I’m your hostess over at Girl Talk Thursday today, where we’re talking about books we love.  Come join the conversation!

Dear heavenly being:

Please help my daughter not to be a disaster during the drive from here to there.

Also, please conveniently place a Taco Bell on the highway at lunch time.  I hate eating old Sbarro’s or McDonald’s. It’s disgusting.

Love,
Me.

I can’t breathe when I think of ever not seeing that smile.

So what is my comfort food?

If I have five minutes — peanut butter & jelly.  There’s just something innately comforting about a PBJ sammich, probably since I ate many of them as a child.  I’m big on lots of chunky peanut butter and just a thin layer of jelly/jam, or even playing around and substituting bananas or apples for the jelly.  Yummm!

If I have half an hour — risotto.  The long, labour-intensive process of cooking risotto and ending up with a beautiful, creamy dish just soothes my mind.  I love chopping the vegetables, toasting the rice, standing over the oven and stirring, adding in the cheese at the end… and if I am feeling frisky, I have some truffle oil in the cabinet (thanks mom!) to drizzle over it at serving time to make it perfect!

What’s your favourite comfort food?

I haven’t read it.  And I really don’t want to.  It’s not that I’m anti-popular culture or whatnot, but it’s that I’ve read enough vampire novels.  I had a friend in high school who was really into vampires — like to the point where she fantasized openly about Anne Rice’s creation, Lestat, coming to sweep her off her feet.  She had a beautiful singing voice, and she’d create songs for him; her bedroom window faced a graveyard, and she’d stand there and sing to him every night (since, you know, vampires hang out in graveyards).  She’d write fanfic stories about him and whatnot, and it was always an aspect of her personality that I despised.  An incident between us connected to her love of Lestat is the primary reason our friendship ended.

So, Twilight… I don’t want to touch it.  I’ve read enough about the series to know the vampires sparkle, and I know a whole new generation of girls are in love with them, including a cousin of mine.  Just like Harry Potter, I appreciate that these novels are connecting with young adults and encouraging them to read.

Would I read the series if it had nothing to do with vampires?  Maybe!  I’m not against some light reading material that sucks me into another world for awhile.  I dislike that it’s a teenage romance involving a vampire, but I like teenage romances in general, because most girls like to daydream about their knight in shining armour and those types of books provide an example of that.  At the same time, I wonder if there is a “love hurts” type theme in the novels — vampires tend to have a darker side — and if that’s romanticized.  If so, then I worry.

I guess this makes me neutral, then!

I love you two so much that it almost hurts my brain, but you have no appreciation for me whatsoever.  Don’t you realize I have more qualities than “rubs my belly”, “gives me food”, “opens door to let me outside”?  I am a human being, I have many other capabilities and charms.  For example, I still have my reproductive organs, which is more than I can say for one of you.

Like, let’s be real.  I’ve seen you both eat puke and your own shit (at least, that’s what I’m assuming it was, because thinking of you eating another dog’s shit is somehow even more gross).  I’ve seen the shreds of Kleenex strewn across my living room carpet in the morning because you decided you wanted to eat the boogers that used to be contained in them.  I’ve come home from shopping only to find you guiltily eating the crotch of my underwear that you pulled through the holes of the laundry basket because I forgot to close the bedroom door.  You lick each other’s ears and eyes and asses.  YOU TWO ARE FUCKING DISGUSTING LITTLE CREATURES.

When I take you outside, one of you invariably barks and bounces, stiff-legged, through the snow and onto a neighbour’s patio.  The other follows.  Then I have to shoo you off her patio, and let me tell you, if you had any idea how huge, unbalanced, and awkward it is to try and move fast enough to control two chihuahuas that are like seven inches off the ground and I can’t even see over my stomach half the fucking time, you might be a little more respectful and stay off that bitch’s patio.  Honestly, that’s all I ask.  Romp anywhere else.  Stay off people’s patios.  I was surprised that, after she banged on her window when I was trying to shoo you off it at 12:30am, you didn’t bark at her.  At least that’s a positive.  You just got even more excited and ran in even more circles.

Oh, and let’s not even talk about how you get so interested in sniffing pee or romping through the snow that you end up ten yards away from me in drifts so deep that all I can see are the tips of your ears, then decide you’re too damned cold to continue moving, so you stand there whining pathetically while trying to stand on as few paws as possible.  Guess who gets to break a path through the snow to rescue you because it breaks her heart to see you upset?  That’s right, me.

THEN YOU SHIT ON MY FLOOR WHEN I BRING YOU BACK INSIDE.

