The kielbasa thing was tasty, probably about a B on the overall scale of Things I've Made Lately. (e:zobar) theorized that it shouldn't be sweet; I wonder if that would work at all. I definitely think there should've been sauerkraut or cabbage in it somewhere because kielbasa always makes me want cabbage.

The bread pudding was more like a B+ or even A in terms of Things I've Made Lately. (e:zobar) isn't a big dessert man, and this won because it wasn't too sweet.

I'd take photos, but I know I'll never get around to getting them off my camera, plus neither dish was particularly attractive-looking.

I am going to resolve to blog with more photos in the future, but today I have been utterly useless, and will have gotten a ridiculous amount of sleep, so I wouldn't want to mess it up by being too constructive.

I am recovering from throwing a party last night. Before you all feel left out, it was a party to welcome the 2009 season rookies to the roller derby league, so I couldn't invite y'all, or I would've. It's the first party we ever threw in this house for more than, like, two other people.
(Four years ago we threw a "political party" for the presidential election. I'll let you guess whether that one wound up being a downer.)

My house is not trashed, of course. This wouldn't be right. But there are beer bottles everywhere. Full, empty, and in-between. I am planning on simply "paying it forward" with the full ones-- I'll put them in storage and bring them to the next party that happens, of course. And the empty ones will be rinsed and sorted and returned for deposit, naturally. But the half-empty ones...
It breaks my heart to pour full beers down the sink. So out of curiosity, I poured them into an empty juice bottle instead.
I filled a 32-ounce bottle with the half-empty beer bottles.

Well, hell, man. In the past, if I don't finish a beer, I'd save it to use as a hair rinse. (No lie! The natural acidity conditions the hair strand and makes it lie smoother. The odor actually rinses away.) But 32 ounces of beer! That's a lot of fucking hair rinse. It'll go moldy before I get to it.

I thought this over for a couple of hours, as I sat around totally unable to function. (I didn't drink that much, but my hangover took the form of being unable to complete a thought. I was happy and stupid as a goldfish all day today.)

Finally I lit upon a solution.
I had bought kielbasa, figuring on just chucking it in a roasting pan and eating it with some fall vegetables, as a way to get through a jar of horseradish I had to buy for a recipe that needed... 1 tablespoon. (I hate that. Horseradish doesn't last. But the recipe wouldn't really work without it.)
Kielbasa... in beer.

I cut up two onions, put a pat of butter (and daub of bacon grease, left over from breakfast) into a cast iron skillet. Sauteed the onion while I chopped up two or three carrots. (I bought a five pound bag of organic carrots for like five cents at Wegmans, in a fit of insanity. What the fuck do two people do with five pounds of carrots?? I'm putting carrots in everything.) Threw the carrots in with the onion. Cut the kielbasa into half-inch semicircles or so. Tossed it in.
At this party, one of my teammates had found my sister's Nerf gun, and much fun had ensued with people trying to shoot apples off one another's heads, William Tell-style. (Sour Grapes, #23, is a formidable markswoman, among other things. Don't fuck with her.) This was never successful, as a Nerf dart is not heavy enough to remove an apple. But the apples fell a lot nonetheless, because none of us went to finishing school. (You know how in movies they balance books on their heads in finishing school? That.)
So I had a badly bruised apple or two. Cut that up, threw that in too.

Two or three tablespoons of brown sugar, the scrapings of a nearly-exhausted jar of Weber's mustard, some mustard seeds.

Mixed it all up in the skillet. Then I poured in beer until the skillet was nearly full and everything floating just a little.

It's in the oven and smells really awesome. I put some potatoes in there to bake; I have no idea when the sausageness is going to be done, so I'm just going by when the potatoes are soft enough to impale on a fork and cut up and eat the hell out of. I dunno how long that'll be. Maybe an hour, all told? I put the potatoes in first thing, before I started making the kielbasa thing.

Then I was confronted with a plate full of assorted baked goods left over from the party. There was a bit of yellow cake, diced and generally smashed up (no frosting). There were cornbread muffins with whole wheat and a tiny bit of bran cereal in them. I had planned on using up some honey whole wheat bread I baked this past week, but there was so much other stuff...

