Category: Odds and Ends

All In Just A Few Short Hours

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

After work yesterday I went to the school to sit in on the EMT class.  Last night was a very long, drawn-out, not terribly succinct lecture on anatomy, given by sir stutters-a-lot.  It was good review, but I remembered pretty much everything he talked about.

Mr. Williams gave “the kids” the test in groups.  I can’t remember if we took it in groups or individually, but I think they should have to take it as individuals.  I hung around in the front of the room with the other non-students and watched and waited.  I helped grade the tests, which most of the kids stood around and watched because they wanted to know how they did.

They seemed to be under the misimpression that I’m someone special, because they kept asking me questions.

Can we look at the test papers again and see what we missed? I don’t know you’ll have to ask Johaun. (Johaun, pronounced Joe-Hahn, is the Teachers Assistant)

Will we review the tests in class? I doubt it, but you could ask Johaun about it.

Will there be another test on Wednesday night? I don’t think so, but maybe.

What will it be about?  I don’t know.  You’ll have to ask Johaun.  Now stop talking to me, I’m trying to grade this test.

Are you sensing a trend yet?  Johaun is the TA.  Johaun is the man who knows the plan (assuming there really is a plan.)  Johaun is the one with the authority.  I’m only putting on an act while I wield the red pen.

~~~~~

I didn’t get home until nearly 10:00.  I hadn’t had dinner.  I didn’t have any clothes ironed and ready to wear today.  My kitchen was a mess and all the cat food bowls were dirty as were both of my blenders; which I would need this morning for feeding my household.

I changed clothes and went into the bathroom to… take care of business.  While I was sitting there, Mischa came wandering in and stood on his back legs putting his front legs on my knee and asking for some attention.  I noticed a significant amount of mucous in the corner of his right eye, so I used a tissue to wipe that away and scratched his head a little bit.  He walked away and came back a few minutes later.  I noticed that his eye lid was glistening and he was blinking his eye a lot, keeping it closed more than opened.  I scooped him up and held him in my arms and said, “you’re not going to like this very much, but hopefully it will help you” before I dripped a few drops of Visene is his eye.  I was right, he didn’t like it much.  I was wrong, it didn’t help any.  I looked into his eye but I didn’t see any obvious injuries or problems.  It looks like the corner of his eye, might be cut or torn slightly, leaving a larger space than his left eye, but I may just be imagining it.  If the favoring and/or discharge persists, we’ll have to make a dreaded trip to the vets office.  He’ll like that even less.

I quickly emptied, refilled and started the dishwasher.  I chopped the green onions and cilantro that would go into my Chicken A l’Orange that I had for dinner.  Fortunately, I had some left over rice in the refrigerator so I didn’t have to cook that too.  While the Chicken was browning I mixed a cocktail that I discovered a week ago at The Olive Garden.  Citron Vodka with Lemoncello and Strawberry puree.  Really tasty.  Really fun to make.  Really shouldn’t have bought the stuff to make it at home, but I digress.

I ate dinner while watching Live with Regis and Kelly.  It’s their 10th anniversary and naturally Gelman, the producer, is making a big hoopla about it.  I used to watch Live with Regis and Kathy Lee every day, but I really watched it for Kathy Lee and I only stuck around after her departure out of idle curiosity and just long enough to find out who would replace her.  I started recording the show again yesterday, because after 117 years on the air, Regis Philbin is finally retiring… Apparently.  I’m curious about how things will go and who will replace him.  (In my opinion they should just end the show, but what do I know.)

Chris Colfer from Glee was one of their guests and they played a clip from tonight’s show.

SPOILER ALERT:  Kurt and Blaine are standing at a counter in a coffee shop.  Blaine orders, “I’ll have a tall regular drip and a [I forget the name of the actual drink] for this guy.  And let’s get one of those [insert some cookie or pastry item here] to share, please.” He takes out his wallet and begins fishing for the money to pay for his order.

Kurt has an astonished look on his face as Blaine turns and looks at him.  “You know my coffee,” Kurt says disbelieving.

“Of course I do silly,” Blaine says while Kurt reaches into his pocket for the cash.  Blaine smiles sweetly while looking Kurt in the eyes and tells him to put his money away before walking out of frame with his coffee and cookie.

Kurt looks at the cashier as he reaches for his coffee drink and says, “This is my new favorite holiday.”

AND, SCENE.

Kurt has an astonished look on his face as Blaine turns and looks at him.  “You know my coffee,” Kurt says disbelieving, as I say to no one in particular, “OF COURSE HE DOES, stupid.  He’s in love with you and has been since the day you met.”

I ironed my clothes for today and I went to bed.

I dreamed.

