Monday, June 29, 2015

Wish I was in Tijuana, Eating barbecued iguana

Kitten decided she needed to spruce up breakfast today.  It's been a while since she's brought home snacks, so she almost got me.  She tried to sneak this little fkr in the house twice.  While it was still alive.



Sunday, June 28, 2015

taters gonna tate

Meet Potato, a.k.a. Tater, with his new shirt that Auntie Wendy bought him.  (Or maybe his dad will wear it.)  Potato is part Dogo and part Bulldog and completely adorable.





Saturday, June 27, 2015

Vanity Sizing

Love it or hate it?  Me, I hate it.  And yes, I know you think that's easy for me to say because I'm skinny.  Truthfully though, I'd rather say I'm a 4 than a 00.  Or a S than an XXS.  Because saying I'm 00 or XXS makes me feel insignificant.  Silly, I know, but there you have it.  But, what I'd most prefer is knowing what fucking size I am all of the time, in every brand.

Recently, I met a friend for lunch and then went shopping with her.  She asked me what size I am as she was looking through clothes.  I answered anywhere from 0 to 4.  That's a fucked up answer for someone who so rarely fluctuates in size that I've only gone up one size since high school.

I know you think you'd rather be an 8 than a 12, but if everyone knows 8 is the new 12, are you really fooling anyone?  I've also noticed that vanity sizing caters more to wealthy women.  The more expensive the brand, the lower the size.  Again, who the fuck do you think you're fooling?  Plus, no one cares except you.  Well, let me clarify.  I certainly don't care if you're a 6, 8, or 12, as long as you feel good about yourself or are making some effort to get there (feeling good not being a 6).  And if someone else does care, ask yourself why it's any of their damn business.  Time to houseclean your friends if they make you feel bad about yourself.  Life is hard enough without purposefully surrounding ourselves with negativity.

Or, maybe I just hate shopping and am super grumpy.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Live bear cam

I've had this bear cam running all morning in the background and got so excited when I saw a bear!  It's not great video quality, definitely no middle-out compression, but it does what it can.  The views change intermittently, hunting bear I would imagine.

How to make Wendycoffee

  • Boil water
  • Put ground organic coffee (yeah, yeah, I know there's a controversy about organic coffee, but I like to err on the side of healthy) in a French Press.  My brother gave me mine, and I fucking love it!!
  • Pour almost boiling water over grounds.  Let brew for 4 minutes
  • While that's brewing, place these ingredients in a large mug, in whatever amounts you prefer:
    • Organic Stevia (at this point just assume everything is organic)
    • Unsweetened cocoa powder
    • Ground cinnamon
    • Ground cardamom
  • After coffee brews for 4 minutes, push the plunger down on the French Press and pour about 2 fingers (3 of my skinny ones) into your mug with the dry ingredients.  Stir thoroughly.
  • Add molasses and stir again
  • Add one raw egg (optional) and stir again
  • Once the mixture seems creamy and smooth, add the rest of the coffee in.
  • Top it off with heavy whipping cream
    • May substitute with butter, preferably Kerrygold
Enjoy!


P.S. All of the ingredients were carefully chosen for my health.  The consistent small amount of caffeine every morning seems to aid in migraine prevention.  It felt healthier than popping a half of an Excedrin.  The cinnamon helps regulate blood sugar.  I can't remember why cardamom, maybe just for flavor because it was in my cupboard.  :)  The cocoa powder has protein, as does the egg.  The molasses has tons of minerals in it.  The Stevia has been proven to promote healthy gut bacteria.  And the cream is a healthy fat.  Again, assume all organic ingredients.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Ringneck rescue



How cute is this little guy that I rescued from the pool this morning? 

they mostly come at night... mostly

Last week, I encountered a swarm of carpenter ants.

In my bedroom.

As I was about to go to sleep.

Welp, that woke me right the fuck up.  I battled them tirelessly for 2 hours with my Dyson.  Until it broke.  Then, I pulled out the handheld Dyson, which finished the job right as the battery died.  I must have looked like a loon, holding the flashlight tactical-style with the vacuum wand, in my front window.

