bring a torch

I had no idea there were that many types of blocks.

2011-08-08T22:17:00.003-04:00

Updating just for a moment to say that I did get through the summer program, and it was an adventure. We finished on a Friday. By the end of Monday, I had zapped my resume to every elementary school principal in the county. And by the end of Tuesday, I had an offer.

I'm teaching pre-K which starts later than the rest of the grades. This reflects severe state budget cuts but to me it is a huge help, because my LORD, people, my classroom is a mess. There is so much stuff and so many surfaces and everything needs to be thoroughly attacked with antibacterial wipes. I do not know how they used to fit eighteen small people and two adult-size people in there, and am similarly perplexed as to how I am going to fit twenty-two small people and two adult-size people in there.

I will have an aide--the second adult-size person--but s/he hasn't been hired yet. I hope to heck I have some sort of curriculum to follow, too. (I do have a bunch of state standards, but as far as parceling them out over the year, in a way that gets them all taught? I have no idea.)

I am trying to figure out how to regularly blog again without getting myself into trouble. Another worry for another day.

The Fluxing Capacitor (with thanks to Mir and Ellen)

2011-06-02T10:03:00.012-04:00

I should begin by saying that Spouse's job sitch worked out exactly like Swistle predicted on my last entry, and not long after I wrote it, either. He is really a ton happier.

Things are fixin' to change in a big way for me, as well. Since August 2008, I have applied to lawyer or lawyer-appropriate jobs whenever I've learned of opportunities, and gone on a number of interviews, and even gone on a couple of second interviews. My outlook on life has depended on where I was in the waiting game at any given moment. Recently, after one more turn on the hamster wheel that didn't work out, I decided I was done.

That same week, I'd found out about a new alternative teacher certification program. I'd looked into teaching before, but this was a new thing, only recruiting for high-need subjects in high-need schools. So I went to the info night, and found out that I could take tests and qualify to teach special ed. A field in which the law degree, that $160,000 albatross, would actually come in handy. That just blew my mind.

So I wrote my application essays, sent them off, and was invited to interview for the program. Prior to the interview, as requested, I signed up to take three state certification tests. The interview day went really well--my five-minute lesson was definitely one of the better ones in my small group, and I was absolutely sure I would get into the program. So positive, in fact, that I went inactive with the state bar, which is easily reversible, and really not that big a deal procedure-wise, but my Lord, did it hurt. (I was only mostly done.)

Fast forward to the night before the first test: I got an email saying I was wait-listed. OUCH. I dwelled about this for weeks. I felt like I had been rejected yet again, and like I was being punished for something. Really, though, it meant that I got some sleep, instead of staying up all night trying to teach myself electromagnetism via Wikipedia. (Capacitance is a real thing; flux is a real thing; flux capacitors remain theoretical, but I couldn't tell you why.) I would have kept going, because I'm just that goofy, but once I had that news, I felt ok to eat pizza with Spouse and go to bed.

Eventually I got word that I passed that test, and not long after, that I had gotten into the program. Then I passed another test. Then I did a school visit and was blown away by how skilled the teachers were, how deftly they handled everything the kids threw at them. I've had homework to do, too--a big guidebook to read, a bunch of essays to write about my school visit.

I've been procrastinating, in part because that's what I do, and in part because of ambivalence. This is going to be hard. (On the other hand, it cannot possibly be as hard as the bar exam. Or law school. Or the aforementioned hamster dance.) Historically, I used to bolt when things get hard. (On the other hand: since then, I have become tenacious as all hell.) I still have to actually get a teaching job, which will involve more interviews (but there will be help with that; I won't be completely on my own and isolated like I have been with the law stuff). Communication from the program has not been as instantaneous or as detailed as I would like. (But I can be a tad obsessive: see, for example, having pecked at this all day.)

Summer training starts tomorrow, and until yesterday I'd been feeling disconnected and put-upon and meh about it. I got a very lucky break yesterday, when I read Mir's entry about whether or not public school is right for her son, who has Aspberger's. She was indirectly advised, by a very well-known person on the spectrum, to pull him out ASAP. Strangely, even with teaching stuff all over my desk, I didn't make the connection until I read this comment. A teacher named Ellen wrote,

At my school, we are getting ready to say goodbye to a girl who came in 6th grade totally lost. I am not saying we’d do a great job with Monkey, but [...] It is possible to have success in a public, diverse middle school.

And the light bulb went off: Hey! That's where I'm gonna be this summer!

And: Holy crap! I could do a great job with Monkey! (Eventually, I mean.)

And then I felt a LOT more invested and connected and hopeful.

I have this pernicious tendency to over-believe the negative. I told myself during this whole process that I would end up feeling really silly about all the turmoil re the waiting list if it all worked out in the end. And, well, I've got to got figure out what to wear tomorrow, because it did work out. So my goal for this summer is to focus on the positive, regardless of whatever crap hits the fan. I have no idea where I'm going, only that I'm going somewhere else, and that is HUGE.

Dreamin' is free

2010-11-11T18:18:00.004-05:00

My husband, who has been keeping us afloat financially for the 3 years we've been married, lost his job early last week. He's only told a couple of friends. He hasn't said anything about it on Facebook and asked that I wait to mention it until he does. My mom and a couple other people I haven't been able to avoid know, but otherwise I've been keeping radio silence. It's been just over a week now. Hence me typing in this box.

We'd both been eagerly contemplating both of us having Real Jobs. He had been talking a lot about how great it was that we had built up our savings again. In fact, he'd been talking about it so much that it was making me nervous. For my part, I'd been spending hours writing in this box about how part of me still badly wanted to have kids but another part, a surprisingly loud, anxious part, did not want to go back to worrying about money so soon. I didn't post any of this for fear of sounding materialistic, or like I wasn't sincere about having a baby.

He'd left that morning at about 8:45, and I'd stayed in bed and conked out again immediately. Then I heard him come back in and I thought he had forgotten his inhaler or something, not realizing I'd been asleep for half an hour. So I murmured something like "What happened?" into my pillow and wasn't even looking at him when he told me. My loyal, supportive, loving response was "Are you fucking kidding me?!"

I've been on an emo roller coaster ever since. He said he almost replied "thank you" when they told him, because he had been abso-freaking-miserable there. I knew he wasn't happy--a week or two earlier, he'd politely but firmly told me I wasn't allowed to ask him about work--but I had no idea how miserable it was making him. So in the first minute or so, I was happy, even excited. I didn't cry until I remembered all the prescription bottles in our bathroom. But at the end of the day I felt all right. I went to meditation that night and on the way home I left a message for my therapist saying that this was the worst possible thing that could happen, I'd thought, and it wasn't really all that bad.

My thoughts have changed slightly since then. We still don't know what COBRA might cost. I've been on it before, and it was exorbitant. I was excited about the 65% subsidy until I read that it was allowed to lapse by Congress. By Democrats in Congress. On one hand the premiums were still so high that relatively few families were taking advantage of the subsidy. On the other hand I feel like my team deserved to lose if it is that completely incompetent, and in a weird, circular way, that makes me feel less horrible about the elections.

Spouse was looking forward to taking a little break and was hoping we could get by on unemployment. Unfortunately we live in a lousy backwards Southern state. Even if he gets the maximum level of benefits, Spouse will receive less than half of what he'd been earning. I successfully represented clients in unemployment hearings in another state as a law student. This summer during my internship I did research for a couple of unemployment appeals. In other words, I am supposed to know something about unemployment. Yet I was blindsided by the fact that the benefits are capped in my state, and at a ridiculously low sum. Of course it's better than nothing. A lot better. It's not enough to live on for very long without exhausting our savings, but at least we have savings to exhaust.

I am STILL supposed to have an second interview at the place that hosted me this summer. I got that confirmed today and am waiting to hear about scheduling. This is a good thing. When you've gotten used to having zero prospects, you can get a ton of mileage out of having one.

I am studiously avoiding Christmas and will be doing well if I can get our Thanksgiving scheduled without crying. That would be a new thing for me. Three houses to hit + plans coming together at the last minute + one of the houses being 45 minutes away + baking for Dad's birthday + stuffing, at minimum, for Mom's house + Mom's having surgery the week before + Spouse's delicate tummy + my various neuroses = an overly complicated Turkey Day situation.

