Category Archives: Sweet Domesticity

A Series of Small Controlled Disasters.

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About to change my Yelp review for my jam service

When we last spoke, I was actually on my second full day of having no hot water. I hit “post” and was like OH YEAH, I knew I forgot something. I brought a basket of laundry downstairs on Wednesday and stepped in a massive puddle that had been sopped up by all my rando IKEA rugs that I keep in the very unfinished furnace room so it’s not completely dire to walk through. They also keep the kitty litter contained to that one room. My first thought was that the terrible plumber had done something stupid (again) a year ago during the basement bathroom remodel. I saw that water was dripping out of the bottom of the heater, so that answered the question of where the water was coming from.

I shut off the water supply to the water heater, and then shut off the breaker. Then there was the fun process of pulling up the rugs and mopping, and I set up a fan to finish drying the floor.

P. came home about an hour later. “Hey homeowner who doesn’t have to pay excessive rent or deal with landlords or anything,” I said by way of greeting.

“What happened?” he asked.

We set up a new water heater delivery and install that night, but they couldn’t come until Saturday. I knew my interview was on Friday, and I needed to be clean and presentable then. I took a cold shower on Thursday night and it was fine. My hair actually looked better than usual.

Here I am gussied up and spackled (pre-lip gloss and HIRE ME face). My “style” “inspirations” for the past year have been Jane Fonda in 9 to 5 and Lydia Rodate-Quayle from Breaking Bad. So, a lot of jackets with pussy bows and vintage brooches. Bonkers patterns. I really gave up on my hair on Friday. It’s a pretty decent length bob now, which wear loose pretty often, but the front still has a lot of damaged hair from when I was going red all the time a year ago, and that’s the first thing people see. I have the twitching hands of wanting to cut it so badly, but I want to grow it out. So, that thing.

The interview itself was kind of terrible. I think I was in denial about what I was in for. I had a phone screen, fine, normal for a contract. Then they asked to do a second screen with a second person. THEN they asked me to come in for a two-hour loop with four people. If there is a way to tell your interviewers that their process is above your pay grade and position as a feckless contractor, I have not discovered it. I got the full-court press as if I was interviewing for an FTE postion. One person looked over my resume and expressed confusion about my “career.” He read off it: “Uhhh, marketing, taxonomist, content analyst/xquery, writing, editing…” He did not know what to do with it. I refused to explain myself. I have learned to say, “I like a fast pace and the challenge of a variety of tasks” rather than “I get bored easily behind a desk and corporate life in particular bores the shit out of me. May I have a job at your Business Factory?” They are doing this to two other poor contractors so I won’t hear until the end of the week. I got this exact same job in the same department five years ago with a 40 minute phone screen and a writing sample. ANYWAY.

But enough about my TERRIBLE ATTITUDE. We had hot water again by Saturday night, which was great. Then I woke up a 2 a.m. on Sunday morning to the sound of really loud pops, like fireworks, amidst the sounds of a heavy windstorm. It turns out it was transformers blowing and the power in my house was dead. I got out of bed and threw on my coat and boots and went out the front door and I could see downed power lines leading straight to the ground. I called the po-pos and reported it, and a fire truck came out. Two guys jumped out and one said “Hi” to me as I stood on the edge of the lawn with a flashlight. Then they left. A couple of cars came and went down my street, trying to get through, and in their headlights I could see that a tree was completely blocking the road.

I pulled P. out of bed to come look as well. There wasn’t much to see other than a giant tree in the dark. The sky was beautiful and for once you could see every star. Orion was on his side, which is the best, because then he turns into Burt Reynolds. Another neighbor was out and he said “watch out for the low wires.” We ducked under and got close to the tree. I could see that most of my street had power except our end.

That giant Narnia-looking hedge motherfucker is actually the tree and is where cars are supposed to go. The police closed my street and they left when the power company came. For hours it was just guard trucks on either end of the street. I got a message on my dying phone that power would be restored by 1 p.m. so we went for a huge walk because we were bored and kind of weirdly anxious about first having no hot water and then no power. It made for a crap weekend.

We had the neighborhood to ourselves since apparently a football game was happening. I love walking on football days. We encountered some people getting into a car and they declared, “Wow, the only people in the city not watching the Seahawks!”

“Our power’s out,” we explained, so we would not be shot on sight or citizens’ arrested.

Taking the dogs out to a nearby park and back was a bit of a mistake since they were caked in mud when we came home. I washed them with some of the hot water we had left, but couldn’t blow dry them as usual. Horace followed me around with his confused face on until I bundled them up in the living room, where we had a fire going most of the day. They shivered a little and fell asleep. Later Horace spent a lot of time staring at the kitchen vent, which was not giving up the warm blowy goods at all.

I should say that overall this was a very minor inconvenience. It has been reaching almost 50F here during the day, and is sunny as hell today (I went out hiking for two hours earlier, listening to the newest Extra Hot Great). We still had the stove top, which could be lit with a match, so I kept mint tea going all day. After our walk we sat by the fire and read.

The sun started setting before five and a bucket truck appeared on our street. Strudel and I cheered and jumped around. I busted out all my candles and started making dinner. Chicken, veg, and yellow split pea soup.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this. This is awesome,” P. said. We talked about going to dinner, but knew we would just have to come back to our sad cold dark house. I carried a taper around with me to the pantry and to look in the fridge, and even knocked it over and spilt wax on my pants and floor. What a clumsy early Victorian I would have been. While I cooked, Strudel put on her boots and went out and spied on the grownup talk on the street. She came back in triumphant: “They say two more hours!”

It was less time than that. About three minutes before my soup was ready, the microwave and various other devices awakened with beeps and boops. I blew out my candles and cursed the darkness.

Other business:

I lost access to my old Twitter account (long story involving me being stupid) so I started a new one a couple of months ago at @theiasshole. I wanted to give it some time to see if I would get back into it, and I have been wading back in slowly after being a heavy user a few years ago. And then I got sick and went into Greta Garbo hermit mode, but I am climbing out again. I am even getting used to socializing a little again. I don’t have palpitations every time some emails me anymore. Sigh. Anyway follow along if you are a twitter type person or not. I am trying to refollow people I used to follow as they pop up and whatnot.

