Merry greens, folks.

Sam Skellington would like to wish you the jauntiest of St Paddy's Days.

You can't tell, but he is winking at you drunkenly.

Teeny updatey

Amigolings, I am starting to taste foodstuffs again and it. is. amazing.  Everything is still a little bit off (and cheese is still gross) but food is discernable as food and I want to eat it all.

Other than that, school is as school does, and the weather is great out here.

Three Things I Learned from Invictus

1.  Morgan Freeman is never not adorable.

2.  Sports will make people not be racist.  If you win.

3.  Rugby is down near cricket on the sense-making scale.

Hope on the horizon (in a box in the pantry)

Ok so tonight I was eating some frozen blueberries and they were tasting like crunchy balls of lard because I can't taste anything sweet (or salty, or spicy, but I can feel spicy so I put tobasco sauce on everything now) and I was ensaddened because this is crappy, you guys.  I ate bland, nasty food for a month and then I had three glorious days of waffles and pizza and cookies and now I'm back to the bland and it's better because I'm not so damned hungry all the time, but it's worse because at least then things tasted like things.

So I'm on the google tonight all, Dear google, please tell me this will go away. And most of the google is like, It'll take a few months to a year, but you'll be fine, but then that sneaky nasty part of the google that is always telling us that our symptoms are fatal is like, This could be permanent so get used to sucking at food.

I didn't mean to be so bleak, bloggonets, because the upshot of this story is actually kind of awesome. So one helpful googlebit was all, If you gargle with baking soda it will speed up the healing process! And I was all, Yerk, that will be gross but I am desperate so I will try. And guys, it was so not gross because (you may recall) I CAN'T TASTE ANYTHING!!!
So that was kind of fun. I feel like this is my new superpower, like I could drink a bottle of sriricha sauce and suffer no harm. I am going to gargle with baking soda until it starts being nasty, because when baking soda tastes nasty then food tastes like food.

A mouthful of change

Ok, I told my book blog I'd stop talking about my cancer now, but if you are here it's because you WANT to hear about my cancer.  Or about my weekend in Uclulet, which basically consisted of a hot tub and a puppy and he ate a bouncy ball and then I snuggled him.  See facebook for photographic evidence of snuggling.

I've been done my radiation and saltless hell for almost two weeks, and those first few days were a glorious frenzy of eating.  I. ate. everything.  I thought I'd make myself sick, but I felt amazing and everything tasted like babies' faces and rainbows.  But somewhere along the way the radioactive iodine seeped into my salivary glands and now everything tastes like dirty pennies.  Dirty pennies with an undertone of cereal, dirty pennies with an undertone of brownies.  Water tastes like straight-up dirty pennies so I'm kind of dehydrated all the time.

And I haven't seen a doctor in what feels like ages but is actually maybe twelve days, so I haven't been able to ask but extensive interwebble research says this is normal, and that it should go away.  Eventually.  If it doesn't, so help me I will stab something, because I baked cookies today and I can't even tell if they taste good.

In other, better news, I was scanned yesterday for I dont even know what, something cancery, and the nuke med tech said it looked clean.  My radiation-doctor is super old, and I'm not even sure he understands telephones so we might be waiting on a call from him for a while, plus I have bloodwork scheduled for well into May, so there might not be a doctory stamp of non-cancerness for some time.  I'm just going to assume that everything's fine now, and move on to Operation Side-Effects (see, for example, mouth-pennies).

It is like Wonderland, not as in 'Winter' but as in 'Alice in'

Ok guys, seriously.  I understand if the Olympics is making you cranky because you work downtown and there are HOARDS or you are a paramedic and Vancouver sucks at organizing things like sufficient paramedics.  You guys may feel free to bitch.  But everyone else who is just nay-saying the Olympics because you think it makes you sound world-weary and cultured, you need to go down there and let random shit happen to you.

Because you will waste an entire morning trying to get curling tickets, only to realize that the O brings out the professional scalpers who still want $100 for a $60 ticket when the event is an hour gone, and you will laugh at them because this is ridiculous.

And then you will see a really patriotic dog, and it might try to bite your face off, but it won't try really hard.

