It gets dark.

I am a genius and if you've ever doubted that stop it this instant. I just figured out how to cure fungus gnats in houseplants without resorting to chemical means or using a vaccuum cleaner. How did I achieve this miracle?

I found some little house spiders - the kind that make the tiny little webs along the baseboards and in corners? - and re-homed them to my plants.  Two days later the Biker and I are noticing a distinct lack of gnats flapping around. A week later and I found two little spider middens in my plant tower, full of little gnatty corpses.

Am I worried that the spiders will get fat and huge and start preying on dogs?  No. We don't have a dog.

_________________________

Where have I been.

I have been to St. Lukes Imaging Center, where I was stuffed into an MRI machine. This made me feel kind of like a sausage. They were terribly concerned with my head for some reason (I went in for spinal problems) and so they out my head into a plastic cage - thingie, which was not as unpleasant as it sounds. I had a mirror contraption so I could see the in and out of the MRI chamber and be reassured that I was not being digested by modern science, and that was nice. I also had a little breeze blowing in there, which I found odd but not at all unpleasant.  The scanner-bed slid me back and forth like a pizza at unannounced intervals, which made me yip. At one point I felt as though I was slowly being brought up to the boiling point, and I almost bailed.  Apparently the MRI waves heat up the iron in your blood.

No shit. That's what they told me. It did not make me feel better. It made me feel like I'd pissed off Magneto.

Turns out I have spinal stenosis.  Whaddya gonna do.

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Where have I been, part deaux:

I dealt with the Trump shit. Rolled with that. Resisted and held my line. Did OK.  But Epstein? That shit has triggered me so hard that I don't even want to leave the house - so I haven't.  It's been a month and I'm just now getting over it.  I went out the other day and I did a little thrifting. That felt OK. But going to the grocery store, dealing with corporate retail, felt disgusting.  

I keep washing my hands.  

I've gone on a news fast, but the news is everywhere. It's like there is no bottom to the sewer those people were crawling in, and new horrors just keep on coming to light, more bizarre, more vile. And the kicker is, yeah, Epstein and his Mouseketeers are the definition of evil - but holy shit, what must the players behind the scene be like?  Every government in the world and all the big money players are part of this! Here and now!  It's not over, either! 

I don't want to touch anything. I don't want to participate in the outside world.  I don't want to get it on me. 

OK OK OK I'm doing fine. I'm fighting the good fight and pulling out of this mindset. Still. 

It's goddamn time WE RISE.

Shirtless, Shoeless, No Propeller

A wonderful thing just happened here at the El Apartmento!

BEHOLD:

I got it halfway out of the package and I was giggling!

The Biker came over to see and his eyes lit up!  I told him "I want you to be the first to go through this" because I love him 'n shit. And I handed it over.

 Then I hung over him and was a nuisance until he read it.

 

If you are not a fan of Tony Bourdain, you won't like this. It is pretty Bourdain (tm). 

If you are a fan of Bourdain, get this book IMMEDIATELY. It is pretty Bourdain(tm).

 

I read this book in one sitting and loved it. But honestly, I won't be cooking out of it right away.  

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Dear Mme. Arcati:

Elizabeth Davids' A Book of Mediterranean Food has just arrived yesterday and I cannot put it down!

I made her Pate of Chicken Livers this morning, and it is ASTOUNDING.  The only thing I did differently was to use a Glad Reuseable 

container instead of a small earthenware crock because I am plumb out of small earthenware crocks. 

Note that I could not wait to try out these recipes.  What a stellar  recommenation this was! 

Thank you!!!

____________________________________________

Ashley Gavin. Because lesbians make everything better!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yId_uC-Iaw8

https://x.com/AshGavs/status/1252638120182456324

 

 

Misadventures with Wine + stuff

NOTE:  I pulled the trigger in this one before I could talk myself out of it. 

We are not wine drinkers here at the El Apartmento. Not by any stretch of the imagination.  But we are wine consumers, in that we use the stuff as a cooking ingredient.

As ingredients, then, we prefer to use a garbage Merlot, and a garbage Chardonnay, the nastiest, cheapest ones on offer, in case I didn't make myself clear.

