I am too pooped to pop … for no other reason than just not getting enough sleep this week. I’d love to babble, but what little brain power I have right now is being devoted 100% to making bread. So in lieu of all the things I would like to post or should post, I’ll just show off what we got at the market this morning.

I have to go poke at bread, get dinner started, and at some point flop on the couch and fall asleep … hopefully after getting the bread and dinner finished and eaten.

Oh look. Internet service. I didn’t expect it to work, seeing as it hasn’t been working all day and I haven’t been able to get tech support on the telephone. Of course, now I am in the middle of full-on pizza preparation and don’t have time to babble or read. It figures.

While bored and going crazy without my internet fix this afternoon, I made two audio posts over on my LJ … post one and post two.

Brief update: Obviously my internet is finally working again. The Insane Neighbors have removed the truck from my front yard. The kitties are awake after sleeping all day and are now set on driving me the rest of the way to insane. Lin has gone out with friends for happy hour, and I am eating the pizza at 8 pm whether he is here or not … because I can’t wait to dig into the apple cobbler and ice cream. I think that about sums it up for a brief update. I would, of course, like to babble at length about all manner of things, but it will have to wait until after dinner, after our TV shows, and probably until after I get some sleep (and also likely until after I go to market in the morning).

Back to the kitchen! There are veggies waiting to be chopped!

Extremely local news:

Lin bought two tall and skinny stereo speakers for the TV system … and a 100 watt Peavy amp for his guitars. He got fantastic deals on both. I expect to be totally deaf in a few days.

It turned out to be another beautiful day in Austin. It’s as if there is an invisible shield making these storms stop to the west of us and just sit there until they die. Weird.

They are closing The South Forty. Long-time friends and readers may recall that used to be our corner bar (like Cheers). We haven’t been back in ages, but we are still a little sad to see it go. Told you even if we moved back to the old neighborhood, it would never be the old neighborhood again.

Everyone and their ten children must have been at the grocery store this afternoon. It was the craziest I have seen it in ages. Must remember to go shopping in the mornings when it is quiet and peaceful.

I still have a headache. Lin’s “shredding” isn’t helping.

Gotta get back to dinner. I’d rather just go back to bed.

I need to go to the grocery store, but there’s another slow-moving storm headed this way. The sun is shining here now, but I would hate to walk out of the HEB and into a raging storm, and that would be just my luck. I’m going to wait and see if this one fades away before getting to Austin like the storms did yesterday … or if it’s going to be a big one. Besides, I haven’t heard the trash truck yet, and the location we have to put the trash bin at effectively blocks my ability to egress the driveway. Not like I really felt like jumping up and going right this minute anyway. I at least have to wait for the aspirin to kick in. I woke up with a rotten headache today.

Because I have nothing else of note to say this morning … a cat photo!

Ronin’s new favorite late afternoon sleeping spot is on the stack of Dr Pepper. He started squeezing himself in after the first six-pack had been removed. I just put the last six-pack in the top case in the fridge, so I guess this afternoon he’ll have enough room to properly stretch out and snooze.

“There’s a guy out there who knows what my wife looks like naked.”

Raise your hand if you have seen my tits. [Observes the forest of raised hands.] Do you think that makes my husband angry or disturbs him in any way?

I was reading a news story about a woman who was traumatized because a maintenance worker on a ladder may have seen her new breast implants while she was trying on bras at Target … because the only people who have ever seen her naked are her doctor and husband. That’s a claim I find hard to believe, but perhaps it’s possible she doesn’t have parents or siblings and didn’t have to take gym in high school … and her husband is the only boyfriend she ever had.

I was laughing for several reasons as I read about their outrage over what I am betting was a simple “oops” on the part of the worker. First off, I never have any expectation of privacy in public dressing rooms. The possibility of someone accidentally or on-purpose seeing your exposed flesh is high. Secondly, unless she felt it was necessary remove all her clothing in order to try on bras, someone may have seen her tits, not seen her naked … and as I have always said, they are just tits and every human has them. If you are traumatized by someone seeing your brand new fake tits, why the hell did you get them? Fake tits (as well as real ones) are attention getters. People will look at them whether they are covered or not.

