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Last night I got home from work secure in the knowledge that I had the ingredients to make tuna noodle casserole for dinner.  The casserole was delightful:  low-carb pasta curls, cream of mushroom soup, a can of tuna and a cup of frozen peas, baked until bubbling hot with a crust of French fried onions on top.  It’s not something you’d ever look for or even want at a restaurant, but sometimes the quickie, at-home meals are the best.  (See also:  rice topped with a can of pork and beans.)

I spent the next morning cleaning up the kitchen, feeling no shame at the sight of crumb-covered cooling racks from a pre-Halloween batch of cookies.  I know I’m a slob and I accept that.

I was a little ashamed at the state of my dressing room.  It’s developing a bad case of half-hidden junk piles.  There are stacks of papers in bags and boxes tucked here and there throughout the room, no doubt placed there to get them out of sight of visitors on various occasions.  It’s nothing an evening with a paper shredder wouldn’t fix, but that evening really can’t come too soon at this point.

Maybe this weekend I can spend a day at home, put a chicken in a pot on the stove to cook all afternoon, and do a thorough tidying.  As long as I lock up the TV remotes and my unread books, I might have a shot at accomplishing something.  Stranger things have happened.

My weekend was almost entirely uneventful.  I attended a game night with friends on Saturday (one win, two losses, 10+ cough drops), but spent the rest of the weekend flat on my back either sleeping, reading or watching TV.  The cats loved me for it.

I read America (The Book), Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and Interior Desecrations – all very entertaining in different ways.  I also watched a lot of basic cable, which sharpened my distaste for the smarmy bartender in the Disaronno Amaretto commercials. 

Did all the extra rest cure my cold?  Unfortunately not.  Still, I’m sure I’m better off than if I’d raced around from one event to another all weekend long the way I ordinarily would. 

Yes, I’m still sick.  I woke up in the middle of the night with so much tension in my upper back and shoulders that I thought my body was preparing to pop my aching head off like a champagne cork.  After a dose of Dayquil (it’s all I had) I sat reclined on the couch with a heating pad across my shoulders and slept until the sun came up.  The headache was gone.  Hooray!

Now I’m a little medicine-fogged and prone to frequent throat clearing, but I think I can be functional.

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have such a puny immune system.  It’s an absolute miracle when I can make it through even one cold weather month without getting sick.  Vitamins?  I take them daily.  Immune-boosting supplements?  Useless.  I get plenty of sleep, mostly stay away from refined sugar, etc., etc.  Nothing helps.

Okay, enough whining.  If I don’t stop now, I’ll lose all my readership except my hypochondriac base.  Assuming this cold is over in the usual amount of time, I should be better by Monday.  Have a lovely weekend!

The last time I felt flush with cash and went to get a pedicure, I decided to get a manicure as well. It was just clear polish and a remedy for my many hangnails, but I enjoyed having well-groomed fingers and decided to let my nails grow for a while.

I’ve never had much luck growing my nails and my rule has always been, “Once one breaks, the rest must go, too.” This time, though, they just kept growing. I don’t know if I’m getting lots of unexpected gelatin in my diet or if it was the polish, but my nails simply didn’t break. They grew and grew until there was no polish on the last third of the nail surface. I even had to file them one day so they’d keep their shape. It was a fun experiment at first, akin to growing a colony of Sea-Monkeys, but with far less maintenance.

Soon, however, I began to remember why I usually keep my nails short. The length of my nails started to hinder my daily activities: they collected remnants of cookie dough, hand lotion and bar soap, and they sometimes got hung up between the computer keys when I typed. When I put my hands in my jacket pockets, my nails dug into my palms. No doubt to the annoyance of my co-workers and friends, I added a new kind of fidgeting to my repertoire: tapping my nails on things. My little experiment was becoming a nuisance for everyone.

Last night I’d finally had enough. I was awake in the middle of the night with another bout of cold-induced insomnia and surfing the ‘net when I decided I could no longer stand to type with my nails scraping the laptop keys. It took less than a minute to undo the weeks of nail growth progress and return to my short, practical manicure. Ahhh! The feel of my fingertips on the computer again!

Now I’m adding long fingernails to the same category as pointy-toed shoes. They’re attractive and all, but the suffering outweighs any possible benefits. That’s why I’ll never be particularly fashionable: I’d much rather feel good than look good.

Maybe tomorrow…

I got to my neighborhood polling location just after 6:00 a.m. and ended up standing in a short line outside the building in the rather chilly weather. My town has a population of about 10,000 and I don’t know how many voting locations there are, but mine had only four voting machines. Still, the line moved fairly quickly. I’d researched all the candidates and issues in advance, so I made it through the ballot in short order.

I’m still not particularly comfortable with the electronic voting machines, but I just have to cross my fingers and hope my votes are counted properly. I’m seriously considering volunteering as a poll worker in the future, partly so I can get a better idea of how the whole thing works.

The Dayquil seems to be helping, so I’ll head into work as usual. I don’t have band practice tonight, which means I can go home and lie down all evening (afternoon?) as needed.