DID YOU KNOW

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That you can hurt yourself cleaning? Of course you can. Of course I can, anyway. I have given myself TENNIS ELBOW from squeezing a sponge repeatedly. How sad is that?

I felt a wave of dread at facing another injury that might take months to heal, as in the past, and then I remembered that I heal pretty fast now (i.e. like a healthy person). It is already feeling better. I have been icing it with a bag of frozen leek hom bow that no one in my house can eat now. I am still trying to get rid of a little food here and there, as donations, to friends. P. found a perfectly good bag of unopened corn flour in the pantry from Bob’s that is waiting for my sister’s next visit. I did a huge cleanout when I discovered what disagreed with me, but somehow it was psychologically hard to get rid of unopened, brand new things? And then I forgot about some of them.

The cool thing about cleaning the house from top to bottom was not experiencing any back pain afterwards. I was a little tired, but that was nice and I slept great. I had back pain for years, back to high school. People gave me advice: stretch, run, walk lots, stand, do yoga, do sit ups, and more. I tried everything but nothing really worked. I would do light amounts of housework or work one of my many jobs that I had throughout high school and college and I would still come home with a dull throb in my lower back. If I laid down I would literally limp around after I got up. I just thought, no matter how hard or how little I exercised, that I was a wimpy person. Of course it is something that can present with Celiac disease.

I had a trip to the dentist in December where my long-time hygienist noticed my long-time mouth roof hole. This lady’s great, she rarely misses a trick.

“Did you burn the roof of your mouth?” she asked.

“Uhhh, probably.” The Notorious P.I.G. does not have time for food to cool to an edible temperature. “Oh wait, THISH?” I crammed my finger up to the roof of my mouth where I knew the scar was. “That’s that old, old hole.”

“Oh yeah! It looks different.”

She asked me what was new as they do at the beginning of my appointment and I told her I found I was intolerant to pretty much everything that comes in a wrapper. I mentioned this because it seemed like a “health change” that you should declare as a patient and I was afraid that there would be corn in something they would use on me or Strudel. They were very nice and let me see the ingredients in the tooth polish and fluoride. So the groundwork was set for me to mention that the hole had healed further.

“I used to get a shooting nerve pain up to my ear when I would touch it with my tongue,” I said. “No more.”

My teeth are also no longer sensitive to citrus/acids, or cold like ice cream, or hurt when I use a sonic toothbrush.

“You’re barely bleeding,” she told me. “You used to be a BLEEDER.”

“I know,” I said. “Sorry. Gross.”

“Your teeth look great, too. Hardly any build up on them.”

I win! I didn’t say this because it veers off into “I don’t know what is happening so it sounds kind of crackpotty,” but I have this weird feeling like my pH has changed somehow. My mouth tastes different and my breath is better. No matter how I would floss and brush it seemed like tartar would fly to my teeth and cling a week after the dentist. Now they feel great for almost the whole six months. Flossing is no longer an ordeal that I have to steel myself for, and expect to spit tons of blood no matter how regularly I flossed. Now my mouth is like “WHAT ELSE YOU GOT, FOOL?” I am thinking about inventing something new in oral care just so I can do that every night too.

A thing I have learned about myself after many years is that as soon as I start feeling decent, I start hurting myself immediately. I am not watching a ton of TV right now, but I have been taking the chance to catch up on a couple of things I let build up on my hard drive during the holidays. I told myself I can watch TV if I spend the first ten minutes of a program in a “third world squat.” Flexibility was always a struggle because it hurt to get into basic yoga positions like “table.” I kid you not. My wrists would scream. I had padding for my padding when I did yoga. I must have looked like I was about 900 years old.

There’s kind of an ethos at my house which involves keeping electronics mostly out of sight. I’m not sure why I do this–it may be partly the librarian in me who wants a serene environment that is more conducive to reading or conversation than “let’s all face a screen.” We bought a midcentury end table a year ago to hide what is almost the sum total of our electronics. The Wii lives in the bottom cabinet, and my laptop sits in the middle when it is running TV. The projector and a lamp sits on top, and my MP3 player charges and hides in one drawer (the Wiimotes are in the other).

ANYWAY, I say all this by way of explaining that for the past year if we do want to watch something, my routine has been to kneel down in front of this little cabinet to access my laptop and queue it up, silently cursing the whole time about my knees and back. But lately I’ve found myself just dipping into a squat, like a toddler. I realized it didn’t hurt, and in fact felt good! “I bet I could do this for a long time,” I thought, foolishly. “I will start with ten minutes, that’ll go by fast!” Yeah, a lot of things sound easy until you try them, like plank pose or ass-to-mouth.

But I’m starting with this, and when my “sponge elbow” feels better I’ll do some other things that involve my arms.

So this is fun, and by fun I mean “gross.” I was hunting through a drawer for who knows what during my big clean and I found this from my stocking last year:

P. had gotten me a giant clove (my favorite candy flavor) candy cane in my stocking. As I’ve mentioned I got to the point where I was barely eating sweets because everything made me feel fairly ill. No doubt it was the corn in most candy. So I snapped an end off at Christmastime and ate that, and then tucked it into a drawer, where I meant to come back to it and then forgot about it. They look like this new. Whoops! And EUGH.

In good food news, my current obsession is socca. I mixed finely chopped green onions into the batter last night and it kind of reminded me of those thousand-layer Chinese pancakes. I made collard greens last night and put bites of greens on pieces of socca and it was wonderful. It also reminded me I want to try making injera at home. Teff=gluten free!

I moved the hand vac temporarily when I was scrubbing that zone of my kitchen and Edith lost her MIND. This doesn’t capture it as I would have liked. When I came into the dining room she was flat on her belly whisper-barking at it. “HUMAN THERE IS AN INTRUDER, I WILL SAVE YOU.”

Horace went into “FOR FUCK’S SAKE” mode like he does with her and came in to show her it was no big deal by kicking it and touching it with his nose. He’s a good big brother. She likes to fetch and he watches until I throw the toy and it goes a little out of her sight (like into an empty laundry basket) or in a different direction. Then he will go “JESUS CHRIST” and get up and show her where it is. Brain the size of a planet and he is stuck being a service dog to a creature slightly dumber than Winnie the Pooh.

I am appalled at how much time I spent writing about cleaning, too.

