The Meh

Not much is happening lately. My sleeping pattern's shot. I'll put something new and exciting here when this moment of meh passes.

Also, our laundry machine is refusing to spin and I need clean clothes and we've been trying to fix that for the past few days. Hygiene before interwebz, yo.

The Good Intentions

So, there's not a lot of jobs being offered this month. No idea why, but it's been a few days since there was even a hopeful entry position that then demanded degrees, experience and a solemn promise to help in the breeding of a superior race of low-level administrative drones.

Okay, maybe not the last one, but even McDondald's won't have me, on account that I don't have the German certification of not being a serial killer or a herpes-riddled prostitute. All other employers either demand experience or a degree, all homocidal maniacs and diseased streetwalkers welcome.

I've even been refused for a learning position because, I shit you not, my secondary school diploma wasn't German. Where did I apply? The city. I'm assuming they were ho-humming about bloody foreigners not wanting to learn when my application pinged into their inbox, followed by a flustered 'What does it mean, 'secondary education'? No, no, wait, it's not a German school, can't have that. Make it go away, quickly!'

J., as mentioned before (I think, slightly sleep-deprived from too much Pokémon), will hire me as studio slave next month, but I figured out today that there's only so much you can do in the studio.

Take today, for example. I was bored. Rather than chat endlessly with customers until I was politely asked to shut my piehole, I decided I'd be good. I'd be helpful. I'd do useful stuff.

Like re-arranging all the gels so the colors matched, rather than having to pick out pink from between the brown and purple and orange and missing the pot that was inbetween the blue. Then I lined up the TLC gels by color of box. The black boxes with their risky but pretty gels next to the silver ones with their relatively safe pretty gels. Then I checked all the gels of all the brands for foil left behind. It's not a total bother, it's just enormously messy if it's big chunks of metal keeping you out of the thing. Then I stuck tips on the pots without tips and colored them in. It turns out, we had half as much 'anthracite' gel as we thought: the second pot wasn't in the 'nail polish' variety, but the 'glimmer gel' one. Whoops.

I also cleaned S.'s sponges. She has two and had managed to cover them entirely in several colors of gel.

And the little lint-free rectangles used to wipe down nails with were running suspiciously low. S. was out, J. was out, Sis was fast running out, I hadn't had any since last week. The strange thing was, there had been four rolls of it lying around the studio when I checked the week before. There's at least 500 squares on a roll. They don't just disappear.

Turns out, they didn't.

In case you hadn't noticed, everyone in the studio has a mild case of kleptomania. Sis steals gels from her mom when she's running low, everyone envies S. her pink stamping polish, since it's the only pink that works, I. has bright yellow and neon colors in her own, personal, self-paid arsenal of gels that occasionally get borrowed without asking and no one takes it seriously when Sis puts her stamping plates under her desk. You just nab them at will.

The problem is, we're all aware of that. Sis and J. share the costs of buying gels, S. stamps in pink more than anyone else, I. has colors customers seldom ask for, but which look nice in contrast to others and the stamping plates always get returned to Sis, even if it's when I come in and put them back. It's a give-and-take situation where no one really minds.

Except for one colleague I've never met. I know she's supposedly nice and polite. She works evenings, sometimes alone. What I also know is that she is known to leave sinkfuls of dirty glasses to congeal over the weekend, does not bother to dust or sweep up the studio even if the dirt is lying finger-thick and uses gels from everyone who has them. Not just a little dab of gel here and there, mind you. Both J. and Sis frequently come into work asking each other if they've used their gels, since it's nearly empty again. S. has more than once had to retrieve either her or J.'s gels from this woman's shelves. I'm pretty sure the only reason I.'s and my gels are safe is because we use leftovers and finds from in storage. They rarely if ever get used on customers, so she has no use for our stuff.

Everyone seems annoyed, and I'm wondering why she's still employed.

Today, we spent two hours wondering how we were going to fill the wipe-shortage, until I vocalised this worry to Sis. Weren't there any left in the shelves? Nope, not even in the boxes near the reception desk. Well, no worries, Ms. Nightworker still had two packages in her shelf. Two packages. With two rolls of 500 rectangles in each. While she still had half a roll left, mind you. I'm starting to wonder if she's just spiteful. I liberated a package and made sure S. and J. had wipes. You know, since they, unlike others, did not have a week-long holiday this week and needed them to earn a living and other such whimsical things.

J. showed me how to clean up the pedicure room for her, which took up another whopping fifteen minutes of my time.

Then I released my inner kleptomaniac and nabbed the leftover twenty squares from S. and got cracking on making me some nails. I worked with some stamps, tried a triangular french tip with a hair-thin gold lining, all went well. What I really wanted to do, and did, was practices with the swirl tool and hair-thin brush, trying to get both thin and delicate, intricate details onto the nails.

Big loops are easiest with the brush. A swirl tool is a wonderful piece of equipment, but it's not suitable to draw smooth lines with. It's not like a pen that refills itself. You have to keep feeding it gel, drop by agonising drop, and lines that flow only work if they're thick. So, brush.

But if you want something like a tight spiral, the brush very much works against you.

I spent the better part of half an hour trying to figure this out. I couldn't use the brush without making a mess, I couldn't use the swirl tool to draw a flowing line.

What I could do, however, was break down the spiral into components, like I'd done to create Mario's face. First put out points where lines either cross or bend. Then connect those using a scallop pattern with a little swoosh at the end for flair. Finally, ad loops by going one way, then the next. If you run out of gel, add it to the very first points, nowhere else, or it'll smudge.

I hardened, I sealed, I hardened again... And noticed that I'd wiped off to the top each time, giving the top two-thirds of the nail a greyish film, irrepairably trapped with my hard work. The only way to make my greytone confection look presentable, was adding a bottom of green grass where the white was still white.

Then I made a carrot in the corner of a white nail. It looked lonely, so I threw together a quick rabbit on the opposite side's opposite corner, drawing a dotted line with unnecessary loops inbetween.

Then I decided to be silly and drew eyes on the tip of a nail, including eyebrows.

After which it was time to go home.

I have nothing to do tomorrow. If there's a job, I'll apply for it. If not... I want to do laundry. And bake stuff. I want to try making dulce de leche, and American baked cheesecake, and micro cupcakes baked in thimbles. I want to make bacon muffins and pizza pockets. I want to make soup, so we've got some vegetables in our lives. And I still want a treadmill, so I have no excuse to not move anymore.

The Burgers

I slept for ages, again, waking up here and there for insignificant things like letting the dog out and making sure he had water and food, mumbling about how I was too tired to do anything and finally, to get up and go to the convention.

Except Boyfriend was AWOL. He'd left for lunch with his parents two hours earlier, and showed up later to tell me that his sister had already been to the convention the day before, and there wasn't much there. Oh, and he was going to play some more Mario Kart with her. I was offered to come, but I didn't feel like picking out fresh clothes to go sit in cigarette smoke and then come home tempted to put my eyeballs under the shower. I politely declined in favor of playing Pokémon and doing my laundry.

