Hot and Sour Chicken Soup
Or Sweet and Sour - I've never had Hot and Sour soup. Anyway, that's what happens when you make Saurkraut Chicken with a dressing labelled 'French' which is clearly Catalina, you forget to drain the saurkraut until half of it is in the pot, then overcook in the crockpot by at least an hour. Said dressing dissolved most of the 32 oz jar of saurkraut, and dyed some of the drumstick meat dark pink (on the outside, not inside).
2016's been a bit of a shitshow so far, with a shingles/Rh flareup, an earthquake (luckily I'd closed my windows earlier that evening, as I'm pretty sure I heard Madeline try to jump through the one in the bedroom. Another cat one floor down did jump and died.), late retirement payment (it didn't get direct deposited until the 4th, which as everyone who's ever rented knows is the day before rent is due!), and notice that my rent went up even tho my income didn't - the office seems to think I have some sort of subsidy coming in, which I don't, so I'll have to rap with them tomorrow about that. And I seem to have broken a tooth, or one of the fillings in said tooth came out.
Oh, and the bugs. Carpet beetles, courtesy of the birds attacking and nesting in the stucco of the building somewhere above and below my apartment. Because when the city renovated the building, they refaced the aging cement outside with foam (appears to be literal styrofoam, judging from the 'snow'), then a layer of stucco so thin woodpeckers can easily breach it followed by happy starlings. And because there's no money to fix this, maintenance is reduced to spraying either DE or poison out the edges of the screens whenever a resident reports a problem. That's it. So I've been washing and freezing and bagging and DEing and spraying lavender oil on damn near everything, and yesterday bought a garment steamer for those things I can't stick in the freezer or wash and dry on hot. Wanted a multi-purpose one, but couldn't find one in town. Will have to buy it when my IRS check comes in, as this will clearly be a continuing problem. I was also told by maintenance that my under-door draft blocker is technically not allowed, but since there's such a bug problem they let it slide (and unlike certain relatives who flaked on me about the carpet beetles, *they* thought my tale of the roach that committed suicide rather than enter the wide open doorway of my across the hall neighbor who cooks wretched smelling stuff was funny. It moved as fast as its little roachy legs would carry it across the hall toward me as soon as I opened my door; I squished it before it got there, of course). Let it slide so much that when my down the hall neighbor moved out and left his, they left it in place for the next resident.
I still have a lot of work to do, and fatigue isn't helping, but I'm gradually making progress. Elected to toss my latchook rug my dad made me when I was in high school, among other things like uniforms, even tho my parents let me leave it outside on their back porch to freeze; I decided between the time I left it with them and picked it up (and unintentionally caused a fight over which door to enter - mother just *had* to get on me about it and having brain inflammation that day I was taken aback by my own instant anger in response. And it was a stupid fucking thing to argue over in the first place, since I had a perfectly logical reason for coming in the door that I did.) that the pile was too long to ever be sure it was fully clean of bugs. Also tossed Madeline's cat tree, which was way old and ratty. So, since cats cannot be left without things they're allowed to scratch on I bought her two new little scratchy things, and bought the steamer, and boxes of big Ziploc bags, and a couple vacuum storage bags (those ones you see on TV), and more lavender oil spray, AND laundry quarters after my mother's freakout about the bugs and door (we haven't talked since, since I've also been waiting until the inflammation stays down, which was brought on by the stress in the first place) I'm probably not going to start getting my savings back up above the pathetic $5 minimum until at least next month. Probably going back to the food bank, too.
Couple of good things, tho - I *finally* have a referral appointment to an immunologist, and its *up here* via the Veteran's Choice Program instead of at the VA hospital. Yay! And I have an Exploding Tardis rug on the way, thanks to the ThinkGeek gift card my sister gave me for Xmas. :D And I can easily have the tooth taken care of for almost free as soon as I have a good day to go sit on my ass at the community clinic.
--Zhora
2016's been a bit of a shitshow so far, with a shingles/Rh flareup, an earthquake (luckily I'd closed my windows earlier that evening, as I'm pretty sure I heard Madeline try to jump through the one in the bedroom. Another cat one floor down did jump and died.), late retirement payment (it didn't get direct deposited until the 4th, which as everyone who's ever rented knows is the day before rent is due!), and notice that my rent went up even tho my income didn't - the office seems to think I have some sort of subsidy coming in, which I don't, so I'll have to rap with them tomorrow about that. And I seem to have broken a tooth, or one of the fillings in said tooth came out.
Oh, and the bugs. Carpet beetles, courtesy of the birds attacking and nesting in the stucco of the building somewhere above and below my apartment. Because when the city renovated the building, they refaced the aging cement outside with foam (appears to be literal styrofoam, judging from the 'snow'), then a layer of stucco so thin woodpeckers can easily breach it followed by happy starlings. And because there's no money to fix this, maintenance is reduced to spraying either DE or poison out the edges of the screens whenever a resident reports a problem. That's it. So I've been washing and freezing and bagging and DEing and spraying lavender oil on damn near everything, and yesterday bought a garment steamer for those things I can't stick in the freezer or wash and dry on hot. Wanted a multi-purpose one, but couldn't find one in town. Will have to buy it when my IRS check comes in, as this will clearly be a continuing problem. I was also told by maintenance that my under-door draft blocker is technically not allowed, but since there's such a bug problem they let it slide (and unlike certain relatives who flaked on me about the carpet beetles, *they* thought my tale of the roach that committed suicide rather than enter the wide open doorway of my across the hall neighbor who cooks wretched smelling stuff was funny. It moved as fast as its little roachy legs would carry it across the hall toward me as soon as I opened my door; I squished it before it got there, of course). Let it slide so much that when my down the hall neighbor moved out and left his, they left it in place for the next resident.
I still have a lot of work to do, and fatigue isn't helping, but I'm gradually making progress. Elected to toss my latchook rug my dad made me when I was in high school, among other things like uniforms, even tho my parents let me leave it outside on their back porch to freeze; I decided between the time I left it with them and picked it up (and unintentionally caused a fight over which door to enter - mother just *had* to get on me about it and having brain inflammation that day I was taken aback by my own instant anger in response. And it was a stupid fucking thing to argue over in the first place, since I had a perfectly logical reason for coming in the door that I did.) that the pile was too long to ever be sure it was fully clean of bugs. Also tossed Madeline's cat tree, which was way old and ratty. So, since cats cannot be left without things they're allowed to scratch on I bought her two new little scratchy things, and bought the steamer, and boxes of big Ziploc bags, and a couple vacuum storage bags (those ones you see on TV), and more lavender oil spray, AND laundry quarters after my mother's freakout about the bugs and door (we haven't talked since, since I've also been waiting until the inflammation stays down, which was brought on by the stress in the first place) I'm probably not going to start getting my savings back up above the pathetic $5 minimum until at least next month. Probably going back to the food bank, too.
Couple of good things, tho - I *finally* have a referral appointment to an immunologist, and its *up here* via the Veteran's Choice Program instead of at the VA hospital. Yay! And I have an Exploding Tardis rug on the way, thanks to the ThinkGeek gift card my sister gave me for Xmas. :D And I can easily have the tooth taken care of for almost free as soon as I have a good day to go sit on my ass at the community clinic.
--Zhora