Get Back to Work, Slacker

Muscato asks us, in the comments of our Work, What a Dreadful Idea whinging post, “So how was it?” Oh, the insouciance. It was, in alphabetical order, disgusting, exhausting, filthy, hateful, innervating, loathsome, menial, petty, twisted, uninviting, and yucky. The usual.

Digging my way out from under a medium sized mountain of email, I ran across a convoluted exchange between the members of a committee I am held prisoner by. The series held a growing note of crisis, deepening into hysteria and then just disappeared. I wrote the one member I like and asked what happened. Her reply? “…we finished it. You want to have lunch Friday?”

Yes, bitches, yes. I am back. Don’t call me Friday, I got plans for lunch. Afterwards I plan to speak firmly to Angelus Garibaldi about his underpants.

Work. What a Dreadful Idea

Last Thursday I went back into work for the first time in a couple of weeks and didn’t last long. I had planned to stay for half a day, but after one measly hour, I realized that plan was not going to fly. I may have mentioned I was lying on the floor trying not to faint when I came to this conclusion. That kind of insight is just something I’m noted for.

Before I fled, I had noticed the hundreds of emails that had piled up while I was out, many, many of which include astonishingly generous offers of people I have never met, but who want to share a big chunk of their enormous inheritance with me. Usually they are from some African country which, oddly, I have never heard of. Scattered in amongst them were also plenty of messages about my job. Since staying in a locked and upright position was the most I could focus on right then, I decided I would deal with all that when I felt better. Today, as it turned out.

Do you have a job where you suspect your boss does not actually know just what it is you do? Do you work in an office with several dozen other people who have no apparent function and yet, should you be out sick for a couple of weeks with, oh, say, bronchitis, cannot figure out how to deal with the crises they carefully forward to you? I do.

I love my job. I really do. It’s interesting, the work is gratifying and at times like this, I get the very false impression I am irreplaceable. I know, of course, that’s not true. If I were to accept those kind offers that flood my email to share in the wealth of the Republic of the Ivory Coast and I never came back to my desk, eventually someone would have to figure out how to do what I do. Since I’m only sick, they know they can ignore the problems, place them tidily on my chair (office protocol: the more desperate the situation, the more important it is to leave it in a really neat stack) and go out for more coffee.

Tomorrow mrpeenee will be back in the office, will remove his pathetic voicemail message claiming he is out sick and has no idea when he will return and which 21 people so far have ignored in order to leave increasingly testy voicemails, will respond to a few dozen emails, and will triumph. He will not lie down on the floor. That’s what he gets paid for.

Boys Gone By

It is tragically, tragically true that as a very young gay boy, I had the hots for Jethro Bodine, aka Max Baer. Fortunately, the infatuation passed.
I also was drawn to Ricky Nelson, a phenotype (pretty, luscious lips, thick hair) I NEVER outgrew.He's mine.

The Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen In Love

Eat that, skinny, young whippersnappers.

Quiet, please.

I must be getting better because a) I appear to not be dead yet and b) I'm tired of lying around, but not yet well enough to try anything else. I went out to dinner last night and Friday with our guests and while it was most amusing, it also wore me out. I'm just so darn fragile. Everyone's going out to brunch at Zuni Cafe this afternoon, but I'm staying home like a sensible Miss.

Saki has taken to demonstrating cat yoga for me in hopes that I will take it up, but I refuse.

Not Dead Yet

So I'm going to pretend all the snarky potshots taken in the comments section of my last post were simply playful attempts at humor, expressions of loving concern in disguise. The latest mrpreenee sickroom news: I'm still sick. Being the overachiever I am, I shot through the flu and wound up in bronchitis, from which I write, wheezing and hacking. And just how very not well are we? I am too sick to watch porn, that's how sick. Just kill me now.

We finished re-doing the guest room in the middle of my puniness and just in time for our friends Ehsan and Dennis to arrive. They were very flattering about the room, and have been most solicitous. I sent them off touring around with R Man this morning and we'll be going out for Thai food at the charming Grand Poo Bah shortly. Imagine, actually leaving the house. Except for a brief, ill advised attempt to return to work yesterday, where I wound up lying on the floor of my cubicle thinking maybe this wasn't such a great idea, I haven't been outside for more than a week. Still. I've started a round of very expensive antibiotics, so I expect to better pronto.

