general updates

1. the dogs are still in the backyard. they aren't friendly with cats. billie has been thoroughly traumatized and yesterday she climbed, i swear to god, the tallest tree in nashville. we have called, and here for once i am not exaggerating, every single animal rescue organization in middle tennessee. nobody can help us. nobody has room. at least none of the no-kill shelters have room. i am totally at my wit's end and have no idea what to do. desperation and despair have simultaneously descended on me.

2. i rearranged the bedroom today in an attempt to shake aforementioned despair.

3. i've eaten two cherry tomatoes from my garden. they were both life changingly good.

4. watched "transamerica" tonight. liked it. while watching "transamerica," overheard someone unload their clip across the street. stifled the urge to duck and cover. come on over to the east sieeeeeede, there is plenty of room for everyone. everyone that packs heat, at least.

5. saturn is rising (not really).

6. still no progress on the feeding-family front. am considering ordering kfc. too fancy? maybe white castle.

7. the house progress is slow. we aren't really "flipping" the house, in the way you might flip a burger. we are turning it on a stunningly slow rotisserie. rotisserie that house.

8. decided to quadruple the dosage of my antidepressant. will keep you posted on how that works out for me, that is unless i suddenly become so delightfully happy that i can't be bothered to play on my computer because i'm too busy frolicking in fields of poppies and posies and pansies and peonies. and petunias.

all you big-hearted people out there, pay heed

i don't have the time or energy right now, and i'm too grumpy, to compose an amusing little anecdote about these dogs. i woke up on tuesday morning with an enormous hangover, and extra creatures in my backyard. i guess kind of like how people wake up with strangers in their bed? kind of like that. they are both girls, are friendly and healthy, and are attached at the hip. they are lovely, big, affectionate dogs. we cannot keep them. YOU should keep them. please, please, tell me if you want them or know someone who might.

family systems colliding

big events on the horizon.

this weekend, julie's parents plus grandma are paying us a little visit. family visits are always fun, beause our house is the size of a shoe box and we all get to sleep within 4 cm of each other so that when somebody inhales, or exhales, everybody can stay up to date on who is breathing and who is not.

add to this the fact that i thought it would be a smashing idea to invite my parents over for dinner on one of the nights that julie's parents+grandma will be here. "julie's parents, meet morgan's parents. they think we live a life of sin, and can't wait for morgan to outgrow this weird phase, meet a 'god-fearing man,' and have babies!" oh, the fun! oh oh oh, i almost forgot: "julie's grandma, welcome to morgan and julie's house, where it is excruciatingly clear that julie and morgan share a bed, like any other 'friends' would do!" just thinking about the awkwardness that is sure to ensue makes my eyes sparkle with sheer delight. it also makes me want to drink, heavily.

naturally, i have already started obsessing about what to serve for dinner. this should be SO easy to figure out...mix a few carnivores with some die-hard-meat-and-potatoes-folks, throw in a couple of cases of ibs, and some diverticulitis, and then put a vegan in the kitchen, and what do you get? I DON'T KNOW EITHER. naturally, i consulted rachael ray, and thought i would perhaps use her suggested 4th of july menu, with a little modification (and with me not really eating anything):
glazed grilled chicken breasts with pineapple
balsamic green bean and potato salad
grilled corn with parmesan butter
red fruit tart
i ran it by julie, and she says: "i don't know, i think its a little too fancy for my parents. maybe we could just do ribs and potato salad?"
ribs?
potato salad?
i don't even know what you're talking about.

stay tuned for more exciting updates as my social anxiety grows increasingly debilitating!

REALLY BAD DOG

let me preface this by saying that julie, to my extreme discontent and disgruntlement, gives mercy people food. mercy's favorite people food is watermelon.

this past weekend i bought a seedless yellow watermelon at the farmer's market. and it is up there with top 5 best watermelons i've ever had. so today, we are sitting on the couch watching a movie and eating pieces of watermelon. i take a piece out of the tupperware, and before i can even get it into my MOUTH, mercy leaps from her spot on the couch and SNATCHES IT OUT OF MY HAND.

morgan: GASP!!!
julie: jesus christ, you would think somebody just stole your virginity.

