Fun and games at the Elfhame Wash & Dash

Laundry day! And since our washer is on the fritz again, I am off to a new-to-me local laundromat (the Elfhame Wash & Dash) to justify my epithet of  "Laundry Faerie." We'll see how it goes.

3:51 p.m.
Just chillin' and sudsin' at the laundromat. As you do.

4:18 p.m.
The handsome fae attendant has twice had to forbid a young vampire from playing in the extra-large-capacity dryers. "One more time and I uninvite you from the premises," he warns. A couple of elderly banshee customers nod and tut in agreement.

The vampire is now sulking punkishly in the darkest corner of the place. He's spotted a rolling laundry cart and it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out what he's planning to do next.

4:19 p.m.
Young punk vampire has now grabbed the cart and is merrily rolling up and down the aisles yelling "I'm Batman!" This won't end well.

4:22 p.m.
Well, Count Suckpunk just ran over several tomtar, who are now yelling at him and cursing rather violently in Swedish. The attendant, looking weary despite his immortal beauty, wades into the fray. Meanwhile I'm loading a dryer and minding my bidness.

4:25 p.m.
The attendant is making the vampire apologize to the tomtar. "I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, I was just bored," he mumbles.

The eldest tomten isn't having it. "I don't care if yer undead, yer cruisin' for a bruisin'!" he says in a carrying voice.

The attendant sighs. He seems to be rethinking his career choices.

4:29 p.m.
Oh hey, one of Santa's elves just showed up. With one of the biggest red loads I've ever seen.

4:35 p.m.
The elf was listening in on the vampire-tomtar brouhaha as he loaded an extra-high-capacity washer.

He is now making a list. And checking it twice.

4:41 p.m.
Wup, the attendant just dropped a roll of quarters. They scattered everywhere and now the young vampire is searching for and counting every single one.

The elf looks over, pulls out his list and makes a few amendments.

4:42 p.m.
"Forty! Forty quarters! Ah ah ah ah" *BOOOOOM*

5:11 p.m.
Welp, my load is dry and I think I'm going to fold this at home, just in case things get any crazier and someone calls the chupacopras. Thanks for coming with me!

Blam This Piece of Crap Day: Let's blam some Spam! (Plus bonus blamming)

Well, it's the day you've all been waiting for!

I'll admit, I didn't think up a good idea to celebrate BTPoC Day until it was upon us. But then I realized I had not one, but two different examples of BLAMming ready to go.

Let's cover the tastiest one first: Spam fried rice. This recipe was slightly modified from one made by Seonkyoung Longest and it is YUM.

Yeah, yeah, Spam is a registered trademark, yadda yadda, bite me, Hormel. Anyway, this can be made with any kind of "canned luncheon meat" you have on hand, as long as the flavor isn't too exotic. I recommend using lower-sodium generic spam if you can find it, because the sauce we're gonna make for this has a fair amount of sodium already.

I have long held a pink-meat prejudice that dates from my teenhood, when my working mom would occasionally make jazzed-up ramen for dinner. If I came in late for dinner, which I occasionally did, I'd get ramen noodles so soft they were falling apart, garnished with shriveled peas and cold chunks of spam. Bluergh. So for a long time I wouldn't eat spam. This recipe brought me around to liking it again. Maybe you'll feel the same way.

Anyhoo, get that spam out of the can and cut it into 1/4" thick slices, then into dice.

And if you have cats, better put them somewhere else. Charlie and Millie became very interested in our kitchen-related doings the minute they heard that can open. But spam of any kind has too much fat and salt and mystery amendments to be good for them. (Sorry, kittens)

Four eggs. There go our next four mortgage payments. Scramble 'em up.

A medium-sized white/yellow/brown onion, chopped or diced. This is optional, but Captain Midnight likes it.

A few cloves of garlic, finely chopped, minced or pressed. You can add as much or as little as you like, but at least three good-sized cloves, I think. 

A whole lotta rice ("6 cups," says Captain Midnight). It doesn't have to be fresh from the rice cooker, like this. In fact, fried rice benefits from using rice that's a day old and starting to dry out. (Yes, another piece of crap to BLAM!)

Also a whole lotta green onions. Use these even if you don't use the white onion; they taste different and a little bit set aside makes a very pretty garnish for the finished bowl.
 

Homemade teriyaki sauce. Refer to the Seonkyoung Longest recipe for full details because I'm lazy.

Oh, okaaaaay. Briefly: 2 parts soy sauce, 2 parts sake, 2 parts mirin, 1 part sugar. For this batch of fried rice, we did "tablespoons" for parts. You can scale it up or down depending on your tastes and how large a batch you're making.

And, of course, a wok. No, it doesn't have to be 35 years old like this one. You don't even need a wok, but you do need a pan that can handle high heat and a lot of fast sauteing, and has enough volume to hold a lot of rice.

