His song “Feliz Navidad” kept me awake behind the steering wheel tonight.

I attended a business dinner tonight at Rosa Mexicano - the Union Square location. Everything was quite delicious and I brought home some filet mignon with mushroom cream sauce as well as pan-seared Chilean sea bass in a chili/pineapple/passionfruit sauce. I had a pomegranate margarita (soooo good) and coconut flan for dessert. Mmmm. Everyone I work with is so cool. We sat there for three hours just talking, and barely talked about work at all. There was, like, BONDING going on. People were sharing pet photos on cell phones and talking about favorite sitcoms from their youths and house renovations and holiday shopping… it was good times.

Then I went back to Hoboken to catch a train home. It was 9:20 and the next train was the 10:04. I should’ve been home at 10:40. But no. Another train had some technical difficulties and we had to pick up their passengers along the way. The people from that train who got in my train car were only three in number. They were loud and obnoxious and drunk, though.

Two guys, and a girl named Stephanie. I know this only because her husband - the drunker of the two guys - kept saying her name in conversation. He was the real star of the show. I don’t know him, but he’s someone I’ve chosen to hate. I am still a negatively charged ion, so it’s a little better to direct this hatred outward towards someone who is mildly deserving of it, rather than back in on myself for another day. Right?

SO - Drunkey McDrunk started asking his equally drunk buddies, “What time do we land in Montclair?”

What time do we land in Montclair. Wow.

Neither one of his cohorts knew because - hell! - they were drunk as f**k too, on a Wednesday night. They weren’t college kids either. This guy was pushing forty, it would appear. McDrunk asked his friend McStupid to ask the train people what time the train LANDS. McStupid opened the door of the car and asked the crew members, “What time do we land in Montclair?”

To their credit, they didn’t laugh. The male NJ Transit employee just repeated, “What time do we land? Oh. We ARRIVE in Montclair at 10:42 since the train is 8 minutes behind.”

McDrunk didn’t like this answer much, and started LOUDLY proclaiming, “This is the LONGEST F**KING TRAIN RIDE EVER!!!” Mrs. McDrunk asked him to quiet down since she takes this train sometimes and doesn’t want him embarrassing her. He said, “Yeah?? Well, why don’t you f’in BLOW ME!!!” and then LAUGHED hysterically and commented to McStupid, “See how I showed her who’s in charge? That’s right. Make out or read. Make out or shut up.”

I don’t even know what that last part means, but I don’t think I need to. More disturbing than his comments was the fact that his wife laughed at this. She then offered to call the cab company to pick them up from the train station and drive them the rest of the way home (props to her for having the wits about her to think this much ahead and know they were in no state to drive home.) She was being connected by her cell phone directory assistance and McDrunk made her hang up the phone. She asked him why. He replied that she would be too nice and that if they wanted the cab to come get them in time, HE should call and “f’k with them so they know I mean business.”

Uh-huh. He was also drinking a Heineken out of a bottle on the train (it’s allowed) and started dry-puffing his cigarette on the train since he was already informed by the train crew that there was no smoking on the train and he “really need[s] some f’ing nicotine.” He got the hiccups and McStupid made a comment about that. McDrunk shot back, “First I hiccup, then I punch. And anything that gets in my way is getting f’ing obliterated. The hiccups are a warning.”

Luckily, they got off a mere two stops later. I wrote this all down in the notebook I had from my meetings today so I wouldn’t forget this precious experience, and now I am sharing it with you.

This compulsion to write things down is getting stronger again and happening more and more often. I always carry a little notebook and if, by some chance, I don’t have it with me, it’s usually pretty easy to find a receipt or a scrap of paper to write on. Granted that I have a pen, I can even do without paper and use the back of my hand as a writing surface or canvas in a pinch… if there’s something I feel I need to remember.

It’s just after midnight and I need to get to sleep. I’m really rather awake now since driving home - and singing “Feliz Navidad” with Mr. Feliciano - really helped me wake up again. I only had one margarita and that was at 6:30, so there was never any danger of that effecting me. Though my head was spinning a little when I took my last drag of margarita through the cocktail straw and caught a “vein” of tequila that had been floating atop the icy concoction as it melted. It wasn’t water, that’s for damn sure.