(just want to say, though, that i snatched the watermelon right out of her grubby little mouth, and i ate it. that little bitch.)

bad dog

go ahead, YOU try and discipline her.

RACHAEL RAY

first, i will need to admit that i have been becoming weary in my little vegan culinary world. i have several cookbooks that i lurv, but i have had them for awhile, and have fallen into a bit of a lentil rut. there are a few good vegan cookbooks, but a lot of them suck, and are based on the assumption that if you are a vegan, you also must not like anything with flavor, and also must be a rabbit. sometimes i get a little gloomy when i go to the cookbook section in the bookstore (as i tend to do, for long amounts of time) because my section is tiny, and then there are shelves and shelves of the most beautiful and enticing and wonderful cookbooks overflowing with dairy, and dairy, and some dairy with eggs, and some dairy with meat, and some more dairy. and dairy, did i say dairy? they have the dairy. oh, and the meat too.

now for my next confession. i have a little friend (well, i use "friend" loosely here, because really what i mean is MORTAL ENEMY) who i like to call my cheese monkey. cheese monkey eats cheese, and only cheese, and a lot of cheese. cheese monkey scoffs at soy cheese, and any other product that tries to masquerade as cheese. sometimes, cheese monkey will lie dormant for months and months without causing any kind of ruckus. those are the good times. the happy times. the normal pooping times. but then cheese monkey starts demanding things. when i say things, i mean cheese. every and any type of cheese. if cheese monkey's demands are not met, cheese monkey throws tantrums of such epic proportion i dare not try to limit them to the tiny parameters of my inadequate vocabulary. eventually, the cheese monkey gets what the cheese monkey wants.

BUT, my friends, the plot thickens. i have been successful enough in repressing the cheese monkey and keeping it chained in its cold lonely cell that my body has forgotten what to do with cheese. over the course of my two and a half years of fairly strict veganism, i have become what i believe people like to call "lactose intolerant." so, when i am defeated by the cheese monkey i must do penance for my sins in the form of bloating, extreme discomfort, and other unmentionables.

recently i was at the house of a dear friend, and i noted a magazine nearby: "every day with rachael ray." i've never really been much into rachael ray, primarily because i can't eat the majority of the food from her cookbooks, on her show, etc. but i have fallen crazily and hopelessly in love with this magazine. i can find a fair amount of recipes that can at least be adapted for my gastrointestinal comfort, and the rest i just have to feed to other people who come eat at my house. AND most of the recipes have a wine suggestion, which prevents me from wandering stupidly around the wine store completely puzzled about what wine would best complement stuffed portobellos with bread salad. last week i made a free form red fruit tart (from the magazine, naturally) that was CRAZY amazing. in the past, i have cried more than one time (go ahead and laugh) trying to make a flaky crust. my frustration with flaky crusts actually led me to a meltdown on christmas eve in which i swore i wasn't going to go to christmas with my family because i had FAILED AT MAKING A PERFECT PIE CRUST. well, not the case with the tart. the crust was effortlessly, marvelously, meltingly flaky. plus, it wasn't salted with my own tears. i will admit, sometimes rachael ray and cheese monkey appear to be in cahoots with each other (like, for instance, a couple of weeks ago when i apparently TOTALLY LOST MY MIND and decided it would be a good plan to eat a pressed manchego cheese sandwich with roasted red peppers. CHEESE SANDWICH? i will spare the gory details of the fallout.) so anyways. say what you will about rachael, because i have said it too. and then try the recipes from that damn magazine and start working on the SHRINE to her that you will surely want to construct in your kitchen.

