Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

Breaking news!  I ate a vegetable for dinner! 

I quit smoking two months ago (go me!), started running, and now, now I’m eating veggies?  What’s next, a cure for cancer?  Don’t roll your eyes, I’m sure whatever is growing in the Petri dish that is my bathtub has medicinal properties.  Mr. Dingo and I are trying to adopt healthier eating habits and so far, of all the changes in my life, this one that has been the toughest.  I mean, I was raised in a family where “fried” is the fifth food group.  If the food wasn’t fried it had best be smothered in gravy.  My culinary role models were not Julia Child or the Cajun Chef and his “un-yones.” I was more cosmopolitan in my tastes, preferring the exoticism of Outback Steakhouse and the intercontinental flair of The International House of Pancakes. 

Obviously, I am not a foodie.  Which, by the way is a pretentious label.  Do people actually go around calling themselves “foodies?” Wait a minute, let me ask my friend Google.  Oh my God, Google says, “Yes!” What does one wear to such an “intimate” event that the information on location will only be given to those who RSVP to the tasting?  Would my Red Lobster bib be completely out of place?  When should one use the finger bowl and when should one just lick one’s fingers and why does one always use the pronoun “one” when trying to sound high-falutin?  I would go to an event like this if just to report back to you but $85 is a lot of money to shell out just to make fun of people when I can get that sort of amusement for free just by walking down the street.  Or teaching my class. 

Speaking of class, yesterday — only two class meetings away from the end of the semester — I was informed that I have to give a final exam in the class.  As part of some new (“new” as in only TWO class meetings from the end of the semester!!) assessment program, all freshman literature classes must have a final exam.  My class took it rather well.  I softened the blow by telling them that I would only use the highest test grade, whether that was their mid-term or their final, when calculating final grades.  I was immediately hailed a hero.  I basked in the praise — “You are soo cool!” and “You rock!” — while secretly patting myself on the back for figuring out a way to avoid creating a new grading rubric.  Oh, and the students that the assessment team chose from my class to assess?  You guessed it, the plagiarist.  Also included in my assessment:  a student who hasn’t turned in a paper the entire semester and someone who has been featured quite regularly in my rants here.  They couldn’t pick my rock stars?  They couldn’t pick the students who amaze me daily with their insights and ability to discuss issues and the complexities of literature and life?  No, they pick the two students who I can’t tell whether they are vegetable or mineral. 

It’s enough to make me want to drink except that, after reading that foodienyc.com web site, I’m beginning to doubt my ability to taste and assess food and wine.  Maybe I should put together an assessment team for food and wine.  We could all meet at my apartment and eat fried food and drink my favorite wine.  I would even spring for one can for each of us.  Of course, since it would be such an intimate setting, I won’t be able to tell you the location until you RSVP.  And please, bring your own Red Lobster bibs.  My set is currently in the laundry hamper until the maid gets around to cleaning them.

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Furry Frenzy

I had planned to write a witty post this morning about how I quit my job and the how trying to find someone to replace me has my former coworkers in a frenzy.  I was going to gloat about how Mrs. Garrett runs late to meetings and curses the day I walked out the door.  I was going to write about all of that this morning.  Instead, I chased Not a Dingo around the apartment with a pair of scissors. 

Not a Dingo had a massive dingleberry hanging from her butt and I had to remove it.  It was gross.  Really gross.  I first noticed it this morning when I smelled a rotten stench on the bed.  At the time I blamed it on Mr. Dingo and the delicious burritos we consumed last night.  “Very funny, Sweetie,” I said, before making a quick escape to the living room.  Well, it wasn’t exactly a quick escape.  Not a Dingo sleeps on my pillow and Dingo Girl sleeps across my legs, but I extracted myself as quickly as possible without inflicting bodily injury and hightailed it outta there.  The girls were close behind.  I did not believe Mr. Dingo’s drowsy denials and was a little miffed that I was driven from bed and robbed of thirty additional minutes of sleep — robbed, I tell you! — by his malodorous wake-up call. 

About 20-minutes later, Not a Dingo joined me at my desk.  She often takes up residence in my outbox while I am working.  When she’s not in my outbox, she’s sitting on my keyboard, trying to sit on my keyboard, or sitting in front of my keyboard with her furry face five inches from mine trying to hypnotize me with those big eyes of hers to get up and get her a treat.  So, when my feline inhabited outbox produced the odor of a fully inhabited catbox this morning, I knew that I had unjustly maligned Mr. Dingo — but I didn’t apologize.  If he didn’t deserve my censure this morning, he certainly has on other occasions.  He had it coming.

Lifting Not a Dingo from her perch I was immediately disgusted and repelled at the nastiness appended to her.  And now, you are disgusted and repelled as well.  That’s what blogs are for, no?  But you didn’t have to wrestle with a pissed-off cat this morning.  And neither did Mr. Dingo.  Two seconds after I told him of our dilemma, he suddenly had to be at work early for a conference call or some such sorry-I-just-checked-my-calendar-and-noticed-it-have-to-run-don’t-want-to-be-late-very-important-bye thing, and out the door he went.  Oh Mr. Dingo, you will get yours....