I crumbled up three cups' worth of baked goods, and dumped them in a lightly floured 1.5 quart casserole dish. Then I heated 2 cups of milk on the stove until a skim started to form on the surface, whereupon I dumped in 4 Tbsp of butter and let it melt. I cooled that to room temp, and meanwhile whisked together 2/3 cup sugar, 3 eggs, 2 tsp or so of cinnamon, about a tsp of nutmeg, a tsp or so of vanilla extract, and 3 Tbsp of whiskey.
I poured the scalded milk mixture into the egg mixture once it was cool enough not to cook it, and poured that over the crumbled up bread products. That's in the oven and is supposed to cook for 50 minutes or "until it sets", based on the Internet recipe I followed most closely.

I have no idea how either dish will turn out. I could have created a monster here. We'll see.

But it's a theme dinner!
1) Waste not want not
2) How many calories can you cram down your gullet?
3) Booze.
Both dishes incorporate leftovers that would have otherwise been useless, both dishes are, let's just say, nutritionally dense, and both dishes incorporate quantities of alcohol. Yay!!!

I can't think of any better way to spend a slightly-chilly autumn evening, can you?

That's all, really. I hate everything. Everything is a pain in my ass, or oppresses my soul, or whatever. Hate it hate it hate it! I hate everything.

• does a little dance*

There we go. Hey, at least I did something constructive about it-- I added a journal here!!

AGGGHGHHH.


Oh, I posted photos of the completed rollergirl embroidery:

And Fi's cat Remi.

I'm doing my part to help Paul get the site stats up or whatever he's doing.:)

I am looking forward to the party, immensely. Fi will be in town-- she may have to go back down to Cortland to work a couple more weeks at her job, since her boss was out of town so she couldn't give a month's notice and she's very concerned with not offending these people on the way out, first because it's her first real job, second because she actually liked much of what she did there, and third because maybe, just maybe, they'll keep her on as an independent consultant working remotely to do the parts of her job that she actually liked, which would considerably ease her transition to her New Life In The Big(ish) City.
But, she has promised herself that she is going to really celebrate Halloween. It is her favoritest favoritest holiday, and she has not really gotten to celebrate it for the last five or so years, because of a combination of Leech Boy not being into it, and living in such an isolated place, and not having a ton of local friends, and just general grimness of life.
Z and I already had picked costumes, but thought it might be more fun if the three of us went as parts of a theme instead-- I wasn't married to the idea of our costumes anyway, because it would be quite difficult for me to actually make my part of it comprehensible, let alone convincing. (Let's just say I don't make a convincing man.)
So Fi and Z and B (shit, man, we all rhyme!) all have related-but-not-identical costumes. Fi is sad not to be able to wear her stilettos, but pretty easily abandoned the idea.

I was going to ask, if stilettos are right out for the new floors, what about roller skates???!! Those are my standby costume accessory of late, and since we skate on a lovingly hand-finished hardwood floor every day, my skates are pretty well-maintained.
But it turns out skates aren't part of my costume this year (OMG! I know.) so it doesn't matter. I will probably be wearing boots instead.

While Fi was up this weekend, moving almost the last of her belongings, we visited with some of Leech Boy's friends, who live in Buffalo. Fi and LB were in their wedding, but they were friends of LB first.
I was worried things might be a little awkward, but they were mostly annoyed and baffled by LB's behavior. They admitted they'd wanted to invite him to visit, because they were sort of worried about him, but they knew that if they did he'd as a matter of course bring along his 22-year-old New Girlfriend, and they had absolutely no interest in meeting her.

We've theorized that LB may be going through some sort of odd phase? But a lot of his reactions and things have made it very clear: He expected Fi to stick around after he'd dumped her, and expected her to continue to let him live in her apartment (let's be real, he never paid any of the rent, so it was hers), let him eat her food, and seems to even have expected her to continue to support him financially as he finished his program at school. He seems to have simply expected this as a matter of course, and is completely flabberghasted that she so quickly decided to move on in her life.
He must not have realized how miserable she was. She was sitting at my dining room table last night, as we ate dinner, and counted up how long she'd lived there. "That apartment was just a temporary stop," she said. "I never planned on staying at my job this long. Four years. We lived there four years as of next week. I hated it there, I was never happy, and all along, we were planning to go somewhere else."
She thought that over for a little while, and then said, "I'm never doing that again. If something's going to be temporary, it's going to be fucking temporary. I'm not hanging around like that, not for a man."