homo depot

i used to make trips to home depot on the weekends to buy things like mulch, and flowers, and pretty things to play with. those days are a distant memory that i long for, in the same way one might long for the golden days of youth. nowadays (i just turned 88, right then when i used that word) i go to home depot for lumber. drywall (do you know how much drywall weighs? i could just as easily have bought and carried sheets of steel to hang on the walls). i specialize in buying the NOT fun things these days. so i have to make my own fun out of the home depot trips, because i'm certainly not going to get any pleasure out of poring over sticks of wood.

the day before yesterday, we stopped at la hacienda on nolensville road to grab a bite to eat before going to spend the whole rest of the evening at the depot. lo and behold -- it was happy hour at la hacienda! 2 for 1 margaritas! so, i got plowed, and then julie took me shopping to pick out a bathtub. kohler devonshire, would you like to have a margarita with me? i thought so.

yesterday, we needed to buy caulk. now see, that word, it is funny. say it a little quickly and don't clearly pronounce the "l", and you have infinity amount of childish sex jokes at your fingertips. caulk -- at your fingertips! yesterday i wasn't plowed at home depot, but i was sure to speak loudly about caulk in such a way that many many heads turned. here are some of my favorite caulk jokes:

"we have spent the whole day trying to get caulk off! it takes a long time because the caulk, it is old."

while in the caulk aisle, talking to another man shopping for caulk: "there are so many kinds of caulk! each one is a little different, but they all serve the same purpose."

"some caulk fills small holes, other caulk fills large holes."

"exercise great caution when using a caulk gun, because if you don't handle it just right it will explode all over the place."

i know, i have the maturity and sense of humor of a 13 year old boy. whatever.
you liked it. you like caulk.

morgan's friday quotsies

(in response to mr. allstate, re: flip property):

"you can't deny me fucking home owner's insurance just because my house is ghetto!"

how does my garden grow?

this is the first year i've had my very own garden, with the real dirt and the things that grow in it. last year after we moved in we were able to plant some flowers, but it was too late in the season to plant vegetables. but THIS year, oh the gardening, it did happen. with the vegetables. i planted lettuce, green onions, cucumbers, LOTS of green bell peppers (i don't like them that much, but they came in a little six pack, and it seemed silly not to plant them. if you need green bell peppers, please contact me when they ripen.), red bell peppers (THOSE i do like, and they were not sold in a six pack. do not contact me when they ripen, because i will eat them all myself.), cucumbers, four different kinds of tomatoes, basil, cilantro, rosemary, and lavender. YAY FOR MY GARDEN!!!

my two favorite gardening events have been:
1. when the lettuce started to sprout. little wee tiny heads of leaf lettuce all in a row! from seeds! that i planted! magic.
2. this week, when i peeked under the GIGANTIC cucumber vines only to discover that there is a whole cucumber community thriving under those big fuzzy leaves, with some cucumbers very tiny and some big enough to pick! and eat! with the mouth! we have harvested three cucumbers, and they are lovely and perfect and all i could ever ask for. plus, they don't have that bitter awful tasting wax on them like the ones from the grocery store.

i'm also pretty excited about the cherry tomatoes that i've spotted....very small and green, but VERY promising. all of this wonderment kind of makes me wish i had planted a few other things....i poked my head over the fence (well, the fence isn't that tall to really require that much of a head poke, i can pretty well see over it just fine with no head poke at all) to look at the neighbor's garden, and they are growing broccoli and those heads of broccoli are about the cutest dern things i've ever seen. also they have pole beans. but no cucumbers. or lettuce. but if you combine the produce from both gardens -- behold!

i'm serious about the green peppers. prepare to contact me.

house flipping/flopping

as of yet, i haven't really addressed (via blog, that is) pretty much the most major thing that is happening in my life (and in my bank account) currently. see, contrary to what a lot of people think, social workers don't make a lot of money. i have (mostly) phased out sex work and drug dealing as sources of additional income, and so naturally the next thing i turned to was real estate. so i bought a house. another one. a small one, so wee. so cheap! so run down and in need of love.

