Fifteen vanilla beans showed up in my mailbox today. I am going ot make vanilla extract. Woohoo. Pictures to follow, when I find my digital camera battery charger. (This must happen before the weekend, regardless, as we are going whale watching! I am so excited! We studied whales in like fifth grade and I have wanted to see them ever since.) _

Oh, thought I, my driver's lisence expired on Wednesday. Well, I wanted to switch it to MA anyway, so, whatever. The stupid DMV in Massachusetts isn't open on Saturdays (I swear the one in Harrisburg is). And it costs like $125, which I'm sure is not how much I paid. _

Hey, check it out, that was like two blog posts almost within a week of each other. Probably because the bitchy one was too long to post. _

I am home again, however, I came with my grandmother towing along behind me and seem to be unable to shake my job as her primary care giver. I am feeling fairly anxious about it, and the stairs are making everything worse. It can't possibly be healthy to sit in a room alone all day because you are too scared to do stairs because you have a muscle in spasm. I am supposed to, somehow, find her an outpatient physical therapy facility, preferably one that is attached to a hospital. Short of calling Mass General, I'm not sure how that's supposed to pan out.

I haven't managed to sort out my personal space issues, as she has been put up in my bedroom, and I am sleeping on a mattress on my sister's floor. I have had my own room since I was like ten. Sharing a loft double in Paca was hard enough. Half of my clothes are in the closet in her room, half are in my sister's closet/still in my suitcase. All of my books are in my/her bedroom. Which means there is nowhere I can go to escape people, really, as my sister's room looks like a tornado hit, and my half-hearted unpacking efforts have only made it worse.

((I really really wanted a week away from my grandmother.))

I called both of my temp agencies the day after my birthday (which was my first full day back), and the one I wasn't expecting to have anything for me again ever has found me a receptionist job for three weeks, which is nice. I think I will be on the bus for like an hour every morning, and I'm not hugely fond of buses (nor do I have a clue how much money is on my CharlieCard). It starts tomorrow (Friday).

On a whim today, and the recent discovery that it's a slightly long but comfortable walk, I walked this afternoon to a little Italian market in the North End that sells fresh pasta and fresh mozzarella (both cow and buffalo, the cow was better) among other things, and we had fresh pasta tonight with dinner (also a frittata made with the random leftover vegetables from our last organic produce delivery). It was lovely, and Sam was beside himself with glee at the chance to take a long walk. _

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Oh, good, they're doing Book Fest this year. _

I am struggling with my inability to finish things. If I'd cooked for a vice on this week's Top Chef, I would have served them cookie dough (mmm...cookie dough). I have at least three books lying around the house, begun and unable to hold my attention long enough to finish them. (I feel like I am failing Atonement the most of them all, as it is the best of the lot.) I have three lace projects with me, one one of them I am halfway through the second to last row and then I can cast off and be done, but I...do other things. I have a sleeve and half done of the sweater I have been wanting to make for more than two years, and so I bought yarn and kneedles and cast on a new sweater when I was in DC last week (but my pattern is in Boston, so that is sitting around with two inches of the bottom of the back sitting around my grandmother's house).

Maybe I should just finish the nearly completed piece, shower, make candy... _

On am whim, have started rewatching Coupling streamed through Netflix (because Netflix is awesome). Am about to get to one of Brianne's favorite moments, Steve's rant about cushions, which reminds me of my question from that rant. When Steve is questioning the point of throw cushions, and is trying to demonstrate that the one useful thing is in case of Daleks and throws himself on the ground behind the counch, is he saying in the off chance that there were Daleks attacking you, you should hide behind the couch, or is it one of Moffat's references to how he thinks Dr. Who should be so scary it makes you want to hide behind the couch?

If it's the latter, I'm not sure I can deal with a whole season of episodes like the one with the Weeping Angels. I love Moffat's monsters the best in Davies' Dr. Who but you only get one (or two) clock-work men trying to get your brain, or zombie children asking if you are their mummy. Or, bizarre dream-like words and creatures that live in the dark to eat your flesh. You kind of need the farting monsters in flesh suits, or Dobbie-Doctor to balance it out. _

I have a Jack Skellington cotton throw blanket on my bed. It's subtle enough that my brother had to say "is that The Nightmare Before Christmas?" Brianne got it for me for my birthday a few years ago, right after I'd seen it at the Disney Store and thought it was great. My grandmother (who has no sense of personal space) just came in my room and asked me if I made it. I said, no, I didn't. She then said "it's handsome, and striking. I laughed and laughed and laughed, that my 82 year old grandmother likes my Disney-Goes-Goth blanket. _

My grandmother, in her non-ending quest to pronounce everything correctly, prounces Havre de Grace as though it were in France rather than rural Maryland, and pronounces every letter in King of Prussia. King of Prussia is one of my particular annoyances. She is the only person I know who says three distinct words. For years, I knew (I think I was learning cursive and was learning how to write an "f" when I learned otherwise) that I learned that it wasn't Kingaprusha.

Also, she is now able to help with household chores, which sounds like it should be great, except she moves at a snails pace, and does insane things like washes her green towels and orange towels seperately because they are different colors, despite being about the same shade of dark. And she is a royal pain in the kitchen, because she has an amazing ability to always need to be in the cabinet I'm standing in front of. Last night it was basically never mind that Tori is standing in front of a stove carefully flipping a whole large frying pan of fried zucchini indivually; she needed to be in the cabinet I was vaguel near so I had to stand aside so she could search for a particular plate to put something in the microwave.

