Emchap's Shit from the Internet 3/7/18 🍠
My stuff showed up today, which is very exciting! Unfortunately, a non-zero amount of it was lost or damaged, which fucking sucks! I don't have a cute anecdote about that, I'm just bummed out. I'm hopeful the lost stuff will turn up, but the broken stuff is of course quite broken. But, at least I know, I guess. The majority of my art remained unscathed; my jewelry and coats and extra bedding are all lost somewhere.
This week, my cat has learned that he can open all the cabinets in my house. My cat has a storied history of opening things and getting stuck in them (most notably, for several days, the walls of an apartment I lived in in Atlanta), and this is no different. Specifically, he appears to have learned that he can open the door of the cabinet where my pots and pans are stored, crawl from a tiny opening in the side of that wall into a dark space that is behind some drawers (the unoccupied space between the drawers and the wall, if that makes sense), and just hang out.
When he's done doing whatever it is he does there, he'll crawl back through. (I can hear him doing this.) He'll then try to open the door or—if that's not successful—meow until I come get him.
I don't know what it is exactly that he enjoys about enclosed spaces, but he's very insistent about occupying them. If I pull him out he'll crawl back. Sometimes he eats things in the spaces (I know this because he then gets tape worms, which are v. gross).
If I was feeling up for it this would be a metaphor about maladaptive coping mechanisms, but I'm not, so instead it is just a story about some weird shit my cat does. He seems happy to have my bed back, and is climbing on top of it as I type this.
In non-metaphorical news, Saturday is my birthday, and I am going to pay some nice person to scrub all the skin off of my body at a Korean spa, along with dragging a friend along to dim sum and—fingers crossed—seeing Mal Ortberg do a reading in my neighborhood. I'm going to be 27! That's nuts!
Shit to read
The new season of Atlanta is excellent so far, and I liked this piece about it.
There are a bunch of women who were laughing stocks at the time whose legacies deserve to be revisited in light of changes in how we as a culture talk about domestic abuse and power and sex, and Lorena Bobbitt is one of them.
I am here for any and all conspiracy theory stories about Antoni the food guy from the new Queer Eye.
I am reading the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey now, and this exploration of The Odyssey and home is lovely.
This interview with two teen brothers is gentle and sweet and lovely.
More stories about line cooks, please.
Shit to eat
Realizing that you don't have access to 99% of your cookware, decide to make the best of it and buy a pre-made flatbread and some pasta sauce at Kroger.
Heat the oven to whatever temperature it's supposed to be. Wash and salad spin whatever vegetables you're going to use (I used mushrooms and arugula and garlic, also, mostly just wanted to play with my salad spinner) and put them in a pan with some olive oil. Sauté until they're a little more vibrantly green or soft, depending on what the vegetable you're cooking does when it's heated.
Pour some pasta sauce onto the flatbread and spread it around.
Add your cooked vegetables. Spread them around.
Wash and dry and add some basil if you're feeling fancy.
On top, put your mozzarella. If you've been clever, you'll use good mozz. If you're me, you'll use pre-sliced sandwich slices because they were on sale.
Pop that onto the rack of the oven for however long the flatbread packaging says.
Tease back out onto a toaster oven baking tray with a fork once it's done, because all of your shit is in a truck somewhere.
Cut with a butter knife and enjoy.
Shit to listen to
I have listened to a few episodes of The Wonderful World of Depression lately, and have really enjoyed it. I particularly liked Hannah Hart's.
Shit to buy
Supplemental insurance on a cross-country move.
I need someone to buy this body suit and tell me if it's worth it.