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One thing I like about this time of year is getting over the “dark hump” and realizing that though my plants look terrible, they are probably not going to die this year. I question my wisdom in having a potted ficus stand in as a Christmas tree, because it starts turning brown in places and dropping leaves, and doesn’t really stop until February. Maybe I should move Xmas to summer when it is lush and green.

I saw that the Saddest Rubber Tree in North America, which resides in my dining room, is trying to put on new leaves and then I ran around and pity-watered everyone, which I forgot to do last weekend. I knew this house was going to be challenging for plants. It’s on a great orientation for a sunny place, like California or Arizona. When we moved in I had a mass wave of deaths and then another when I was bedridden earlier last year. There is something so right about limping to the bathroom like a sadsack and seeing that you have lost yet another plant. Someone call Emily Dickinson, I think we’ve got a lead for her.

I usually get this weird sense of foreboding as we hurtle toward the solstice, and a great sense of relief when we get away from it. I guess that’s why humans invented Xmas and Snuggies and growlers anyway. Hide out from the forebodums.

“I’m so happy this year is almost over,” P. said a couple of weeks ago. I was really surprised. It’s very uncharacteristic for him to make dramatic Eeyore-esque pronouncements like that (the position has been filled by me). I had to ask him what he meant. “This year was TERRIBLE,” he said. And then I felt very dumb as I realized he was referring to the first part of it. March seems like a lifetime ago in some ways, though I still wake up almost every day like I have Quantum Leap’d or something and must check all my parts: “Nothing hurts; can think; am in good mood. WOW. Let’s do this.”

So last night I made a very boring secret plan. In honor of the fact that I am not working, and am finally feeling well enough, I have started cleaning the house from top to bottom. I would guess it’s been over a year since the house has been scrubbed this hard, since I starting getting really sick (hard-to-move sick) in October ’13. For a couple of years prior to me losing my grip I had to prop myself up on copious amounts of drugs and coffee to get my joints working and enough energy to clean, and it was miserable.

Today it felt easy and I didn’t mind it one bit. I listened to podcasts all day long. I used to have a SPOTLESS house, even with a baby and toddler. I maintenance cleaned once a week and it took me three hours in our old Fremont duplex. It was just what I had become accustomed to growing up. My parents built their house and they were going to keep it new and clean, at all costs. We had the kind of house where more often than not, there were vacuum marks in the rug, like a newly-mowed lawn. I really let that go when we moved into the big split-level rental in 2010. I was getting ill and that place was a pit, so it all seemed kind of hopeless.

Today I scrubbed cabinet fronts, and most nooks and crannies in the kitchen. I cleaned behind the microwave, and inside of the dishwasher door hinge. I did both of the bathrooms top to bottom (okay, I did not dust the pictures, but I will tomorrow) I had an inkling this tsunami of anal retentiveness was coming, since I cleaned kitchen windows and other hard-to-reach spots a couple of weeks ago. There was so much to do and I was moving relatively slowly so I abandoned the job halfway through before dinnertime, vowing to be back soon.

I was kind of thrilled that packages were arriving all day as well, because they contained needed kitcheny things that I could put in place as I put it back together: an electric kettle which I’ve been wanting for years; silpat for baking sheets; an LED bulb for a burned-out one in one of the heinous booblights in the kitchen.

I have come to a few conclusions after doing all the “wet work” today (dusting and dry floors tomorrow). First is, Fuck a Tile Counter. I love my tile counters, and the tile bathrooms, especially my pink poodle one. But I’ve realized that they look like crap 60 years on. There are cracks, permanent staining, missing bits. Not to mention the amount of time that it takes to clean between every goddam tile where the schmutz builds up. We’ve already decided to pull the counter tile in the kitchen and leave the yellow backsplash, which is perfect. Perhaps the same treatment is in order for the upstairs bathrooms.

The second conclusion is that every time I greedily think we should have gotten more house, I need to clean this one. There is a lot of real estate here. A lot of surfaces. Someone keeps cluttering it up with terrible old gewgaws from the 20th century and they all need dusting.

The third conclusion is that I am starting to trust that I am well again. It’s strange, I still feel like I am somewhat of a different person, as if I have been rebuilt out of old refurbed parts. But it’s all working better. I’m having some stiffness in the morning that I hope will be resolved with exercise, which doesn’t sound like an impossible undertaking now.

Franny’s coming back today. It sounds like her holiday with SeaFed was pretty fun, small amounts of drama aside. She called me whispering, hiding outdoors one day to vent her spleen about a mini-row that resulted in her being called “ungrateful” for not eating a “gluten-free” doughnut that had been produced in the bakery where they bake all the wheat ones. I made sympathetic noises and told her she did the right thing in politely turning it down.

I have a lead on a tech contract (phone screen tomorrow) back in the pit where I was before Xmas. Hooray/boo for work, but yay for being back to the gluten free food truck that is one of three restaurants I trust not to poison me in Seattle. I have to say, my long-time commenter “A.” made the penny finally drop on this gluten-free sauce business idea, but I don’t know if I would have considered it for more than two minutes if I wouldn’t have eaten at this gluten-free truck during my last contract. I know running a side business isn’t easy (my stepfather ran a coin-op amusement business in addition to his full time career) but I thought about the components and it looked possible.

And on Saturday I am taking a small food business class which runs all day, because that is the plan for this year. I am working on dressings bi-weekly now. I want to relentlessly tinker with sauce daily until I feel like I have some testers that I can shop out to my friends, but then I feel bad about pouring out perfectly good olive oil concoctions because there are too many and I don’t get to them. So we eat our way through the so-so and the pretty decent dressings and then I start again at a reasonable pace. I am trying to develop four in time for the summer farmer’s markets.

I’m feeling very grateful that I had all that experience in 2010 altering and experimenting with Victorian recipes. I was thinking that chapter of my life was something I would leave behind as a fun hobby and memory, but it really made me a better cook and a better recipe developer. I did not dream I would use those skills this soon–I thought I would be developing recipes for my b&b and some point in the way off, and I didn’t really have a concept about how I was going to go from working for random people in techworld to owning my own business. But I am really thrilled to have some practice at “opening” a small business now. The start-up costs should be pretty low and this is not a make-or-break operation, so this won’t ruin us if it fails. I will have to file for a license, so I am trying to think of a business name. Alas, I have ruled out ass-related ones. I will be very excited to fill you in on the details of this venture as I go this year.