Spouse has just suggested we host something HERE, since we both have some time on our hands, and I just told him he might as well go to a certain part of town that has a number of pawn shops and buy himself a shotgun. Because Oh MY GOD.

Waiting

2010-10-11T14:23:00.002-04:00

My internship has ended. There is a job opening there and I am anxiously waiting to hear when my second interview will be. This would be life-changing on a million levels.

My worry meter is running hot, and I feel pretty lost during the day. I need to get on a regular schedule and leave the house a lot more often. There is a litany of tasks I could be doing now that I won't have time to do later. Spouse is home sick today, which always throws me off, and I'm not sure why.

Once I pick up my reserves that have come in from around the state, I will have something like 30 library books on my living room floor. I've blazed through all the fluffy stuff (lots of celebrity memoirs, see Twitter for reviews!) and am now trying to avoid the more imposing tomes. There needs to be a word for the type of procrastination that involves putting off things you actually want to do. I wish I could figure out why I do this!

Quick change

2010-06-20T15:13:00.002-04:00

I have an internship, at my dream employer in the small city where I live. I got it because a busy professional, who was volunteering anyway, took extra steps to make it happen. Must write her a thank-you note. I start tomorrow morning. I'll be wearing a suit. And a teeny weeny bit of makeup. And possibly, some adorable gold ballet flats. While it's just a summer job, I'm trying really hard to focus on the next ten weeks and not on what happens after that.

Off to put the kitchen back together and to deal with an untenable laundry situation.

Heavy on the prepositional phrases

2010-05-18T22:42:00.003-04:00

Our financial situation has improved since I started my little job, and having rebuilt our savings, we recently invested in a Hugh Mungous flatscreen TV. Spouse had been looking for months, nay, years--whenever we were in a store that sold flatscreens, even if we'd gone in for potato chips, he'd end up in the electronics section--and found a good deal online. So we got the thing, and it now sits on the dresser in our bedroom. I stayed home to meet the delivery man, and when it got here I called Spouse and gaily announced, "It's a boy!"

I should explain that when we moved into the townhouse we rent, we had no kitchen table. We also had no couch. We did have a hodgepodge of other furnishings our parents didn't want anymore, including the aforementioned dresser. Also, before we ever slept in the new place, we went to Sam's and got a king-size mattress and box spring, and I was oddly comforted when I read on the labeling that it had been manufactured right here in our fair city. We also got an extremely basic bed frame. Since there was nothing else to sit on other than a lawn chair, we'd sit on said bed to eat dinner and watch TV or a movie, on the laptop, on the dresser.

I should also explain that Spouse has to be watching something when he eats a meal. When he was a kid, TV during family dinners was an ordinary, regular experience. (My mom is a retired reading teacher, and when we were little kids, TV was as poisonous as sugar and Liquid Plumr.) Granted, if I'm alone and eating anything that takes more than a minute to chew, I've gotta be reading something, or listening to the radio, or I feel ridiculous. But when I have company during a meal, I would just as soon have a conversation as watch MythBusters.

The embarrassing fact I'm getting at is: despite having eventually acquired both a dining room table and a comfy couch, we still eat dinner in our bed, which is why the TV is perched on our bedroom dresser, where the mirror should be, and not on the living room wall, opposite said couch. This is mostly my fault, not just because I failed to put my marital foot down, but because the table is perpetually covered in my junk. Hell, pretty much the entire dining quadrant of the living room is covered in my junk, including, Spouse informed me the other day, something like thirteen pairs of shoes. That area is my landing pad when I get home. It's where the mail gets tossed, and where the receipts and candy wrappers go when I clean out my purse, and where I sit if I'm looking through cookbooks or filling out bills. It's hot out now but there are still coats and jackets on the dining chairs. (Have I mentioned how rarely we have people over, and how if anything breaks or needs maintenance, such that the landlord has to visit, panic ensues?)

Eventually this will have to change, because eventually (I hope) we will have offspring, who will probably be even messier eaters than we are. But for now, we eat dinner in bed, and late at night when whatever we've watched on Netflix ends and the giant screen glows red, I think, "Who needs a fireplace?" And if I get sleepy before the show's over and take off my glasses, if I hear something interesting, I can look up and see it just fine.

Disaster brownies

2010-05-18T11:30:00.005-04:00

I think if I wait until I have Something Important or Something Upbeat to say, I will continue to not blog very often.

So instead I will talk about the cookbook I recently threw out.

Many years ago I got my mom a cookbook with a charming title about how sugar-filled and butter-packed its contents were. And recently it came back to me when Mom was cleaning out her cookbooks and gave me an overflowing bag of them. Many were utter doozies (fundraising collections, heavy on mayonnaise-based cuisine), but this one was funny to read and the baked goods sounded delish.

So one evening last week I tried to make Congo Bars, basically a chocolate chip blondie, and they were a total disaster. There was a center portion that looked and tasted all right but it was surrounded by a moat of scary-looking goo that had to be chiseled out of the pan. You could see that the batter had bubbled to the very top of the pan and could easily have spilled over. My oven rack had not been centered, and I figured they must have gotten too hot.

Not twelve hours later, with the rack properly adjusted, I opened the oven to find...exactly the same thing. I was chagrined. I asked Mom if she remembered the cookbook, and she said, "Um, I think there might have been a reason it was in the giveaway pile." As in, she probably hadn't had any luck either. So I dumped the cookbook in the kitchen trash, along with most of the contents of the brownie pan.

Last night I got some Good Chocolate bars so I can make World Peace Cookies if I wanna.

My yoga teacher and probably closest friend here is moving away, and I need to find something to do exercise-wise or my new clothes aren't going to fit. I suppose I could just walk around my neighborhood but depending on the time of day, I have to beware blistering sunlight or swarms of insects. It's hard to get a good pace going to NPR. I don't have an iPod, so I wear one of those headphone radio contraptions, and as ridiculous as that probably looks, I'd feel even sillier lugging around a Discman. I might as well strap an Atari console to my back.

What is really bothering me: A couple weeks ago I had an appointment to meet with an attorney, mostly to get advice about what to do for my pro bono client. This attorney works with my therapist, who had mentioned me to her and recommended that we meet.

It was less than helpful. Mostly, she just did not have time to meet with me. She took a phone call right after we sat down, and then we spoke a bit, and then suddenly she urgently had to take her paralegals out to lunch. I'm sure she didn't mean to be dismissive or discouraging. Honestly, it's the same problem I bump into over and over again: Almost nobody, particularly practicing lawyers, can get their brain around an unemployed lawyer. People just cannot believe it. My existence messes with their heads. This is precisely why I don't go to local bar meetings. I have not found a way to describe my situation--faraway law school, extended struggle with bar exam, finally licensed, can't find job--in a way that makes people understand it and react with any sort of warmth or empathy. People react with utter incredulity and I have no idea how to respond.

If anything, meeting this lady--who just happens to look like a dang supermodel--made me feel even more awkward and incompetent, and even less equipped to deal. I'd spent the previous week applying for an internship in public-interest law, for law students and licensed attorneys, and had written all these essays about my much-vaunted experience, and how I'd gone to law school to Help People, and was finally feeling sorta motivated again...and now I'm back to wondering why I bothered applying, because I haven't heard anything yet and I'm not sure they're even going to consider me.

My part-time job, at the Day Spa for Overly Entitled Women and Occasionally Their Spouses, is...probably best not discussed here. Sigh.

Channing who?

2010-04-26T09:32:00.004-04:00

So...did anyone else assume Channing Tatum was a girl?

Let me back up a bit. I used to be somewhat up on my celebrity news, at least what I could read in a daily paper. However, the daily paper in the town where I live is full of typos and its editorial slant ranges from slightly rightward to full-on nutjob. Between the cost and what it would do to my blood pressure, I have never subscribed. I was getting Radar magazine for a while, and then when it folded I received a few issues of The Star, which was a hoot. But other than that, my celebrity news is decidedly limited to what I can skim at the hair salon or doctor's office, or what I happen upon online. I continue to enjoy Go Fug Yourself, but honestly, I don't know who half the people being skewered are anymore.