The towels had dried. They weren't soft, but they weren't pot-scrubber rough and hard either, so I declared the experiment a partial success and folded them. My first load of dark laundry (where did all this dark laundry come from that we have two loads of it?) came out fine. Then I wanted to wash some red stuff (the only other colored article of clothing we had was neon green, not a color to put in with new red fabric, it seemed to me) and the machine threw a fit. It didn't want to spin anymore. No way, no how. I stopped the cycle, started a spin cycle, and after half an hour it said one minute had passed. I checked to see if it had spun. The door was stuck ("Booooooyfrieeeeeeeeeeeend!") and the clothes, if possible, were wetter than when I put them in. I hung them up anyway and was forced to put two of my clean towels under them to make sure we didn't flood the apartment, again. The drying rack is full again, so I'm off laundry duty for at least another eight hours.

Somewhere in there, Boyfriend had come home.

We discussed back and forth a bit, then decided to give healthy living the finger and go to McDonalds. By bike, so not a complete waste of calories.

We used the coupons to liberate a lot of chicken nuggets, saving half for the dogs of Chris' parents, who love them. I got a small menu with an extra burger. Except my burgers weren't immediately ready. No problem, I'd wait.

The wait was suspiciously long. It was not that surprising, since we'd come in with the post-convention crowd, but still strange. Especially when the two burgers I'd ordered were delivered to a table outside. Now, it wasn't outside the realm of possibilities that someone else had ordered the same thing as me at the same time. We hadn't been the only ones selecting food from the coupon list. But then they came with 'my' burgers. Which were so not what I'd ordered. I double-checked by opening one. I checked against what I'd ordered on a second coupon. I'd gotten the smaller, cheaper version with the other sauce that tasted weird and wrong in combination with the entire thing. So Boyfriend put on his valiant face and pleaded my case in front of the guy we'd ordered from. He immediately got two correct burgers, no fuss.

Ah, well. We ordered ice cream to go, and again got an incorrect order. To be fair, we were being kind of difficult in ordering. Four McFlurries and a large fries. Two of the flurries without toppings, one of the promotional ones and, just to test you, one with a basic topping and an extra topping of caramel sauce. The guy repeated our order three times at us. It was horribly confusing to hear it ourselves, but in the end, we left with what we thought was a correct order. Coming home, Boyfriend's ice cream was caramel-free. Or we'd been overcharged by thirty cents.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some. We got home to discover Iggy is evolving into an actual puppy. He misses us and cries when he thinks it'll make us come home sooner. He is starting to associate us scary two with treats, treats and walkies. And he is definitely using his litter box rather than the little cubby under my desk. For the low price of one serving of caramel sauce, that's a neat thing to learn.

The Vinegar

Unlike my plans, I didn't go to the tattoo convention today. Nor did I spend the day trying to catch 'em all.

Now, don't get me wrong, I did play on the 3DS. But then J. called us over for a late lunch (we slept late again) and I had to do groceries.

Now, we can survive a weekend without bread, and I could have stolen Boyfriend's shower gel, but I didn't want to. And while I was there, I bought a banana, muffin cups and some vinegar. No fancy apple or white wine stuff, just ordinary white table vinegar. Under a euro, comes in huge bottles, just the stuff I was looking for. I spent about half an hour more looking all over the store for something else, but I didn't find it. Poo. I looked over the cheap candy and decided to chuck in something called 'fizz powder'. It had bright colors and was cheaper than dirt. Trying couldn't hurt.


If you recall, our shower is blocked. Or, more precisely, was blocked.

Boyfriend brought home baking soda yesterday. In the huge supermarket 2 km away, you can get it in quantities higher than 25 grams per package. For the way I've been using the stuff lately, I need waaaaay more, but the 250 grams Boyfriend bought will do for now.

So I tidied the kitchen, loaded the dishwasher and did the dishes. I wanted to find stuff in the kitchen again. It's a quirk of mine that I want to know where stuff is when I use that particular corner of the house. Cereal dust in pasta or breadcrumbs of dubious age in muffins do not make for appetizing cookery. It's this quirk that's taught me that 'chucking deep frozen food in the oven and waiting' doesn't fall under cooking, since you don't require to clear the countertops, scrub the cooker, do the hand dishes and make the sink shine before you do it. Then I took the baking soda to the bathroom, with my glorious vinegar.

The internet had clear instructions on what needed to be done, though I was rather skeptical. I was going to have to do this at least twice. It was too cheap. Too easy.

Upon arriving, I noticed Boyfriend had forgotten the shower was clogged and shaved under there. There were two inches of soapy, hairy water and a drain that was downright blocked with hair. Yum.

I spent some time fishing out enough hair to have some drainage, then realised I could plug the hole with one of the two plugs we have for our single kitchen sink. Back to the kitchen, fetch plug, regain skeptical pose next to the shower.

Then I chucked two 50 gram sachets of baking soda down the drain. The drain was so blocked, it didn't agree with this plan. It required a lot of poking and rubbing and in the end, a little bit of water, to make the slurry go down. Turns out, baking soda doesn't stay dry and granular in a moist shower. After learning this, I measured out one hundred mils of vinegar and poured that after it, then tried to push in the plug. Anyone with a basic knowledge of chemistry knows why this failed miserably for the first two minutes. Plug in place, I poked my head into the living room where Boyfriend and friend were playing video games. Could he put on an alarm for half an hour from now, please?

Then the vinegar was used as fabric softener for the towels. Then I made a vinegar-and-shampoo mixture for my brush and soaked it.

Then I gave up all semblance of sanity and cleaned the entire bathroom by hand. The floors of it are quite clean, but somehow, the rest of it gets covered in a gray, dust-based, sticky film after a while. Oh, and there were soap stains near the washing machine and where we stored the washing powder.

Half an hour later, I was definitely done with the bathroom. I boiled a full kettle of water, since Boyfriend had said it had been half an hour, then I tied up the trash and took the dishes from the dishwasher, since those were done. The boiled water went down the shower drain with suspicious ease. I tried putting on the shower hose to discredit this total and utter witchcraft, but no, the drain was unclogged. Without poisoning either me or the dog with vapours. For under two euros. Nothing damaged on the tub, even the scum I'd been unable to scrub off was gone from the drain. My brush wasn't as clean as I'd like, but it smelled better.

Iggy couldn't be forgotten in this fest of domesticity, so I cleaned his food bowls, scrubbed the mess away on the floor where they usually stood and bribed Iggy himself to stay in his basket for ten minutes with a treat. He's now accepting those by hand. Next step, convincing him that treats are stronger than fear.

This had contaminated my perfectly sanitary kitchen, so I cleaned it all over again.

I also had a shopping bag with holes near the handles. It's one of the two of that model I have. They're double as expensive as the usual canvas shopping bags available in Belgian supermarkets, but it has its bag (in which it remains tiny and manageable for a purse) sewn in. For those interested, it's the shopping bag offered by Veritas. I'd like more, should anyone be wondering what kind of surprise package to send me. Anyway, I couldn't leave it like that. I needed to try and save it. So I broke out my sewing kit (I have black thread, white thread and sewing needles) and clumsily stitched the holes closed with quadrupled thread and hope. Oh, and double knots. Mustn't forget those. I don't know how well it'll hold, but it looks strong.