I realize my views on nudity and bare breasts are not universal. As Lin said this morning, “You’re special. You were an exotic dancer, and you are an artist.” While that is true, my view that nudity and breasts are natural and only as sexual as you make them was formed long before either of those things were true about me, and my opinion is that people just need to get over it. Though our bodies come in all shapes, sizes and colors, they are all built in exactly the same way, and if you think that the few square inches of swimsuit fabric you cover yourself with on the beach leaves anything at all to even the worst imagination, you are fooling yourself. Hell, I can look at a woman fully clothed and tell you exactly what she would look like naked, but then I have seen more than my fair share of naked women.

I’m not saying everyone has to go running around topless or stripping their clothing off at the drop of a hat, though that wouldn’t really bother me. I’m not even saying everyone has to be willing to allow others to see them topless or nude, though I think people need to be less uptight about it. What I am saying is that people need to stop being traumatized by their own nudity. That’s what happened here. The guy didn’t do anything to her (but maybe look at her and have a thought or two — something that for guys doesn’t even require exposed flesh), and now she’s got issues. She was traumatized by her own damn nudity. She injured herself because she is too uptight about her body.

I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the guy on the ladder. Not that I am generally oblivious to my surroundings, but as I said, I have no expectation of privacy in dressing rooms. I always just assume someone is looking and don’t even think about it, and even if someone should be intentionally spying on me in a dressing room, while I would like it stopped if I find out about it, it would hardly leave me unable to change clothes in dressing rooms in the future or undressing in public bathrooms (another issue she is now having at another place one can never assume one has privacy).

Personally, I think this is a lot less about “someone saw my wife naked” and a lot more about “how much money can we get out of Target” … seeing as they say a settlement “would be nice.” And dude, I have never seen your wife naked, but I bet she looks just like every other slender 30-something woman who has gotten breast implants. There are magazines and web sites filled to overflowing with women that look just like her. She really isn’t all that remarkable. Cute, but average. Get over yourselves already. The world would be a much better place if people were less traumatized by nudity (and sexuality) and more traumatized by violence posing as entertainment. But that’s just my opinion, and what do I know? I’m just an over-educated ex-titty dancer and artist who loves the naked human form.

And now that my tit-o-meter has been activated and I have spent far too much time sitting here rolling my eyes about people’s attitudes toward nudity … and to prove I have no issues with hundreds or thousands of people looking at mine … behind the cut (to protect the easily offended and traumatized) a completely Not Safe For Work photo of bare breasts.
Continue Reading »

After federal health officials discovered last month that tainted Chinese toothpaste had entered the United States, they warned that it would most likely be found in discount stores.

In fact, the toothpaste has been distributed much more widely. Roughly 900,000 tubes containing a poison used in some antifreeze products have turned up in hospitals for the mentally ill, prisons, juvenile detention centers and even some hospitals serving the general population.

Isn’t that special? 900,000 tubes of poisonous toothpaste at large in America! Oh, but it’s just the insane, the criminal, and the “general population” … which I would read as the poor. I’m pretty sure the finest hospitals in Austin aren’t buying any Chinese-made toothpaste. But then, you never know, do you?

But wait! The spokesman for the FDA says that “No Chinese toothpaste has come into the country since the end of May.” And how the hell would they know that? The latest figures I have seen for what percent of imports from anywhere on the planet was a less than 1% … I mean … 0.59%. So how exactly do they know no Chinese-made toothpaste has entered the country since May? I distinctly recall reading news stories about how they run across crates that say they are one thing, and they turn out to be something else. Or, you know, in all probability, as long as the paperwork seems to be in order, it never gets looked at at all. Pardon me if I don’t take the FDA’s word for it that there isn’t still Chinese-made toothpaste entering the country, as well as all manner of other potentially harmful products and items … like children’s toys that contain lead … or tires that rip themselves apart.

But here are the dual punchlines from the last linked story:

Chinese products now account for 60 percent of all products recalled in the U.S.

Wow. Only 60%?! I’d think it could be a little higher, considering that every freaking thing in the USA seems to be made in China! If I wanted to live my life without ever buying anything from China, I would have to revert to the life of an early American settler with a covered wagon and mule cooking over a camp-fire. Do you remember the last time you saw a label that said Made in America? I can’t, and that’s sad, because I look for them.

60% of all recalled products. Holy sh*t.

And…

“…we’re trying to help them understand that we have outstanding standards in the U.S. for our products and those standards save lives.”

