Caustic Cupcake's Creepy Cupboard

This morning when the alarm when off at seven I woke up knowing damn well I wasn't getting out of bed. Logic Professor, accustomed to my morning routine, got up and hit the snooze button. Our alarm is across the room, you see, a vestige of the time when I could turn the alarm off without waking up but didn't have a Logic Professor to physically remove me from bed if I overslept. Moving the alarm out of arm's reach had to happen, and it worked: by the time I'd get to the alarm to hit "snooze" it didn't feel worth it anymore to go back to bed for a few minutes knowing I'd have to repeat the process. It was a success until LoPro moved in, and now not only do I not have to get up to make the alarm go away, I don't even have to wake up. That's where the physical removal comes in. He'll hit snooze a few times for me, or even re-set the alarm for a half hour later, but eventually he'll get me up. I can fall back asleep alright, but I never know when he's going to swoop in, grab me, and set me on my feet, stupidly expecting that I'll support myself and walk or something.

It didn't take more than one round of snoozing for me to declare that LIKE HELL would I drag my ass to Linguistics at What The Fuck o'clock in the morning. I like Linguistics and all, but five hours previously I'd been out on the town in a ball gown, staggering around on the dance floor like a fucking zombie.

No, I wasn't drunk. We were at the Zombie Prom, with hundreds of other zombies!









Unfortunately, Logic Professor had to get up and go to school. But then again, he gets paid to do that. I got to languish in bed for hours. (I foresee a day months from now when I am too sick/exhausted/injured to go to Linguistics and have to crawl into the classroom because I selfishly slept in the day after Zombie Prom, and when Captain Language looks down and sees me struggling across the floor towards my desk, possibly followed by a trail of blood, he'll ask why I'm at school at all and I'll say "Zombies" and then die.) I didn't even have to get up to take a shower, having done that the night before for fear of smearing my sheets with my green and grey body makeup. I got mostly everything off, except for the line of stitches between my shoulder blades.

Sadly, I don't think I put on enough. Year after year I kick myself for going too subtle on the zombie makeup. When will I learn that there's no such thing as too much zombie makeup? We were one of only a few people who weren't smeared with blood. And I'm normally all about blood, but for some stupid reason or another didn't feel like getting sticky last night. Today I regret it; how often do I have an excuse to get bloody? Thus, I have made myself a promise to at all times wear as much blood as the situation allows, in this case all of it.

We left a little early, seeing as how we had an early day the next morning, but wound up getting waylaid by The Awesomest Barback, who hasn't worked at the CPRB for months. We were walking towards the car when LoPro said, "Hey, isn't that Awesome Barback?" I wasn't wearing my glasses, which have been most unsatisfactory of late, and was thus unable to answer affirmatively until we were within not just spitting distance but licking distance.

It WAS Awesome Barback, trying to look in the window of a bar to get the score of some game that was on. In the time we stood around talking about what happened when he got in a fistfight with the Tall Crazy Manager (and won, but then again, I've never had someone tell me about losing a fight), we could have stuck around the Zombie Prom long enough to hear Thriller. Missing that was my only other regret of the night, aside from not looking disgusting enough.

Then we stopped in to see some friends who work at a coffee shop down the street from the CPRB, stuck our heads in the CPRB for a few minutes, then drove home and had zombie sex*. LIKE YOU WOULDN'T.

By the time I got to bed, it was after 2 am and I guess I was a little worn out from all the dancing. I forget which one of us asked the other to dance, but either way, I was surprised at us. Dance in public? I don't think I've done that since my high school prom, and then I didn't even dance as much as I did last night. Being a zombie was liberating. It didn't matter how fucking stupid I looked as I lurched around with LoPro on the dance floor. We were zombies! Zombies lurch and stagger! How could we go wrong?