Tonight after cleaning for seven (!) hours, I am going to treat myself to some sauv blanc and sleep in a bit tomorrow before my phone screen at 11 a.m. Happy new year.

Can I say that sometimes I am jealous of people who are my age and are just now having babies

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Psych though, because I am really into sleeping eight hours. I am all OCK OCK teenage problems and then I am all…sleeping eight hours. I dunno. The answer is probably: cigars on ice. Okay, I know I am supposed to be quoting D’Angelo now, but I am still not over Bey.

Chalkboard Christmas Steve welcomes you the fuck into Xmas.

Okay what happened this year? Nothing, which I think is very exciting. We did Capitalism on Christmas Steve, since Franny was set to leave on xmas eve.

I wanted to give her a little time to enjoy her big present. Naturally, she took the guitar away with her to her dad’s house. I threatened her gently and said YOU MUST BRING IT BACK. I can just see her father’s children sitting on it or something. So can she, actually. She triple assured me she would bring it back. As a side bar, it’s interesting to me that she’s trying to talk her dad into getting off the wheat. He’s having all kinds of problems that are just like hers were (and mine). He’s not biting. He was always a super big fan of not believing anything because BLEAH. Why believe anything anyone tells you? Fuck that noise.

So. Strudel was ready for her first earrings and Franny really wanted her nose pierced, so as part of their xmas presents I took them back to the place where I took Franny when she was eight and wanted her ears pierced. I don’t think I got a good picture of her–just a crap one on my phone. She said she wanted it on her right nostril, like her Auntie Morgan.

They did really well. Strudel wanted to hold my hand but of course Franny did not.

“A present!” Franny said. That is not a present, that is a Dr. Hoho.

I asked Strudel something later that day and she said “WHAT MOM I’M LISTENING TO DRAKE.” Please don’t make me regret my earphones decision. It did get her to clean with us very pleasantly today. “WOW I LISTENED TO MUSIC THE WHOLE TIME.” Okay, please turn it down before you start talking…

Stocking happiness. I had to go the the Special Store (read: expensive) and get corn, dairy, and gluten-free candy for stockings. If you are very bored I defy you to read labels in a store and try to find something processed that does not contain any of those things. I sent Franny away with mad vitamins and a command to actually take them. Our lives are vitamins right now. It’s working.

Look who has a mild case of the ocds.

She’s always like this. I make her insane because I am chaotic neutral and leave stuff lying around differently depending on how profitable it is.

Edith spent the whole time doing this every time I took the camera out.

“FOOD IS THERE FOOD???” No.

Okay, so there’s no graceful way to slip this in here. Strudel spends A LOT of time holding Dorty upside down. I always like it, because Edith likes the attention and it doesn’t seem to be interfering with anything. But at the same time, I feel like she’s an old thymey model being mesmerized by Strudel.

FURTHERMORE MY LOANS ARE PAID OFF. Ten years later. I reckon that’s about right. And now, I am ready for new debt.

So tonight I decided to make Thai food: phad see ew, tom yum, spring rolls, and a red curry with duck. I got it all from my guru at High Heel Gourmet. As a bonus I made a hot sauce with bird’s eye peppers and peanut sauce. WOO GLUTEN FREE.

Also I had a captive audience to test salad dressings on. I pulled five samples out and a bunch of veggies as appetizers. Lucky for me, my guests were hungry and like to give opinions. I’m plinking away at developing a first salad dressing that tastes awesome and is relatively hypoallergenic. Lucky me I am a closely related to two supertasters.

I also made real appetizers: spring rolls.

It’s like an ad for Natural Calm, really.

The recipe called for cooking the mung bean sprouts a little, which was cool, because it made them kind of like noodles.

This is the bouquet garni for the tom yum. Galangal, kafir leaves, and lemongrass.

When I was desperately making Thai food at my house in college almost twenty years ago, I thought that I could sub limes for kafir limes, because HEY they are both limes right? The smell that filled my house today….holy shit. Intoxicating. So that was Christmas.

A forgotten cheepie thrift store coat has been found in a closet:

Lots of phad see ew lately. “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??”

I finished working Monday thank FUCK. I would like to have another job lined up, of course, but I am loose and flapping for now. I will be tinkering with recipes and probably writing, because that’s how I roll.

Happy Xmas!!

Fangs for the memories

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Here it is FAAAANGSGIVING again and I have decided to let myself off the hook some this year. I was plotting and planning how to make an exact replica of Thanksgiving, but gluten- and dairy- and corn-free and I said you know what? I am just going to do what I’ve been doing here and play to my strengths. I bought a nice rib roast and it has been sitting in the refrigerator for almost 24 hours coated in salt.

I was that asshole at the store last night who was going “Sooo do you have any more oxtails or what?” No, they have TURKEY. I’m basically doing a very nice Sunday dinner, and I did a half-assed clean, and I feel very good about that. I enjoyed doing the big ten person thing last year, and this year I like the idea of having Morgan and her boyfriend and that’s it! It’s noon and I’m basically done.

This gives me time to recount the horror that was parent-teacher conferences on Tuesday. I am VERY VERY excited about Strudel’s teacher this year. She’s really pushing Strudel to do well. We were expecting to hear that there were behavior issues–the usual thing, talking, not finishing homework, but what we got was pretty over the top.

First there were the coffee cups. I’ve been enjoying a cup or two in the morning before I jump on the bus, or I even take some with me. I even program it to be ready by the time I wake up–such luxury! I can smell it in my dreams. Every day is a fucking coffee commercial. We have three travel mugs and a thermos, but generally the thermos gets used for soup. Two of the travel mugs are kind of crap, but we keep them because one is from a contract agency that P. was indentured to some time ago when we had a tiny baby and barely had two sticks to rub together. The other one has the name of the student org I was VP for in grad school. Memories.

My go-to, non-crap mug was dirty, so I opened the cabinet for a backup mug. There was nothing–the two old crap cups were gone.

“Why did you take the travel mugs to school?” I asked Strudel.

There is no “did you” or “what happened to” needed. I know what happened, and that yes, she did, and I don’t even want to know why. She started making mouth noises about what she was doing with them and that she knew where they both were–probably–and…I cut her off.

