Anyone Up For Some McNuggets?

For two years I lived on fast food and anything that could be heated up in a toaster oven. Needless to say, svelte is not a word that comes to mind when I look in the mirror. When my position was terminated and it became clear I would not be able to move out this summer as planned, I finally held my breath and my cookbooks and went downstairs to the kitchen.

This afternoon was a reminder as to why I didn't venture down there to begin with.

Granny: "Are you making hamburgers?"

Me: "I'm not making hamburgers."

Granny: "I like them with Romano cheese."

Me: "I'm not making hamburgers."

Granny: "They're so good with Romano cheese, Minnie down the street told me that."

Me: chopping onions..."Mmmhmmm."

Granny: proceeds to watch me chop said onion.

Me: waiting for direction as to how I should chop said onion, which surprisingly never comes, but makes me tense nevertheless, because I can sense the disapproval. This is usually where I cut myself, which surprisingly also doesn't happen. I pick up my specially selected, retro-style fruit printed flour sack kitchen towel, Crate & Barrel 95 cents.

Granny: "You should wipe your hands on a paper towel!"

Me: "I don't like paper towels." (I don't, especially the weird wet squishiness they get)

Granny: "Then you won't have to wash them!"

Me: holding 8 inch Forschner chef's knife in one hand, "I don't like paper towels!"

Granny: "Do you need a frying pan? There's frying pans in..."

Me: "I have a frying pan."

Granny: "Yeah, but you keep going up and down the stairs."

Me: brandishing large, Cooks Illustrated-approved stainless steel skillet, "I have it right here."

Granny: "There's a tunderstorm warning until 4:30."

Me: "Mmmmhmm."

Summertime, And The Living Is Annoying

Contrary to popular belief, it does not snow nine months of the year in Buffalo. In fact, one of the reasons people who live here keep trying to justify their lives is that "We get all four seasons here!"

Well, actually, that whole four season thing ended about fifteen years ago. Now there's Hot Sticky and Exhausting (July 5th to August 27th) and Cold Wet and Muddy (the rest of the year). But not this year! Hot Sticky and Exhausting has been replaced with Overcast and Kinda Warm. Which is fine with me, but everyone is bitching. Because if it was 87 degrees and humid for weeks on end, they would supposedly be really into that.

Buffalo weather is marked by a series of questions. The local newscasts go like this:

Will we get some rain to water the grass?

When is it going to stop raining?

Will we have a white Christmas?

When is it going to stop snowing?

When will it warm up?

When are we going to get a break from the heat?

When will we see the sun again?

I started this post with the weather situation because no matter what the summer weather, its always 80 degrees up stairs at Granny's. This wouldn't be so bad if I weren't so heat sensitive. Anything over 72 and I'm about to spontaneously combust. To combat this, I purchased one of those rolling A/C units, which looks a lot like R2-D2. A loud, cold air dispensing savior on wheels.

The heat is a problem, but the stale air is another. You see, 85% of the windows in this house do not open, some because they're broken, but mostly because they were built that way. Why Poppy, or anyone for that matter, would choose to install fixed windows but not central air is beyond me.

Thankfully, the windows in my upstairs rooms are OK. My bathroom window needs to be propped open with a stick lest it fall closed, but at least it opens. The same can't be said of the kitchen window above the sink (only the left side opens), the majority of the Jalousie windows on the porch (either broken, permanently closed or permanently open -they no longer make Jalousie windows anymore to replace them), or the window at the top of the staircase (hasn't opened since it was re-installed backwards after a siding job).

Then there's the giant wall of windows in the living room (fixed), the windows in the kitchen corner by the table (fixed), the window in the downstairs bathroom (opens to the enclosed porch), the windows in the downstairs bedroom (they open, but Granny is to afraid to leave them open, in case someone would decide to murder her in her sleep), and the left side of the kitchen window above the sink (she leaves it open maybe an inch).

It's like living in a vacuum, and not even a nice, posh Dyson.

Well, That Certainly Came Out Of Nowhere

So I was cooking some dinner, minding my own business, when Granny came into the kitchen.

"If these coloreds keep killing themselves, we won't have to worry about them much longer! It's all DRUGS!".

Alrighty then.

Happy Birthday Granny!

Goin' to the Wilco show, see ya.

Vader Was Nothing But a Toady

Even back in 1983, I thought Granny kind of looked like this dude.

"Anybody touches my stuff...I'll kill you."

Living here has turned me into that guy from Stripes, the one who wanted to be called "Psycho" but who's name was really Francis ("You call me Francis...and I'll kill you")

Granny, please stop touching my stuff.

This morning I found my underwear on her kitchen table. It had been in the dryer overnight. My grandmother knows what my underwear looks like. FML.

Spiders (Kidsmoke)

The other afternoon I happened to notice some tiny dark spots on my bathroom ceiling. I looked closely but couldn't quite figure out what was going on. Then I got distracted by a puppy or something so the topic was dropped.

That night there were thirty or so baby spiders ambling around my bathroom ceiling.

Now I'm a live and let live type person, so I let them be. It was also 3:30 in the morning and wasn't quite sure if I was seeing things or not.

Seriously, I do not have a spider phobia, and since they were all barely the size of a pin head I let them go become part of the ecosystem of this house, where I'm sure they will strike up conversations with the mice and centipedes.