Not shown, but used: vegetable oil, a little sesame oil, some cut-up slivers of nori if you like it, and some sesame seeds. And maybe some sriracha.

Now, what happened next went fast enough that I didn't take pictures, but:

Captain Midnight prepped all the ingredients beforehand. He got the wok screaming hot (yay gas stove!) and put in a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil. When it was hot, he threw in the egg. It immediately puffed around the edges. He tossed the egg around until it was about three-quarters cooked, then fished it all out into a bowl. Then he added a tiny bit of oil and the chunks of spam. These he cooked, gently moving them constantly, until they started to get crispy (the first rule of improving spam: improve the texture). Once they were nice and crisped up, he fished them out so he could cook the yellow onion. (If you're not using this, don't take out the spam; just move right on to the garlic.)

Onion in. He cooked it just until it softened and started to brown. Then in went the garlic, and he tossed it around just until it started to smell good. Back in with the spam; added the rice. He stirred it about until things were well incorporated, then drizzled the teriyaki sauce around the edges of the wok. That was thoroughly mixed in. As the rice absorbed the sauce and started to get dry again, he threw the egg back in and chopped it up a bit (you want fairly large chunks of egg in this -- I mean, if you're going to pay for eggs, you might as well be able to taste them!). Off the heat, he added just a touch of sesame oil for flavor, three-quarters of the green onions, some sesame seeds, gave it all a good toss and it was ready.

This was promptly plated up and sprinkled with additional green onions.

I prefer my fried rice without nori on top.

Captain Midnight prefers his with LOTS of nori on top. And some sriracha for good measure.

Remember what I said about the cats? Yup.

No, Millie, you cannot have some.

Both the cats did get some strips of nori, aka Tasty Green Fish Paper. And great was the omming and nomming thereof. So a good time was had by all.

And now for the Bonus Blam: a thrift store special!

About two weeks ago I ventured into the local Goodwill looking for sundries. What I found was a very large ball of red yarn with three sets of knitting needles shanked into the middle of it. Whoever had owned it before had started knitting a scarf with it, but had gotten bored with the project and ended up donating it to Goodwill.

Well, I ripped it back to the beginning, and after two or three tries with different patterns, I finally settled on this one.

This is variously called a basketweave or checkerboard pattern, it's fully reversible and it works up fast enough that even though I'm a slow knitter, it's nearly done. I will either give it to the Red Scarf Project or pass it on to someone else in the community who needs or wants it.

So that was our Blam This Piece of Crap Day. How was yours?

Great googly moogly!

You know what happens when Sooz a) is kinda bored and b) has craft items in her possession?

Yep. You get a random case of the googlies.

Googly Daruma!

Googly Dalahäst!

Googly washing machine!

Even googly sister collage portrait! Because that's how we roll around here.

(Great, now her googly eyes follow me everywhere. Creeeeeepy.)

Blam This Piece of Crap Day 2022: fridge velcro quiche!

So I took my own sweet time figuring out how to turn something from meh to marvelous for Blam This Piece of Crap Day this year. As a result, when the day finally arrived I had to hustle something up pronto. And the most obvious decision was to make some kind of fridge velcro.

I'm not absolutely certain about the origins of the phrase "fridge velcro" -- it might be an Alton Brown thing -- but in this household it refers to certain foods (quiche, casseroles, soup, etc.) where most of the odds and ends of things you have lurking in your fridge will "stick" to the recipe. Make something tasty and clean out a major appliance at the same time!

Considering the number of marked-down supermarket specials, various containers of leftovers, and the quantity of eggs we had in the chiller, I decided to make a fridge velcro quiche.

Now behold its slung-together glory!

Crust: leftover rice.

Filling: sautéed red onion, marked-down mushrooms, one sad Roma tomato cut to bits and sautéed with slightly wilted green onions (both came back to life in the pan), a marked-down turkey kielbasa cut into bits and sautéed until piping hot, marked-down chêvre blended with four eggs and a splash of milk, various grated ends and pieces of cheese, all slooshed together and poured into the crust. Deeeeelicious (if a little goaty, but I happen to like that quality).

I didn't set a timer and forgot about the quiche in the oven (so, ADD Brain, we meet again.), so it got a little more brown on top than is normal for a quiche, but it's still delicious. I had a test piece to make sure. And since quiche is good served either hot or cold, we'll have meals for a couple of days off this baby.

I also had a little bit of leftover Nutella, so I made some Nutella hot chocolate (heat some milk until it's hot but not boiling, add Nutella -- I'd say about a tablespoon of Nutella per cup of milk, but you do you -- and whisk until it dissolves. Add a touch of vanilla extract if you want, or just drink your deliciously rich hazelnut hot chocolate as is).

ALL HAIL BTPOC DAY! *slurp* aaaah, chocolate.

Buenas noches, señores

 Soy Doña Calavera.

Mucho gusto.