Maybe the Thai food will help. If not, I'm sure houseboy Aloysius Tregiautomy will.

In the Grip of the Grippe

Maybe you’ve noticed every other blog includes pathetic whimpering posts about the cold or flu the writer is overwhelmed by. In my ceaseless effort to stay au courant, to remain ahead of the curve, to leave the Joneses in the dirt, I am now sick myself. Snotty and achy with a dry hacking cough that sounds like a student production where they decided to create a mashup of Camille and La Boheme. I am staying home from work today and, oh boy, this is also the day the new carpet is being installed. I’m sure it’s not really any louder than a small war being fought in our guest room and I’m dealing with all the dust stirred up by inhaling it so it doesn’t mess up the house. That’s just how I am, giving, giving, always giving. Do you think it’s possible to drown in your own snot?

I wish I had a houseboy who was talented in nursing, but when you pick them based on their pole dancing ability, like Wolfgang Cupertino here, I guess you can't have everything.

Get Out of Mouse Trap Free

I bow down before juliannk who was actually more help in a goddam blog comment section about my mouse problems than the highly paid computer guys physically located in the same office as me. Sheesh.

Houseboy Gunter Garmandus has nothing to to with this topic, but do you really care?

Mouse Trapped

My stupid mouse on my stupid computer at my stupid work has decided it no longer wishes to function as a mere device and has declared its independence. It's possible it is even now considering a future in interpretive danse. Sometimes when I click, it performs whatever pointing thingy I want it to, often it just ignores me. Pull down menus vanish like a mirage when I try to select something on them and often a link under the menu will wind up the lucky winner. That's how I landed on the Chronicle's sports page three times in a row. Attempting to highlight a section is an exercise in futility: I might as well be working with an Etch-a-Sketch.

My plan is to wait until everyone else goes home and then sneak over to the desk of someone I don't like and switch out mouses with them. The only difficulty will be selecting a victim from the many, many deserving goons here. If you had ever experienced our tech "support" you would know it's the only way.

Art off the Block

Urban Street Pirate and I headed off to an auction today at the local art academy.  R Man's parting words to the Pirate were "Don't let him buy anything."  Thus when I spied a big ass black and white print I realized I could buy it and it would be the Pirate's fault.  What could be more ideal?

Artsy B&W mounted print: $300

Pinning the blame on your friend: priceless.

It looks rather smashing in our living room, R Man seems to like it, and the Pirate went out for drinks with his friends, so now we're all happy.

Saki Invictus

Our cat Saki is back from his surgery to remove the little plastic nub he had idiotically swallowed.  Idiot.  He seems to be doing fine, a little dazed, but not messing with his scar or having any troubles.  Part of the substantial bill included morphine; unfortunately, it was for him and not R Man and me, although considering how much we paid, it seems like we could have gotten at least a small bump.

He has a tiny, little purple scar on his belly.  If you've never seen a partially shaved cat, you'll have to take my word for it that they are both pathetic and pretty funny looking.  R Man and I try to pretend we're some Barbara Stanwyckian broads and talk tough about what a pain Saki is, but having him spend the night in the vet hospital revealed our true doting old aunties' nature.  How embarrassing. 

Hair Don'ts

Whenever I feel all Boohoo about my rapidly receding hairline, I try to remind myself that as a young nancy-boy-in-training, I desperately wanted Farrah Fawcett hair.
Instead, I rather looked like I was wearing Marcia Wallace's wig. Backwards.
So maybe it's no great loss.