I was still feeling like I had to do something more productive than try and get that one Pokémon I wanted to trade for another one, so I made some jelly pudding for the boys. Then I made chocolate muffins. Then I made raspberry muffins. Somewhere in there, I hung up the first load of laundry and put in a second load of towels. The washing powder masked the smell of vinegar quite well. I've yet to see if it actually softens the towels, but I'm hopeful.

There's nothing more to do for now. I can give in to the videogame-y depravity of it all, guilt-free. Until the laundry's done, anyway.

Late again!

This post is late. Not because I didn't think of it, but because... Well...

I had a good day at the studio. J. informed me that, should I still need a job by the end of the month, I'd be hired as official studio slave. This would mean having actual health insurance. Enough income to survive on. Wowee.

Buoyed by this assurance, I worked on some fake nails. And some more. The detail brush was doing everything I wanted it to. Not all of the colors did, but that was because I didn't get suspicious of gel that turned from brown into green when worked on too long. I had gotten some fake nail tips for the fake finger (tips which didn't actually agree with the finger, but heck, what's life without a piece of plastic filed to a point catapulting itself at your face from time to time?) and something called 'filing protection'. The last is a thick, aerated tape that adheres to itself. There's no glue on it, but it's really wavy and bumpy, so I think it's more of a purely physical cohesion-adhesion thing that makes that happen. It's amazing. First of all, it spares my poor, banged up nails any more abuse. Second of all, you notice when you file on it. It takes the wind right out of your sails. Oh, and I used it to put a pattern on a fingernail by wrapping it around the back of my brush and applying gel with that. My sponge was soaked in cleaner and not co-operating. It worked.

Then I got this brilliant idea of making animal heads at the tip of nails. Okay, I'd seen it before on the internet, but not in the studio. It had to be worth a shot with gel, right? So I made a cute little ducky that made everyone laugh and a bunny rabbit that "looked like pikachu". J.'s comment on both of them was that they looked good, could I do a Super Mario?

Erm... I supposed. Except all images of Mario had flown right out of my head to be replaced by a pixelated, two-tone side view. Boo.

I had to wait for Boyfriend to come along to pick up his Wii which had arrived, demand he show me a Mario on his phone and then be faced with the problem of Boyfriend not being done with work yet. I had ten minutes to burn the image of Mario in my mind.

My recreation wasn't as detailed as the 3D image on Boyfriend's phone, but it was definitely Mario. It lacked a few features, but I'd done an extreme closeup of his face. I could pretend there was no room for sideburns and ears and a detailed moustache. And it's gel, not airbrushing. I can't do shadows.

Then I stuck around a bit. Sticking around paid off.

You see, S. had broken a nail. I don't know how S. and I. do it, but they seem to break nails the way I go through potato chips (when I have them). Maybe they have a competition going on, I don't know. She'd found time to file her nail down and put a tip on, but not to actually finish the nail. So when I commented on it and she said 'yeah, I should get started on that', I asked if I could try it. I knew the theory of all the steps, since she just had a pink tip with a stamp on it.

There was a moment of silence, but in the end she said 'sure'.

My filing has improved. Sort of. I didn't hit skin once, but S. kept telling me I was allowed to put some pressure on the file.

Gelling her up went quite easy. I got a bit of gel on her cuticles, but not irrepairably so. And she pointed it out to me before it was stuck in the machine. We discussed the merits of starting at the top or the bottom when painting on a colored tip. S. likes starting at the top, I end up going way too far when I do. So I draw on the bottom and color it in like a toddler, because that works for me and J. taught me that way.

The stamp was surprisingly easy, except S. didn't get it when I asked if she'd used the stamp vertically or horizontally. I checked with Boyfriend later, and I'd used real German words. For once, the fault lay not with me. But we figured it out, I put the polish on the stamping pad, scraped and BAM, perfect from the first time. Wait ten seconds to make sure it's really dry, top coat, harden, wipe, done.

J. would have taken maybe fifteen minutes in doing this. I took half an hour. The end result got valued as 'super' by J. and S. said, in all seriousness, that I could repair nails if necessary. Wowee.

When I got home, high on my victories of the day (Also, J. asked if I lost weight. I don't have scales, but maybe I have. Positive thinking!), the living room was covered in boxes and wires and games. Someone other than me had installed his Wii. Iggy doesn't have opposable thumbs. But I'm not naming names here.

On my desk, there was a case of Pokémon White. I'm not a big gamer, but I love the Pokémon Gameboy games. Boyfriend had managed to get it cheap and no longer needed his normal-sized 3DS, so... Yeah. I may have gone all sparkly-eyed at the prospect of catching me some pokemans.

I had, however, a splitting headache. So after quick dinner, I took a nap. I was rested after two hours, but I made the mistake of not putting on pajamas. The bedroom has been ice cold since the sunny days are over. I, in all my wisdom, had forgotten to close the window as well. I didn't come out until the temperature had risen enough for me to risk poking out my fingers, snatching my robe and bundling up before fleeing to the warmer living room. I had a blog to fill out.

Except... Pokémon. It wouldn't hurt to get just one badge, would it? No, of course not. It couldn't possibly. I found a walkthrough, put on some videos for the boring 'train until you drop' parts and started playing.

Then it was suddenly four in the morning and going to bed seemed like a better idea than blogging. I was late anyway.

The Urge to Shop

If anyone noticed, I don't have a job yet. That means no disposable income or any other income whatsoever. After this month, I am officially left to either going back to Belgium or living off of my savings. I'm aware of that fact. I'm also aware of the huge amount of fun stuff out there.

First of all, there's Sis' birthday coming up. I'm fairly sure there's several pieces of piercing jewelry she'd appreciate from my favorite website, and they had a sale on most of them today while I was reading a book and didn't notice. Then again, I'm trying to not spend oodles of money this month.

Secondly, there's books. I ordered the Hunger Games trilogy today because it was cheap. Then I remembered I want the Harry Potter series in English. Oh, and Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops. And a King James Bible. And a how-to guide on sexual bondage, just to see what happens when I place it inbetween titles like 'Jane Eyre' and 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and one of Boyfriend's friends tries being intellectual. But yeah, I'm lacking funds.

Then there's clothing and accessories. There's several pairs and models of lovely glass hangers I want for my ears. And an awesome jacket I saw online. And some dresses, oh yes. A few tunic tops, maybe. And I bought underwear for quite a lot of money, simply because I don't want to run out of undies of that brand just yet. I'd also like a new pair of jeans, maybe even two, but I'm not sure any of that is a financially sound move. Well, I know the 130 euro, silver-dipped glass ear hangers aren't. Not unless I want to cut the remainder of my monthly budget by roughly 80%/

Next up is food. Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying myself food, but there's silly things I want and shouldn't buy. Like Ben en Jerry's ice cream, of Haagen Dasz. Both are expensive, fattening and have an 80% chance of giving me an evening spent on the toilet while my bowels try to crawl out through the nearest exit. Then there's the deal at Burger King with an extra big chicken burger that looks downright delicious, and the McFlurry of the season including Twix flavor, and the memory of KFC chicken being delectable. I won't get sick from them, but they won't help the twenty kilos too much I'm dragging around, either. The semi-healthy stuff I don't need, like garam masala spice mix and mango chutney and lemon curd, I'm just curious about. I have recipes that call for all and look delicious, but both Boyfriend and me are too picky eaters to risk buying it and then having the entire thing go to waste. There's kids starving in Africa, and our society throws out edible and often expensive food by the ton, which is shameful. That, and I already feel guilty and worried when I buy myself chocolate milk.

