Jimmy on the news?!?!?!

The perch demands its 15 minutes...

So I was making chicken pot pie for the fourth time in 10 days and had Alpha tsannel on in the living room. Kind of a lightish newscast, nothing like Star, but not tiring like the one where people yell at each other about politics till your ears ring. And I popped in to get an ingredient from the fridge. [You know the fridge is in the living room of the rat's nest, right? Cause the fridge is bigger than the entire kitchen, and until I remodel the kitchen, 10.000 euros from now, le frigo se trouve dans le salon.]

And Jimmy, Jimmy exactly:

was on TV!!! Except as the "fattest cat in Germany", looking for a new home for some reason. Exactly like Jimmy, except not as big!!! Aughgh! But you have to realize it was the same to the detail, like if Jimmy was a breed, the same exact example. And his face markings and stripey sides and absolutely everything-- carbon copy. AUGH! Except smaller! I've spent over half an hour trying to find some kind of a link and will not give up!

I don't know why this cheered me up because the rest of the day was black. A big volcano of thickened Sharpie ink spilling out and covering everything. Wasted morning trying to get chemeo, sent away due to low platelets after three hours of waiting. I am becoming more and more negative about this therapy working because my blood can't manage to keep up with the treatments and I keep getting sent home. The regimen is supposed to go like clockwork and mine is like a broken watch where you keep noticing that you forgot to wind it. I'm not saying that to be overdramatic, it's just the fact. At some point you throw the watch out, people, and get a brand new Casio and forget about it. The Casio is looming on the horizon.

BUT JIMMY WAS ON TV!!!

Hugest rat's nest news: Bathroom door installed! Heavy slider. Privacy for all! Guests don't have to pee in the dark with the TV turned up for a modicum of privacy. BIL doesn't have to pee at Everest to maintain a sense of propriety! Bonus: They had sent the wrong door frame molding, which the installer picked up on before setting out, so he brought the right stuff and I got to keep the extra molding. Not bad. You can always use that for a project... Not sure what but G will think of something, I bet.

The life-giving visitors arrive soon...
Tuesday the 13th. Unlucky day for people in this country because Smyrni was invaded on Tuesday the 13th.
Tuesday the 13th. Lucky day for me!!! It's like when you reclaim a bad word and use it differently and change its connotation and piss off the people that used to use it against you. (Also Eva insists it's a lucky day cause she was born on Tuesday the 13th.)

Happy Monday

You'll be glad to know I don't have the swine flu.
We can all go back to eating pork chops now.

Oinkety oink

Still at the rat's nest,

in about half an hour I have to take another Tamiflu pill, prescribed today by the onco, who is (slightly) afraid that my cold could be swine flu!!! She swabbed my throat and we'll know for sure on Sunday morning.

Dear Al,
Dude. If you gave me the f-ing swine flu after telling me it was allergies, bite me.
Love, Miss Piggy

PS It's bad enough looking like Miss Piggy without having her species' illness too.

Off the hook for giving me swine flu are the 'rents, who both got the jab in the Fall.
Kazzie and her Mom could not get the jab due to the very existence of the Kaz.

ALSO: THE BATHROOM DOOR IS HERE! DELIVERED BUT NOT INSTALLED. I KNOW EVERYBODY WAS DYING TO KNOW.

cioccolato gianduia con nocciole intere

Reporting from the rat's nest...

Forget for a few moments that sugar feeds cancer. Remind yourself that rebelling is a way to assert free will and make you feel like you have some control in a world where you have very little control. Now open wide.

Two steps back. Last year for work I researched/wrote an article about the chocolate industry for an upper-level textbook of which we were all really proud. Lots of good issues were explored in the various texts presented. Anyway, the things I learned about the level of child labor, including child slave labor, employed in the chocolate industry made me cry at my computer screen. The way chocolate is harvested and the distance of the fincas from urban centers means that work-related accidents often lead to death for these child workers. Around seventy percent of the chocolate produced worldwide is done in a way that should make us feel deeply ashamed to consume it. So I swore that I would only eat/buy fair trade chocolate from then on. I have been pretty good about this, not perfect. One exception is that I sometimes send my brother a certain wafery thing from here that reminds us of our childhoods. Not an excuse, though.

What does it mean to eat only fair trade chocolate? Deprivation and huge expense? Hardly. Think about it. How tasty is the waxy, hard, artificial, mass-produced rubbish used in supermarket chocolate? One bite of the good stuff is worth ten crummy candy bars.

