Garbage, Food, and Brains

Well I just fed the more industrious of the dumpster animals in my complex. My money is on the raccoons and that is fine with me because possums are fucking terrible and should be eradicated from the planet. Seriously. I love animals but those things are incredibly creepy and gross and I have a weird phobia about them (yes, I know they eat mosquitoes or whatever). Honestly, if I had to pick one, a room full of cockroaches or a room full of possums, I would choose the cockroaches. And I hate those things too, especially the big bitches we have out here in Texas. They are just these cocky sons of bitches who look like they should be wearing a top hat and twirling a cane as they casually walk across your carpet like they own the place. I once found a dead one in my bathroom and the noise I made was akin to the sound of a character dying in super old school Nintendo games.

I've been cooking lately and focusing on plant-based recipes. This isn't because I'm looking to transition to being vegetarian or vegan but because I am 39 years old and if I don't start eating vegetables and healthy foods, my body will probably start flat out rejecting nutrients and we can't have that. It's been nice and I've been reminded of how much I enjoy cooking (on the weekend, naturally; I don't want to spend hours in the kitchen on a Wednesday night) and I've had mostly success. Who knew I loved quinoa? Who knew that crispy quinoa cakes with tomato and chickpea relish would be delicious and that you could get so much mileage out of it? Also, quinoa has a lot of nutrients and health benefits so score! So do lentils, which I also cooked. They were OK but kind of dry because I overcooked them by being a dummy and not paying proper attention. I still ate the hell out of them though.

Sadly, however, it doesn't all turn out well. Today I attempted a butternut squash and kale casserole. Disaster. I'm not sure how to tell if butternut squash is ripe or whatever but I'm guessing maybe the one I got wasn't. Also, the recipe, which I failed to look at previously, was shit. I'm in the camp that doesn't need seven pages of pictures and personal backstory before getting to the nuts and bolts of a recipe but I do need the basics. I need to know how much of an ingredient I need and how it should be prepared (minced, diced, etc). This recipe was just a list of how much of each an ingredient you needed and then a list of what to do. How should I prepare the half butternut squash? How should I cut the potato? Do I keep the onion in large rings or am I dicing it? So I just guessed at it and cooked it and it was terrible so I put the baking dish in my freezer for ten minutes so that I could then dump it into a plastic carrier bag and take it out to the dumpster (I was sort of in a hurry because, after cleaning up, I had a full trash can to take out and I didn't want to leave it and didn't want to make two trips). I actually double bagged it for fear it would leak, hence the more industrious of dumpster animals.

It was as I was taking the trash out that I came up with most of this post, which is funny because it wasn't what I'd planned on writing about. My intention was to write about the following.

Middle brother messaged me on Tuesday evening saying "Hey." Well, I knew something was up because he doesn't do that. He proceeded to inform me that whilst on a little vacation, our mother was involved in an incident that saw her go to the hospital even though she was perfectly fine (venue insisted) and the results of a CT scan found that she had an aneurysm on her brain. They'd wanted to send her to a hospital for emergency surgery immediately but she was all "nah, I'm good. I'll go when I get back to Phoenix." Eldest brother was due to arrive on Wednesday and the surgery was scheduled for Thursday. I was all "thanks for letting me know. How bizarre." It was only as SA and I were on our way back to his place that it hit me.

My mother is having brain surgery in two days.

I know, right? How does one process that? This one kind of didn't. I held it together completely and felt very unemotional about it. I don't think I could really believe it and treat it as real because of the enormity of the situation. I didn't know what time the surgery was scheduled so decided, in my mind, that it was going to begin at 9 a.m. Arizona time and, upon googling, found that aneurysm repair typically takes 3-5 hours. So I expected to hear something around 5 or 6 p.m. my time and just went about my day, making plans with friends and doing some work. I didn't hear anything so eventually, around 6:30, I texted my mother's former neighbor to see if she'd heard anything. She hadn't and I told her that I was too scared to reach out to Middle brother. She pointed out that if something bad had happened someone would definitely have contacted me but Middle brother lives in China so the time zone thing is hard and I'd have to wait for him to have heard something because Eldest brother doesn't have my phone number and can we get into peoples' phones these days to get contact information? Who would want the task of using my dead hand to use the finger scan to unlock my phone?