My goal is to ignore the election results until tomorrow morning, but I’m sure I won’t be able to resist paying attention to the news. I guess that’s the curse of living in “interesting times.”

I wanted to make it to the polls as soon as they open, but this is ridiculous,

Yesterday I could tell I was coming down with something. I wasn’t surprised: I always spend the entire fall and winter mired in a series of colds, flu, bronchitis, tonsillitis and sometimes a bonus of pneumonia. This time around it’s a painful sore throat that’s resistant to all of the painkillers I have on hand. I can’t sleep, so here I am watching “Heavy Metal” on cable (my verdict: the animation looks pretty crude by today’s standards but the soundtrack is still good) and wondering if I should try to go back to bed and catch a few Zs before my alarm rings at 5:30.

I’m still planning to vote first thing in the morning, but I’m starting to doubt that I’ll accomplish anything else today. I guess we’ll see what happens once I get some Dayquil in my system.

You know you’re getting old when you need a whole day to rest after every party you attend.

I went to a friend’s house on Friday night to play board games. I didn’t mean to stay until 2:30 a.m., but that’s how long it took nine people to play three different games. We made it through a card game called Palabra (I’d never heard of it before and there’s quite a bit of math involved, but it was fun), a round of Cranium and a round of Frazzle. I won Frazzle, but only because the scoring is completely arbitrary and I think everyone was dying for someone to win so we could all go home.

The next day, I stayed in bed until late morning and didn’t make it to breakfast until after 1:00 p.m. My husband and I went shopping for last-minute Halloween costume accessories and then spent the rest of the day sitting around web surfing and watching TV except for another trip out into the world to get dinner. (We’re boring folks, what can I say?)

By the time I’d gotten myself all dressed in 1980s finery and gelled and scrunched my hair until it was HUGE, my husband had come to the conclusion that he didn’t want to go anywhere that night. I wasn’t about to waste my stylish rubber bracelets, enormous fluffy hair bow and patterned tights, so I went to the party without him.

As usual for this party, there were some good costumes: Carrie, the Ambiguously Gay Duo, Paris Hilton, Donatella Versace, Barney Fife, and The Bride and Go Go Ubari from Kill Bill (Go Go was portrayed by the husband of the woman dressed as The Bride, which made the whole combination that much more entertaining). My costume was well-received, but I’m going to do my best to come up with something more creative next year.

So today I’m tired and I think I might be catching a cold. Was it worth it? Yes, I think so. Still, I believe I’ll spend the next few weekends reading and snuggling with the cats instead of going out on the town. It’s all about balance…

Every year my husband and I are invited to a Halloween party thrown and attended by people who are extremely serious about their costumes. One year, a woman came dressed as Our Lady of Guadalupe, complete with shrine and candles. She was forced to stand in her niche all evening and have people bring her drinks, but everyone was suitably impressed by her commitment to the costume.

The only year my husband and I have ever had a real costume hit was when we attended as Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. Ever since then, we just can’t compete.

After wracking my brain and examining my empty wallet, this year I’ve decided to recycle my 1980s prom dress and really embrace the era by going in Valley Girl character. (Important note: I was not at the time, nor have I ever been, an actual Valley Girl or facsimile thereof.) My husband, who originally had refused to go in costume at all this year, has decided that he’ll spray his hair dark and apply a mustache and soul patch to go as Frank Zappa.

This means I have all day tomorrow to listen to the song “Valley Girl” and relearn Val-speak before the party. My band has considered doing the song, so it’s possible I’d need to learn it anyway. I’m also trying to decide if I really want to back-comb and scrunch my own hair, or if a wig would be a better way to go.

I’ll be sure to provide a full report on Monday.

My question for the day: why have single-use dishwasher detergent portions suddenly evolved so rapidly?

I was a big fan of Electrasol tablets when they came out. They were little bricks of dry dishwasher powder that dropped into the water at the proper time, dissolved nicely and did a good job of cleaning the dishes. Then the company added a little marble sticking out of the center that was supposedly Jet-Dry, an additional cleaner that fights water spots. That was fine, too. Earlier this year I bought a big box of them from the clearance basket at the grocery store, not realizing it was the last box of them I would ever see at my store.

Now Electrasol comes in the form of little bladders of scented goo. The scent choices are green apple, orange blossom and lemon. Like most Americans, I’m already conditioned to think of lemon as an acceptable cleaning product odor, so I chose that. To me, orange blossom is a perfume scent and green apple is a bubblegum flavor. I don’t care to have my dishes smelling like either one.

As it turns out, I don’t want my dishes to smell like lemon either. The lemon scent is actually rather nice as it wafts out of the dishwasher while the machine is running. Unfortunately, the smell clings to the insides of glasses and particularly to softer plastic items.

A visit to the company’s website reveals that they still make the tablets. That may be my next Obscure Household Product Quest, following on the heels of my last trek across the Internet to find Chore Boy (formerly Chore Girl and referred to by my aunt as Chore Person) Golden Fleece scouring cloths.

Someday, archaeologists will find my secret hoard of Golden Fleece and Electrasol tablets and be very, very puzzled.