And somewhere along the way I picked up the name Channing Tatum, and I just assumed that it was some new music video or TV starlet with implants, a made-up name, and a somewhat quaint affection for pop culture. Carol Channing's a girl, Stockard Channing's a girl, Tatum O'Neal's a girl, ergo Channing Tatum must be female. So when I read this from the Fug Girls last night, I felt rather sheepish.

I should say that I do not know how to dress myself at all. If I am ever complimented on anything I'm wearing, inevitably my mom or grandmother found it for me. I wore my "good" pants Easter Sunday and they declared that a Shopping Day was overdue, because said pants were falling off. So we went last weekend, and it was an adventure. Everything I tried on felt too tight, and they had to reassure me that I did not look like a sausage and just needed to get used to clothes that actually fit.

I was hopeful that shopping would be different, having lost 36 pounds in the last, I dunno, year or so. But I am still decidedly 3X up top, and down below, my underbelly is so outsized compared to the rest that it was still a pain to find pants. At least we stayed at one department store and avoided both Catherine's and Lane Bryant. In that respect, it was a lot better.

Oh, and I'm SHORT! At 5'6", I might add! In grade school I was one of the tall girls and now I'm "petite." Plus-size petite. Jesus. It almost makes me want to try wearing heels, except I know better. Short and fat beats short, fat, and in a cast any day of the week.

twit twit oh twitter twit

2010-04-12T18:10:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to mention that I've started tweeting. Well, actually, I haven't tweeted yet, but I did start an account, mostly so I could keep up with friends and bloggers who have protected accounts. If I'm not following you yet, let me know your moniker on Twitter!

Yawning in Technicolor (GROSS ALERT)

2010-03-22T20:06:00.006-04:00

So...not last Saturday night, but the one before that, I got very, very sick. I went in the bathroom and came out several hours later, and then tried to sleep, but like clockwork, every freaking twenty to thirty minutes, my stomach would hurt and I'd have to go again.

Early the following afternoon, after I'd finally gotten a little sleep, my belly still hurt but I was pretty sure I was all done, on the grounds that there couldn't possibly be anything left to eject. So I tried to take my pills. On an ordinary day I take seven pills of various sizes, for various ailments, and I nearly always do them all in one gulp, no biggie. But not that day. No, that day will go down in history in our household as The Day I Barfed All Over Everything.

Immediately, the pills came up, along with great quantities of puke. My bedside trash receptacle was right there, only about half full and lined with a bag besides, but I thought I could make the three steps to the bathroom sink. I made it about half a step, and the unthinkable happened.

Casualties included my lampshade, my husband's ancient copy of Ender's Game, my History of God book, the gardening journal I spent months on, and various ointments and beauty treatments from the top of my nightstand. I am in the process of washing most of the clothing I own, because my clean laundry piles were in the splashdown range. Luckily I had finished LOTR, and actually put it away, and for once I didn't have any library books out, or I'd have had a grim phone call to make. If nothing else, I am unlikely to pile that much junk at my bedside ever again. Spouse was just horrified--he got what he could, and stripped the bed, but puke makes him puke and he had to get out of the room. It wasn't until last Sunday, when I was picking crud out of my clock radio, that I realized just how awful a tableau it must have been.

Spouse took good care of me--he got me to the doctor, made numerous trips to the pharmacy, and called to check on me from work, and made me the few foods I could think about eating, like instant mashed potatoes.

I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I have never, ever, EVER been in that much pain. Granted, I don't have much to compare it to--I've never had a baby, and I've only ever had a couple of surgeries, and the last one was in junior high. I'm very lucky to not have to deal with anything hurty on a regular basis like so many folks do. But this was almost a spiritual experience. When things stopped hurting so acutely, I found myself in this weird state of bliss and gratitude. (I should point out that I was pretty out of it once the Phernagan kicked in.)

Another strange thing: I SAW the phone ringing. I mean, I heard it, too, but this was freaky. I'd be lying there trying to read Bloom County cartoons, and instantly everything on the page would be distorted, like the panels had been printed on a layer of glass that suddenly shattered. I'd have the visual disturbance, and then I'd realize the phone was ringing. It went away immediately, but I've never had anything like that happen before.

I worked this week, though, without any problem. A couple people pointed out that my face had cleared up. I don't know if it was the not eating for a couple days, or the sweating, or what. I have a number of friends who will periodically go on "cleanses," eschewing food for a dubious cocktail of lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and honey or agave nectar. They'll do this for more than a week, which seems insane to me, and yet I can't help but wonder if maybe it's not completely nuts. I do know that my portions veer too large--especially when we're eating fast food or take-out--and that Twizzlers and I need to have a serious talk. Or maybe I'm allergic to milk or something. I don't know.

Things are mostly back to normal, although the other receptionist at work has been out with her own stomach troubles, and I'd feel terrible if she got them from me. Also the brown felted cardigan sweater I wore several times a week during the winter is still lurking in the laundry pile, possibly tainted. It's too nice to throw in the machine, so I have been assiduously avoiding it.

Yeah, go ahead and think I'm smiling at you

2010-02-17T21:11:00.002-05:00

Spouse and I spend a lot of time watching movies, and currently we are viewing Alien and its spawn. We watch a lot of "action" films and thrillers, because that's largely what my husband owns. I am largely prejudiced against "action" films, being that I have "taste," and I am just too jumpy for thrillers. Frequently I interrupt movies at particularly gross or scary moments to proclaim, "If this gives me nightmares, I'm waking you up!"

But I really just came here to recount what we just saw over dinner, in Alien Cubed. (And yeah, as you may suspect, this series is pretty much Thumbs Down as far as dining viewing. Yaaack.) Sigourney Weaver, sporting a crew cut, bursts into a large room, where the Evil Warden of the all-male Prison Planet is hectoring the captives. Other than the last line, nothing is an actual movie quote.

Sigourney [panting]: Holy crap! The aliens are here! They're disgusting! We have to do something!

E.W.P.P.: Shut up! You are completely bonkers. You stupid woman. Ima gonna come over there an--

Alien [crawling onto E.W.P.P. from above]: Om nom nom.

Onlooking Prisoner: F--k!

People frequently react to my animated self-expression by dismissing me outright, telling me to calm down, saying that it's cute, or otherwise displaying condescension, and I suspect that's partly why I like this scene so much, but I'd probably like it anyway.

Short-form resolutions

2010-01-27T11:50:00.003-05:00

This will probably sound odd, but sometimes what keeps me from blogging is having too much to say. Stuff will happen that I'll want to write about and I'm not at a point yet where I just come to this space and type. Now granted, I observe LOADS of interesting content at work (boy howdy) but literally trying to blog about it right then would be impossible.

So instead I wait until I'm "ready" to blog, and...hardly ever blog. Phooey.

And then I read about people who actually write for a living, getting sponsored by X or Y corporation, inking development deals with TV networks, etc. etc. and get very angry at myself for not writing.

So. Here are my ten New Year's resolutions in abbreviated form. I had this all written up as a handwritten entry but it didn't have an ending (I always have trouble with that). Also I don't know that it would have been legible. And Spouse would have probably fussed at me for privacy reasons. Anyway, here is my shortened list, with comments where appropriate.

Thing One: Read the Lord of the Rings, all 3 books. I've had a very nice hardcover edition since, um, 2003, that Spouse (then-LDPP, Long Distance Partner Person) gave me for Christmas. This Christmas we watched the movies again (all three in long-form director's cut editions, which makes for something like a week of viewing), and I think we might make that an annual holiday thing.

Thing Two: Read A History of God by Karen Armstrong. This will be worth it. I need to either underline or highlight as I read, or take notes, because I keep having to start all over again.

Thing Three: Read some Richard Dawkins. We went to see him speak at a nearby university a few months ago, and it was a Huge Deal, both going out and doing something with Spouse, and driving the hour-plus to get there. The very first cell phone picture I ever took is of Spouse getting his book signed, and it trips me out every time I see it.