I needed pharmaceutical assistance to relax after that.

I took apart my vacuum the next day to fix it.  I cleaned the filters.  Disassembled all moving parts.  Nothing.  I'm not loving Dysons anymore.  They used to be good, but this one has broken twice in 6 months.  And yes, I saw the Reddit AMA, after I had already bought it.  I took it to the shop, where they replaced the power button.

Then I took a baggy of a few dead ants to the pest store.  She agreed they were carpenter ants, so now I need to get my house treated.  Ugh.  I can only imagine how bad these chemicals are going to be on Kitten and me.   But the alternative is worse.  Of course they swear the powder is non-toxic.  What's a migraine or three if it means no ants swarming?

They're due here any minute.  And I'm sitting on the edge of my seat, hoping that when they look in the attic, the damage isn't too bad.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Quit judging me

Who am I kidding?  No one will ever stop judging me.  It's what we all do.  But I beseech you to stop doing it openly to my face.  And for what am I being judged the harshest?  Being thin.

Am I supposed to whip out my 3rd grade photo showing a gangly, pig-tail wearing little girl and say, "I've always been thin"?  Am I supposed to say that's because I watch wtf I eat, not in an obsessive way (I'm looking at you, bacon for dinner), but rather in a "no, 15 cookies in one sitting is probably not healthy" way? 

When asked if I ever eat, are you expecting me to say no, so you can feel superior?  Pretend I did, and feel superior all you want.  Just please stop being so mean to me about it.  Because you aren't going to like my real answer of yes, all the fkn time because food.

When you come up to me and say I hate you for being so skinny, am I supposed to say, "thanks, I hate you, too"?  What would Miss Manners say the proper etiquette is here?

When I was younger, someone asked my brother how I had such ripped abs.  His answer was fkn priceless, and I love him more every day for it.  He said I party so hard that I puke, that's how.  Of course, that was nowhere near the truth.  The truth was much sadder.  I had migraines so bad then, that I was puking all the time.  Want to try that diet and exercise regimen next?  I can tell you it works.  Nowadays, my abs aren't nearly as ripped, thanks to having the migraines under better control, and I couldn't be more delighted.

Feel superior all you want about everyone.  Just stfu about it to me please.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Bags and baggage

Before you start feeling sorry for me about all of my health and other problems, consider this.  If everyone put their own troubles and tribulations into bags, set them on a table, and heard what everyone else's true problems were, you would scramble madly to be able to retrieve your own bag full of setbacks.  And I feel exactly the same way.  Most people aren't honest about their problems, so it always looks as if the grass is greener everywhere else.  Not that I blame people.  When someone asks me how I am, I almost always respond in a false manner.  Not many people actually care, so why burden them with the truth?  From the outside, I look like I have my shit together and am crushing it at life.  From the inside, well, not many people have a good view of my true thoughts and fears.  This blog is helping me to get past the constant need to hide all of that and come clean when I'm scared or anxious.


Would it be wonderful or awful to know that most people are just as miserable as we are sometimes?  I know someone in her late 40s who said she's never had an anxiety attack.  To me, that sends the wrong message to kids who are still learning about life.  When I was younger, I felt like an oddball, thinking no one else ever had these moments of doubt and fear.  Fuck, I still get them, thankfully not as often as I did.  But pretending they aren't here, to put on a polite face, seems wrong.  Sorry, not sorry, to inconvenience you, but to paraphrase someone much wiser than me, Life means suffering sometimes.  It's how we grow.


Fortunately, no one gave me such sage advice a few months ago when I was crying in the shower (or in my pillow or in my car or you get the picture).  If they had, I might have punched them in the face.  Probably not, because that would hurt my knuckles.  More likely, I would have kicked them.  After I put shoes on.  That would have been a lot of work during a crying jag, so let's all be happy I didn't need to.  But now that I can be semi-rational, I know it's true.


