i made peanut sauce

... and it was delicious! Most of the time, without a recipe, or without watching someone else make the food before I try making it myself, a dish will be an utter disaster. This time I must say I did well with just a rumbly in my tumbly and some basic ingredients:

1. Start with a small frying pan and place it on the stove on medium heat.
2. Add a layer of sesame oil, and a healthy drizzle of honey.
   
3. As the oil and honey heat, add two large scoops of chunky peanut butter. Stir the peanut butter into the hot oil-honey mix.
   
4. Drop in a splash (a tablespoon?) of soy sauce. Stir in, and keep stirring until the whole pan starts to foam.
   
5. Once the pan starts to foam, remove the pan from heat (and try not to freak out). Stir in sriracha to taste.
   
6. Eat on cheapo noodles.
   

I'm so proud of myself. I'm so bad at writing recipes.

how i manage my pms

Sorry about the delay in "whambien part 2". Suffice it to say, I did survive, it didn't work out like I was hoping-- neither in a funny story or in a more cogent next day. I've been doing things that were blog-worthy, but I've been delayed by my brain chemistry. If you don't know already, I endure a little something called PMDD or full-on ovarian mutiny. Like most ladies, I have the PMS, but unlike most ladies, I have the PMS to the point where it impedes on the functioning of my life. I would have something interesting to write about it, but instead I'm feeling lazy and will refer you to what someone else had to say that I would say if I were smarter and more creative. It might be the most accurate account of intense lady-craziness that I have ever read:

How I Manage My PMS

More entries next week when I return to the living.

whambien

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/060731sh_shouts

SHOUTS & MURMURS about recipes using the sleeping pill Ambien, which causes nighttime eating. Sorpresa con Queso Ingredients: 7 bags Cheetos, 17 to 19 glasses tap water, 5 mg. Ambien Place Cheetos bags in cupboard. Take Ambien, fall asleep. Wait 2-3 hours, then sleepwalk to kitchen, tear cupboard doors off hinges in search of Cheetos…eat contents of all 7 bags… Icebox Melange…Take Ambien, fall asleep…sleepwalk to kitchen. Devour everything in refrigerator…Belch loud enough to wake wife or girlfriend. When she enters kitchen, bellow, “Can't you see I'm working here?”… Tummy Cake…Take Ambien, fall asleep. Wake up in kitchen, mixing eggs, flour, Crisco, and milk in-for some reason-a mop bucket…Retrieve bucket from kitchen, drink entire contents in 3-5 gulps… Nhi Ho Trang Phu…Lay out beef jerky and Gatorade on nightstand…Take Ambien, fall asleep. After 2-3 hours, awaken half-submerged in a rice paddy in the jungle lowlands just north of the Mekong Delta….

In a few minutes I will be taking Ambien to sleep (I can't think of another reason to take it, it doesn't seem like a very fun drug) for the very first time. I'm more than a little nervous. Will I drink nine glasses of tap water? Will I drive my car willy-nilly all over the streets of Portland? (Will that be any different than usual if that actually happens? Probably not.) As a lifelong insomniac, I have a hard time imagining what a day on a full night of sleep will be like. I once had a job schedule that allowed me to sleep my natural hours-- 2am to 10am. Even when I had the time to do that, there would be days when I couldn't fall asleep. Will I be a completely different person after my first full night of sleep since working for The Big Movie Rental Company? More pleasant? More boring? The anxiety of it all is making me edgy, and if it weren't for the prescription itself I would probably not be able to sleep a wink tonight.

Yikes. Here goes nothing.

random stuff found in my purse

My purse is a black hole of doom, where items go in and only come out at the most inappropriate moment. Last night, while out at my local pub, I was digging around for some change and instead found:

• a diaper
  
• three little notebooks
• an "over the door" coathook
• five pens
• another, smaller purse

... but of course, there is no change for the jukebox. Nice.

about me

I'm a child welfare social worker, a book reader, a cameraphobe, a "creative person", a serious nerd and a longtime confirmed workaholic.

A few months ago a coworker said to me, "You know, [we have these cool jobs but] I'm really a boring guy. I work ten hours a day, four or five hours on Sunday, go home and then go back to work! The last three day weekend we had, I thought I was going to lose my mind, I had absolutely nothing to do." At the time I laughed and agreed, but the more I think about it the sadder that little truth about our lives made me.

This blog is my little attempt to grow by recording bits of my personal life (I'll try to leave out the yucky work stuff as much as possible) in hopes of fostering a better one.

movie distribution phone monkey: the new job

Today I got to hear a guy from Louisiana call Steven Segal "one baaaaaaadd mamma jamma" and when I agreed with this guy "Why yes, I guess Steven Segal is pretty cool" he corrected me "No! He is a bad mamma jamma!" Twenty minutes later I spent about a half hour explaining how to use the internet to perhaps the dumbest woman on earth. Half an hour. To add "Desperate Housewives" to her list. Half an hour.

Sometimes I have a hard time keeping a straight face at work. Sometimes work makes me wish I were dead.

Just like my last job, strangely enough.

steps to curing a bad day

1. Drive home in an aggressive manner.
   
2. Huffily smoke cigarettes.
   
3. Argue on the internet.
   
4. Chop the fuck out of a giant pile of vegetables.
   
5. Whine to new roommate.
   
6. Go to the gym.
   
7. Eat overpriced grocery store sushi.
   

Yaaay.