I am officially over-stimulated. Way more stimulated than I can handle.
I took my massive shopping lists and headed out of work early (my boss rules). I picked up my sister (and got to see the new little hedgehog) and headed to lunch (mmm chinese buffet. 2005 is totally the year of the chinese buffet. I need to shoot myself now). After lunch it was Costco. Talk about overwhelming. It’s a lot like Sam’s Club only bigger and cleaner and it had better lighting. I thought Costco would be the perfect solution to throwing a huge party, but it’s not. I mean it kind of is, I got huge amounts of asparagus, green beans and avocados for cheap, but for the most part I would see things I needed, artichoke hearts, for example, and even though I needed them for the cheese platter, i did not need a gallon of artichoke hearts.
I managed to get quite a few things, but towards the end I was wandering around, mumbling to myself and my hands were doing the weird ‘one-hand-clapping’ thing that do when i get all overwhelmed. April was a shining star, though. Seriously, if you need someone to take control of a situation, to manage every detail, you call my sister. She. Gets. Shit. Done.
Back to her place, we split a beer (it was 2:30 in the afternoon), we split a cigarette (I was out) and we chatted a bit. I told her how I glued my eye shut the other night!
After I got home and put stuff away and read the instructions for upgrading to Tiger (it was delivered today) I sat down to rewrite my grocery list for a regular grocery store. Sit down. Rewrite list.
What list?
Where’s the list? where’s my notebook? Where is the notebook that I had with the menu, the food lists, the cryptic shorthand telling me all kinds of information about each thing I have to buy (4 checks next to scallions means 3 bunches, but 2 checks next to mascarpone means buy 2. An X means it’s on the other list as well, a circle means it’s on the specialty store list, a circle with a line through it means…aw fuckit). Where’s my notebook? Not in with the groceries I just brought in, not on the sofa, not in the car, not in the trunk, not under the sink, not in the back yard.
Oh fuck me pretty!
Yeah, lost the notebook. The single (SINGLE) most important thing in planning this party gets lost somewhere in a Costco parking lot. What the hell is wrong with me? I have 43 rsvp’s! 43 people said “I would like to come to your home and eat your food and chat amiably with you and your friends. I hope the food is good because I’ve got no other reason to be there” and I lost my menu. I’m throwing some fucking cheetohs and onion dip on the table on saturday!
The menu is gone, the lists are gone.
Yeah, okay, so I recreated the menu, recreated the lists, made a new shopping list. Calmed down. David is amazingly calming.
David went to the grocery store with me, which I appreciated as I know he doesn’t really care to go to the grocery store with me and would rather go alone or not at all. Thing is, David’s a lot of fun at the grocery store once you get used to his method. he spends a lot of time inspecting certain things and I used to get impatient. Now I know to leave the cart with him and wander off to get this or that. You never want to take the cart and leave him alone, leaving the cart with him makes you go back to the cart and inevitably he has something cool to show you.
Today’s coolness was the Jelly Belly bulk display. Every flavor was seperated (they also had a bin with the mixed ones) and we took a bag and went flavor by flavor and added 2 or 3 or 4. We didn’t want to get a giant bag, just a little bit to share. It was fun. I wandered off again and he picked up little bits of this or that bulk candy. Good fun.
I got overstimulated at the grocery store too. It was really strange in there. I hate when I don’t know the layout of a store and nothing is where it belongs.
Home, groceries away, the dogs are being asses, dinner was greasy and unsatisfying. I’m tired.
BUT shopping was a success, i got the things I needed, David was helpful. Things are going to be fine.

So I had big plans for tonight, cleaning and whatnot, but a certain kidney decided to play havoc on me this weekend. I’m tired, so very tired. Shopping and cleanign will have to take place tomorrow. It’s 10:30 and all I want to do is sleep. I don’t go to bed this early! I feel like an old person.
Also, if my dog just vomited behind the sofa on the newly shampooed rugs I will kill her and I will sell her carcass to the first person who promises to eat her.
The other dog, the little guy, is curled up next to me passed out. Lately he’s become rather insistent that I participate in a little Ghengis time every day. So I make sure to clear some room on my lap and get him up there and tell him how wonderful he is and how happy I am to have him around. He seems to enjoy it and I do too.
Ghengis smiles, I’m positive.
This evening I had a freak out about the party. A minor one. David said the exact right things again. You have no idea how happy I am to have him around, too! He says the right things, he tells me that not everything will be fine, but most things will.
And he hugs me while I sleep.
I made my shopping list. It’s huge. HUGE. It’s also an involved process. First you make the menu. Then you take each menu item and break it down into all of the food you need to make it with ball park type quantities. Then you take that list and you make third list where you copy down only the things you need to buy from the store (I already have vanilla! no need to buy that). After that you make your 4th list which is where you organize everything into actual grocery store sections to make shopping easier. The 5th list is anything that needs to be bought at a specialty shop or liquor store or cheese counter where flavored cheese spread is NOT that high water mark.
So I didn’t succeed in doing everything I needed to do tonight but I am okay with that. I need to be healthy by this weekend or the party won’t happen and that would be a travesty of the highest order.
This chochobo is going to bed!

