5/13/05

reading: Little Bitty Lies, by Mary Kay Andrews. Finished last night: Death of a Butterfly. Excellent book.

* * * I think my body is still trying to figure out the new menstrual (as opposed to minstrel) schedule. I’m retaining water like a champ this week, despite the fact that I just had my period two weeks ago and thus won’t have it again for another 10 weeks (thank you, Seasonale!). Also, one of those really painful zits popped up on my left cheekbone, and when that started going away, a couple popped up on my jawline. The one on my cheekbone is mostly gone, but the ones on my jawline are bright, flashing, neon red. If you’re in the same room with me, you can’t look away from them, believe you me. Oh, it’s FUN to be a girl, ain’t it? * * * Know what word I loathe? “Chuckle.” It’s such a smug, self-satisfied word. * * * I’m sitting here drinking my daily cup of tea, and it occurs to me that though I’ve informed Jane of this fact, I perhaps have not shared it with y’all. The fact about me and tea is that I don’t like the taste of tea. That is, I like the peppermint tea I drink every day, but I don’t like tea that tastes like tea. If there’s absolutely nothing else to drink, I’ll take a glass of iced tea and dump 63 packets of Splenda in it, but given a choice between tea and anything else – ANYTHING – I’ll take the other thing. Don’t tell me I just haven’t found the right tea. I’ve tried them all, and I don’t like the taste of tea. The only word I can think of to describe the taste of regular tea is “grainy”. I don’t know. Don’t give me that look. But give me a cup of peppermint tea, which tastes like peppermint (BUT NOT TEA), and I’m all set. Of course, I’d take Diet Coke over even peppermint tea any time. The daily (big-ass) cup of peppermint tea is just to shake things up. I love Diet Coke, but if I drink too much of it, I feel like my blood is getting all sluggish. No doubt it’s all in my head, but I’m sure the peppermint tea doesn’t hurt. * * * Speaking of things to drink, Fred has lately taken to drinking sugar-free cherry Kool-Aid. He makes it in big gallon-sized jugs, and no matter what he does when he opens a packet of the Kool-Aid mix, invariably the next day when I’m wiping down the counters, the powder has gotten all over the place. The dishtowels and dishcloths I was using were yellow, and when you use a yellow dishcloth to wipe up red cherry Kool-Aid mix, you get a stain that will never ever ever come out. Fucking Kool-Aid. So after some thought, I bought a set of good white dishcloths at Williams-Sonoma, and some white flour sack towels on eBay, and then I bought some dye, and I died the discloths and dishtowels a darkish blue (denim blue, I think this particular shade was called), and now when I wipe up the red Kool-Aid, you can’t see the stain on the dishcloths. And the flour sack dishtowels are awesome; they soak up water like nobody’s business, and they dry out in about ten minutes. It really takes very little to make me happy, have you noticed? * * * I have come to the conclusion that I definitely need a camera phone. It’s always my intention to carry a camera around in my purse, but I do that for a few days then take the camera out to download the pictures to my hard drive, and forget to put it back. And invariably I’m out running errands and see something that would be a cool picture… but I don’t have my camera! I don’t intend to send pictures to people; I just want to be able to take a picture when I need to. Our cell phone contract is up in December, so I think I’m going to trade my phone in for a camera phone. Maybe I will, anyway. I guess it’ll depend on whether I can convince Fred that I need one! * * * “How YOU doin’?”]]>