Tag Archives: KIBIS

It’s my birthday!

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But I’m not entirely sure about that exclamation point up there. Not that I feel or even look particularly decrepit – or even my actual age – its more that this one is a bit anti-climactic. Last year was a biggie, you see, and I won’t get another biggie for a while.

We are planning a BBQ at our place tomorrow, which is a little stressful as my house is a disaster since the dog started blowing her coat and hasn’t stopped quiiiiite yet. Tumbledogs everywhere. And that icky white dander that coats your fingers and anything she brushes up against. Ewww. Cats are so much easier.

I’m also being asked to work the weekend. Any and all days I can. Which suuuuucks. A: because it’s my birthday weekend B: because it is a bank holiday weekend and I’m meant to get THREE days off. Not one, or none, or two. Sigh. And why will I go in? Not for the money, which will be less than what is supposedly what I’m entitled to for working a national holiday. Because I feel responsible. Because I want to help. Because I know they are in a deep hole with things that need done and a deadline to do them in. Will I be given tasks that actually help achieve that end? Doubtful. Last time I lost a Saturday to work – I kid thee not – I ended up stuffing envelopes. Not a proper use of my time, and not a proper use of my skills.

But hey! I have a rainbow in Ireland on my birthday – gonna take this right now with the iPad so forgive the poor quality:

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So that’s something, right?

Tonight hubby is making me Thai green curry and then we’ll go out to the pub to see some friends that are home from London. It’s their last night here and I missed them last weekend as the stress got to me and I wasn’t well enough to go out (or work). We also have a friend home from Manchester who will be coming to the BBQ tomorrow, just to even the numbers of Irish and not-Irish. Don’t let her Manchester accent fool you, she’s a classy Culchie through and through! She’s also seriously tall with gorgeous long straight blonde hair and is a lovely person inside and out. I’m glad she’s a new friend and glad she’ll be here. Will see if the group allows photos to be posted here. It will be the KIBIS crowd and their male hangers-on. Had to invite the guys as mine is doing the cooking!

Well, once again I think you all have cheered me up, even though I haven’t hit ‘post’ yet. Just talking things out, knowing you are there and will listen, helps enormously.

And I still have that rainbow up above!

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Morning musings

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Well, I didn’t post yesterday. It might be my first day missed, or maybe my second: I seem to recall one Sunday I was too hung over to type. I feel a little lazy about it, but I’ve 145 posts and over 3,500 views and twice last week new records were set for most views in one day (thanks, YukonSocks and unknown person who read nearly every post). I also had my two-month blogging anniversary on Sunday, but I was busy… I guess it’s okay I that I took a day off.

I did nothing yesterday. It was me wearing two shirts, two pairs of socks, two blankets and two cats on the couch most of the day. We found new free TV channels so I gorged on CSI and SVU. Always loved napping to those shows in the US. I like them because I don’t have to care about the regular characters; I can dip in and out and not miss much.

Right now, I’m sitting in front of a roaring fire with Spot. He is annoying me to no end by trying to rub on the corner of my iPad. Gerroff! The sound of his little teeth clicking on the plastic cover drives me crazy.

I’ve another lazy day planned. iDJ broke the hinge on the oven door Saturday, so I need to try to fix that. I’m sure I’ll get sucked into cleaning it, too. Which means first I have to do dishes so my sink is free. Ugh, I’m so tired of doing dishes. Sigh. I also keep meaning to try this recycled-materials recipe for homemade firelighters. I’ll be using the butt-ends of old candles instead of new wax, though, and I’ve been collecting dryer lint and egg cartons for a while, too.

I also have to take a bath. That means turning on the electric water heater and cringing at the red numbers on my Wattson. (It want from 91 watts used per hour to 2,110!) But, I can’t take showers any more, not without suffering. I don’t know what is wrong with my skin, but I have to soak, scrub, soak, scrub to get the dead layer off. A shower just gets it wet and then I itch for an hour. It’s truly disgusting to see my bath water after – I almost need a shower to rinse off my bath. Wish I knew a dermatologist, but they are harder to see here than a back doctor. The internet hasn’t been helpful; as usual, I’m unusual.