Today I didn't do a whole hell of a lot besides eat pudding (I'm up to batch ten, I believe, and IT IS DELICIOUS) and get my glasses fixed. Here's the deal: one of my eyes is much worse than the other. When they were independently corrected to see equally (that is, one lens was stronger than the other) I was sick to my stomach for days and the world looked like a funhouse, even though everything was clear. Today the eye doctor told me that she had actually cut back on the stronger prescription to minimize the difference between the two (what? the? fuck?), anticipating that this would happen. Today, she rewrote the prescription so that both lenses were about the same. Now everything looks like it did before I had glasses, only much clearer; nothing looks out of proportion. Hooray!



* Sex while dressed up as zombies, obviously.

Labels: Lovelife, The Imminent Zombie Apocalypse

Today I am 23.99726 years old, and tomorrow I will be 24.

Last night there were some electrical issues at the bar, and I wonder if it burned down overnight as per my prediction.

I just ordered a pizza and put some pants on in anticipation of the pizza guy's arrival. I am going to sit around with my pizza and my Norton Shakespeare anthology writing up a few short essays for a take-home exam. Discuss an instance of ekphrasis? Um, sure. Tellingly, and discouragingly, the word alone gets underlined as a misspelling in Word.* I AM UP FOR THE EKPHRASIS CHALLENGE, SHAKESPEARE PROF.

Then, this evening, I will go to my parents' house for a birthday dinner. Presumably there will be presents and cake.

I predict it will be a good day.



* For the record, I use OpenOffice. The other Word. I must give credit to LoPro for introducing it to me.

Holy shit, is it Friday already?

It totally is.

• The baby bunnies are gone. They have mysteriously vacated their nest, but a rabbit I take to be their mother has still been hanging out in the periphery of the yard. I bet they're in the weeds by the fence, but don't want to scare them further away by excavating.


• Meanwhile, Parsley the house rabbit has been unusually sweet and clingy; I think he's finally gotten back to normal after a few months of barely having us home- LoPro was away at Nerd Camp for six weeks, and I was in Denver and Chicago. Also making a sudden guest appearance along with his affection are his testicles, which we hadn't really noticed until he started spending more time with us. While licking them.


• School is just dandy.
  • Today I stopped in the English department to see when my advisor's office hours are. She does not have email. For this reason alone I am considering switching advisors.
  • That and I'm smitten with linguistics. I knew that a Statistics minor would be an unlikely match with an English major, until I realized that there is a name for that combination: Linguistics! So who better to be my advisor than Captain Language? Granted, my linguistics prof does not yet know of my evil plan to make him advise me. I'm waiting until the end of the semester. By then I'll know whether I like linguistics enough to consider pursuing it as a Master's, and more importantly, I'll know whether or not Captain Language likes me or just thinks I'm a pain in the ass. Also, I might wind up liking my ACTUAL advisor enough to patiently teach her about "The Internet" and "electronic mail", more commonly known as "e-mail".
  • There was a horrifying moment last week when I had to give a presentation on a piece of Medieval lit, during which I nervously referred to the protagonist as "the dude" so many times that the Lit Prof added "dudiness of the dude" to his topics-to-discuss list on the chalkboard behind me, and everyone laughed so I turned around to see what the were laughing at, and had to laugh at myself but then cringed inwardly until it was erased.
  • Other than that, I am enjoying all of my classes.
  
  
• I didn't wear my glasses today. They're giving me a fucking headache and I'm afraid to drive while wearing them. The world is remarkably clearer, to be sure, but it's also moving in strange ways when I turn my head, and the ground looks like it's right under my chin. I intend to take them back to Lenscrafters and use them to stab someone.


• Today I made Pudding the Eighth, a delicious follow-up to Pudding the Seventh, which was my first (disappointing) foray into the realm of chocolate.


• Wednesday night I trained two new bartenders at work. Neither had bartending experience, so I wasn't just training a new employee about our policies, prices, and the location of the supplies they would need. I had to teach them how to bartend, and then train them about our policies, prices, and the location of the supplies they would need. I am still not confident in them in the least, but that's not my problem. W. T. F?


• My birthday is on Monday.

Thanks for picking my new glasses, guys! I'm tempted to make all my major life decisions by letting my readers vote. I picture Logic Professor down on one knee, and me saying "Hold on; I have to blog about this first!"

