Monday is a terrible way to spend 1/7th of your life

Back to Work today. We got along okay today, Work and I, though there is still this low key tension between us. I think Work knows that even when I am there I am not really there, that I am looking at other Works and thinking about them even when I am with Work. I'm not proud of that, but I am the kind of woman  who doesn't have it in her to remain faithful to one Work. I like variety.

Does anyone know a private detective who wants a secretary? I've decided I might make a good Effie Perrine. I see myself wearing smart gray suits with pumps, and having a small black bird statuette on the corner of my desk. I'd keep a large glass ashtray in the office and crack wise with the customers.

Or perhaps I may take up dog walking. I like dogs! I like walking. Being a professional stroller might help me drop more of my avoirdupois as well. I could wear jeans all the time, which sounds good.

Other careers that appeal are baker (love baking!) or working for a wine distributor. Probably neither of those is a great idea, I don't need to hang around too many baked goods and I'm more interested in drinking vino than distributing it.

The Soup Diet

Today was a supremely lazy day. We didn't leave home. We sat in the back yard reading books and taking naps and hanging out. We also wrote a large check to the guy who is going to be doing our landscaping work in a few weeks. Wooh, writing those big checks is traumatic. Unlike things which are easy come-easy go, money is so hard to come by, but goes out so quickly!

Yesterday a Good Elf brought my poor sick husband some soup! Thanks Toni, he needs someone to be nice to him, which I haven't been doing a very good job of lately. He said it was good soup!

Speaking of soup, Crystal Thai, up the road, makes the best Tom Yung Gai. I have started to crave it once a week. Maybe in the summer I will quit cooking entirely and only eat the tom yung gai from there and the gazpacho from Mari Luna. Just those two soups would give me everything I need: chicken, vegetables, delicious spiciness, yummy limey goodness. Darn, my mouth is watering!

WAR!

Today I ran away.

First, I emptied out the area under the kitchen sink where mouse poop had been sighted and scrubbed and bleached and threw away things that had teeny tiny mouse tooth marks. Then, taking advantage of my rage-induced energy I dragged the fridge out of its bay and changed the water filter and vacuumed and cleaned everything. Whoa damn, it felt good to get those nasty chores out of the way.

The rage came from the fact that I was pissy about the taxes, and you know how once you are mad, you can be mad about everything someone has done since the Year Dot? Well, last week I was in bed and Thomas came in, turned on the light, and informed me, in a voice full of Portent and Doom, that he thought we had mice in the kitchen because he thought he saw mouse poop. To which I said, basically, "Yuk. Well, clean it up."

But no cleaning up was done and when I had a peek today to find indeed, mouse turds under the sink, I thought about having a hissy and screaming and stuff. But really, what good does it do? WAR! Whu-ut is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again! WAR!

War doesn't help. Getting all Valkyrie on his ass about the kitchen when what I am really angry about is the taxes is immature and pointless (not that I can't do immature and pointless with the best of them). But I am TRYING to be a grownup and Use My Words and remember to breathe like we learn at YOGA. So, I asked him to go upstairs and finish the taxes and I tackled the Problem Areas.

And then I ran away. I took myself out to lunch, went to the library, read for a couple of hours sitting in my car. It was all very lazy and calming and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I came back with a much improved attitude to a clean kitchen and taxes that had been submitted.

Win!

Guess who is married to The Sickest Man?

Tonight I read John Green's new book, The Fault In Our Stars. For the final half hour it took me to complete it I had tears streaming down my face and soaking into my shirt. It was so good, funny, and sad, and full of all kinds of wisdom about death and living, and I enjoyed it. Not as much as I loved An Abundance of Katherines, but very, very much. With TFIOS, John Green goes back to the tragicomic style he used in his first novel, Looking For Alaska, with teenagers struggling with the big questions:

Why are we here?

What is the meaning of life and death?

Why do we suffer?

What will I leave behind me when I go?

I am all dehydrated from the crying, but I actually feel better than I did when I came home from work with a huge case of the grumpies. I got home to find the dogs hungry and dying for a pee while Thomas was upstairs watching tv and having his cold *cof, cof*

I sympathize with his not feeling well and not wanting to give them a proper walk, but he couldn't even be arsed to go downstairs, feed them and put them in the yard?

There is also the fact that although it is the Ides of April and our taxes are NOT filed. They are done in the computer and it would only take a little to file them but Thomas isn't ready to let them go. I truly do not understand where his mind is when it comes to the taxes...we finished them a month ago but he wanted "to look them over again," and now it is almost tax day and they aren't filed. And now he is the Sickest Man on Earth and was Too Tired and Sick to punch the keys it would have taken to file them today.

Right now, I am thinking about spitting in his next cup of peppermint tea. 

First Him Then Me Still Me Now Him Again

All last week Thomas had a tickly sort of feeling he was getting a cold, but nothing much materialized. Then I got a for real cold, followed by an ear that is completely blocked up and painful. It is feeling better, but I am still poorly, and now Thomas has a full-blown case of "the lurgie" (as my friend Sam calls it).

Welcome to Plague House!

In the past week I have been watching all kinds of series on Netflix. We watched Life with D. Lewis. I watched all of Father Brown from back in the 70s and a series of Tommy and Tuppence from back when Francesca Annis was just a Young Thing.

Now we are back to season 3 of Murdoch. I love this show. Yannick Bisson is the handsome, Crabtree is sweetly appealing, and I've always had a thing for red-headed Englishmen, so I like the Captain too. But really, I think the prettiest thing about the show is the beautiful Helene Joy, who plays the Doctor, William's coroner inamorata. She's red headed and freckled, and I swear, when she appears on screen you can hear angelic choirs singing "AAAAAAAaaaaaah," while faeries drop pixie dust on her beautiful skin and hair.

Anyway, the show is also very funny.