Public Drunkenness

The power went off in my office yesterday, so after 45 minutes of assing around, computerless, my coworkers and I wended our ways home. It was already like, 4 p.m. when the transformer blew (or whatever the hell happened; the whole block save the two unaffected businesses, which are clearly in league with Satan, were dim), so it was a little mini-go-home-early card.

Here's where it gets surreal: as I'm walking up the hill that leads to my neighborhood, I see a prone figure lying half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter. [I'm kicking myself for not having taken a photo with my phone.] The way this guy was situated, he was alongside a parked van, on the passenger side. It was entirely conceivable that the driver could've gotten in and driven over this guy's head.

As I passed, a few people started to gather, and I stopped. "He's breathin'," one woman said. One of the guy's sneakers was about 10 feet away on the sidewalk, and his fly was down. Piss drunk and passed out was my immediate thought. Then I felt bad - just because this area has a string of crappy bars that seem neverendingly populated by inebriated contractors didn't mean this guy wasn't actually hurt. The store owner whose sidewalk he was on said he would call 911 (though I eventually called when it seemed like it was taking a while, and the dispatcher confirmed my assumption that I was the first caller).

In the meantime, one of the onlookers came up with a pitcher of cold water, poured it on the guy's face, and he miraculously revived. O Lazarus! Have a brewski! The man was so hammered he was nearly unintelligible, but that didn't stop him from staggering up the street. At this point, I was irritated that I had wasted a 911 call on this dipso asshole, but shortly thereafter the cop arrived (5'10", 275 lbs. of pure donut), and drove the short distance that Drunkie had managed to cover in several minutes of laborious ascent up the paved hill. Last I saw, he was being escorted to the station house, which is about 100 yards over and across the street. Ah, sweet justice! It was a weird day.

Hello, My Name is Mrs. Harridan, and I'm a Food Nerd

I have to admit to a certain level of food nerd-dom, although it's lessened over the past few years. When I was in my twenties, it was not altogether uncommon for me to spend a Saturday night clipping coupons and reading cookbooks*, looking for the best way to maximize my teensy income.

As a result, I have a collection of cookbooks that instruct how to make one's own groceries, use the cheapest foods as the bases of decent meals, and how to make mixes similar to those available pre-packaged in the supermarket.

This last one, Make-a-Mix Cookery, is the best; when I was super-poor I learned the value of the library, and I got this title from inter-library loan (best. Library. Service. Ever.), then photocopied the recipes I wanted. I still have those photocopied recipes in my recipe binder. Sadly, some of them didn't make it to the revised edition of the book, so I'm glad I did. Nyaah, nyaah, permissions -- I'd do it again!

Tonight I dragged one of the books out (I now inexplicably own 2 copies, and I blame Ebay for this problem) and made granola. I halved the recipe and still made about 5-6 cups of granola. It seems pretty healthful** (sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, oats, honey, brown sugar, etc.), and it was remarkably easy. Let's hope that it actually tastes good - Chris and I will give it a trial run tomorrow, when we would normally eat store bought granola bars (I have yet to understand why the variety pack includes "s'mores" flavor. Why would you want a s'mores flavored granola bar?). If nothing else, they will give us our annual allotment of wheat germ, which I haven't knowingly ingested since childhood, when a jar of Kretschmer's sat on the fridge door for years after some health craze/diet of my mother's during the wacky seventies. Says there it contains plenty of folic acid. If that's anything like what was in the prenatal vitamins I've taken in the past, I will be daydreaming of colonics in the very near future.

* Much to my mother's dismay. She wanted me to be drunk as a lord all weekend, every weekend, and securing a fun-loving but dependable husband in the process. She failed to realize that Dirty Frank's, my fave hangout at the time, was hardly conducive to finding a man who had all his teeth, let alone a job or a middling-high sperm count.

** My husband is insistent that I use the word healthy rather than healthful. But then, he is basically Mr. Malaprop, so I dismiss him with an imperious wave of my hand. Which of us is right? Do tell, proofreaders of the Interwebs.

Positive Eggly Thoughts

OK, after that last post I learned how to do links (after moaning to Chris that I wanted to be able to just push a button - Lo! There was a button! I clicked, and it was magical. Ahem). So now, I will share with you what I found when I googled "eggwhite+ cervical": Mama Kath.

I'm sure she means well, and maybe her info is good. Carrot juice = cervical mucus? OK, I'll bite. But isn't evening primrose oil something people took in the Dark Ages (i.e. pre-Roe v. Wade) to induce miscarriage?

What I find most disturbing is the photo at the bottom of the page. Lest we worry that Mama Kath is Unwed Mama Kath (oh, the scandal! Avert your eyes), here she is in all her bridal glory. And I thought my dress looked like a giant meringue. Well, maybe it just felt like one - it was about 90 degrees on our wedding day. Luckily I'm of the "Some people sweat; I perspire" crowd. My husband is not so lucky (witness the sweating, stage right).

Acting Like Grown-ups

So, this past weekend my new husband and I had my friends over for dinner. I won't bore you with the story of how his method of 'cleaning' the living room meant taking everything that was lying around the room and tossing it into a handle bag (which led to my tearful search for our joint checkbook after I had to freeze my account because the cleaning service at my office apparently stole my paycheck). Instead I'll regale you with tales of my friends' adorable girl toddler, Charlotte. Well, one tale, anyway.

She has an attachment to two seemingly identical doll babies. The only way to tell them apart is the clothing ("It's hard to tell, because they are frequently naked," said her mother) and the fact that one doll's eyes are a little different than the other's The best part are the babies' names: Baby Wow and Baby Yayay (or Yaya, which immediately brought me a vision of the wannabe model from America's Next Top Model). My husband immediately commenced calling Baby Yayay "Baby YeahYeah," while using his powers of ventriloquism to make her speak to Charlotte. He is so ready to be a father, it's sickening. I'm trying to be gung ho about our babymaking plans, but he may have caught a glimpse of my naked fear about the whole situation. Must tamp that down!