They offered the job to someone else who hasn't accepted yet. I would have accepted in three seconds flat.
But, whatever. I've given up.
Ta,
Bec
28.2.13
27.2.13
Waiting
Don't know yet.
Hopefully will know soon.
I'm mildly irritated. How long does it take to get an answer from these people?
I'll let you know when I know.
Ta,
Bec
Hopefully will know soon.
I'm mildly irritated. How long does it take to get an answer from these people?
I'll let you know when I know.
Ta,
Bec
22.2.13
Recipe Book!
Once long ago, I made a recipe book online.
It was nice. I used it often.
But it could have been more, if only I had had the time to fix it. It had a lot of mistakes and glitches and suchlike and was missing quite a few recipes that it should have had.
But I had time, and I felt good, so I decided to fix it.
I plowed through it for three or four days, and I'm glad to say it's finished.
There are heaps more recipes; some stuff I've altered in the last little while to suit me and some stuff that didn't make it into the first one (I missed my grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe and my mother's banana bread, in particular.) Most of the recipes posted here on the blog are in this book, so if you're looking for Chocolate Delirium or Mujadara the way I did it, it's there.
I will try to post a link here; if it doesn't work, message me and I will try to get you a copy (it's in PDF, so it's easily transportable.)
I'm also in the semi-finals for a poetry contest, so yay me!
Ta,
Bec
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1s_Wfkb24L1Aiggys_w0cGSeZACNe268sJinRsPPwJznTxBiCy1mA2rhg_tBI/edit?usp=sharing
25th February-I updated the book today-fixed a lot of stuff I didn't see in the beginning. If you notice any glitches with the book, don't hesitate to post a comment and let me know.
2nd of March: I don't honestly understand HOW the menu got as fuddled up as it did, but it did. The two problems have been worked out to my satisfaction and so I relinked the new one to this page.
29th of May-Mixed Nut Bars has been rewritten because as it stood, even I couldn't figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with the butterscotch chips. Unlike other versions of this recipe, we cut the salt out of the crust (as you're pouring an entire can of mixed nuts onto the crust, the salt seems unnecessary.) I have reuploaded the book again.
It was nice. I used it often.
But it could have been more, if only I had had the time to fix it. It had a lot of mistakes and glitches and suchlike and was missing quite a few recipes that it should have had.
But I had time, and I felt good, so I decided to fix it.
I plowed through it for three or four days, and I'm glad to say it's finished.
There are heaps more recipes; some stuff I've altered in the last little while to suit me and some stuff that didn't make it into the first one (I missed my grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe and my mother's banana bread, in particular.) Most of the recipes posted here on the blog are in this book, so if you're looking for Chocolate Delirium or Mujadara the way I did it, it's there.
I will try to post a link here; if it doesn't work, message me and I will try to get you a copy (it's in PDF, so it's easily transportable.)
I'm also in the semi-finals for a poetry contest, so yay me!
Ta,
Bec
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1s_Wfkb24L1Aiggys_w0cGSeZACNe268sJinRsPPwJznTxBiCy1mA2rhg_tBI/edit?usp=sharing
25th February-I updated the book today-fixed a lot of stuff I didn't see in the beginning. If you notice any glitches with the book, don't hesitate to post a comment and let me know.
2nd of March: I don't honestly understand HOW the menu got as fuddled up as it did, but it did. The two problems have been worked out to my satisfaction and so I relinked the new one to this page.
29th of May-Mixed Nut Bars has been rewritten because as it stood, even I couldn't figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with the butterscotch chips. Unlike other versions of this recipe, we cut the salt out of the crust (as you're pouring an entire can of mixed nuts onto the crust, the salt seems unnecessary.) I have reuploaded the book again.
21.2.13
Emu Oil
Hi.
I am in a far better mood than I was last week. Had an interview with Girdwood, Alaska about a position; we'll know yea or nay next week.
I am also feeling a thousand times better thanks to a weird and outrageous substance that I took a risk on and now I'm glad I did.