This year's Halloween costume was fairly haphazard and last-minute, but still pretty effective.

I wanted to take at least one good picture while holding Charlie, but as it turned out he was terrified of me. This was the only photo we got where he wasn't trying to squirm out of my hands and hide under the bed, poor guy.

V and a few friends had a Halloween party here, so they handled the trick-or-treaters. Which is just as well, because this year we had the most trick-or-treaters we've ever had at this house. I guess it pays to sign up for the Teal Pumpkin Project. (We got smart this time and offered not only non-food prizes, but allergy-safe treats as well.) I think we'll do it again next year!

Devil pepper!

I like making a few seasonally-appropriate dinners around Halloween. Usually it's pretty traditional fare -- Dinner in a Pumpkin or pumpkin soup served in a hollowed-out pumpkin shell or the like -- but this time I noticed a recipe for jack o' lantern stuffed peppers, presented by the inimitable Chef John himself. Everyone in our family likes stuffed peppers (yes, including Charlie, but he never gets any) and I knew orange peppers were on sale this week, so off to the store I went!

This time I pulled a mix-and-match recipe swap and filled the peppers with braaaains stuffed the peppers with another Chef John recipe (if you try it, be forewarned: this recipe creates enough stuffing to fill 8 peppers, not 4). Three of the four peppers were orange, and they made great jack o' lanterns, but I had a fourth pepper that was red.

It had to become THE DEVIL PEPPER.

Behold His Infernal Majesty!

The photo makes it kind of hard to see (yes, that's my glorious "Happy Halloween" bleach shirt in the background), but I created a couple of little devil horns from the pepper offcuts and stuck them on his head using toothpicks. They blackened up in the oven to create a nice, properly demonic effect.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Mr. Devil Pepper was doused in marinara "blood" sauce and scarfed with great glee.

So long, Devil Pepper. You were demonically delicious.

Oh yeah, and if you're stuck with more pepper filling than you need and wondering what you should do with it, may I suggest making Italian meatballs? (That's what we did. Super tasty!)

The Grammar Pedant: Nauseous vs. nauseated

Greetings, pedants! I didn't think I would do another Grammar Pedant post for a while, but I heard something today that made me twitch, so here we are.

Today we're going to talk about a useful, but widely misused word:

NAUSEOUS.

This misuse isn't limited to the Illiterati. I've heard far too many otherwise word-savvy people say things like, "I ate cold leftover pizza for breakfast and it's not sitting right; I'm super nauseous," or "I think I might be coming down with something; I've felt nauseous for the last hour." I always feel slightly embarrassed when I hear comments like this, because the primary definition for "nauseous" is "sickening, disgusting, or causing others to feel sickness." Barf on the sidewalk is nauseous. Dogs consuming their own poop are nauseous. People with furry green teeth and paint-peeling bad breath are nauseous. I sincerely hope that you are never nauseous to anyone.

So what's the word to use if you feel sick or disgusted by something? That word, my dear friends and fellow pedants, is

NAUSEATED.

The definition for this word is "feeling a sickness in the stomach associated with the urge to vomit," and it's the one you need if you are feeling ill. (Not if you're making other people retch and spew due to your funky oral hygiene and whatnot.)

So. "Nauseated" = "I feel sick." "Nauseous" = "I make other people feel sick."

One potential way to remember the difference between the two words is that "nauseated" contains the full root word "nausea" within it, while "nauseous" does not.

That's all for now, and remember -- the English language is a terrible thing to waste.

A little regifting tip

INCE it's nearing the end of June, a month where folks are traditionally more likely to get married, I thought it might be wise (and potentially entertaining) to offer a PSA about regifting.

In days of yore, when hubby and I got married, we were lavishly endowed with many gifts. (Especially from my dear departed maternal grandmother, who was so excited over the first of her grandchildren getting married that she went a little nuts sending us gifts on the order of one per week, but that's another story.)

Once we got back from our honeymoon, we started opening the wedding gifts we'd received. One of them -- and even at this remove, I won't tell what it was or who it was from -- came with a sweet little note inside.

"To [Danielle and Fred]*, congratulations and the best of luck in your new life together."

We are not named [Danielle and Fred]. The people who gave us the gift are also not named [Danielle and Fred]. Which means this particular item was regifted at least twice without anyone even bothering to open it and check out the contents.

So if you're going to regift an item, mayyybe give its contents a once-over first.

*names changed, obvi

How to blam a piece of crap

So, since February 3rd is Blam This Piece of Crap Day in our household (it can be in yours, too! Try it, it's fun!), I thought it might be worthwhile to show y'all an example of how a piece of crap can be BLAMmed up into something better.

Exhibit A: canned beef chunks in water.

I've had these canned beef chunks in our food storage for quite some time. While they are not horrible by any means, they tend to look rather off-putting when they first come out of the can, like something you might feed to a dog.

(Foties from here on out by Captain Midnight. Thanks, honey!)