So, this morning was spent running with scissors.  Not a Dingo was far from cooperative.  Without getting into the gritty details of this morning’s bout of Twister with my normally docile kitty (because I expended all the grittiness describing Not a Dingo’s poor hygiene), let’s just say that I’m reconsidering our decision not to declaw her and have notified the CDC that my local hospital will need antibiotics to counteract the effects of cat scratch fever. 

This was definitely a two-person job.  I could not hold a wiggling Not a Dingo and use a pair of scissors to clip a foul-smelling golf ball size mutant appendage while trying to calm Dingo Girl.  Yes, Dingo Girl had to get in on the act.  Any sign of distress from Not a Dingo caused Dingo Girl to whine, bark, and nudge my elbow with her nose.  Between the mewling, gyrating, barking, nudging, stinking, tears and tears, I was truly in awe of people who work from home and manage to be productive. 

When I quit my job a little over two weeks ago, I had blissful but seemingly realistic visions of morning workouts in Central Park followed by several hours of writing, preparing for my English subject-matter test, a break for some play time and a walk with Dingo Girl, working on my thesis, and then studies before running off to teach and returning home to a warm, hot, nutritious meal and glass of wine on the beach, the sunset glittering off my diamonds and too-white teeth.  But it was not to be.  There are not enough hours in the day when my days are filled with things like dingleberry distractions and extractions that prevent me from sitting at my desk and working.  I need to come up with a system that makes me just as efficient and as organized at home as I was at work.  Any suggestions that do not involve violence?

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Welcome!

I know I am several years behind the blogging bandwagon but I have a good excuse.  My apartment is a mess.  So, in honor of President’s Day and the presidents who took pride in organizing our great nation, I decided this President’s Day to organize my apartment.  I now join the ranks of bloggers everywhere.  I think another national holiday is in order. 

I can sense some of you nodding your heads in empathy.  You know what it’s like to try to get any work done when the cat’s snoozing on your chair and your desk holds your laptop, laundry, and more books than the New York Public Library.  For those of you who don’t understand what a messy apartment has to do with not being able to write, blog, pay the cable bill, let me ‘splain.  I’m one of those writers who must have a clean and organized space in order to truly get down to business.  Something out of place will just distract me to no end until I get up and put the offending object where it’s supposed to be.  Simple enough if it’s just folding the blanket on the couch or cleaning out my “to be filed” bin but if I do a mad sweep through the living room and take an empty cup or plate into the kitchen my world collapses.  Granted, I can’t see the kitchen from my desk.  We have a nice curtain from Home Depot that blocks the kitchen chaos from my view.  But the problem is that once I take the offending plate or bowl into the kitchen I KNOW it and its culinary brethren piled up in the sink or stacked precariously on the counter are just sitting there mutely but accusingly until I can find the time and energy to tend to them.  And knowing they are there…just, just…well, I just can’t concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing – and that’s usually my writing!  Mr. Dingo claims that it’s just procrastination on my part that compels me to tackle the great wall of dishes when I’m two days away from a paper deadline and I haven’t even started the paper because I’m still doing research because I just haven’t found the perfect awe-inspiring topic yet.  Nope, that’s not it at all.  I just need order in order to order my thoughts.

I am typically of the “how great for you!” mindset when I hear of someone else’s good fortune but when I read author interviews I am jealous.  Not of their success mind you, but because the pictures that accompany the interviews are stunning.  Well organized bookshelves, beautiful art, not a speck of dust in sight.  No wonder they are on the New York Times bestseller list, I think, look at the beautiful space in which they work!  If I had to define my apartment style, Art Deco, Shabby Chic, or Urban Contemporary aren’t the words that come to mind.  It’s more like 21st Century Ransacked. 

But I must admit that my lack of domestic ability only weighs on me when I am facing a deadline.  Mr. Dingo’s view is we’re busy people --we work, we go to school, we have a life.  We’ll get to it when we get to it.  In fact, on those rare but cherished nothing to do days, dishes and dust be damned.  Mr. Dingo and I would rather take advantage of rare downtime by walking in Central Park with our dog, Dingo Girl, catching up on some reading, or hanging out together rather than making our home ready for some white-glove test. 

But it really would be nice if after one of our afternoons in the park, we came home to find that our friends and the folks from While You Were Out had paid a visit.  Either them or Merry Maids.  I was forced to take matters into my own hands this weekend, however, as it appears that the folks from While You Were Out and Merry Maids had better things to do.  Now that order has descended upon the chaos I have no excuse for not writing my blog, my thesis, or the next Great American Novel.  Finding that cable bill is another matter entirely.

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