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This OT is Having a W(h)ine and Cheese Kinda Night

You ever have one of those days where every emotion is right there beneath the surface, just waiting for something inoccuous to bring it spewing out? Yeah, it’s been one of those kinda days. 

So, to calm my nerves, I’m self-medicating with some Moscato. You know, the kind that comes in single-serving bottles that are actually like a kiddie-sized serving? Yeah, that kind. And some super fancy Sargento “lite” string cheese. But more cheese than wine – I have to get up early tomorrow.

So, Persephoneers, how is your week going so far? Are you counting the hours until the weekend yet?

By [E]queSarahSarah

Part-time artist, full-time crankypants who dabbles in knitting, running, and burpees.

68 replies on “This OT is Having a W(h)ine and Cheese Kinda Night”

After 70 (approximately) times of pressing F5 and sweating carrots (Dutch verb), I managed to get two very much wanted (they were supposed to be a gift for boyfriend freckle’s birthday nine months ago) tickets for the Lowlands festival. Three days of camping, dancing, concerts, films, acts and so on. Yes!

And my tax return is higher than expected. So I would say it’s a pretty okay week.

I’m trying not to freak out.

BF and I moved into an apartment 1.5 weeks ago, and I’ve been busting my ass to get it unpacked and liveable… I need that sort of thing to be able to do work here and, as a graduate student, I work from home.

He’s leaving on Friday. For the second weekend in a row. (Both necessary trips, but that doesn’t make it any more fun to be alone in a new city with this huge to-do list to do that I can’t ignore)… There’s really only one room left packed up and it’s the living room. It’s his domain because it’s electronics, and his leather bound books, and the art, etc. But the rest is done, and by gawd you couldn’t tell we just moved in… (cuz das how I roll)

Ok, that’s the back story. The story: I woke up at 830 and the ENTIRE HOUSE looks like we moved in yesterday again. I KNEW this would happen when he started unpacking the living room, but REALLY? This much? THE ENTIRE HOUSE? I couldn’t move around the kitchen to make us breakfast. When I tripped over the crock pot on the floor I was like “ok, I’ll be in my studio for the rest of the day…” AND GUESS WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I WENT IN MY STUDIO… JUST GUESS. OK I’LL TELL YOU. It’s COVERED with shit. I had an Abed like moment (see attached) and was all like “DOES NOT COMPUTE.” I told him I needed him to help me get everything out of my office and that I’ll be in there for the rest of the day.

Mind you, I JUST finished my office yesterday JUST SO THAT I could start to work on my paper that is now do in 2 weeks.

(not to mention that this paper is on philosophy of illness, and is essentially a phenomenology of my disease alongside working with a new and difficult philosopher who write on auto immunity and identity OH YEA AND I JUST GOT DIAGNOSED WITH AN AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE.)

Ok, the chances of me freaking out are less now… Not gone, but less.. How’s that for whine?

HA! Thank you for justifying my total cray. Luckily, he knew that I was about to lose my mind and was totally fine with me locking myself in… away from the cluttery-cray. I just kept repeating to myself, “different people have different ways of doing things… different people have different ways of doing things….”

(BTW: He left the living room, though not fully unpacked, straightened and neat and navigable. Because he loves me (and does not want the cray to come out).)

Oooh I hate that (especially because I always end up shoving all the odds and ends and random things into a back room when unpacking from a move and then when I DO finally confront it, it messes up the entire house all over again). It also happens (to me) when I do a big clean and somehow everything gets way worse before it resembles orderly again… I once stayed up cleaning/putting things away until 330am because I knew I didn’t want to wake up to it. I wanted to wake up to clean. It was… maybe a little cray… but WORTH IT

He always looked like that. Tangelo cat was perpetually cute. (The official word from the vet was that it had something to do with him having Siamese in his blood lines and having dark lines around his eyes that made them look bigger)

I am having a fantabulous week.  I got the job in my dream district after initially getting an e-mail saying they’d hired someone else.  What a pleasant surprise on Monday morning.  :)

Now I need to find an apartment to live in!  Any tips on things I should be looking out for?  I already know I need a place that allows cats.  One place has been bumped to the bottom of my list because they want cats declawed.  Assholes.

Freshman and Sophomore English.  I was kind of hoping that since I’m only teaching three classes, they’d all be the same grade and I’d only have one prep, but…eh.  At my last teaching job, I had four-six preps depending on the semester.  Two is definitely an improvement.

