In Which Dirtbunny's Principles Turn Out to Be Fairly Bendy

Originally posted on December 15, 2012

1.  It's no secret:  I have diabetes and I am on insulin.  I have some that I carry back and forth to work, but I keep it in a mini-fridge under my desk and sometimes I forget to bring it home.  Like yesterday.
2.  Missing a shot or two is not always a big deal, but sometimes it can make me feel really sick.
3.  When I realized I had forgotten to bring it home last night at about 8pm, Mr. D offered to drive me into the city to retrieve it.  I wanted desperately to go to sleep, so I took a pass and decided to wait it out.
4.  At midnight, I woke up burning up, agitated, twitchy, trembly, and freaked out by nightmares.  I have miscalculated.  The missed injections have made me sick.  I have to go in to retrieve the insulin.  No problem.  I'll just do it.
5.  Problem.  Mr. D is still up and he offers to drive me in.  I should turn him down, but I don't.  He drives me in.  He tells me gently that he's irked that we didn't take care of this 4 hours earlier when he offered before.  He's right, of course.
6.  The whole transaction takes about 45 minutes and all is well.
7.  This morning, I'm feeling appreciative, so I offer to make Mr. D whatever he wants for dinner.
8.  I should have seen this coming.  He wants meatballs and rigatoni, his absolute favorite.
9.  I've been experimenting with veganism this fall.  I haven't cooked meat in months (except to make Kirby dinner, but that's another drama.)  After beating myself up for a while, I decided to give up on being a vegan until after the holidays.  I'm a pretty serious cook.  I can adapt to no eggs and no meat, but dairy butter plays a big part in baking.  Especially holiday baking, in which I might go through 7-8 pounds of butter making breads and sweets.  I did not adjust to non-dairy butter in time to forgo dairy butter, but I can try again later when traditional butter/sugar bombs are less of an obsession.
10.  Despite the vegan thing, and lately, the vegetarian thing, I turn out to have no misgivings at all about making meatballs.  Ground mix with beef, pork, and veal?  No problem.
11.  However, while at the market, I read all the labels on the granola, and I buy the one that's vegan.  The only thing that keeps granola from being vegan is honey and I'm not convinced so far that exploiting honeybees is the moral equivalent of exploiting cows.
12.  I come home with about 4 pounds of fresh ricotta, because they haven't had any for a while and now I can make a cheesecake, lots of parmesan, butter, eggs, cream, Ghirardelli products that contain milk solids, gelatin (which I haven't bought in years because the thought of where it comes from disgusts me so much), a pound and a half of mascarpone, a mini-ham, ice cream, and a bunch of different holiday candy things that contain God-knows-what.  And other stuff too.  But, and this is important, I bought vegan granola.

Veal? Yes.  Gelatin?  Absolutely.  Something like 8 pounds of cheese?  You better believe it.

But vegan granola.

A Day of Dirtbunny

Originally posted on January 10, 2012



5:45 am:  Alarm goes off.  Hit snooze.
5:52 am:  Alarm goes off.  Hit snooze
5:59 am:  Alarm goes off.  OK, OK, I'm up.  Go get Mac to see if anyone commented on yesterday's post.   No.  Look for transfer news, read a little real world news, decide Newt Gingrich is still a dick.  Mr. D comes in with my coffee, then he gets in bed and starts snoring.  Drink coffee.  Play one sudoku.  Decide not to play another because I'm about five minutes behind and I don't want to aggravate the beast within Mr. D.

Get in shower.  Contemplate speeding things up by not conditioning hair, but opt in favor of conditioner.  This turns out to be a wise decision.

Brush teeth.  Examine eyebrow.  Where is are my tweezers?  Mr. D has borrowed it to remove glass shards from the washing machine (don't ask) because he forgets we have needle-nose pliers for that.  Summing up:  he borrows it/them for an illicit purpose and then he doesn't return it/them.  Wash it/them carefully with alcohol and tend to eyebrow.

Start getting dressed.  What am I going to wear?  Put yesterday's dirty stuff in hamper.  What am I going to wear?  Can't put on pants until I've put lotion on my legs, and shouldn't really do that without doing my feet as well, and if I'm going to do my feet, which I really must, I'll want to put socks on immediately, so need to choose some socks before I can start any of this.  Before I can choose socks, I need to know what else I am going to wear so I can, you know, match, sort of.