She didn't bring her portable hard drive this time so I couldn't steal the Skateboard Fail videos off it, sadly. So bummed.

Anyway. The only other thing really going on in my life is that I've decided to make my own embroidery patterns and learn to embroider. I'm astonishingly much better at it than I ever would have thought. I've had to re-learn how to draw, though-- I used to be super good at it, but had a really assholey teacher in high school who dissuaded me, so I gave it up and haven't really touched a drafting pencil in ten years or so.
But it comes back to you. I'll take some decent pictures and post them up in this piece, as I make more progress on the thing. It's time-consuming, because I'm being so particular about the stitches, but I'm really having a blast. I'm doing embroideries of roller derby illustrations taken from photos of my leaguemates-- the only embroidery pattern I found commercially mentioning roller derby is from Sublime Stitching, whose idea of derby is (understandably, but inaccurately) a chick with feathered hair and hot pants delivering a flying elbow -- which is cute, but for those of us who actually play, she's pretty clearly banked-track, as a flying elbow will get you tossed out of a modern flat-track meet. So I figured, I'd do up my own.

So far the best part has been my discovery that there is an existing embroidery stitch that gives the precise appearance of fishnet. It's called trellis stitch, though the Internet isn't backing me up on this. Maybe the little booklet I have is wrong! I guess I'll just claim that I invented it and call it Fishnet Stitch. Basically you take long stitches to make a grid, then you go back and tack down the junctions everywhere the grid intersects with either one tiny slanted stitch, or a cross stitch. It looks precisely like fence-net stockings. Maybe I'll call it Fence-Net Stitch instead...
Most of the fun of roller derby to me (OK not really, but a lot) is the Awesome Socks. Many of my leaguemates feel the same. There's always at least a handful of people at any given practice wearing tights, leggings, or socks that are worthy of comment. Last night our team captain showed up in a long fuschia empire-line spagetti-strap top, yellow booty shorts, and silver lam`e leggings. When we complimented her on her rather startling appearance, she looked down and said, "Oh my, I hadn't realized. This is just what was clean."

Anyway, so the Awesome Socks are the icing on the cupcake of every one of the embroideries I have planned.
This first one has sparkly gold fencenet stockings, because I have a spool of gold embroidery thread.
Yes. It is entirely made of win.

So my sister's coming to live with us in Buffalo.

Well, I should clarify. I have three sisters. I'm #2 of 4. #3 of 4, also known as Fi (rhymes with B, right? So we match), had to share Middle Child Syndrome with me. I know. I didn't even get my own syndrome. She might've had it worse than me, because she got 3 years of being the baby before this kicked in. (#4 of 4 got to sit in Mom's lap for eight years, until she outgrew it. #4 of 4 just got Surprise Married in Reno, too, so you see where being the Baby gets you. And #1 of 4 served two tours in Iraq, so there's where being the Oldest gets you.)

So #3 of 4, Fi, has always had terrible taste in friends. This extends to men. She has terrible, terrible taste in men. She picks the ones who need her. She has just spent five years, six months, and seven days (yes, she worked it out because she's kind of a worrier and a bit OCD) supporting a man my age. Literally supporting him, to the tune of him costing her about ten grand in that five years.
He's going back to school to become a massage therapist. He couldn't afford this on his own, so she agreed to support him.
He is among 22-year-olds.
Several of them are hot.
One of them, he has decided, is his new soulmate.
He promised Fi he'd never cheat on her. He has achieved this promise by dumping her, fucking the new girl, and about a week later finally getting around to telling Fi she was dumped. To put it un-gently. So technically he didn't cheat on her, as their 'breakup' took place about ten minutes before he slept with this new girl, right, even though Fi didn't know about it at the time? That's not cheating.
Right?
This new girl "knows me better than anyone," he insists. They're soulmates.
She's 22 and has never lived on her own before. (He's a little older than me, so, pushing 30 rather hard. Balding, too, I might add.)
She doesn't know that he's thousands of dollars in debt and hasn't had a real job in years.
Basically, it's not so much that she knows him better, but that she knows a better him. Only knowing the good parts of him, she's bound to be a more entertaining companion than my exhausted sister, who is a saint but not a fool and has the terrible, terrible habit of keeping track of her finances. (Mean mean woman!)