My feet hurt, my eyes are tired, and I have cramps. But my belly is full of tasty foods, tomorrow is Thursday, and perhaps today marks the beginning of the Pendulum of Suck swinging the other way.

Several unpleasant things happen when you’re severely deprived of sleep - or at least these are the ones by which I’m afflicted today.

I become unable to speak clearly or correctly, I crave carbohydrates since they’re the simplest and easiest for the body to digest and are what the brain wants when it lacks other basics, my eyelids twitch, my equilibrium is off, I’m superbly irritable and sensitive to light and sound, and I get the chills and shivers. Time for some hot tea and today’s Netflix arrival - “Dark City.”

It’s raining, I just changed my sheets to my winter flannel knit ones, and bed should be divinely cozy.

One story… or is it two? I can’t remember. Um. Well, one thing was that an elderly woman with horribly dry bleached hair (looked like blonde Brillo pad) on the train spent the entire ride talking to her apparently ancient mother (judging by the age of the daughter and assuming the mother was 18 or 19 when she gave birth to her… 90-something?)

At every train station on the way, this woman would inform her mother via cell phone, in a very loud Jersey voice, “Ma - I just passed Bay Street… Ma - I just passed Glen Ridge…” etc. THEN, she was so busy telling her about how nice the new upholstery in the train was that she missed her stop. When she noticed that something felt wrong, she stood up from her seat with the cell phone still glued to her cheek and said, to no one in particular and obviously knowing the answer herself since the train has an electronic sign that displays the next stop, “What was that stop? Was it Walnut Street? Was it?” I think everyone ignored her except for a man who’d just gotten on at Walnut Street and didn’t know any better.

The next five minutes consisted of this woman complaining about missing the stop and how she didn’t hear the announcement, “I don’t think they made one, Ma!” Then she decided she was going to call her husband from the station near his work. Crisis was averted and she switched gears to complaining about some town Christmas concert for which she reserved tickets but never picked them up. Since she didn’t pick them up, they sold them to someone else and all she got were general admission tickets and she was bitching that they don’t guarantee seating and her husband can’t stand with his bad knee and blah blah blah. She was making me even more nauseated, so I was glad when my stop came, I got off and she kept going.

That’s today’s little taste of Jersey.

Today is going a little better thus far, but not by much.

Despite the ungodly hour at which I finally fell asleep for a 6 a.m. waking (it was 2:38 when I decided to turn my alarm clock 90 degrees so I wouldn’t have to see it) I was up. I was dizzy in the shower and had to hold myself up against the wall, but I managed to maintain that bastion of Western human culture, PERSONAL HYGIENE.

I even had a banana and some very sweet milky coffee. I went outside to get into my car and drive to the train station: wait. Where’s my car? Crap. It’s in the garage, where my brother hooked it up to a battery charger. There are four cars outside of the garage belonging to various other members of my family and the likelihood of actually getting them to MOVE their cars in the 5 minutes I had was nil. I just broke down crying at the comical cruel ridiculous stupidity of it all.

I asked the parents to move the damn cars so I could leave, knowing full well I would be late, but not knowing what else to do without cash to pay for parking or any other means of transport. I’d just take a later train and get there late. Screw it. I was a little too hysterical for my father to trust that I wouldn’t crash into something driving myself, so he drove me into Hoboken himself. He complained about the traffic the whole way while I was sitting there crying and trying to calm my breathing since I’d been hyperventilating and screaming. It was lovely.

I got into Jersey City JUST in time for the meeting at 8:30, but had no makeup on, puffy eyes, and all that jazz. I came back here (the office) after that meeting, took care of some loose ends and get to go back around 3:00 for another meeting. The fun just won’t QUIT. Nah, actually. The meetings and work are more pleasant than the alternative(s).