Tonight K stopped by the fair trade store on Nikis Street and got me a chocolate bar with whole hazelnuts that is unbelievable. A rare treat that is all the more enjoyable because it is made carefully, responsibly, fairly. So when you're going to break the rules, do it right. Yummety yum.

Kazzie Appreciation Society

The rat's nest

has been doubling as the headquarters for the newly formed Kazzie Appreciation Society, and I am the president and founding member. Okay, don't you love the name Keziah? Am I the only one?!?!? It means wild cinnamon bush. And it's a family name. So perfect and beautiful, right? K and the bro-in-law picked something else but I maintain my position and continue calling Kazzie, Kazzie, hoping that it'll stick.

Yesterday the K.A.S. actually received two nutter crank calls. The phone number looked like K's, so I answered "Kazzie Appreciation Society." But it wasn't her, it was some nutter trying to speak English with an eerie high-pitched voice. Who called back again. So I hung up on him/her but it was weird.

I have knitted two spazzie bibs for my niece. Tonight I may start a chevron burp cloth. Chemeo brain has not been allowing me to knit anything much more complicated.

In other news, the bathroom door is ready! Tomorrow I find out when it can be installed. Finally, finally, finally.

Still trying to get over the nasty cold. I think I have to blame my new office mate Al for giving me this cold. He was sniffling the other day, and I said, it sounds like you're coming down with a cold, as I recoiled. And he said it's not a cold, but allergies. Isn't it kind of early for allergy season, though? So despite my best intentions to get in four days at the office this week, it looks like it's gonna be just Wed and Thur because I'll probably have to stay home tomorrow too.

Your friend,
Mrs Potato Head
aka
Marshmallow Face
aka
Allergic to Bee Stings and Just Got Stung in the Face by about Twenty Bees

(gotta love those steroids, man)

Temple in the middle of nowhere

This site had closed 25 minutes before we got there. It wasn't our destination but it was on the way. A temple for Artemis, if I recall, photographed too late in the day to look decent, and from too far away.


It was last week or the week before, I don't remember. This is the little helper building. I love little stone buildings.

And later we walked along the beach, where there were kids playing in the chill.

And then a very good coffee on a squishy leather sofa. And then sweet bread (not sweet breads) from the best place around to get sweet bread. It turned my mood around.

But today I'm battling a cold. With the help of K's chicken pot pie recipe. I cancelled my lesson and my lunch guests and am hoping that I'll be well enough to go to work tomorrow...

Sunny city

Bright light flooding the rat's nest, heating up the solar panels, drying the laundry. I don't think I could ever leave the Mediterranean. There are thousands of problems here, but yesterday was February 24th and I took a walk in a huge, green-filled park in a long-sleeved T-shirt and almost wished I could take that off at some point. I would not be able to stand my life right now if the weather were bad. I really needed this break.

Going bald for the fifth time made me go wig shopping the other day. The prices are not to be believed. It looks natural but man, oh, man. If anybody was thinking twice about donating hair to one of those wig charities for cancer patients, please don't (think twice, that is). My insurance covered more than half of mine, and it's a pretty nice one, but there were some for sale that looked fake and crappy for well over what insurance covered. And I'm sure there are plenty of insurance companies in the States that don't cover a wig, or maybe give you like fifty bucks or something.

When you are basically a lady of leisure, with specialists telling you to stay home, you have lots of time to do house work. The rat's nest has never been so clean and tidy and organized. A couple of IKEA runs for new bookshelves and other storage stuff helped, as does the fabulous new bathroom which makes such a big difference. It'll be nice when it has a door, too. Still waiting for the guy to measure for it! Then it'll be twenty days or so to get it installed. Anyway, my mild OCD is in danger of going into overdrive, with laundry and dishes pleading to get done as soon as something gets used/worn. Today I cleaned the freezer (Q-tips and bleach, like the fridge!). For the first time in years, there is nothing mysterious or elderly in the freezer. Some day I have to go through the tons of CDs/DVDs I don't listen to or watch and maybe put them in one of those albums if I'm not going to throw them out.

Part of my reason for getting ultra organized is that I know if I die, no one in my family will be able to deal with all my crap. It will rot in the rat's nest. At least if it's in categories, it can be given away or tossed. If it has to be sorted, it will rot here, believe me. And I'm the least sentimental person I know, so obviously I should unsentimentally deal with my material baggage. Bonus: I get more room, get rid of stuff, know where everything is, etc, etc. Also, it keeps me busy.

Off I go to meet with my boss to see what the hey-ho I'm gonna do about going back to work part time. I'll let you know. (Did you really get this far and read this whole post? Well done!)