And then there will be Russian ladies dancing,

And then you will be offered free poutine but you will still be full from lunch, and you will only be in the Quebec pavillion to use their bathroom anyways.

And then you will watch bobsledding in a bar and everyone will groan every time your country doesn't win a heat (which is every time) and they will bring you chips and salsa in to-go containers so that they don't have to do any dishes.

And then a guy will drive by with a goat in his car.

And then you will eat a cream puff the size of your two fists.  With caramel sauce.

And then you will watch speed-skating on a giant screen with hundreds of other people who will all hold their breath when you are in second place for the briefest moment, but you will lose it and end up last.  Everyone will moan, but you kind of won't mind because you will be petting a puppy.

And then there will be a Coke parade and you will get a free Coke, but you will not drink it because it is nighttime and cold so you will put it in your purse for later.

And then, just when you will be packing it in for the night, a man will try to sell you hockey tickets at face value and you will talk him down to face value minus $30 and then you will go see a hockey game and they will confiscate your parade Cokes at the door, which you will find ironic because Coke is a supporter of the Olympics, no?  But you won't really care because you will be at an Olympic hockey game!

And because it is between Germany and Belarus, everyone will cheer for everything and there will be lots of cheering.  Also, a fat Jack Bauer wearing eight t-shirts will strip one off and dance every time the camera is on him, and it will never not be funny.

And then the next day you will wake up at 6am to see if any curling tickets were released late, and none will be so you will go back to sleep and then wake up at 9 and watch curling in your sweats and it will be way better that way.

And then you will go wait in line for over an hour (in the sunshine, with other charming people and their adorable Russian girlfriends who are always scampering off to see how much Russia is winning by and seriously, it will be adorable) to get into the VAG for free to see Leonardo Da Vinci's anatomical drawings that the queen lent, and your husband will explain to you all these things that Da Vinci figured out that science did not yet know, and it will be surprisingly interesting.

And then you will head to the ferries, thinking that you are making good time to catch the 5 and can watch Canada play USA on the ferry, but everyone (including you) will forget that not only is this Sunday, but it is the end of UVic's spring break and you will be nearish the front of a line of several thousand foot passengers and you will count yourself lucky to catch the 7.

But the sun will still be out and the general carnival atmosphere will make the wait like your own personal Olympic event, and the cameraderie will extend to the ridiculously long food line-ups inside the ferry and a very nice lady will offer you both a ride home because the line-ups for the buses stretch around the parking lot.

Disclaimer: not all of thsi stuff will happen to you.  But probably some of it will.

That time I was radioactive.

I am out of the clink!  And probably don't have cancer anymore.  We have to wait on some scans and some bloodwork but thinking about it will freak us out so we're just going to go with yes and move on to telling you about my incarceration.

Ok so.  They gave me my own little lead-lined room with a teeny tv and a bathroom that I could contaminate to my heart's content.  The walls were cheery and yellow and Joel had sent me with some spring-in-a-pot (tulips! daffodils! crocuses! those asparagusy-looking flowers that bloom into a bunch of bitty purple ones!) and I had two windows that overlooked the hospital grounds that I could open to flush out the hospital air.  It's like they were begging me not to go crazy in there.  Also, it was sunny.

The first RN they sent to install my IV couldn't have been more than 25 and had flunked out of Teeeny Veins 101.  He spent a few minutes poking around my right arm, and then poked around in my left arm for a long while, and then he hit a nerve which was like rapping my funnybone HARD, only worse and shooting into my thumb, and then he threw in the towel because I was getting fainty.  Like I do.  And guys, I am the valedictorian of getting fainty and not actually fainting, I KNOW there's nothing you can do besides lie down and take deep breaths and put a cool cloth on your forehead, but he looks at me from the door and is all, Just try to, you know, breathe.  Which, THANKS now why don't you go get another tattoo, child.

And then they sent in the fairy godmother of IV nurses and she gave a good stab and was in.  I told her she could put in my IVs any time.

And then they took a BUNCH of blood and we watched women's snowboard cross on my tiny tv and joked about how slow my blood moves, which is why I'm bad at donating it (see also, fainting).