We are pretty fatigued by her elaborate stories lately. We had another talk about asking to borrow things, and even if objects appear to be sitting around for years the adults probably still want them. I so did not get that when I was a kid. My sense of time was so short and impatient. I didn’t understand that tools, etc, that sat around collecting dust were still wanted by their owners. So I kind of get where she’s coming from on this. I borrowed things if I thought I could get away with it. After about a week of nagging, both mugs came back home again, were cleaned, and went back to residing in the cupboard, waiting for a road trip or to be called upon as backup.

The mug issue reared its head again in our conference.

“She came in one morning,” her teacher said, “and she had a coffee mug, and was drinking out of it. Of course all of the other kids were shocked that she would be drinking coffee. I figured it was water.” (I knew it was coffee.) “I decided to just ignore it.”

“A sound plan,” I said. I spend a lot of time ignoring small stuff as well.

“Then the next day she brought in another mug. She left it on a table and went out to recess and I smelled it. It was coffee!”

I was completely unsurprised by this one, and to be honest, the biggest issue I had with it was borrowing things without permission, and causing a disruption in the classroom, because it’s a bunch of ten-year olds, not a tech start up. She drinks coffee at home sometimes–it’s not a big deal.

But her teacher wasn’t done.

“And then there was the day she came in with a ring in her nose.”

That one got me. “WHAT?”

“Yes, she had this ring attached to her nose somehow.” Her teacher pointed to one nostril. “Everyone was talking about it, of course. There was a rumor that people were saying: ‘Her mom MADE her pierce her nose.” My jaw dropped. “The other teachers were all talking about it, asking me about it. I just ignored it.”

“Oh jesus. Well that’s good,” I managed. P. was turning crimson and looked like he wanted to die. So basically he looked exactly how I felt.

“By lunchtime it was gone,” her teacher said.

The teacher had some nice things to say that were pretty much in line with what we already knew. She’s a good reader and a good writer and mather…but also has this unfortunate tendency to spontaneously fall out of her chair, which I’m sure is a big hit with her peers. She says she wants to be an engineer, but I am worried she’s going to grow up to be Amy Sedaris.

He and I were pretty subdued on the way home. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” P. said. I thought someone was really enjoying having the watchful eyes of her older sister at another school across town.

As we parked the car, we decided not to bring up the nose ring, and the coffee cups had been dealt with to our satisfaction. I made dinner and the three of us and Franny sat down. I couldn’t resist–I had to tease her a little.

“Your teacher told us EVERYTHING you’ve been up to, you know,” I said, shaking some hot sauce onto my food.

“Everything?” Strudel said in a small voice. “Like what?”

“I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your sister, but let’s say it had the RING of truth. Some of her observations were RIGHT ON THE NOSE.”

Strudel turned a crimson shade and grimaced like her father had been doing hour or so before.

“PLEASE don’t tell Franny what you’re talking about!” she begged.

“I won’t,” I promised. “If you can be good for the REST OF THE YEAR.” She agreed eagerly.

“I have no idea what’s going on here,” Franny said.

Amen, sister.

Halloween Pre-vue

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SO. My power flickered Monday with all this wind we’re having and my connection has been super flaky since then. I realized the flaw in my plans yesterday when I was trying to write and I was getting kicked on and off the internet, and I realized I don’t have offline word processing software anymore. I started a story about a man stuck on some crappy planet like Tatooine where people ride giant birds around and kept getting kicked out and my Pandora station that has me Pavlov’d into Get Ur Writing On was cutting in and out. Probably for the best, though, really.

Last night we carved pumpkins. We took two years off! Last year we all forgot and then all of the sudden it was Halloween. I think all four of us have been slowly grinding to a halt for a while now. Now we can actually do things like run errands in the evening and stay awake until 10! I even made savory (truffle salt, black pepper, garlic) and sweet (pumpkin pie spices) pumpkin seeds! Craziness!

Franny shaved her pumpkin down to do some kind of moon/silhouette thing and then it kind of collapsed. She got really frustrated and I felt bad for her. She turned it around and made a lightning bolt, which she was not thrilled with. But I like it.

P. made a crazy face with pointy goblin ears.

Strudel made a kitty. She informed us that other parents carve pumpkins for their kids and it’s boring. I am sure that other kids are allowed to carve. Maybe not at six though.

“Remember that year I cut myself?” she asked.

“Which one?” we said.

I made a spaniel face.

Frannie is doing kind of an On the Waterfront hipster thing lately, which I am loving.

Of course she is wearing her lipstick she made out of crayons.

Recently I dropped some shredded oxtail down the slot between my oven and counter. Edith discovered this, which saved me the trouble of fishing it out. Now she thinks that this slot is a magical meat dispensing vending machine, and often hangs out here when I am cooking dinner. She’s what’s known as “food motivated.”

Here is a little Strudel Halloween preview. Here we are at Men’s Wearhouse, trying on her rented suit.

“She looks just like Ramona Quimby!” the clerk said.

Yes she does. Heh.

And sometimes, disturbingly, like Michael Cera.

This is the last day of my job I’ve had for 3+ years. It was a hard run. For the first part I was in court and then for the second half I was really ill, and then finally part time this summer. I sort of feel like I was docked in a little hospital for the time I’d been with the company, since it was not fast-paced or really challenging like I am used to in the tech world. It’s not a slam–it was just very different culturally than other corporate environments I’d been in. I thought it would be a nice contrast to my free time, which involved being locked into a custody battle.

I think about how the last few years have gone–starting with the IUD (some people think hormonal birth control depletes magnesium and other vitamins. This is interesting to me because I had signs of mag deficiency back to 2008 when I had it inserted.), to barely recovering after having it removed to being launched into court and then getting sicker and sicker. On Monday I am moving onto a role that is very different than what I’ve been doing (drawing on my old writing/marketing background) and I am very excited for a new challenge!

F is for fourteen

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Franny’s been ill this week.

She said she could sort of taste her cake, and she suspected it tasted good.

At her request I made her a red Thai curry. It turned out really well in spite of the fact I completely forgot to buy limes. I put a splash of rice vinegar in at the end and that was sufficient.

She’s been an interesting kid lately. I realized I have past advice from Tadpoledrain, Helen, and Miss Piggy mentioning magnesium, and lo, I was super scary rock-bottom low prices on it in a recent blood test. We all started taking it and it’s evened her out a lot–much less on the aches and pains front. Strudel is sleeping better. I am feeling better as well. I am holding my breath here but my tinnitus of twenty years now (!) has been on break since I started taking it. I did not know my porch light buzzes.