No. No … if we had outstanding standards for anything at all, this foreign-made crap wouldn’t be sitting on our store shelves. We, as a country, wouldn’t be allowing it in until it proven to match our outstanding standards of quality. No, we don’t have such outstanding standards, unless getting goods as cheaply as possible is a high standard to achieve. Our standards are no better than the standards of the worst country we buy goods from, and right now … that’s China. We even have our very own American companies that put out the same kind of adulterated crap as the Chinese ones.

Tembec BTLSR Inc. - a resin manufacturer based in Toledo, Ohio - has been told by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to stop using the industrial chemical melamine to make binding agents that end up in feed for farmed fish, shrimp and livestock.

Oh, but it’s OK. The melamine tainted fish feed “was not intended to be used domestically, but for foreign markets.” Yeah, great. In the endless cycle of crap being shipped back and forth across the seas, here we have a company in the USA making fish feed with melamine and selling it to foreign sources … which is then fed to fish and shrimp that are sold right back at us. You do realize that 80% of the fish and seafood eaten in the USA is imported from foreign countries don’t you, and that the vast majority of it is farm raised? Well, if you didn’t know, now you do. Sorry.

And here’s some more trivia for you. Anybody want to guess how many refrigerated trucks there are in all of China? Come on. Guess. Lin guessed a million. Ha! The USA doesn’t even have a million of them. We only have 280,000. Surely China has at least that many! Right?

Not! There are 30,000 refrigerated trucks in all of China.

With all of that said, I think I better go to bed. I got it off my chest, but I certainly don’t feel better about it. Humans, across the globe, are poisoning both each other and the environment. A planet-killing asteroid would almost be a godsend at this point, because I don’t think I want to see where this ride takes us.

My personal [humorous] theory is that it’s the poisons and chemicals in our foods and environment that end up forcing us to evolve into the creatures known as the Greys, who then build space-time machines to travel back to this era to kidnap trailer-dwellers in an attempt to discover at what point in history the point-of-no-return was passed causing the evolution … because they’d like to stop it from happening. Being a Grey isn’t really so fun, you see.

Yup. Time for bed.

I did not get a nap. Therefore, I am grumpy. All the same, might as well babble while waiting for the corn to cook, right? At least it’s keeping me awake, and I don’t really have to make too much sense … because I know you love me when I am crazy with fatigue.

During the process of tearing the house apart trying to find my wallet, I found an unopened envelope from the mortgage company mixed in with some other ancient mail. It appeared to contain a check, so I ripped it open. It did, in fact, contain a check. A large check. Finding large checks is a good thing.

Two minutes later, my email beeped to let me know I had new mail. I finally got summoned for jury selection. Blech. You win some, you lose some. Who knows, maybe they won’t pick me. It looks like I’ll be doing traffic court, and quite frankly, I can’t think of anything more boring. But at least I don’t have to go until July 10th and not until afternoon. If I had gotten an email today telling me I had to be downtown at some wee hour of the morning to be selected for traffic court jury, I would have poked my eyes out with the corner of a cat-chewed wallet.

Today has not been the best of days.

I just spent the entire afternoon having a major panic attack. I couldn’t find my wallet … my small, red, credit card wallet containing my ID, several bank cards, several un-used gift cards, and ALL that mad money I have been saving for months for who knows what. Yes, I couldn’t find my wallet, and I spent hours weeping, tearing the house apart, tearing the truck apart, walking around in the yard, calling stores, and even … digging through the trash bin piece by disgusting piece. Yes, I dug through the trash. It was my last hope. My wallet wasn’t there, and I may never eat again after the trash experience.

I then gave up and sat at my desk and cried huge, fat tears.

Then I thought to check the bank statement to see if anyone had used it. We only buy things at a few select places, so anything odd would stand right out. Nothing but the few things we bought the last few days. Phew. People usually rape credit cards as soon as they find/steal them, though I did have the thought that they might have been so thrilled with the cash that was in it they didn’t care about the cards. Cash can’t be traced. Neither can the gift cards. Or maybe it was just really, really lost somewhere.

I cried some more huge, fat tears. Then … I gave up all hope.

Fine. Fine! My wallet, my money, my bank cards, my gift cards, my ID … all gone. My mad money. MY MAD MONEY!!! It was the mad money making me the maddest. It takes me forever to save pennies here and there to get enough together to blow on myself on something useless (but fun). I’d planned to go shopping soon to get me some cool new kitchen things.