Not thinking, as seems to happen a lot lately, I put 'garbage white' on the grocery list, presuming that The Biker would get the usual.

He did not.

He got a Moscato.

He got Barefoot Wineries White Moscato..

He did not look when he bought it.

And I did not look when I opened the bottle. 

 

I was feeling saucy that afternoon, so I tipped a little into a glass and took a sip. All my jungle instincts kicked in as it hit the back of my tongue. I turned to the sink, spat it out, dumped the glass, grabbed the bottle, ran for the terlet and flushed it all. One long fluid movement from sip to flush, like a ballet. 

Like this ballet.

I don't blame the Biker a bit. And I never said a word about it. 

 But today I did this:

OO!  OO!  Wha'd it taste like wha'd it taste  like OO OO

OK FINE I WILL TELL YOU.

It tasted like straight Karo syrup and mouthwash.

It even had a texture. 

It was like   

I'm not saying what I was going to say because it's too grosFINE OK.

It was like a slug. It was like as if someone had stepped on a slug, in your mouth.

See, you had to know, and now look at you.

______________________________________

I figured out how to tell the Conservatives from the Liberals here in Idaho. 

Any institution that has a lot of Hispanic people?  Is Liberal.  Or Liberal-er.  Or -ish.

Unless it's the Catholic church.  Catholicism here is its own special brand of....this: "That Guy In Rome": A Catholic Town in Idaho Where The Pope is a Heretic | Religion Dispatches 

Have I made you uncomfortable?  Good. I know I am. Now I have company.*

_________________________________________

OK here's what I've figured out:

A Vape place is a tiny hole-in-the-wall joint, usually with a drive-thru out back, that sells primarily vape juice and vaping thingies. (Not something I do, so yeah.) They might sell a little pop, they might have an expresso machine.  They all exhale a weird candy aroma, like those cherry-scented things they used to put in gas station toilets.

A Tobacco store sells conventional nicotene products - as long as they're made by Philip Morris. They also carry marijuana paraphernalia, doper lifestyle accessories (like a lighter shaped like a MAC 5 - ask Savannah, she has one in her purse) and black light posters, incense, and things that Snoop Dog has signed. Also craft beer, garbage beer, garbage wine and malt liquor. Oh and let's not forget the massive cases full of Kratom in various forms.

A liquor store sells liquor, beer, wine, malt liquor, mixers, pop, and a little bit of all the above ^^^. Also ice cream treats.

Unless you're up the road in Weiser, where it's just all one thing and they either call it Such and So's TOBACCO STORE or VAPE PLACE... and liquor, in little teeny letters. Along with a bunch of lottery ticket ads.

It would seem that people here are desperate to run shit through their livers. And also obvious that they feel guilty about it.  

There's a hierarchy of sin, too. 

Vape stuff is off the radar, but something really sketch is going on in those places, so black out the windows and put bars over the doors. 

Tobacco is bad for you, but at least it's not beer or wine, which is  bad-ER for you, so here, let's put that in a bag (seen above) so that nobody at all will guess in one million years that you have just bought alcoholic beverages. From the tobacco store.

But hard liquor, now, hey, that's REALLY SUPER EL FUCKING BAD SENOR so let's just put 150 signs advertising lottery tickets all over the place and advertise the tobacco and vape shit, wink wink. Nobody in two million and a half years will ever guess that you stopped in to buy HARD LIQUOR. You just go on now, clutching that long, skinny paper bag that nothing else in the world comes in, BY THE NECK, and we'll all...presumably pretend that this never happened, or something.

Man, Idaho, you are a TRIP.

________________________________________________________

*From my hometown, making me proud. They've been around for years. This is the ideal that I grew up with, in my town, in my neighborhood.

Thank God.

Or whoever.

This church is going viral for their openness and their sign game is epic (25 pics)

King Of All Waffles

Fifty Words for Snow  

My friends, when searching Hathi, IA, WikiSource, Perseus, DPLA et al gets frustrating, here you go - an easy to use, odd, kind of self-indulgent but not at all stupid, free E-BOOK site for all your ancient/medieval/renaissance/etc. eras up to about 1920? reading needs! 