I finally ladied up and messaged MB around 8:30 and he got back to me 45 minutes later saying that the surgery couldn't have gone any better, that mom would remain in the hospital for about a week, and that when he'd talked to EB, mom was still knocked out but that the doctor said if there were going to be any complications, they would have shown by then. Evidently part of me had been clenched and sucked in all day because all of me exhaled when I read that and it was then that I felt like weeping.

So yeah, that happened. One minute you are sitting on a stool enjoying a drink in Lake Tahoe and the next you are having brain surgery.

My Mother Thinks I'm Weird

My mother and I have a complicated relationship. I am not going to go into it because 1) it isn't complicated in an interesting way and 2) this is my blog which means you only get my sides of things and one of the lessons my mother taught me is that you don't tell tales on a person who is not here to defend themselves. But yeah, it is complicated and I stopped talking to her in June of 2018. I reached out to her tonight for two other reasons. 1) I had some job news that I am cautiously excited about and want to tell everyone and 2) one of the people I called about the job news is a former neighbor of my mother's and that neighbor mentioned that over Christmas, my mom visited but got lost on the way.

My mother is going to be 73 this year so when someone tells you "yeah, so she lived next door to me for ten years but got lost on her way over," you automatically think of senility in one of it's form. That is terrifying because senility is terrifying but also because we don't have that in my family on either side. So, you know, yay something else to worry about! But also, I love my mother even if things are weird and I'm not about to have her wandering around her neighborhood in a house coat not knowing where she is.

So I called her and we chatted and did the Simply Family thing of non-confrontation, anti-dealing with things and just picked up where we left off. I called her again later with a question which was, basically, "you have known me my entire life, why do people think I'm smart or good at things?" We chatted for about 10 minutes but then she had to go because she had guests. We hung up and I went back to my iPad to watch America's Got Talent, as per usual on a day off, but then I had a thought so I texted her. That text was "can I tell people my dad was a sociopath and that is where I get my charm from?"

I am 100% certain that my mother is happy that I'm talking to her again just so I can ask her random-ass bizarre questions that have nothing to do with anything and so she can think "you're so weird.".

Madness and Misery

I get thrown off every so often during NPR fundraising weeks. To be fair, I think I do a fair amount of just making assumptions and then being bewildered when they are wrong. Take Sunday for instance. On Sunday I put on the radio whilst doing a few chores and the programs that were playing were not what I expected for those times on that day. I actually had a moment of panic and checked my phone to make sure that it was, indeed, Sunday and that I hadn't overslept on a Monday. I'm not sure if there was a schedule change or if I've just always assumed X whilst Y was correct but it was rather disconcerting.

On Monday, however, it was all NPR and zero me. I was making my lunch when Sam Baker's voice came on to announce that it was four minutes after 10 and I literally stopped what I was doing and stood still for a minute. He then started saying how we were going to be moving to local news from international news and that's when it clicked. KERA reruns The Texas Standard at 8 o'clock in the evening having originally aired it at 10 a.m. Before it hit me, however, I really wondered if I were going mad because that was twice within two days when I felt I was completely off time-wise. It's like how on Thanksgiving when I was driving to SA's place I suddenly felt like the roads were utterly foreign to me even though I'd driven them countless times in the past. That happens every so often (rarely, fortunately) and is usually contained to my suddenly not recognizing the street he lives on and questioning myself about everything. It's like I go memory blind for a moment.

Never fun.

Speaking of things being no fun, poor Bubbles had a miserable time recently. I noticed on a Sunday that she was winking at me an awful lot and that her right eye looked funny. My vet didn't have any appointments available that day but I got her in at 9:30 the following morning. The doctor told me that it appeared she'd gotten a superficial cut on her eye and that it had healed and gotten infected so now she has a lot of conjunctivitis. That required a cone collar to prevent her from pawing at it and my having to give her drops twice a day. She is just so pitiful. Here is a photo of her in her least pitiful moment post collar.

There were moments that were far more heartbreaking after that though. Seeing her walk into things, having to back up and try again when the collar hit something. Finding her in my closet just sitting and facing the built in. Her sleeping right next to me all night the first night because she was so unhappy. Finding her after work, one of her legs stuck through the collar.