Here, Fido

Appearance, however, isn't as important as taste. See, this canned beef was designed to be part of a long-term food storage solution. I want to use it up before it loses significant nutritive value. Canned meat works fine in any application that might use leftover cooked meat; it makes decent chili, for instance. But at this point in its shelf life, canned beef often tastes more like can than beef. If you make beef enchiladas out of this, you will taste the canned flavor. If you make deviled meat for sandwiches, you will taste the canned flavor.

I do not want to taste that can. I do not like it, Sam-I-Am.

So whatever I make with this will have to be flavorful enough to defeat the taste of the can.

Fortunately, I know just the thing, because I watch the Future Neighbor channel on YouTube. I'm gonna BLAM this can into a spicy red-pepper-based stew over rice!

Ingredients assemble!

For those of you who are Korean or who cook Korean on the regular, yes, this is an adaptation of gochujang-jjigae. Yes, OF COURSE it tastes better with fresh beef/pork/chicken and otherwise more authentic ingredients. But it was surprisingly delicious just using up what I had. (In fact, to complete this dish, I had to buy exactly one item from the store: a jalapeño pepper. I thought I had one, but it had been sitting in the fridge too long and had started growing its own little civilization, and eating volunteer mold is never a good idea.)

Not shown: the pepper I had to buy and some soy sauce, because, um, I forgot this recipe had soy sauce. I did add it later.

In addition to the beef chunks, there was a handful of mushrooms of questionable provenance which I wanted to use up, as well as some leftover rice and a rather sad-looking old potato.

Let's do this.

Mise-en-place

In the center: gochujang, a traditional Korean fermented red pepper paste with tons of fabulous flavor. Around it: half a white onion, the aforementioned jalapeño, mushroom soaking water, mushrooms, green onions, the peeled and thinly sliced potato, and about 2 tablespoons minced garlic. Oh yeah.

Let's drain and rinse those beef chunks. They look better already.

Time to put a wok or other large saucepan over low to medium-low heat, and add some neutral cooking oil and some sesame oil. It immediately starts to smell good.

When the oil is hot, you slide in the gochujang paste and cook until it starts bubbling and changing the color of the oil. Mmmm. Then you throw in about a tablespoon of gochugaru (red pepper flakes)...

Mmm, gochujang broth.

...and immediately follow that with a few cups of water (we added the mushroom soaking liquid to this), bringing the whole thing up to a boil.

Bubbling broth!

Here you add the potato, garlic, some soy sauce and some fish sauce. If we'd been using fresh beef, this is where we would have added that -- but since canned beef is so soft it will fall apart if you look at it too long, we decided to wait until later in the cooking process to fling it in.

This bubbles away for about 5 minutes, letting all the flavors get to know each other and giving the fish sauce some time to settle down.

Getting chunkier

At this point you add the white onion, mushrooms and jalapeño. Bring it back to a boil...

And into the drink they go!

...add the beef chunks, gently stir to break them apart, and let the stew bubble for another 7 to 10 minutes, or until the potato pieces are soft enough to eat.

Is it stew yet?

When the potatoes are soft, sprinkle over some of the green onions, turn off the heat and let the stew sit for 10 minutes to allow the flavors to relax. Check for seasoning -- if it's too salty, add a splash of water.

Done!

The stew is now complete. Heat up your rice and plate that thing up.

All ready to eat

Put rice in bowl. Put stew on rice. Put green onions on stew.
Put spoon in bowl. Put spoon in face. Repeat until gone.

Nom.

And that, my friends, is how you BLAM a piece of crap.

Dance like nobody's watching! (Freak.)

Ah, internet aphorisms. They're always fun, aren't they?

Within my lifetime, the phrase "Dance like nobody's watching" has passed into aphoristic immortality. (You can tell a particular affirmation has achieved this level of notoriety when it gets attributed to multiple wits, and this one has been pinned to both Satchel Paige and Mark Twain -- I guess it isn't quite smooth enough to be believable as an Oscar Wilde. For what it's worth, the phrase originates from the lyrics to "Come From the Heart," a country song written in the '80s by Susanna Clark and Richard Leigh.) Despite the wild popularity of this phrase, I suspect a lot of people don't understand it very well. Too many people seem to think that this phrase assumes your ability to channel your inner Michael Flatley -- that if you dance like a spaz in public, people will be impressed by your sweet moves, whoop and rise to their feet and cheer you on like that scene in Napoleon Dynamite.

Not even sorta.

Truth is, if you dance like a spaz in public, most people will raise their eyebrows but say nothing. Others, Nelson-like, will laugh and point at your mad gyrations. A few will be mean and call you a freak or worse. So why tell people to do it at all? Why encourage them to boogie down like a complete goofball and endure public humiliation for it?

