It's raining again... and again.

I woke up this morning and turned on the television to watch our local weather caster who had pretty much filled in the extended forecast with every variance of a rainy day description she could remember, other than torrential down pour, over the next five to seven days. This was not good news because I'm moving my mother's belongings into storage this weekend. And it must be done this weekend. Next weekend is Christmas and you know just about nothing purposeful is going to get done that weekend other than the typical holiday faire. The following weekend is New Years, but the rent is only paid up to the 31st, so, again, I'm feeling screwed and not in the good way. I can only hope that Mother Nature has some pity on me and parts the storm clouds and ceases all precipitation long enough for me to get the truck loaded up.

Any sort of yard sale/estate sale is now out of the question due to the inclement weather unless I have it inside her apartment. I'm not sure if I'm exactly comfortable with that idea.

Karma's a bitch

In life, there is always a yin and a yang, a good and a bad, a right and a wrong, a black and the white. It's all those shades of gray that are the really messy stuff.

Steve is gone. He realized that he's not ready for a relationship. #1 reason: he's still in one. His host of health  problems, I feel, are due to stress from him not wanting to deal with his problems in the first place. His arguments are mostly circular which perpetuates his issues. I can't and won't fix you. Bye bye - good luck. You'll need it.

My mother passed away suddenly. I'm sure it was another blood clot that did her in. I wasn't close to her. I barely knew her. I'm glad I'm not that way with my son.

She did a lot of crappy things to hurt my brother and me while we were growing up and to this day some of her spite-filled actions, even through they were supposed to get my father's attention, still effect us. As adults, we feel fucked over by her passing in December and me discovering she had been living off of her credit cards for awhile now. I found two that were charge off's and there is this one for $15k. How the hell am I supposed to settle that? Shit.

She purposefully isolated herself away from family. After her triple heart by-pass last April, she finally understood doing so was not the way things are supposed to be and that her decision was screwed up.

I remember her saying this so many times when she didn't like what she was hearing from whomever it was that was saying it and now reflecting on the past, it wreaks of karma... drop dead. Ah, memories.

 I'll write more later when I'm not so busy. December is kicking my ass at work and home.

Work Work Work Thanksgiving Work

2010 Thanksgiving Day Menu:

Mustard deviled eggs
Celery sticks with goat cheese and peanut butter

Stuffed turkey breast
Cranberry sauce with orange bits
Rustic red skinned mashed potatoes with pan roasted garlic
Oven roasted carrots with rosemary
White corn on the cobettes
Turkey gravy
Wheat dinner rolls

pumpkin cake with vanilla frosting

Martinelli sparkling apple cider
Kendall-Jackson Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay

Oh the weekends here... again.

After going to dinner at a Thai place, I spent the night at Steve's house in Santa Monica again. I fell alseep on the couch. Passed out. Dinner was good. Whatever he had on TV was boring, so I dozed off. He woke me up at 3AM when he was going to bed after doing whatever he does on the computer. It didn't matter to me whether I slept on the couch or the bed after being asleep for 6 hours.

I woke up and eat the rest of the thai food that was left over and updated my yelp.com page and got on the road back to home by 9am or so. I went to a baby shower on Saturday afternoon. It was a shower for the unmarried daughter of one of the ladies at work. I'm not sure if it was greed or a nicity, but I was invited.

It turned out to be one of those events that might be career suicide if you didn't attend as the boss of my department went... the gal that called me into to the job that I have now. Her and her daughter that once worked for me as well as her two grand babies were there, too. Besides me, only three other people from work showed up... there were more invited. But it will all come out in the wash, now won't it?

I'm not feeling the effects of the time change - yet. I've been waking up early for weeks now. As long as I get my 6, I'm cool.

More more more

I hate it when I'm driving to work or at work doing something and a blog topic hits me and I can't write it down immediately to put it down into words later. It's a pain. I keep a note pad in my car, but really when do you get to jot down a damn thing while driving on the freeway in the dark at 6am going 70 mph? You don't. I was thinking of getting a personal digital recorder.