I have a condition (diagnosed last year) called lichensclerosis. It is, quite possibly, the most horrible of all the autoimmune stuff I have ever had to deal with. The itchiness is enough to drive you insane (I almost went there.) The only thing that has quelled the terrible itch and burn to this point has been a steroid cream, which has the unfortunate side effect of thinning the skin wherever you happen to put it.
I was trolling around on the Internet, looking for an alternative to the cream, when I chanced across a glowing, angelic report on emu oil.
It sounded like bull, but after ten or fifteen more reports that were singing the praises of the stuff, I had to try it. So I bought a bottle (25 dollars for 8 ounces of the pure stuff) and tried it out, and now I'M singing its praises.
With steroid cream, you can only put it on twice a day tops. This stuff, I can put on over and over and not worry about thinning skin.
I swear, anything that nixes the itch of this condition is welcome.
I do feel a little guilty for the emus (they do have to kill them to get the oil), but I am using very, very little of the stuff at a time and it should last me months.
I feel like a million bucks. Let's hope the feeling lasts.
Ta,
Bec
I am in a far better mood than I was last week. Had an interview with Girdwood, Alaska about a position; we'll know yea or nay next week.
I am also feeling a thousand times better thanks to a weird and outrageous substance that I took a risk on and now I'm glad I did.
I have a condition (diagnosed last year) called lichensclerosis. It is, quite possibly, the most horrible of all the autoimmune stuff I have ever had to deal with. The itchiness is enough to drive you insane (I almost went there.) The only thing that has quelled the terrible itch and burn to this point has been a steroid cream, which has the unfortunate side effect of thinning the skin wherever you happen to put it.
I was trolling around on the Internet, looking for an alternative to the cream, when I chanced across a glowing, angelic report on emu oil.
It sounded like bull, but after ten or fifteen more reports that were singing the praises of the stuff, I had to try it. So I bought a bottle (25 dollars for 8 ounces of the pure stuff) and tried it out, and now I'M singing its praises.
With steroid cream, you can only put it on twice a day tops. This stuff, I can put on over and over and not worry about thinning skin.
I swear, anything that nixes the itch of this condition is welcome.
I do feel a little guilty for the emus (they do have to kill them to get the oil), but I am using very, very little of the stuff at a time and it should last me months.
I feel like a million bucks. Let's hope the feeling lasts.
Ta,
Bec
14.2.13
A Scathing Report on the Relations
For God's sake!
This entry was written a while ago (October?) but I held it back because I thought it was scathing and rude. It still is, but since my uncle seems to think we're living high on the hog, I've been told to post this. Normally I wouldn't give in to my mother's demands when it comes to my writing, but this is a special case.
My family is freaking insane. I know, I know, all families are. No. You do not know insane until you've hung around these people. For example:
My grandmother thinks her daughter (my Aunt Sue) isn't sleeping with the guy who comes to church with her every week (he LIVES with her.) This belief is from a woman who had five children, (she cannot be that naive. Please.) also believes you can't have watermelon until you've had your appendix out, and who let Sue borrow the car (Sue crashed hers) last week to take her best friend's husband to hospital because he crushed his heel. This grandmother also gave my two cousins gorgeous glass jewelry boxes for Christmas when I was 11 or 12 and decided not to give me one because I might break it (it still rankles.) She invited my younger sister strawberry picking and didn't invite me because I was "too young to go" (yet they let toddlers in those strawberry fields and I was at least ten when she said this.) When I invited her to my graduation from Eau Claire (because I was being NICE) she told me my cousin had managed her degree in four years and my other cousin (who's in the military and was on a SHIP taking his classes) did it in 3 1/2. Not "Congratulations." Not "I'm so proud of you." No. That's not what I hear. I hear I wasn't good enough DESPITE four different illnesses, two surgeries, the suicide of a good friend, and Asperger's/ AND a math disability which nearly caused me to fail out of college. And they wonder why I have self-esteem issues...
My Aunt Sue is parading around claiming her lungs are failing her. She smoked for thirty years and yes, she quit, but claiming you need a lung transplant and you're on prednisone for your terrible breathing is bullcrap when you're line-dancing for an hour with the boyfriend every week. Sorry, not buying it. She also visits her youngest daughter so often she should buy a plane, and at family parties, though she has 5 grandchildren presently, we only ever hear about 1 (and maybe two others.) That would be because the two that are never mentioned's mother keeps them away mostly from their grandma Sue because they have strained relations.