Well, I'm going to make the argument that the public humiliation is not a bug, but a feature of this advice. Goofball dancing in public (or other forms of gotta-be-me silliness -- about which, see more below) isn't necessarily going to win you lots of new friends. But it does work pretty well at winnowing out the people in your life who don't "get" you, or who are too concerned about being cool to put up with your unique weirdness in public. And it helps you build up the mental toughness to handle that rejection (which is inevitably going to happen) and keep being who you're meant to be.

No, it doesn't have to be dance specifically. I don't usually dance in public or private, since dance is not my preferred form of creative expression. But if I'm in any public place and they play Billy Joel's "Tell Her About It," my life will temporarily turn into a musical as I break into song for the next 3 minutes and 52 seconds. If you have to make yourself scarce during that time, I'll try to be understanding -- but it's still gonna happen because nearly four decades on, that song (and pretty much everything else on the Innocent Man album) is still A BOP. #sorrynotsorry

The other day I picked up an oversized bubble wand for $1.10 at a craft store, because reasons. I was set to pick up a few groceries and go home, but it was a nice cool evening, I didn't need to be anywhere right away, and the bubble wand needed breaking in... so for about half an hour, people got to laugh at this crazy middle-aged lady randomly blowing bubbles in a grocery store parking lot. Some just sped past me not making eye contact, and I thought, "Welp, there lies the man with heart so dead." Some, such as the Francophone couple who didn't know or care that I could understand what they were saying, got into their car making arch comments about "the idiot blowing bubbles." A few teenagers laughed, pulled out their phones and filmed me from a safe distance. (No, I don't want to know if I ended up on social media.)

But most people got it. Their eyes lit up. They smiled. They sang "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" at me. They giggled and chased floating bubbles on the wind like sugared-up kindergartners (and not just the kids, either; a couple of big, beefy, heavily-tatted guys who looked like they could have been in a gang were grinning and popping bubbles like it was going outta style). Or they just walked by to say, "That looks like fun!" At the least, I made their Monday night grocery run a little more interesting. And how many other fun things can you do in public for just $1.10?

Yeah, I live in my own little cosmos. So do you, probably. And doing silly stuff that makes you happy, in a place where other people can see, helps you decide who you can trust inside that cosmos and who gets denied entry. That's what I think "dance like nobody's watching" really means. Because people do watch... and the ones who like you anyway, even after seeing you flail about like a dork, are the ones who deserve to get in on the fun.

What does Soozcat do all day, you ask? Here we go.

Making semi-homemade baked beans today. (This involves rough chopping a small onion and cutting up some pork product -- some days it's bacon, others it's kielbasa, depending on what needs using up -- sautéeing them in a medium-hot pan until the onions start to get soft, then opening up a couple cans of pork and beans, adding them to the pan along with a good squirt of ketchup, some spicy brown mustard, a shot or two of Worcestershire, a bit of liquid smoke and some kind of sweetener -- this time it was apricot preserves instead of brown sugar because I'm all fancy-pants like that -- putting everything into a casserole dish and cooking at 200 degrees for a couple hours, or until it's thick and bubbly and delectable. Nom.) I'll whang together a green salad later, and that'll be dinner done.

No, I didn't use these. Though they are pretty tasty.

Also running a hot bleach load fulla whites and some fabric yardage Miss V wanted preshrunk before it was sent to her. I'm hoping I cut enough of it to account for shrinkage, but we'll see. And later I need to unload the dishwasher.

Meanwhile, in errands, my Doomed Quest for Packing Peanuts continues. You'd think packing peanuts would be available for sale everywhere. Nope. I've been to four different businesses today, with no joy. The only glimmer of hope so far was at Staples, where they had a tiny bag for inflated prices. I AM DISAPPOINT, but I'm also tenacious. I'm certain U-Haul or the UPS Store will have what I need, at a price I'm willing to pay.

Also on the list today: 120 grit sandpaper, Mountain Dew, kitty litter, replacement shovel (ours did a bunk a while back when someone borrowed it for a Boy Scout Eagle project) and ice cream sandwiches. Hmm. I'm pretty sure I know who added that last entry.

I'd be off to Git Stuff Dun, only Roxy-cat jumped up onto the desk while I was typing and has settled down between my arms to take a nap. AAAAH PINIONED TO THE SPOT BY FUZZY CUTENESS. I must gnaw off a limb and flee!

The magic coffee table, or A Woman's Work Is Never Noticed

(Trying not to go full ranty-pants here, but We Gotta Talk About This, right? Right.)

Some of you may have seen this before. It's a bit by Australian comedian Troy Kinne, and it never fails to make Captain Midnight cackle.

Yes, it's silly. It's meant to be. But like most comedy, it's also truth writ large. And the truth is that, in our society, domestic maintenance -- the work traditionally done by women -- goes largely unnoticed and unappreciated.