Point being, Franny is doing a lot of art right now. She hit this kind of blah wall last winter where she wasn’t even sketching like she always used to do, incessantly. She came back with this from her dad’s house on Monday:

“Okay, I copied this from a book, but I didn’t trace it,” she said.

“I can tell it’s not traced,” I said.

“ARTY KID ARTY KID ARTY KIIIID,” my sister sang.

I don’t think she would have had that kind of concentration a few months ago to even start something like this. She’s gobbling up books, her algebra class is “easy and fun” and she’s cranking out at least a drawing a day. Between the diet and the vitamins SOMETHING IS WORKING so I am not going to stop.

She also made lipstick out of crayon nubbles and coconut oil on one of her sick days.

“I saw this on YouTube.”

It’s been a good week.

When I first saw my endocrinologist, she said, “We’re getting into the land of the expensive tests.”

“The cheap tests aren’t showing anything,” I said.

Yesterday I thanked her for doing the expensive tests.

“Mmm we’ll see if you still feel that way when you see your bill,” she said.

“How quickly would I die If I jumped from the top of the parachutes?”

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A quick note to say I have a page up now with movies and recipes for my mini-noir fest. I will expand on it this week until it’s done, but this week’s is up. I will link this in my sidebar for easy access as well.

It was, I have to say, a pretty good weekend for me. I managed to get downtown and go spelunking through old copies of Gourmet as planned, as well as pick up an old cookbook (Mrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book, 1898), which includes regional American food such as Hawaiian, Creole, and Mexican. There is a recipe for alligator pear! I had to look that one up (avocado). I also got some new cookbooks, such as Simply Gluten Free Desserts, which looks like one of the best ones I have found, and is a relief with all the October birthdays coming up. It’s kind of like a Moosewood dessert book in its scope and range.

A bit of a mixed bag for the girls, since they are having ongoing digestive problems and Franny is having weird muscle spasms. I am encouraging them to stick with their diet while I am trying to get to the bottom of what is setting them off.

I got a call from Franny’s doctor this morning, who said her “thyroid looked good” with no real explanation of what that meant and I didn’t bother. She tested negative for “everything” so that is that with that doctor I suppose. I don’t believe I can work with her to get to the bottom of this. I feel like I am in reverse Back to the Future where I am playing my guitar at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance but instead of me and my siblings disappearing, I see years of misery in a futuristic photo of my children stuck in my guitar neck! I HAVE TO HURRY. TORTURED METAPHOR. Ummm…line please! Hello?


Day 38: the humans still won’t let me in.

I took Franny to a homecoming football game so she could watch her BFF who goes to a “normal” high school cheer. Afterwards we were to bring her home so she could spend the night. Franny and Strudel spent a lot of time going up and down the stands and I sat with my tablet, reading in the visitor’s section since the home section was packed. The visiting team was from one of the islands and was very, very white. Every cheerleader was wearing a Northface jacket, I kid you not.

On the way home the BFF lamented the fact that all of their middle school cohorts no longer seem to talk or hang out. I feel kind of bad because she is a lovely, funny girl and she is quite lonely right now as the only freshman on the cheer squad. Most of her time is spent cheering so she doesn’t have much of a social life. I know things will change for her, but I remember the suckiness of being new. Franny already has a handful of friends at her new school, which is completely unsurprising.

I fed them fancy brunch the next morning with sweet potato fries, bacon, a scramble, fruit, and various pickles and hot sauces. I seem to have attracted some stray cats in the form of some neighborhood foster kids who tell Strudel they sometimes get cut out of meals at home, and one of them who was over was VERY eager to join our brunch. They are quite skinny. I know that’s not always an indicator that one is underfed, but the way they hoover up all my snacks I tend to believe it. Underfed foster children! :((( There is so much banal heartbreak in this world. I want to adopt all the strays.

The girls went off to a neighborhood fair with rides on Sunday so I am assured that they have caught up and rebonded. I was afraid Franny would lose touch with her busy BFF but they still seem tight. “My mom says she will work to make sure we see each other,” I overheard Franny say. Hee.

It’s fun to see exactly how embarrassing I am when Franny has friends over. I was in the middle of writing and said something about “fashioning a cover” for my oil rain lamp since I don’t turn it on in the summer. Was that a smurfy thing to say? Yes, it was. It just slipped out.

“Fashioning! Oh MOTHER you talk so funny!” Franny said. To be fair she says this even when friends aren’t over. But I do feel her distancing herself from me when we have guests. I think it’s normal.

She Ain’t Heavy she my Strudel

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I’m lying in bed, not an uncommon occurrence nowadays, though I am cutting myself some slack since it’s early on a Saturday morning. I got up to feed and water the chickens since they were up and making their cranky “WE ARE AWAKE ATTEND TO US RESISTANCE IS FUTILE” noises.

As an aside, it’s been fun being home “with” them. They get so excited the second I appear in the backyard, since I often have treats or scraps for them. I hear their noises change throughout the day and sometimes I call to them and they call back. Or they yell at birds or squirrels. Sometimes I see them seeing me through the window, while I’m working. I am reminded of the first summer I had chickens, before library school started, and I could just kind of hang out with tiny Franny and my teenaged sister and watch them and experiment on them all day long.

I guess I was lying here thinking about how the summer went. We had a big meal last night that seemed very sad and Farewell to Summer since it is both the last holiday weekend and supposed to be cloudy all weekend. We ate tomato salad and ribs and watermelon, and some pretty unsuccessful potato salad with eggplant that I would not recommend at all. The eggplant went right to mush.

Strudel’s been off wheat for the whole summer, with occasional “oops” moments here and there. I think it took her backsliding a few times to realize the immediate results. I packed her lunch for camp all summer, which was challenging, since camp was a “nut free zone.” If you aren’t eating wheat and you can’t bring nuts or do nut butter, and you’re packing a lunch for all day, including two snacks, you’re looking at trying to transport and store some cold things, like cheese, meats, salad, and the little jars of milk kefir I have been making.