It's been awful and I just need it to be over. I don't like tormenting animals by holding them down so I can squeeze things into their eyes! I hate seeing them struggle to do things because they can't see or whisker feel around them! I also feel like a complete asshole because I had no idea she'd gotten a cut on her eye. I mean, I know that cats are pretty notorious for hiding discomfort but still, it is terrible learning that your pet has been in distress and you were blithely unaware of it.

Fortunately, the drops seem to help pretty quickly and I've been getting better at it. I have a call into the vet to ask about it spreading to the other eye because I think it might have done (and by the time this is published, it hopefully will be as I have a follow up appointment that Monday. Bless Blogger's scheduling function).

Poor Bubbles. She is going to get some lovely canned food tonight. 

Mundane Things I'm Bad At

Drying myself off after a shower. It's probably because I'm impatient about all things that have to do with showering. Baths? Great, can take an hour long one with a glass of wine and a good book. But showers? Don't know why but I hate them, especially when I have to wash my hair (I absolutely despise having wet hair unless I'm swimming). So, when I get out of the shower, I just want it to be over and done with so that I can put on my clothes and get back to doing whatever it was I was doing. One funny thing about this is that it annoys guys. It just really irks them that I don't make sure my back is properly dry before I hang my towel back up and start putting on my clothes.

Shaving my knees and underarms. I am positive this isn't some personal defect but something shared by many women. I once googled the knee thing for tips but I don't think it worked. And underarms? Are mine just especially concave or something? I will think I've done a stellar drive only to find a fur patch on the inner side. It is extremely irritating and makes me feel like I need to keep hacking away until I see blood.

Cracking an egg. I can, obviously, crack one, but not without getting some shell into the bowl. This infuriates me because I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong. I try hitting it softly against the side of the bowl, get shell. Try whacking it against the side of the bowl, get shell. How am I 39 years old and incapable of cleanly cracking an egg into a bowl ffs? I have searched ways to get the shells out of course, and try the "dip your finger in water first" trick but it is still a monumental pain in my ass. And considering I've taken to making potato omelettes recently, something that takes at least six eggs, it is just really, really frustrating.

Getting out of my car. This is partly genetic, apparently, as I do the same thing that my maternal grandmother did, which is to either put my foot against the door or straight kind of kick the door as I open it. I don't do this when a passenger because I am aware that people wouldn't especially like that but man, when I get out of my own car? Foot on that pocket at the bottom all the way. The other part is just some form of learned helplessness. Even though I've been doing it for years, I still find it a struggle when I exit my car with more than just my laptop bag and a lunch bag. Add one more thing and I'm an awkward pack mule who is too impatient to get out of the car and either reach in to gather everything or, you know, walk around to the other side and get the stuff out easily.

Culture

NPR
I have mentioned before that I listen to NPR somewhat regularly. I am pretty sure I just mention it in passing when explaining why I don't know modern music but I do fear I may have mentioned it a bit too often on this blog over the years and given the wrong impression. Here is the profile I have in my mind when I think "NPR listener": smart, sophisticated, erudite, socially responsible people who frequent the theater/opera, shop at Whole Foods bi-weekly, are nearly always well put together, including accessories, and give and/or attend dinner parties frequently.

I am not those things. I mean, OK, I'm a bit bright but it's mainly smoke and mirrors and I seem smarter than I actually am. I do use reusable shopping bags unless I am running low on plastic carrier bags (which I need for litter box duty) but I have only today started setting my bottles and cans aside because my apartment complex just installed two recycling dumpsters. I frequent janky Kroger and Wal-Mart that are nearby whilst my sophisticated entertainment takes the form of binge watching Acorn TV, reading, maybe playing a video game, drinking, and puttering around. I went to one party last year, the first get together that wasn't a happy hour that I've been to since 2017, and whilst I do dress appropriately and often look "cute" according to colleagues, I don't know how to accessorize and I pretty much just go out on the bet that no one is going to look at my feet because all my shoes are busted.