three) Be careful when applying fake eyelash adhesive to your eye. Mishaps including, but not limited to can include gluing your eye shut, gluing your lid open, burning the shit out of your eye. On the other hand, I’m keen on the glitter.
II) Finally saw “Punch Drunk Love” all the way through. Loved it for all it’s quirky WTDedness.
Uno) Everyday I see things I wish I could photograph but then they’re lost. They’re the visual ephemera of my day. here…gone…no record of them ever existing. The dogs are lying together right now in a pose that would kill you for how cute they are. To get my camera would distract them and the shot would be lost. Maddie is sleeping on my, Ghengis is curled against her watching David put dinner away. Gone..
try to remember things, people, remember that Lena Leonard was in 206…

So I was desperately searching Photoshop for a specific feature that I know should be in there, I want it to constrain my crop to a ratio equivilent to 4×6. I know it has to be in there but I can’t find it. The pictures my camera takes are not to the same height/width ratio as the 4×6 photo paper that I have which means either the top gets cut off or there is a white border on the sides. I accept that cropping with have to occcur, I just want to be able to control what gets cropped. Also, I don’t always want the entire picture, I just want a part of it but I still want that part to fit on 4×6 paper.
Can’t find it, no one knows how except to crop pixel by pixel until it fits. People suggest downloading this software or that software, but I don’t want different software, I don’t want to have to learn something new (and that smug “meh meh meh meh my software is so l33t I could kill 10 pumas with it” attitude makes me want to steal your software and shoot it in the soul. If it had one.)
So I do that and another curious thing happens. I open a photo, crop the top edge off, save it and print it and the color quality goes to hell. I can’t figure it out. I didn’t do anything to the photo except crop the top off and suddenly my sunset is printing up all shitty.
Sigh.
So I do more searching and guess what I find? iPhoto has cropping constraints! What the hell, why didnt I notice this before (because I am retarded as highlighted by my photoshop follies). iPhoto gives you either a 4×6 frame to move about on your photo or keeps your custom crop box to the right ratio. Simple! and the quality does not degrade in any way when you print them.
I’m a printing fool. I’ve filled all but two of my picture frames! I need to get more. I need to fill my house with pictures. I need to resist the urge to print every picture of the dogs that i have!
And so, after printing like a maniac we got ready and headed over to the 14th anniversary extravaganza for Balls Cabaret which is the longest continuously running midnight cabaret or something like that. If they had a website I’d link to that. We go there semi-regularly and last night was truly one of the best times all around. There was partial nudity, there was barry manilow, there was full frontal nudity, there was humor, hitler, best friend fucking and loads of aftershow chocolate and cake. Someday we’ll get David back up there on that stage (though, I mentioned earlier he’s been doing Song-o-Rama on Wednesdays and I’m pretty happy about that. Hey, David, finish the lobster song!)
Halfway through the show at Balls I felt the old familiar pain in my back and this morning woke up with my good friend Mr Bladder Infection pounding away at my kidneys and bladder.
Birthday breakfast with my sister and then a trip to urgent care. My sister got a combo Christmas/Birthday present but I didn’t want her to feel all forgotten or anything so I gave her the one present that anybody would want, A framed photo of my dogs. Oh yeah! Ghengis and Maddie together for her to proudly display.
I was in pain and cranky at breakfast, not very good company at all. Sorry, April, I’ll make it up to you.
Urgent care was completely unbusy and I was in and out of there with antibiotics in hand in no time (well, ‘no time’ in a sort of Einsteinian relative sort of way, David was probably pretty bored and he probably felt like it took forever. he’s a good chochobo though, and we did the crossword puzzle while we waited.)
I got home thinking I’d be lazy and chill for the rest of the day but I had a surprising amount of energy so i popped some alleve and vacuumed twice (I love my Dyson vacuum, have I mentioned that lately) and then decided that I did have enough energy to steam clean the carpets.
First of all, the steam cleaner will not remove blood from the carpet. This is a pain. Secondly, I was struck by the thought the list of people I could make in my mind that would stop me part way through the process and tell me the ‘right’ way to do it. They’d tell me to stop being so random, to go from one end of the place to the other, to stop walking over the spots I had already cleaned…to work in a fucking pattern. You know what? I didn’t care. The best thing about my life is that I get to live it. I did this totally messed up, random carpet cleaning and it worked and my carpets are clean and they look better and I didn’t get bored while doing it.
Of course how could i get bored when the mixer mechanism that attaches to the sink started leaking without me noticing and the water ran down the hose onto the floor and flooded the kitchen and leaked into the basement? Aaaah, good times. Cleaning that up make my kitchen floor the cleanest it has been in a long time, though so that’s a good thing.
Then I cleaned the bathroom all over and admonished David to keep it clean (which is not a reflection of his habits, he’s not messy, just a stated rule that no one can make the bathroom messy until after the party).
Then I wrote this.
And now this chochobo is going to wander into the kitchen to stuff food in her mouth as she hasn’t eaten since breakfast and the antibiotics make her woozily.
bolochobo out!