And then the doctor came in from nuclear medicine and this was the best part, because she had on the lead bib and gloves and whatall, and one of those heavy yellow cylindrical canisters like in spy films and when she opened it it went *shhhhunk* and I expected steam to pour out but none did.  She took out a really boring-looking pill bottle and put it on my table and then immediately backed into the hall, watching me from the doorway.  Go ahead and swallow the pill in there, she says.  Don't shake it into your hand, you don't want to touch it.  But I am GOING to touch it with my STOMACH, which I sort of thought was the point?  Science makes no sense.

And they let me stew in my own radioactive juices for about 10 minutes before coming in to scan me, and the scanner beeped over my stomach like I had pennies in there.

And that was sort of it.  I sat in my room and watched tv and the nurses brought me food periodically and I tell you what, plain old hospital food has nothing on iodine-free hospital food for grossness.  Because for lunch it was a slice of grey, flavorless turkey between two slices of dry, iodine-free bread and then for dinner it was a slice of grey, flavorless turkey atop some soggy, unseasoned rice and some steamed carrots (also unseasoned).  The next day was a ditto for both meals except that beans were subbed in for the carrots for dinner.  And I never got any yogurt or muffins or jello or anything hospital-delicious (which is different than regular-delicious, and is a matter of relativity).  It is making me throw up in my mouth to think of it, let us move on.

Some kids from Joel's class came by for a visit Tuesday afternoon, but they didn't wear plastic booties over their shoes (because no one told them to) and got an ass-chewing from the nurse, and then I got an ass-chewing for letting them in, and then the nurse sent a doc from nuclear medicine to give me an ass-chewing but she was just all, Ehhh, don't do it again.  And I don't really understand, because unless you're in the habit of walking around the house in your shoes and then licking the floor, I don't see how booties will help you.  Anyway, they had to stay two meters away from me, as did Joel when he came later, which was hard because my room was about two meters long.  I curled up on one end of my bed and did my best not to give any of them cancer.

And then the nuke med doc came in on Wednesday and scanned me again and my radiation levels were waaaaaaaaay down because I'd been drinking ALL of the waters and juices (I got two waters and two juices with every meal, and more with snacks.  Also, many laxatives, to which my poos are apparently immune) and had flushed the hell out of my kidneys.  I was technically safe to wander free among the public, but they kept me for another twenty-four hours because hospitals are sadists.  This gave everyone time to come visit me again and wear booties this time.

There was a fly in my room at one point and I was going to try to catch him so I could either kill him with my mind or gain his powers (flying, multi-faceted eyes) but he got out the window.  I also petted my flowers to try to turn them into mutants, but I guess I wasn't there long enough. 

I was there long enough to get horribly stir-crazy.  Small rooms and no salt makes you something something.  I'd been pent up for so long (ok, two days, but I was pinned to my bed with THE LETHARGY for three days before that) that by the time they let me out I was all FIDDLE-DEE!  Let my exhaustion be damned!  And I spun myself home and picked up a donut on the way and ate it before I'd made it half a block and then Joel and I ordered a bacon-chicken-bbq-pizza for lunch because it encompasses all the things I couldn't eat before (mmmmmmmmmpork products! condiments! cheese!) and then I slipped into a food induced coma and now I can't leave the couch, because I am actually really exhausted.

This is a long post and I am worn out from the typing (also, I am still digesting that pizza).  Thank you for reading through all this drivel and listening to me bitch about salt for the last month and for sending good vibes my way the last few days.  You are the best ones.

Happy day of the Valentine, lovers!

This morning for Valentine's Day Joel took  me down to the hospital so I could get a shot in my ass, and then picked me up a coffee because I am too tired and too stupid to do anything as complicated as make coffee anymore.  I went off my thyroid meds a week ago in preparation for my radiation, as as of yesterday I am officially a pile of useless.

They tell you that you'll get fatigued when you're hypothyroid but fatigued is one of thsoe words that doesn't seem to mean anything except I'LL tell you what it means.  Ok so say you've spent the morning painting your dining room (especially the ceiling) and then done the Grouse Grind in the afternoon and then come home and collapsed in a chair and then realized that you have to get up to lock the door/let the dog out/get a beer.  THAT feeling, that realizing that you have to get up, that is fatigue.