Thing Four: Get back to doing yoga regularly. I have the options of reasonably priced classes that take place upstairs at my workplace, or of playing a DVD at home, and have taken advantage of neither.

Thing Five: Get involved in UU church. If I can't make the services (Sundays, 11 a.m., less than 2 miles away), join one of the umpty-million committees. They even have a Committee Committee, I shit you not (although they call it the "Committee Council," which I think is a Committee Cop-Out.)

Thing Six: Learn how to roast a chicken. (We get rotisserie chickens rather often, and I want to see if I can do it better, or as well.)

Thing Seven: Do some pro bono legal work. (Oh the drama! This will be like pulling teeth but it HAS to be done if I ever want to get a job as a lawyer. Which is not a question I can answer quickly or without crying.)

Thing Eight: Blog more regularly. Consider Tweeting, if only so I can respond to the people I read.

Thing Nine: Learn to deal with money anxiety. (Translation: learn to deal with, and not procrastinate on, student loan paperwork. See parethenses after Thing Seven.)

Thing Ten: Learn how to speak honestly and not freak out about whether people will like me afterwards. Unless I am talking to Spouse, a close family member, or a friend I feel truly safe with (this rarely happens, and is not so much a commentary on my friends as on my hangups), I repress. A LOT. (Spouse would pipe up here and say, "And then you come home and bitch at me about it!" Which is true.)

See, there have been a few occasions lately where I have spoken up, or been assertive, or at least not been a marshmallow, and it seems to inevitably Bite Me in the Ass, Hard. And I'm not sure what message I'm supposed to learn from that. One might think it would be about Thinking Before I Speak, or even Shhhhh, but I so rarely say what I'm really feeling, outside a therapeutic context (and even inside one sometimes, I'm ashamed to admit), and my self-worth is so desperately low, and has been for years and years, that I cannot believe that the takeaway is STFU. That would be nuts. I think maybe the takeaway is, "People are going to flip out no matter how carefully you phrase your truth, so you might as well JUST SAY IT and develop some self-protective behaviors so you don't flip out when they do." Or something like that.

I can't fret about this ending, because FUDGE, I have to leave for work in 20 minutes, and today's a shampoo day. Aieeee.

And so I rise

2009-12-30T11:41:00.005-05:00

*begin angry rant*

Hey world! Guess what I had for breakfast? Toast, with actual carbs! And butter! Gorsh, I must be deeply unhappy with the world and my place in it. And the fact that the toast came from a loaf I actually baked? Aieeee, no wonder I'm morbidly obese! I have Issues with Flour! Somebody call somebody!

Please, Internet, tell me all the reasons I should hate myself and my body! Because I don't know how awful I look in clothes! Or how many years I'm taking off my life! Or all the Big Scary diseases I'm sure to develop! This is exactly the information I need to get motivated about Lifestyle Changes! I'm gonna go get one of those "30 Day Shred" DVDs RIGHT NOW, because you cared enough to tell me you don't want to sit next to me on an airplane! Thanks for caring about my "health," as you so euphemistically put it!

*shaking head* *end rant*

I should add that said toast was also garnished with honey, from a jar I received from my dearest friend, who was visiting from northern California and is a beekeeper in his spare time. The honey is incredibly complex in flavor; it's definitely sweet, but there are other notes in there as well. I'll have to work on describing it. It'd be great in savory applications, I bet.

This Christmas I actually got most of the baking done that I wanted to do, or at least all of the baking that was on deadline, for our families and a couple friends. Between last year (when I didn't do any baking, because I sliced a major finger open), and this year's Thanksgiving (when, at 2:00 in the morning, half of Dad's apple Bundt cake elected to stay in the pan), I guess some sort of vindication was in order.

*ahem* There were six kinds of cookies and two different breads. I made double batches of chewy chocolate chip, white chocolate-macadamia nut, and World Peace cookies. Most of the World Peace cookies (a.k.a. PMS Cookies, a.k.a. Chocolate Salty Balls) were eaten by me, since they came out looking like "cow pies," as one observer put it. Even if they were pretty I doubt many would have made it out of the house. (Issues!)

I made a pan of raspberry bars, mostly because with this recipe*, they are very satisfying to make: you take the shortbread dough and chill it in logs, and once they are good and cold, you shred the logs into the pan, using the big holes of a grater. So the dough ends up looking exactly like mozzarella cheese. Then you spoon out a jar of raspberry preserves, and then another layer of dough. Trying to even out brownie batter with a spatula makes me nuts, so I really love this approach. It's the kind of "Shred" I can actually accomplish. (Seriously, I'm done. Promise.)

I made a regular batch of oatmeal raisin with golden raisins, because my regular raisins were in brick form. And I finally busted out the pizzelle maker I got from Dad last year, which was actually kind of fun. Pizzelles are Italian cookies made on a device similar to a waffle iron. They actually taste a lot like waffle ice cream cones, and could conceiveably be rolled into cones themselves, but I haven't had the nerve to try that yet. My Italian grandmother was known for mailing out huge, insured packages of pizzelles and other goodies several times a year, and one summer when we were visiting I got to help her make them.

There were also 3 challah braids and two loaves of wheat bread. The wheat bread came out really well. I started it at 8 one evening so it didn't come out of the oven until (sensing a pattern here) 2:00 a.m., but the house smelled insanely good. ("Worth it!" she declared triumphantly, with BBC news on the radio and dough stuck in her hair.) I need to make bread more often, as Spouse loves the challah but all 3 were spoken for, and I really do like making it. My braids always look lumpy and frumpy at first but then they rise for another hour and even themselves out.

________________________________________
*Please note that mine do NOT come out perfectly distributed, like the ones pictured. Sheesh.

Why am I surprised that I already have a category for that?

2009-12-17T14:17:00.005-05:00

Wheeeee! What else can I do to procrastinate on Christmas Cheer? I know, I'll blog something!

I have printed out one million recipes and have to go through and make lists of what absolutely has to get made, what will have to wait for later, and what will be tossed altogether on account of being too fussy.

And blah blah blah, I know I will feel so much better if I Just Get Started. I hate this aspect of myself. This is what I always do when I feel overwhelmed by too many things on my list: wait until the last minute. Then it doesn't matter if the cookies (or the take-home exam, in a past life, or the student loan paperwork, or the house chores) aren't done absolutely perfectly--it simply matters that they get done.

Work continues to be dysfunctional, full of petty hurts and whispered conversations and other paper cuts, and yet: me working, just part-time, not for any major bucks, has rather transformed our marriage. It's kind of freaky, and it makes me cling to the job that much harder despite the psychodrama. But nowadays, when we both come home more nights than not exhausted and brain-dead, for some reason, we get along so much better--so much so that if it comes down to it and I find myself having to find some other not-law job, I will do it, in a heartbeat.

Or maybe I will start doing the schmoozing, volunteering, mass resume mailing, and other things one has to do to get networked in the legal community here. That's the real answer. I keep waiting for my dream job to land in my lap and that's not going to happen without legwork on my part. Well, it's more head-work than anything else: getting over the last several years, or if not getting over 'em, getting to a point where I can discuss my "career," such as it is, without needing to cry afterward (or during).

Arrgh. But! I can procrastinate on Career Crap by NOT procrastinating on Christmas Cra--er, y'know, Cheer, Christmas Cheer. Well then! Off to deal with my kitchen!

Stuff it

2009-11-23T22:53:00.004-05:00

[Ed. note: Thanks to Swistle for the encouragement that got me back here.]

I am in a bit of a tailspin about several things, some more serious than others.

-A friend got me a part-time temporary gig doing reception. It has done me a world of good to spend more time out of the house and to earn a bit of pocket money. However, the adjustment was a lot harder than I thought it would be, and it remains surprisingly stressful. Spouse was overjoyed when I began coming home in a zombie-like state, frequently holding out a bag of fast food ("Chicken fingerrrrrrs!"), because it drives him nuts when he comes home exhausted and I'm all boingy and hyper and eager to talk to a person instead of the radio.

