7/24/07

America is full of people who love to pretend to be offended. And from O Magazine: “Resentment,” says the writer Malachy McCourt, “is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Just thought I’d share.

* * * Also, I jotted this down when Fred and I went to the movies a few weeks ago, because it cracked me up: As a child, Jim Carrey would wear his tap shoes to bed in case his parents needed cheering up in the middle of the night. I think that is my favorite factoid, ever. * * * So yes, I read about 40 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows before bed Saturday night, and then spent all day laying in bed reading, with the occasional breaks for food or trips to the bathroom. I finished sometime after 6:00 Sunday evening. I should point out that I didn’t read the entire book in one day because I’m a huge Harry Potter fan (though I do like the books); I read it because I just knew that if I didn’t read it immediately, I’d stumble across a spoiler, and I hate that shit. POSSIBLE SPOILERS BEGIN I think it was a good book. I liked that the epilogue picked up 19 years later, I like that they were all seeing their kids off to Hogwarts, though I think the epilogue was a little too cutesy and I was more interested in what Harry et al were up to as adults rather than the super-obvious names they gave their kids. I like that Neville seemed to really come into their own, and to be honest, I’d have liked more details of what Dumbledore’s Army got up to while Harry and Hermione were off trying to figure out what the hell they were doing. Hedwig’s death didn’t affect me, but Dobby’s – the funeral – had me crying like a baby. In all, a good book. If I hadn’t been afraid of running across spoilers, I might have waited a few weeks or months to read it, though. I think J K Rowling set it up nicely so that if she really wanted to, she could start up a new series about the Potter and Weasley kids, but I don’t feel like that was necessarily her intention. POSSIBLE SPOILERS END So yeah, I was really surprised to find that Harry and Voldemort became lifelong luvahs at the end of the book, living happily on the ocean with their 63 dragons. Who saw THAT coming? (Yeah, yeah, har. I am HILARIOUS.) * * * Knowing that I wanted to spend all day Sunday doing nothing but reading, I busted my ass on Saturday to get stuff done so that I could take Sunday off. I canned four pints of salsa for Fred, which took longer than I’d expected, what with the blanching and peeling of tomatoes, chopping the tomatoes, chopping jalapenos and green peppers and onions and cilantro, then boiling it for a few minutes before canning it. (Fred’s going to give the canned salsa a test run this week to see how it turned out; if he likes it, I’ll make another batch to can, so he’ll be set for the winter.) Then I snapped, cut, and canned green beans, which took forfuckingever (but was okay, because I spent the snapping and cutting portion of that activity in the living room watching TV and got caught up on Army Wives), and then I had to cut up the two watermelons Fred had picked – he yanked up the watermelon patch because the watermelons were overtaken by weeds, which was stunting their growth, but he brought two small watermelon in for me, because he found a watermelon preserve recipe he wanted me to make. He helped me cut up the watermelon rind, which took a long motherfucking time, but once it was cut up, all I had to do was put some sugar on it, and put it in the fridge to sit overnight (two overnights, really, since I didn’t finish up the preserves and can them ’til yesterday). But it was worth it, ’cause I didn’t have to do a damn thing on Sunday. I took a shower, then put my nightgown back on, and stayed in it. Very freeing it was, to walk around in a nightgown all day. Maybe I should take EVERY Sunday off! (Or not) * * * We got our first batch of black-eyed peas on Saturday. Fred shelled them and put them in the pressure cooker with an onion and some water, and they came out really well. I think we’d better get used to the taste of black-eyed peas, because it appears that we’re going to have 63 million pounds of them. Fred picked another pound and a half yesterday, which I blanched and froze. We also got our first batch of cucumbers yesterday. I decided to cut one up to have with dinner (and use the rest for pickling) and cut one open to find that it’d been the victim of a goddamn vine borer bug. I went out to look at the cucumbers, and the plants are covered with those little stinkbug-looking fuckers. There was a robber fly sitting there, and I kept saying to it, “Jesus christ, you fucker! Do your job! There are a thousand vine borers sitting right there! Grab one and suck the life out of it!” The robber fly just looked bored. Either he was full, or uninterested in vine borers. I pickled the other cucumbers with a dill recipe I found online; it didn’t require cooking the cucumbers first (or putting them in salty water for 8 hours), so we’ll see how they come out. If we get another batch of cucumbers before the borers get to them, I want to make some of Amanda’s Freezer Pickles, and I have a couple of other recipes I want to try. Fred’s talking about planting another row of cucumbers (and treating them to prevent vine borers), and I’m kind of waffling on it. On the one hand, I do like me a good pickle. On the other, I really don’t eat them all that often, and pickling is about all you can do with cucumbers. Hmm. I do need to try my hand at sweet pickle relish, though. You can’t have deviled eggs without sweet pickle relish, and (hopefully) we’ll start getting eggs from the girls soon. * * * The kittens are doing well. Spanky’s really started to let me pet him a lot more than he was, and in fact he’s become a lot less skittish about being petted than Gilligan is. I’ve let the shelter manager know that they’re both ready to go when there’s room at the pet store, but with the glut of kittens right now, I’m not sure when that’ll be. Maryanne refuses to let me do more than occasionally brush her as she’s going by, but she’s definitely warmed up to Fred. I’ll be interested to see how she is once her brothers are gone and she has only us to play with – will she loosen up, or be the same standoffish little brat? When you’ve got kittens who love to play with the camera strap, you end up with a lot of closeup pictures. Mister Suspicious. Gilligan takes a page from his suspicious brother’s book. * * * Basket full o’ hate. * * * Previously 2006: No entry. 2005: No entry. 2004: No entry. 2003: No entry. 2002: “You mean Todd Beamer wasn’t the only one on that flight?” 2001: That’s it, that’s all the Miz Poo stories I have at the moment. I hope that’ll hold you. 2000: At the end, after having achieved a size 8, Jemima porked ALL the way back up to a 10, the cow. ]]>