Great. I went upstairs to start filling the bath. I got sidetracked watering plants. I came back to the fire to find it had just collapsed and a chunk had flown out and burned a pillow. Glad it didn’t burn Spot! He was only a hands-breadth away.

I have a KIBIS meeting tonight, yay! Last week was postponed due to a cold, then cancelled due to a back injury – and it wasn’t me either time! Unfortunately both happened to MrsMMC. Three of us had a long goofy conversation via FB’s messenger on Friday, though, wherein we decided we should dress up as the Pink Ladies from Grease and enter a float based on the song ‘Look at me I’m Sandra Dee’ in next year’s Paddy’s Day parade. Except we think we should wear red, because all four of our home countries use red in their flags. I said I’d think about it, if I can be Rizzo. They want to have a bowling night, too, so we could reuse the Red Ladies jackets for our bowling team. I don’t enjoy bowling, did it once when I was six and never wanted to do it again – despite the fact I’m good at it on the Wii. But the gals are such good craic, I might put up with it.

The ‘Grease’ idea came out of someone saying that the menfolk are jealous of our KIBIS meetings, and think we all gather around in sexy lingerie and have pillow fights. Uuugh, men. Yes, we’re all gorgeous gals, but really?!? A few weeks ago we spent a half an hour talking about stab wounds and how to recreate them in rising bread dough, autopsies, what weird and/or gross foods we eat in our home countries, and drinking. Soooo girly!

International food shenanigans

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I’m grinning like crazy right now. The little group of international blow-ins that I (unintentionally) named is KIBIS really taking off. It consists of me, from the US; a Canadian, an Italian, and our newest member is Japanese.

Our KIBIS group today decided to have a ‘KIBIS Christmas Gala Dinner’ on the 14th Dec. I suggested we make and bring food from our respective countries. This is going to be an interesting meal!

Italy: either sage stuffed roast chicken with walnut bread, or lasagne. (I’m hoping for lasagne, I haven’t had it in years.)
Canada: sweet potatoes with cranberries and maple syrup (Wow! I think I’m salivating just typing that.)
Japan: a variety of sushi (Okay, I’m a newbie at sushi. Hope I don’t make an ass of myself.)
USA: cornbread and DethNog.

Since the last two are obviously mine, I have more than a parenthetical comment to offer.

I’ve never made cornbread, unless you count Jiffy Mix. I don’t know if I can even get cornmeal here! I might end up going with my second option, buttermilk biscuits.

Proper southern recipes for either one are now being taken. I don’t have a clue…

The eggnog, however, is a classic family concoction. I have my dad’s instructions for this brew, and it is POTENT! Our tradition is to write on the jug ‘death nog’, because one morning mom put it in her coffee instead of milk. Wheee! Work today is so much more fun than usual!

I usually draw a skull n crossbones in a Santa hat on the jug, to keep it coffee-safe. Last year I had two, one was a cat and one a dog.

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Hmm, it seems I left the ‘deth’ part off last year.

Anyhow, if I could be bothered to dig it out, and had my dad’s permission, I’d give you the recipe. But I can’t, and I don’t. Maybe if someone asks nicely I will. Tomorrow, when I’m less giddy.

Don’t be scared…

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I’m sitting in a house that’s only lit by candlelight, with a scary sound effect track playing. There’s a red lightbulb lit over our door, pumpkin and ghost lights in the windows, and a big scary streamer thing covering our front door. There are two big jack-o-lanterns, four headstones, and skull-bedecked cemetery fencing in our front garden. I’m wearing a wizard hat, and iDJ has on a creepy-as-hell clown mask.

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We are ready for trick or treaters!

We’ve had one uncostumed, dare-you, ToT attempt that we rejected, and three real ones so far. Two of the first three were in traditional Samhain masks, really good to see that.