Basic

I think if I had to live in a world where there there were no pot roast nor roasted chicken to eat, I would not want to live in that world.

I made pot roast for dinner. I started with a clod of frozen beef shoulder. Add 4 beef bullion cubes, chopped potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, steak seasoning and a cup of water in a roasting bag and at 300 degrees and three hours later, bingo - dinner.

Thirty minutes into dinner, with me and my son consuming the meal, it's half gone. Yum.

This is cool!

Cooking again

I cooked a classic dish called "Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic" today. I edited the recipe to allow me to make it in a crock pot with boneless skinless chicken breasts. It was quite basic and very good. The prepared garlic I picked up at my local Korean grocery store. The rest, I already had on hand. And I made some steamed new potatoes for the starch.

Drama

I'm not sure what's worse - the drama that we carry inside ourselves or the unresolved drama in life that effects those around us. Maybe it's a combination of both to some degree.

Version 1:

It's easy enough to find unhappy men. Men unhappy in their marriage, in their unfulfilled career aspirations, in themselves. I guess what's hard is to find the courage inside to move forward and not dwell for too long on the stuff that depresses you. But how long is too long? When the inevitable conclusion is staring you in the face, does delaying the issue make it any less painful?

I've come to the conclusion that the man I've been dating since 8/13 has become a curmudgeon way before his time. I recognize now that he's been on the autobahn to this attitude because he has low self-esteem and that is something I find harder to deal with than his self-absorbed, crabby, opinionated ways. Add to his cocktail a set of health problems he's waking up to and it makes him seem more like a man who's approaching retirement instead of the age of 41 years he actually is.

Rules are for games. And I felt like a looser in the game of life where he carried the rule book. I was sad for about 5 minutes. I know I was stupid to get involved with a man in who was still breaking up with his wife after almost four years of continued co-habitation.

I took the long way home in Friday night traffic from LA. I watched the harvest moon follow me home. This is the first Friday night I've been home in 7 weeks.

Version 2:

My sexual prowess in bed was compared in contrast to a fat, loud, lying cancer infected alpha female diagnosed as clinically bi-polar who took medication in amounts considered overdosing to most. It's always an ego boost when someone under psychiatric care says fucking a crazy person on a mood swing was better than fucking you. Moron.

The fan must be on. The window must be open. There must be at least two comforters or three or more pillows on the bed at all times in all seasons. The door must be closed. The lights must be on and "without candlelight, I don't feel like I can get in the mood". These are the rules I had to play by in order to deal with  an ADD/OCD/diabetic man in bed. I closed that play book. I shut the door. I walked away barely shedding a tear.

Version 3:

He eats and he eats and he eats and then he drink and he drink and he drinks. His consumption is out of control and it's due to his diabetes and not much more. He's waking up to the fact that everything he knows is wrong, everything he thought was true is now false and you cannot live life without consequences. It's not a time to start a relationship. I can't fix him nor was I out to in the first place. I only showed him that dietary dilligence allows you to feel better one meal at a time, one day at a time. And now it's time to move on.

Version 4:

When someone from a website I contribute reviews to posed the question, "Any racial preferences?" I almost wrote, "Race isn't as important as employed non-alcoholic, not married and not having to take any mood stablizing drugs in order to function in society." That would have been the cruel, honest facts I was dealing with. Shit, what a walking mess of a man. And that's not even the half of it.

My Labor Day Weekend 2010

I went to the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, CA during Labor Day weekend 2010. I was happy to see that they still had the "Stutz" exhibit up after so many years.

After, Steve and I went to lunch at the food court at Mitsuwa. It think that location is the smallest one of the chain in Southern California. I ate a cold udon soup and cod roe upon maserated raddish in a miso broth.

The next day, I took a hike in Peterson Canyon on Orange, CA. It was a 5.5 mile hike and I got a mild sunburn. But as I drove Steve back to Santa Monica, a large bank of fog rolled in over Southern California again. Summer is over. I think we had three hot days of it this year.