today my mom and i narrowly escaped having a runaway SUV crash into our van in slow-mo. and after work i got a flat tire. and then we saw three deer and a dog eating road kill. so it was a dangerous driving day. but i made it unscathed. although my tire is ripped to shreds.

TOP SECRET, for dipsy only: "oh, rooney!!!"

ha ha ha! yes, so, as jess said on my guestbook: baked potatoes, teacups, socks, a "key-monica," and mice! everywhere mice, in the mousehole. but here's a little trip down memory lane for you, miss jessica: masked men stealing our bracelets! peeing safety in numbers, because at the end of the day, it's all about pee. don't throw the electric keyboard into the fire, because the batteries will explode! and lots of other gems.

also: charred sproingy bunny. yep.

*crash* hulk angry! ha ha ha! i want a giant green foam fist that transforms into a beer mitt with a few deft strokes of a swiss army knife.

so i still haven't written much about last weekend. i am dangerously close to forgetting things. but now it's almost sleepy time for me. how sad.

but K and i are really getting along at the moment, and i will be with him a week from now, and that is really good news.

i may not have heard from my boyfriend in forever but....my *best freakin' friend* from high school and i are now back in touch. yay. we haven't talked in five years. now i think it is party time.

***

yesterday as i was pureeing hot dogs, i thought to myself, "this is like a little tiny nightmare." then i had to liquify hot dogs (incl. bun) and the nightmare grew a bit larger, then the blade fell out into my pan as i was pouring out the liquid hot dogs, and caused liquid hot dog to splash on my face.

i hope i get google hits for "liquid hot dog." i just know someone out there is looking for it.

liquid hot god?

***

i am feeling a weeee bit cheery right now. hee hee hee. And i just watched "i love 1983" on VH1.

i don't know. i tried to use the audioblogger thing multiple times this weekend and i don't think it worked.

ricka: that was my actual-ganger; i was buying greek wine in the short north.

i had a really good weekend. more later. and then when i got home, it was really good too. more later.

back to work. all i do now, here, is work and sleep. work and sleep.

and i changed my timestamp back to CDT so's it makes some sense.

it is five a.m. and i am lisssssstening.......to columbus.

to the airport!

actual food items i have pureed in my first week at work:

* egg salad sandwiches
* freshly baked cinnamon rolls
* hamburger gravy
* chicken and rice
* breaded cod


do you know what it's like to put these things in a blender? those cinnamon rolls about broke my heart. after i worked so hard on the frosting! if i work weekends, i'll get to puree cherry turnovers. i wonder how those look!

last night for some reason i really wished i had audio blogger. probably because i was a bit drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrunk.

anyway, last night: got off work at 8, went to the synagogue on a whim, and went over to the 'drome. drove my drunk friends for chinese food. came back and got drunk myself. watched futurama DVDs and smoked. then allen drove my car to hy-vee and we got groceries--i should remember it's a bad idea when i'm in that state, but now i have enough passover food for three consecutive years. then i got them to drop me off at a bar, and then things got fun!

for SOME reason i had a pink plastic penis with me (not mine, i swear), and i was wearing it all around to dance with my little gay friends, and these random guys would start checking me out and then their eyes would drift to the penis and they would get a funny look on their faces and stop checking me out. ha! i like this. then i let other people wear it for a while and i taught matty a few dance moves. la la la drunky smoky dancy. (dancy? is that a word?)

mmmm later we all went outside for the obligatory meeting-new-people-at-closing-time ritual, and i played a little eye contact game with some guy and laughed at him. earlier i had shouted spanish snack food words at him and he found that amusing. then i started on household appliances and he found that weird. some guy named greg decided to tag along with us, and he walked me to the 'drome for my safety. then i sobered up on the couch for a while and then went home. oh! i remember what made me want audio blogger! matt and clint and thao were saying that they will always remember that i ran out into traffic chasing a penis. because first i thought i lost the penis, and i left the bartender a voice mail to look for it when she was cleaning. but then i found out it was still in my fly, and then it fell out and rolled into the street! so, looking both ways, i ran out across four lanes of traffic and retrieved it. that's it.

this thing is messing with my MIND!