Tea is just a lovely curative elixir.
I just had a mug of honeysuckle white tea and some toast.
It made me feel a bit better.
I’m still pretty angry, but I have my clothing laid out for tomorrow and my bag is packed and ready and all should be well.

I wish I had some reflection or realization about today and how I feel that would give me an ounce of peace and help me fall asleep. However, I’m just not finding it. Nothing I can think of is helping me deal, much less cheer up.

Hey - these crap days happen, too. I don’t look for or expect sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. I know that at most I’ll get some lollipops from the bank teller who knows me. There will be no sunshine or rainbows. Or free lunches or pots of gold or Prince Charmings or any of the other fairy tales.

And now I’m really tired and words aren’t making sense anymore. Sleepy time. This tea was good. Tea quotes. There’s an idea.

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world. ~T’ien Yiheng

There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea. ~Bernard-Paul Heroux

If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you. ~Gladstone, 1865

Tea should be taken in solitude. ~C.S. Lewis

If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~Japanese Proverb

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. ~Saki

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. ~Thich Nat Hahn

The first cup moistens my lips and throat. The second cup breaks my loneliness. The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration - all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified. The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither. ~Lu Tung, “Tea-Drinking”

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. ~C.S. Lewis

Today was just one of those days where things did not go right. Or even correctly. I couldn’t sleep last night, took some pills, still couldn’t sleep and then overslept this morning. That meant that I missed the earlier train, barely had time to shower, did NOT have time to iron nice pants and a nice shirt to look presentable for the sales conference, did not have time to put on makeup to cover up the three huge period zits on my face, did not have time for breakfast or to bring lunch, and not time to stop at the bank.

I then got to the train station to discover that there were no parking spaces left (since I missed that earlier train) and had to park like an asshole next to an SUV that was so outside of its parking space that I had to get out the passenger side back door where there was no car and no tree blocking me.

I felt absolutely nauseated during the whole train ride because of the residual sleeping pills in my system, lack of sleep and breakfast and stress. Got to work, unwound a little, had lunch with Krys (she spotted my po’ ass since I had $3 in quarters for the PATH train - and I can spot her later this week, so it works out.)

Then my boss and I went over to the hotel/conference site. Due to my lack of time to iron things, I wasn’t dressed as nicely as anyone and felt like the gross little troll person they brought along to lug things around. The meeting was long, but OK. I just felt uncomfortable the whole time in my clothing and skin and makeup (or lack thereof) and zits. My work friend Kara took my name label sticker and above my name wrote “I ♥” and then below it wrote, “4-evah.” That made me smile and I stuck it on my nice work notebook.

After that, I went back to the PATH to get into Hoboken again to catch the train and that was OK. I was feeling a little light-headed and nauseated from the heat in the PATH and being overdressed for it and being dehydrated and hungry, but whatever. I knew I was going to be home soon and able to eat dinner and do laundry and even drive to the auto parts store and pick up my sideview mirror.

NOPE.

I went to turn on the car and the battery was dead.

In my rush to get out of the car this morning through the back side door and hearing the train coming, I forgot to turn off my headlights entirely (the low setting, not full night driving, and I don’t have daytime running lights, so they didn’t turn off themselves.) So, they were on all day draining my battery. The woman parked next to me asked me if I could move my car since she needed to get in through her passenger door (the SUV that was parked really really close to me since she parked over her dividing lines? Remember from paragraph 2?) and her driver’s side lock was broken.

This was sadly comedic in that her lock was broken and my battery was dead so I couldn’t even move it for her. She wanted to give me a jumpstart, but had no jumper cables and neither did I. She ended up crawling in through her TRUNK (yes, today was the day I got to make other people embarrass themselves, too.)

I called my brother (who took the day off of work today) and he came over and gave me a jump. Then I drove home, hooked up the charger to the battery in the garage and am sitting here feeling absolutely nauseated and unable to eat a thing knowing that I have no money and my brother is now downstairs propositioning my parents to (I think) co-sign a loan for him so he can buy a house. He’s never even had an apartment or lived outside of this home for any period of time, but he’s the lucky bastard who picked a field that pays him handsomely for his work and is able to consider something like this seriously. I have a few quarters in my wallet until tomorrow; he is looking to buy a house.