Wretched

Summer continues to trudge along Chez Nous.  The farm box comes every Wednesday and the dogs beg for whatever might be in there, which lately has included a lot of kale.  You want kale?  OK, here you go:

They greedily grab it, chew it a few times, spit it out ("yuck") and then beg for more:

No Big Deal

It's 6:30 pm on Friday night.  You're hungry.  You're tired.  Tomorrow is Saturday.  On Saturday, at 10:00 am, you are expected at Mel's for craft club.  You have promised to bring food--specifically, madeleines.  You made this promise willingly and enthusiastically.  Somehow, however, you have arrived at 6:30 the night before and you have not started the madeleines.  What do you do?  WHAT DO YOU DO???

Aftermath

It's the fourth day of Christmas.  There are fresh English football matches to watch and frigid windy weather to keep us inside and stale Christmas cookies to throw away and I'm starting to dream about my job again and to make lists of things I gotta do again and new books to read and old knitting to finish and I'm only sleeping twelve hours a day now instead of sixteen.  Time marches on, but before I start on the final 2010 clean-up and embark on 2011, let's review Christmas 2010.

It snowed:

Just barely, but there were five minutes of "Ooh!  Pretty!" to go along with the cocoa and kringle.  Note to self:  write thank-you note to MIL.

Thoughts on the Lady Baltimore Cake

When I was an infant, the cookbook most frequently consulted in our house was an old edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. It was full of exotic delights. For example, the recipe for Spanish Rice was accompanied by a stylized drawing of a senorita in a mantilla. One of the recipes that caught my imagination was the Lady Baltimore Cake. I can't remember why I was so captivated. Was there a photo? Was there a blurb that made it sound especially enticing? Was it because it was a *gasp* three layer cake? That would have rocked my eight-year-old world because all the cakes I knew only had two layers. (Little did I know at the time that the rest of America had already moved on to cake mixes. Frosting came in mixes too back then, but shortly evolved into tubs of ready-made frosting when the concept of adding your own water became too much for the American cook of the 1970s).

BBP: 2007 is done

When we last examined the Bunny Baking Project, she had two last recipes to try.  The first was a Lemon Tart.  I've made a bunch of lemon tarts.  This one was delish, but did not stand out from the others and in fact, the crust was unnecessarily fussy when an ordinary pate brisee would do.  I give it two stars:  a do-over, but not a stand-out.

And that brings me to the Mother of All 2007 recipes:  The Black Forest Cake.  And here is what I learned:  If you cannot find really really good tart cherries, then don't bother.  I was only able to find mediocre cherries.  They would have been fine in a pie doctored up with sugar and cornstarch, but not so much when they stand alone (aside from a soak in kirsch).

Old Lady Post: A Point! Woohoo!

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 13, 2010



Everyone says that was a rip-roarin', hootin'-tootin' fabulously excitin' match for the ages.  Perhaps it was.  All I know is this:  I was watching the match with Mr. D and our good friend Jose Cuervo and I was feeling pretty good about things and then I looked up to see how much time was left and saw we were only at minute 59.

And a great shadow of "Oh, shit" fell across the Dirtbunny household.



Pros:

• Zebra goal drought is over
• No one sustained a major injury
• Pepe showed that he is not completely useless, not all the time.
   

Cons:

• There are problems in the fullback area that go beyond Marcolino keeping his arms covered. 
• It is a good idea to have a center striker even if you have awesome second strikers
• So far, Albertino is still Albertino 

Shall we, then?

Dogs Hate Daylight Savings Time

Their tummies say, "It's suppertime."  Their eyes say, "It's getting dark.  It's suppertime."  Their humans say, "It's only 5 o'clock.  It's not suppertime."  Their tiny little brains reply, "Then why are you in the kitchen messing with stuff that smells like food?"  Their Bunny says, "I'm always in the kitchen messing with food, at least when I'm not taking a nap."  They say "Gimme some.  NOW."  Bunny's feet say "Scoot."  And no supper is forthcoming.  And you can't reason with them that it's only once a year because they don't remember for one and for two they find no comfort in that.  