I listen to Morning Edition on my way to work unless it is fully saturated with politics. I sometimes listen to the second half of Fresh Air on my way home if I don't have an audio book. If I wake up early enough, I'll maybe tune into Weekend Edition and if I'm cleaning, I sometimes turn on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Ask Me Another, and A Way With Words. But I'm not listening to, like, Think With Chris Boyd or Freakonomics or any of those really smart people programs. I'd love to be the "NPR listener" of my imagination but am, sadly, just a lazy, pitiful peasant.

Seen Any Good Movies Lately? 
When you don't own a lot of DVDs because you sold them at one point in order to get some cash to help pay off that ticket that you got or because you need money for some reason, it is fun to look at what your collection looks like as you slowly build it back. I was dusting one Friday evening, as one does when one is young and hip, and I cast a side smile at my DVD "library". It presently contains:

Murder, She Wrote - Seasons 1-7
Sherlock (BBC) - Seasons 1-4
5 Day Yoga - Unopened
Miss Marple (BBC Collection)
Murder on the Orient Express
Sherlock Holmes The Complete Series - Legends Series, Television Classics
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Amy Schumer, Mostly Sex Stuff - Birthday Gift from Rabbit a couple of years ago
Indiscreet
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Alice in Wonderland
Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Volumes 1 and 2
Harry Potter - Complete series
Circle of Friends
Observe and Report
Shaun of the Dead
Hot Fuzz
Star Wars - First 6 movies
Indiana Jones - Complete series

I don't know why but that list is just funny to me. The Monty Python I got in the divorce, as I did Shaun of the Dead. Rabbit got The Life of Brian and our original copy of Hot Fuzz. It is obvious from that list that I really, really enjoy Sherlock Holmes yet I don't have the two most recent Hollywood movies. I enjoyed the first and assume I enjoyed the second (I can't remember it) but I never thought to get it. Whatever, it amuses me for some reason but probably no one else. There was another work-out DVD but, surprisingly, I do have some pride and am kind of embarrassed to admit to it.

Apparently, 2020 me has some pride! Look at that! Let's see where that gets me. 

Great, Now I Hate Darth Vader

Does anyone know why they do anything anymore? I find myself starting a lot of my stories with "for whatever reason, I decided to..." and I really can't tell you why I did what I did. For instance, for some reason, I got it into my head that I wanted the Star Wars movies so I ordered the six that are available. On Christmas Eve, we were allowed to work from home and so I spent the day watching the prequels.

God those are bad, aren't they? People talk about them being terrible and I know I've seen parts of them before but, yeah, awful. Phantom Menace is so obviously a children's movie that I just can't take any of it seriously. I guess A New Hope was meant as a kids' movie as well? But, I mean, adults to this day can still enjoy it. PM is just god awful. Super obnoxious child protagonist? Check. Utterly over the top animal-type character who is so obnoxious that only a little kid could enjoy? Check. Just all of it screamed "we need to rope in a new generation of fans so let's Disney the fuck out of this."

The other two, whilst being less kiddie, are no better and I pretty much checked out of them for half the time (in all fairness to the movies, I did have them on whilst I was working). All I took away from the series was that Anakin Skywalker was a terrible Jedi. He was immature, selfish, and self-absorbed, not at all what you want in your Jedi, level of power notwithstanding. Qui-Gon should have left his selfish, smart-mouthed ass back on Tatooine and just told Yoda "I know that he is the 'chosen one', Master, but I think we need to go ahead and choose another one. If you're worried, I can kill the little bastard so that no one else gets him. It's not a problem; it'd be like when our blurrg had a litter and dad drowned the babies in the space-pond."

And the mommy issues on this kid! I don't know why, but the whole romance thing between Anakin and Padme was kind of creepy. They may only be five years apart and I am all for older women dating younger men but Anakin was so incredibly immature when they met that I actually thought he was about seven years old. I only know that they were five years apart because I googled. It just seems a bit predatory for Padme, a woman of incredible privilege, to get involved with Anakin, who was essentially taken from his mother in order to focus pretty much entirely on becoming a Jedi. And when they met, it wasn't under the best of circumstances so he was traumatized. You know, Padme, just because you're the hot teacher and your student is of age, it doesn't mean you take their flattery and run with it.