makes sense, doesn't it, that if you are a little tight on money you would pick up a second mortgage on a second house? perfect sense. money management plus morgan equals riches galore!

it has been about a month since i closed, and oh the demolition, there has been a lot of it. but - great progress has been made! and only one dead bird has been found! it fell out of the attic when we ripped out the ceiling in the living room. and speaking of ripping out the ceiling in the living room (and the kitchen) -- all those things people say about fiberglass insulation making you itch -- they are true. horrifically, monstrously true.

so anyways, i'm going to blog more, i SWEAR i am, and i'm going to blog about house flipping because it is funny and ridiculous. the hvac installation was completed yesterday, and i wish to god i had taken a picture of the crew that did the installation. i'm trying to think what i could write to describe them that wouldn't be offensive and wouldn't result in someone calling me smug or arrogant or whatever else, and i can't think of anything. they did a good job. for a good price. with a small gene pool from which to work.

drama mama

not last week, but the week BEFORE last week i had a bit of a crisis which is still even now making my life more difficult than it needs to be.

so i have this client, and she is struggling. with the money. and with not having any of it. and right now she is on crutches. we had a session, and i took her a couple of places and at one of those places she got a donation of an air conditioner, which i lifted into my car by myself, narrowly avoiding crushing every bone in my body (but that isn't the crisis). we get back to her apartment, and she wants me to go upstairs and get her shopping cart out of her apartment (i know, everybody has a shopping cart, right? i have five of them in my living room for occasions just such as this one). i leave her in the car, and go get the shopping cart. it takes me quite some time. i come back, load the air conditioner into the shopping cart, send her on her way. then it occurs to me to check my purse to be sure everything that should be in the purse is in the purse. and everything is.

except my wallet. the wallet that has my life in it.

so i call julie.

julie: hello?
morgan: I THINK MY CLIENT JUST STOLE MY WALLET.
julie: oh dear.
morgan: I'M GOING TO HAVE A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.
julie: let me look around here and make sure you didn't leave it.
***time passes***
julie: i've looked everywhere. it isn't here. i searched the whole house.
morgan: GOING TO KILL MYSELF.

so i call my supervisor, for some advice on how to navigate this somewhat tricky little situation. i go back to my client's apartment, and this time around i'm all, "oh, i think i might have dropped my wallet up here." blah blah blah, she says she hasn't seen it, i narrow my eyes suspiciously and growl, i leave her apartment and commence sobbing while i call both banks, cancel both debit cards, put stop payments on all my checks, file a police report, try to run myself over. i decide to give her one more chance to confess before the swat team arrives to knock down her door. i say: "are you sure you don't have my wallet? please tell me if you do. all the cards are cancelled and there is no cash, so it won't do you any good. give me back my wallet, you thief." (not really that last part, but i might as well have said that).

so back in the car i go, talking to julie on the phone about how dreadfully horrendously terrible it is going to be to replace everything in my wallet and what a tremendous pain in the ass it is going to be until i get my debit cards and checks in the mail (what am i supopsed to do during those 7 business days, bank man? write people i.o.u's? barter? STEAL?), and then julie says: "oh! i found your wallet!"

now clearly, i am overjoyed that my wallet was not stolen. and that conversation when i apologized to my client for practically throwing her in the clink with my own hands, well that conversation was SO much fun. and, since it has been 9 business days and i STILL don't have checks from one of my banks, the bank that has the account that i happen to be using to remodel a house, i'm pretty sure the government is going to investigate me because i keep going to the bank to withdraw very large sums of cash. like large enough to, say, install an hvac. or buy a lot of drugs.

oh, and two of those checks that i put stop payments on? i had already written them. it's pretty likely that i'm going to win some kind of customer appreciation award for awesomeness from the electric company. i hear they LOVE it when people pay their bills with hot checks.