ambitiouslyambivalent

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Story of my life.

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... i have learned SO much. You're lying if you say you didn't immediately try one of these...

Creative & DIY

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AM I THE 4TH PERSON EVER TO ORDER FROM MARCOS ONLINE???

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When you're asked to attend a virtual company meeting for "updates" and then see the title of the meeting...

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Unfinished stories

So, I broke my laptop, which meant that I had to dig out my old one, right? Now, I haven’t been on this thing in YEARS. Probably a decade. And I’m going through and updating drivers and clearing out unwanted or obsolete files... and I discover a bunch of “stories” that I had started writing and never continued. Some of them are only a page long, including the one below. I share this purely for the amusement factor, in case any of you are bored, and also because I have NO IDEA WHAT THIS STORY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT. If I get a great enough suggestion, I may just have to write some more of it! ;)

HERE WE GO:

I’ve never been a particularly “pink” person. It wouldn’t be my first choice in nail polish or t-shirts. I can’t imagine growing up with a pink paint hue on my bedroom walls, nor can I remember a time I’ve ever asked for a pink jacket, scarf or cell phone case. All shades of magenta, rose, salmon, fuchsia and tickle me pink crayons are guaranteed to be the last ones touched, reserved only for “upon necessity” colorings. And aside from strawberry-flavored Skittles, I’m not even partial to choosing pink-colored candies. So why I chose pink to be the first color to dye my hair, is lost to me. But here I am, halfway through a jar of Hot Pink Manic Panic hair dye, purchased in haste at the local Spencer’s novelty store. 

Standing in front of the mirror at home, I had decided to “highlight” my hair, rather than cover my whole head. How hard could it be, right? I’ve seen it done in salons before, with the stylists brushing the color on strand after strand, folding foil after foil. 

As it turns out, I am not a stylist. I managed to stumble my way through the process to bleach the locks of my dark brown mane, only to find when I unrolled the foil, my carefully selected “highlights” were looking like much larger tresses than I had anticipated. I sighed, well, I wanted to make a statement and I’d say I succeeded. 

The dye actually turned out to be a deep crimson color. As I brushed it onto the first strand it was hard not to imagine this would be what I would look like if I had suffered a particularly gruesome head injury. Reminding myself that the final color would be much more chic, I continued. 

“Shit.” And here we are. Just as I’m folding my last foil and looking like I had won a starring role in a B-grade sci-fi movie, the dye jar tips over and rolls off the counter—the now-empty container no longer able to support the weight of the brush I had placed in it seconds before. As I rush down to pick it up, I use my left hand to steady myself on the sink cabinet. 

“Shit!” I had forgotten the dye-covered polyethylene glove, now making an almost perfect handprint on the woodgrain.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Ripping both gloves off and tossing them in the trash can, I grab the washcloth I had used that morning out of the shower and start scrubbing, deciding I’ll bleach the rag later or make it mysteriously disappear. 

Outside, I hear a car door shut and a couple seconds later, my mom calls “Addie?” as she kicks off her shoes and stumbles into the kitchen to set down the bags of groceries she had just picked up. “Addie, sweetie?”

I freeze. The panic is instant as I scrub a few more strokes and instantly toss the washcloth into the trash can besides the gloves, throwing the jar and brush in right after. I would’ve liked a few more seconds to compose the bathroom (and more honestly, compose myself), but we are not blessed with a large house. About 15 seconds after she gets home, she is knocking and opening the bathroom door. 

“Addie, I picked up some great—“ She stops the instant she sees me, standing directly in front of the cabinet where the now-damp wood has taken on a red mahogany tint. 

“Mom! Have you ever heard of privacy? What if I wasn’t dressed!” I cross my arms, trying not to seem guilty or as though I’m hiding anything. 

She just stares for a minute. “You dyed your hair.”

The thing is, I’m not sure my mother would have gotten angry if I had dyed my hair blue, of all things. She has always been a bit more interested in being friends than a stand-up parent icon. Besides, I’m almost an adult now, about to start my first year at the college of my choosing.

AND, SCENE! Well... at least until I remember what I was actually writing about... Thoughts????

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Mmmm, Dinner.

Breaded Lemon Cod with Tartar Sauce & Zucchini

Instructions--

FISH:

Preheat oven to 400F. Line pan with foil and brush with olive oil. 

Combine lemon of 1 lemon, garlic (2 cloves), 1/4 cup fresh parsley and 1/2 tsp salt. Combine with breadcrumbs (I use gluten-free italian style).

Pat fish dry. Brush with olive oil and press into crumb mixture.

Place on pan and bake for 15-20 minutes.

TARTAR: (use desired portions, this isn’t a science)

Mix the following together: mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce (if preferred), chopped pepperoncini pepper, chopped pickle, dijon mustard, salt and squeeze lemon juice in until desired consistency.

Enjoy!

ZUCCHINI: 

Dice to desired size (not too small if you like a little crunch)

Saute in pan with olive oil until it begins to brown 

Enjoy!