It's a little weird that the ground seems so close. I'm telling myself that it's a good thing because Parsley is nearer to me. Reading, on the other hand, has been AWESOME. I didn't realize how blurry everything was.

So! The results thus far are:

20 votes for Hipster,
14 for So Red!,
8 for European,
4 for Masked Superhero,
1 lonely vote for Mennonite,
and absolutely no votes for the terribly unpopular and subsequently self-esteem deficient Clear.

Thank you all so much for your comments- Erin, C, Sheri, Watercolor, Jo, Amanda, Klynn, Jennfactor 10, Christina, Gawdess, Momjoan, Kayla, Andrea, Snickollet, Logic Professor, Rora, Missnic, Iselyahna, Robbie, AussieAndrea, Boulder, Emmowyn, Nibblet's Mom, Jacinda, Elizasmom, and Lou! I have to say I was surprised and impressed at some of the names that showed up in the comments. What are THEY doing here?! I thought.

I think it's time to go get me some glasses.

I need your help.

Yesterday, in addition to folding laundry, making egg sandwiches, reading your fabulous comments, and keeping current on the state of the teeny-tinies in the back yard, I went to the eye doctor. It's a hobby of mine.

No, actually, it was about fucking time. I've been getting headaches every couple days, my eyes hurt daily, my older sister ridicules me mercilessly for squinting and has developed an uncannily cruel (read: accurate) impersonation, I have memorized the buttons on the cash register at the Cool Punk Rock Bar because I can't see them, and the reason why I started doing laundry yesterday was that I can't read for more than a couple hours before my eyes won't focus on the words any more. Then I turn away from the computer screen and see double until my eyes get back to normal. You know, perhaps it's unfair, but deep inside I feel that I am entitled more than anyone to not experience the unpleasant side effects of drinking, however they result.

I had been chalking these symptoms up to eye gnomes colonizing my retinas, but the cool doctor at my local eyeglass store disabused me of that by telling me that thanks to a gradually worsening astigmatism (they all worsen eventually) I am neither near-sighted nor far-sighted, but actually no-sighted. "You probably have trouble seeing far things, like road signs, but you can't comfortably see close things like books, either," she explained, "unless they're three inches from your face." And I would like my older sister to know that according to this CERTIFIED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL, squinting works and is the ONLY WAY I CAN FOCUS ON FAR OBJECTS WITHOUT CORRECTIVE LENSES. Oh, snap! My eye doctor just said FUCK YOU! HA!

My vision is not that bad, truth be told. Aside from reading books and road signs, I can see everything I have to, like faces, my bunny, and the sun. I'm at 20/40 now- what the average person can see clearly at 40 feet, I can see clearly at 20 feet, although I have heard this is an outdated and misleading way of measuring visual acuity. 20/40 is, in most states, the cutoff for being allowed to drive without glasses. I'm still in the clear in that respect. (Wooot!) So, by most accounts, my vision is pretty good.

My peripheral vision is fine, I show no signs of brain tumors or glaucoma, and I am not colorblind in the least (whereas my poor father is not allowed to dress himself). I didn't score the greatest on the 3D test, however. "For each example, tell me which circle stands out the most," said the technician who administered the tests (as well as the awful puff of air for the glaucoma test).
"Is there one in every example?" I asked nervously.
"Yes," she said, and then offered, "They do get harder." You mean they get impossible? Yes, yes they do. I forget what the significance of that test was, though, so it must not have been overly vital.

Logic Professor and I couldn't decide on glasses, though, and were kind of pressed for time. "We should let the blog decide!" I said, and he thought it was a great idea, too, and took the pictures. We narrowed it down to six pairs. Please help me out, guys, by voting in the comments. You can vote for more than one, or tell me they all suck and offer other suggestions. LoPro says that one should take caution not to be biased in favor of the pics in which I am smiling, but that might be a bias unique to him.

I would like to note that I DO have more hair; it was pulled back in a bun.

Here goes:


1. The Masked Superhero (Logic Professor says he doesn't like these because they make me look too much like a masked superhero, but I think that's why they're so fabulous.)