The cats are unimpressed, one has left the downstairs entirely, and one is more interested in the fact we cracked the window a little bit to run the speaker wire outside. Dog is fine until the doorbell rings. In Ireland, they shoot off (illegal) fireworks for Halloween. So far, the dog hasn’t even twitched an ear at the booms, a good thing. Unless that first little barstid comes back and tries to put one in our letterbox…

A friend on FB just pointed out that this is the only time we encourage kids to visit. Damn right, and it is only okay now because we are doing our best to make them scream, cry, or wet their pants.

Oh, here’s how we tortured the dog this week:

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She only had to be Spiderman for a few minutes. It didn’t fit right.

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Ooo, aren’t we tough in our spikes? As long as Mr Carrot is around to protect us, we are…

We had a good time on Saturday night. The plan was a house party, then to hit as many of the three pubs in town that we could. Of course, we only ever landed in one pub, as you do.

Here’s me and the KIBIS-ers at the house party:

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Don’t we look great? I’m the tall one, obviously. I tried to squish my boobage flat (ha) and wear gender-neutral or even masculine clothes. The idea being that as long as I kept my mouth shut, no one would know if I was a girl or boy. It’s nice being tall 🙂 And it worked! In the pub, I scared a good few folks just by walking up and staring at them with my arms crossed. I found it really messed with their heads if I opened my eyes really wide to make crazy-person whites glow out of the mask. Yay!

My Harley jacket gave me away, though, to people who know me – I do wear it quite often, and as I’m the only biker chick in the town, well, they aren’t eejits here. Best response to me trying to fool someone came from the publican himself – “How’s the weather in America this week?”

Now for the piece de resistance! iDJ in his costume, assembled mostly by me and makeup by me.

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Any guesses who he is? How about a close up, then?

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Yes, he is Dee Snyder from the 80’s metal band, Twisted Sister! I really wanted to utilise his long blonde hair, and came up with Dee. I think he looks great! Even though he’s in my leggings, shirt, jacket, handcuffs, scarf, bandannas… hell, the only clothes that aren’t mine are socks, jocks and boots. Nice when a couple can share their clothing…

Halloween costumes and gender stereotypes, with random BS

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Hi, and welcome back to another instalment of the continuing saga, “….

Nope, I got nothing. My blogging friend Michael could come up with something, I’m sure.

I’m a bit at loose ends tonight, as my BFF Socks has family over and isn’t available for our usual phone call. I know she’s having a great time, though, and not even I can begrudge her that. We’ve planned a conversation tomorrow, but it must needs be cut short due to my needing to assemble Halloween costumes.

My costume is mostly make up – well, actually, glue-on, good quality prostheses I bought in the US last year- and those terrifying New Rock boots I mention in my ‘about’ page. But iDJ – well. I am gonna have soooo much fun with him. I refuse to give it away, but we came up with a costume that utilises his beautiful, arse-length blonde hair. It also involves make up, but more like lipstick and eyeshadow rather than greys and blacks.

Despite us being married for over 6 years, he still gets called gay because of the hair. The hair I love. The hair that suits him. When they see him in costume (called ‘fancy dress’ here) on Saturday, they will say it even more. The thing is: only a man secure in his gender preference is comfortable enough to dress so oddly (and no, he’s not going to be in drag). So, you small town, insecure, gender-preference-repressed name callers – eat it and weep. He’ll be awesome, and he gets to come home with me.

I will post pictures. I know I’ll be unrecognisable, and he will likely be, too. I say that, because I’m still debating on keeping the blog anonymous. I think I have four out of 11 followers who don’t know me in ‘real life.’ However, I’ve not said the horrible things I thought I might say when I first started the blog. I was in such a dark place, I figured it would be non-stop bitching about everything. Instead, it turns out this thing helps me see the humor in my life, and makes me appreciate the little things more.

I also think I appreciate the bigger small things more, like my KIBIS nights. We did have one this week, not at my house but at MrsMMC’s apartment. We voted to include another member, but we didn’t say who was going to invite her… oops. Is that my job? I’m not going to detail the evening, but some things we talked about are things I want to ramble on about here, and I’ll give a KIBIS-mention when I get a round tuit.