And now for the bane of our lives...Uncle Evan. You slimeball.
You all have heard how I dislike some of my relations. Most of them are good people, most of them don't deserve my wrath. The ones that do have earned a place on my naughty list (and I am being reserved as all heck here.)
My uncle manages the place where my father has worked for the last 35 years or so. It's mostly a family business-there's only one person who is unrelated to anyone else who works there. My father does the heavy work-lifting sheetrock, cutting boards, measuring nails, etc. etc. He gets paid very little for how much he does and how long he does it. He endures insults to himself and us, endures long days of backbreaking work without a decent lunch break and sometimes is shouted at for no other reason than the fact that he wants a drink of water (or a day off.) He's been ordered to work on the FOURTH of JULY (by his mother. I was there.) He has been threatened with bodily harm (including being threatened with a gun and the cops had to get involved and tell my uncle to calm down and knock it off.)
When my father was banging his head against the wall in his sleep, trying to get enough oxygen because his throat was closing from undiagnosed sleep apnea, they laughed at him. When my dad was sleeping on the floor of the place where he worked and getting up in the morning and going back to work for his brother like a SLAVE, they ignored him. He only met my mother because he happened to stop for a root beer on a day when he made it to his mother's house from work. Without my mother, my father would have DIED of an undiagnosed, untreated sleep disorder. She stood up for him and saved him from his family's ignorance.
How my father handles his brother and other family members is not the issue here. We've been telling him to stand up to his family and go get a decent job for years and he hasn't.
Contrast the way we have lived to the way my uncle's children have: We three girls are in one bedroom. My things are piled six feet high. I didn't own any closet space of my own until last year when I moved out (there wasn't enough for all three of us.) Our house is unfinished. Our bathroom needs a complete redo from the sheetrock up (as in, the paint has chipped away, the walls are falling apart, and our bathtub is held together with putty where it has cracked.) Our kitchen floor has chips out of it. Our carpet in the living room is giving out. Our shingles need replacing.
But good old Uncle Evan, well, since his daughter graduated last year, he had his house redone! (his FIRST one, not the second one that he also owns.) God, I wish we had the money for that. I wish we had the money to do all the things that sincerely need doing around here, but we've never, ever had it.
When his kids got dinner, they had McDonald's. When we had dinner, we had something made at home. We get government surplus once a month. If a light fails to work and it's not the bulb, we quit using it (case in point-the living room lamp that hasn't been turned on in five years. Hence, we have no light in the living room.)
We have always been without. The couch we have is a used one from my late great uncle (can't remember how long we've had it-decades.) Grandma gave us her old chair. My aunt and uncle gave us another one. Almost every stitch of clothing I own, including my underwear, my bras, and my socks that I'm wearing today, were once owned by someone else (disgust really goes out the window when you need the clothes.) I haven't bought a new pair of jeans in a regular clothing store in ten years. I haven't bought a new shirt in five. I can't afford to. I have always been broke, I have always been poor, and I have lived with it for every minute of my nearly 27 years.
We've never gone to bed hungry like some, so we were never too bad off. We just never lived the lives of luxury that our cousins seemed to-skiing at Brule and such things.
So when I see Evan's children with new, expensive toys that they got for Christmas (to replace the new, expensive toy they got last Christmas, or the Christmas before that) I act like an adult and try not to be jealous.
There are good things that come of being like this. I am frugal as hell. My mother taught me how to save a buck and do it well. I have a laptop I got refurbished and then argued with the seller and got 200 dollars shaved off. My Sherlock DVD came 15 dollars cheaper because I ordered it early. I can live on 20 bucks a week grocery-wise. I know how to shop in a thrift store and the books that I own are mostly used, but the words read the same either way.
I and my sisters have had our teeth fixed by the state because we were too poor to pay the fees (and because our teeth were all in dire need of braces.) We've had our education bills chopped down considerably because our parents couldn't foot the bill. We've coped with government food and food that was slightly outdated. We've gotten clothes that might not have been brand-new but were still functional. We've learned that if we really want something, we have to budget it, make sure we can pay the fee before we shell out.