A few months back, Robin Schaer observed one real-life version of the Magic Coffee Table on Twitter: "My friend & her husband lived in an apartment that had a soap dispenser installed on the edge of the kitchen sink. When they moved out after two years, he marveled to her: '[I]t's amazing how that dispenser never ran out of soap in all this time.' Women's work is truly invisible."

Responses to this tweet ranged from hilarious to alarming.

For my part, I shared an experience from my extended family. My maternal grandfather, who lost a leg in WWII when he was in his early twenties, always took pride in his ability to get as many things done with only one leg as other men did with two. It wasn't until my grandmother died that he discovered the full extent of the illusion under which he had lived his entire adult life. Grandma, who was a registered nurse, had done practically everything for Grandpa in a way that rarely drew his attention, so he was able to take most of the credit for being "independent." She died a mere month after being diagnosed with uterine cancer -- as quietly, tidily and efficiently as she'd done everything else in life -- and it was instructive to see how quickly Grandpa succumbed when she was no longer there to support him.

As for me, this blog is called "Confessions of a Laundry Faerie" for a reason. I hope not to be a huge martyr about it, but there are some days when people appreciate the myriad things I do to maintain a household, to run it smoothly -- and there are days when they don't. I'm not alone in this; most people who run households have had similar experiences. The continuous work of maintenance, so critical to a happy and comfortable life, usually isn't important enough to be noticed -- unless and until it stops happening.

Forgive this minor slip into misandry, but thanks to my experiences, and further because of my faith in God, I can't help but assume that the current prevailing theory about the cosmos -- that the universe and all its wonders spontaneously came into being with no need for a higher power to cause or direct it -- must have been thought up by male scientists. Specifically, male scientists who were able to focus their time and efforts on this theory and its implications, never noticing the person(s) in the background who emptied their trash cans, cleaned their coffee mugs, washed their lab coats, got their cars' oil changed and did all the other countless quotidian things that needed doing. (I'm not wrong about this. Read the names of the greater lights of M-theory, for instance, and you won't see many Sophias or Marcias or Jennifers on the list. You will, however, probably notice the name of Stephen Hawking -- a man who required near-constant physical support by a caretaker just to stay alive and thinking, and who nonetheless averred that the universe went on ticking along with no divine maintenance work whatsoever. The irony there is so thick you'd have to cut it with a blowtorch.)

About a fortnight ago, the United Nations dropped a bombshell summary of a report that, among other things, warned that up to a million species on Earth face extinction within the next five years unless human beings work together in concert to turn around the biodiversity crisis. And at the time, I couldn't help thinking (although I believe God isn't this petty, and indeed is a lot more patient and loving than most people give Him credit for) of a deity who, after having all his cosmic maintenance work ignored for millennia, finally gets fed up: "You humans don't appreciate or recognize all the things I do for you? Don't even think I exist? Fine. Have a crack at taking care of your own biosphere for a while; let's see how you do!"

So what's my point?

Domestic maintenance work is real, it's important, and unless you do this work yourself, you rely on it more than you probably think. So please, practice looking around you. See not only where you are now, but also the people who helped get you there and the work they do. Notice that work, appreciate it, and maybe, occasionally, take the initiative to do some of the heavy lifting yourself. Because you know what? I don't know how the universe works, but I can tell you EXACTLY how the laundry gets done. And I can assure you, no magic coffee tables are involved.

Going aggro

Don't chop off his head to make yourself look tall
Don't tear a strip off to make yourself feel wonderful
Who wants to compare, as if this was a competition
Leave that to teachers at school; must preserve their tradition

--Howard Jones, "Specialty"

So, I'm an ambler and always have been (Little Ms Two Speeds, remember?). Although I can hustle it up when absolutely necessary, I've found that even at my usual relaxed speed, I eventually get where I need to be. And at this point in life I see no compelling reason to become a power-walker.

Every now and then, though, I've noticed that my andante tempo provokes weirdly competitive urges in other people. This happened today at Costco. I'd finished with checkout and was walking at what I thought was a reasonable pace toward the exit, when suddenly a middle-aged woman with violently orange curls and a very full cart flew past me on the right. She was moving as close to full-out running as decorum would allow, and she had her eyes on the prize -- which in this case was the Costco employee inspecting carts as people left the premises.

I didn't think much about it in the moment; I just figured Little Orphan Annie was in a big hurry to beat rush hour traffic. Interestingly, though, as soon as her cart was inspected, she slowed to more of a cocky, victorious saunter as she headed for the parking lot. And in that moment I realized: she was going that fast only because she decided she had to beat me to the exit. I was sort of gobsmacked that I'd just lost a competition I hadn't even known I'd been part of, one she had literally made up out of thin air.

My friend at Costco is far from alone. I see this ha-ha-I-beat-you behavior all the time, everywhere from yard sales to four-way stops. And I'm still not sure why. Why do people do this? Does it really make them feel better or stronger to create a nonexistent competition against others on the fly, just so they can "win?" Does it bash at some inner demon of insecurity? Are their lives not sufficiently difficult, to the point that they need to gin up arbitrary challenges? Or is it just another case of way too much caffeine? Seriously, what is it? Because if you have insights into this mindset, I'd love to hear about them.

