splinters

A few months ago, my BFF Dot asked me to make her birthday cake.

She had a fairly specific idea of what she wanted, in what colors, and it looked like an awesome challenge, so I said yes.

Cue weeks of various shopping sprees for equipment & ingredients (I now own a cake leveler!), testing, more testing, taste tests, more testing, a near-nervous breakdown, much cheering and whining on Twitter, and a final triumphant reveal, for which I have blatantly jacked one of KT’s pics, since none of mine came out well:

Hit the cut for a fairly long-winded explanation of the process, and more pics.

Continue Reading »

Well behind on posts, but dammit, I’m throwing up the Bats Day one anyway.

Continue Reading »

Happy anniversary to me and my belovedest! Fifteen years, bitches. Can you stand it?

We’ll find somewhere cool to have dinner tonight, then celebrate by … probably taking the dog for a walk & hoping it tires him out so he doesn’t bug us all damn night.

This is apparently the crystal or watches anniversary, but we’re taking each other to Bats Day instead, which should be just as good, and less likely to be affected by water or drops onto tile floors. Win!

No, not you. You Freecycle people asking for stupid things today.

Want: Kitten
We have been looking to adopt a kitten into our family, my children love animals. We are on a tight budget though. Must be in good health. Would be super loved.

Aww, that’s so sweet! You can’t afford $150 to save a cat from certain death at the Kitty Concentration Camp, so you probably can’t afford proper food or medical care, and you sure as hell won’t spring for spaying or neutering, so you’ll probably be freecycling any kittens that your knocked-up cat produces — unless you get a boy-cat, and he just knocks up the neighbors’ cats, which would be someone else’s problem, I expect. Nice to know you’d provide super love, though!

Wanted: Hairless Cat for my boys
We really want a cat but due to allergies, we cannot handle one with hair. I know it’s a long shot but if anyone knows of one that needs an excellent home, we would love to have it!

I’m nearly certain the hair-allergy thing is incorrect — I was pretty sure I’d read it’s the saliva that causes the issues. Regardless, I’m also reasonably certain that hairless cats aren’t the sort that just turn up on Freecycle, but hey, if you don’t ask, you don’t get, right?

This one is my hands-down favorite, though:

Wanted: a slot machine that takes real money
I cannot afford much but I’d like a slot machine so I can stop going to the casino and blowing my money. I’d rather put it into a slot machine so I can save it instead.
Thanks for reading this

You’re welcome! And I can totally help you out there, Trixie. It’s called A Savings Account and Some Fucking Willpower, To Say Nothing of Personal Responsibility.

Seriously, this is brilliant: the chances are slim that anyone will actually have a money-accepting slot machine they’re going to give away, so when she doesn’t get one, it’s her perfect excuse to keep going to casinos!

Most days I love Freecycle and the spirit that created it and keeps it going, but today? Today the idiots are getting right up my nose.

But laughing all the way. I present to you … Windle as a lion!

Also, they had to sedate him, so he’s wandering around kinda stoned — which is why I had to resort to a flash pic, as he wouldn’t hold still.

Think of this as the business-practices version of What Not To Wear, with me as both Trinny and Susannah¹.

Say there’s a business that offers two basically similar but functionally quite different services, like, say, a daycare center, that also offers in-home babysitting. And you probably only need one of them — like, say, you want your kid to be able to play with other kids, so you want the daycare thing.

So you call up this company — let’s call them, oh, say, VIP Childcare — and say “I’d like to find out about getting my kid into your daycare one day next week. I’m having a function at my house and my kid wouldn’t be comfortable in this gathering.” Or, rather, you say it to their voicemail, which is fine, really², and then you get a call back the next day from a woman who sounds harried and flustered and not very well-spoken and you think, well, she’s just having A Day, happens to all of us, I am cutting the slack here.

And the woman — let’s call her, say, Trixie — says, “Right, daycare, totally. Probably not a problem. Can I call you back in an hour or so, though, ’cause I was just running out the damn door³ when the phone rang, and we can talk more about it.”

And you say, “Sure, no problem. Look forward to hearing from you.”

And half a day passes with nary a peep from VIP Childcare, and you say to yourself, “Y’know, the hell with this. I’ll find another place.” And you do, and you feel pretty good about your choice (which is closer, staffed by nice people who answer the phone and all your questions and appear to have all the time in the world to talk to you).

And then, the next day, you get a voicemail that blows your fucking mind.

“Hi, this is Dick⁴ from VIP Childcare, don’t know why my wife Trixie didn’t tell you this yesterday, but we don’t do daycare right now, just in-home babysitting, which obviously won’t work for your function, unless you want Trixie at your function …”

… at which point you stab the Delete Message button in a rage and wonder how the fuck you “forget” you don’t have kids in your fucking facility all day long.

Because really? You don’t forget that, unless you’re on fucking drugs, or are psychotic, or have “episodes” or something, none of which makes me feel good about you getting within a fucking mile of my kid.

 
 
In other news, I have a list of dog-boarding places in the East Valley you should avoid at all costs.