Then there's the downright silly, which I'm sorting under the nomer of 'home improvement'.

Like clothes hangers. We could use a few more of those. Not crappy plastic ones, but sturdy wooden ones that cost something and can carry a winter coat.

Or little doors for the bookshelf in the bedroom, so Boyfriend can store his clothes more comfortably without detracting from the bookgasmic bookscape I'm building around the cubbies his clothes (and the bedclothes) are taking up. They'd require a trip to IKEA, and some hmm-hawwing over which little doorsies to get.

And Boyfriend's getting a Wii. Because it was cheap and it's his money and he wants to do dirty, computer-nerdy things to it. He's foresaw my 'the console storage thing is covered in crap, where are you going to put it' argument, and reorganised half the living room until there was room. Last night, before I woke up. So, yeah, we're getting a Wii.

Then there's my dream of owning a food processor with some oomph behind it. We have a hand-cranked one, a stick blender we haven't used to far and my 15 euro blender if we ever decide we want to blend up soft fruit or chop a small amount of nuts. Large quantities without liquid tend to get blended very well at the bottom and not at all on the top. It also lacks any and all safety features you can imagine. There's several affordable, good models of food processor out there, but I can't really justify buying one just yet.

And to conclude this little trip into I-Wanna-Wanna-Wanna land, there's a treadmill. And all the things necessary to mount my laptop on it. The treadmill is fairly easy. There's secondhand ones to be had online for under one hundred euros, and new ones for under two-hundred. And I'm sure the internet has solutions for mounting laptops. But, yeah, I might need the money I spend on it later this year for other frivolous things. Like food. Or a job interview outfit.

The Return of the Boss

J. returned to the store today. Well, technically yesterday, but I wasn't there yesterday, so I'm saying today.

This meant I had someone to watch all day, should I so desire, and I did not get kicked out at one o'clock like last week due to nothing more to do until six. I learned many interesting things, such as that there's actual nail polish being used at times, and the corner of a rosewood stick can be used to apply rhinestones just the same as the swirl tool and J. has a lot of things she forgot about in storage.

The last bit I discovered because I., after fixing the studio chairs and kitchen plumbing last week, decided to have a shot at organising storage. Suddenly, there were display nails on sticks galore, unpainted and ready to be made into amazing things. The sponges haven't shown up so far, but she did find a finger. A creepy, disembodied finger shaped nothing like a real one, made out of plastic and stuck in some kind of post-mortal twitch. You put nail tips in so you can work on them rather than the display nails. I'm assuming it's a cheaper alternative to the stick nails, because I have yet to find a way in which it's different from them. The tips are a bit wobbly, but that's where it ends.

I tried the finger out and did a great job apart from a bump at the smile line. J. urged me to try again with building gel on top of the design. In case you've forgotten, my building gel is about as practical in use as a lion is in herding flamingos. Sometimes it runs, sometimes it doesn't. I got the bump at the front worked away and got two bumps at the side for my trouble. Filing did not help.

I also learned that Sis has her birthday in a month. I have a lot of inspiration as to what she could get from me, but little to no funds to make any of it come true. Sigh.

And it was rainy and I forgot to eat lunch and the bakery on the corner, for some freak reason, closed early today. Long story short, by the time umbrella-less me got out of the studio, the bakery was closed and I had to wait until I was home to eat. Choices came down to pizza or cereal. I went for pizza. Pizza had bacon and salami on there and I'm not that environmentally friendly when I get hungry.

I did write some more letters to possible employers. The only reason I'm including this is because, for once, it was more than one. This annoyed Boyfriend a lot, since he gets the honor and privelege of correcting my German when I'm done. If it's small changes to my basic letter, he's done in two minutes. If I have to seem personal and interested and make up new sentences, there's a 50-50 chance that I rape the German language in a way that's understandable, but so wrong it's hard to twist it back in place.

With all of them sent and provided with attachment of my cv, diploma's and a smiley, hopeful picture, I decided to take a nap. When I woke up, it was tomorrow, eight pm. I only know this because I checked my iPod. My cell phone/alarm clock, I left on the kitchen table in the studio. Oops.

The Rainy Day

Today was looking to be a great day. Except we got rain somewhere between the afternoon and the evening.

I looked up jobs, since I still don't have one and I'd really, really, really like to stay here, for which I need a job. I've found a few which have the hours and pay and nearness I want, but most require things like handyman skills, or the ability to not be in pain and probably fit into standard safety shoes. The two that were further away have one for which I'm certainly suitable, one which is vague, but not awful, and both are 90% sure to require me to find a bus route, if not more. I'm willing to do that, but I still have to send my job application.

I only check the non-governmental job sites once a week or so. If they order job offers near me, they're usually not biking-close and almost all of them require a bachelor's degree. I'd love to get one, but I'd love to stay sane more.

So I'm writing two application letters full of vim and happiness... Tomorrow. Today, I'm going to bed on time, so I don't make a habit of not showing up for work due to tiredness.

I tested my new bathrobe. It's brown, which was a better color than the fabric-softner blue they had. I grew up in the nineties. Dark blue, the only other option, does not appeal to me. I want my bathrobes either earthy or cheerful, my jeans not the obnoxious oooh-I'm-new, navy blue and my sweaters bright. I want to be able to alert oncoming traffic of my coming while wearing them. Unless it's a formal occasion, in which case I'll still go for diesel-blue or black. Or white. Or khaki. Just not prussian blue. So my bathrobe, which is awesome, is brown and I love it.

I also tried making dinner today. Meatballs and cherry sauce. The sauce is easy. The sauce went great. The meatballs however... It's hard to measure dry bread crumbs without a kitchen scale. So I eyeballed it. And I measured out the spices before I put in the meat. The result were very bready, crumbly meatballs that had little to no taste after cooking them. Boyfriend didn't like cherry sauce either. All-in-all, it could have gone better. And now we have tasteless meatballs and quite a bit of cherry sauce left. The meatballs will probably disappear over the course of the next few days, preferably into the trash can. The sauce... I could pour it over ice cream, except the cherry-in-diary combo makes me heave. I could put it on cake, but it's a bit too liquid for that. I could make pancakes if I was skilled with a spatula, or I could bake waffles if I had an iron, but I don't. That leaves 'bake cookies and dunk'. We have, for once and probably a limited time only, all the ingredients for basic baking in the house. I could make shortbread or sand cookies.