I tried sending her with gluten-free, nut-free bars, but of course they came with the CYA labeling business of “may have at one time been driven by a facility that was thinking about processing nuts” and were sent home again. I tracked down one brand (which I will not bother linking since adherents will know it and no one else cares) that made bars in a “DEDICATED NUT FREE FACILITY!” The upside was that the ingredients weren’t awful, kind of like nutless Larabars, but they had names like “chocolate brownie” that made them sound very treat-y.

This year there was a counselor who had a large and firmly lodged stick up his ass, and the skinny was that the kids pretty much hated him, but it was becoming increasingly obvious over the summer that he had a real boner for messing with Strudel. He saw these bars (I actually sent the box in with them so they would have the full NUT FREE literature to peruse) and somehow deemed them unacceptable for a snack. The idea was that a bar and a piece of fruit could be her afternoon snack, since by then the cold things in her bag would need to be eaten earlier due to the fact that her ice packs only remained frozen through noon or so.

He told her she had to eat the bar with lunch as “dessert,” but I knew other kids had granola bars for snacks and things that looked healthier, but I am sure had just as much sugar. Most of the counselors were aware that most kids brought lunch but there were a couple of allergic kids who had to pack in morning snack, lunch, and afternoon snack for themselves, since they couldn’t eat things the camp would pass out, like Goldfish crackers.

I sat down and wrote a letter to the director that night, which I felt was necessary but incredibly lame. I always have these conflicting twinges of “HOORAY I AM MY CHILD’S ADVOCATE” mixed with the shame of “ugh I am helicoptering.” I think I get these feelings because I was raised on the “Go play in the street, kid” side of things.

I got jumped on the bus when I was in second grade by three older boys. Black eye, clumps of hair falling out from being pulled out, generally terrified. I got off the bus crying and my mother picked me up.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I got beat up on the bus by some boys.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

FIN.

WHAT THE FUCK. I got in trouble later for biting one of them in self defense. Since my mother didn’t call the school or get involved, and his parents had, it was assumed that I was the perpetrator. He and I made friends later in high school in government class, when I was a junior and he was a senior. We sat in the back together. I was stoned every day because A. it was right after lunch and B. it was HELLA BORING. He used to make fun of me for being a stoner and then…he discovered pot himself.

“I get it now, I’m sorry,” he said. He showed me the faint scar on his forearm that still bore the impression of my dental record at eight years old.

SHIT WHERE WAS I? Okay, so I drafted this sad letter to the camp director, about how Strudel cannot eat wheat, and the challenge of packing one full meal and two light ones without bread products or nuts. I said I respected the nut rule, and I hoped her limitations could be accommodated, including letting her eat a snack bar as a snack and not “dessert.” It was granted. It was all very silly, but whatever it takes to make this work right now.

Friday was swimming day at camp, and on her last Friday she was going to be a late arrival so she asked me if she could just wear her swimsuit under her clothes at camp. I came into her room to ask her something, and was struck by how tall and lean she looked. Then I realized: for the first time ever, she didn’t have a rock-hard, distended belly. I had found myself wondering when she was going to grow out of her belly, since it seemed like that little kid pot belly was sticking with her much later than Franny’s had. I remember my mother prodding mine at Strudel’s age and saying things like, “Wow, you’re getting really chunky!”

A couple of times during the last school year Strudel had even asked me if I thought she was fat (what is that sound? Oh, it’s my heart breaking a little). There were vague references to this stemming from conversations with girls at school who thought they were fat, and it made Strudel think about her own body. We had talks about how athletic she is and how eating and having some fat is critical for your body and brain. We got to the bottom of it, and she was becoming self conscious about her belly. I pointed out that it was firm. I showed her my stomach, and had her poke through my squishy places, down to the muscle underneath. “Here, feel this. This is what fat feels like. You’re not like this. And even if you had some fat like me, it’s really not the end of the world AT ALL. Big deal. Your body works GREAT, right?”

Well, this was true overall, but it seems like her body was not working quite as well as it could. Stomachaches were normal, and daily, just like my childhood. I didn’t know she was having diarrhea regularly, and thought that was normal. And she was a VERY rough customer. She was crabby a lot of the time. I have posted videos of her having ten or twenty minute tantrums years ago. She has turned over furniture–lamps, tables, dressers. Trying to do something simple, like get her into the shower, or put her clean clothes away, would turn into a five minute shouting match (a one-sided match, though, really). I learned to get her motivated faster by being kind of a wall and never letting her bait me. She had her sweet moments and her great moments, but she was a very testy person, and a screamy baby.

It’s like a switch flipped this summer. We’ve tried the wheat-free thing before, most notably a couple of years ago, but I knew she was cheating A LOT, so her stomachaches were lessened, but there was no significant change. Now she is being very diligent about her consumption on her own, because she can see the difference. She is a delight to be around, and unless she is overtired, is in a great mood. She had a breakdown last night over something that happened while we were playing Killer Bunnies, and I realized it was after nine and she was getting non-functional.

“Okay, bedtime,” I said. I braced myself for an explosion and for the air to turn blue but it didn’t come.

“FINE,” she said, and semi-stomped to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Then she went to bed. It was like magic compared to the past, as recently as springtime.

After she dressed for her last day of camp (camp was going on for two more weeks after that, but I was keeping her home with me and her sister through the start of school) I brought her in and said I’d see her at the end of the day. I picked her up and I could see from her eyes that something had gone down and it turns out it was with the counselor who had the stick up his ass.

“You won’t believe this! I was talking to [Favorite Counselor] and I found out she can’t eat wheat either! And [Counselor Asshat] heard us talking and he said ‘Oh, you’re weird like Strudel’ to her. And then…the director walked by and heard him and FIRED HIM!”

I am so glad she got to witness that.

Now I am going to embarrass P. and say that he forgot what time our anniversary dinner was on Sunday, which he had planned. We were going to have a multi-course Medieval meal at a place an hour away. By the time he looked at our tickets we realized we would be late for our seating and would miss a lot of it.

I had to ask him the awkward question, since he’s forgotten about our last few plans/date nights/family dinners together unless I really keep on top of him. We sat in the bathroom, dressed up, and talking about what to do and what had happened. It wasn’t a fight, but I think we wanted to parley quietly, out of earshot of the children. Should we drive anyway and be very late? Should we go somewhere else? Should we bag it and stay home? That sounded depressing.