So I’m feeling quite literally sick with jealousy, self-pity, self-hatred, anger and all kinds of other tasty things. I am ravenous, but I looked in the fridge before and thought I was going to hurl at the thought of consuming anything since in addition to everything above, I’m also pre-menstrual, clinically depressed, and hating my skin, body, hair, weight and everything else about myself at this particular moment in time.

It’s too bad I’ve never followed through with my plan to stick a $20 bill in a book somewhere in my room so when I have moments like this, I know I’m not penniless and can go buy myself some new nail polish or hair dye or a book and cheer myself up, if only a little. Lesson learned: upon direct deposit of funds tomorrow at midnight and subsequent withdrawal, that $20 bill is going into my copy of either the Annotated Alice in Wonderland or Annotated Wizard of Oz. Prolly the Wizard of Oz because it’s green.

I’m going to drink some tea and have a cracker or something. My laundry should be done soon, and I’ll iron a shirt for tomorrow and life will be peachy. Except that I have to be awake at 5:30 tomorrow to dress up and style my hair and eat breakfast since my first meeting at the sales conference is at 8:30 which means I have to catch a 7 a.m. train to work in Hoboken and then get over to the conference site via PATH train… there is no direct method that’s as cheap or convenient for me in my current impoverished state. PATHETIC. FREAKING PATHETIC.

But things will be better later this week. I never did get through to the bank today about that mystery charge. I have some free hours between meetings tomorrow and I can do that then. Perhaps I’ll have some closure there.

The movies page is updated.

Though my little brother just alerted me to the fact that somewhere along the way, I uploaded some old “movies” graphic to the homepage. I’ll have to bring it back to the correct one. Poopies. Right now, I’m using my little sister’s laptop. It’s pretty funny. My little brother, his girlfriend and I are all sitting in the family room, watching “Law & Order: SVU”, with blankets covering our feet and laptops on our laps. Everyone is either coding or typing content for something.

As I may have mentioned, I’m re-reading “The Chronicles of Narnia”. When I read the dedication for “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, I was rather touched and I’m not sure why there was this sudden emotional response to it. But here it is:

My Dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be
your affectionate Godfather,
C.S. Lewis

It almost had me choked up. Maybe it’s something hormonal, or due to incredible amounts of boredom and solitude this weekend, but it made me think about how much changes in terms of imagination and creativity from our childhood days through to adulthood. Even at the age of 18 or 19, I remember thinking how difficult it was to let my imagination run wild. It’s actually been a little better lately - and perhaps it has something to do with a general sense of greater happiness and well-being in my life - but things are still nowhere near where they used to be in my youth.

I love reading the books I enjoyed in my childhood now, though. They do serve as a sort of time machine. While I don’t remember where I was or what I was thinking when I read them originally, I feel blissfully unencumbered by my workaday “adult” worries and other things that get me down normally. Actually, that applies for all books, but childrens’ books have that effect more quickly. I think it might be because the books are written for minds with shorter attention spans that demand greater “pay-off” for the time spent reading. Something has to “happen” in each chapter or young minds will be bored senseless. That’s probably the reason that childrens’ books are great mindful distractions. I started writing this as a paragraph, but I think a list will work far better:

I’m sure there are others I’m not remembering right now, but I’ll leave it at this since I am having trouble concentrating while watching this MST3K since it’s rather funny and I keep laughing or chuckling. The line, “Tell me where your fish lives…” just had my giggling uncontrollably. As did the whole walnut farming theme, but I think you have to watch it to appreciate the loveliness. The robots and Mike Nelson just sang, “Come sit me with me, and Satan too, he’s your friend and mine” as the romantic leads in this movie walked along a brook and sat on a tree stump canoodling to bad 70’s harpsichord music. I can’t explain why it’s funny.