Then the Hermes dude showed up with a package for Boyfriend. Boyfriend hadn't ordered anything. Which meant it was my underwear. Some women like shopping. I hate and detest the principle because I can't decipher or flatter the fit of anything, but when I know my size and can trust the brand... Yeah, I'm now the proud owner of four pairs of lacy panties. And four more girl boxers. I tried out the panties already, because the sticker on the packaging said 'new cut!'. It's basically the old cut, except they no longer come in 3-pair combo packs and the lace has been given some growth hormones. They're comfy and they suit me. I'm keeping them.

I'm also pretty sure that they look good on me, since Boyfriend took about two minutes of watching me go 'Are you sure my butt doesn't look fat in this red?' before dragging me to the bedroom in a manly fashion and tearing them off.

All on all, a good day. Most rainy days are.

The Way My Mind Works

Nothing quite beats nightmares after you come off anti-anxiety and antidepressants.

I had one last night, woke up, spent half an hour worrying about what it was about and that spiraled down to being scared, insecure and a feeling of general hopelessness. Boyfriend was very concerned about this.

Needless to say, neither one of us went back to bed after that.

I had to go to the studio with my mind still suggesting everyone hated me for not making it to work on Friday, and I'd be thrown out and I'd end up homeless and alone. Normally, that's a bad thing. Except this time I realised what I was doing and managed to at least point out to myself that I might be taking it a bit far.

Going to the studio took care of the majority of all my worries. People were just the same as ever, there was fun, sunshine and friendliness.

My stamping could use some work, so I spent half an hour stamping 'OOPS!' in big red capitals on my ruined nails. Remember how I filed them down to painful little damaged red things? Yeah, I'm down to the last few millimeters of damage, but that means my nails are splitting, tearing, breaking and generally being a pain. No gel, no tips, just stamping.

I even managed to make a few nails I liked, even if it took me ages to make them, half of which was spent trying to manipulate the thin gel brush into doing what I wanted it to. One of them might even be sort of suitable to be actually used on people.

Occupational therapy with an educational angle.

Next I went home. Boyfriend was asleep. I took out Iggy, pumped up my tire, took Iggy and the pump back inside and then went to Lidl, looking for soup veggies without brussels sprouts. I found some. Then I found a bathrobe, which was affordable and the lack of which had been bothering me at least once a week for the past month. Then I found breadcrumbs, minced meat, cherries... Yeah, dinner was fixed.

Except we had no nutmeg.

I went back home and crawled into bed with Boyfriend, needing snuggles and time to think if I'd risk making meatballs without nutmeg. I miss nutmeg. I don't get why there's no nutmeg in Lidl. Nutmeg is amazing in lots of things. I wanted nutmeg.

So I guess tomorrow, I'll find some nutmeg and make some meatballs.

The Wardrobe Reorganisation

I know I've been talking a while about stuff that still needs doing and that I still haven't done.

I wanted to do it all this weekend, but, well... By now you know the true me. Why scrub the oven when you can have McDo at unchristian times of the night?

But I'm still feeling a bit of residual guilt over Friday and not adding vanilla to the welcome-home cupcakes. And I'm currently on weekend mode: no idea what day it is, wide awake in the middle of the night, dead tired as soon as there's daylight.

So I turned on the dishwasher, did dishes, tied off a garbage bag and put a new one in. I tried scrubbing the oven's grill, which had no result on the grime imbedded in there. Must ask dad about his amazing grill-cleaning tricks.

I scrubbed a bit at the oven itself, but after about ten minutes of getting a lot of soot off and a lot of soot staying there, I just scrubbed the window clean, did for the sides what I could and took the internet's advice about the stains on the bottom. I poured sodium bicarbonate over it, sprayed it with water and let it sit for the night.

I checked on the T-shirts still in the wash. The laundry machine was having issues again, but a quick reset quickly took care of that. My felted slippers were grimy, so I tossed those in the machine after hanging up the T-shirts, putting on a wool wash program.

The things I wearing went into the laundry, except for my panties. My panties, my amazingly comfortable and supportive Pieces girl-boxers, had a hole in them. The kind where I've learned they've had a long and comfy life, but now it's time to let go. I'd noticed earlier, and found room in my budget to buy new Pieces underwear. It's not the cheapest, but neither is it the most expensive. Also, the website was reducing the price for every three pieces bought and they wouldn't let me buy anything under forty euros. It's insane, but I paid slightly less than forty-two euros for eight pieces of underwear. I know the brand, and I know what size I have when shopping there. Next week, I'll have gloriously drab-colored boxers and cute lace-rimmed panties to drown my sadness in over losing my first pair of Pieces underwear. Then I took a quick shower. I know this won't endear me with the neighbours, but I was feeling grimy, dammit.

Next I took my amazing folding board and shlepped it to the bedroom. Window closed, lights on, plan on working fast enough to not turn the place into a sweat-scented locker room.

First came the pajamas. What do I wear, what don't I wear? The least often worn on the back pile, the stuff I like on the front, bottoms on the bottom, tops on the top.

Then my trousers. It's basically jeans and sweatpants, but I don't know a less fancy term for a collection of those than trousers. I'd figured out how to fold pants with them during my last non-towel laundry load, so I folded it all, sorted it in less-worn jeans, sweatpants and worn jeans and put it all back in the wardrobe.

By now, I'd noticed that there seemed to be a lot more room in there somehow. I don't know where it came from, but my pajamas were no longer crammed in and I had double as much room to stuff socks next to my trousers as before. It's spooky is what it is. Boyfriend was also checking in on what I was doing at this time of night. He may or may not have asked if I was feeling okay. I was.

Then came the conundrum of my tops. Over half of them don't fit anymore, but my mother has managed to instill enough guilt in me that I don't throw them out. You know, in case the fat-fairy comes by and magics away twenty kilos of my body weight without removing body parts. Or if I go biking more and actually don't use that as an excuse to eat more chocolate-dipped, deep-fried yum-yums. Both scenarios are unlikely, but you never know.

First I sorted it into 'fits' and 'doesn't fit'. 'Doesn't fit' got folded first. On top of that came the ones that fit, but don't fit well. Followed by two sweaters that are better off folded than hung up, followed by cold-day wear and the category 'shouldn't wear in public but comfy'. Then I started a second pile of things I could wear, sorting them on sleeve length.

Before, there were two piles of tops, desperately crammed into the wardrobe and remembered whenever I saw something that might be both flattering and affordable in the store. Now, I think I could manage buying one or two new shirts. I'd even have room left.

The entire process took maybe forty minutes. By then my slippers were done. I shaped them into their slipper-shapes again and threw in the pot holders that had gotten into an unfortunate mix-up with the slurry of water, batter and molten butter where we'd been soaking our muffin paraphenelia. After that, I have a load of coloreds waiting to be washed, a pile of darks I could wash and by then it's probably time to walk Iggy. In the meanwhile, I'm going to empty the dishwasher, watch some series and maybe read a bit. Because, in all honesty, I'm only just now starting to get tired.

The Return

J. and W. came back today.

Boyfriend was feeling a bit meh.

I thought I'd celebrate the first and remedy the latter by baking muffins. Sadly, my feet are covered in mosquito bites that have reached full allergic potential. Putting on shoes hurts. So I sent Mr. Grumpipants on his way to buy things like flour, sugar, eggs, bananas, butter, muffin paper thingies and cocoa powder.