-A few months ago I joined the local Unitarian Universalist church, which has been really great. Through there I got to be friends with a bunch of people who are into paganism, a religion I was sort of interested in. I have since figured out that paganism, at least in the community I fell into, involves a shit-ton of attendant drama, not to mention stigma in the wider world, and for me it's just not worth it. I am trying to figure out how to continue to spend time with the folks I really like, without roping myself into a potluck dinner every other week, without endangering my employability, and without feeling bad for lacking props and costumes.

-I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with my law degree. I came across a ten-question quiz in a book I was reading about alternative careers for lawyers. Those answering even one question in the affirmative are advised to "seriously reconsider using your degree to actually practice law." I answered EVERY SINGLE QUESTION in the affirmative. Ordinarily I'd go off on this at length but I spent most of the weekend crying about it. Besides:

-It's freaking Thanksgiving! Tomorrow after work I will do a major shopping run and buy baking potatoes, trimmings for said potatoes, "stuff for salad," and whatever I need for whatever Bundt cake I decide to make for Dad's birthday. My brother will be doing steaks. That will be Wednesday night.

In preparation for Thursday, I will also get stuffing stuff, and if I get really crazy, cornbread stuff, since I actually have the requisite skillet now.

We still have to decide whether to go to my mom's house or to his sister's house. Both families know that I agonize about this every year, and have told us not to worry if we can't make it to both.

Hearing that, Spouse suggested we get takeout Peking duck and eat at our house, by ourselves, with neither family being the wiser. I'm seriously considering it.

technical difficulties, some with sub-parts

2009-06-30T11:10:00.004-04:00

Various problemos of the last little while:

1. Sunday afternoon, Monday evening, and this morning have all featured a special guest appearance by...a roach. (Not the same one, mind you, unless reincarnation works incredibly quickly. Yeeesh.) This wouldn't be that big a deal except a) it freaks Spouse the heck out, b) the bug guy just came for his quarterly visit three weeks ago, and c) it necessitates major housecleaning.

2. In dermatological news, Spouse had an actual scary infection on his chest, where he'd had a mole removed. He seems to be on the mend and has a follow-up Wednesday. I went in yesterday and had two thingies removed, one big bumpy mole I've had my whole life, and a weird bump on the top of my left foot. I was very careful not to watch, and couldn't feel anything because I was nicely numbed, but the foot thing seemed to require some serious, uh, yanking. Both thingies are on their way to a lab to be tested; I'm actually not worried about it, but who knows.

3. Our money situation suddenly became Not a Crisis, But Not Good Either. I never heard anything from the Other Public Defender Office, and it especially sucks for that reason. I seriously have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, career-wise, but we're at the point where I need to expand my search beyond lawyer jobs. Not to fast food necessarily, but to something.

4. Under the heading of getting involved in social stuff, I ramped up my involvement in a couple of things and have said yes to too much. I've gone from having a really open schedule and very few responsibilities to what feels like Way Too Much, and it's freaking me out. One of the responsibilities involves actual legal research and I can't get into the program my state bar membership is supposed to buy me (and that's freaking me out). All this will ease up in a huge way after Saturday, though.

But there are happy things, too: I've lost 20 pounds over the last 6 months; Father's Day was really good; Saturday I had a very nice dinner out with Mom and my grandmother (during which I got slightly buzzed, remarking "Man, I need to drink wine more often, because I feel a heck of a lot better than I did this afternoon!"); and Spouse and I are getting along pretty darned well considering all of the above. As always I have tons to be grateful for. I am working hard at focusing on positive stuff, and on looking ahead as opposed to looking back. And when I remember to do it, it really helps a lot.

The Holy Grail of Pink and Cute

2009-06-15T16:31:00.006-04:00

Okay, this entry is all happy stuff! No sad trombones or horrible shootings here! [Ed. note: Bring A. Torch had another job interview, at another public defender office, a couple weeks ago. She hasn't heard anything yet and is about to jump out of her skin. Please bear with her as she tries valiantly to cheer herself up.]

Spouse has been admirably sweet, and has given me three celebrity-related compliments lately. Let's review!

The first: After I got my hair done, in a bob that is pretty close to how I've always wanted it, he said approvingly, "You remind me of Charlize Theron in...something, I can't remember what," which turned out to be Aeon Flux.
The second: He and I were in our computer cave, him WOW-ing and me ~~playing cheesy Flash games~~ catching up on The Economist. I was streaming audio from an awesome alternative station and "Stupid Girl" by Garbage came on. I said, "Hey, I bet you'd like this band. They're kinda techno." That got no response, but this did: "They're fronted by this really hot redhead." Spouse requested evidence. After viewing the image search results: "You're way cuter."
The third was when I was ~~comparing myself to mega-mommybloggers, when I am not a mommy and barely even a blogger~~ making droll observations about current events: He called me "Dave Barry in a skirt." I was floored. I still can't believe he said that.

Last weekend I had me a project: putting together a care package, with the theme of PINK! and CUTE! This included a trip to Tuesday Morning, which is like Ross or T.J. Maxx, but primarily housewares as opposed to clothes. The pickings there can be excellent, rotten, or just plain bizarre. (I actually almost bought that thing for a mom friend, but something told me to test it, and Grover popped out looking mournful and like he might be about to hurl some Super chunks.) Frequently you find something that would be ideal for So-and-So, except there's a button missing, or a suspicious-looking stain, or the box looks like it's been run over by a truck. So it was completely amazing that right when my legs reminded me I'd been standing for too long, when I was desperately pawing through the stuffed animals, I found the Holy Grail of Pink and Cute: a Hello Kitty! I was bouncing off the walls when I got home. (Spouse: "Okay, you're DONE shopping now, right?")

I got so into it, I even did up the box--I cut out a star, a heart, and a kitty face out of shiny pink paper (75 cents, people!), and just covered the edges of everything with clear packing tape. (Kitty face = 2 up-pointing triangles for ears, 3 down-pointing ones for eyes and a nose, and then 6 long pointy whiskers. Spouse assured me that it was recognizably feline. I'm kicking myself for not having taken a picture, as it really turned out cool. (Too frequently my attempts at anything resembling home repair or craftiness involve frustrating results for whatever the project is, and first aid for me.) Even better, I checked today and saw the package made it there in 4 days, when the postal worker warned me it'd take 2 weeks. That made me happy.

This weekend's project was painting two coffee cans, so I can plant stuff in 'em. It has been really hard to spread the acrylic out evenly while still providing good coverage, but that may have something to do with the cheapass foam brushes I bought. I hope I have enough paint to finish up, as the expenditures are rapidly approaching what I would've spent just buying two flippin' more little pots. But they're bright blue and cheery and look surprisingly okay so far. HANDY SAFETY TIP: Carefully inspect the lip of each can for pointy spots before poking around inside; one of mine bit me when I was washing it out! Spouse did something with pliers to make it safe, and was also responsible for poking drainage holes, as I am not allowed to play with sharp objects while he's around.

And it was still hot

2009-05-22T23:15:00.004-04:00

This is a blog made by the people responsible for the film of Where the Wild Things Are, that I found when Juniper and Gram's dad linked to it. And here is an absolute gem of a video of President Obama reading the book to a crowd, with his family looking on.

Let me repeat that: The President of the United States, a black man, is shown reading from a beloved, subversive children's book, written and illustrated by a gay man, on what I assume is the White House lawn. This is amazing to me.

Sometime during the 1992 campaign, there was a poll asking who folks would rather have watch their kids, George H. W. Bush or Bill Clinton. Then-Governor Clinton won by a healthy margin, if I recall correctly. I was reminded of that poll watching the President read with obvious facility, peering at the upside-down words from above, making faces and growls where called for with no hesitation at all. In other words: he has read this book to the girls, a LOT.

This to me is more comforting than a pot of tea and a plate of gingersnaps.

2009-04-14T13:36:00.002-04:00

I did not get the public defender job. And I sulked about it for weeks.

On to new topics! Ahem! I've been wanting to try growing herbs for ages. I would like to cook more with fresh herbs but I hate buying them at the grocery store. So this is what I did: I went to our local college library, which amazingly I am allowed to borrow from since we gave a little bit to Spouse's alumni association, and picked out my limit of 5 books. And then I went online and found 6 books from all over the state, which came in via interlibrary loan.

