ButtercupPunch – “La clique, c’est chic!”

In actuality, Kadinsky and I spent Thanksgiving week on a cold and windy, four-city European jaunt.  We’ll try to bring you the highlights later in the week, as we recover from our excesses and the approximate 48 hours we spent just in transit.  I called my mom last night to get the family Thanksgiving news, and spent most of yesterday reading my various websites to catch up on internet gossip and general idiocy (Muppets sing Bohemian Rhapsody!  Famewhores crash the White House!  Tiger Woods in domestic incident car crash!  All standard internet fare). 

Fortunately, what didn’t pass me by was a little story out of Scotland, my former home-away-from-home, about BrewDog Beer (a brewery in the northern town of Fraserburgh) and the release of their newest beer, known as Tactical Nuclear Penguin.  The £30-a-bottle, limited-edition beer has been released with a whopping 32% alcohol content:

A warning on the label states: “This is an extremely strong beer; it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance. In exactly the same manner that you would enjoy a fine whisky, a Frank Zappa album or a visit from a friendly yet anxious ghost.”

However Jack Law, of Alcohol Focus Scotland, described it was a “cynical marketing ploy” and said: “We want to know why a brewer would produce a beer almost as strong as whisky.” (more…)

It’s a Thanksgiving Miracle! Dolly is healed! Yesterday, as the turkey I did not eat was slowly roasting, Dolly began to show signs of dramatic improvement after four days on antibiotics. The snorting and snuffling and sneezing stopped. The nosebleeds have not returned. She can breathe through her nose again, so no more Joker grimace. She is sleeping soundly through the night, and there has only been one sneeze so far today, her customary first-thing-in-the-morning sneeze!

The vet thinks, because Dolly’s a hound who spends so much time on walks with her nose to the ground following the scents of things, she probably sniffed something fungal or moldy and had a nasty nasal infection of some sort.

I don’t know why I got so Debbie Downer on the whole ordeal — that’s not usually like me. But even the shelter had me spooked when I called them and they told me they’d once had to give her a shot for a swollen face — another thing that can be a symptom of something very bad. I had a totally bad feeling about it, but thankfully, I was wrong.

A sweet side story: My very maternal girl cat totally watched over Dolly when she was sick, sleeping close to her and milling around when she was suffering, and now they are true pals. Dolly wags her tail when she sees her coming and Charlotte purrs when Dolly walks into the room. A Florence Nightingale, interspecies love story!

I have something that happens to me often that is as perplexing to me as who the hell listens to Enya other than people lying on massage tables, why are bagels hotter than hell when you take them out of the toaster and why the hell won’t Trader Joe’s sell some of their shit online?

And that is this: How come whenever I cook a big turkey dinner, I can hardly eat it?

It’s happened again today. Stupidly, I decided it would be a good idea to cook a 12-pound turkey for me and my son, who really doesn’t like turkey. But I didn’t care because I was seriously jonesing for turkey — the big feast, all the side dishes, the notion of turkey sandwiches for dinner for a week. I didn’t eat all day as I made stuffing and stuffed the turkey and put it in the oven. I peeled potatoes. I prepared to reheat the cauliflower and Brussels sprouts gratin that I made last night (and ate part of for Thanksgiving Eve dinner). I made the corn casserole. All day I didn’t eat, excited with anticipation about the meal.

And when  meal time came, and the turkey was carved and the potatoes were whipped with cream and butter and the gravy was rich and thick and the side dishes were bubbling and fragrant, here’s what I ate: a heaping spoonful of stuffing. Two bites of white meat. One spoonful of mashed potatoes. And then I felt sick and could eat no more.

This happens every Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner, by the way.

Is it psychological? My sister is borderline obese and I am always worrying about food intake/diet/weight, for fear there is an obese woman inside me struggling to get out (she almost succeeded with both pregnancies).  My kids tell me I eat like an anorexic (which is not really true, I just don’t eat a big dinner and nibble on smaller things all day). Do I subconsciously freak myself out about hoovering down a huge meal and so my brain tells me I’m full and nauseated?

I don’t nibble all day when I cook the stupid bird, so it’s not like I can possibly be full.

Is it something about turkey? Could I be allergic? No, because the leftovers never bother me.

