It is apparent on days like today when anxiety creeps up and crankiness seeps out that I should focus on those things that I love.
I love being alone in the house for short periods of time. I especially love this when I am feeling motivated enough to get something done.
I love making up my own version of aloo mutter paratha (indian flatbread with potatoes and peas) for me and onion kulcha for him. I love the methodical act of chopping, of mixing up the spices, of heating the cumin seeds and mustard seeds first, adding the cinnamon, the ginger, the cardamom, the ground cumin, the cayenne, and the turmeric. Sauteeing the onions and garlic. I wanted potatoes and peas on mine (I don’t like onions). I had a small bag of potatoes but earlier today I discovered that the potatoes had died and leaked potato juice all over a bag of whole wheat flour. Had I put the flour in the cambro I bought for it this would not be an issue. I did not love that.
I didn’t have potatoes, but I did have tater tots. Yes, I took 6 tater tots, microwaved them, hacked them up a bit and sauteed them in a myriad of spices and butter. I put our respective toppings on our flatbread (tortillas, i’m so ghetto when it comes to cooking lately). I loved the process of making a vegetable biryani.
I loved having dinner ready when David got home.
I love my mug that says “please go away” and it has a bunny on it.
I love my dogs. Of course you know that because I write about them almost constantly. I love watching Ghengis navigate his world. He noses through his toy basket until he finds what he wants, he pushes the bad choices out of the way. Ghengis adores David, follows him around like..well…like a puppy. I love Ghengis’ little trot with his ears perked up.
I love Maddie for all of her whacked out attachment and loyalty. I love that she is the perfect size for cuddling.
I love tea with milk and sugar.
I love that even when I am cranky for most of the day David will still buy me an ice cream after the show just because I mention it.
I love that people would come in from out of state and even out of the country just to celebrate my housewarming.
I love when things fall into place.
I love Sebastian Joes mint mocha ice cream.
I love that David fixed my space bar on my computer.
Today, I decided I need to get better about sharing. I used to be good about it, then i stopped, now I have to get better with it. It’s like a habit or something, you get used to it but if you stop it’s hard to go back. Even simple things i’ve become very possesive and selfish about. And a good many of you are familiar with my ‘politics of ice cream rant. I won’t reproduce it here but suffice to say, no one has ever written more words on the issues revolving around a bite of ice cream.
Anyway, what I’m saying is that I think it would be good for my soul and my karma and my well being to share more.
Oh, and also, I think I just need to accept that sometimes I have bad days and it’s not because of any deep seated issue or stress or pms. It could just be because I’m having a bad day. I think I need to stop apologizing for them.
I love my bed.

Let’s see, the first and pretty much only order of business is this:
There is now an official moratorium on eating breakfast with me downtown. It’s just not worth it. I love you guys dearly, but two weekends in a row I had to start my Sundays off snapping at my boyfriend and cursing the pull of the urban center. Uptown, Longfellow, Northeast, Franklin, Dinkytown, Lyn-Lake, South…any of these places! They’re great, fine, wonderful neighborhoods to get a bite to eat and the reward balances out better with the journey.
The problem is this, there are good and fine restaurants downtown, but driving and parking is a hassle. No convenient place to park that isn’t a ramp trying to suck next week’s paycheck out from under you. So you drive around and around and around. You drive down one-way streets, you have to strategize your journey, go too far down 7th and suddenly you have no choice but to cross hennepin and go over to 1st and things get a little futzy for a few blocks. When you drive down a 2 way street you focus on the parking on your side. Drive down a one way and you have to freakily pay attention to the car in front of you AND both sides of parking and inevitably, if a spot presents itself it’s on the far side and you’d better be willing to cause a major traffic disturbance to get over there because it’s not like you can just circle the block. You leave that spot and 2 Cooper Mini’s will have wedged themselves in there by the time you return.