Also, being hypothyroid makes you crazytunes and last time I would have an emotional breakdown every evening at around 5.  Friday I felt fine and yesterday morning I felt fine and then I started to get achy and tired and then I tore my sweatpants and then I started to cry, and part of me was watching myself cry over my torn sweatpants and being all, Oh shit, we are at this stage again where I cry over torn sweatpants, and then the part of me that was actually really sad because I'd torn my sweatpants got even sadder because I hate being in this place where I cry over torn sweatpants, and the part that was watching me cry was trying to talk me down from my tree because this is only for a few days but the part of me that was crying was so wrapped up in how fragile my state of mind is now and how torn my sweatpants were that I couldn't seem to hear myself.  I felt completely unhinged.

I am now re-hinged, and have come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to get anything useful done in these next two days because besides being fatigued and crazy I'm also incredibly stupid and have had to marshall all of my ganglia to write this one post.  I'm going to lie here and watch men's moguls and maybe read some trashy Tudor fiction if I can muster up the wherewithal to hold a book.  Merry Feb 14th, amis!

Haute decor

Amigos, may I introduce?  This is Sam Skellington.  I bought him one year after Halloween because he was on the cheap, he's fairly non-flimsy and all of his bones are more or less where they ought to be.  I used to bring him to daycare to teach my kiddies about bones, and then I stored him in a box in my parents' garage for a few years, and last weekend I dug him out.  Now he sits in the living room and dresses up for holidays.  For you, his Valentine, he wears his heart on his...ribcage.

Don't cry for me, Argentina

My saltless hell continues apace, but the good news(es) is that it's only for nine more days, and that for three of those nine days I'll be in the hospital and won't be cooking for myself.  Victoire!

Also, I made more bagels and they are waaaaaaaaaaay more bagelly-looking than the first batch.

Although one of them deflated.

And then they went moldy but I was kind of sick of them anyways.  But, BUT!  I made pitas.  Pitas = moderately more difficult than bagels, but easier to fill with things, so it evens out.

Also, they will make tastier chips when the inevitable day comes where I never want to see their faces again.

I pita the fool that doesn't enjoy a fine avocado pita from time to time.

They are so fresh, you will want to slap them.

I am a happy clam, jokesters.

In other hijinks, I went mainlanding this weekend and we bought my sister a frock to get hitched in.  It is the fabricky equivalent of her spunkiness.

And they all lived happily, sooner or later.

Ok so this story has an ambitious beginning, kind of a sad middle where I remember that I don't actually like pasta sauce, and a happy ending where I eventually realize that I am willing to eat just about anything these days.

Ok so.  I can eat oatmeal and popcorn and muffins, but none of these are technically meals.  Pasta sauce is part of a meal, and was also something I figured I could make iodine-less so I bought a zillion tomatoes.

Good thing I have that tiny food whizzer.  ANYways, whizzed fresh tomatoes mostly just look like tomato-smoothie.  Urgh?

Whizzed fresh tomatoes with a bunch of other stuff that has been simmering for, like, five hours looks like sauce!

The chunky bits is carrot, not delicious beef.  I'm not supposed to have ground meats.  But this is the part of the story where I remember how fond I am of cream sauces, and how turkey, unless you bake it, is kind of gross, and how rice is not pasta.

This was a sad day for me, and was followed by a few more sad days until I just threw the rest of the sauce in the freezer.  And then I ate nothing but popcorn and oatmeal for three days straight and then I remembered the sauce in the freezer and I think I was starved for nutrients, because it. was. great.

In which, with one fell swoop, I make myself lunch for the week.

Hey kids, what's new.  I suppose you'd like to know how this whole iodine-less business is going, and the answer is both 'shitty' and 'fine.'  'Shitty' because sometimes I just want a quick snack, and I don't want it to be carrot sticks or kiwis eaten furiously over the sink because I'm so hungry.  'Shitty' because none of my food really tastes like food.  My chili tastes like a bunch of beans and tomatoes, because I realized at the last minute that chili powder has salt in it, and that all the things you think are in chili powder don't seem to add up to a chili-flavor.  'Shitty' because I'm so sick of bagels I could die.

