Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Tonight we went to eat at Taqueria Arandas. I had the carne asada plate, which is a thin slice of marinated skirt steak, grilled and served over avocados and tomatoes, with fried cactus (nopalitos) and sauteed green onion on top, all with a liberal side helping of Spanish rice and refried beans. I drank a huge glass of horchata, rice milk that’s been sweetened and flavored with vanilla. For dessert I had a Pulparindo, which is dried tamarind pulp (like fruit leather), that’s been flavored with sugar, salt, and peppers, so it’s like a sour, salty, sweet, spicy fruit rollup.

Then on the way home we almost ran over an armadillo that was trying to get across the street.

Why do I even bother to shop anywhere else but Steinmart? I placed a huge order with an online store and got it in the other day; all but three items were grossly undersized. Like the bust was 8 inches smaller than it should have been. Steinmart always has really nice clothes for really low prices. I’m stocking up for my April and May trips.

I’m thinking about smuggling booze onboard the cruise ship. In a mouthwash bottle. Heh. I’m so 16 years old.

Will someone please sit down and explain Donnie Darko to me, preferably in words of two syllables or less?

Sleep deprivation sounds like a joke. Sometimes it turns into a dick-size contest, especially around new parents: “I only got 5 hours of sleep last night.” “Yeah, I know what you mean, I only got 4.” Like it’s a point of pride that you’re up and functioning after being deprived of sleep.

It is in fact more serious than that. Here’s a partial list of sleep depreivation symptoms. Here’s a short essay on the subject.

Ever since the baby came, hub and I have been sleep deprived. She is just one of those kids who doesn’t sleep well on her own, and at 18 months still doesn’t regularly sleep through the night. I’m what you call a “delicate” sleeper anyway – I have a hard time falling asleep, and if something wakes me up, I have a hard time going back to sleep. The net effect is that for the past 18 months, I’ve been averaging around 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Hub gets a tiny bit more than that. Still not enough.

Of course this tends to make us irritable, and since we work out of the house we are around each other and the children all day, every day, with very few breaks. We’ve never had a babysitter. Occasionally, maybe once a month, the kids go to stay with their grandparents for a couple of days.

To make a long story less long, things have been really rough around here lately. Bad news rough. We’re working hard now to try to get the kids on a better schedule, but it’s the little one who’s the problem. She wakes up at 5 in the morning and won’t go back to sleep in her own bed, so she ends up sleeping with us and beats the crap out of me all night. She almost broke my nose 2 weeks ago. Last week she broke my glasses while thrashing in her sleep. She’s slowly becoming very attached to her stuffed dog and her quilt and I hope that she will be able to use them to comfort herself back to sleep instead of needing to come to bed with us.

In the meantime, if hub or I snap at you, don’t take it too personally.

This makes me so upset. I mean like so mad I cry. How on earth could someone be so irresponsible and selfish that they feel they need to undergo fertility treatments at the age of 58? Holy shit, lady, your kids are going to want you to be around for their high school graduation. They’re going to want you to see them off to college. They’re going to want their children to know their grandparents.

I know this first-hand. My mother died when I was 16. I wanted her around for all those things and more. How dare this selfish, stupid woman think that it’s right for her to give birth at 58?

I just don’t understand people.

The unholy fascination with tea continues. I bought myself an electric kettle, because you know I:

1) need something else on my counter
2) need yet another gadget, and
3) need something else that does just one damn thing.

I wanted a regular, on the stove kettle but neither grocery store I went to had one.

Please forgive me for any typos. The puppy chewed through the last keyboard cable and I’m on a new keyboard that sucks. I’m fixing to order a new one. I hate mushy keyboards. I liked the really clackety ones that had the tactile “click” when you pressed a key, but the problem was that they were really loud. Not the thing when you’re trying to soothe a baby, a puppy, or a husband to sleep.

Luckily I was not one of the ones who had their name a social secirity number stolen from UT’s computer system last week, but turns out a friend of mine did. Wonder what weird things are going to show up on his credit report.

Today was just the prettiest day outside. About 72 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. Such a nice change from the unusual cold and ice we had recently. I cleaned off the table on the screened in porch and set the kids up with some Play-Doh while I sat in a rocking chair and quilted. I’ve got my nephew’s quilt about 2/3 done, which would normally be good news except I started it six months ago and it needs to be done by the first week in April. Crystal ball points to many sore fingers in the immediate future.

Hopefully the kids will sleep tonight so I can get an early start tomorrow morning and head over to the farmer’s market.

Last but not least. The trick to excellent mashed potatoes is adding more butter than you think humanly possible. A stick per 2.5 pounds. Trust me on this, it’s really worth it. Cooks Illustrated agrees.

*burp*

The other day the baby wandered into the living room, unaccountably soaking wet from her shirt collar up. I asked her, as her hair dripped around her ears, what happened. She could only giggle. All I can figure is that she tried to dive into the dog’s water bowl.

I tried putting her to bed tonight around 9:30 because she hadn’t had a nap all day and she fell asleep. She woke back up around midnight and hasn’t been back to sleep yet.

Thanks to my referral logs, I just found out that my blog is one of only three hits on Google for ‘assasinate “George Walker Bush”‘

Um, if I suddenly stop posting, you know where I am.

The latest on Featureprice? I’m waiting to hear back from American Express after sending them my 40 pages of documentation on why I should get my money back. I also got an email from Featureprice this morning, apparently in response to one of my many emails that had complained that the helpdesk didn’t work.

I’ll post the mail here, highlighting the funny part.

Return-Path:
Delivered-To: xxx@xxx.net
Received: (qmail 31176 invoked from network); 5 Mar 2003 19:18:16 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO ….com) ([x..x.x.x])
(envelope-sender )
by xxx.xxx.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP
for ; 5 Mar 2003 19:18:16 -0000
Received: from xxx.xxx.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by xxx.xxx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A380754A8
for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2003 14:17:29 -0500 (EST)
Delivered-To: xxx@xxx.com
Received: from ssl.featureprice.com (unknown [64.38.111.240])
by xxx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E53EB7539A
for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2003 14:17:13 -0500 (EST)
Received: from ssl.featureprice.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by ssl.featureprice.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id h25ExCYo021010
for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2003 11:16:49 -0500
Received: (from nobody@localhost)
by ssl.featureprice.com (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) id h0C3Q6rp002179;
Sat, 11 Jan 2003 22:26:06 -0500
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 22:26:06 -0500
Message-Id: <200301120326.h0C3Q6rp002179@ssl.featureprice.com>
To: xxx@xxx.com
Subject: Your HelpDesk Access Information
From: “FeaturePrice.com”
X-Sender:
X-Mailer: PHP

Hello Xxx Xxx,

Please do not reply to this email since it was automatically generated by our password reminder program.

As per your request, we are resending the HelpDesk access information. Please find your email address as well as the password below. With this information, you will be able to login to the HelpDesk.

http://helpdesk.featureprice.com
E-Mail Address: xxx@xxx.com
Password: xxx

If you are still experiencing problems logging in to your Help Desk account, please contact our customer service at +1-800-605-4883.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Best Regards,
——————————————————————–
HelpDesk Support
www.featureprice.com
——————————————————————–
Online Help Desk: http://helpdesk.featureprice.com
Technical Inquiries: 800-605-4883
—

Can you believe this? They back dated the email to make it look like they sent it on January 11. How clueless does a hosting company have to be to think that the headers don’t have the correct date? I hadn’t even sent the email saying that my helpdesk login was broken until January 22nd.

What losers.