use real butter

This morning, I emptied my jar of generic antacid tablets. Why did I eat the ice cream last night? And it’s been killing me all day.

My parents are coming out to visit us at the end of February. I will probably go crazy while they are here, but for now, I’m really happy about seeing them. Silly parents.

Anastasia liked the Brussels sprouts! YAY!!!

Okay, I’ll admit it. I don’t want to deal with the backed up kitchen sink anymore. Why can’t we call our landlord, who is the coolest landlord on earth, and have him come fix it? He was a professional plumber in communist Poland for crying out loud! Now he’s an optical engineer working on secret stuff. He could fix it in no time, I’m sure. But we must let Jeremy try his hand at the solution. Meanwhile, I feel like my OCD-self is going to have a meltdown shortly. My kitchen is MY domain. I do my best work THERE. When it is piled with dirty dishes, a sink with nasty dried crap all over it, and this goes on for 4 days, I start to get disturbed. It bothers me. groan…

Lydia invited us over for dinner this weekend, except we’re going to be in Atlanta. The Trud said she was preparing a special meal and everything just because it was us and that Lydia was stressing over it. Now, I need to make something very very clear here. Just because I like to cook and entertain, doesn’t mean other people should feel compelled to cook (especially if they don’t cook) for me. My pal, squid, she doesn’t cook. She tells me so all the time. She and Shahen always say, “come over to our place, we’ll order out – we don’t cook.” And that is fine. They have a lovely flat, and better than that, they are so much fun to talk to and be with. A while back I was talking about reciprocation from friends. It doesn’t have to be in kind, it need only be in friendship. Cooking a meal for friends should not stress a person out. What the hell would you do if your friend was a professional chef? Get a degree in cooking just so you can invite them over? nooooo.

In fact, I recall inviting Ro, E, the Trud, and Lydia over for my bday (and Ro’s – same day!) and I BOUGHT the cake, BOUGHT the pizza, made simple pesto pasta and we drank wine and knitted. That was a lot of fun. Sheesh, the last thing I want is for friends to feel this sort of obligation. Lydia, I love you no matter what. Trud, you don’t have to make pavlova (but it seriously kicked ass last night) to be my friend. You are awesome in your wacky way as is. Are we clear on this now? I would never try to write a lithospheric compensation model for you :)

It has been raining a lot this weekend. Drip drip drip, patter patter, whooosh! All sorts of rain coming down outside the house. Kaweah is curled up on bed #23 (the whole place is her bed). We did a load of laundry this morning and our washer hose that drains the water backed up and began fountaining. Luckily, we have buckets. I emptied a bucket down the kitchen sink and… nothing happened. The water just swirled around and sat in the sink. Eventually the water slowly crept down over a period of 20 minutes. It was pouring down particularly hard outside, so we guessed that public works was under intense strain. You never really think about what to do when you can’t get rid of waste water. Can’t pour it outside, there’s detergent in the water (biodegradable, but still…) Made me think of the flooded regions hit by the tsunami and how very lucky and spoiled we are here. It happened again tonight while preparing dinner. I think for the next few days, we’ll go easy on water usage.

After we finished the laundry (holding hose to bucket during the final spin cycle) we decided to head to REI to return a dry bag we ended up not using, and for me to replace my good but dead watch. Then we swung by Santa Anita mall (the very word mall sends shivers down my spine) to get Jeremy some jeans without holes in them. For those who know me, I’m not a fashion plate, or even a fashion saucer. I needed to pick up some clothes that didn’t scream “bum”, but I nearly had a heart attack at Macy’s the other day when a plain white shirt cost $57 (it better make me look 30 lbs. lighter and 5 inches taller for $57). We did quite well, dropping $125 on 3 jeans, 3 tops, and 2 sweaters for both of us. Not bad, except we had headaches (because of shopping). Here’s the kicker. I spent the same amount of $ on these:

**Jump for more butter**