The Decorating Project That Would Not Die

The stupid Good Taste fabric in our guest room simply did not work, so I ripped it down and now Urban Street Pirate (goddess love him) is painting it a rather fabulous dark olive green. Should you be in the market for a drag name, let me recommend the one attached to this particular shade: Jade Romanesque. You know there was lotsa laffs over drinks at lunch the day the Benjamin Moore marketing geniuses came up with that one.
R Man (and goddess love him too) has jumped enthusiastically onto the redecorating bandwagon. Honest to Lady Jezzus, my original idea was just to change the color of the walls in there, but R Man recognized this as a prime chance to rid ourselves of the last vestige of the carpet that came with the house when we bought it. Ice blue, low pile shag, it was originally in almost every room and now only remains in the guest room and the upstairs hall. It’s long since turned into ice blue dirt and I’m plenty glad to see the last of it by replacing it with a lovely caramel and brown low weave, almost industrial carpet, but I hadn’t actually planned on dropping that particular wad of cash right now.

The beds in there were two extra long twins that had at one time made up the king bed in R Man’s room. Visitors occasionally described the sleeping accommodations as “spending the night in Lucy and Ricky’s bedroom.” Bitches. So ok, we’re replacing them with a queen bed with a very plain headboard.

I salvaged several big panels of the Good Taste fabric and our seamstress lady, Mrs. Draper (not making it up, I don’t have to) is running up a pair of curtains from them.

And a new dresser cause there isn’t one now. And a new chair since the old one Just Will Not Do. It’s like a goddam Visa ad, except without the “priceless” punchline.

In the middle of all the ka-ching racket of a steadily mounting budget, we noticed Saki, the adorable and evil cat, has resumed puking. A quick visit to the vet this morning, including a $200 x-ray, reveals the little idiot has swallowed something slightly bigger than a pencil eraser (do people even use pencils any more?) Big enough not pass through kitty innards and so (ka-ching) we have an appointment scheduled for Thursday morning with the cat surgeon to open him up and remove it, whatever it is.

Just doing my part to get the economy moving.

In Every Home, a Heartache

photo swiped courtesy of Palnetfabulon.

What are these people thinking? Don’t they realize early exposure to pink kitchen appliances causes homosexuality in children? Just look at that little fruit, there’s obviously no hope for him. Dad at least seems to have caught on to the tragic implications of the family’s misdirected decorating choices and has retired to the patio with a two gallon jug of martinis to brood about the future, a future marked by junior making increasingly sardonic bon mots Dad just doesn’t get. Mom, of course, is oblivious, but that’s mostly due to her intake of Prozac, Paxil, Seroxat, Lexapro, Celexa, Valium and Zoloft. And gin.

In Which Mrpeenee Reveals the Depths of His Martha Stewart Fascination

I make my own vegetable stock. There. I’ve admitted it. I am not ashamed, I do not need an intervention, I make my own stock. As someone who cooks a lot, I generate a lot of kitchen scraps, flotsam like onion skins and carrot peels, the occasional exotica of sweet potato skins, all that. For years, I dumped them in a corner of the yard, just like my granny did, and built up compost. Incidentally, there’s a jasmine and a rose growing out of that patch which have responded to the mulch so enthusiastically that they are now collapsing the trellis they’re on. It’s always something.

But the stock, queen, what about the stock? Oh, yeah. For my birthday last year, R Man gave me a pressure cooker. I was thrilled, which in itself says something pretty Martheusian about me, doesn’t it? One of our friends mentioned how excellent the cookers were for making stock and I was off like a shot. Now, instead of composting, I keep the scraps in gallon baggies in the freezer and when they’ve accumulated to a volume that makes getting to the ice cubes challenging, I know it’s time for a new batch of Mother Peenee’s Homemade Vegetable Stock. Trademark.

I pulverize everything in the Cuisineart (whee! Extra appliances!) until it’s the texture of baby poo, shovel it in the pressure cooker, seal the lid and let the magic happen. Twenty minutes later I have delicious, delicious stock to make beans or lentils or rice or, because I’m a wild man, curry.

Of course, part of it is the thrill of using a pressure cooker. I’m sure all of us raised in the 60’s remember the rep these miscreants had as Killers of the Kitchen. Headlines like “Housewife scalded by exploding mashed potatoes” play out in my mind every time I use mine, but if Martha can live dangerously, so can I.

Next up: Starching your linens using the by-products of your yeast infection. Stay tuned.