Does this happen to anyone else? What IS this phenomenon? All this work for two bites of turkey, a half a cup of mashed potatoes and not much more stuffing. The dog ate more in stuff that fell to the floor than I did. The kid who doesn’t like turkey ate more turkey than I did. I am pissed, and still feel like I could barf.

Oh hi there. Sorry I’ve been out of touch. I’m a bit bagged, you see. I have a new arrival in my home and the poor little thing has been keeping me up at night. I’ve let her in my bed — never a good idea — and even climbed into bed with her to try to help her sleep and to ease her discomfort. What’s that, you say? No, it’s not a tiny baby. IT’S A SIXTY-POUND HOUND DOG.

Yes, Dolly is ill. We’re not sure yet what’s going on. It seems like a cold; she is very stuffed up, unable to breathe through her nose, etc. But now her ailment is taking a menacing turn, with repeated nosebleeds. Nosebleeds in dogs are rarely a good sign.

In any event, for the past 10 days or so, the poor dog has suffered. Always a champion sleeper, she is now up every hour or so wandering the house snorting and snuffling and sneezing loudly. Last night, she was spraying blood from her nose in something that was akin to a horror movie. I ran around the house chasing her, her face in a weird Joker grimace as she breathed through her mouth and I mopped up blood. My son was scared. The cats were enthralled. Dolly, ever polite, sweetly wagged her tail as I cleaned her up and the cats came close to check her out. After I calmed everyone down,  I slept fitfully with her in the spare bed, weepy because I fear the worst. Google “canine nosebleeds” and you’ll see why.

In any event, I haven’t been this bagged since I brought home a new baby.

Today we walked to the vet’s again and they did a bunch of tests and gave me nosedrops and an antibiotic for her in case it’s an infection, though there is no fever so it’s not pointing to a bacterial infection. She’s only had two doses of the penicillin so far, but she’s still snorting and snuffling and having trouble breathing. The nose drops don’t seem to be helping. So, yes, I am hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. And while I might have thought it would be funny to see a hound dog walking around with a big snot bubble the size of a golf ball wheezing in and out of her nose, now it is depressing the hell out of me. The cats, however, remain fascinated.

Howdy People!

Forgive my absence, I have been traveling.  Specifically, I tortured myself for 10 hours in coach this week (never again!) to cross the seas and visit with my dear friend, Tailfeather.  Say hi, Feather..(Hi!)…she says hello.  We have a fantastic week planned, wherein we are doing a little tour of Europe, with culturally fulfilling stops in Belgium and The Netherlands as well as London.  The Netherlands I have been to before, but not Belgium.  London I haven’t been back to since I was a child, so it’s been fun hanging out here the last couple of days.

Earlier tonight, we went to the store to get some essentials (wine, very essential.  also chocolate.) and I found myself wandering the aisles in an nostalgic daze as I saw all the food stuffs of my youth.

The Bigga peas and Devonshire custard my mother used to have in the pantry when we lived in Ireland, the Pear soap and Fairy liquid my Nanna kept by the sink, the jars of Marmite and Bovril and bottles of Lucozade my Grandfather favored.  And don’t even get me started on the sweets!  Quality Street!  Crunchies!  MALTEASERS!!   (Contented sigh).  Ahh, memories, like the corners of my mind.  Tell me, what products remind you of your childhood?

*Oh, the food item above is NOT one of the fond childhood memories, it was just too bizarrely offensive not to share.

A welcome and rather touching addition to the photo blog ranks is My Parents Were Awesome, profiled on NPR’s All Things Considered last week.  Eliot Glazer has compiled over 3,000 user-submitted images of parents and grandparents in their heyday, and the result is a lovely little tribute to eras past.  Definitely worth a browse.

From Reuters:

Britons are among the ugliest people in the world, according to a dating website that says it only allows “beautiful people” to join.Fewer than one in eight British men and just three in 20 women who have applied to BeautifulPeople.com have been accepted, an emailed statement from the website showed.

Existing members of the “elite dating site” rate how attractive potential members are over a 48 hour period, after applicants upload a recent photo and personal profile.

Swedish men have proved the most successful, with 65 percent being accepted, while Norwegian women are considered the most beautiful with 76 percent accepted, the website said.

