comfort foods
December 16, 2005, 10:38 P.M.

I have been spending the last few evenings (at least until I pass out on the couch, anyway) watching my tapes of the old Jim Hutton series, "The Adventures of Ellery Queen". I love that old show, and I am still, 25 years after he died, a little hung up on Jim Hutton. The mysteries are a bit simplistic, and it can be fairly obvious that TVLand cut great hunks out when they ran them several years ago, but I still find myself riveted. I miss this type of well-produced television, with engaging stars and the talented Hollywood stalwarts that guested. Real costumes, scripts, sets, and actors. Pretty far removed from what passes itself off as television programming today! Of course, it was a dying breed even then--EQ was cancelled because it was simply too expensive to produce.

Anyway--I've found myself needing to crawl into an old show like this to get away from the real world. It is, I think, a sort of video comfort food, to help me release stress, and keep me occupied and away from the Christmas cookies.

I have, since the beginning of the holiday season, baked the following: 8 dozen M&M Cookies, with red & green candies, Spritz cookies, in two separate batches of 5 dozen each, and 3 dozen Peanut Butter Cup Cookies.

As of this morning, there are no cookies in my house.

I�m never going to get done baking, apparently, unless I hide my cookies somewhere! I don�t mind that Spouse is enjoying them during the holiday season, because that is kind of the point. But I did want to have some left for�you know--Christmas?!

So this afternoon, I'm baking again--this time, traditional rolled sugar cookies. But I'm cheating. I got some of the pre-made Nestlé Tollhouse pre-made cookie dough, that already comes in sheets and stamped with cutouts...trees, ornaments, candy canes. Plus you can roll out the scraps and uses your own cutters, so I have a few pigs (family joke) and hearts (using the only cookie cutter I have left from my maternal Grandmother). I never have any luck with my own rolled cookies, so I figured I'd give this a try. So far, so good. They taste okay and bake up very well. I'm decorating about half with colored sugars, and the rest I'll ice with the icing that came in the cookie package. That will just have to be enough, though, because I'm running out of time to bake.

On a side note--Spouse and I have a new euphemism. The other day when Nephew was over, Spouse asked me where he was. I replied "doing computer maintenance." When Spouse (who was seated at the computer at the time)looked at me all puzzled-like, I added "He's deleting cookies."

I�m now fucked into working just as hard as I have been for the last two months, continuing through the holidays, the end of the year, and into January.

The downtime I�ve been dreaming of since October�that I�ve been dangling before myself like a carrot�the reward I promised myself if I could just hang in there till the middle of December�

�Gone. Snatched away from me by the worthless tweeks and fucks I work with, and for, and who constantly and consistently work AGAINST me.

And the hardest thing, for me to have to stand there and swallow like a Bangkok whore? The expect me to be grateful that they extended the deadline. That I get to work right on through the end-of-year systems freeze, that I can have no time off in January, that I won�t even get to complete my year-end clean up and organization tasks, because I�ll be too busy testing�these are apparently all PLUSSES, in the eyes of the bastards I have to deal with every day.

I cannot keep doing this. I�m developing a skin condition, a facial twitch, musculoskeletal issues, and an itchy trigger finger.

So now, I've had to work a full day on another Friday, I have to work Saturday, and I�m never, ever going to get my Christmas shopping done, because I�m working yet another Saturday, and Spouse is working yet another Sunday, and we just cannot get together.

What in the heck am I going to do?

Or maybe I�m just an idiot, because when he mentioned couple of days ago that he needed to fill the washer fluid in his car, and I asked that when he did so, he fill mine, and then he promised to do just that�I THOUGHT HE MEANT HE WAS GOING TO ACTUALLY GO DO IT. RIGHT THEN.

It seems, however, that it was merely a vague and undefined future goal of his. I know this now, because I was late to work today due to a blinding slop-storm on the roads, and a bone-dry washer fluid reservoir.
When he called me at work this morning, I brought up the problem I�d had, and he returned an off-hand �oh, yeah�my dashboard�s telling me I need to fill mine, too.�

Do you know what agape means? Me, on hearing that.
[rant]
Well, if that ill-equipped, poorly made, California car piece of shit I have to drive had an idiot light for washer fluid, I wouldn�t have been flailing around in the dark this morning trying to find an unlit exit and a gas station where I could get jacked three bucks for a bottle of blue tap water. So now I�m pissed off royally, for several washer related problems, all of which are his fault.

Except they are not. Because I KNOW that there is no one on this fucking planet I can truly depend on�but me. Every time I trust ANYone, to do ANYthing, I am being a prize fool. And I know this (see work-related stuff above.), and still, I lean and I trust and I depend and I get let down anyway.

Because I�m stupid.

[end rant]