2. Clear


3. Hipster (dark with green edges)


4. So Red!


5. The Mennonite


6. The European

Labels: Cleaning Out The Cupboard, Product Endorsements

I was standing under the clothes that are drying on the clotheslines strung across our kitchen, frying the eight egg whites left over from last night's sugar soup for LoPro when he came in from mowing the lawn. We are so fucking domestic. It's times like these when I contentedly think to myself, I could totally live like the Amish. But while it is true that I enjoy hanging clothes out to dry, I grudgingly remind myself that there is more to the Amish way of living- not to speak of the Amish faith- than pinning up your panties on a line instead of tossing them in a dryer. Making your own clothes, for instance, or canning vegetables: activities I'd eagerly engage in but most likely ruin for lack of experience. The first time I accidentally made a shirt with three sleeves or had to clean up a jar of botulism-laced peaches that exploded on the pantry shelf, I would bitterly remember when I used to hang out a couple socks and pat myself on the back for being so adaptable and handy.

"I don't think anything's wrong," he began, and I came to attention immediately. Truth be told, I thought he was going to say he was having chest pains or had run over his foot with the mower. No. On his last pass with the lawnmower, the tiniest little bunny ran out from under the mower and wedged itself against the side of our building.

"Was there blood?" I asked, and shut off the frying pan; the egg whites hadn't started to cook yet.
"No," he said. I put on some shoes and followed him downstairs. At first I couldn't see it, and then when I did, I thought I was mistaken and that it was a leaf instead of a rabbit. It could sleep comfortably in an empty soup can. Its ears are like nickels.

There was no blood and it was still breathing. He was certainly small enough to pass under the blade, but just. LoPro thought it had been hanging out in our lengthy, neglected lawn when the mower passed over. I dug my foot into a little depression in the grass, wondering if he'd made himself comfy there. Lo, the grass gave way and my foot hit something soft. Yes, he had been sleeping there. With his three siblings, one of whom got a face full of sneaker and was now eying me quietly, shuffling a little as if it were deciding when to jump out and run.

"Oh my god," said my boyfriend. Later he told me that when he saw them, he got woozy. He thought he'd mangled an entire family, the offspring of the teeny-tiny bunnies from earlier this summer. A quick bunny-check revealed that each was whole and breathing, if a little jumpy. We covered them with grass and left the one against the building, hopefully to be found by its mom. Logic Professor was still visibly shaken as we walked upstairs.

Then we had egg sandwiches.

*UPDATED!*
See the bunny in the corner?

No? Look closer:

While the bunny waits for Mom, its brothers and sister are five feet away in their burrow:




There's usually a grown-up rabbit hanging out on the lawn when I get home from work at 3:30 or 4 in the morning; if such is not the case and the little thing is still alone in the corner, I'll try to gently put it back with its siblings so nothing kills and eats it before their Mom returns. It just seems to be waiting patiently, not suffering, and has shifted positions a few times.

Labels: Bunny, Logic Professor, The Garden

Today I made a double batch of pudding for LoPro, and the cornstarch separated into lumps at the bottom, leaving a quart of sweet, gritty milk on top. Damn it!

A couple people asked how school's going. It's... going. After sitting on my ass for so long, it's been hard to transition back into so much reading. This semester I'm taking English Lit, Shakespeare I (there IS an overlap), Linguistics, and something called, mysteriously, "Critical Methods of English", the exact purpose of which I'm still unsure. Fucking English.

I love Linguistics. I fear I may have made a mistake in deciding to be an English major. I picked English because I love words. It turns out that they don't have to be in English. Despite this revelation, I'm still stuck in English Lit. Fucking English. The good news is that I can always get a Master's in Linguistics.

I have not given up my hope of minoring in Statistics, mind you.

Meanwhile, I thought it would be a good idea to sign up to give my requisite English Lit presentation earlier in the semester rather than later- we all have to give one at some point- and now I'm kicking myself because it's on a Thursday, and I work Wednesday night. By Wednesday night I mean two hours from now, and by Thursday I mean tomorrow. DAMN IT. Fucking English Lit.

