I did the classic fifteen-minute $70 groceries dash last night (including a rotisserie chicken, which I nabbed as soon as I walked in the door, thank you very much) and then planned to replicate the very awesome lunchtime carrots from our favorite little Japanese restaurant on Broadway, as I am fighting back the sniffles and Esteban’ well, if left to his own devices, the man would never let vegetation pass his lips, save for the occasional baked potato nugget that serves only as a sour cream delivery system. I tend not to worry too much about his dietary inadequacies, because I find that weird dynamic wherein wives act as though their husbands are children to be extremly offensive, but also because I haven’t figured out how to get five servings down my gullet reliably each day (unless you count jam as a fruit), so I certainly don’t have the right to stand over him and demand that he eat his vegetables. However, I want him to eat better because I love him and also, from a purely Randian aspect, if he gets sick, I will likely also end up sick from sleeping next to his germiness (and also the fact that when I get out of bed, he appropriates my pillow and begins to spew forth a fountain of drool). When I indicated my plan to make these carrots, he told me to not bother and didn’t I notice that he always ate the carrots first? I replied, yes, don’t you eat them first because they are so good? No, he replied, he eats them first to get them out of the way. We are very different, sometimes. Anyway, I didn’t make the carrots, because I felt sort of deflated and gave up and popped open a can of baby peas (yes, I know that most people don’t like canned peas, but they are one of my comfort foods), which Esteban wouldn’t touch in a million years.
My professor, who is usually all laid back and uses the ‘adult attention deficit’ method of class organization, seemed to have realized that there were only two class nights left, so for next week, I must read Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, write a paper with six sources on a topic that the entire class is very confused about (as the most we’ve been able to discern from our distracted leader is that the paper should be about, you know, the process and, er, and then he makes random hand motions which in some cultures may indicate ‘the world’ or ‘the circle of life’ or maybe ‘the roof, the roof, the roof is on fiyah’) read and critique a short story, and also revise my own story. I had grand intentions after my lazy non-cooking dinner (although I did heat up the peas in the microwave, so that is technically cooking, non?), but then spent the rest of the evening assuring myself that I was going to start on my homework for class any second, just after I got a head start on the pre-organization for the Holiday Cards. I figured that I would just get my address labels set up, but then I ended up spending forever doing that and then one semi-drunken phone (in which ‘It was their fault. I think.’ Became much more funny than it seems in print) from a friend later, I gave up on the homework thing and just kept screwing around with the address labels. Which still aren’t done. Go me.
In other holiday news, the Clampett’s have decorated their little pine tree with sixteen of the smallest dollar store red and silver bows. I want to go over and tap them on the shoulder and say ‘Do you realize that by half-assing this decorating thing, it looks much worse than if you had done nothing? The bows are not proportional to the size of the tree and there are far too few of them.’ But then night fell and they lit the four million light blue lights in the sad little tree and now the whole thing just makes my head hurt. And there is still a trailer in my yard. Did I mention that if I forget their names, they are written in script on the back of said trailer? I am not making that up.
Her name is Jolene. I am living next door to a country western song.
Have a lovely weekend. Mine will be spent frantically trying to cram 19th century gothic fiction into my brain and fashion a term paper out of jazz hands and spirit fingers.