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Yes, I know that is an old, bad joke. It makes me think of my dad, though. He had one of these, and he loves an old, bad joke as much as I do. Hell, my whole family loves stupid jokes. Would you like two that came from my great-grandmother, on my mother’s side? No? Tough. Please note, these jokes have to be over 150 years old, passed down over the generations.

What are the three dirty parts of the stove? Lifter leg and poker.

What are the three naughty vegetables in the garden? Lettuce turnip and pea.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Right, what next? If I hadn’t segued into bad jokes and KIBIS, I might have said some things about the seeming gender confusion in my household. That is completely the wrong term, of course. Stereotype shattering is a better term.

An example from right now! He is live on the air, playing his Internet radio show. Tonight is Halloween themed. He was playing a song that is new to me, and I like it a lot (a rarity, I’m picky). Afterward, he (was) is playing Glen Campbell, Ghost on a Canvas. He told me that he’s snuffling back tears because Glen has Alzheimer’s, and his memory only comes back for his songs, not his family or friends. So, Glen is now a ghost himself. Aw. (iDJ also said the two songs before the one I like made him weepy.)

Me? I’m considering deleting the part of my post yesterday where I admitted to feeling anything.

Okay, back to fun examples of why we are so good, and so odd, together.

He loves to shop for clothes. He knows labels, what is hot, what is classic, what isn’t worth the trouble and why. He always has, and spent hundreds on a single jacket or pair of jeans back in the day of the Irish Punt.

I don’t know, nor do I care, about labels or what is in fashion or cool, except to avoid what is trendy. I buy based on three things:
Is it an acceptable price for what it is?
Is it ‘classic’? Meaning, it better not be a trend and I’ll look like a twat next year because I’m not doing this shopping shit again any time soon if I can help it.
Does it look good on me?
Sometimes there is a no. four: is it so totally awesomely tacky that I cannot live without it?

iDJ is a shoe freak. Sneakers, trainers, whatever you want to call them. His passion is to re-buy all the trainers he had as a kid; sadly thwarted due to me not having any income. The good part about this is that he shops well. TK Maxx, aka TJ Maxx, is the best for inexpensive cool shoes. Even better is that after he checks the selection in his size he looks at my size, and has gotten me some really cool rare kicks. Oh lordy, he’s rubbing off on me.

Enough about clothing, it’s boring.

Next is, of course, that his hair is loooooooong. He’s not a metalhead, and doesn’t want to be taken for one. Hipster is more his style. Yes, he even wears cardigans. But, he has no piercings or tattoos and doesn’t want any. I have 3 tats, want another, and my ears are punctured 4 times left, once right. All my tats are on my left, too, it’s a thing with me. No, I don’t know why.

Last one, then I’m done, honey, I promise.

He drives a MINI Cooper. I drive a Harley-Davidson Sportster.

Because this has gone on long enough and I have to end on a high note, don’t I? A thing i am very happy indeed about: He isn’t threatened, is indeed relieved, to let me do most of the mechanical repairs and assembly around the house. I love putting together flat-pack!

Wine sucks

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I have to write something! I’m sitting here, just goofing around fingerpainting instead of putting words on paper. Um. Pixels on pixels? Just what the hell is it called when you write digitally, anyway? We need new clichés.

I actually do use paper on occasion. Mostly to make a quick note to remind me of something funny, or a good turn of phrase I want to keep, something I want to Google later, or a date of importance. I have a crap memory. I blame it on all those drugs I did in the 60’s. Drugs, at least, would explain why I cannot keep to a single topic in a paragraph. Bad writing? Probably. Do I give a shit? Obviously not. This blog is me upending my cerebellum and splashing around in the puddle.

How many topics did I fit in there? I could have kept going.

Right, notes. I have four from last night, two from conversations with iDJ and two from the KIBIS meeting. One of the ones from my beloved relates to wine, and I have a photo to share, so without further ado, let’s talk about wine!

It sucks.