I'm also giving an explication of a sonnet in Crit Meth o' Eng. Is it just me or does "explication" sound like a fancy culinary term, such as "simmered in an explication of shallots"? And speaking of fancy culinary terms and wasting time in the 24 hours leading up to an important presentation for which I am unprepared, I made Pudding 4.0 today, and while it hasn't had time to chill, I can tell it's promising. I took care not to burn the pudding this time because to be honest, I wasn't going for creme brulee the first time, it just worked out this way, and by "worked out that way" I mean "failed thusly". The flip side is that for my fear of overdone pudding, I may give Logic Professor salmonella. We'll see if he dies within the week.

You guys have been so super-commenty since I jabbed you with the Stick of Guilt. Keep up the good work!

Well, that was successful!

Thanks to C., Christina, Sheri, Becky, Kayla, Allie, Klynn, Elise, Erin, Watercolor, Sharah, my beloved LoPro, Iselyahna, AussieAndrea, Elizasmom, Krista, Gawdess, and Rose for the comments. My two favorites were from Elizasmom (":uncloak: here :recloak:") and the fantabulously clever AussieAndrea, who posed a great question:

Also, when you say you are 23.9 years old... are you using the decimal point in reference to the number 10 (general decimals) or in reference to the number 12 (number of months in the year)??

A GREAT QUESTION, I TELL YOU. I based it on 10, and since there are only 13 days until my birthday, I am technically 23.964384 years old. This is why you guys need to comment more often. Specifically, this is why Andrea needs to comment more often.

I should probably give a shout out to Jo, who has commented on almost every post since the get-go. Go read her blog here (like you don't already); I read it faithfully through Bloglines, which does bad things for my commenting track record. I might as well note, as I'm noting things, that I'm glad to see some of you aren't dead- Allie in particular, who has a great blog WHEN SHE POSTS and (speaking of not posting) Klynn, who periodically stops back in her blog to reassure the internets that things are still Southern and Mediocre.

Now my question for everyone is this: does anyone make a good homemade pudding? I've made three batches in the past week:

1. Creme Brulee pudding: I achieved this unique and delicious flavor of pudding by letting the sugar settle to the bottom of the pan and burning the ever-loving fuck out of it. After it was annihilated done, I strained the concoction into a glass bowl and let it set, preserving the bits of blackened sugar that were small enough to make it through the strainer like insects in amber. It was a delicious failure that I might not be able to replicate.


2. Snowy white, sweet and soggy: It was good, mind you, and I didn't burn it this time, but it a little too sweet and a little too loose. I vowed to cut down on the sugar and up the cornstarch from 3 tablespoons to 4.


3. Milkloaf: Too much cornstarch. The taste is good, what with the reduced sugar, but the consistency is similar to the albumen of a hard-boiled egg. Eerily similar. That hasn't stopped Logic Professor from eating it. Version 4.0 will feature 3.5 tablespoons of cornstarch.

If you have any ideas, now is the time to let me know.

So! I'm still baking the occasional pie, and I hope you are too, even though I haven't mailed out the tiny pie trophies of lore. They're sitting on a plant stand next to the kitchen table. Periodically I knock them onto the floor when I'm reaching for the sugar (there are no plants on the plant stand; it's all kitcheny stuff), but I guess it's a promising sign that I pick them up before Parsley eats them, as I'm still intending to send one each to Klynn and Amanda.

Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And tiny pie trophies.

And comments!

Labels: Cleaning Out The Cupboard

Okay, bitches, who's out there?

Edited to ask: ...and what are you up to?

Furthermore: like the new color scheme?

Labels: Cleaning Out The Cupboard

My favorite customer last night was the one who broke her glass outside and came in to get another drink. As I was making it, I told her how much is was.
"I have to pay for it?" she exclaimed.
"Of course," I said.
"But I broke my drink!"
"Yeah?" I asked, as in, so?
"Nevermind then," she said pissily. What? Seriously? Bitch, you're lucky I didn't charge you for the glass! I'm not surprised that she didn't want to pay for another drink. I AM surprised at her indignation that I wouldn't give her a free one. Can you imaging if that was our policy, or anyone's policy, for that matter? Imagine the cost of all the glasses we would have to replace.