It's not a bad life. I just want a decent job so that I can not worry whether the bills are going to be paid next week. I don't want my kids growing up worrying that if Mum buys them a 200 dollar something that they need, will she be able to pay the light bill this month? This shouldn't be something a kid worries about.
Now comes the news (recall this was written months ago and I'm just posting it now) from someone who's looking at my parents finances (for reasons I'm not at liberty to reveal) that the business where my father works made 50,000 dollars last year. My father owns a fifth of the business, so 10,000 of that should have by rights been ours.
We received 1,100 of that 10,000.
We've known for years Evan was stealing from the business, from us, his own relations. We couldn't get the IRS to look at it, to see what was really going on-that while our house crumbles around our ears from lack of money to fix the walls and the ceiling and the roof, he was off making repairs to his so that his daughter could have her stupid high school graduation there. If he was making the money we were, he wouldn't have enough to lay a shingle down.
And now here's another slight, that we were screwed out of 8,900 dollars by our own family, by people who are supposed to love and respect us. And that was just last year. Imagine how much money we haven't gotten in 35 years.
If this came out, and the IRS investigated, I know for a fact that my aunt and grandmother would turn on us. We would be in the wrong, regardless of how much evidence and how much money was missing.
This is why I can't dredge up enough respect for these people-because our lives have been tied to these idiots, and we have been royally (pardon the language) fucked by all of them. I can't respect someone who stole almost 9,000 bucks from my parents last year-I just can't. That would have been enough to fix our bathroom, that would have been enough to finish this house.
This is why I have to leave. I can't stay close to family members who have done this to us. I don't want my future husband or future children around them. They're poison, toxic to anyone who comes too close, and I would rather never have my children visit with my relations outside of my immediate family than have them hear the things these people say about each other behind backs and behind closed doors.
I have to face that bastard in the future because he's family. I won't say what I want to say because it won't fix anything. But damn how I want to.
This is not a recent development. This has been going on for decades. I'm putting this entry here because these things are true. This is my reality; my mother and father and my sisters reality. We live with this every day of our lives. I had a school therapist tell me I had to let my anger at my family go because it's unhealthy, but how can I when these people continue to abuse us? I have lived this nightmare for nearly 27 years. I have lived my whole life not counting in the eyes of my aunt Sue, my uncle Evan, and my grandmother. It never ends. It never stops.
If you don't believe what I've said here, that's fine. Believe what you like. But I see the wear and tear on my mother and father. I see it when my sisters both take medication for depression (I probably should, since I myself have chronic depression, but I don't have the money for a doctor.) I see it on our kitchen floor and our bathroom and our carpet in the living room. Our windowsills aren't finished. Our porch is rotting.
I don't know who can help us. The IRS has told us there's nothing they can do, so no help from them is coming. We have waited and waited for Evan to slip up and make a mistake with his finances and find himself in hot water, but either the government is too stupid/blind to see that he's taking Social Security and working full-time at the same time and stealing along with that (several hundred disappeared last year from the business and he reported it. No one was caught but it was an inside job. Guess who.) We're praying for a miracle, even if it means never speaking to some of my family again if Evan falls from grace.
This entry was written a while ago (October?) but I held it back because I thought it was scathing and rude. It still is, but since my uncle seems to think we're living high on the hog, I've been told to post this. Normally I wouldn't give in to my mother's demands when it comes to my writing, but this is a special case.
My family is freaking insane. I know, I know, all families are. No. You do not know insane until you've hung around these people. For example:
My grandmother thinks her daughter (my Aunt Sue) isn't sleeping with the guy who comes to church with her every week (he LIVES with her.) This belief is from a woman who had five children, (she cannot be that naive. Please.) also believes you can't have watermelon until you've had your appendix out, and who let Sue borrow the car (Sue crashed hers) last week to take her best friend's husband to hospital because he crushed his heel. This grandmother also gave my two cousins gorgeous glass jewelry boxes for Christmas when I was 11 or 12 and decided not to give me one because I might break it (it still rankles.) She invited my younger sister strawberry picking and didn't invite me because I was "too young to go" (yet they let toddlers in those strawberry fields and I was at least ten when she said this.) When I invited her to my graduation from Eau Claire (because I was being NICE) she told me my cousin had managed her degree in four years and my other cousin (who's in the military and was on a SHIP taking his classes) did it in 3 1/2. Not "Congratulations." Not "I'm so proud of you." No. That's not what I hear. I hear I wasn't good enough DESPITE four different illnesses, two surgeries, the suicide of a good friend, and Asperger's/ AND a math disability which nearly caused me to fail out of college. And they wonder why I have self-esteem issues...