Okay! The ‘meeting’ was great craic of course. I’m glad we are making an effort to have a get-together regularly. Lawsy me, I do need a social life. We mostly talk about our pets, because we are all animal people and all have at least two fur-persons in our respective homes. Our representative from Italy (hereafter Mrs MMC) currently has way, way more than two, in two countries and at least three houses. Wow! Loads of stories, and despite English not being her first language, she can really tell a funny tale. But I can’t share them, because I wasn’t taking notes. Well, except for those two times I mentioned…

Mrs MMC and I share our homes with menfolk, along with the other animals. We have picked menfolk who are particularly good at letting animals manipulate them. If one of their cats miaows at her hubby he panics, trying to figure out what kitty wants: Do you want me to make you a sausage? Some take out? A curry?

My other note was about when they are at his parents’ house. Now, they feed a lot of local strays, and there are a lot of strays. Mrs MMC catches and has them vet checked and sterilised at her own expense, by the way. Thank you! Anyhow, there are always a rake of kitties outside on the back patio. When the parents aren’t home, Mr & Mrs MMC leave the door wide open and let the furry masses troop in and out as they please.

Right, maybe you had to be there.

Back to wine. Here’s iDJ’s temporary workstation last evening:

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Yes, my Halloween decor is over the top. Feic off. I love Halloween.

Please note he has the essentials: Plastic Halloween wine glass, Mac laptop, and a box-o-wine, all ready to hand. Blargh! Even if I could stand wine, I cannot imagine boxed wine decanted into plastic tastes good. Yes, dear, I know we’re broke (that is for when he reads this and gives out to me for making fun of cheapo wine in a cardboard bottle).

Ugh! Just now: I needed to check the internal temperature on my pork roast. I’m not allowed to bend over cuz of the bad back, so I got on my knees in front of the oven (I’m tall, this put me eye level with the meat thermometer). iDJ starts in right away about how he never sees me on my knees anymore. Like, as in prayer (we are atheist). I told him I was praying to the pork, then wished I never, ever, said that.

Back to wine. See, I hate it so much I can’t even be arsed to keep writing about it for 10 minutes! M’man was giving me stick about not liking wine, and pulled out his old standard, “One of these days. I’ll keep working on you.” This got him a glare of rage and a rant about how, at my age, I fucking well know what I like, and no amount of different colours or flavors of wine was ever going to convince me that wine is palatable.

He kept at me, and I finally shut him up by threatening him with the words that have been uttered many a time since blogs were invented – just not said by me.

“Don’t make me blog about this!”

Real stuff has been going on

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Huh, I can ramble on about nothing in particular with ease, but I’ve had real life fun stuff happen, and I don’t want to try to put it into words! Strange! So I think I’m figuring out what parts of me I want to put on here, and which ones are for FB.

That said, I had a great, great night last night with the Kiltimagh International Blow In Society, or KIBIS. Yes, I made that up. Yes, I meant to put ” women’s ” in there, but I can’t figure a way to make a decent acronym that includes a W. KIBIS sort of works. It could also be a C instead of a K for the town, or even CM. We played around with CMWIBIS, but that looks really Welsh, and I don’t know of any Welsh women, locally. CIWBIS? Ugh, this is hard 🙂 Ideas, anyone?

Crap, I should explain ‘blow in!’ that is what you are called when you are clearly not from Mayo, but have made it your home. I was the senior blow in last night! No, not cuz I’m old, kiss my arse. I’ve been here longest. Sheesh, I thought you liked me.

Anyhow, KIBIS was attended by an American, a Canadian, and an Italian. We also had my dog, who is American in breed name but is in all actuality a Galway Girl. Technically still a blow in. We had Canadian cookies and American beer, and tears of laughter that were 100% Italian.

Both boy cats and the boy iDJ were upstairs. We weren’t being sexist, it was their choice. More cookies for us!

If I had been taking minutes of the meeting, they would have been covered in snot from me laughing so much. I did make one note: Vegetarian Irish Wine Drinking Cat. Imagine that as an accurate description of one of our many, many pets, and you’ll have an idea of what we talked about all night!

We really hope to have regular meetings, and possibly expand our membership to include Japan and Slovakia. As long as they like animals, of course!

Here’s the three gals having a sickening love-fest on the couch. It’s hard to say which one is smiling the most!

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