 
 
1 I’m aware that there’s an American version of this show; I’ve not seen it, I’m sure it’s horrible, and we will not speak of it. Also, I won’t be grabbing anyone’s boobs.
2 Or would be if you hadn’t already emailed them four or five days ago about the same thing and didn’t get a reply, but that’s a rant for another day.
3 Seriously.
4 Not his real name.

So I had this idea that home ownership would be all about doing what we wanted — our paint colors, our lovely ceiling fans, our ideas everywhere.

And while this is broadly true, we did not buy the platonic ideal: a brand-new house. A truly blank canvas. And I didn’t realize, six months ago, all the ways in which the previous owner is now, in absentia, wrecking my life.

In a nutshell: I fucking loathe the pair of homicidal bougainvillea bushes planted on the east side of the house, and I can’t wait to rip them right the fuck out & replace them with something that doesn’t try to kill me when I prune it.

(Or better yet, with something that doesn’t require pruning at all. I’m thinking Italian cypresses.)

And I didn’t even do most of the work, y’all. Loki did the lion’s share; I just turned up for the end bit — trimming the clippings down so they’d fit in the trash bags — and I am still covered in scratches and achey as all get out.

(And don’t get me started on the sprinklerless front lawn, the single straggly rosebush or the 87,345,821 tiny holes in the walls. I’m still finding nails, screws & thumbtacks everywhere.)

All of which is the long way of saying “I did yardwork this weekend & I hated it”, and also “I can’t wait to rip out everything but the trees and plant stuff that won’t create tons of work down the road”.

It’s good to dream.

Man, I suck at writing lately. I blame the puppy.

(Seriously. He requires extremes of attention for hours at a time, and when he finally falls asleep, I collapse on the couch and turn on the tv, no energy left to do anything. This is why I will never have kids; he’ll grow out of this eventually & learn the beauty of the all-day nap like his feline siblings, but a kid? That’s eighteen years of bad sleep and tantrums, no thank you.)

Anyway.

We sold Colin last week, which was sad but inevitable, and I think his new owner will be pretty nice to him. This makes me happy.

We had dinner with Beth & Bo last night (and also Kara, Jeremy, Jon & his girlfriend OmgI’veforgottenhernamealready Butshewasdelightful). This makes me sad, as it’s likely the last such gathering for a long time. Damn them for moving away!

We made great strides towards organization, too: donated/freecycled a bunch of stuff, put up a new shelf in the living room for the game consoles & related stuff, and cleared out quite a bit of the garage. (No, we still can’t park in there, don’t be silly.)

And I’ve finally decided that the Mini is a Nigel. Nigel Wensleydale, actually (because I couldn’t decide) but that’s kind of a mouthful and he’ll probably just be Nigel.

So there’s the last ten days or so. Up and down, really.

I keep having these nightmares about my wrist, and they’re all bass-related: I can’t bend my wrist, and I end up strapping my bass waaaaay up my chest so I can fret without bending my wrist. It’s hard to pick with my arm practically parallel to the floor, and I look incredibly lame.

Happily, the reality is that my flexibility is slowly coming back, thanks to hourly stretching and strengthening exercises … it’s just not coming back fast enough or far enough for me. I’ve got 2 weeks to go before I’m free of the splint forever (probably …), and while the bone’s healing well ahead of schedule, I still don’t have anything like the flexibility I think I ought to.

And it’s dangerous to try to go too fast with the getting-flexibility-back thing: they actually cut the tendon that runs down my thumb to the wrist, and if I try to stretch it too much, too fast, I can damage it. YAY.

I have what ought to be my final appointment with my specialist next week, and I really really hope he’s got some good news for me, or another exercise, or something, ’cause the alternative is lame bass-playing and let’s face it, I don’t need any help with the lame.

Before I throw an ad on Craigslist and end up turning the keys to my precious Colin over to some maniac who’ll use him to deliver pizzas, I thought I’d see if any of my friends want him.

1995 Honda Civic VX Hatchback in red

• 5-speed manual transmission
• AM/FM/CD/Cassette (and it works, too, the cassette player. drag out those old mixtapes & go to town!)
• A/C works well
• 36 miles to the gallon, around town, generally with the a/c on

Some minor drawbacks:

• The windshield wiper activator stalk doesn’t want to stay in the off position. It’s currently held there with a folded-up piece of paper.
• The side mirrors don’t want to stay in their positions, either. See above re: folded piece of paper. I’m sure someone even only slightly more motivated than I could come up with a better kludge, or actually fix it.
• The hydraulic piston-things for the hatchback have come off, and the lock assembly is loose. See above re: fixing it. I just haven’t had the time.
• The CD player doesn’t seem to want to play home-burned CDs. I’m blaming this on the fact that it’s 14 years old and probably pre-dates the CD-R.

I was offered $1,500 for him a few months ago, but I’m open to offers. Also, he’s filthy from the pollen-pooping tree outside our house and needs a good wash. You probably don’t want to see him before I take care of that.