“Uhh. So. It seems like you enjoy spending time with me at home and like seeing me. But maybe do not want to go out with me places?”

He told me he honestly could not remember, and that was about as deep as it went. He wasn’t trying to send me a message or anything.

I was sad and I said so but I regrouped and made quick reservations at one of my favorite places that is known for being local, organic, seasonal, and very difficult-diet friendly. I had gotten results from some blood tests a few days before that indicated it is likely I am Celiac (yes, I have buried this boring lede. I am still thinking about whether or not to pursue an endoscopy. Probably should to assess the damage, and I am still going to an endocrinologist next month.). I thought this restaurant would be better for me, though would probably contain 100% fewer lute players and people shouting “huzzah!” alas.

I told P. that it seemed like his memory was getting worse. He agreed wholeheartedly that it has been, and he was having trouble at times even tracking conversations due to brain fog, which sounded a lot like me.

“Do you want to maybe try doing what I’m doing and take a break from wheat?”

I told him about the great mental clarity I’d had in May when I did a Whole30. He agreed it was pretty harmless to try it, and went off wheat that night.

Well. I was shocked how much it affected him, since he seems to tolerate wheat well. He had a fever, sweating, gastrointestinal distress, and by Wednesday–a sharper brain and better recall than he’s had in months or years. He’s been eating very well, veggies, meats, salads, nuts, so he is not plugging his empty gluten hole with junk. He woke up this morning and told me he remembered a dream (very rare for him) and it was something about forgetting to write an item we were out of on our chalkboard list.

“It was paper towels,” I said.

“Yes! We ran out of paper towels.”

“You remembered that you forgot something. That is huge,” I said.

“Before I wouldn’t have remembered that I forgot something.”

We are like 90-year-old dementia patients coming out of a haze. A whole house of freaks. FUCK!

Oxtail Enchiladas for no reason really

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I know you woke up this morning and were like, “SJ, I have too many hours in the day. I need a dinner that takes at least 4+ of them.” And I’m like, “Yo doggy, I am here for you.”

Sometimes I like to make little cooking challenges for myself, and Saturday’s was, you know what, I have never had enchiladas with oxtails. Let’s makes this happen. I got inspired at the store because I saw one of my favorite things in the world, Hatch chilies. My only bummer is that I feel like oxtails are more expensive in the past couple of years. NUTS. I’m writing this down because I’m sure I will not remember what I did by, like, Tuesday.

So here is what I did, without a million pictures, because I am not Pioneer Woman and I trust you have not been sucking on a tailpipe. However I do like to roll like Chris KimBOLL so let me tell you a wacky story. Oxtail soup is one of the first things I made in my Victorian year. The recipe was so greasy and awful that to this day majorly shitting yourself in this house is called “making oxtails.” Bon apetit and wacky Vermont local color in the hizzle.

OXTAIL ENCHILADAS

Ingredients:
3 lbs oxtails
2 yellow onions
4 oregano sprigs
6 Hatch chilis
2 bell peppers, anything but green
28 oz. can ground peeled tomatoes
garlic paste or 6 garlic cloves, chopped
ground cumin
paprika
8 oz. feta or queso fresco, crumbled or shredded
bunch of cilantro
10 corn tortillas (6-inch size)
olive oil, salt and pepper

1. Set oven to 500. Place oxtails upright in a heavy pan with a lid (like a dutch oven), if possible, or something that foil can be wrapped over tightly. Set oxtails in pan–it helps to have a pan that the oxtails fit in pretty well, since you’re about to make a meat/veg parfait, and you’re going to want to separate part of it later. Slice one onion and scatter over oxtails, then sprinkle half the chopped garlic or about a tablespoon of garlic paste over the onions. Set oregano over the top of the mixture. Pour pureed tomatoes over the top. Even if there is a lid, I recommend a tight foil layer to keep in moisture. Cover and place in oven and immediately turn down to 325. Cook for 3.5 hours.

2. When oxtails come out, let it cool without a lid for a few minutes. Steam is not your friend. Pick off oregano stems and using a slotted spoon, scoop out as much tomato and onion as possible into a bowl or blender (avoid oxtail grease at the bottom if possible, but don’t go crazy). Use tongs to pull oxtails out onto a plate, spread out to cool slightly.

3. In the meantime, set oven to broil and halve 4 Hatch peppers and quarter one bell pepper. Toss them in olive oil on a cookie sheet, and place them skin side up. Broil for 5-6 minutes 4″ from heat or until they are pleasingly charred. When they are finished, drop them in with the tomato mixture that was spooned off the oxtails. Set the oven to 375. Add about 1/2 c water, 1-2 tsp salt, and some black pepper to this pepper, onion, and tomato mixture and then blend into a sauce (I like an immersion blender for this, but a regular blender or small food processor would be fine). You should have between 2-3 cups of sauce. It should be fairly thick. Eyeball it, don’t panic.


Fire roasted!

4. Wrap the tortillas up in a sheet of foil and put in the oven for about 5-10 minutes. The goal is to make them a bit more flexible.

5. The oxtails should now be cool enough to handle. Separate the meat from the fat and bone to the best of your ability. If you have never worked with oxtails, you should know they are slimy, treacherous, delicious bitches. Shred up larger chunks of tail meat.

6. Chop remaining onion, Hatch chilies, and bell pepper. Saute onions in olive oil on medium heat for about 5 minutes, until they get semi-translucent. Then add peppers and the rest of the garlic (three cloves, chopped, or another T garlic paste). Saute for another 3 minutes or so. Toss in oxtail meat, 2 tsp cumin, and 1 T paprika, and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Turn off heat and mix in half of the cheese. Salt and pepper this mixture to taste.

7. Spread about 1/2 c. sauce in the bottom of a 5.5 qt rectangular dish. (This is like the baby cousin of the 13 x 9 casserole. If you don’t have this size, you can go larger and leave some room or you might be able to squinch this into a 9 x 9, the world will not end.) Load this filling into the shells, fold up, and place in pan seam side down. I ended up with 2 rows of five. Cover with the rest of the sauce.

8. Cover the pan tightly with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top, and bake for 10 more minutes to brown the top slightly and crisp up the exposed edges of the shells (so good). Let set up for 5 minutes and then serve with Uncle Tapa, cilantro, and sour cream if desired.