Because we're an international couple, there was some discussion as to what exactly was meant by 'cocoa powder'. It wasn't Nesquik, was it? Really? Then what did I mean?

Boyfriend is still amazed by my demands of cooking stuff from scratch. Mixes are so... easy! I don't see the point of paying three euros for maybe one euro's worth of flour, baking powder and sugar, mixed in a bag, even if buying the ingredients seems more expensive at the time. The fact that my man can actually cook and bake like a master once he has a recipe did not help his cause on 'but you only need to mix in oil and eggs'. We have the technology, we have the skills and buying mixes saves about five minutes off a ten to twelve minute process. No one is in that much of a rush.

If I got paid a euro and a half or more for every five minutes' work I did, I'd be making eighteen euros an hour. Times seven hours a day, times about twenty-one days a month... That's a pay of 2650 euros a month. For measuring out dry ingredients and pressing a button on a paddle mixer. Even if I subtract taxes and health insurance from that, I could be living quite comfortably off of my highly specialised abilities of pouring and reading. And knowing better than to smoke around large quantities of dry, flammable, aerosolised materials, I suppose, but I'm pretty sure such crimes against common sense and Darwinistic theory get punished by death quite quickly. For those wondering what I'm talking about, go to youtube, look up 'flour explosion'. Go on. You know you want to.

So Boyfriend set off, certain he'd get something horrendously wrong and we'd end up with baked bads rather than baked goods. I was pretty sure the only thing he might need to ask about was the cocoa powder, but once you stress that you're not making chocolate milk, most women people who work in supermarkets should know what he was on about.

Ten minutes later, my cell phone went off.

Did I mean wheat flour? Yes. This type? Any type. Germany has a very foreigner and beginner-unfriendly system of sorting flour into affordable flour, but with a cryptic, angricultural type name which states the type of grain and a number or named flour with a big hint as to what they can be used for and charging double for spelling it out for you. I'm pretty sure that anything that comes in one kilo packaging and states 'wheat' as its source can be used for baking. I could've used my dark meal that I bought to make dog biscuits with, but fibre doesn't belong together with vanilla sugar and butter in my book.

Next came the predictable, the cocoa. He'd actually found a box labeled 'cocoa powder for baking purposes', which is the German helpfulness equivalent of being spoon-fed by the staff in a restaurant. He was pretty sure it was right, but was the amount okay? Yes, the amount was fine.

He came back with everything, so we set to baking.

First came the low-fat, low-egg muffins with raspberries. I was going to throw in some vanilla sugar, but forgot. I also forgot to melt the butter. Powerful spoon action from Boyfriend - Super Cook solved the last problem and reduced the frozen berries to manageable little pieces.

We put those in the oven and tried again with high-everything chocolate muffins with banana pieces. We did try and melt the butter this time, but I forgot that butter, once overheated, explodes. Yeah, we still need to clean our microwave.

By the time we needed the oven again, the raspberry muffins were done. So we put in the chocolate ones, left the dishes in the sink 'to soak' (read: to not get put in the dishwasher due to infantile laziness) and arranged the raspberry ones on a plate with a note saying 'Welcome back from Boyfriend, Sis and Wolk'.

The chocolate ones are delicious. I know, because I checked. Four times. They're definitely delicious.

By the time J. and W. got home, there was a raspberry one missing, too. I guess someone was checking if ninjas poisoned them while we weren't looking. They hadn't: Boyfriend is fine.

The welcome back get-togeter was relatively quiet. There were awesome T-shirts, hello's and yum-tasty-muffins. A few thank yous were thrown in for taking care of the cats (Boyfriend and Sis did this).

I tried a piece of muffin, but it was definitely missing some vanilla sugar to give it a bit of oomph.

Iggy tried to liven things up. He found a dog blanket that smelled of dog, saw it wasn't his bed and decided it must therefore be his litter box. Luckily, J. could understand this. Iggy spent the rest of the time playing with Leon, who spent half of the time playing back and the other half being a massive canine pervert, trying to mount the puppy. They must have played for over half an hour. Our little ball of fur and happiness even went so far as to accept treats being given to him, because it were long treats, keeping the evil, evil human hands far away from him. Iggy's little doggy face was licked clean (making it all wet and spiky-haired) by the time J. told us we were being thrown out because she was tired after the long car ride.

 J. also had bought too much treats for her dogs, so we went home carrying an empty muffin plate and an armful of treats. Iggy went up by himself, then went up even further. I was once again the evil one who said 'No, bad dog!' to this behavior. He almost didn't do it when he noticed I was displeased, but then decided he was going to anyway. It might seem like a small thing, but I keep having this horror image of someone leaving the door open, Iggy being frightened and fleeing (he can only go up stairs, going down is a bit too much for his tiny body to manage) and then excreting his fear where our neighbours keep their shoes. I don't even know if the people upstairs like dogs.

So now we're home, washing stuff because the new shirts smell like cigarettes and I finally have enough coloreds to warrant a load. And I suppose I should go put the dishes in the dishwasher and clean the microwave before we get vermin.

The Oopsie

I pissed off Sis today.

It all started last night. Late last night, to be precise. One of Boyfriend's friends didn't have time to show up today, so he decided to show up one day earlier. I was slightly skeptical, since both Boyfriend and me had to get up at eight the next day, but usually we manage.

Not this time.

I went to bed between midnight and one. The boys were watching a very hilarious movie. With a lot of shouting. A very long movie. I was still awake at three, at which point my body demanded I feed it before I was allowed to sleep.

I had been, up til then, been very proud of my not taking a nap that day. Come morning, I was cursing my not napping. I made Boyfriend message Sis that I'd be coming a bit later, since I was too tired to coordinate any of my movements. Sis sent back a very grumpy text about me not having to come in at all then.

True, I'd overslept on Wednesday, but falling asleep on the job seemed worse than being late.

So I didn't go to the store.

Then Iggy decided to pick up where the boys had left off early in the morning. Boyfriend left and Iggy tried to howl for about twenty minutes. Then he found a squeaky toy, dragged it to the door I'd closed, and went to viciously attacking it in front of the door.

Yeah, I didn't sleep.

Around noon, Boyfriend came home. He was dead tired, too. We let Iggy out, where he did his good dog thing, and then went to bed.

I don't know why, but it seems I've evolved to not be able to sleep without Boyfriend giving his blessing to it, or being next to me in bed.

Eventually, we woke up. Then we got distracted. By the time we got out of the bedroom, we had to split responsibilities. Boyfriend was expecting friends, and we had close to no food whatsoever in the house.

I ran to the store, bought the essentials (and chips and toffifee, because I buy stupid stuff when I'm hungry) and got back. I got the wrong bread, our less-than-favorite milk and cereal and broke the health streak we're on and got some deep-frozen pizzas. Could've gotten a few onions, some meat and another tin of tomatoes and made some bolognese sauce, or gotten bacon and carrots and made mash, but I didn't.

It's now close to eight and I've done nothing really productive today. Unless giving Boyfriend's friend something for his tummy ache counts as productive. My towel project still isn't dry. My feet are covered in mosquito bites. Can't clean the oven, because we might need it later. And it'll be dark soon, so I can't reorganise the wardrobe anymore, either. If I close the window, I can put on the light, but the bedroom will get stifling hot. If I let it open and turn on the light, more mosquitos out for my blood will come and suck me dry.