The way that BeautifulPeople.com accepts new members is simple. A potential member applies with a photo and a brief profile. Over 48 hours, existing members of the opposite sex vote whether or not to admit them, the site said.

Options are: “Yes definitely,” “Hmm yes, O.K,” “Hmm no, not really” and “No definitely not.”

The site was founded in 2002 in Denmark and went live across the globe last month. Since then, the site has rejected nearly 1.8 million people from 190 countries, admitting just 360,000 new members.

“I would say Britain is stumbling because they don’t spend as much time polishing up their appearance and they are letting themselves down on physical fitness,” Beautiful People managing director Greg Hodge said. “Next to Brazilian and Scandinavian beauties, British people just aren’t as toned or glamorous.”

Only the male Russian and Polish applicants fared worse than British men, although Russian women had a 44 percent acceptance rate. Polish women did not appear in the table.

German applicants were slated for offering up unflattering photographs, which may have hindered their acceptance rates at 15 percent for men and 13 percent for women, the lowest rate in their category.

“German men and women aren’t faring well, but they are submitting stern images, they need to soften up,” Hodge said.

 

OMG.  I mean, sure, we all curse online dating for the douches that post 10 yr old pics or head shots only while they claim to be tall/fit/mobile, but damn!  A site that will just straight up reject you like the doorman at The Bank – how brutal(ly efficient).   But they’re not without a little compassion, scrolling to the bottom of the sign in page shows you how you can get past the rope and get a peek – “Too ugly to sign up?  Click here to browse BeautifulPeople as a guest“.  Thaaaaaaaaaaannnnks.

A few weeks ago, I did a post about my Boy Person’s impending move-in date, and how, while I was excited, I was also weighing in my mind the ways in which I view this new definition of commitment as a limitation of opportunity.  How very funny, in retrospect.  This week is my first week as a cohabitant, and the challenges thus far are a little different that the ones I was expecting.

I planned to do my second post on the division of housework and personal time – you know, the standard day-to-day things that keep us all ticking along, and seek input on how you divvy up your own allotments of chores and space as cohabitants.  While space is something the Boy and I are still working on, all of that has come secondary to The Most Important Thing in My Life:  My Job.

As seems to be the nature of my job, things lurch along without much of a problem until, all of a sudden!, we enter a solid week or two of panic mode, wherein I am at the office 11 hours a day, perpetually stressed and wiped out and completely incapable of carrying on functional relationships with the people in my Real-Life, to the point where I am too exhausted and irritable to even make a phone call when I drag my ass home.  I get so physically and emotionally tired that I am a fount of irritability.  I am crabby.  I am short-tempered.  I am brittle.  I am the worst version of myself and I have no time for anyone else.  I never meet friends during the week and I don’t even like to call my mom, because when I get home I just want to inhale the little bubble of solitude I have for three hours until I collapse into bed to have anxiety-dreams and wake up dehydrated and achey at 4:00 am.  It is melodramatic, completely self-centered, and I feel helpless to do anything about it.  (more…)

I believe I can officially say that autumn is my least favorite time of year in this part of the world. Yes, I love the brisk temperatures and the glorious colors. But oh my God, The Leaves.

I don’t know why The Leaves are so abundant here. There are trees in Canada, after all. But perhaps given the climate, the trees seem denser, more packed with leaves than any trees I am familiar with. And so when The Leaves come down, it is almost suffocating. I have a 400-year-old sycamore in my backyard. I have a big huge maple in the front. They are MASSIVE. And when they drop their leaves, we are talking what seem like millions and millions of leaves.

The Leaves haunt my dreams. They fall down the chimney. They end up everywhere in the house. If it rains, they form a thick mat several inches thick that is almost impossible to rake. I am constantly sweeping and raking and sweeping and raking. I saw a snake slither out of The Leaves the other day. I have seen dead rodents in them. I dream I am drowning in the The Leaves. I dream they are alive. I am not a nightmare person, but The Leaves freak me the fuck out.

I am also tense about The Leaves and The Trimbles. Fucking Vern Trimble is out in his yard several times a day, raking them. He is an enemy of The Leaves, and I feel his judgment when I am only out, say, several times a week. He plucks stray leaves off his car constantly, and he’s parked under an oak. He is always, always on top of The Leaves. The Leaves are apparently his life for two months every autumn. (more…)

(more…)