The actual mommy issue story point was completely wasted on me. This little kid begs his poor, busted-ass mom to let him go with this nice stranger so that he can be a Jedi. And you know damn well that they didn't keep in touch. He wasn't writing his dear old ma letters and visiting during the space-equivalent of summer vacation. So when he finally does get around to going to say 'sup to the old broad, he finds that she's dead and his entire life changes. Bullshit. I mean, yeah, be sad that she's died and everything. I'm not saying he should have found out and been all "bummer" but it's pretty clear that a lot of time has gone by and he wasn't bothered by his slave mom slaving away and shit while he was off playing laser swords. If he was upset when he found out and he was consumed with guilt and regret for having peaced out on her, I would have bought it. But that's not how that shit went down at all.

And let's be fair, he was a little shit before he found out she died. He was going to go to the dark side with or without her death, you could tell.

That's all Darth Vader was. A little bitch boy deep in his feelings who was happy serving some old dude with a face like a nut sac that sat in water for an hour. It is really, really hard to respect that. Before? Whatever, DV is the second in command of the main baddie and he is one hell of a foot soldier. Badass, powerful, and has a great outfit. And the prequels took that away from me and I don't really like him anymore. Thanks a lot adulthood and whoever is responsible for the travesty that is the prequels. 

2019 - Best Of!

This is a thing that happens this time of year, yeah? Magazines, television shows, and internet sites do a year-end retrospective about the best things of the year? Bloggers do it too, what with being "influencers" and all, so I figured, if I'm ever going to hit the big time, become Internet famous, and live off the proceeds of my wildly successful blog, I should follow suit. That being said, this blog has zero focus, I influence nothing, and I'm so far behind the times that the times are lapping me. So here is just a bunch of stuff I enjoyed this year. Full disclosure, it's going to be stuff that I enjoyed recently because who remembers March?

Besides, I'm fairly certain "my favorite thing in 2019" was just "those times I got really great sleep."

Without further ado, Simply a Girl's Favorites of 2019!

Television

Murder, She Wrote. More specifically, season four which offered us such gems as Episode 12, "Who Threw the Barbitals in Mrs. Fletcher's Chowder?" What doesn't this episode have? Sheriff Amos Tupper's sister, Winnie, comes to town because she has left her husband. All of a sudden she's decided she isn't really into hill folk and wanted to escape his family. So we get Cabot Cove (all the best episodes are either in the cove or are locked-room mystery types), a lot of Seth Hazlett, and Amos feeling uncomfortable a lot of the time. 

Season four also gave us episode 7, "If it's Thursday, it Must Be Beverly." This also takes place in Cabot Cove and it features Seth and Jessica finding out that the entirety of its female population is being serviced by one doofy dude. I want to say he is a plumber or something but he's not. I can't remember what he does but then, I don't really see how he has any time considering he's laying pipe of a different sort all over town. 

Finally, we have episode 9, "Trouble in Eden". I think this one takes place in the pacific north west. I only remember that (if I'm correct) because it just seems so weird that the Eden Hotel is in Oregon rather than the deep south. Yeah, I don't know why that is weird to me but it is. Any noodles, this episode gets a mention because in it, our delightful Mrs. Fletcher goes under cover to pose as the sister of a hotel owner who dies and she doesn't even flinch when she finds out that said hotel is run as a brothel. 

Congratulations to 1988's finest in television programming! 

Cinema

The original Indiana Jones trilogy. And the Last Crusade is, obviously, the best IJ movie ever, we all know that. But I'd like to give a special honor to And the Temple of Doom for having the best scene in the entire franchise. No, not that one. Please, homie ripping the heart out of other homie through his chest is cool and all, but over played and worn out. No, I'm talking about the scene at the beginning of the movie during all the chaos when Indiana is frantically trying to get to the antidote for the poison he's been slipped. At one point, he turns around, pauses, and then straight punches a cigarette girl. WTF is with that? The pause before the punch is what makes it special to me. It makes zero sense (unless the girl was hiding a gun but I'd have to go re-watch to see).

Something else that makes no sense? Whilst all hell is breaking loose and people are screaming and running for the exits and fists are being thrown, the fucking dancing girls come out and try as best they can to do their number. I think something was even on fire at that point. No offense ladies but this isn't special ops or anything and the world will survive just fine if you do not complete your mission. 

Let's hear it for movies featuring a young Harrison Ford! 

