Yes!

I adore Avalanche. She's very, very cool, and very, very active, and very, very on top of things.

She's fun, she's neat to talk to.

And she's the new building sphere lead on Ashes. I am no longer anything but an assistant, meaning I'll feel less guilty as I carve out time to rp. Meaning I can put in more code-time, as long as building doesn't need me, because I'm not the first (or worse, as I effectively was for so long, the first and the last) for some or all tasks.

Well, okay, I am for a couple - because she's still learning some things - but I don't think that will last long. This is so cool.

Nachos.

As a note, I don't kill everything I try to cook. Despite my complaints, if it's quick and easy (not just "simple", but "low-effort" as well) I usually do okay.

For example, even I can make nachos. With black olives. Nummy. I was too lazy to sort out actual sauce, tho, so I'm sure they're plain for most people's tastes.

That's okay. They're delicious. And maybe I'll make a pre-made cake mix up later. I'm actually in the mood for that. (Scary, innit? Don't worry, it'll pass. I think it's partially because it's finally cool enough that using the oven won't kill me....)

Mmmm.

On balance, not such a bad day, really. Despite my own stupidity.

I made nachos. I got them right. They were yummy. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my lactaid pills. Honestly, you'd think I'd learn better...yes, I'm sensitive to milk products. Yes, that does include cheese, Laura. (Though I eat the "cheese and noodles" microwave dinners without a pill - largely because there is very little dairy in the "cheese" sauce. This probably adds to my confusion.)

I spent most of the afternoon feeling lousy, in the bathroom as much as not. (My reactions never used to be this bad, but then I low-grade felt lousy all the time before, since I used regular milk on my cereal without knowing any better.) Then I went up and curled up on the bed, and spent two hours asleep, hoping that would help. Then I woke up feeling much better, starving, and had lentil soup.

Then I went grocery shopping. I went to Winco (formerly Cub Foods) for candy for the office candy dish, and assorted other things. They really are cheaper, but I will never buy anything perishable - refrigerated, frozen, vegetable, fruit, made in their bakery, anything, in other words, that is a food and is not prepackaged and dated or prepackaged and reasonably non-expiring, like candy - there again. Ever. Not since they had a power outage and, four days later, were selling moldy bean dip. Yes, they have no generators. Yes, they don't clear out the merchandise when that happens, even if the outage lasts for several hours. Yes, they don't even do a decent visual inspections of the items they could!

If that had been it, I might shop there - except for, say, a month after a power outage, of course.... If I knew about all power outages. But I wanted to file a complaint about the bean dip (we bought it before we saw the mold - considering how much of it there was, I can only say we were at fault for not paying attention too!). I mostly wanted to complain that no one had seen the blatant, fuzzy green stuff growing on the tomatos, thorugh the plastic lid. Ugh! Yes, we brought it back within half an hour. Ugh, I say! At this point, the checker said she had to get a manager, as they had the forms, and she could certainly understand why I wanted to complain. She had been very understanding and sympathetic.

The manager, a pimply-faced kid who probably a bit older than he looked but not much, didn't want to give me a comment card. He wanted to soothe me. He wanted to say they'd make sure it didn't happen again, and did I want a coupon? No, I didn't want a coupon. I wanted to complain about the obviously sucky training and performance at this store, etc., etc.

I finally got the card; I wrote it up, complete with a complaint about the manager, and sent it in.

As far as I know, no one ever read it; I certainly never heard anything. I could care less about that - when I walked out the door that day, I knew I wasn't going to buy anything that might expire there, ever again. In fact, it was a good long while before I bought anything there, as you might well imagine.

But...anyway. They're cheaper. I left with candy for the office candy dish, including yummy Palmer's balls (chocolate with chocolate-fudge inside...and peanut butter balls, but those I don't love quite so much). We'll see how many of the really good ones make it to the office candy dish.

Then I went to Fred Meyer's, because they're just across the street, and I was foolish. They do have comment cards, as I found out when I was leaving; and they had my milk, this time, so not quite as bad as it could have been. I got a short-haired wig there. I'm not sure what I'll do for a costume yet. Halloween is something I make a half-hearted effort at each year, at best. I love the candy. Costuming, I could care less about, mostly.

And the stuff I might most enjoy can assuredly not be worn to the office Halloween party. Even if my boss did come as Little Red Riding Ho (in a short red skirt and a blouse and falsies) a couple years ago....

I also have soy treats. They had the nummy mint chocolate chip ones back in stock, so I promptly took most of them away. I left one or two - I think - they were way at the back and it was too much trouble to fish them out. Hee!

A good book....

Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. This book makes sense to me.

Right now, the chapter I'm in is talking about marriages. And it uses gender stereotypes. Okay, that's mildly irksome, but the points it makes about two different methods of relating are actually very handy to me. I guess it makes me stereotypically feminine, too; I'm firmly on one side, and people who land on the other frustrate me. Especially if I ask them not to try to fix things when fixing isn't what it needs, and they go on to do it.

It's nice to read a book that at least says I'm not a stupid freak for reacting this way, which is how I've sometimes been made to feel. On the other hand, it's not very productive to let people I know don't "deal" that way in very far if I haven't already, is it?

The passage (page 142 in my copy):

"Men also need to be on guard against short-circuiting the discussion by offering a practical solution too early on -- it's typically more important to a wife that she feel her husband hears her complaint and empathizes with her feelings about the matter (though he need not agree with her). She may hear his offering advice as a way of dismissing her feelings as inconsequential."

You know, that's exactly it? All too often, if I'm upset, a solution offered to the underlying cause - unless it is something difficult! - feels like a pat on the head. "Here's a solution, now go away." If it's a particularly obvious sort of thing, it feels downright insulting. If I want help, I'll ask for help. If I just want to complain about something, to be heard, that's a different matter.

You learn over time who you can and cannot trust, that way. Really, what I'm looking for is recognition - not solutions - most of the time. Now, if it's an odd, difficult pattern, offering a solution after the recognition is hardly gonna upset me. (Before? I'll thank you later - but probably not right then.)

It's talking about marital situations, and the advice to the woman is more specific to that, about not making the person feel attacked. The advice to men applies even to situations where they're not involved, and frankly, I could care less about genders in both of these. Amen, for all of us, please!

Sorry. Just, after some conversations in the past year, reading this passage made me feel better. And I felt like sharing it.