Yeah, fuck you chihuahuas.  You’ve got the good life and you don’t even appreciate it.

——-

Fuck You Fridays are the brainchild of Cristin over at Tiptoeing Through The Tulips. Drop by and see what’s gotten under her skin this week!

I didn’t vote for the dude because he’s black.  In fact, for nearly the entire campaign, no one wanted to breathe about his skin colour.  Was it important to everyone?  I don’t know.  I don’t think it was to those of us who love him for his policies and the optimistic attitude that he embodies — okay, or, at least I didn’t think about his skin colour.

I thought about how his policies would impact my life & my family’s.  I thought about what I wanted American citizenship to represent to — AND ABOUT — my daughter.

Now, I can understand how blacks (I hate the term “African-American” — unless you were born in another country, we’re all just Americans) see something more messianic and representative about the triumph of civil rights in Obama’s inauguration.  I don’t.

Civil rights are not just one skin colour versus another.  The nation is writing discrimination against people based on their sexual preference into law; that is just an immense (and disgusting, and unacceptable) gap in the ‘civil rights’ movement.  Discrimination doesn’t start and end with black and white.

Now, yes, I do have faith in Obama to have a successful, inspiring, and vibrant presidency.  But I think a huge part of that happening lies on the shoulders of those who voted him into office.  Part of his platform was based on service to your fellow man.  If his success inspires more people to get involved in their communities through volunteer work or even just being more active in their local political scene, then he’s accomplished a great deal.  I hate that so many of his supporters just want him to fix everything.  He can’t.  He is a single man, the face of an entire political system, and his word is not the law.  If he thought it was, we wouldn’t have voted for him.

The media coverage of all this is sickening.  I had to turn off the television the other day when CNN was covering Obama’s train ride from Philly (?) to DC.  The newscasters have no bloody idea how to report relevant information.  In between waxing rhapsodic about how Obama appeared at the back of the train to wave to people, Anderson Cooper managed to squeeze out a casual statement about a unilateral ceasefire being reached in Gaza.  A moment later they were right back onto the entire BUT OBAMA IS ON A TRAIN JUST LIKE LINCOLN RODE ON A TRAIN!! topic.

A unilateral ceasefire?  A step towards peace, maybe, or at least more humane treatment of the Palestinian people?  Well shit, that doesn’t hold a candle to Obama on a train!

Gahhh… too bad I have no interest in actually participating in television media.

Last week, we implented a “no dogs on the couch” rule.  They can be on their loveseat all they want, but the couch shouldn’t smell like dog and really, shouldn’t the humans own a piece of furniture?  Easier said than done.  Even with nothing on the couch that could be appealing to snuggle with, we’ll still catch them (okay, usually Joss) lying on it now and again.  So all week, we’ve been having to yell at the dogs to GET DOWN and then telling them GOOD BOY/GIRL! when they jump up onto the loveseat again.  It kind of breaks my heart in a way to tell Joss to get down off the couch, because his perky little ears droop so low, his tail goes far between his legs, his eyes get big and wet… and when I have to move him off the couch, he whines because he is just. that. unhappy.

Needless to say, Chris suspects that I am not enforcing the “no dogs on the couch” rule as firmly as I could be, although I am. Last night, we saw Buffy lying on the loveseat, but didn’t know if Joss was there.  So my darling husband walks over to the couch and lifts up a pillow that’s tucked into the corner.

As in, to check if I put a pillow on top of Joss to make sure Chris wouldn’t see him lying on the couch.

WTF?  I’m still laughing about it.  Who knew I was so devious?

Fuck you, Apartment.

Fuck you for being so charming when we first came here.

Fuck you for seducing us with your big, bold balcony and being on the second floor so I know that firemen can rescue me if there’s a problem.

Fuck you for having some douchebag that scrawls “CLEAN UP YOUR DOG SHIT” on the doors to go outside.  Who made them the poopie police?

Fuck you for all your issues that give me issues.

Fuck you for the garage construction project that’s been going on since October with no end in site, yet we’re still paying for parking even if our spot isn’t always ours.

Fuck you for the three washers that don’t have a reliable stream of hot water and the fact that sometimes your dryers take money off my card but won’t turn on.

Fuck you for not having any lights by the doors in the back where we take the dogs out.  Do you know how many times I’ve fumbled with my keys while trying to open the door?

Furthermore, fuck you for there being no garbage cans outside for me to toss my baggies of dog poo in.  Sometimes I throw my poo in the lobby trash can just out of spite because I hope it stinks in the morning when everyone is walking through.  I especially hope the poopie police goes through the lobby on those mornings.