today I’m taking a break

Because it’s very unfair to have to work on my birthday. Especially when what I’m doing is making files and checksheets for new nursing students, which is without a doubt my least favorite thing ever. I won’t go into all the reasons why I hate it so, but let’s just say the material I get from the nursing department is chaotic and confusing and often just plain wrong. And between translating courses that have transferred in from their often-wrong original numbers to their often-wrong credit-given numbers, and the fifteen gazillion steps you have to go through to find anything (especially transfer work) on our horrendo nightmare computer system, it’s giving me a headache. And I’m just not having that on my birthday. I would have taken the day off, but we still haven’t filled my old position so I’m holding out until we do. Then I’m taking a bunch of days. Meanwhile, the annoying headache-inducing nursing files can wait till tomorrow. I’m doing… another survey!

Yeah, I know. I just did one. I randomed across this one the other day and thought it would be fun. it’s certainly different. It’s the What’s in Your House survey. And it’s loooooooooong. It should entertain us all for the rest of the afternoon.

In Fridge?

Mustard?:  Okay, I do NOT understand this idiotic formatting thing. I want the questions in bold and the answers not in bold. Apparently there is no way to manage that, although, as you see, I CAN do the opposite. Which I don’t want. But it’s either that or it’s all bold or all not bold and that’s hard to read. FINE. We’ll do it BACKWARDS. Yes, there is mustard in my fridge. I know there’s Dijon mustard. There may be some regular yellow mustard too, but if there is it’s very very very old. So don’t eat it.

A giant jar of pickles?:  Not currently, but I love pickles. I did buy a big jar not long ago and Baker B said, "Why did you buy such a huge jar of pickles???" Then he ate them all.

What’s the oldest thing in your fridge?:  There are many contenders for that award. And of course I’m not actually able to peer into the fridge and see, so I’m going to have to go with my memory. I know that there is a bottle of bitters which has been in there for, seriously, YEARS. Longer than the possibly non-existent yellow mustard. I’m not sure if it’s even still usable. SO I should throw it out. There are also several very old nearly-empty jars of relish. Which need to be thrown out. Baker B has a bad habit of putting things back in the fridge which have like 1/8 a teaspoon left in them.

Do you have baking soda in it?: No, but I should.

How many expired things are in your fridge?:  A lot, I’m sure. I need to look. Certainly those bitters. I have a box of ground flax seed that may be expired too.

Do you keep bread in your fridge?:  There’s one kind that I do – Dr. Brownberry’s Nut and Whatever Bread, which is supposed to be refrigerated. Otherwise I don’t like to because it dries it out. However, Baker B also puts the bread in the fridge pretty regularly, no matter what kind it is.

Do you keep nail polish in your fridge?:  No…. should I be??

How many bottles of salad dressing are in it?: I don’t think there are currently any bottles of salad dressing in my fridge. I’ve been making my own oil and vinegar, and I don’t think Baker B has been in a Salad Dressing Phase lately.

What are in the bottom drawers?: Maybe a grapefruit on one side. I think on the other there’s a bag of broccoli. I believe I purged both pretty recently. Baker B won’t use the drawers – except the top one where he puts the cheese – so I put things in them that I don’t want him to use up. I think right now it’s all used up.

What’s the most fattening thing in your fridge?:  You know, right now I don’t think there’s anything terribly fattening in there. Believe it or not. There’s a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips in the freezer – does that count? Our fridge is currently pretty healthy.

Miracle whip or mayonnaise?:  Miracle whip is NASTY. Ewwwww. I’m not a big mayo fan, but I’ll pick it over Miracle Whip any day.

Have you ever lost your car keys and they showed up in your fridge?:  No, but I lost Kim’s years ago when we were roommates, and found them days later hanging off the shade of a lamp. Where I’d been sitting on the back of the couch, talking on the phone and playing mindlessly with her keys.

How many different kinds of cheese do you have in your fridge?:  A LOT. OH, that would be the fattening things! Although lately we’ve been buying lower-fat cheese because Skinny Baker B has, oddly, high cholesterol. Well, his good cholesterol is very very high, which is great, and his bad cholesterol is on the high end, so his overall cholesterol was high. So it’s not that bad, but it still made him buy lower fat cheese. Because he can, seriously, scarf down a whole block of cheese in the course of an evening.

How often do you open your fridge and just stare at it?: Pretty much daily. I’ve also found myself doing it to the office fridge. Which would kind of indicate that it’s a habit.

In Your Closet?
How many gay men do you have in your closet?:  Believe me, nobody would fit in my closet. Gay, straight, bi, man, woman, whatever. One cat may be able to squeeze in, but that’s about it.

How many boxes of crap do you have in your closet?:  Way too many. The spare room closet is nothing but boxes of crap. And my clothes jammed in till you can’t pry them apart.

Is your closet a walk-in or a sliding door one?: How about neither? 

Has any of your friend’s parents came out of a closet?:  Grammar police, grammar police!!!! And what in the hell are you talking about??!!?? Now see, when you use horrible grammar, nobody can understand you. 

Do you color code your clothes?:  Hahahahahaha!!!! Yeah, right. Cause I’m THAT organized.

Do you hang your T-shirts?:  I do hang a lot of them. Up on hangers.

Do you have colorful hangers?:  Yes I do! Colorful plastic ones.