Anyway. I don't know what he expected would happen, but Fi basically said, "Well, that's a damn shame, and I'm sorry it ended this way. The only reason I was staying in this godforsaken place was for you, so I'll be out by the end of the month-- you'll have to go too, since I was the one on the lease, but maybe you can renegotiate with the landlord. You'll need a new bank account and a new cellphone account. All the dishes belong to me and I'm going to take the one cat, but leave you with your dead mother's cat and the other cat, who loves you more. The furniture is all yours, including the bed, but all the sheets belong to me and I can actually use them so I'm taking them too. Also the video store membership is in my name so I'm canceling it. Have a nice life."

He seems totally shocked by this reaction.
But me, I know. We Kelly girls, we don't fuck around. She was heartbroken for about three days, but then she realized...
She's young, she's single, she's got excellent marketable skills (she works in sales for a clothing company and has been going to trade shows for five years), she's quite pretty (we Kelly girls all look alike, but she got the nicest, most conventionally-attractive mix of our mother's chin and our father's eyes and our grandmother's nose-- pale hair, dark eyebrows and lashes, strong cheekbones)... And she's moving to Buffalo. Without the albatross of this deadbeat around her neck, she's actually got a whole lot to look forward to.

Boy are we going to have a good time. So she's sort of guilty that she's not more upset about getting dumped, but mostly she's just relieved-- she'd never have been able to dump him without being consumed by guilt, so this way she basically gets out free. He's completely broke, and screwed, and has no way to afford anything because he's taken advantage of his family so much they won't help him anymore-- he's going to starve on the street or go begging. But he couldn't keep his cock in his pants for another six months, so it's not her problem anymore!
I think he's actually a little hurt that she's so totally not torn up over his sudden but inevitable betrayal. (All of HIS friends responded to the breakup by telling her they'd always thought she could do better!! And his family all cried and told Fi they'd miss her, and told her BF not to call them anymore!!!) But what's she supposed to do? She's been enough of a chump for five years when he at least claimed he loved her. Now that he doesn't anymore, what can he expect from her? He's lucky she didn't kill him-- I would have.

So I've been helping her pack up and move her stuff, and if I never see Cortland again it will be too soon. What a GOD-AWFUL little town.

But more to the point, or to the subject of the post...
The cat she decided she was keeping is a small gray girl cat. Just like Chita. Remi is a couple of years older (Remi is short for Remington, because of her gun-metal color), a few shades darker, and quite a bit pudgier than Chita, but is much more cuddly and friendly, albeit just as eccentric in her own way.
So the two of them have been attempting to divide our house up.
This morning I woke up when Remi and Chita both decided that the bed which I was then occupying was The Place to hash out their relationship once and for all. Remi sat in the corner growling. Chita would slink into the room, pop her head up over the side of the bed, and hiss. I was between them. I was the barricade. They yelled at each other over, around, and through me. It was very disconcerting, especially since it was so early I kept falling asleep.

So my house is a battlefield, but nobody's actually fighting-- just lots of shrill cussing and guttural hissing...

Anyway. I'll see if I can get Fi signed up on this site. She'll be around for Halloween, which is her most favoritest holiday ever and which she hasn't been able to celebrate for five years because she's been stuck with Idiot McBrokeypants. So we're getting her dressed up in a good and hobaggy costume (why not?!) and taking her out on the town!!! It'll be fun! So keep me posted on any upcoming parties...

And the most amusing part of this breakup, to me, is that when she was transferring all her photos from his computer (she deleted his copy of every photo of herself, and worried that this was bitchy. Why would you worry? Don't leave yourself vulnerable to him! If later he feels bad and apologizes, you can send him a few of the photos back, but don't do him any favors. Right now, he's enough of a fucking douchebag that he might use the photos to make fun of you or something. Fuck that noise) she found all the videos of him he'd made her stand around and shoot at the skate park.
Yes, he's a skateboarder. Pushing 30-- pushing thirty hard, I might add, as his birthday's this winter-- yes, this winner is older than me and dating someone younger than our baby sister-- and he's still an avid skateboarder and makes his long-suffering girlfriend stand around at the skate park and shoot...
video after video...
of him totally failing to perform basic skate tricks.

Is it just me, or are these videos about to be remade into an absolutely fucking hysterical montage?

It's a goddamn goldmine. And I promise I'll post about it here.