Books

The Kay Scarpetta series by Patrica Cornwell. Remember those? I feel like she's the one who made people first aware of things like "forensics" and "y-incisions" and shit. You know, before CSI and all that took off. I read a whole bunch of this series way back in the day because my mom read them and I kind of just pick up whatever is available and give it a try. Reading them now is pretty hilarious. Everybody smokes everywhere. No joke, Kay legit lights up with her buddy Marino in the morgue. Which, yeah, OK, probably the one place where smoking seems to make some sense. But when she goes to the FBI headquarters place in VA, she lights up in homeboy's office. Like, after looking around and not finding and ashtray, she and Marino don't take the hint but are all "shrug, let's use this coke can". She smokes in her house. They are just constantly smoking. And Marino reads like such a stereotype. It's actually funner to listen to the audiobooks. Hang on, brief aside. 

See, what happened was SA took me to Half Price Books after we saw the Mr. Rogers movie and he bought me a stack of paperbacks. One of them was From Potter's Field because I saw Cornwell and I got kind of nostalgic and I was specifically looking for thrillers to keep at SA's for when he got the massive nightstands. This makes perfect sense because I'm a sissy and can't read or watch scary stuff alone. But FPF is way into the series and opens with Kay and Marino going to NYC because they believe some serial killer has struck again. So, you know, I obviously had to start from the beginning. 

So, that led me to using my December Audible credit to download the first book in the series, Post-Mortem. The lady who reads it has a a rougher voice than I expected, almost everyone but Kay and Pete have southern accents, and Pete sounds like a Philly stereotype, even though he was previously on the NYPD, not the Philly PD. It really is hilarious and I had to rewind a bunch of times on my way to work, which is when I listen to audiobooks because I really cannot stand hearing about what Trump tweeted or what crimes he's committed that he's going to get away with. I've had enough of that. I highly recommend it and am just waiting until January's Audible credit so I can get the third installment. A really, really sweet colleague of mine got me the second one, Body of Evidence, for new year's so I'm reading that one. 

Thank you 1990 and 1991! 

Music

I don't really listen to music anymore. For eleven years, I had a car with am/fm only and got used to listening to NPR. Even once I got a "new" car that has a CD player, I still pretty much just listen to NPR out of habit. That's weird, come to think of it, considering I'm one of the only people I know who actually still has CDs.

Based on what is in my in-house CD player and what was purchased most recently, the best music in 2019 was five-or-six disc set of Opera's Greatest Hits, Enter the Wu by The Wu-Tang Clan, Fiona Apple's entire catalog published thus far, and a replacement Bessie Smith album because my last one got scratched and god damn it but I need a clear version of Gimme a Pig's Foot if I'm going to be a happy camper.

Gotta hand it to the kids today and the music they are producing! 

Food and Drink

Really reaching at this point since I know nothing about food and don't really care about it that much. I mean, food is good and everything but I'm never going to think "this would be great with some aioli". I don't know what aioli is other than knowing it is some sort of sauce and I think it had its fifteen minutes a couple of years ago.

But let's go with "Ralph's Pizza." Ralph's is a little hole-in-the-wall place where you can get pizza by the slice after you've done your shopping at the beer and wine store and visited the friendly pay-day loan place. I think it is New York-style because it is thin crust without being the super thin and crunchy crust you can get at Dominoes (no shade, I love a good thin crust from D's). But I don't really care because I'm not a pizza snob. I just like ordering my large cheese with ricotta and, because I still feel like I'm not allowed to order plain cheese pizza, a side of the sub-par mozzarella sticks.

Sorry, Ralph's; you do fantastic cheese pizza but your cheese sticks are never cooked long enough.

To pair with your cheese and ricotta pie, enjoy a bottle of Cooper and Thief's red blend. I "discovered" this wine when SA ordered it during our Nick and Sam's steak dinner for Valentine's Day. I always make SA order the wine because he's the one paying and I'd hate to order something he didn't like when he's going to have to pay $30 for what you can get at the grocery store for $15. This wine is good, you can get it at Kroger for around $25 so it is a splurge for sure, and you want to be careful because it has a high ABV. I would tell you about the taste but it's been awhile since I've had it so don't really remember, just that I like it. 