GUYS there is a research vessel of sorts (has no engines, needs to be towed around) that looks like a narwhal in boat form that fills with water to intentionally sink and TIP VERTICALLY FOR WEEKS ON END.  And it’s stable!  And people do research on it!  All the furniture is on lazy-susan type things and spin to remain in useful positions!  THIS IS SO COOL:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP  Video here: http://sio.ucsd.edu/voyager/flip/flip1_high.html

Yup, living with my parents and sister is like that. Every. Single. Day. Today was embarassing and awful because of it, but I had a mostly lovely Sunday and tomorrow will be lovely too, so I think everything gets balanced out, right?

Also, where does one get tiny wine bottles? I’ve seen them in 2/3 serving bottles (which is why Sunday was so lovely) but a single-serving one would be great. Kind of like a grown-up juicebox.

Yes. Yes they do. Although most people (read: people who are still trying to be classy adults while drinking wine from a juicebox) just use the little tear-away aluminum tab like those boxes of coconut water and pour it into a glass. But where’s the fun in that?!

Sutter Home sells wine in four-packs of single-serving little bottles.  It’s not great wine by any standard, but they have Merlot, Cab, and a few types of white wines.  Barefoot also sells four-packs, but I couldn’t even choke it down.  I’m sure there are other brands, too.  And, if the liquor store in Oakley, BFE Kansas sells them, I’m sure you can find them wherever you’re at.

I am more stressed and worried than emotional.  Maybe after next week, when school is out and the reality of my new job in the fall hits, my emotions will surface.  That is when I will take a mikes hard cranberry juice poured over pineapple.  Delish and goes down like water.

Im doing the wine thing too! I have myself a bottle of my favorite affordable Riesling, and now I’m thinking about getting the espresso-rubbed cheese out of the fridge. It’s soooo good, but I don’t know how it would go with the wine. Only one way to find out, I suppose!

I thought it would be awful, but it turns out it’s amazing! It’s Bella Vitano Esoresso cheese, and the outside is just coated in a very fine layer of ground espresso. It’s savory with a hint of sweet smokiness from the espresso. I bought a chunk of it at the grocery store after sampling it and had to go back two days later to buy more.

We’re getting ready for a Big Trip, leaving on Monday, and I’m completely wound up.  Completely.  I’m afraid of how Sofia will be on the airplane, I’m afraid of the last leg of the trip when I’ll be alone with a jet-lagged toddler who hasn’t been able to run around, I’m afraid of the overnight train ride to our final destination with a jet-lagged toddler and a crapton of baggage, I’m afraid of the following two weeks when I’ll be at my mother-in-law’s one-bedroom apartment with me, Sofia, my mother-in-law, her husband, and my grandmother-in-law.  Sofia is an anxious kid to start out with (WONDER WHERE SHE GETS THAT) and I’m afraid it’s going to be really overwhelming for her, and I’m afraid that her grandparents will think that she doesn’t love them or that she’s too American to understand them, I’m afraid that I will lose my crap because I’m wound up and it will be stressful.  So on the agenda for this week:  1) being wound up, 2) planning out as many Sofia activities as possible (including packing several new lip glosses to unveil on the plane when times get tough, because she loves that crap), 3) trying to pack in as efficient a way as possible to make the actual travel easier, and 4) being wound up.

FUN.  PASS ME THE WINE.

Mr. Susan isn’t going with you on the Big Trip? I can’t even imagine how stressful that all must be. I’m stressing over coordinating multiple short trips in a row in the next couple weeks and that has me a mess trying to work out the logistics of it all. So you have my sympathies on trying to work that out with an anxious toddler. It’ll be okay. How long are you going for?

He’s going – but he’s going to ditch us when we have a layover in France, and then meet back up with us after a couple of weeks.  We were all going to go to France (his best friend lives there), but we can’t afford extra flights, and he’s going to take a bus for the last half of the trip.  Which…36 hours on a bus with a toddler would be way, way worse.  All told, it’s going to be a six week trip, but I’m mostly just stressing out about the first two weeks.

Puzzles and/or other fun toys? Everybody likes crayons, right?

My mom would just drug us up with triaminic or dimetapp or whatever night-timey medicine, but I don’t know if that counts for good parenting these days? (We turned out mostly ok though.)

My mom still does that to my sister! I give her hell for it, but honestly, it’s were my mind goes when someone asks what to do with a small child on a trip! Bad Elfity!

Susan, do you have a tablet with games she can play with for the trip, or do you know somebody who would lend you theirs? After she exhausts the lip glosses and other activities, perhaps you can pull out the big guns! Portable DVD players, tablets, iPhones, etc are like crack to most of the kids I know. Not that they’re tiny crack addicts or anything. Oops.

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