Now, garden writers are absolutely charming. I need to do some choice quotes next time I'm about. However, the problem with eleven different gardening books [and two University Extension Services, and Martha Stewart's web stuff] is that you end up with umpteen different voices squawking about, say, Greek vs. Italian oregano. Certainly there is some overlap, but there are just enough differences in the advice from source to source to drive me up the freaking wall. I am one of those people plagued by the notion that there is a "right" way to do everything. I even take it further and believe there is probably a "best" way to do everything, and I feel like a failure if I don't do it that way the first time.

And by the time I finally decided that yes, I did want to start with teeny little seeds and babysit them into great big plants, it hadn't yet sunk in how LOOOOONG all this was going to take. Little sprouts might pop up right away for most herbs, but as far as actual plants you could transfer to your garden, or to pots in my case, it can take 7-10 WEEKS. Our development is beautifully manicured--more than I would have ever expected for a bunch of townhouses--and our little fenced-in area is covered in mulch, so I am, as they say, pot-bound.

Anyway, I have probably waited too long to get started, such that by the time I have anything big enough to put in a real pot, it will be so hot and humid that the little guys would fizzle and croak outdoors. Which would be okay, I guess, because some herbs can do just fine indoors. The issue is just how much bigger and bushier they would be if they grew outside (see also: in the ground, vs. in a pot). We have a petunia that has been a houseplant since I brought it home, and it's more than just technically alive--in fact, it's really perked up lately, with lots of magenta blooms--but compared to the ones I saw outside at Lowe's on Saturday, it looks utterly peaked.

So I'll try it and see what happens. I do have a couple seed packets to order (one from Monticello, as in Thomas Jefferson, holy cow), and if shipping isn't too exorbitant, I may be ordering one plant since I haven't been able to find seeds. But as far as basil, oregano, etc., I'm good to get started.

The news around here is I'm not currently worrying about the job thing, because I have something else to fret about instead: Spouse is seriously sick. As soon as we had any information, I went straight to Dr. Google and instantly wished I hadn't, because I've been scared out of my mind since. He's undergone testing and should see a specialist this week. Much as I want to know what it really is, I'm a little afraid to know as well. If you happen to be into prayer, lighting candles, Reiki, or whatever, it would be much appreciated. I know in my heart that ultimately he'll be fine; I just need to convince my head of that and not panic.

Pants panic

2009-03-02T14:41:00.002-05:00

I am having a cow over here.

This morning I was out and about at a ridiculously early hour because I gave someone a ride to work, trying to be helpful. I ended up right by Wal-Mart and was pleasantly wandering about their gardening stuff when Spouse called.

"I fucked up," he said. Well, not too badly: He sent a pen through the washer, and then through the dryer. "All my clothes are ruined," he said. Well, not really.

He made it to work anyway. I surveyed the damage when I got home and it really wasn't that bad. To get at the ink, I started attacking the dryer with all kinds of chemicals. Unfortunately for fire safety, almost everything recommended to work on ink is highly flammable, so the first thing I had to do was unplug the thing.

Hairspray was on the list and seemed to be making the most progress. The first ingredient in hairspray is denatured alcohol, which we happen to have, because the fondue pot that we have yet to use needs it for fuel. Denatured alcohol has all kinds of scary warnings on it, and is a pain in the ass to open, and Lord knows how many brain cells I lost to its powerful fumes, but the stains are now faded such that you'd only see them if you stuck a flashlight in there.

Alas, I have the feeling that is exactly what's going to happen, because I pushed the drum in the wrong direction when I was trying to get at the ink, and it emitted this horrible crunching sound. After a break for ventilation (read: eating cookies and reading David Sedaris), I plugged the dryer back in and hit the button. It heated up but did not spin around. Oh crap.

I think I fucked up worse than Spouse, but he says it's arguable. In lawyerspeak, the actual cause of the dryer not spinning was me pushing it around in ways it did not want to be pushed, but the proximate cause was Spouse leaving the danged pen in his pants pocket.

This is causing a panic for two reasons. The not-so-big-a-deal panic is because Spouse's preferred pants suffered casualties, which means shopping has to happen, and neither of us is a cheerful shopper when it comes to clothes. The full-bore, Oh-My-Golly, sound-the-alarm panic is because the house is a wreck and needs some serious sanitation before the landlord can be called and her handyguy can be dispatched.

Oh, and tomorrow morning I am supposed to leave at oh-dark-thirty so I can make it to Megalopolis for mandatory how-to-be-a-lawyer training, which only the unemployed have to pay for and participate in, and it just makes me really mad. And sad.

I have not heard back about the job I interviewed for, and I strongly suspect that this is what I am really panicking about. That and driving in downtown Megalopolis. Not so much the poor dryer.

Married, filing jointly

2009-02-26T10:49:00.003-05:00

So I got the taxes done last night, and it was another case of "What was I so worried about?" Last year's taxes were a nightmare: we'd just gotten married, we'd moved across a state line, and it was my first time having to file as an independent contractor, so there were library books involved, because I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

This year was a comparative walk. I was really worried because I didn't pay quarterlies in advance this year. That can result in penalties if you earn serious money, but there was so little work this year it was no big deal.

I was motivated to get them done yesterday because it was our year-and-a-half anniversary and it means a lot to Spouse that I do our taxes. Despite being a math genius, he used to go to one of those storefront places to get his taxes done! So I wrestle with TurboTax, he makes a big fuss when I give him the final figure, and it makes me feel appreciated.

His beef, which I'm inclined to agree with, is that taxes are too flipping complicated. I have a legal background, so I feel like I should understand what they mean when they say "Copy your total from the 2008 Widget Recycling Incentive Deduction Reduction Credit into the Bonus Box on Form Umpty-million, multiply by Q, do a little dance, make a little love, and use the resulting figure to verify your Seriously Gross Acne-Related Health Expenditures." I am never sure I've gotten it right, and it just shouldn't be that hard! I mean, apparently you can have the financial savvy to consult to the World Bank and still screw up your return. (Not that I'm bitter or anything.)*

I made a little card that spelled out "I love you" and "Sugar Bear" in binary, and concentrating that hard on all the zeroes and ones made me see spots. There was also a little Woodstock**, dressed like Cupid and holding a tiny Whitman's Sampler, for 75% off at the grocery store. I think Spouse was amused, but he's getting alarmed at how rapidly I accumulate stuffed animals.

And for dinner, we did burgers and crazy fries. Crazy fries are what I call Spouse's method of doing up French fries with real bacon bits, shredded cheese, and Ranch dressing, which sounds gross but smells and tastes amazing.

I am so crazily, ridiculously lucky to be happily married. We have our ups and downs, our lumps and bumps, but somewhere under all the clutter and conflict is something real and true. We are just fine. We are great, actually. What a gift.

_____________________
*Totally lying here.
**Snoopy's avian life partner.

Things I did this week

2009-02-20T22:08:00.004-05:00

Observed: I was driving by the City Christian Schools complex and noticed for the first time that one of the buildings said this:

HOME OF THE LIONS

*blink*

Um, it's been a loooong time since 8th grade Church history, but I seem to recall lions enjoying Christians in the same way Dr. Lecter had an old friend for dinner.

Jobs applied for: One.

Thank-you notes sent (re previous week's interview): Two.

Mood swings (ditto): All over the danged map, ranging from "Oh boy, oh boy, let's go buy me a new suit" to dramatic boo-hooing and subsequent nose-blowing.

Resume tinkering: Fin. My girlfriend, the yoga and dance goddess who went to business school and is fixin' to take over the world, somehow made it all fit on one page in a non-myopic font, doing all the awful futzing with tabs and bullet points that makes me berserk, and the lawyer I ran it by said it was much improved. Woot!

Tax-related procrastination: Persisted, but Spouse is on to me.

Web phenomenon discovered: It's Nannerpus!

Raging craving for: Pancakes.

For my valentine (click to enlarge)

2009-02-14T09:41:00.003-05:00

Transcendence. Also: poop.

2009-02-13T14:41:00.006-05:00

So Monday I emailed a friend of a friend a networking letter and a rez, and said friend of a friend passed said rez up to their boss, and holy crap, I had an interview yesterday (Thursday).

