Right Before the Murderer Gets Caught

It’s so cold my laptop is freezing my fingers off, and what I really feel like doing is making a potato salad. I’m the only one at home and potato salad is an iffy dinner choice for small lad, even if paired with sausages. And sauce. And dinner is eight hours away. Harumph.

I’m a hospital scientist, and this is my day off.

I’m annoyed by everything at the moment, but mostly because I didn’t sleep enough on my day of sleep in between, went to work Tuesday and didn’t do my best. I spent yesterday evening second-guessing what I’d done the morning before and please, brain, just lay off. I didn’t fuck up, I was just slow.

Other than poo-pooing myself, this kind of annoyance has no particular focus, I can pick up anywhere and start ranting. For hours. I don’t want to inflict that on anyone or deal with the consequences of shouting at random people, so I shut up. Which also annoys me, and gee I love this spiralling gyre leading inevitably down to mind-numbing, eye-squinting, teeth-clenching rage if I don’t get out of my own head. Soon everything will be in caps.

Cooking would make me feel better, but small lad and I have entered some kind of power struggle over food…and it stinks. I know better, and it hasn’t been an issue (much) before - a dietician friend had clued me in before small lad came along about how to feed a littl’un. We’ve always been fairly relaxed about food, and careful about what’s on offer. Some junk, of course, but beyond the Coco Pops and occasional crap (fast food, in other words), it’s meat and three veg or variations thereupon (by which I probably mean fruit, but don’t take my word for anything today).

But small lad’s tastes are changing and I’m struggling to keep up. Dammit. Some of it, too, is my fault. He has a habit of asking what he can have to eat in the afternoons after school, and I tried out letting him decide what to eat - with the proviso that he’d have to eat dinner. It didn’t work, and dinner time started being a struggle. Gah.

Today I have half-arsed plans about something that isn’t sitting around (boom-boom) “resting” where I usually fall asleep right before the murderer gets caught, but I’ve only gotten as far as what I don’t want to do. This two-on-two-off bit of my roster is the pits. I should probably start drinking coffee again.

My laptop has warmed up and my fingers are no longer freezing, so that’s something, and when I’m finished here I’m going to make a cup of tea. Mmmmmm, tea.

Mmmmm. I need that tea. Take care, and laters.

Felis Maniaca

Our cat has gone officially insane. Let's be kind, we said to ourselves and each other. The weather is cold and the cat will not sleep in any warm bed we make for her. Let's have her inside and she can climb up onto our bed, wrap herself around husbandly's legs and purr herself into oblivion.

That was then. This is now.

Meowing pitifully when she came in, because inside is evil, she settled herself in to the bedroom after some obligatory hiding out under the bed. This morning she disappeared entirely, probably back under the bed. Determined to put her back outside again, because certain businesses belong outside, I settle in to wait while I re-read Neuromancer. I hear some tacka-tacka-tack as she swans around the bedroom, then settles herself by the door. I got up to pat her and back under the bed she went. We did this twice. When I got up to pat her again and (gently) pick her up, she exploded into a whirlwind of claws and rather loud caterwauling.

She managed to get both of my wrists, three toes and scare the crap out of me. Silly cow.

I don't know if it was a combination of being hungry and small lad being at home (she has issues - he is as gentle as all get out) or she was just having a moment.

Now I'm walking wounded and she isn't talking to me again. Sigh.

Reruns of Reruns

Bewitched? Not really. I saw this episode yesterday.

Small lad excelled himself in the Mother's Day stakes this morning. He made cards, both of them utterly gorgeous (particularly the emoticons in silver pen), and handed over an oil burner - something I've needed for a while.

"Needed" being a relative term: the fates of our lives do not depend on the presence of an oil burner.

The day went sort of downhill from there. I had half-planned a trip to the Powerhouse Museum, but before I said anything about it we had an invitation to a family do. So tough luck on that. It's frustrating that there is never room for compromise with these things. And no is not taken well with this particular bunch. All of that grousing aside, "my" herb bread went over a treat.

So much so I looked it up on the iPad; cue watching youtube videos and getting embarrassed about looking up my stats for this blog. (I opened Safari, okay? Blogger was one of my open pages, okay?) Some people read this page. Good Lord. Drivel ready? Drivel launched.

This is the most stop-start entry ever. I have A Few Good Men playing in the background - late-eighties/early nineties musical grace notes to denote action, ick - and keep getting sidetracked. They're all so young! Jack Nicholson is so crazy! Guantanemo Bay - that embarrassment - before anyone had an idea what it was!

As much as this is compelling, I find myself out of love with easeful deat- Sorry, wrong opinion piece. Ahem, I find myself out of love with American courtroom drama. The constant harping on judicial process and the majesty of the legal system is starting to sound like a denial argument - methinks they doth protest too much. Extrajudicial process? Sure. Go overseas. Disregard any judicial process in the host country; it's probably inferior.

Okay, that's it for my incendiary remarks for today. Good timing. Jessup (Nicholson) has just entered the courtroom. Got to love the logic of the righteous - how utterly insane in the brain, murrain. Well, not really a murrain, unless I wanted to start a whimsy on the death of empathy; the death of understanding and the deeper ramifications. Nah. Take too long, and I'd contradict myself at least four hundred times.

Still worth a thought.

I have mixed feelings about the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. There's no Will Turner or Elizabeth. Not that the only reason I was watching was Orlando Bloom...not at all preciousss.

Hairy Bikers are now cooking, and I have an urge to barbecue a pineapple on a spit, basting it with sugar and cinnamon as I go. Not what the Hairy Bikers are doing, they have some sesame seed thing (gak! blech! I hate sesame!). I had my pineapple thing at the Braza in Leichardt and think about it every now and then as the perfect dessert. Except for the heartburn from the pineapple, but you pay for what you get in life, right?

It is late and I am tired so it is time for me to read a book until my eyes slam shut and I leave the light on all night.