~~~~~

I was at the school, sitting at one of the tables, grading a test.  Students were around and talking, but not crowded around me, as was the reality last night.  Other seats at the table which I sat were filled with students, primarily chatting amongst themselves.  I’m aware of a student sitting next to me and as I dream and my unconscious mind must fill the void, the student takes on the form of this guy. –>

My focus is on the paper in front of me.  My right hand holds a pen as I scan the page prepared to mark wrong answers.  My left hand is lightly placed on top of the table, my fingers slightly curled leaving a space below my palm.

As I continue to grade the test I’m aware that the student has placed his hand on the table as well, near my hand, but not touching.  I smile lightly as a tingle runs down my spine.  As my mind narrates the dream and fills in the voids of knowledge and emotion, I’m aware that there has been an unspoken attraction toward this boy and an uncertain perception of reciprocation.  I continue to grade the test.

After a brief, trepidatious moment – perhaps he was testing the waters – he lifts his hand off of the table and slides it under my arm, placing his hand back on the table on the nearer side of mine.  He scoots his chair closer and there is electricity in the air between our bodies.  My smile grows and spreads to my eyes as I briefly redirect my gaze at his strong, sinewy hand, which grazes ever so slightly against my thumb.  I return my attention to the test.  I don’t know exactly what is happening, but I like it.

After another moment, perhaps because I have not resisted, perhaps because he sees my smile, he turns his hand over and slides it under mine, interlacing his fingers with mine.  I stop grading the test and I turn my head to look at this boys handsome, sweet face.   As I look at him, he turns and looks back at me with the kindest eyes I think I’ve ever seen and he smiles a smile that conveys so much innocence and sincerity.  I am taken aback for a moment as I realize the air of casualness with which he performed this act of simple affection, completely devoid of any self-consciousness.  I realize that while I was aware of his presence and his movements, I was not aware that he had been engaged in conversation with another student, the entire time and this feels like the most natural thing in the world.

The class ends and he asks to meet me at my house.  I have to make a stop on the way so I tell him I’ll see him there.  As we part ways I begin to worry.  I’m not your stereo typical gay man.  I’m not out, running around looking for the next hook up, the next easy lay.  I want a relationship with substance and commitment.  What if I misread his intention.  What if he just wants to fool around and then move on?

I stand in front of my apartment door, knowing, inexplicably, that he is inside waiting for me.  I’m nervous and anxious about what I’ll find on the other side of the door, but I know what I want to say and I’m optimistic about his reaction.

I open the door and look inside and there he is, sitting on my couch looking happily toward me as I walk in, encouraged about the direction this conversation will take, hopeful that he wants more than just a casual fling.