But then 'fine' because I made the bagels that I was so sick of and which were rapidly going stale into bagel chips, so I have a quick, carb-loaded snack until those run out.  'Fine' because I can still have popcorn if I air-pop it, and if I add olive oil and kosher salt it is the only thing I can eat that tastes like food.  'Fine' because if I can't put dried fruit in my oatmeal, oatmeal + honey is actually pretty damned good.  And then fine because of these:

Deathless muffins!  I am a triumphstress of substitutions.

Not actual butter.

Eggs with all the delicious, iodiney parts removed.

Subbing oil + applesauce for butter and egg whites for eggs is actually standard health-nutty practice, so I like to think of this as embracing Victoria.  When in Rome, etc. (...go on...)

And then various flours with hella bran, because what I totally need in this oatmeal-popcorn-veggie-eating phase of my life is more fiber?

Whatever.  This genuinely looks tasty.

Final verdict:  These suckas is dense, but in a delicious sort of way.  I have a pretty heavy hand with the add-ins, so they're riddled with cranberries and pecans (the walnut's less-healthy but infinitely-superior cousin.  To quote my secret internet girlfriend Lauren, walnuts have been wasting my time).  One of them isn't going to fill me up, but two of them might do just fine.  I should be sick to death of them in about six days, at which point it'll be time to make...I don't know...iodine-free pitas, or something.

H'em

Dear Cantaloupe,

Seriously, why are you not a cookie?  Become a cookie.  You will be fired immediately if I do not see some rapid cookie-becoming.

Kthx.

Pursuit of saltlessness

Ok so, a life without bagels is essentially a life not worth living, but any commercially-prepared bagels are bound to have salt in them, and salt is my kryptonite.  But bagels can't be that hard to make, right?

RIGHT!!  You thought I was setting you up for some big catastrophe there, but it turns out that bagels are surprisingly easy.

Make dough, as with bread.

Make balls and empoken balls with hole.

Leave alone, until fatter.

Boil.

Warning; boiled bread looks, as my Foods 11 cooking partner Jovan used to say of everything we made with dough, like fat people.

To cure of fat-people look, bake!  The end.  Some of them are a little rustic-looking.

Some of them are very rustic-looking.

But they are chewy and good, toasted up nicely and spread well with some salt-free peanut butter (bless its beautiful hide).

Welcome to my saltless hell

Ok so on the one hand, we finally have a date for radiation so wooooooooooooo!  Getting this done!

On the other hand, it is exactly one month from today which means that between now and then I'll be on a low-iodine diet in order to starve any rogue thyroid cells so that when I go on the radioactive iodine they'll hork it down without thinking.  And then a-splode.

So, iodine.  Most salt is iodized, but I have a big happy box of non-iodized salt for my use in the next month.  The PROBLEM is that almost EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD is made with iodized salt.

Bread.  Pasta.  Everything that is canned.  Everything that comes in a box.  Everything that is ordered in a restaurant.  EVERYTHING THAT I WILL WANT TO EAT EVER!!!!!  Also dairy, because cow teats are cleaned with an iodine solution.

So.  This blog for the next month will probably devolve into a chronicle of the various things I tried to make myself without using butter or eggs (both verboten) before I give up and just eat platefuls of boiled broccoli and chicken (which I have to buy fresh, because frozen chicken is packaged with salt).  UnTIL then, here are some things I have been eating WITH A RELISH for the last week:

Mr Noodle With An Egg.  A childhood staple and my go-to lazy-man's lunch.  The noodles, broth, and egg yolk are all off-limits.  I can still have the egg whites and the hot water, though.

Steak with broccoli salad and sweet potatoes.  Not the steak, broccoli or potatoes per se, just the salty crust or mayonnaisey dressing that makes them all worth eating.

Pickles.  Pickes are made entirely of salt.  I ate an entire jar yesterday, and then wished I hadn't.

This was my 'last meal' yesterday.  Salty fries with a salty burger on a salty bun with salty onion straws and salty bbq sauce.  The lettuce was probably not salty.

Raclette-licious!

Intratubulettes!  Did I ever tell you about my life list?  Right, so, one of my non-quantifiable life resolutions is to Use The Things That I Have to Make My Life More Fun.  Joel and I got a raclette set for our wedding and *shhh* haven't used it yet, so one of my quantifaible-and-check-off-able life resolutions was to have a raclette party.