I woke up at 7:00 today, only it was really 6:00, and I celebrated being up by watching football.  Viola--Donkeys were live online at 6:30 a.m., so I had coffee and sleepy beagles and yarn and I watched football in bed.  The league decided to have some 6:30 12:30 matches on Sundays, probably for television purposes, but some Italians are predictably decrying the intrusion of crass popular culture into the sacrosanct rituals of mass and Sunday dinner with the family.  This is a little hard for me to understand as a secular American, because everyone knows that it's church and family that encroaches on television, not the other way around.  Anyhoo, you can't expect the die-hard fans ("ultras") to skip the match because of church and family, so they go, but they don't like it.  A few weeks ago, I can't remember which match, but the ultras went to the game, but protested:  By bringing sandwiches to the match.  And eating them.  

Stuffed-up November Blahs

We have a cold.  Both Mr. D. and I are afflicted and we have both missed some work. The fact that it happened to be a Champions League/Europa League week had nothing to do with it.  We're mostly better now, at least I am.  Tragically, we do not feel well enough for yard work, but that's fine, because I'm not obsessing nearly enough about the bulbs I haven't planted, the woodpile I haven't dealt with, the fencing I haven't finished, or the compost heap I haven't moved.  Unless I work myself into a full-blown anxiety attack, I probably won't get around to it until next week, and when I do it, I'll be out there red-faced and weeping about how much it sucks to do yard work.

Flotsam. Also: Introducing the Bunny Baking Project

So I got up for work one day this month and saw this by the front door.  Can anyone explain this?

Um, yes, those are pants.  Yes, Mr. D's pants.  Why are Mr. D's pants draped over the back of the sofa next to the front door?  Maybe he didn't want to waste any time when the dial-a-whore arrived.

Why is Dirtbunny so tired today?

WARNING: THIS POST IS RATED "P" FOR POOP!

I think Kirby is in love with his vet, Dr. Ginger. She's shaped kind of like me, and has hair kind of like mine, but she's younger, her boobs are bigger, and she's got a nose stud. I'm a little jealous. It hs been about three weeks since we last took him to the vet, and I suppose he's a little lonely for her, so he's decided to have ... oh hell I'm just going to say it .... diarrhea. He's happy and goofy and in a wonderful mood, but he has to go. A lot.

Last night, he went five times. The first three, Mr. D took care of, which is not to say that I didn't get to hear all about it. Mr. D does not like being woken up in the middle of the night for dog crises. I'm hearing impaired, so I can often sleep through dog drama, but he can't, and he resents it.  So after the third time, he announced that he was done and he stormed off to the other room and closed the door behind him and left me alone in the room with a sleepy and confused Tiki, an illin' Kirby, and a very expensive persian rug that I like very very much. Naturally, because I was so addled with sleep, I promptly went back to the land of nod.


Two hours later, Kirby woke me up. I don't know how, because he never barks and he won't try to nudge me awake or anything, but there he was, pacing the floor, looking up at me, and panting like crazy.


I have a theory that most people are either asleep or awake. Not me. Under the best of circumstances, I have a long period of about 20 minutes to an hour, depending, of semi-conscious where-the-hell-am-I and I have a very hard time forcing myself awake. I was able to register, barely, that Kirby needed to go out. A little while later, I realized I was going to have to take him out. Then I decided I needed shoes and pants and glasses, and I managed to drag myself up and stagger (literally. I was stumbling and weaving.) around to get shoes, and on the way, I stepped in.... umm...... something squishy on my expensive rug that I like very very much, and so then I ended up wiping my feet on the bathroom rug before I could put my shoes on, only my feet were still a little......ummm......smeared and Kirby was dancing around saying HURRY UP I GOTTA GO!!!!! and so I staggered out to the kitchen with my smeary feet. And then I remembered that Kirby likes to wander outside at night, so I needed to leash him, and that meant I had to find his bling and that took a while and Kirby is about to explode but we finally make it outside, me staggering and weaving the whole time. Poor guy. We spent about ten minutes out there in an lightning storm while he took care of business and tried to feel better and I managed not to lose my balance or fall down.


