, probably Moojoos. We made somewhat awkward small talk since I have a -3 to my Charisma. The one thing that stood out, which I've mentioned before, was that he didn't laugh at my major.

After that, a few weeks went by. I'm bad at being able to tell if a guy is interested in me, so I didn't think anything was really going to come of that drink. According to Wook-Wook, the reason he didn't ask me out right away was because I kept running out of the basement at DnD while he was preparing the chloroformed rag. 

Once he did though, that was pretty much it. We'd go to either my house or his on weekends to have Joss Whedon marathons, getting through Firefly (still can't take the sky from me), Dollhouse (WTF was up with the series finale?!?) and Angel (nothing to say other than still perfection). We'd discuss all the most recent Cracked.com articles and get each other to read old archived ones we liked. He got me to go try hole-in-the-wall restaurants I would have probably overlooked, and I introduced him to Darren Aronofsky films.

Anyway, one year and a couple of months later, that's it. Nothing very romantic and fluffy to it aside from afternoon cuddles, no roses or poetry. Lasting love isn't all about swooning and sparkles (I'm looking at you, Twilight). The thing about fireworks is that they burn out, leaving the night just as dark as if they were never there at all. Sometimes after a long walk out in the cold alone, all you want is someone you can trust to be at home to warm you up after.