I cried a few more huge, fat tears for the gadgets I wasn’t going to get.

I decided to go look in the living room one more time. I moved the furniture again. I dug around in the couch. I picked up anything I knew had been added to the mess since Saturday. No luck. I’d already checked all these locations at least two or three times, so I don’t know what I was expecting.

Then I picked up the edge of the large rug.

There, nestled among an odd assortment of cat-chewed guitar picks, q-tips with the cotton chewed off them, mangled and tooth-marked straws, a few chopsticks, and a bunch of dust, was one small, red, slightly cat-chewed credit card wallet. Cat … chewed. There’s only one cat in this house that runs off with anything made of tasty, chewable plastic, and that would be RONIN. I’d kill him, but he wouldn’t understand why I was killing him, so it seems rather pointless. Besides, I am so thrilled to have my wallet back, even if it is slightly cat-chewed, now all I want to do is take a nap. It’s amazing how tiring panic attacks can be, isn’t it?

Though I am left wondering how he gets all that stuff under the rug in the first place. Apparently he does it in the dark of night while we are asleep, because I have never seen him fussing with the rug at all.

So my plan to run to the store since the weather was nice and then come home and finish up those posts I keep promising are coming was foiled by one tubby grey cat with a plastic fetish. Well at least now I know where he hides the stuff and can check there anytime something plastic goes missing. Little bratty, plastic-loving, freak of a cat!

I never got a nap today, and let me tell you, three hours of sleep is not enough to fuel a full-blown panic attack. It’s awfully late to be taking a nap, but I have to grab a few winks or I will never make it until our late-night shows come on.

Tomorrow is going to be a better day. Tomorrow is going to be a better day.

The storm has dwindled. Good. Mom is OK, as are the other folks I was concerned about. Good. I need to go to the store today. I may skip it until tomorrow, because we were up late last night and up early again this morning keeping an eye on the storm. I’m beat. Surely there is something dessert-like I can make with what’s in the house. Lin has gone to work to try to get a few hours done at one site, but I suspect he’ll be home early. It’s not exactly construction weather out there even if it doesn’t rain for the rest of the day. So all is basically well at Casa de Orb.

The neighbors across the street had their property surveyed yesterday. I wonder if they are planning on selling. They have been doing a ton of work on the place the last year. Maybe we’ll get some cool new neighbors … or some more crazy ones. Speaking of crazy, the habit of screaming in driveways seems to be catching. P. and her husband were yelling at each other and slamming front doors this morning. Ugh. Meanwhile, Lin and I are still hugging and kissing in our driveway. Have to set a good example for the neighborhood lunatics, don’t you know.

The kittens have been driving me insane for about 12 hours now. Where do they get the energy?! Lin asked me the other night if I thought we could expect another year of them being total pills. I think so. Even though they are almost 11 months old, they still have a whole lot of kitten in them yet. In fact, as intelligent and feisty as these two are, it may be years before they settle down at all. Maybe I should let them get fat and lazy. They may be driving us both a little crazy, but they are also becoming wonderful and affection cats. Once they get past their teen stage, I think they will be nothing but a pure delight. Let’s hope the cats, ourselves, the house, and our belongings all survive the teen-aged cat rebellion.

I’m going to do one more run-through of the weather sites, and then I am going to have the last of the stew for brunch. If it wakes me up, I’ll go to the store. If it makes me sleepy, I am heading back to bed. I’m betting on bed. I ache all over from the damp, damp weather, and three hours of sleep is just not enough, particularly since I didn’t sleep very well worrying about the storm that was hitting my mom’s house. Yes, I probably worry to much, but better to worry than to think these intense storms we get that cause flash flooding can’t cause a wicked mess of problems with no notice at all. I am certain we will eventually get back into the usual dry and hot summer weather, and then I can stop worrying and start complaining about how freaking hot it is.

It looks like that huge storm is actually dissipating. All the water in the system still has to go somewhere. More flood gates are being opened. It’s just a mess.

Haven’t called Mom yet. I didn’t want to call while she was in the middle of the storm. She wouldn’t have answered the phone anyway.

Here, look at some nice, peaceful and cute goats:

China has closed 180 food factories after inspectors found industrial chemicals being used in products from candy to seafood, state media said Wednesday.

The closures came amid a nationwide crackdown on shoddy and dangerous products launched in December that also uncovered use of recycled or expired food, the China Daily said.

