I actually cried while filling up my car today. A full tank cost me fifty dollars. When the price skyrocketed above three per gallon, I didn't notice. I knew it was getting worse, but for God's sake, I can't afford this.
I can remember when gas was eighty-nine cents a gallon.
A good plateful of Thai curry helped me forget my woes for awhile (and gave me a runny nose). I cooked jasmine rice for the first time to accompany the curry, and I'm never going back. You know the amazing goodness of Chinese restaurant rice? One of their secrets is, of course, that they steam theirs. Sadly I don't have a steamer/rice cooker. But the other secret is that they use jasmine rice. I always wished I could cook rice so good I could eat it plain and cold from the little cardboard box in the refrigerator (I love cold Chinese), but thought it was completely beyond the realm of my ability. Not so. As soon as I opened the bag to dig my measuring cup inside, that sweet fragrance wafted up and took me straight back to the China Jade in North East. Heaven.
I also cooked with fish sauce. It adds great flavor, but is Very Stinky.
Leigh Ann had this marvelous idea -- since we won't be seeing each other as often now that I work and she's in grad school in D.C. and we can't allow our whole friendship to be based around Buffy every time we see each other -- of mailing me the contemporary Buffy and Angel seasons one at a time; I will watch them, mail them back, and get the next season. Meanwhile we will correspond about them.
This is taking loving a show to a bizarre level. But it's totally made my evening, when I could sit and savor the delectable artistic cheesiness that is Buffy.
Ooooo, and the new season of House premieres on my birthday!
I had no Close Encounters of the Psycho Kind when coming home from work today; it seems that Kevin is hiding or at least out of sight whenever I march past his door on the way to my own. It seems the same evening I shut the door in his face Colette visited him to tell him that there is no chance for him ever to get back together with her. So hopefully he's thoroughly depressed and planning to move.
Today at work the buzz centered around some local shoe store which donated fifty crappy art kits to the homeless kids at the Center and wanted publicity for it. So our whole morning was shot waiting around for the camera people to arrive, and then trying to help our two-year-olds to hold still and not be frightened of the many strange adults milling around with flash bulbs.
I'm not sneering at the donation. Crappy or not, art kits are something our kids don't have to take home with them, till today. But the self-congratulatory oo-look-at-me-doing-something-good makes me ill. Two slickly dressed representatives of the shoe company arrived wearing suits and stood in the middle of the photographs and then hung around shaking hands and giving their full name AND job title when introducing themselves and saying saccharine schmoozy things like, "Well, we hope the kids enjoy the art kits as much as we enjoyed donating them."
At that point I had to grab a kid and make for indoors muttering something about a diaper. It's not like they gave the Center half a million dollars. And how exactly does one enjoy donating something? It's like enjoying pouring a bowl of cereal. You just do it. The kids being happy with the gift is what you enjoy, but the slick reps didn't stick around for that part.
Plus it threw our kids off routine so that they were insecure and cranky the rest of the day (our classroom is about the only routine that most of these kids get). The whole experience was topped off by the random appearance of a Chik-Fil-A cow in full "Eat Mor Chikin" signboard regalia, which frightened our infants to tears. (People dressed in huge fuzzy animal outfits have always given me the creeps too.) At that point I wondered what dimension of reality I had suddenly wandered into and started checking along the baseboards for the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East.
Rrrgh.
So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ~Matthew 6:2-4
I just can't wait for Christmastime. Maybe I'll spend the whole month of December dressed as Santa Claus so people can't see me scowling behind the curly fake beard. It also might help our kids not to be afraid of morons in suits. (The only suited creature I've ever loved is the Grove City Gorilla, who chased the kid in the wheelchair -- yes, at Grove City he was THE kid in the wheelchair -- and humped him with an orange traffic cone, and who leaped onto the stage at the Class of 2004 Senior Dinner in the middle of Nancy Paxton's goodbye speech, gave us a silent victory sign with both arms, jumped off the stage, and ran out a side door. I loved that guy.)
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