And then I made her cry, last night, because I lost my temper a little with her inability to keep herself safe and also her inability to let me have private space, when she went into my bedroom, didn't turn on the light, and had to lift her walker over things to avoid tripping to close the blinds. I was upset, she said "please don't scold me tonight" and I really lost it with a "then don't do things that are unsafe!" and she started crying. I felt rotten. And, part of what made me feel particularly rotten is that I feel pretty incredibly strongly that I was in the right. _

I have been having the same fight since 10 o'clock last night, all involving the walker and my grandmother not using it. She swears it's forgetting it, or that "really, the occupational therapist said it's okay". The OT said it's okay for her to walk without the walker if she has a counter, or table, or washing machine to hold onto. So, she leave the walker in the dining room, and walks into the kitchen, and that's the position she's in when I wake up in the morning, and she doesn't understand my panic. I have tried every manipulative trick. I started with rational explanation, tried guilt, fear. I suggested tying her M&Ms to the walker, and have threatened to create a leash that attaches her to the walker. I have talked calmly and in a panic near scream. My uncle is going to come over to try to explain to her what it is that has us all worried, and to help her figure out a way to remember. I don't know how to handle this at all. _

It's Sunday, and I was up far too late last night, because Brianne came to visit and she helped me touch up my roots after we went to Harry Potter and then hung out and chatted with my grandmother and uncle for a while. The house feels sleepy and lazy on Sunday morning, and I'm considering a donut run, because it feels like a day that needs donuts. I am far enough away from Boston, however, that finding a Dunkin Donuts feels hard (according to Google there are several within 3 miles). _

Apparently, Crest makes a sonic toothbrush. It makes me think of Captain Jack's explosion of "who looks at a screwdriver and thinks "this could be more...sonic?!" _

I am trying rather desperately to understand what part of "please don't go in the kitchen alone, and please always keep both hands on your walker, I don't want you to fall" translates into "as soon as Tori takes a shower, I will go into the kitchen to go through the mail."

I am frustrated and tired. I haven't slept for more than three hours straight for almost two weeks. I hate showering at night, but it seems I am going to have to start showering after she goes to bed. I have been reminding her of the same things about walking for a week and a half. I have been having the same fight about food for a week and a half. I haven't left for more than two hours, and then it was to run errands for her. I had a little melt down in the grocery store after walking around in circles like four times because I kept forgetting something important. And I can't install the shower with hose (why I thought I would be able to is still a little beyond me; I can't even install curtain rods). _

After I helped my grandmother do her physical therapy excersizes, she asked me what time it was. "Quarter to 7," I replied.

"But it was 3 the last time I asked."

"Well, yeah, but you asked, then took a nap while I watched TV."

"Oh, what did you watch?"

"Um...this bad British science fiction show that I can't stop watching."

"Oh, I would like to watch that with you!"

"No, you wouldn't like it."

"Why do you say that?"

How do you answer a question like that, how do you explain to your 82 year old grandmother, who has trouble following relatively simple plots, and couldn't understand what was going on in the episodes of Leverage that you'd shown her the night before, couldn't even follow who was whom, and was vaguely convinced that the bad guy in the first episode was the good guy and doesn't understand why Nate Ford is cool (Nate Ford is cool, even when I can dissasciate him from Archie Goodwin)  or Parker and Hardison are adorable and delightful, why she wouldn't like Torchwood. Especially when I can't actually explain to myself why I bother watching Torchwood half the time. V qernq gur qrngu bs Vnagb. V zvtug abg unir nccebirq bs Wnpx va n zbabtnzbhf eryngvbafuvc, ohg V yvxrq Vnagb. V cebonoyl jbhyq or zber rntre gb jngpu Puvyqera bs Rnegu vs V qvqa'g xabj gung ur jnf tbvat gb qvr. _

Ah ha! After more than a week of "look, you've lost way too much weight post surgery, you have to eat, this is unhealthy" and "oh, my mouth just tastes so sour, I feel so sick, the thought of food makes me nauseated", I sighed over my uncle buying my grandmother skim milk instead of the 1% I'd decided she was going to drink until she started eating again, she piped up with "oh, no, I want skim, I don't want to gain weight."

Which, is to say, my hunch that she has been not eating because she is secretly proud of having lost weight post surgery is probably confirmed. My sister did point out that I do prefer to cook the exact right sort of food you would make for someone you want to gain weight. _

My grandmother thinks that leftovers lose their nutrition as they sit in the refrigerator. Has anyone ever heard of anything like this before?

Also, how long is it safe to keep cooked chicken in the refrigerator? _

Funniest line from a movie review I've read in ages:

Kids who started reading J.K. Rowling prepubertally (“He and Cho Chang snog? No way!”) have since moved on to Mormon sexual-repression parables involving vampires, while Little Harry got naked on Broadway and blinded six horses with a metal spike. _

I ran my grandmother's dishwasher, and it drained into the small part of her sink with the garbage disposal, and now it won't go down. Or maybe it's goind down slowly. I tried running the disposal, and nothing. ((sigh)) Plunger, do you think? Somewhere on the internet there seemed to be a suggestion of baking soda, vinegar, and boiling water in the other side. _

Does Facebook have no minimum age for sign up? It seems very odd to me that my 13 year old cousin is on. _