Formaldehyde, illegal dyes, and industrial wax were found being used to make candy, pickles, crackers and seafood, it said, citing Han Yi, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which is responsible for food safety.

“These are not isolated cases,” Han, director of the administration’s quality control and inspection department, was quoted as saying.

Just … eeeeew.

UPDATE: Full story from the NYT can be found here.

That storm sat just west of us all night. The flooding in the Marble Falls and Leander area is historic in proportions. The area near Lin’s office has parts of the highway under water. It has been calm here all night, that weird sort of calm that is too still and too quiet. Another front has been shooting across Texas, and it looks like it’s going to push through the Austin area sometime in a few hours. I am still hoping it dies out, but I don’t really see that happening. This is an awful storm system. I’m was nervous enough last night to have the emergency light handy, and I am keeping it close, just in case.

Everyone, please send your good thoughts, prayers, and/or positive energy to the Central Texas area today. There are a lot of people already in danger and there will probably be more as this storm progresses.

I don’t think we are in any danger of flooding right here at the house. I don’t think. I am a little concerned about high winds, and if we get too much rain, the laundry room will flood and the roof will leak.

I’m going to go call my Mom and a few friends and check on them. Then I am going to get dressed and watch the weather until this storm either dies or hits us. If we lose electricity or there’s some other sort of crisis at Casa de Orb, remember I have a Livejournal. If anything too crazy happens here, I’ll be updating there by cell phone. I’m hoping it won’t be getting that crazy here.

Like I said, send some good energy to Central Texas today. It’s just awful out to the west of us. I feel so terrible for all the people who are in shelters right now. I’m hoping the situation doesn’t get worse for everyone’s sake.

In other news: My web site seems to be having database problems today, and there’s been one mother of a storm sort-of headed our way for hours. I still can’t tell if it’s going to hit us, but the places it is going through look to be getting hit hard. Eek.

At least dinner was superb tonight.

The weather has been so weird the last two days. Roaming little storms popping up here and there and making things crazy … then a little sunlight to make things miserable. It’s not quite hot enough to turn on the AC, unless I want to set it to Hell Frozen Over, but with the windows open, the humidity is just oppressive. Just washing the dishes left me as sweaty as if I had run a marathon, and I feel just about as wiped out too. I really feel for Lin, who has to be right out in this stuff.

I didn’t mind that we had a nice wet spring for a change, because we’d been in drought status for a long time, and we really needed some water from the sky. But … it could stop now. The ground is saturated, the lakes are full, and the flooding is only going to get worse from here on out. I realize that without these storms it would be Hell Hot outside right now, but I’d settle for a nice dry baking sun over constant grey skies and flooding every day.

Not that it’s flooding in my neighborhood, thank heavens. They fixed our creek/storm drain, so I think even though we live a block away from a flood plain, we would only see an actual flood here if it was a storm of Noah proportions. Well, at least I hope I am right about that. But in general, there is too much flooding going on around Texas.

The sun is out right now, but the way these storms just pop up from nowhere, I don’t expect that to last long. I guess now that I am somewhat recuperated from the dish-washing, I better go check the mail and take out the trash while it isn’t raining cats and dogs. Then I think a nice shower and turning the AC on to Hell Frozen Over for a while is in order. I’m making the meatloaf tonight, and I dread turning the oven on. The kitchen is already unbearable, and the late afternoon sun isn’t even beaming in through the windows yet. Yes, Hell Frozen Over is definitely in order.

I love cats. All cats, even the really big ones. Cats are cats, no matter the size. The biggest difference is that I outweigh my house cats by a good 100 pounds and could easily take them out of they tried to chew off my leg, and they know this … and so don’t generally try to chew off my leg. Generally. Ronin gives it a go every once in a while, but I give him “the look” and he stops chewing and starts licking. Don’t think I don’t know that every time he is licking something he’d rather be chewing on it. He no longer chews on his sisters head (at least not so much), but he does lick her head until it is sopping wet these days. I am certain he’d rather be chewing on her ears … and my feet. He’s a big cat in a somewhat small package.

But these ARE big cats, lions, and just look at them:

They are SOOOO cute. Deadly, due to their size, but cute nonetheless. See, all cats like the belly rubs, but at least with my little monsters, when they decide they have had enough, I don’t have to worry about losing a limb … or my head.

And the dude is pretty hot too. Not that I am looking (too intensely).