Clothing

The slipper socks that make my feet into unicorns that I bought at Wal-Mart yesterday. I have no style and the only things I buy are $2.17 camisoles from Wal-Mart and dresses for work off Amazon. I picked up these slipper socks when I was doing some grocery shopping and didn't even realize they were unicorns until I got home and found the horns. I tried to find a picture on their company web-site but, whilst I could fill up several virtual shopping carts with the cute socks that came up, after four pages of not finding these particular ones, I gave up.

I didn't even buy them because they are adorable but because I need something to keep my feet warm at SA's house so that I stop borrowing his socks.

So, since I don't have a picture, I'll give you this instead. That's the dress my girlfriend wore for Christmas and it is adorable and I'm super jealous. 

God, these are fucking disturbing, aren't they? Why don't I just slap a pair of possums on my feet and call it a day ffs? 

Gadgets

I bought a new vacuum this year! It's a Shark Lift Away Deluxe and is super quiet, has that turning technology that makes it turn nicely, and does its job as a vacuum. I think it cost me $150 at Wal-Mart or Home Depot. You can take the canister off and use the the hose attachment for, like, stairs and stuff. I don't know, I needed/wanted a new vacuum and it is such a nice change to the air raid siren that I used to own. You know, come to think of it, the last time that SA and I were broken up, I updated my OK Cupid profile and one of the questions was about goals. My goal was to own a couch and a vacuum that didn't pierce my ears one day. 

People of the Internet, this is what living the dream looks like. 

Beauty

Not smoking. Seriously, when I'm really good and manage to not smoke for at least two days, my skin improves tremendously. Because weekends are rough and I'm all "what will power?" I have been smoking and so my skin is dry and rough and the moisturizer I slather on just gets soaked into my brain or something I guess because this shit is still flaky and gross. That's going to be one of the things I use to really beat the habit, reminding myself of how nice it is to not feel like my face is 800 miles of bad road. I don't care what anyone says, I do hydrate. I drink so much water at work that my hands are chapped from going to the damn bathroom eight million times and having to then wash my hands with the awful work bathroom soap. I hydrate, I use lotion, and I stay out of the sun because I'm a shut-in; trust me, the best thing for your skin is to stop smoking. If you already don't smoke? I don't know, maybe pick it up for a month or two to see how it ravages the skin, quit, and bask in the glory of your good health and supple face. 

Here's looking at you smooth, radiant, wonderful skin after I've successfully quit smoking! 

Web Site

I know, I know, you really thought I was going to say "You Tube so I can watch people who have talent do their talent stuff." Oh ho ho, you think you know me but you don't. The 2019 best of web site award goes to Murder, She Blogged. This site goes through every episode of MSW and includes photos from the show. I think the chick who writes it is Australian and she is just a huge fan of the show and Jessica Fletcher and she started this project and followed through. It's an absolute joy and I still haven't gotten through its entirety. 

As I said, it includes photos of scenes and they are hilarious. In going to grab one, I saw that the last entry was in July of this year so this is actually the most fitting "favorite" of this entire entry! 

The author is Briony W. and she is just brilliant. The link is in the title above. 

Looking Ahead

What will 2020 look like for someone with her finger on the pulse of pop-culture? It'll probably look a lot like 2019 with me re-watching things I already know I like, continuing to read old stuff, not discover new music, and maybe buy a kitchen gadget as I pretend to turn my eating habits around. 

Things I will not miss from 2019? Having two cats who like to be right next to me as they endlessly clean themselves and who like to get into squabbles that make me wonder "fighting or playing?" I won't miss these things because I'm carrying these two fur-balls into the new decade with me, of course! And I think I'm getting a new phone in March so I definitely will not miss the way my battery drains and then takes seven hours to recharge. Seriously, my phone is only three years old but if I use it, even if it is plugged in, the battery drains super quickly. It's probably my weather app or something but I'm going with age of the phone. In March the 5G shit should be figured out and Samsung will have their new edition out so I'm holding out till then.

Mostly, I look forward to no longer having to work because my blog will take off and I'll rake in six figures for basically faffing about and typing non-sense. Then, as my fame increases, my posting will decrease and I'll coast on the residuals. Before we know it, I'll have paid off all my debt and will be safely installed as someone's stay at home girlfriend, living the dream.

Happy New Year!