Next, we went in. I took off my shoes and wiped the smear off my foot. Then I wiped his poor little doggy butt before he wiped it himself on my furniture and then I got to clean the.....ummmm.......stuff off my expensive rug that I like very very much. There was a moment there when I thought I was going to vomit on top of the, um, stuff, but I managed to keep it down and then I finished and took the cleaning stuff out to the deck to put in the poop can just as the skies opened up on me and got me good and drenched. By now, because of the storm, Tiki was all upset and anxious, so the three of us got in bed, they put me in a rather constricting sandwich nd we finally, blessedly, fell asleep, and stayed that way until my alarm went off at 5:45 am. At which point I hit the snooze for half an hour, and then I sat up and groggily stared at my cup of coffee for about fifteen minutes, and then I started to drink my coffee and I slowly woke up.



Four things:



1. That coffee didn't just come down from the sky. Mr. D brought it to me and set it down by my bedside for when I was ready for it. He makes awesome coffee.


2. These are the shoes I wore outside last night:

They don't match. I suppose it's a big accomplishment that I got Kirby outside safely at all. They still have, um, stuff in them that I have to clean up at some point.

3. We are going to the vet today. hurrah

4. I did a really good job on the stuff that was on the rug, which is rather remarkable in light of the problem with the shoes.

Can you smell that?

If you ask Mr. D, he will almost invariably say "no."  His official position is that he can't smell anything.  So when you overhear him muttering this to the Yarn Bandit:

I can't stay mad at you, even though you reduce our environmental conditions to that of a hellhole.

...then you know you have a serious problem.  It's not like we don't clean up after the devilish urinator--we do--but he can be really sneaky, and it's hard to get it completely out.  Over time, and especially when it gets hot and humid, an above-and-beyond-the-call cleansing of the Hellhole is unavoidable.  And so, this morning, we rolled up the rugs, salvaged the salvageable rug pad and tossed the others, and took the rugs out to be professionally cleaned.  We will be back to the bare wood floors for three or four weeks.

WC2010: Day Four

1. I lost my effing chapstick, but then I found it again.

2. I think I'm actually going to finish the laundry in one day, for once.

3. It's amazing how much work you can get done when you force yourself to avoid the toob and the interwebs.

4. If Mr. D really loved me, he would not be in the office today, and I would not have to wait until he got home to see what the Azzurri have done. Instead, he goes off to do his VERY IMPORTANT UNCLE SAM STUFF *blows raspberry* and leaves me here alone with my unchanneled energy.

More from Day 3

Item One: Tiki spent the day doing like he do.....

......forsaking the comforts that cost me real, actual money (dog beds, air conditioning), to find whatever bits of sun there are so he can bake himself.

WC2010: Day Three

1.   Dirtbunny is all wound up today. It's HHH outside (already), I'm tired and cranky, and Mr. D is making no move to get to the vet for Kirby's refills before they close. He's got about 75 minutes to make a move, or else I'm going to have to go myself. If I have to go myself, that means I have to get dressed, and I was planning on wearing pajama pants all day.

2.   Some critters are eating my 1.8 billion dollar landscaping, which I can't enjoy anyway because it is too hot and too buggy.

3.   God bless Martin Tyler. Of all the ESPN World Cup commenters, he is the only one who refuses to repeat the "one game changes everything" slogan forty times per broadcast, because he knows it makes him look like a tool and it annoys the viewers and because he's about the football, dammit.

4.   John Harkes, who apparently believes that Algeria is playing a mythical nation named "Slovania," makes me ashamed to be a Wahoo. He is a creep and an idiot for many reasons, but anyone with the education he has should be aware enough to learn the names of the non-United States nations playing in the world cup, especially if he is calling their game.

Birthday wrap-up, plus Dirtbunny Rags on the Bianconeri

Mr. D's birthday





Honestly? I was going to finish my four-part series but now it's been so long ago I've forgotten what happened. I know there was rigatoni and meatballs, I remember a birthday cake, there are still some blueberry pancakes leftover, he got his present geez three weeks ago now, and oh yeah, I made some god-awful pina coladas with leftover coconut cream from the coconut birthday cake. And he got to do what he loves more than anything in the world: sit on his ass and do nothing.



The Zebras: They suck


The Bianconeri put a bullet through the head of the 2009-2010 season and put us all out of our misery. They finished seventh, managing to squeak into a Europa League qualifier spot through the operation of some obscure rule I don't understand. It was apparently the worst season ever, depending on how you analyze the statistics. Let's see. The evil suits sacked Ciro (sob) and his replacement was a bona fide idiot who did no better, and who had so little authority that he allowed his captain (you know who that is) to have a big public righteous temper tantrum about a moronic substitution right there on the pitch, which means it was on international TV for everyone to see. Replacement Coach has only two things going for him: (1) ADP was right, and coach changed his mind about the substitution just before Claudio was stretchered off, meaning that Juve actually got to finish the match with 11 men players instead of the ten there would have been if the sub had gone through; and (2) he's gone now. Juve has a new coach now. Also: new suits. Now if only they had better players.....