For those of you who DON’T know yet... I have fructose malabsorption, meaning that my body does NOT like to process fructose (otherwise known as the natural sugar found in fruits, veggies, and pretty much EVERYTHING else). It is pretty much impossible to avoid it completely, so after a few grueling months of detoxing it from my body, I am now able to eat it in small quantities. YES! For this reason, if any of you are also FM sufferers, I have added the fructose contents here for you. Bon appetit! 

Zucchini-- 1.2 grams in every 100 grams Pickle (dill)-- 0.9 grams in every 100 grams Pepper (pepperoncini)-- 2.6 grams in every 100 grams **BEWARE OF HOT PEPPERS IF YOU HAVE A SENSITIVE GI TRACT Condiments-- typically >1g in a tablespoon Breadcrumbs-- You’ll have to look at the containers here, but avoid gluten as the fructANS in gluten turn INTO frucTOSE during digestion.

(There is no fructose content for fresh fish, meats and most cheeses).

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My nieces sit as comfortably as I do...

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It has taken me 30 years to realize the accuracy and importance of this statement.

Oscar Wilde

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My cat, Mooney, just watching the early morning thunderstorm without a care in the world. There are days I'm definitely jealous of the feline life.

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Jesus. Harsh.

...and yet it's already happening.

From The Washington Post. Damn

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I thought this is an important message. BLM isn’t going away, and it’s people aren’t fighting fair... they’re fighting RIGHT.

The View From The Idea Center

A Black Lives Matter sign in Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood has reopened old wounds about race, white flight and community change. Staff members at University Settlement, a nonprofit community center on Broadway Avenue, painted and put up the yellow-and-black sign shortly after the death of George Floyd, the Black Minneapolis man whose death after being pinned by the knee of a white police officer triggered protests in Cleveland on May 30 and a renewed look at entrenched racism in America. Early one morning in June, “a white male drove up in a white van, angrily cut out the word ‘Black’ from our sign with a knife, crumpled the excised word into a ball and drove away,” said University Settlement’s director, Earl Pike, on Facebook. It was captured on video. 

Staff replaced the sign with a bigger one.

“And if someone defaces the newest sign, we’ll put up an even bigger one,” Pike went on to say in his Facebook post.

Someone did mar the second BLM sign. As ideastream’s Justin Glanville reports, they hoisted a larger, bolder new one into place.

The sign and its vandalism have stirred up emotions and debate in Slavic Village, which used to be, as its name says, a neighborhood of Polish, Czech and other Central European immigrants. It’s now nearly half white and half Black, with African Americans making up the majority of the population and a growing number of Hispanics across both races. Resentment and fear, it seems, are still there, bubbling right under the surface.

Pike told Justin he’s thinking of a “restorative justice” approach to the vandalism. Once the perpetrator is identified, he’d like to invite him to talk about it with others in the community. That would be as big and as bold as the new BLM sign.

Can such a conversation happen? Can we really have meaningful and restorative discussions about racism, or the upcoming presidential election or the response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic? I’d like to think so. And there’s a safe and structured way to do it. ideastream is collaborating with StoryCorps to foster these talks through a nationwide project called One Small Step. Think about signing up. It would be your bright, bold statement against silence and simmering hostilities.

See you bright and early on the radio tomorrow morning, Amy Eddings

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WTF.

This is part of the transcript for one of the lectures in my Greek and Roman Mythology class:

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

“...wished he could be turned into a man to avoid being raped again and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” 

Not cool, Professor.  Yes, I realize the Greeks (and Romans) were fucked up; yes, I realize these are mythical stories; yes, I realize the culture back then did not recognize rape as a criminal activity; BUT I also realize that this is fucking 2020 and academic study shouldn’t throw those words away. Especially when a character is so affected by the rape to want to change genders for protection, and yadda, yadda, yadda. <-- had to.

Hmpf. 

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I’m all set for SCIENCE CAMP!

That’s right, my man hooked me up! I am a 31yo woman and I am going to science the shit out of this week. It’s all virtual now... but that just means bras aren’t required, right? 

Day 1: Mixtures

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I just spit milk out my nose.

Really confusing

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Did you know there’s a movie??

So, I just finished this book series (okay, I finished it a couple weeks ago) and found out there is a MOVIE of the first book with Gary Oldman. And there’s a documentary also. Which I have to say guys... this series is fucked up but so good. Believe me, even if historical fiction isn’t your deal you’ll be hooked within the first few pages. It’s dark, deeply disturbing and totally based on a true story of Russia’s Red Ripper, a sociopathic serial killer who murdered over 50 people, many of them children. Visit Stalin’s Soviet Union where murder doesn’t exist simply because crime doesn’t exist. I really can’t stress how quickly I ran through these novels. And Child 44 was TRS’ first book. Well done, sir, well done.

This picture annoys me though because the books are out of order: 

Child 44

The Secret Speech

Agent 6

The order is important, believe me. 

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In case you all were wondering.... it is indeed.

(photo cred to my brother)