You will find a spot, 1/4 mile away. You will be late to breakfast. You will snap at your boyfriend and secretly blame him for the Marquette-Nicolet-Hennepin aves one-way scheme fuckedness. If you go down 7th (a one-way headed west) you eventually hit Marquette, a one-way going north, after that comes Nicolet, logically that should be a one way headed south. It’s not. You’re not allowed to drive on it. It’s for pedestrians and buses and homicidal bike messengers. After Nicolet comes Hennepin, a one-way that goes north. huh. Now you must cross Hennepin, which in your mind is the dividing line that takes you out of downtown and into pointless-town (it also makes clear to you that you will be late and this road configuration is clearly your boyfriend’s fault).
All of the restaurants that everyone wants to eat at are located on 8th street (a one-way headed east) just east of hennepin or nicolet or marquette. No parking, no easy navigation and the food at the places just doesn’t have the excess of plus points that bring us above even.
I can stay in bed and break even.
And this leads me to another concern of mine. I’m becoming cynical. Nothing dazzles me anymore. Nothing is new and exciting. In everything from food to performances to movies I see artifice and method and gimmick. I’m especially getting irritated with restaurants lately. I’m just not DAZZLED with the food. The food is only ‘okay’, more often than not all I see is gimmick. And I’m not talking about chain places or fast food, we can all agree that the food there is mediocre at best. You eat at Chilis or Applebees you get exactly what you deserve. I’m talking about the places where you have a chef, someone who creates dishes and menus, places where they craft recipes, not places where they throw a frozen steak on the grill and serve it in a lake of cheese.
I’m tired of big portions shoved in front of me as though that’s the trade-off for artistry. I’m not amused by neo-pseudo-fusion cuisine anymore. It’s wonderful that you want to be creative, I do indeed want new and exciting combinations, but don’t just plunk 3 disparate ingredients in front of me and expect me to be impressed with the novelty. I’m not going to sit there and eat it and think “i know I should like this, a professional made it” I’m going to thing “you’re just trying to be amusingly different but you’ve come across as inattentive”.
and I’m tired of being that person! I want to be the person that gets excited by food again. I want to go see a movie and love it from beginning to end for all it’s flash and color.
I want to look at things and see the possibility for success and joy. I spend too much time and energy dealing with people who too easily see the distant disaster.
I was going to also write a great big long thing about how much I love my dogs but now I’m cranky and Ghengis is barking and Maddie has the foulest breath I have ever come upon. And I have to go make dinner.

Today’s surefire cure for the hangover…15 minutes with mom and half a bag of dill pickle chips. I was still tired and poorly motivated but the sickiness and headache went away (of course the two alleve and 4 shots of espresso probably helped).
David found a notebook for me, hallelujah. Of course, once I got the notebook I was completely incapable of finding the motivation for listing food and making grocery lists. But i have the notebook and that’s what matters. My living room is strewn with cookbooks, my email is full of links in emails with subject lines reading “recipes” or “here”.
The highlight of the day was a call from local superheroes Dena and Levi inviting us over to celebrate the new fire pit they installed in the back yard. It was beautiful. It truly was the nicest fire pit i’d ever seen. Dug out of the ground, lined with bricks around the outside, layer of gravel on the bottom and previously hidden/recently found river rock pavers edge the top of it. We also got to sit on the sturdy little benches that Levi had made just minutes before we got there.
I love eating food made over an open fire! We had veggie burgers and corn and potatoes!! They also got a s’mores kit with hand made marshmallows in it. So very good. handmade marshmallows taste like frosting!
I also got to swing on Dena’s special swing that levi made for her and set up in a tree. It was fun but my fear of heights and being out of control took over. Sad.
Came home to discover that things were not bad. Nothing chewed, no pee, nothing broken. It’s early, but I think the hormone/pheromone doohicky might actually be working. As I wrote this she made a deeply contented sigh. I love how many people told me (and rightly so) that perhaps Maddie would not be so issue ridden if I didn’t put rabbit ears on her for fun.
they’re probably right.