.

A raclette set is a tiny indoor grill with little trays on the bottom.

Ours are itty-bitty, we were trying to feed seven people, so even though our set came with two, Morgan and Shannon brought over their massive one.  The main deterrent in raclette is all the prep work, because you literally have to chop a thousand things. 

It's really no more work than, say, making a massive stir-fry, except that you end up dirtying every bowl in your house.  Do not attempt this if you don't have a dishwasher.

.

All the usual suspects were present: peppers, onions, mushrooms, broccoli.  This being our first hosted raclette, I thought we'd play a game called Will It Grill (that being a misnomer, becasue of course it will grill.  The real question is whether it will taste good afterwards).  To that end, I threw in a few rogue vegetables like leeks, edamame beans, and eggplant.  All were surprisingly tasty (full points go to the grilled leeks), which may or may not have had something to do with the roasted garlic and herbed butters that ended up everywhere.

.

So!  Grilling.  We accidentally kept the teeny ones quasi-segregated into vegetables

and meat.

The large one was omnivoricious.

But what of the teeny trays on the bottom?  That is where you throw some cheese to melt so that you can pour it over your...whatever.  Or you take your grilled whatever and put it on a slice of bread with some cheese, and put that in the teeny tray and roast it.  There are no pictures of the teeny trays because I was eating what was in them.

.

The other problem with raclette, related to the myriad of bowls, is space.  There will almost be no room on your table for your plates.  You will have to relocate your beverage station to a side table, and if someone brings a leetle gasoline pump to mix cosmos in, so much the better.

In keeping with the spirit of Using Things Because I Have Them, I busted out the napkins that Gnoe sent me from the Netherlands. 

My instinct is to totally hang on to these and hoard them forever, because when will I have such terrifically Dutch napkins again?  But life is for living and napkins are for using, and raclette is a Swiss dish and while I KNOW THAT SWITZERLAND IS NOT THE NETHERLANDS, it's near enough.

So!  With all the grilling and melting and more grilling and prodding, raclette takes hours to eat.  Make sure you have plenty of time, and excellent company.

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor hail...

Bonne 2010, mes amis.  Welcome to the new year.  I have many things to say re: Christmas break and caramel squares and that one run I took which totally justified bringing my sports bra all the way to the  mainland, because I felt fantastic afterwards (ok, I felt horrible, but that is because I ran with a belly full of eggs and sauce.  Maybe two hours later I felt fantastic), but for now all you need to know is that I've found my mail.

I'VE FOUND MY MAIL!!!!

Because we stopped getting mail round about the time the construction on the moat started OVER A MONTH AGO.  Apparently the mail carrier won't come to your door if your door is blocked by eight hulking neanderthals who (despite being construction-workers-for-hire) suck at tools, and even after those neaderthals have vacated the premises, the mail carrier won't come if your front walkway was removed and replaced with a sea of mud and gravel and mud and mud.  Not even if you try to lure him with a make-shift plank path.

So before Christmas Joel and I trekked out to the Big Post Office Downtown to see if they had our mail, but all they had was a security guard who went to go talk to a guy who said there was a note in our file which meant either that our mail was either being held or re-routed, but if it was being held, they didn't have it, and if it was being re-routed, they didn't know where to.

We put it out of our minds for the next 12 days because Christmas is not a time for fretting, and we were on the mainland and couldn't do anything about anything.  So.  We got home on Saturday night, and as we're approaching the house Joel is all, I expect a huge mess, and I'm all, I EXPECT STEPS!  They spent that whole WEEK before we left saying things like, Only a few more days until STEPS, so I expect STEPS to have been procured in our absence.

No steps.

It turns out that the construction crew quit the day after we left, for reasons I will not get into here.  So it doesn't look like we'll be getting any steps in the near future, which means that all of my shoes are ruined every time I leave the house, and also my MAIL!  My free books!  My ebay purchases!  And our heating bill still comes to us through the door and not through the intrawebs.