Nice shootin', Tex!

So a while back I went on an errand to the food playground known informally in this household as Asian Vegetable Disneyland, and found myself a great piece of ginger.

Seriously, what does this remind you of?

Well, I knew what it reminded me of.

"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good ginger at your side, kid."

Yeah! *fwoot* Let's see a Stormtrooper pull THAT off. Fellas can't hit the broad side of a barn.

What makes you giggle?

Ah, Tim-my-brother. Years ago he worked as an attendant for a local gas-and-go convenience store, and one day when business was especially slow he filled out a fake gas theft report for his own amusement.

I saved it. Because come on, I had to.

For those who can't read his handwriting:

CIRCUMSTANCES: Someone decided not to pay for gas, so I destroyed them with balefire.

CAR DESCRIPTION: Charred smoking mass

LICENSE NUMBER: I didn't get it before I reduced him to a cinder

DRIVER DESCRIPTION: Extra crispy

Every time I read this piece of paper, I laugh until my stomach hurts. Every. Time. It's helped me kick minor bouts of depression, it works so well. I can't even explain why I think it's funny, except the first time I read it the whole thing was so random and unexpected that it hit the sweet spot in my particular sense of humor, which I've observed reacts pretty positively to ideas that come seemingly out of nowhere.

What kinds of things make you laugh? Have you noticed how your particular sense of humor works? (And if someone decided not to pay for gas, would you destroy them with balefire?)

52!

In addition to being a solstice, a full moon, the first day of winter and all other sorts of fun things, today is Captain Midnight's birthday! Today he turns the big 52!

In honor of this milestone, should I make him play 52 Card Pickup?

Nah, that's just mean. Instead, in the time-honored tradition of his family, I think I will send him on a Birthday Chase! Where have I hidden his presents? NO ONE KNOWS.

Well, almost no one knows. Maybe Roxy knows.

But cats are subtle, wise and wily creatures. Also hard to catch if they happen to be Roxy.

The Grammar Pedant: unique

Greetings, pedants!

About five years ago I posted a Grammar Pedant video on YouTube, and almost immediately regretted it -- mostly because I didn't like putting my goofy mug on YouTube. And frankly, even though I'm still putting my mug on YouTube these days (warning: these videos will not be at all interesting unless you're considering duodenal switch surgery), I'm still not comfortable doing it. So, rather than shooting another Grammar Pedant video, we're just going to cover it here. Right? Right.

Today we need to talk about the flagrant abuse of a marvelous word:

UNIQUE.

The Illiterati keep slapping needless modifiers on this adjective, because they don't understand what it means. "Unique" is not, and was never meant to be, a synonym for "unusual." NO, people. Let's look at the etymology:

Unique is a French loan word, derived from the Latin word unicus, from unus or "one." Other words with roots in unicus include unicycle (one wheel), unicorn (one horn), unify (to make one), etc. Notice all those "one" words? I imagine the more perspicacious among us can see where I'm going with this.

When a person, place, thing or concept is unique, there is only one of it in the known world. It is one of a kind. Thus "unique" is a binary adjective; either something is unique, or it is not. There's no "quite unique," no "very unique," no "somewhat unique" or "rather unique" or any other qualifiers to prop up the word. "Unique" prefers to stand on its own. Use it only to describe something that has no peer.

If you're looking for an adjective to describe a rare or unusual item, try "uncommon," "unexpected," "atypical," "different," "creative" or "surprising." All these words yearn to be dusted off and used correctly. SO DO IT!

That's all for now, and remember: the English language is a terrible thing to waste.

When life hands you the spoon

This particular viral video has been making the rounds for a few months now. (Yeah, I'm not a fan of the vertical video format either, but there's nothing I can do about it, so.)

When I first watched this, I laughed and laughed -- not because I'm wantonly cruel (at least I hope not), but because I immediately recognized a kindred spirit in Gabriel the cocoa eater.

I was only a year or two older than Gabriel when I managed to get into my maternal grandmother's kitchen cupboard. Grandma was an excellent cook, and also a notorious food pusher; we used to joke that if you ever left her house hungry, it was your own fault. Her little galley kitchen was almost always busy; not only did a lot of cooking go on in the tiny space, but it was also the primary throughway to all the other public areas of the house, and whenever the family got together it was like Grand Central Station in there, with aunties and uncles and cousins and parents and siblings going to and fro. So even though there were a lot of tantalizing little bottles and jars and whatnot in Grandma's cupboard, I never really had a chance to explore in there because some adult was always around to stop me.

