ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Sunday I ate a sandwich from Subway and had one of those awful moments where you bite the corner of your lip, hard, and it hurts and swells up a lot and practically fills your whole mouth, making it harder not to bite it again. I was so careful all Sunday and Monday and had almost forgotten about the lurking threat of my swollen inner lip. Then yesterday night, as I was just digging into our appallingly expensive dinner of breaded baked prawns, I bit it again, and so hard that it bled and bled, which I discovered was because I actually bit off part of my mouth flesh OW OW OW and Jesus Christ that hurt. I abandoned my dinner for a paper towel and ice cube, cried about it a little and spent most of the evening feeling sorry for myself, and then put my dinner away and had a bowl of ice cream instead. Today my lip is a lot better but looks really freaky on the inside and I’ve been so careful all day.

My boyfriend isn’t working this week so he came over to see if I had cumin for some chili he is making tonight and I put that into a little container and we went to the grocery store but I said first I wanted to go look for a meat grinder. I want to get one to use occasionally because some of the new recipes I’m trying call for ground chicken breast, and the butcher shop at Hen House simply will not grind it for me themselves. He suggested that Bed Bath & Beyond might carry these and he was right, but they only had electric models which were at least $100 and then he suggested checking the Harbor Freight website and they had an electric and manual one and both were $40. The electric only handles 2 lbs per minute compared to the manual one which grinds 5 lbs, but it is electric, doesn’t have to be clamped to a table, and also has some attachments. And really, what the hell do I know about meat grinders anyway? I called my mother and she volunteered to let me use theirs, which she estimates she has not touched in 20+ years by now, to see if I like it enough to buy my own. $40 is not too bad, I am thinking, but I can’t imagine ever using $100 worth of meat grinder regularly enough to justify it.

Today I started on my decluttering agenda so I will have a distinct plan of attack on my upcoming major house project. Since I’m the sort of person who enjoys making lists, I’m also the type of person who enjoys making agendas, since they are glorified to-do lists anyway. Looking at my situation, which is that I’m working a lot and also sort of beginning to look for a new job that will actually utilize my degree, I think it’s going to be a serious construction in process type thing. I simply won’t have the time or motivation to work on it more than probably once a week or so, especially since I’m spending a lot of my time and energy on my “cook at home don’t eat out” project right now and that agenda is more time-consuming than you might think.