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. i totally bought it on black friday when it was only $5, and it is the best album i've bought all year.my sister still has a mix tape i made in 2000. it is all the sisters of mercy and kmfdm and kraftwerk and 12 rounds -- mixed with tony lucca, and elf power, and dan bern, and dar williams. i make the worst mix tapes ever. and yet it is quite enjoyable to listen to, and i don't actually have any complaints. we listened to both sides twice while playing with the wii and eating pizza bagels, & it was great.
(also, it has been so long since i heard "circular malevolence" that i did not remember who the artist was!)
my brain is churning around lately, & i am really unhappy with a couple of situations, but i can't. i am not. it's. etc. i loathe obnoxiously vague livejournal entries -- detail the fucking details or keep it to yourself, you know? but at the same time, my problems are actually kind of vague right now. it's just the same dumb shit i always think about (why am i never the motherfucking priority? what is it that i want from people? how do i know whether or not my expectations are realistic and appropriate?) except with new and awful and stupid real life applications that i don't particularly want to talk about.
the other day my mother made several jokes about how i sleep late/all the time. and after the second or third joke, i was finally like, what the fuck are you talking about? because seriously -- during the week, i am usually awake by the time she leaves for work around sixish, and sometimes i fall back asleep, but sometimes i don't. i'm awake all day -- taking my sister to school, working on manuscripts, applying for full time jobs, planning menus, coming up with new recipes, doing the dishes, running errands, folding laundry, thinking about one day possibly writing something, feeling shitty, you know, the usual. then i cook supper, serve it, clean up after it, wash the pots and pans, make lunch for my sister, make sure there's a pint container of leftovers all set up if my mother wants to take it for lunch, feed the cats, watch an hour or two of tv, and then hang out on the internet until i fall asleep. wake up, do it again. i get up just as early as she does on saturdays, which she knows since we grocery shop together almost every week. so what the fuck?
and she was like, oh yeah, i guess you don't ever sleep late anymore, do you?
way to be making a joke that is 15 yrs out of date -- not to mention that it wasn't even applicable back then, if you were paying attention to my sleep cycle at all.
way to not notice that i hate being the butt of the joke ever, even in affection.
ugh.
thanksgiving was fine. our neighbors annoy me; the kid is a fucking talker and never shuts the hell up. if she ever said anything worth listening to, that would be one thing, but everything she talks about is stupid shit that no one cares about. i can't believe that even she cares about it, tbh. i hate her boyfriend -- he is a jerk, and he says things that are jerky. her parents... they don't bother to hide their squabbles from us, which is fine, since her dad is my mom's younger brother's best friend from, like, grammar school or whatever, but it also makes me really uncomfortable. i don't want to hear about their problems with each other in a room full of 15 other people who are eating thanksgiving supper. blah blah blah.
they have this one friend who is always coming to holidays who is okay; she's very abrasive and is sometimes rude/racist/ablist/etc. under the cover of "telling it like it is" and being "honest" which grates on my nerves, but i tolerate her okay, and it's nice to not be the only queer person in the room. she brought her partner this time, and wow. i have not seen someone so intent on fighting with and hating people since 2006. apparently neither of them actually knew that i was queer, so when the partner brought up adam lambert and the good morning america/amas thing, clearly prepared to have a fight, they were really shocked when not only did i vehemently agree, but started throwing around accusations of homophobia, and took it to a level way beyond the one that she was aiming for -- and no one in that room was going to argue with me, even if they might've argued with her.
here's what i was actually really irritated by: our hostess for the evening has been freaking out for days that there wouldn't be enough food or drinks. she asked my mom to buy the soda, and my mom bought six two liter bottles -- and then she forgot she asked, and bought another six or seven bottles herself. she told me she was worried there wouldn't be enough vegetarian food, so i made string bean casserole -- but it turned out that when she'd placed the catering order, she'd ordered several pounds of eggplant parm. thursday morning she called my mom and told her there wasn't enough dessert, so i offered to make a pie in addition to the cookies i'd already made. when i brought the -- totally fucking gorgeous -- pie over to the house, it turns out that there was a giant three layer cake, two pumpkin pies, the cookies i'd made, and now this pie. are you fucking kidding me? there were 15 people there for supper, but only half that for dessert. even if there had been 15 people there for dessert, the two pumpkin pies and giant cake would have been enough -- i didn't have to make cookies or a fucking pie.
it's not even that i minded doing the cooking, though. i like to cook. i like to bake. i'm good at it. several people said they enjoyed the string bean casserole more than the turkey. thumbs up, right? but something about it just didn't sit right with me. maybe it's just how she makes everything into a calamity, everything is a drama, every problem is the end of the world.
and next time she wants a pie, i am going to use a can of the high fructose corn syrup pie filling that we have in the pantry, instead of $12 organic fruit. jfc.
in conclusion, i was irritated, and after four or five hours, i came home and hid in my bedroom and watched episodes of 30 minute meals on fancast. that was very satisfying.
oh, the string bean casserole! i made it totally differently this time than ever before: i put the two cans of cream of mushroom soup into the pan, and then a can-full of half-and-half. i whisked that together, and then put in four cans of french-cut string beans, just a little string bean water, and half a can of the fried onions. then i baked it for half an hour at 350 with tin foil on top, and then put the rest of the onions on top and baked it another 15 minutes. it was very thick -- more like a gratin than a regular string bean casserole. instead of needing two or three spoonfuls, it was so rich people only needed one spoonful. they took two or three anyway, though, because it was so delicious. of course it was delicious -- fat makes everything delicious.
(i am going to, at some point, try this vegan version. it has so much less fat, but looks like it might be even more delicious, since it's made with fresh mushrooms and fresh green beans. i would totally eat it plain myself, but would probably serve it to my mother and sister over a skinless chicken breast that's been poached in veg broth or something.)
sometimes i feel like i need to apologize for writing such long journal entries -- but i'm not sorry. they make me feel better and help me adjust things in my head. only half of this is performative. every day is defriending amnesty day.
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