Do you have plastic, wood, or metal hangers?: I just said plastic. I’ve got a couple of wooden ones but they’re too expensive for all the clothes I have. Wire ones are just EVIL.

Is your closet connected to your room or is it somewhere else?:  Oh, it’s just orbiting around aimlessly in space and time, disconnected from all we know and accept as "real". Including my room.

How many closets do you have in your house?: Not enough, that’s for sure. There’s one in our room, one in the spare room, one in Baker B’s study, and two teeny linen closets. All the closets are teeny. I’d like to make the teeny upstairs linen closet into a pantry, but can’t figure out where I’d put the towels and sheets that I’ve jammed into it.

How many gay men are in them all total?:  What is this obsession with gay men in the closets?? I guess I should appreciate the fact that this is ONE survey that’s shown very little sign of having been written by a 13 year old. Except for the gay men in the closets question. 

What do you keep in your closet besides clothes?:  A whole bunch of gay men!!! To help me decorate and assist me with my wardrobe!! THERE!! Are you HAPPY??!!??

Do you have dead bodies in your closets?:  OH for god’s sake. NO. If you don’t stop with the idiot questions, though, I may have one.

Have you ever slept in your closet?: I can’t even get an arm in my closets, let alone enough of me to sleep. Although I DID once try to sleep in the closet at Baker B’s mom’s house. One Christmas when he was snoring like a pack of wild pigs and I could not sleep. His mom’s 100 year old house has these wonderful huge walk-in closets. It was also about 5 degrees in there, though, so that didn’t work.

In Your Living Room?

Do you have moldy cheese?:  I started to declare this another stupid question and warn this survey that it’s treading on the very edge of my patience. But then I recalled how Baker B sits and throws food at his face while he watches TV, and I have to admit that it’s very likely there are some bits of moldy cheese in there. Except the kittens, AKA the Bottom Feeders, probably have disposed of them.

Do you have a lazy boy (not including your dad and/or brother (the chair))?:  My dad and/or brother the chair???? Oh.Ha ha ha. No, no lazy boy furniture.

Do you have end tables?:  I do have one. One of my uncles made it years and years ago, and I talked my mom into letting me borrow it when I was in college. I never gave it back. Our weird old couches have these arms that are supposed to turn into little end-table-like things you can sit drinks on, but they are all wonky and aren’t level. At all.

If so how many?: One.

Do you have a coffee table?: No. No room.

If so wood or glass?: NO ROOM.

What do you do in your living room?:  Ummmm….live? What don’t we do in there is more like it. We  have a very small house so the living room is where the TV and the computer and the stereo and the one table you can eat off of and pretty much everything else is.

Do you sleep on your couch?:  I sure do. Well, I nap on my couch. Which is kind of funny because the couches are sectional things and they are short and I am tall. So my legs hang way over. I prop them up on the thing you’re supposed to put drinks on but isn’t level. I really should take pictures of the couches. They are very old and very strange. They are actually supposedly good pieces, from Drexel Furniture in Baker B’s hometown. His father gave them to us when we got married so we’d have something to sit on.

Do you have a TV in your living room?:  Like I just said, we have EVERYTHING in our livingroom.

When was the last time you mopped or vacuumed your floor?:  Sunday. I try to do it weekly because we have three cats and that’s a LOT of cat hair.

Do you have wood floors or carpet?:  Sadly it’s carpet. Old old old carpet. I wish we had wood.

Do you have a stereo in your living room?:  Again – YES.

Do you have a rug in your living room?:  Well, Repeato-Survey, I just answered this too. Assuming "rug" and "carpet" are the same thing, and they are where I’m from.

How many dirty dishes do you have in your living room?: There better not be any, but I’d venture a guess that Baker B’s left some coffee mugs around.

Okay, there was a section on the laundry room, which I don’t have, the bedroom which consisted of a zillion questions I’ve answered already, and the bathroom which is so small as to be non-existent. So I’m skipping those. YES, I’m TIRED of the survey!! How shocking!!

Random Things

How many people live in your house?:  Two people, three cats who think they are people.

how many bottles of soap do you have in your house?:  I think just one bottle. Wait – maybe not even that. Maybe no bottles. I just threw out the nearly-empty one in the bathroom.

What do you live in?:  A state of bliss, of course. What do YOU live in?

How many smoke detectors do you have?:  Four or five.

Do you have a garage?:  No.

What room do you have your comp. in?: Well, how odd that you feel you must abbreviate "computer", of all things. What, is it just too much trouble to type out? That IS a long and exhausting word, for sure! Or maybe you mean "compartment". Or "compensation".  Or "compatriot". Or "compact". Well, honestly, how am I supposed to answer this??

Do you have fans?:  I doubt I have as many as I used to, after they’ve suffered through this survey.

<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; color: black;”> Blinds, curtains, or both?:  Blinds.

What color is your kitchen sink?:  A lovely stainless steel.

how many light switches do you have?:  Oh, honestly. Enough to turn all the lights on and off with.

What color is your house?:  A breathtaking shade of grey. With orange shutters and gutters as a stunning highlight. We really need to paint.

Have you ever had a big party in your house (that your parents don’t know)? My parents know my house. They’ve known my house for years. I’ve had one or two parties in my house, but not very big ones. And my parents may not have known about them, but I’m officially old enough that it’s okay. 

Ohhh, it’s over!!! Let’s hit save and see what on earth is going on with this last bit of font.