Fifty Words for Snow  

You just look, you pick, you click, shit opens up, you read. Boom. 

Add it to your digital library links NOW.

Fifty Words for Snow  

________________________________ 

It was while I was at Fifty Words for Snow I found this:

The Cult of the Chafing Dish

...with my apologies to Mr. Peenee for taking so long to provide the link. (Let's test his memory.)

It is a cookbook centered around what arguably could be called the first 'fad' appliance - a chafing dish. Basically you were young, single, poor and living in the big city for the first time in some horrible little crappy room.  But we got you fam! Here! Have a chafing dish!! You can cook in that squalid little room in a pretty little pot OVER A FUCKING CANDLE FLAME OMGWTFBBQ *running in circles like a chihuahua*  - although a spirit lamp is the official line (what else can I do with this sentence?) and thus your ass will save money all over the place and will accrue all kinds of other benefits, including the ability to cure scabies by laying on hands like a monarch of the realm, which I made up.

Our author writes with such cheerful aplomb it's enough to make you laugh out loud, which I did several times, although I admit that in such matters I am a cheap date. Still, never have I enjoyed reading a cookbook so much! And there's footnotes! And outside links! And commentary by the owner of this site! 

GEEZE JUST READ:  The Cult of the Chafing Dish 

__________________________________________

Look what arrived three days ago!

One can never be too careful.

And look at all the swag!  INCLUDING BEER SOAP! Shit, it tastes just like beer, too.

Thank you Mr. Rimpy Rimpington!

Fuck'em if the can't take a joke

 

    I'm staying OUT.   

Toulousey La Funk

 OK. I woke up this morning, shuffled around, poured a little Irish in my coffee and BAMMO I won the FGES competition. 

   Me, first thing in the morning, reacting to the news.      

That shit just doesn't go around happening to people! There was shock! There was awe!

 I tipped a little more Bushmills into my cup and read the message again. Sure enough, I have won this years' Freakin' Green Elf Shorts Competition!

And honestly, who better?

   I haven't shaved yet. Geeze. It's early.    

For now, I await further instructions.  Thank you, people who decide these things, for this singular (and probably unwashed) honor!  I will do my best to uphold the etc. etc. and I look forward to going ass-ass commando in the Green Velveteen, sowing confusion wherever I roam, making hooting noises, chewing on old people, knocking shit over.  

  Oh hell yeah.  

Another quick note:

For the first time in my adult life I am in the closet, and I am going through a whole identity restructuring process as a result.

I have been out since1978. I'd been signaling for years before that. 

Let's face it, straight men either don't believe in bisexuality, or they think it's something drunk chicks do.  That, in combination with the PNW zeitgeist, the ultra- liberal Oregon of my youth and the freedom of Seattle...I never had a worry being out. Not one.   

And it was very, very easy for me to be 'out' too.  That's what I'm trying to explain.  I never faced any risks. I was a cute, curvy young woman and I didn't look butch even in a three-piece suit, smoking a cigar - it was ridiculous. Straight men thought it was hot, gay women thought it was hot, gay men thought it was hot, and straight women....I left alone. And that was fine. Even though I out-grew that suit, and I miss it.

So here I am at 65. 

I knew that I was moving to a conservative state; but I thought it would follow the rule I'd grown up with - the towns and cities would be liberal, and the county would be made up of morons. But conservatism in Idaho is REALLY DIFFERENT. It isn't just a few cranks.  Here, it's the world. It's the NORM.

And you know what, kats and kittens?  It scares the living shit out of me.

Now I think about what I wear going out. I think about how I express myself, and how I move, for the love of fuck. 'Is this or that gesture too masculine?  Should I not be in the 'dude' section of this hardware store?'

And this sounds silly. I know. It is silly. But it's fucking with me.  Now that I'm old, now that all my personality traits are cast in stone, now that I no longer get the 'pretty' pass, now that I no longer live in a certain place, I feel like I have a target on me.  Like people are watching me very closely for the slightest 'off' trait.

I know this is not the place y'all come for stuff like this, but dammit, I'm queer and I'm trippin' hard.

I feel like a sellout. I hate it.

_______________________________