Thanksgiving dinner was a success. Everything was tasty and delicious and dessert was just even more tastiness. No one fought. There was actually laughter at the dinner table - my mother was getting sappy thanking us for supporting her and my little sister piped in with, “Guys - I’d like to thank you for supporting my pregnancy.”

It’s sort of a running inside joke we have. She works as a barista and complains about not making any money, so we tease her about her “second job” as a hooker. Every now and again, we’ll just be sitting eating dinner and someone will ask her, “So… did you get the results back from the clinic yet?” and she’ll pick right up on it and go, “Yeah - thank god. I’m clean. I already told John, my john, and I can come back to work tomorrow.”

Anyway - we watched “Explorers” (1985 - Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix) and “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”… and it’s only 11:00ish, but I’m ready for sleep. I was up at 9:30 baking and cooking and cleaning. I know I did the dishes at least 5 times today, but it could’ve been more. I had to cut all my nails quite short since I sliced one with a vegetable peeler and another with a zester - nothing gross happened and food was not contaminated, but I had to grab the nail clippers right away and cut them down super short. Oh, well.

I’m gonna watch Adult Swim and read a little and tomorrow will be here before I know it. A long day of… not work… and not shopping… and probably lots of leftovers.

Before I say anything else, I just want to reiterate that I LOVE my new job. Love it. Even though today was a half-day and I had three meetings in the 3.5 hours I was there, I did a LOT and felt appreciated for everything I did… two documents I fired out today were called, “Great” by my boss and didn’t require any additional changes or proofreading, and the copy I wrote for another project was praised by a senior copyeditor as being “perfect” since she didn’t need to make a single change to it… in tone or grammar or anything else. Then there was the general sense of well-being around the office the day before Thanksgiving and several people I’ve known for only 6 weeks or so taking the time to find me while they were on their way out to wish me a good holiday. It’s almost utopian in a very corporate way

So… I was home by 1:15 today. I started by creating the brining solution for the turkey. I boiled some vegetable stock with another cup or so of salt, some brown sugar, juniper berries, peppercorns, celery seeds, coriander, dill, and a little ginger (since Alton Brown suggested that addition.)

After that horrible-sounding but very yummy smelling concoction cooled to room temp, I added a gallon of ICE water. I got the thawed turkey from the fridge and pulled out the giblets and whatnot from inside. I also got the Official Household Turkey Bucket. This bucket exists ONLY to house the turkey for the hours it sits bringing prior to roasting.

Turkey –> into bucket. Brining solution –> poured over turkey. I placed a plastic bag over the top of the bucket to prevent any random household whatever from entering the turkey’s solution or the turkey itself. There it sits. Tomorrow morning I will flip it so it’s no longer breast-side down. At around 12:30 tomorrow afternoon, that 18 pounder is going into the oven with some apples and onions and celery shoved inside its gut. Savory. Mmmm.

THEN - it was sweet potato time. I peeled and chunked and boiled them to just under fork-tender. Then they were drained and placed into a large baking dish and I poured over the brown sugar/apple cider/cinnamon/nutmeg mixture that makes them candied. And I baked them. They’re all ready for tomorrow, sitting in the fridge. All I have to do is re-heat and life is good. I prepared string beans for steaming and broccoli rabe for sauteeing with garlic, and tomorrow is also stuffing (or dressing, since it’s not being baked inside the turkey…)

I might try to get a cheesecake baked tonight, too, but I don’t want to push it. I can read instead or watch a movie. Hrm.

Let’s do a little cultural comparison:

Original Video

Family Guy clip

That is all.

My train this morning was 20 minutes late due to police activity at some previous station. As a result, I didn’t get to work until almost 10 a.m.

Work was fine and I stayed until slightly after 6 just because I was in the middle of something and wanted to finish. As a result, I missed the 6:17 train and caught the 6:51 instead. This got me back to the station at 7:35 and then I went to Shop-Rite to buy more pecans for the remaining pie I needed to bake.