My Aunt Sue is parading around claiming her lungs are failing her. She smoked for thirty years and yes, she quit, but claiming you need a lung transplant and you're on prednisone for your terrible breathing is bullcrap when you're line-dancing for an hour with the boyfriend every week. Sorry, not buying it. She also visits her youngest daughter so often she should buy a plane, and at family parties, though she has 5 grandchildren presently, we only ever hear about 1 (and maybe two others.) That would be because the two that are never mentioned's mother keeps them away mostly from their grandma Sue because they have strained relations.
And now for the bane of our lives...Uncle Evan. You slimeball.
You all have heard how I dislike some of my relations. Most of them are good people, most of them don't deserve my wrath. The ones that do have earned a place on my naughty list (and I am being reserved as all heck here.)
My uncle manages the place where my father has worked for the last 35 years or so. It's mostly a family business-there's only one person who is unrelated to anyone else who works there. My father does the heavy work-lifting sheetrock, cutting boards, measuring nails, etc. etc. He gets paid very little for how much he does and how long he does it. He endures insults to himself and us, endures long days of backbreaking work without a decent lunch break and sometimes is shouted at for no other reason than the fact that he wants a drink of water (or a day off.) He's been ordered to work on the FOURTH of JULY (by his mother. I was there.) He has been threatened with bodily harm (including being threatened with a gun and the cops had to get involved and tell my uncle to calm down and knock it off.)
When my father was banging his head against the wall in his sleep, trying to get enough oxygen because his throat was closing from undiagnosed sleep apnea, they laughed at him. When my dad was sleeping on the floor of the place where he worked and getting up in the morning and going back to work for his brother like a SLAVE, they ignored him. He only met my mother because he happened to stop for a root beer on a day when he made it to his mother's house from work. Without my mother, my father would have DIED of an undiagnosed, untreated sleep disorder. She stood up for him and saved him from his family's ignorance.
How my father handles his brother and other family members is not the issue here. We've been telling him to stand up to his family and go get a decent job for years and he hasn't.
Contrast the way we have lived to the way my uncle's children have: We three girls are in one bedroom. My things are piled six feet high. I didn't own any closet space of my own until last year when I moved out (there wasn't enough for all three of us.) Our house is unfinished. Our bathroom needs a complete redo from the sheetrock up (as in, the paint has chipped away, the walls are falling apart, and our bathtub is held together with putty where it has cracked.) Our kitchen floor has chips out of it. Our carpet in the living room is giving out. Our shingles need replacing.
But good old Uncle Evan, well, since his daughter graduated last year, he had his house redone! (his FIRST one, not the second one that he also owns.) God, I wish we had the money for that. I wish we had the money to do all the things that sincerely need doing around here, but we've never, ever had it.
When his kids got dinner, they had McDonald's. When we had dinner, we had something made at home. We get government surplus once a month. If a light fails to work and it's not the bulb, we quit using it (case in point-the living room lamp that hasn't been turned on in five years. Hence, we have no light in the living room.)
We have always been without. The couch we have is a used one from my late great uncle (can't remember how long we've had it-decades.) Grandma gave us her old chair. My aunt and uncle gave us another one. Almost every stitch of clothing I own, including my underwear, my bras, and my socks that I'm wearing today, were once owned by someone else (disgust really goes out the window when you need the clothes.) I haven't bought a new pair of jeans in a regular clothing store in ten years. I haven't bought a new shirt in five. I can't afford to. I have always been broke, I have always been poor, and I have lived with it for every minute of my nearly 27 years.