I got completely hysterical Wednesday night freaking out about what top to wear under my suit jacket, and it turned out the perfect thing was right in front of my face. I'm hoping that is a good sign. When I came home late last night from a potluck and got the mail, my first glossy issue of the state bar magazine had arrived. I'm hoping that was another one.

This interviewer was extremely low-key, which helped calm me down a lot. I had stayed up late and spent time in the morning, when I should have been beautifying, studying actual legal content, thinking I might be quizzed, and nothing like that ever came up.

This would be something totally different for me, in a good way. Mom asked what I would actually do, and I explained it by quoting Joe Friday: "You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, I would be appointed for you." It is hard to describe how freaking amazing it was to say that. To even think it, typing this. I start thinking about watching Henry Fonda in Gideon's Trumpet, in 10th grade Government. Earlier, Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, during freshman English, way, way before I understood what was really happening. And to even earlier, when the church we attended had a prestigious downtown address, adjacent to the courthouse. I read a parking-lot sign that said "Reserved for the Public Defender," and asked my parents what that was, because it sounded like a superhero to me.

I would get lots of experience really fast. I would be learning from really experienced practitioners. It would be crazy challenging on lots of levels. And I would definitely be helping people who really need it. Which is what I went to school to do, and what I think I am called to do, on a spiritual level (I feel goofy typing that, but it's the truth).

And if the number I was quoted is even close, it is beyond our wildest dreams.

I am hoping, hoping, hoping that I got myself across well, and praying (again, goofy, but that's what I'm doing) that it finally took this time. I am trying really hard to stay positive, to open my heart to love and change, and to keep the heck out of my own way.

For the moment, however: I need to go and empty the catboxes at my mother-in-law's.

Ma'amed at the Monologues

2009-02-08T12:05:00.005-05:00

Last night I went to see The Vagina Monologues at Spouse's alma mater. I'd seen it a few years prior during law school and had hemmed and hawed about whether or not to go, and it turned out to blow my mind. I'd remembered how very serious the serious parts were, but had totally forgotten how funny it was, and how hot it could get.

One of the coolest things was that the cast was really diverse, in most aspects. Maybe not in terms of age, but it was a college production. But there were lots of different shapes and sizes and colors in the cast, and even the audience was a lot more gender-balanced than I'd expected.

When my grandmother was still in the hospital, she and I and my mom watched an Oprah that was supposedly meant to help women get their mojo back, or to find it for the first time, or whatever, and they went through the ENTIRE HOUR without saying the word "clitoris." I don't they even referred to it obliquely. And of course they kept pointing people to the show website, where I imagine they could be more frank, but my God, it was making me mad. I know that it's daytime television but if we can watch commercials about erectile dysfunction and priapism during Katie Couric's evening news, then by golly, "clit" should be fair game at 4 p.m.

And in the Monologues, of course, they go there. Over and over again.

When I moved back South I acquired a habit of saying "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" while on the phone with authority figures, and sometimes it slips out when talking to Mom, and she utterly loathes it, and before last night I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. My brother and I didn't learn to say it at home, because my parents weren't native Southerners, but many folks around here just grow up using it.

Last night most of the cast was out in the lobby after the show, before the second act (belly dancers!), and I complimented everyone I saw. On the way to the ladies' room I realized I was going to pass the incredible, elfin youngster who played the sex worker who serves only women (whose monologue involves lots of moaning by the rest of the cast). So I said to her, in what I hoped was an effervescent, non-threatening way, "Ohmigod, you were fan-freakin'-tastic--are you studying theatre?"

She smiled sheepishly, charmingly, and to my great chagrin, replied "Yes, ma'am."

And I got it. Big time. I may have slightly hipster glasses but I do not pass for a college student, or maybe even a grad student, anymore. Even with my gray hair covered. Yeee-owch.

I scolded my reflection in the full-length ladies' room mirror, thinking that had I dressed less frumpily, had my hair been less flat on top, or most cruelly, if I wasn't morbidly obese, I might not have been ma'amed. I don't know if any of that is really true, but I am on the lookout for better-fitting trousers, that's for sure.

And I hope never to say it to my mom ever again.

Afterwards we went to an adorable non-chain pizza place I had never been to before, and which is crazily, colorfully decorated. The front windows are covered with door beads and the walls are deep dark purple. There are painted hubcaps and lots of framed posters, including a Keith Haring. From the ceiling tiles hang Christmas ornament balls painted in pastels and festooned with curled ribbons that hang down, three feet long. All the tables and chairs are painted different ways, and the bathroom is almost entirely decoupaged with kids' coloring pages. My Coke was huge and came in a colorful plastic tumbler--they have shelves full of them--and for napkins we were each handed an actual washcloth, warm from the dryer, all different colors. Mine was nicely striped and appeared to be from Target's College 2008 line. It was completely eclectic and nuts, and I was all, "This is what I want my house to look like." Like fun people live here.

Thank God for female friends who get me out of my shell and off of my couch.

hodgepodge

2009-01-28T19:09:00.003-05:00

Right this second, I'm not writing for any reason other than that I haven't posted in nearly a month and I feel bad about it.

Future posts to include:

-thoughts on beauty, the beauty-related things I am willing to do and those that I am not, my strangely wiry, dye-resistant gray hairs, and how all of the above are probably in reaction to my mother and grandmother;

-Thai chicken and coconut soup;

-recycling rotisserie chicken bones and whatnot into tasty broth;

-recent adventures in what I'll call, for lack of better words, complementary and alternative therapies;

-how to market oneself for employment when one's confidence has been torn out and stomped utterly flat (anyone?);

-and funny things uttered by Spouse.

Case in point: On a rare stop at home during a work day morning, Spouse wakes me up and deposits a box of donuts at my feet. That afternoon I am crying because I cannot do what I need to do, and I call him. He asks, "Well, how many donuts did you eat?"

I confess: three. He says, exactly like a plumber would while flourishing the horribly embarrassing item just extracted from your commode, "There's your problem."

I sniffle, "What?"

"You didn't eat enough."

In culinary news, I had amazing, splendiferous luck with chocolate chip cookies recently, specifically the "Chewy" version available here. I tried these last Christmas and they were seriously tasty but flat as pancakes. This time they kept their shape beautifully, despite being all butter, and I'm not exactly sure what the secret was. I did do all brown sugar, and I did do "large" eggs instead of the jumbo ones I usually buy. And I used the called-for temperature instead of second-guessing the oven. And there were more chips. Lots more chips. Am hoping it's the chips.

The Great Sundry New Year's Meme

2008-12-29T17:08:00.010-05:00

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?

Passed the bar! That's the main thing. I also seriously considered pursuing alternative teacher certification, in case it didn't work out. And I almost exclusively stopped biting my nails.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don't think I got far enough on this meme to really make resolutions last year. I do have several in mind for this year, primarily involving moving more and eating less, and reaching out socially.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

Just this one.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

Steady employment! As an attorney! Hopefully the good kind!

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Halloween, because that's when I found out I passed.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Ahem. Er, see above.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I was not prepared for the possibility of a good outcome on the bar, so when it happened, I sort of flipped out. Like, in a bad way. I'm still trying to figure that out. To be honest, to a certain extent I'm also still flipping out (along the lines of, "BFD, I still need to get a freaking job," etc. etc.). Why am I discounting this Big Success? Am I that scared of writing letters and meeting with people? I don't know.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Well, I had had a remarkably healthy year...and then there was the Thumb Incident. I'm still not ready to knead (because...yack) or to use our spiffy cookie-dough dishers (because they require vigorous thumb action), but I will probably try and make something shortly.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

This bar thing has been extremely expensive (love you, Spouse!). I'd like to think that it's finally worth it.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Spouse's was stellar. I owe him so big. And both our families were all really supportive.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

My own, at times; certain national pundits and candidates; and as someone who was privileged to live in Chicago for a little while, I cannot get my head around the Blagojeviches, man.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Toward quieting the bats in my head (prescription co-pays, therapy co-pays, major therapy bills when I ran out of covered appointments). And toward bar fees. And a new gas tank and muffler.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I made a good female friend who actually lives here! I am finally starting to get [a teeny bit] excited about my career. I did some community service recently and met nice people through that.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?

