I love you more than you know

I just want to say

That I'm happy to be alive during the renaissance of William Shatner.

Those crazy kids

They just love to jump on beds.

Gno-ledge is power

I made gnocchi!

And made a mental note that I need to get a digital camera so I can share these adventures with you.

Gnocchi is surprisingly easy. And it cost me about fifty cents to make about two pounds of it.

Now I have two cookie sheets of delightful little dumplings.

If you want to try, bake about 7-8 medium sized potatoes. I bake 'em in the microwave, because I'm too cheap to turn on the oven for so long.

Let them cool. Then take the skin off. Put in a teaspoon of salt and about 2 tablespoons of oil. Mash well.

Then, add flour (somewhere between 1.5 cups and 2 cups). Squish it with your (clean) hands until you have dough that isn't sticky.

Roll it into a big snake, and cut pieces that are about 3/4 inch blobs.

If you want to get really fancy, you can use a fork to give them stripes that help hold the sauce.

Boil for 2 minutes and eat!

They are way more delicious than the ones you buy at the grocery store, 1/4 of the price, and you can shock and amaze your friends. It took me about half an hour from the time the potatoes were cool enough for me to peel.

Is it wrong?

One of my favourite Simpsons moments ever:

So, stealing is wrong. But is it wrong to steal a load of bread to feed your starving family?

Well, I guess not.

What if you have an extremely large starving family? Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them?

Well...

And what if your family don't like bread, they like cigarettes. Is it wrong to steal them?

And so the question of the day is not about bread, cigarettes, stealing or families.

It's

Is it wrong to go to church, just so you can look around the building?

Hermit 1.0

Winter is my new favourite season.

Perhaps because it's perfectly acceptable, at least in my mind, to stay home. All season. Watching tv shows on dvd, baking and knitting, making endless cups of tea, sitting with cats on top of you, wearing flannel, listening to records, reading and reading, playing with your dog in the snow, and hanging up decorations, and not communicating with other people at all. Okay, except via email.

Summer is usually reserved for thinking about what you've done with your life, what the hell you're going to do with your future, and why life is so totally unsatisfactory. Some people call this "patio season."

But winter seems like a good time to be happy with what you have. So you can not care that you're not a perfect union organizer, or that you're tone deaf, or that you forget to floss three days a week.

Maybe because it's the time of year that makes the starkest difference between the haves (even those that have very little) and the have-nots (because there is always someone with even less than you).

From where I'm sitting, things look pretty okay.

New York is cold, but I like where I'm living....

This time of year always reminds me of Famous Blue Raincoat.

It's that end of November, first snow, general malaise, huddling in your house under a blanket, maybe baking a pie, strategizing about ways to keep warm for free kind of feeling.

Did you know?

That a German Shepherd can scream?

That's exactly what she does, when the vet cuts her nails. It requires a person to sit on her back, one to tap her head and distract her, one to feed her treats, and one to cut. And she shrieks every time the blades click.

I stand outside while this happens because it's so upsetting.

But then, when you take them to harvey's and get them chicken nuggets, they almost forgive you.

So now she's sleeping off her stress on the couch.

square pegs, etc.

There are different things that can happen when you repeatedly shove a square peg into a round hole.

Maybe the peg is made of a stronger material than the hole, and it breaks the frame, allowing pegs of many different shapes to enter.

Or maybe the peg and the hole are equally strong, so they keep bouncing off of each other.

Or the peg is softer than the hole, and over time the sides get whittled down until the peg becomes rounded. In the most extreme case, the peg becomes entirely round.

In any case I am learning that it's hard to be the wrong shape.

And also that I might have some talent for writing horoscopes or fortune cookies.

I should mention

That it's sort of ironic that I purchased the dremelto grind down the dog's unhealthily long nails.

I can see they are causing her toes to spread out and worry that it's hurting her feet. Plus I'd like to get them down to an acceptable length before I take her to the vet next week and get chewed out for it.

So in an effort to save her paws, I've messed up my own.

I repeat: fucking shit.

What is the sound of one hand typing?

This is it.

Just now, in the kitchen, cutting the tag off my new dremel, I slipped with the knife.

So I've gauged a dime-sized slice out of my hand. I think I can see my own fat.

I'd get it stitched, but there's nothing to stitch. It's like punching a hole in the wall, except it's my hand.

So I've used my good hand and my teeth to wrap myself in gauze pads and gauze. It looks like I'm wearing a cast on my left side.

I think I'll avoid the use of any power tools, or utensils for that matter, for a little while.

Fucking shit.

And people get power hungry?

I have my first big set of negotiations in which lives are in my hands and there's a lot to lose.

The stress is making me near comatose. When I'm not eating.

Wish me luck, but more than that, wish it to the members. We're about to see if there's any magic pixie dust in these pockets.

These boots aren't made for walking

I hate this time of year. Rather, I hate this time once every three years or so, when I realize that I need new winter boots.

My criteria are this: no hiking boots, nothing too ugly, must be affordable, must be flat-soled, must have treads.

You'd think a product like thi s might exist.

But oh no, if you're a woman pedestrian who does not spend her days in the mountains, you are fucked my friends, just fucked.

So I bought a pair of flannel pyjama pants and called it a day.

Wash, rinse, repeat

So after about nine loads of laundry, this is said by me:

"So this must be like what it's like to be middle class."

Pause

"No wait, this is what it's like to be working class and win on the Price is Right."

Everything in my house is either clean, fluffed and folded, or just waiting in the queue. I wish I could wash myself in there.

Welcome to the real (?) world

I've bought a washer and dryer. Mind you, I'll be paying off my credit card for the rest of my life, but I will have clean and dry clothes.

It's a big deal, though. I've never purchased a major appliance before.

Welcome to the grown up world. Or at least some kind of world in which you do not have enough time or enough clothes to wait a month to spend half a day in a laundromat, and waiting for people to take your grey shirt you really like.

And also in this topsy turvy world, it seems that you must purchase a washer and dryer, and pray that the floor will not collapse under it.

Don't be cruel....

Oh weather, why is the wind blowing so fiercely on the 31st of October that none of my pumpkins will stay lit, and the atmosphere perfectly calm on November the 1st?