The Man's Spectacular Birthday Weekend, Chapter Two: "The Aged"

To some people, being The Man's age seems impossibly old.  "43, 93, what's the difference?" said The Man.  In addition to The Man, some very cool (or at least famous) people were also born in 1967.  It can be very cool to be The Man's age.  I remember what it was like to be his age when it happened to me a long time ago.  So here's a non-exclusive list of other 67 babies:

The Man's Spectacular Birthday Weekend, Chapter One: "Saturday"

Dirtbunny does a lot of things very well, but most of her skills are unappreciated and/or obscure.  In particular, I've learned that if someone gets used to being fed very very well, they will at some point start to have expectations or even make demands.  I almost always make The Man a birthday cake, for example.  In past years, I've asked him what type he wants and he either pretends he hasn't heard me or shrugs and says Idunno.  One year he requested a lemon cake that he grew up with so I did that.  The ingredients featured two boxes of lemon yellow Jello and a box of cake mix and I'm pretty sure the recipe I obtained was, umm, inexact, because baking it in a springform cake pan led to a woefully undercooked and runny center.  I'm almost certain this thing was supposed to be baked in a Bundt pan. Anyway, it turned out pretty gross and he has lost his enthusiasm for cakes whose major ingredients come prefab from a box.

Oops, I did it again

Behold:  "Lunch."

Yeah, yeah.  Five bags and a long-eared grocery inspector.  Every single thing was an absolute necessity, I swear!

1. Sandwiches and potatoes (deep-fried for him, mayonnaise-coated for me):  Lunch.
2. Diet tonic water:  For G&T on the 1.8 billion dollar deck since it's going to be one of the ten weekends a year when the weather will be optimal. 
3. Farfalle and parm:  Carbonara for dinner, since I already got the pancetta at The Italian Store yesterday when I bought the linguine fini and the cheap Barbera.
4. English cucumbers:  Because explaining to The Man what English cucumbers are is too much trouble so I might as well get them myself.
5. Mascarpone and whipping cream:  For the tiramisu so I can economically use the last of the Christmas pannetone that's in the freezer.
6. Nuts and seeds: Snack.  I need the extra zinc, OK?  And if I eat almonds when I get peckish, I'm less likely to buy Pop-tarts from the vending machine.
7. Apples, cereal, bananas, and milk:  We're almost out.
8. Chocolate:  Brownies.  I put brownies on the to-do list a few weeks ago and I won't be able to rest until there are brownies.  This is an urgent matter of mental health.
9. Pellegrino:  Because the Glutton Place doesn't carry our kind of seltzer.  It's not like I had a choice.
10. Strawberries:  Organic strawberries at two pounds for five dollars?  Around here?  It would be a crime to pass them by.
11. May 2010 La Cucina Italiana:  Sometimes they sell out and I want to be sure to get one.  How else will I know the lastest spring-time recipes for meat and obscure regional Italian ingredients?  Plus it has an ad in the back with the address for that shop in Vienna (no, not the Austrian Vienna) near the yarn store that I've been meaning to visit.
12. Fontina D'Aosta, gorgonzola dolce, walnuts, mozzarella, and frozen pizza dough:  For two kinds of pizza, because I can't decide which one I'd rather have this weekend, and I can't very well make pizza dough with a broken Mr. Kitchen Aid mixer, can I?
13. Red snapper:  Umm....  Dinnner!    Yeah, that's it!  Dinner some time in the next few days when I don't have an arbitrary aversion to fish.  (I almost went for the whole trout with heads on, but I lost my nerve).
14. Four pints of ice cream/gelato:  But I haven't had any since last weekend!  Come ON!

Supervisory long-eared grocery inspector: Let's see.  Cheese......  fish....... strawberries......cheese.....ice cream.......cheese......  Yup.  It's all there.  Good work young grasshopper.  Soon you will be qualified to inspect groceries without a backup.