So.  We headed back down to the Big Post Office this morning and talked to the security guard who talked to the guy who got us our mail (wheeeee!  But also without asking for any ID which, yikes) and who told us to install a mailbox on the driveway.  I'm wondering if we can't just put out a tupperware container and write 'Mailbox' on it?  Maybe I will make for it one of those little red flags.

Aaaanyhoodle, that's about the only thing we can do re: Our Wacky House.  For the rest, we can just go back to being inconvenienced while our landlords try to sort things out.  This whole thing will be hilarious in retrospect, I'm sure.

Updatey...but not really.

Heyyyyyy kids, what've you guys been up to lately?  Me?  Not much...bit o' this...

Little o' that...

Couple a' doors that lead to nowhere...

And I made churros.  Ha cha cha.

They look like tasty snakes.

I was not at home to witness whatever madness happened at the house today.

Don't be alarmed if the house smells like smoke, the note says.  It is all taken care of, the note says.  You might want to air out the upstairs.

This is becoming a saga.

No poo-related misadventures today, but a guy hit himself in the leg with a saw and they hauled him off to the hospital, so.  Things are never not exciting around here.

In other, less bloody news, I got a nifty gifty in the mail yesterday from THE NETHERLANDS!  Sweet, right?  Only don't click on the moat-link in that post because it'll just bring you back here and then you'll be caught in an infinite loop.

In which I am weary of my castle

This thing with the moat is getting way less fun.  It was actually only fun in the first place because I could go around saying I have a moat!  And that has about eight seconds worth of appeal.

ANYhoodle, 98% of this story will involve poop, so if that offends you you should probably turn away now.  Still here?  Ok.  So since this started we've been all, Should we be doing laundry, should we be running the dishwasher, but we assumed they would tell us if we shouldn't because we live upstairs.  But today they turned the water off without telling us, so after I unwittingly wasted my only flush on a pee, I took a huge poo and had no way of dealing with it.  Also, I had to pee again.

A surprising number of people recommended peeing in the moat, which, guys, it is AROUND MY HOUSE.  Besides which, I already sort of inadvertently did that yesterday.

So I mentioned how one of the guys knocked a hole in a ground pipe so that the pipe had a little skylight, through which we could watch our toilet-flushings flush, right?  Ok so yesterday I took a poo and then peeked out the window just to check seriously I don't watch every time I flush.  But it's a lucky thing I did this time, because apparently they had unhooked a pipe in preparation for fixing it but then did not fix it and a bunch of water came rushing out of the pipe onto the ground and I'm pretty sure my poops were in it.

Luckily, there were no dudes around at that time, and somewhere during that day they fixed the pipe (probably because they found poops in the moat).  But surriously, I am too old for these sorts of adventures. 

Where are my crocodiles and where is my drawbridge?

HA!  I thought I'd been totally negligent and not mentioned the flood in the basement AT ALL yet, but I definitely did.

SO!  Flood in the basement = we have a moat.  This is not a euphemism for something less medieval, we have an honest-to-goodness moat.  I could put crocodiles in it to eat the prowlers and any fractious serfs. 

I do not understand the ins and outs of house repair, but something something draining something ok, I can't even pretend but apparently all the things that have to be replaced are right hard by our house, and a good bit down.

So.  A moat.

It goes around the whole house and is about half as deep as I am tall and as wide as maybe three of me and the other day there was a guy in there with a blow-torch (also not a euphemism.  Seriously, a blow-torch, and he was torching things).

There are dudes all over the lawn all the time now.  And the other day the house shook and whatever machine was machinating stopped and there was a bunch of general cursing and then someone who sounded managerial swore AT someone and now there is a hole in one of the ground pipes so that when we flush our toilet, you can look out the window and watch it go.  I try not to have the poops when the lawn-dudes are around, but I refer you to above: they are here all the time.

Also here was a wood chipper, because apparently if your house floods you need to cut down the tree that is furthest from the problem, and chip its ass.

I imagine that for the basement troll (who is now the swamp troll, due to the basement's swampy nature) these past few weeks have been hell on wheels, but aside from the near-constant noise, the inability to walk around our curtainless kitchen in my ratty jammies, and my chronic need to furtively photograph the vehicles, we haven't been too inconvenienced.  Sometimes I dream about owning a house, but in times like these I am only too grateful that renters aren't responsible shit.