in other news...

the first two days of my job were pretty good. this is what i do at work: first i dish up all the food for the people on our two alzheimer's wings. this involves holding a large pink plastic bowl on my outstretched left fingertips while i whack a big suction-cup-on-a-handle onto a 180-degree metal plate and slip it onto the pink plastic bowl. then i cover it with a clean ceramic plate, read the resident's card, and dish up the food accordingly. more about this part later. then i wash dishes for almost an hour, then i go have a cigarette with everyone else.

then i spend the first part of the afternoon dishing up the salads and desserts for the evening meal and making purees for the different diet levels of the residents. here's where the card comes in. everyone has a card with their likes and dislikes, allergies, religious info (like no fish on fridays or whatever), and the card specifies small, medium, or large portion of regular, ground, or puree consistency food. there are also different thicknesses of purees--nectar-thick, honey-thick, and pudding-thick.

this job is kind of funny sometimes. i make something called pureed bread, which is not really pureed at all, but a slice of bread dunked in butter with thickened milk poured over the top, and the bread absorbs the thick milk and i sprinkle cinnamon sugar lovingly over the tops and stick them in the fridge. more on this later. anyway, there is also something called liquid bread, which really is just bread and milk in a blender. i give those poor people cinnamon sugar too. except for the lady who's allergic to it.

then i get a half hour for lunch and a sociable coffee/cigarette break. the people i work with are friendly, and some of them are surprisingly intelligent, which makes me realize how prejudiced i probably was coming in. after this "lunch" break, it's time to dish up supper. so i do the same as above, with the plack-thunk of the suction cup stick and the scalding metal plates and all. but supper is even weirder because i have to dish out soup, which is composed of dead animal juice and other things that might get on my hands. gross. i wear gloves a lot and try not to inhale when there are meaty fumes around. anyway, i do the carts for the alzheimer's units and then i go upstairs to "the feeders," and the nurses there take the plates i dish up for those who can't really feed themselves.

the most amazing thing about all of this is that my manager in the kitchen knows all of the residents' names-nearly 200 people--and their diet. that's a lot of information to know. i like her. she's nice. and she's fair.

now about the pureed bread which is not pureed, my lovely plates of raw french toast. after dinner it's the dish room, and i wash nearly every one down the disposal. along with a good half of the food we dish out. it's enough to make me cry. every time i pour an opened, full carton of milk down the drain, i think of the film _three kings_, and the scene of the people trying to drink milk from the sand beside a gushing tanker truck.

not to be overdramatic. after that, i clean and sanitize many many items. after we have all cleaned and sanitized things--and i must say it's a fairly smooth operation, so it's not torture--i go home.

i think i am pleased. and i certainly am tired. to bed, i said.

hey, city kids: on my farm there is a "lagoon" filled with pig manure. it is smaller than a football field. but larger than a breadbox. also possibly larger than our house. not sure on the dimensions.

well, two days ago it was 70-80 degrees and SUNNY and lovely. today, while i've been locked in a room watching video upon job training video, we got dumped on. rain, sleet, and now snow. at least 13 cars in the ditch in a 10-mile stretch. i'm not one of them. i drove very carefully.

i think i like my new workplace. everyone i met today was really nice (sitting outside in the smoker's gazebo makes it easier to meet people). i really start on monday--today was just orientation. i got a rose in a vase to welcome me...i felt like miss greenland as i was clutching the rose trudging happily through the blinding snow. we'll see what's in store for me, but i feel fairly positive about it.

i was going to go out tonight--haven't seen my friends in a week. but i think the road conditions prevent social life for tonight. :(

i believe a day is productive if you do something you've never done before. today i have done two things i've never done before: 1) i got a Mantoux tuberculosis test. 2) i saw a huge geyser of pigshit.

the first was at work. the second was at my house. just part of farm livin', guys and gals. no kidding. it was a geyser about 25 feet high. neat, huh? my dad was making it with his tractor and some kind of pump, i guess. (special to tim: the manure lagoon needs aeration. also he was pumping it into a tank so he can spread it on our fields. tee. can't leave the windows open today!)

it's super gorgeous outside today. mmm. sunny.