So next time you start feeling down, and you will, because life means suffering sometimes, remember that we all go through it.  It's part of our humanity.  Rum helped mine temporarily, just saying.

DISCLAIMER: I do not recommend rum to anyone with addiction issues.  Also, I heard recently about a study involving rats, addiction, and Rat-opia.  Basically, they concluded that substance addictions are from excessive loneliness.  So start making friends.  I know it's hard, but some of them are worth it.  And you definitely are.  How do I know?  Because you're reading my blog.  Duh.




Monday, June 22, 2015

Sweet sounds of a 56.6k modem!

Okay, not really.  I'm on real fkn broadband this time.  For those of you wondering what a 56.6k modem is, DDG it. 

And just kidding, I wasn't on that before either, stop with the shaking and sweating.  It just felt like it sometimes.

Is ... working ... should ... can... hear ... halp!

Waiting for the Interwebs man

I'm about to take another plunge, y'all.  I'm finally upgrading my shitty Internet service.  I tried a few years ago and had such an abominable experience, that I've been clinging to my old service, shaking with fear.  But, it's time.  Technology has come a long way.  So any minute now, he will show up (he called, so I know it's a he) and get me squared away.  Or, I will lose touch with all of humanity and go tail-spinning into a giant depression.  Could go either way.  If you never hear from me again, just remember I had a good enough life and died happy.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

7 years later...

It's been a long time since I wrote for others' consumption.  A friend reminded me about this last night.  It rattled around in my head all day, until I thought why the fuck not?  Who cares if blogs have taken over the Internet, stifling even the preponderance of cat videos.  I'm hopeful that this will be therapeutic for me, and perhaps mildly interesting for you (if you even exist).  So, here I go.

*grabs your hand and jumps in with both feet*

Life has a way of saying, "hey Wendy, are you starting to feel like you won?  Yeah?  Let's change that."  A handful of years ago, when I was all fat (READ: thin, but that will be a story for another day) and happy, my health decided to fuck me.  Hard.  Non-consensually.  I had various ailments pop up, the torn retina being the scariest.  Well, the scariest I care to talk about in public.  It's healed now, thankfully.

Anyway, I should have been more scared of the migraines slowly worsening, like that damn boiling frog analogy.  But, like the boiling frog, I didn't realize how much worse they had gotten, until I started wishing I would not wake up tomorrow.  A few years back, there was no hope.  I had tried every standard treatment, and quite a few bizarro ones.  Even exercise was triggering them regularly.  My beloved martial arts conditioning class had become the enemy.  It's hard enough some days to find the motivation to exercise.  Now add in the Damocles' Sword of migraine.  Still feel like going?  Me, neither.  Three days a week dwindled down to one.

I muddled through the days, hiding my total pain and misery from everyone.  Oh, I shared bits and pieces of it with close loved ones, but no one got the full effect, because it would just suck the happiness out of a room.  My partner at the time saw more than most, but I held some back.  Why hurt him, too, when nothing could be done?

Almost 2 years ago, I started hearing whispers of a revolutionary way to treat migraines using CGRP.  My ears perked up like my cat on the trail of a lizard.  And I researched like a maniac until I found a clinical trial study to join.  That brought the boiling point so far down again, that it's almost a pleasure (not really a pleasure at all) to have them reduced to 1 or 2 a week.

Life started feeling like I was back in control again.  Yay!

Don't you pay attention?  Control is all an illusion.

A few months ago, A BIG FUCKING METAPHOR OF A TRUCK SLAMMED INTO ME.  My partner of many, many years decided to part ways.  So now, I'm relearning the single life.  It sucked at first, but I'm getting the hang of it.  And to paraphrase a friend who put it so eloquently, dudes just collapsed in on me like a fucking black hole when I became single.  (And women too, somehow, even though I don't swing that way.  I think it's the comfy shoes.)  So that was flattering and gave my ego a much needed boost.

Life gave me lemons, and I added some tequila.  The upside is I've reconnected with close friends from whom I had drifted apart, and I've developed some casual friendships into deeper ones.  Sláinte!