IT WAS A MADHOUSE. MY GAWD. I was in line with my two little bags of pecans, a bag of yogurt covered raisins and carrot ginger salad dressing (mmmmm) behind people with carts full of turkeys and potatoes and whatnot. There were no express lanes open. So I was stuck. And the woman behind me kept pushing her cart into my ass and then apologizing. I think she was just nervously rocking it back and forth since she was impatient about being in such a long slow-moving line, and she was sincerely sorry and embarrassed… but GEEZ. Play a game on your cell phone or read a magazine or something. Don’t go running your cart into my ass!

I got home, had some chili from a can over brown rice my mother had made. THEN… the baking began. It was sort of a race. It was 9:00 and my mother had an apple cobbler already IN the oven as well as an apricot tart getting ready to go in. My pecan pie wasn’t even started yet. So I made the caramel - that has a requisite 30 minute cooling period before I add the eggs. Otherwise, the eggs will get cooked by the hot caramel - and trust me when I tell you it neither looks nor smells pleasant.

(To add to the multi-tasking and stress, I also needed to do laundry and have to be at work early tomorrow for the final part of my new employee orientation.)

I finally put the pie in the oven at 10:00, at which point my mother decided it was bedtime and left me there to do the dishes, finish up HER laundry so I could put mine in the washer, and to watch her two pie/cobbler things and pull them out when they were ready. With two oven timers, a dishwasher cycle, a washer cycle and a dryer cycle to pay attention to, I couldn’t dare let myself get engrossed in my newest book find… The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

It’s damn good so far. I started reading it last night and then couldn’t put it down on the train this morning or during lunch or on the ride home. However, there were many interruptions, so I’m not as far along as I would have been if I’d been able to read for a solid block of time. Grrr. I’d be done by now, really, since I’m halfway there right now. I hate to use the term that made me put off reading it for so long, but it really is “literary vampire fiction.”

It’ll suit a craving for a good historical fiction, good fiction in general… if you like the fiction of Umberto Eco or Arturo Perez Reverte, or if you liked The Rule of Fouryou should dig this.

Tomorrow I will upload a picture of the pie I baked tonight. It’s truly one of the more beautiful caramel pecan pies I’ve baked. Too bad it’s already betrothed to a friend or I’d keep it.

Here’s my little bit of meditative thought for tonight. (It’s raining and I can’t help it…)

To make caramel, you take water and sugar in a 1 to 4 ratio and put them in a saucepan over medium heat. You have to keep stirring and stirring as the sugar and water heat up so that the sugar doesn’t burn and stick to the bottom of the pan. Also, it helps to dissolve the sugar into the water more quickly. While I was making the caramel tonight, I noticed that there’s something really beautiful and magical about the chemistry taking place in this little bit of cooking. As I stir and stir, for the longest period of time the sugar and water just create a cloudy sort of mixture** that I have to keep stirring. After a while, my wrist gets tired and I switch hands or stir clockwise instead of counterclockwise, etc.

There’s a point, though, where I’ll start to see streaks of clarity in the cloud of sugar and water as I stir through it with the wooden spoon. Within seconds of this first streak of clarity - where the sugar and water are actually becoming a syrup - the entire mixture clarifies and is no longer water with crystals of sugar suspended in it, but a lovely homogeneous liquid that’s clear and sweet and ready to caramelize into something beautiful and amber or honey-colored. It’s at this point that I sometimes like to take a fork and dip the tines quickly into the syrup and quickly pull it up while blowing on it… if the speed and consistency are right, I’ll end up with little angel hair strands of sugar that solidify instantly and are just really cool to look at.

This struck me as something a little more meaningful than simple food chemistry. Something about clouds and clarity and heat and work and sweetness. I’m not going to spell it out because it will sound like a cheesy self-help book or some horrible Hallmark card. But take from this little description what you will.

I have to catch the early train, so it’s bedtime for me.

(**I’m NOT going into solution versus suspension or whatever right here, folks!)

(Not the movie…)

I think that Alka Seltzer Nose and Throat KICKS Theraflu’s Cold and Severe Congestion formula’s ASS!!

Tastes better, seems to work better - or I’m just getting better.

Huh. My whole theory might be shot to hell if that’s the case.

Nevermind.