For the record, if another person knocks over your drink, I try to guilt that person into buying a replacement. It almost always works. Drinks knocked over by acts of god I replace for free.

As I was telling Twin 2 what the woman had said, I looked over his shoulder and saw her accidentally knock over someone else's drink outside. Speaking of the Twins, our birthdays are coming up soon. They are eleven days older than I am, and I think we're all going out to dinner sometime in the intervening week.

The major drama of the night was when one of our off-duty bartenders went out to her car drunk and tried to peel out and drift around the corner, but lost control of the car, careening for half a block with her tires screeching until she smashed into a dumpster. A second later, when she heard the sirens, she backed up and tried to flee the scene... until the cops rounded the corner. She's damned lucky she didn't hit any pedestrians- there were lots- and also lucky that she's friends with one of the many, many cops who arrived to presumably arrest her.

That was my Saturday night. How was yours?

It's time to clean out my text-message inbox again and record my messages somewhere for posterity before I delete them.

From: Logic Professor
December 26, 2007 8:37 PM
No heat? I CAN BRING MITTONS
(Because I was bitching about the lack of heat at the Cool Punk Rock Bar.)

From: LoPro
Jan 16, 2008 3:47 PM
That makes me so happy. You know how to treat a needy guy! CLING CLING CLING

From: Logic Professor
January 29, 3:22 PM
Heading to Leaky, a.k.a. OUR HOME WHERE WE WILL LIVE TOGETHAR
(Leaky is the name of our apartment.)

From: Logic Professor
January 30, 2008 5:37 PM
It's been, like, 50 minutes since you called me cute. Am I still cute? NEEDY

From: LoPro
Feb 20, 2008 11:31 pm
Things I love: you, Cupcake, my girlfriend, the woman I'm living with, the middle Pseudonym child, my future wife.

From: LoPro
May 6, 2008 3:34 PM
The Temple Owl ROARS its disapproval. Hoots? No, ROARS!
(after I skipped some function at Temple for prospective students)


From: Mom
May 17, 2008 2:05 PM
Mom & Dad out to lunch at (formerly name of restaurant)'s- now (New Restaurant)- 4 the time being. Shd b home by three-thirty.
(Sent on her 60th birthday from the parking lot of the restaurant where all her family and friends were waiting to surprise her.)

From: LoPro
May 28, 2008 9:45 pm
My busy worker bee! Tiptoe says "Hi!"
(I was at work, and Tiptoe is a stuffed lizard he got for me out of a claw machine)

From: Logic Professor
June 11, 2008 6:33 PM
Sorry so slow! Just woke up from a nice nap! I'm so cute!

From: LoPro
June 12, 2008 1:02 am
You're my human.

From: LoPro
Aug 17, 2008 2:05 am
Done! GO HOME DRUNK ASSHOLES AND LET MY GIRLFRIEND COME HOME AT A SEMI-REASONABLE HOUR

From: Owner of the CPRB
Aug 27, 2008 8:50 pm
FWD: please post notice.effective 09-01. anyone not following dress code will lose the shift theyre unprepared for. forever.. hire bartender no more fuckn arnd

From: LoPro
Sept 4, 2008 5:59 pm
First and only chalkboard of the semester! Truly my life is fascinating.
Sept 4, 2008 6:07 pm
23 of 31 students here. The interestingness of my texts is inversely proportional to the quantity I send.

Today is the first day of class at my new school. Last night I remembered that I was supposed to go to the big start-of-school welcomefest a few days ago. Shit. I have no books, no parking pass, no notebooks, and probably no pens. I also have no idea which classes are today, but I do know that they start in three hours. I need to get my ass out of the house and over to the campus. This feels like one of those nightmares where you realize that you're out in public and not wearing pants, except without the terror.