Next time, I'm just getting up in the morning.

The Domesticity

So far, we've cooked a lot of meals ourselves this week. Went to the store and cooked them from scratch or defrosted something we had leftover (easier to cook for four than for two) at some point after I invested in freezer-safe containers.

Then the folding board came, and I wanted to fold stuff. So I had to do laundry. Our laundry basket was full, anyway, so I did it all. Today, the only loads big enough to warrant doing were towels and Iggy's blanket, all the rest was done or three items of the same sorting group (Our current sorting groups being darks, lights, coloreds, towels and dog). Boyfriend vacuumed today, which caused Iggy to pee on me when I picked him up to prevent him crawling God-knows-where, but that still didn't add enough laundry to the list.

Boyfriend wants soft and fluffy towels, and I sort of agree that our freshly washed towels have been a bit sandpapery as of late. The internet blamed our lack of dryer, our use of fabric softener and our spin cycle for this. I can afford a basic dryer, but not if I want to, say, have enough money left for another couple of months. We could swipe someone else's dryer, but we're lazy and it's a hassle. So I eliminated the fabric softener from the washing, added a rinse cycle to get rid of any leftover soap and fabric softener and programmed the machine to not spin.

When the machine had run its course, I realised I had just ordered the 'basically all your towels, done extra wet'. The natural consequence of this was that the towels, once hung up, gave us two options: mop or start building an ark. We put down the two oversized towels to catch the dripping while I washed Iggy's blanket (without laundry softener for his widdle nosey-wosey, but with a very thorough spin cycle, thank-you-very-much). After that, the towels were still soaked, but no longer actively wetting anything else. So I spun the oversized towels and washed them. And spun them. They're meant to stand on, not to wrap around our baby-soft bodies.

Then I realised our kitchen was a mess. And I mean a real mess. Boyfriend's gone back to buying bread of the non-sliced variety. This means, apart from that my bread consumption has plummeted because the slicing machine frightens me, that the counter and surrounding area's are covered in breadcrumbs. Oh, and we had dishes that desperately needed doing. Including a nice pile of hand-wash only dishes. And there were some groceries that had gotten forgotten behind the microwave and needed to find their place in the world kitchen. And some empty bottles that had fallen over and gotten hidden by the rest of the mess. Things pile up easily in kitchens the size of a three-dimensional postage stamp.

So I cleaned that.

We have a pile of empty plastic bottles, which need to be taken to a bottle bank in Germany (and I have no idea where one is located near us) which I feverishly wish gone.  A few minutes ago, there was also a creatively filled (read: smooshed together), big grocery bag full of old paper and recyclables, but Boyfriend was kind enough to remove those for me.

Still on my to-do list? Refolding the wardrobe, putting all the laundry we did in the wardrobe, finding stuff to cook for dinner on the days to come (though tomorrow is looking a lot like ordering-out-day), cleaning the oven and finding a non-conspicuous way to dispose of the icky old cutlery holder that is taking up space on our serving trolley. My current idea is stomping it to death while Boyfriend is out and then blaming Iggy when he gets home. He's already demonstrated his fierceness on the dust bunnies stuck in the broom and some paper towels we carelessly left in his reach. Who says he wouldn't destroy the hard plastic monstrosity when given half a chance?

The Progress

We cooked our own dinner again today. True, it was a pasta bake, but it had vegetables in it, so we gain health-points where we lose points to laziness. Peas totally are vegetables. And we took light cheese rather than full-fat. Yes, it's still pasta covered in cheese and sauce, but we're trying here!

And I finally filed down all the pre-gelled nails I'm allowed to use. It only took me half an hour or so after the first half hour of mindless filing without any real progress. Then Sis went like 'If it's really that thick, you're better off using the dremel'. I know that if it had been people's nails, I wouldn't have been allowed within ten feet of the thing, but it were plastic nails on sticks. The only one likely to get hurt was me.

Yes, there's dremel tools in nail salons. They're slightly smaller and probably slightly less likely to stab, but it's still something that works best when you crank it up to twenty thousands rotations and go ngeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew with it. The pile of dust that came off of the nails was impressive. If it were cookie crumbs, I could have made a pie base with it. But it was pink, non-edible dust that didn't even have an attractive smell. I damaged one or two of the nails, but a bit of shaping with a file or a generous dollop of building gel took care of most problems.

I used my file to get rid of any unevenness my very, very fluid building gel inevitably caused from being left to gravity. Some people can apparently do nails with the stuff. I'm putting the thick, gloopy stuff on my Christmas wish list. Hell, I want the thicker one, with a sun blocker in it. No idea what that's good for, but you can sculpt little gel castles with it and harden them if you have sufficient patience and skill. Mine just sinks to the sides and corners, causing build-up and hot spots.

And when I got home from doing groceries with Boyfriend, Iggy had peed and pooed in the house. We were only half-upset about this though. He'd namely peed in his litter box. Excitement all around! Poo is relatively easy to clean up, but pee forms irritating puddles that dogs can apparently smell until the end of time. Also, he pees more than he poos. If he makes a habit of doing it in the litter box, I'm okay with an occasional accident because my rain-shy pooch isn't sure about doing his thing during a drizzle yet.

Oh, and I used the folding board. It's still magical. Even more magical was that the laundry I folded has disappeared into the bedroom by the time I got home. Maybe if I'm not totally exhausted after going to the doctor tomorrow (God knows what he'll put me through), I'll take out the folding board on my part of the wardrobe. It's not that the stuff in there's not folded. It's just folded very clumsily. And unevenly. And it's sort of rumpled, too. Who knows, I might have more space than I thought.

In the meanwhile, there's a load of darks that are as good as dry and a pile of towels that need to be washed, too.

The Wonderfold

(I'm skipping posts? Let's compensate!)

I suck at folding laundry. Trousers and underwear and socks are easy, but as soon as it's worn on the top half and it's not a bra, I'm lost. I know the theory of it, I know several techniques for it, but in the end, picking up stuff I folded always ends with the stuff falling apart.

What I wanted, really, really wanted, was what Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory has: a folding board. Not one of these measly squares with a hook Brabantia thinks are folding boards. No, I'm talking a huge, folding, plastic monstrosity. With holes and a step program and the potential for making killer folds. Something that OCD people stock so the width of their clothing stacks is always perfectly the same

But it's big and I thought it would be expensive.

Anyway, I was bored on Sunday and looked it up on the amazons after seeing cardboard ones elsewhere. The cardboard ones didn't look very sturdy... First on the UK amazon, where it was expensive, but not as expensive as I thought. Then, there was Sheldon's model. With 'made in Germany' and the German name for it underneath. Off to the German amazon I went. Within 30 seconds, I learned that the plastic folding board, including shipping, cost 7 euros and some change. I spent about half an hour playing the should-I-shouldn't-I game before ordering it.