And then one fine summer day, when everyone was out in the back yard splashing around in my grandparents' pool, I suddenly realized I was alone in the house. Well. Obviously I made a beeline for the cupboard. There was one particular little bottle I really wanted to sample -- the sauce inside was a vivid orangey-red, almost exactly the same color as the painted wooden Dala horse next to my grandparents' fireplace, and I was sure it was the most delicious, toothsome, savory stuff ever. I figured Grandma wouldn't cook with it if it weren't wonderful.

I got the bottle. I got a tablespoon. I put the sauce in the tablespoon. I put the tablespoon in my mouth.

And.

About twenty seconds later, the entire extended clan heard my shrieks and rushed into the kitchen to see which of my limbs I'd severed. At that point I was too busy screeching and flapping to pay them much attention; I'd already tried, unsuccessfully, to down enough water from the kitchen sink to stop the hideous vinegar-laced chemical burn that seemed to be eating its way through both cheeks. In my haste I had completely abandoned the little orange-red bottle that was the source of the commotion -- the bottle labeled, in neat green and red letters, "McIlhenny Co. Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce."

There are plenty of times when life blindsides you with some misfortune you never saw coming. Sometimes someone else is responsible for that misfortune. Sometimes nobody is responsible; it's just a natural consequence of living in an imperfect world. And then there are other times when the responsibility for your current trouble lies squarely on your own head -- when, after a few attempts at dissuading you, life just hands you the spoon and says, "Have at it, big shot." And hopefully, after spewing a fine dust of cocoa powder all over the kitchen (or drinking about four glasses of milk to quell the chile burn), you learn something useful from the experience.

(And sometimes you don't, but that's another story.)

Suzanne, NOT Susan

All right, before you start in on me, I KNOW what I did today was immature and petty. I'm pushing 50; I should probably be above this sort of passive-aggressive behavior by now.

And yet.

When I read the book and watched the movie Coraline, I empathized fiercely with the protagonist. Because much like Coraline Jones, throughout my life I have had to deal with nearly everyone calling me by the wrong first name. When I was younger and even more shy of strangers, I'd furtively tell them my name -- Suzanne -- and they wouldn't hear me properly and call me "Susan" instead. This happened so often to me that I just started answering to "Susan" without bothering to correct them.

When Mom first noticed me doing this, her displeasure was obvious. "Honey, that isn't your name!" she said.

"That's what they call me."

"Well, tell them your name is Suzanne, not Susan."

"They don't listen to me," I muttered.

"It's easy. You just say, 'My name is Suzanne,' loud enough that they can hear."

At the time, asserting myself this way sounded like torture. I didn't actually start standing up for my real name until some time late in high school, when I finally got thoroughly sick of being Susaned and started saying, "It's... it's Suzanne, actually," to teachers who got it wrong.

Don't misunderstand me -- Susan's not a bad name. It's just not my name. (It is, however, the name of my dear sister-in-law, which has caused all sorts of social media problems for both of us -- but that's a whole 'nother story set.)

From high school to now, some 30 years later, I continue to be Susaned on a regular basis. Even today, when I went into a local burger shop to pick up dinner for Captain Midnight. At the end of the order: "Could I get your name, please?"

"Suzanne," I said, as clearly as I could, not too loudly but loud enough to be understood, articulating the emphasis on the second syllable. I then handed the slightly weeded-up teenager behind the counter my debit card, which has the name "Suzanne" engraved right on it.

"OK, we'll call your name when it's ready," he drawled, handing me back my card and the charge slip, which clearly had printed across the center:

Now, I've been out of sorts all day, so I guess I could blame it on an already bad mood, but for some reason when I saw The Wrong Name being used on me YET AGAIN after I'd taken the time to articulate it clearly and had given Teen Wage Slave a card with the proper spelling of the name in question, I suddenly had no crap to give any more.

I took the card and the receipt, sat down in a chair and proceeded to wait -- and to ignore the numerous calls behind the counter: "Uh, Susan?" "Cheesesteak, Susan?" "Order to go for Susan, cheesesteak and bacon cheese fries?" Sorry, Buster, not my name. Not my circus, not my monkey.

Finally the kid who had taken my order got tired of hollering to no purpose, and trotted out from behind the counter to hand me the bag. I thanked him, did not bother to explain why I hadn't retrieved the order myself, and left to bring CM his delectably greasy goodies.

I'm not sure I'm prepared to go back there soon. First, I'll need to have a T-shirt printed up that says "MY NAME IS SUZANNE, NOT SUSAN." With my track record, however, I'm not sure even this obvious lampshading will get me any leverage.

Maybe that's why I stick to Soozcat.

"I've just had an apostrophe!" "I think you mean an epiphany."

(I know I already posted this on social media, but I couldn't resist.)

So, Bill and Ted:

• show up in a time machine
• that looks like a phone booth
• and they take historical English babes
• (and others)
• on excellent adventures through time and space

I've just realized they're essentially the derpy American version of Dr. Who.