I walk in, close the door behind me…

And then I woke up.

~~~~~

Today, I am sad.

Sock It To Me

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

I’ve had a fairly uneventful couple of days.  And yet, I don’t know where the time went.  I feel like I don’t have a handle on things right now.  Not in a depressive, woah is me, kind of way exactly.  Just, time seems to run out all the time.  I don’t know where the time went and why I didn’t get more done with it.

Friday night I stayed up way too late working on my socks.  I finished them, except for the “grafting” at the end.  I didn’t know what that meant, or how it is done.  I mentioned that to Juana the other day and she said something about alternating knitting and purling and she threw out the name of some technique the name of which I can’t seem to remember, but makes me think of Kussmaul, which isn’t right because that’s the name of a type of breathing that relates to Insulin shock (excess sugar in the system) and has absolutely nothing to do with knitting – Clearly.

I brought the socks in today and Juana showed me how to finish them off.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it again, but at least I know who to ask next time, too.

But I stayed up until after 2:00 in the morning working on them and then slept until after noon on Saturday.  That’s a good way to lose valuable time right there.

On Saturday, I got up with a plan which very quickly fell by the wayside.  I ate some breakfast and watched TV while I worked on my menu for the week.  Well, I guess really I worked on my menu for the week while I ate breakfast and watched TV.  It was supposed to be a quick process but I was easily distracted and it took a few hours to complete the menu and my grocery list and head out to shop.  By the time I made the three stops I needed to make and came home with my loot it was after 8:00 and I still needed to take a shower.  My lofty plans of eating a healthy dinner of Salmon and Brown Rice were shot and I ended up eating left over pizza instead.

One of my stops on Saturday was at Bed, Bath and Beyond where I bought a flour sifter.  I had to go there because much to my surprise, I could not find one at Target.  I needed the flour sifter because Sunday morning I made scones.  I have been craving scones like my mother used to make, for years.  Not that there’s anything particularly special about the way my mother makes them, just that they were always hot and fresh and she put about fifteen times more sugar in them than the recipe calls for (which is only about one and half teaspoons.)

It’s not even a special recipe; it comes from the Betty Crocker cookbook.  The problem is, my Betty Crocker cookbook doesn’t have the scone recipe in it and my mother packed up all her cookbooks when she bought her house several years ago and they’re all stored in her attic where she can’t get to them and therefore couldn’t obtain the recipe for me.  Surprisingly it’s much harder to find on-line than you might think and I’ve been without a good scone recipe for years… until now.

You see, a couple of weeks ago, I had some bananas that were on their last leg and needed to be used or go to waste, so I made banana bread.  The recipe I have for banana bread calls for buttermilk.  I love buttermilk food products, but I detest buttermilk, go figure.  The smallest container I could buy of buttermilk was a quart and the banana bread calls for 1/2 cup.  Having a significant amount of left over buttermilk I needed to find some more recipes to use it in.  So I made biscuits.  They were pretty good.  A little denser and less flakey than I like.  I believe I over kneaded them.  I’ll know for next time.

I still had half a quart of buttermilk left and I needed to find something else to make.  I found an app on my iPhone for a recipe finder where you type in an ingredient and it gives you recipe options.  I found several recipes for blueberry muffins and I love blueberry muffins.  I lost track of which recipe was which and soon I ended up with a cream cheese muffin recipe that sounded really good but wasn’t a “blueberry” recipe.  I decided to take my chances and make it blueberry anyway, only not really knowing what I was doing and not wanting to get too far overboard I only used a 1/2 cup of blueberries for the whole recipe.  They did turn out pretty well but I wasn’t sure if there were enough blueberries so when I brought some into work the next day I offered my coworkers some “Theoretically Blueberry, Absolutely Cream Cheese Muffins.”  Theoretically blueberry, because there was a very real chance of someone getting a muffin with no actual blueberries in it.

While searching for buttermilk recipes and finding blueberry muffins, I also found a recipe for scones.  So I had to make them.  And I did.  And they were deeelishus.  And too many of them.  And too fattening.  I ate them while watching Winter Wipeout (which is not something I can crochet or knit while watching if I want to get the full effect) and while gearing up for my afternoon with Lil’B.

I wasn’t really sure what to do with him and I’m running low on creativity these days.  I started thinking about movies and thought he might like to see Tron: Legacy, but I wasn’t sure.  I don’t know that much about it and I never saw Tron so I didn’t really know if it was appropriate for him.  I put it out to Twitter because anytime you need a question answered you turn to Twitter, right? No?  Hmmm…  I asked “Any reason for a 9 yo to not see Tron?”  I got one answer, hours later, which simply said that if he has a short attention span he won’t be able to get through it.  I think the GI Joe fiasco last year proved that’s not a problem.

I arrived at Lil’B’s house to find a herd of people.  His uncle and his family, from Bakersfield, was visiting.  I wouldn’t have been surprised to have been sent away without Lil’B under the circumstances, but that thought never seemed to cross anyone’s mind.  While Lil’B was finishing getting ready some of his little cousins asked me what we were going to do.  I told them I wasn’t really sure and it depended on if Lil’B had something he wanted to do, and then I said, we might just go to a movie.  They started asking what movie and one of them suggested Tron: Legacy.  Lil’B came out of his room, ready to go and I asked him if he had anything specific he wanted to do.  He said, “I don’t know.” (Naturally)  I asked him if he had any interest in seeing Tron and he said, “I don’t know.” (Naturally) And then another of his cousins spoke up, “Ooo. Go see Little Fockers,” he said enthusiastically.  I missed bits and pieces of their conversation but I heard something about “shot in his penis” and this was funny, apparently.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  Little Fockers is rated PG-13 and Lil’B is only 9.  But his mother doesn’t care about such things and he has seen more than a few movies that were rated above his age bracket.  The movie was actually pretty good, though there were things about it that were a bit above his maturity level and I was a little uneasy from time to time.  After the movie I asked him what his favorite part of the movie was and he said it was when Jack and Greg got into a fight at the kids’ birthday party that had them thrashing about in a ball pit.  I asked him if he had any thoughts about or questions about anything that he heard or saw in the movie and he said he did not.  I hope that means he didn’t think much of the sexual innuendo and questionable moments and not that he was embarrassed to ask.

When I dropped him off his cousins and uncle were still at the house and the young boys came rushing up to ask what we had done.  Angel told them we saw Little Fockers and then he went into the bathroom.  The boys turned to me and asked “How do you get a big brother?”

I told them I didn’t really know.  “I know how to become a big brother.  I don’t know how to get a big brother.”

“I want a big brother!” one of them said.

And then the other said, “I want you to be my big brother!”

I was surprised.  “You do?” I asked.  “Why?”

He answered with a big grin on his face, “Because!  You’re cool!”