We've never gone to bed hungry like some, so we were never too bad off. We just never lived the lives of luxury that our cousins seemed to-skiing at Brule and such things.
So when I see Evan's children with new, expensive toys that they got for Christmas (to replace the new, expensive toy they got last Christmas, or the Christmas before that) I act like an adult and try not to be jealous.
There are good things that come of being like this. I am frugal as hell. My mother taught me how to save a buck and do it well. I have a laptop I got refurbished and then argued with the seller and got 200 dollars shaved off. My Sherlock DVD came 15 dollars cheaper because I ordered it early. I can live on 20 bucks a week grocery-wise. I know how to shop in a thrift store and the books that I own are mostly used, but the words read the same either way.
I and my sisters have had our teeth fixed by the state because we were too poor to pay the fees (and because our teeth were all in dire need of braces.) We've had our education bills chopped down considerably because our parents couldn't foot the bill. We've coped with government food and food that was slightly outdated. We've gotten clothes that might not have been brand-new but were still functional. We've learned that if we really want something, we have to budget it, make sure we can pay the fee before we shell out.
It's not a bad life. I just want a decent job so that I can not worry whether the bills are going to be paid next week. I don't want my kids growing up worrying that if Mum buys them a 200 dollar something that they need, will she be able to pay the light bill this month? This shouldn't be something a kid worries about.
Now comes the news (recall this was written months ago and I'm just posting it now) from someone who's looking at my parents finances (for reasons I'm not at liberty to reveal) that the business where my father works made 50,000 dollars last year. My father owns a fifth of the business, so 10,000 of that should have by rights been ours.
We received 1,100 of that 10,000.
We've known for years Evan was stealing from the business, from us, his own relations. We couldn't get the IRS to look at it, to see what was really going on-that while our house crumbles around our ears from lack of money to fix the walls and the ceiling and the roof, he was off making repairs to his so that his daughter could have her stupid high school graduation there. If he was making the money we were, he wouldn't have enough to lay a shingle down.
And now here's another slight, that we were screwed out of 8,900 dollars by our own family, by people who are supposed to love and respect us. And that was just last year. Imagine how much money we haven't gotten in 35 years.
If this came out, and the IRS investigated, I know for a fact that my aunt and grandmother would turn on us. We would be in the wrong, regardless of how much evidence and how much money was missing.
This is why I can't dredge up enough respect for these people-because our lives have been tied to these idiots, and we have been royally (pardon the language) fucked by all of them. I can't respect someone who stole almost 9,000 bucks from my parents last year-I just can't. That would have been enough to fix our bathroom, that would have been enough to finish this house.
This is why I have to leave. I can't stay close to family members who have done this to us. I don't want my future husband or future children around them. They're poison, toxic to anyone who comes too close, and I would rather never have my children visit with my relations outside of my immediate family than have them hear the things these people say about each other behind backs and behind closed doors.
I have to face that bastard in the future because he's family. I won't say what I want to say because it won't fix anything. But damn how I want to.
This is not a recent development. This has been going on for decades. I'm putting this entry here because these things are true. This is my reality; my mother and father and my sisters reality. We live with this every day of our lives. I had a school therapist tell me I had to let my anger at my family go because it's unhealthy, but how can I when these people continue to abuse us? I have lived this nightmare for nearly 27 years. I have lived my whole life not counting in the eyes of my aunt Sue, my uncle Evan, and my grandmother. It never ends. It never stops.
If you don't believe what I've said here, that's fine. Believe what you like. But I see the wear and tear on my mother and father. I see it when my sisters both take medication for depression (I probably should, since I myself have chronic depression, but I don't have the money for a doctor.) I see it on our kitchen floor and our bathroom and our carpet in the living room. Our windowsills aren't finished. Our porch is rotting.
I don't know who can help us. The IRS has told us there's nothing they can do, so no help from them is coming. We have waited and waited for Evan to slip up and make a mistake with his finances and find himself in hot water, but either the government is too stupid/blind to see that he's taking Social Security and working full-time at the same time and stealing along with that (several hundred disappeared last year from the business and he reported it. No one was caught but it was an inside job. Guess who.) We're praying for a miracle, even if it means never speaking to some of my family again if Evan falls from grace.
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