It wasn't stocked by amazon though, so I was pretty sure I would get it maybe on Friday. I was wrong. My shipment confirmation came yesterday morning and this afternoon, Sis came to our apartment announcing Boyfriend had a package.

Yes, I'm still using his name to order stuff. If I'm spending money on mail, I want it to arrive. The mean part of this was that Boyfriend was expecting a small package, so when a huge one (the box was a bit too big for the contents) with tape from a to him unknown company arrived, he was very confused. I was confused, too. It couldn't be mine... could it?

It was. It wasn't the blue one from the amazon picture, but it came with a manual to fold all kinds of tops, a pair of trousers and a towel. It's purple. It matches our drying rack. Complaining about it seems childish and spoiled.

We still had the drying rack out, anyway. Yes, we're slow in getting the dried stuff into the wardrobe. I tried folding a shirt according to the instructions: fold bottom of the shirt up to fit the board, flip left, flip right, flip bottom piece, done. It worked. It was easy. It didn't fall apart when I was done. Genius.

It doesn't work on jeans, but it works on everything else I've tried so far. I'm so giddy to use it again, I'm doing laundry.

The Risotto

We tried new things today.

First of all, there was the ridiculously easy mushroom risotto.

Boyfriend wasn't very excited about this one. It's a dish that has 'mushroom' in it, and mushrooms are his mortal enemies. But I know the secret to sneaking them past his defences, since he told me a while back.

We used the tupperware chopper for all the chopping necessary, which made an easy recipe even easier. First, the onions with the butter. We avoided the garlic crushing/chopping by using garlic grains, which means we didn't have to buy a whole bulb only to use two cloves of it and have the rest go mouldy. Dried thyme is hard to do cheaper, so we bought the cheapest we could find. It turns out, buying it loose in a bag rather than in a pot halves the price. We were too lazy to search for risotto rice, and amazon promised it would be costly, but we had pudding rice, which the internet said we could use and which is a lot cheaper and thus less painful when we screw up. We didn't have chicken stock cubes, so we used beef stock. We're no drinkers, so we used more stock instead of wine. We just chucked in about a litre of stock with the unboiled rice mixture and shoved it in the oven. Ikea pots are oven-friendly that way.

Next, the mushrooms to be added. No portobello mushrooms exist in the land of affordable foodstuffs which we call our local supermarket, so we went with fresh button mushrooms. There were frozen ones available, which were cheaper, but... Well... We were sort of too hungry to wait for them to defrost.We cleaned the fresh ones and then threw them in the chopper with a glug of cream, as instructed. We were meant to chop them to a paste, but Boyfriend is the resident chopper and he was gleefully turning and turning and turning and... Well, there were no chunks to speak of in the resulting sauce.

We took the baked pot from the oven, added the sauce and let the remaining heat cook the mushroom mix. Ten minutes later, we were eating. Both me and Boyfriend loved it, even though neither of us have any idea what risotto is supposed to taste like. It looked like the picture did and tasted 'mushroomy', which was the main description of the video recipe.

We paid about 15 euros for the ingredients, and it makes at least four generous servings, though the spices will take us a while further and we didn't use the full half-pound of butter. We basically have to buy more mushrooms and onions if we want more risotto. 

The Doggie Wash

I didn't post yesterday because, well, nothing much happens if you sleep the day away. So today, we have the official 100th post.

Today, we washed the dog.

I didn't get up early. We weren't very well prepared. But Iggy has been downright stinky for the past week and we wanted to take care of it.

As if the gods disagreed with this plan, our shower's half-clogged. W. and J. are on holiday, it's Sunday so all the shops are closed and the casino downstairs isn't mob-owned, so there's no drain de-clogger available to us. We did not let this stop us in our plan.

I put on a shirt J. had given me which she didn't want since it didn't fit right and is very much too big on me. No one wants it, but I needed some protection between Iggy's claws and my nipple piercings.

First, we tried getting him wet.

It took a while to get the temperature right. We didn't test that one on Iggy, but rather my wrist. Not too hot, not too cold. Then there was the problem of water pressure. Getting his back wet is easy, getting his chest or underside wet... not so much.

Iggy looks like some kind of low-level, face-eating video game monsterling when his face is wet, by the way.

Surprisingly, though, he didn't struggle much. First there was the shock of OMGWATERNOOOO, but he pretty soon figured out it was nest-temperature and, well, not doing much.We only have one setting on our showerhead where the water pressure might be classified as approaching high. We never use that one, since it comes with a pathetically small water beam. Iggy got put under the 'rain' setting, which is gentle and soft and impossible to get to a painfully high setting. There's drizzles that come down with more power than that.

Then physics turned against us. By the time we'd slow-walked Iggy into getting everything wet, ending with his face, his back had dried. I'm used to a thick-furred cocker spaniel that takes hours and hours to dry even if you towel and blow-dry for an hour. Iggy's not that kind of dog, apparently.

So we adjusted our plan. We re-wetted Iggy's back, shampooed it, and rinsed it out. Then his paws, then his butt (which was very dirty and icky), his underside (almost no hair there) and then his chest and face. Iggy did not appreciate any of this. I'm assuming it's because there's a slight scent to the soap and he can smell that it's not his smell.

Worst of all was his face. Iggy's face is this little cloud of hair, hiding its shape. So I didn't figure out he got his dad's face. A pug's face. He has no nose bridge to speak of. Any and all water that runs down his forehead ends up in his nose. At first, that was just a trickle, and he licked it away in and adorable fashion. Then I had to actually get the water on there and he sneezed. And sneezed. And sneezed. When I finally took it away, he'd had enough, as I'd been assuming he would. He tried to scramble out of the tub, despite the fact that I was keeping his forepaws off the ground and his hind paws had no purchase whatsoever on the tub.

Boyfriend held Iggy as I got a towel. He didn't mind being toweled that much, but still fled to a spot against a wall when I set him loose, where he could see the enemy coming.

I picked him up, got a chew stick and wanted to put him in his basket... Except his blanket was as dirty and stinky as he had been, and underneath, the basket was covered in sand.

Introducing Iggy to the vacuum had not been on the to-do list, but we couldn't let him sleep in there.

The blanket got thrown next to the laundry hamper, and I plugged in the vacuum cleaner. Iggy, at this point, wasn't sure what the big orange thing was, or why I was pulling a thin black tail out of it. Then I switched it on and he ran for cover.

It was only a short vacuuming session, and not a very big area to vacuum, but Iggy had hidden as far away from the orange monster as possible. When I came to pick him up and put him back, he disagreed. So far, he'd been soaked, soaped, toweled and then I'd stolen his blankie and set a monster on his safe spot. I'm very much back to being classified as 'the evil one' in the household, even if he spent a few minutes relaxing on my chest last night (after a lot of minutes of shivering and shaking). Getting a hold of him took a bit of effort.

I put a fresh blanket in his now-clean basket, put his toys back in and then plunked him down in the middle of it. He hasn't moved so far, but he still trusts his basket to keep its invisible force field up and keep him safe. Which doesn't mean he looks up suspiciously at every noise we make for now, ready to bolt if we show signs of taking him back into the bathroom.

Oh well. I'm going to take my anti-vertigo tablets and see if I can get the oven clean.