I’m off to bed early. I need to have some actual, non-drunken sleep tonight.
Special thanks to the super-duo for inviting us over for the maiden voyage of the S.S. Firepit! We had a most excellent time.

Another thing to add to my list of things that i’d never done but now I have…
Went to a 21+ punk show last night. I’m not a huge fan of punk music, it’s very loud and somewhat nonsensical and most of the songs sound the same and everyone drinks PBR because it’s cheap and it’s very very bad. We knew the people in the band so what the hell, we went and drank and had a good time.
and drank…
and the afterbar was across the street in a garage and you had to pay for the cup if you wanted to drink and we did, so we did.
A lot of stuff happened and suffice to say you probably won’t hear about it from me. The tamest thing was me drunk dialing Ireland at 4:30 in the morning (i’m pretty sure it was 10:30 in the morning there).
So taday is 2 alleve and 4 shots of espresso over ice and quiet. Even Ghengis looks hungover. I’m in the final stages of planning the food for the party. I went to go write out lists and I realized I don’t have a single notebook. Not a one. Anywhere. I think all the notebooks were kept in the desk and the desk and it’s contents went with the ex by default. I was at Target the other day and considered buying a notebook and didn’t. Lord, I can buy body glitter marketed to an 8 year old but a notebook? oh no, not a notebook, that’s just a waste of money. I’m sure David has one somewhere, hopefully he’ll wake up soon.
I think the food for this shindig is going to be the best I’ve done, yet!
If you’ve not been invited you should ask yourself what you’d done that was so ill-mannered that I would not invite you!
yobo out!
oh, PS to the guy with the Saturn coupe…sorry, dude.

I get in my car yesterday and under the windshield wiper is a note. I get out to read it and it’s a fucking creepy note addressed to me. It’s written in block letters to hide the handwriting.
It’s amazing what one single creepy sentance can do to you. I filed a report with security and they are investigating it. Now i am sitting here viewing each of my coworkers suspiciously. I’ve told a few people so they could keep an eye out.
Part of me is pissed off and I want to yell “this is not the way to attract someone!!” but the rest of me knows this has nothing to do with attraction or flirting or whatever.
One note. One incident. I’ll stay calm for now.
Then I had a freaky Target experience. First off, they were having some sort of weird clearance and I ended up getting a 4 pack of toilet bowl cleaner for $4. I have 4 big things of toilet bowl cleaner. That should last me 87 years! They also had a 3 pack of toothpaste on sale for $4. and giant clothes detergent for $3! WOO!
Then I was feeling like i needed to treat myself to a little girliness so I bought my panties (the blue set) and a couple cami’s and went wandering off to find the PowerPuff girls body glitter that the waitress had the other day. No luck finding that, but I did find another body glitter set that had adhesive and everything. Little girls get the coolest stuff.
I leave and of COURSE someone stops me in the parking lot. He is out of gas and needs to get to Bemidji…look he has a daughter…isn’t she cute. I have no cash. Part of me feels bad because I do want to believe this is real. The rest of me knows it isn’t and I hate him for using his little girl like that. He doesn’t want cash, he wants me to drive him to a gas station and buy him gas. Okay…no. You’re not getting in my car, little girl with you or not. I hate being paranoid, but there are just enough fucked up assholes in the world who wouldn’t mind pulling some shit even with their kid in the car.
Fuck.
So I go home and re-excite myself with the body glitter! I go to try it on and find that the adhesive has turned into a solid, stinky rubbery blob. SAD!
Talk to my sister on the phone, she’s getting a hedgehog! YAY! I told her my woes and she said she could get fake eyelash adhesive! That would probably be even safer to put on my eyes than whatever this thing came with!
I just met with the security guard from the Art Institute (they own the ramp that I park in) and they showed me the best places to park so that my car would be under surveillance and gave me permission to park in special parking for a while so they could keep an eye on me.
I am glad that people are taking this seriously and taking measures to make sure I am safe. I should not have to feel unsafe at work!