| The Incredible Shrinking Woman | |||
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Friday, April 11, 2003 ( 9:13 AM ) Melody A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood It's a gorgeous day here in Indy. We're expecting temperatures in the high 60s. The sun is shining outside my window at work right now. I'm entering a research phase at work. It will probably only last few days. I've launched several projects recently, so those are off with the authors and the project editors for a week or two until they start encountering problems and I have to step in. I'm waiting on several proposals, and I can't do a lot with preparing even the financials for those books until those materials come in. That leaves the research end of my job-- researching new topics and coming up with book ideas. It's something I sometimes dread (when I'm behind and trying to fill in holes in my pub plan because of software slippages) but mostly thoroughly enjoy. I'm one of those lucky people who actually gets to do a job she loves. If you had told me when we graduated from college that in five years I'd have what is beginning to look like a pretty successful career in computer book publishing, I probably would have run the other way. I had fully convinced myself that any job in the real world, outside of academia, would leave me bored and unfulfilled. Fate always pushes you in the right direction, though. I overshot on the schools I chose to send applications to for grad school, and I failed to get into every one of them. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. One of my professors told me that to work in publishing I'd have to leave my brain at the door, bringing me to the brink of despair. He was wrong. I'm not saying that publishing hasn't thrown me some curve balls. My first job in it was working nights in a sweatshop for former English majors, writing technical catalog copy for companies like GE and Price Phister. After five months of interviewing, I landed a job as an assistant to a Publisher who did nothing but play Duke Nukem in his office with the door shut while our imprint was falling apart. I got downsized from that job after a year. Eventually, however, I landed at a small company where anyone who was willing to work and take on extra responsibilities (for little pay) could learn every part of the business and work her way up quickly. Now I'm acquiring books for the what is probably the most recognized imprint in the world. The best part is that I get to learn something new every day, so I rarely get bored. How many people can say that? # Thursday, April 10, 2003 ( 1:38 PM ) Melody Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Bottle of Tums-- Part II Note: This post was extra long, so I had to split it in half to get it uploaded to the Web. Scroll down and read Part I first. Belinda kept wandering back to check on me, but I told her to go enjoy the fishing. After all, it's not every day you get to put a hook in some unsuspecting creature for no good reason and then throw it back. When the captain ordered everyone to pull up their lines and started the boat up again, I knew I could hold out no longer. I ran to the back of the boat and wretched. As I watched the remains of breakfast speeding away in our wake, I heard a little girl behind me ask her mother if I was sick (duh!). My own mother sprung forward to hold back my hair, but there are times when you just prefer not to be touched. When you're hacking in the sight of more than 30 people, that's one of those times. I pushed her away. I could hear Belinda begging her to leave me alone, but, of course, my mother was convinced I needed my mommy, so Belinda could never hold her back for very long. I had to keep fighting her off. I spent the next few hours sprawled across a bench trying to stay upwind of the scent of aging bait and the catch. When we made it back to the dock, I hauled myself over the side of the boat and onto the pier before we were even properly tied up, to the annoyance of the entire crew. I jogged blubbering all the way back to our hotel and locked myself in the bathroom, where I continued to wretch for a little while longer, finally stopping to lie upon the cold tiles. Then I drug myself into the shower. I was too weak to stand underneath the hot water, so I collapsed into the tub and let the water run over me. I woke there later feeling empty and beaten, as if someone had hung me in a corner, used my mid-section for a punching bag, and then unzipped me and poured out all the sand. # ( 1:24 PM ) Melody Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Bottle of Tums-- Part I Last summer Belinda and I opted to join my parents for a vacation. I know-- taking your lesbian lover on a long trip with your, until recently, pretty puritanical parents. Risky business, but they were driving and paying for the hotel suite, and we needed some time the heck out of Indy. Belinda slept 16 hours there and 16 hours back, and I got in some good bonding time with mom and dad. All in all, it went swimmingly-- except for the morning that dad suggested we take in a 4-hour charter fishing trip. It was the day after our first day at the beach, and my sunblock had given out, so I was roasted. Adding to that, it was Day 2 of my period, and I had opted for eggs at breakfast. I was already feeling woozy when I got on the boat, upon which we immediately started baiting our hooks with freshly thawed squid and mullet. After about a half an hour of pleasant motoring, we lost sight of land. The captain dropped anchor and ordered everyone to drop their lines. My stomach began doing flip-flops. Chatter around me faded into another part of my consciousness. Dad was faking his way through a conversation about the Indianapolis Colts with a vacationing football coach from a Delaware university. Mom and Belinda were happily pulling up their first catches. I excused myself and wandered to the back of the boat, where there was more shade, but when I sat, my stomach began to rock in time with the rocking of the bench underneath me. # Wednesday, April 09, 2003 ( 2:31 PM ) Melody Julia Child has nothing on me Belinda is a good sport. She stuck with me while I was learning to cook. She never failed to at least sample my little messes, and she nearly always kept them down, too. To be fair to myself, though, (I always am) she never bothered to learn to cook. I do all of the cooking in the Layne-Torres household. There was the time I tried to make meatballs and, instead of using the 1 clove the recipe called for, I mistakenly used an entire bulb of garlic. Those were some toxic meatballs. Another time, I tried to make Mom's White Trash Meatloaf. FYI: Mom was too cheap to buy ketchup in the store. She stole ketchup packets from fast food restaurants instead, so her recipe actually calls for 16 McDonald's ketchups. Even on my college student budget, I scraped together the $1.50 for a bottle of Heinz and estimated what I thought would be 16 packets worth of ketchup. Mom's recipe also called for 5 (count them) slices of torn up bread. Mom's recipe (recited to me by Mom herself over the phone) was wrong. The correct amount of bread was 1 and 1/2 slices. So that night Belinda ate meatloaf soup. I cried and vowed never to make meatloaf again, and I haven't to this day. Shortly after college graduation, I went on a health kick and decided to try spaghetti squash and homemade pesto. I tried to microwave the squash, and it came out less like spaghetti, more like fried mush. That time I pushed the plate away first and suggested grilled cheese instead. Another time, the label fell off a bottle of Caro syrup, and I mistook it for vegetable oil when I was making brownies. We never recovered the pan. Despite all of these kitchen disasters, I became a decent cook. At least, I've never killed anyone yet. Last night I broiled fish for the first time. Belinda and I got some Lemon Pepper marinated catfish on sale at Meijer and decided to give it a try. I was nervous because I know that fish can make you sick if it's not cooked enough, and if it's over-cooked it's no good either. It came out just right. I ate mine without a problem. Turns out, however, that Belinda is not a catfish lover. She ended her evening gagging over the trash can. I'm not offended, though. I remember the meatballs. # Tuesday, April 08, 2003 ( 10:28 AM ) Melody Mean Mama Nature In case anyone reading doesn't know, on Monday nights Belinda and I attend our Fat Class. We get weighed and then all the fatties hang and discuss our food issues, exercise issues, and general dislike for the PB (Perky Bitch) who heads up the program that has helped us all lose so much weight. Last night I didn't feel much like talking, though. For the first time in 14 weeks, I gained weight. Not much, I know. It was only 0.1 lbs, but it was enough to put me in a bad mood. When you're eating soy protein flour regularly and limiting yourself to between 800 and 1200 calories a day when your regular diet used to consist of probably more than 3000 calories a day, you're really not ever prepared to gain. I know it's because I'm bloated and crampy and because Mother Nature hates me and wants me to feel fat and ugly, but it doesn't change that it put me in a pissy mood and made me mildly resent all the other fatties who got less fat this week. The only one I don't resent is Belinda, who lost over 3 lbs this week. Kudos to you, honey. You deserve it. # Monday, April 07, 2003 ( 2:48 PM ) Melody Incredible Shrunken Weenis Kate and Joe's dog Charlie has the smallest penis I've ever seen on a dog. That's no exaggeration. Charlie is 50+ lb Australian Shepherd, and his little wee-wee is probably 1/3 the size of the weenis on my parents' 13-lb miniature dachsund Augie. Kate calls it a "midge." Belinda and I have always teased them about Charlie's rather small endowment and even speculated that his penis might actually be the largest clitoris we've ever seen. Well, it turns out that we might be right. Today, Kate found an article on a Web site about male dogs with frequent bladder infections. See it at http://www.vetinfo.com/dbladder.html. It turns out that some male dogs have rudimentary uteruses (or would that be uteri) that become infected and lead to recurrent urinary tract infection. They are very resistant to antibiotic therapy." Charlie might indeed be Charlene. # ( 10:11 AM ) Melody We only learn the hard way. Don't ever buy a mostly plastic sump pump from a regular hardware store. Belinda and I returned from a perfectly lovely 4-mile walk on the Monon on Thursday night to find out beloved newly refinished basement under water. Our two month old Lowe's (read CRAP!!) sump pump had pooped out. We called our handyman/electrician/plumber/part-time husband (in all ways save one) and rushed to Lowe's just in time to buy a replacement. Ed installed the replacement. It sucked up water for approximately 10 minutes and promptly died. At that point, no hardware store was open, so we had to call an emergency plumber who might have one on hand. We finally found one and had a brand-new cast iron sump pump installed at about 2 AM Friday morning, and it has been happily slurping water away from our house ever since. Net cost for the evening: a little over $600. Net cost of damages: still TBD. Belinda finally had to go to bed because she is in her first 90 days at Wiley and isn't allowed to take any time off until that period is over, but I stayed up pretty much all night squeegeeing water off of our beautiful composite tile floor and hanging rugs, couch cushions, and hand-crotcheted blankets over our lawn chairs to dry outside. We called State Farm, who, at first, claimed we did not have coverage for this type of damage and then later retracted, and reported a claim, but I had a water extraction guy come out on Friday, and he said that it would cost less than our deductible of $1000 to clean it up and that we were already doing everything that he would do. It's going to be OK, but it's just a home owner's worst nightmare. The new sump pump is really loud, but I think Belinda and I both sleep better with it. At least we know it's working. # |
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