This is a toughie. I would probably fall back on those few songs that could perk me up when I was in my lowest depths: "A Touch of Grey," "Mother and Child Reunion," "Kodachrome," that kind of thing. I am completely and utterly out of touch musically. (Note to self: mayhap you should resolve to get a clue about music made in this century.)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

a) MUCH happier (the holidays don't freaking count when you're up against a February bar, which I was at this time last year).

b) A teeny bit thinner, amazingly.

c) Decidedly poorer, alas.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

I wish I had...Reached out to people and socialized. Been more dedicated about writing, if not about blogging necessarily. Taken pictures of all the food I keep writing about!

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Freaking out. Worrying. Crying. Living through other people's blogs.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

With our families. (Also: bandaged!)

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?

Am happy to report I stayed that way.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

We are almost done watching TNG (sorry, that's Star Trek: The Next Generation, the one with Captain Picard) on DVD and most of them have been surprisingly good.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Um...yes, strangely. Someone from my past, someone with whom my last interactions were actually pleasant. Recently I kept remembering things and getting pissed about stuff that was said to me in, seriously, 1994. It was really weird.

24. What was the best book you read?

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was surprisingly affecting. I'm still trying to come to some resolution about how it ended.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I don't have one, but this was the COOLEST random media fact I discovered. Okay, you know Lt. Worf [warning! plays a soundbite!], the Klingon, right? It turns out that the actor who plays him, Michael Dorn, is seriously, incredibly, HOTT. Like on a George Clooney scale. So much so that I don't understand why he isn't a household name. Anyway, when I IMDB'd him to see what else he'd been in, I found out something that should have been smack-yer-forehead obvious, and is completely unforgettable once learned: He Is Weasel! That is, on the Cartoon Network show I Am Weasel [click for show opener], he was the voice of Weasel.

This completely revolutionized my viewing of TNG, such that pretty much whenever Worf is onscreen and looking like he is about to make one of his famous pronouncements, I am compelled to proclaim "I Am Weasel!" in a big, booming voice. (And then Spouse rolls his eyes as if he sorely misses the days when he could watch TV in peace.)

26. What did you want and get?

I wanted to pass the bar and I did.

27. What did you want and not get?

I've been waiting for a job to magically materialize and it hasn't. Similarly, I wanted my home to magically organize and decorate itself, and it didn't. I need to get on the stick.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

I am about as useful on movies as on music. Sex and the City was the only thing I saw at an actual cinema, and it really benefits from being watched with a big gaggle of women. At home the mind is freer to ponder provoking questions such as

What the hell is wrong with Carrie?
No, really, how many times does "Big" have to run her over with a bus?
Why would anyone spend so much on shoes? Particularly when it doesn't look like they can afford food?
How cute is that Steve guy?
Could I possibly pull off Miranda's haircut, bearing in mind that I do eat food, am not a redhead, and am likely to burn down the house, let alone my ears, if I attempt to use a curling iron? (Seriously, she looked GORGEOUS.)
If I sort of hate these people, why can't I stop watching?

...and it makes for a much less satisfying show.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 31. Spouse did dinner and candles and bought an adorable stuffed kitty, who has received so much love that his poor furline is receding. I have since purchased an Emergency Backup Kitty, which is less realistic but a little more resistant to wear. [Hat tip: Dave Barry and his Emergency Backup Dog, which you can read about here.]

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Seriously? I don't like how superficial this is going to make me sound, but I wish my face hadn't resembled a pepperoni pizza for much of the year. I'm getting there--I think I finally have the right products, I just need to apply them regularly--but man, I don't know that there's much of a downer than that. (Somehow I am used to how my body looks, and it doesn't bother me nearly so much, even though it could.) It would help matters immensely if I could just Leave Stuff Alone.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

There were days when I was doing good if I got showered. Pass!

32. What kept you sane?

Er, see above re Spouse, and therapy, and drugs. I would also say M'n'Ms.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

On election night, when Michelle Obama hit the stage in her striking red and black, it suddenly sank in that she was going to be the First Lady, and I wore a goofy grin until we went to bed that night. I think we may be following her as closely as we do the President.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

I think I spent more time fuming about what might be labeled "Women in Politics" more than anything else. Was Hillary really crying? Oh my Lord, did she actually say "white Americans"? Why is she Queen B-word, and how the hell does Sarah Palin get to be Diana the Hunter by comparison? Elizabeth Edwards is fierce--why isn't she running for something? What the heck is a "fist bump"? etc. etc.

35. Who did you miss?

My friends from working in another city, who live 60-90 minutes away. First I didn't have time and then there was no gas to be had and now...now gas is cheap, and plentiful, but I'd feel guilty spending the money.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

My yoga teacher, who has become a good, local friend. Yaaaay!

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

I found the Serenity Prayer ("God [or whoever] grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference") really helpful this year, and I need to focus again on making those distinctions every day. From my therapist, I learned a three-syllable version: "Whatever." There is also a two-syllable version, and it rhymes with "bucket."

Also: I made myself a little sign when I was studying. It listed how many possible points there were on the exam, how many I needed to pass, and then said in giant purple crayon, "67.5% = COUNSELOR!!!" Under that it said, "So let go of Lisa Simpson, and embrace your inner Bart!" This was extremely helpful when I was panicking over minute details and convincing myself I would bomb the exam if I didn't master them completely. I need to figure out a similar incremental approach to Getting a Job so I don't feel overwhelmed.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

"This is the day your life will surely change." From that song by The The that I haven't heard in ten-plus years.

Holiday roundup

2008-12-28T11:29:00.002-05:00

Coolest gifts we gave: Twenty-five pounds of jasmine rice from Thailand. Chocolate oranges, even though there were way too many trips involved in procuring ten of them with identical labeling. Sheesh.

Most touching gifts received: A pizzelle iron. A giant teddy bear wearing a hoodie parka (decorated with bears), to the both of us, with note asking for a home with lots of hugs. Sigh.

Most ironic gifts received (from my brother, who had not been told of my recent slicing incident): A Big Scary Knife! And a set of steak knives.

Slightly unnerving gift trend: FOOT-RELATED gifts (pumice stones, moisturizer socks, etc.) from Spouse's family. Yes, okay, people, I'm overdue for a session with my Pedi-Egg. Got it. (Although, really, I've always wanted some of those socks, but am too cheap to buy them, so they're a perfect gift for me. I don't mean to sound ungrateful.)

Gift most likely to be used first: Gigantic Lodge cast-iron skillet.

Most anticipated gifts: Half-Assed, by Pasta Queen; What It Is, a writing guide by Lynda Barry, recommended by Swistle.

Most fun gifts: Pop Rocks! And a Rubik's Cube. And a tiny cow that moos "Deck the Halls."

Christmas is cancelled

2008-12-23T20:35:00.002-05:00

So today at just after 12:00 p.m., I was trying to Get Organized for my baking spree, which I had procrastinated on until it had become an Official Crisis, and I reached into the cabinet for a food processing blade, and pretty well processed my thumb.

It was really gross. I completely lost my marbles.

I am extremely lucky in that Spouse works around the corner from where we live. He was able to drop everything and come home, and he took really good care of me. I feel like a total heel for making him take me to the doctor, because the doctor's advice was pretty much exactly what Spouse said: put some Neosporin on it, then a Band-Aid, and try not to get it wet. I did not need stitches, not even the Krazy Glue kind. And my tetanus shot is current, dating back to a run-in with a file cabinet during law school.

I wonder how many such incidents need to accumulate until one's medical record gets stamped "KLUTZ" in red ink.

I shopped 'til I dropped

2008-12-23T09:40:00.004-05:00

Note to self: Feeling bad about how many people are subscribed to other people's Twitter feeds, when you don't have a Twitter feed, is really pretty silly.

Took a few days off from reading online stuff--not sure why, it just happened, and I came back and read people's updates, and hey! the world did not end while I was away.

I have been procrastinating severely on Christmas stuff. Yesterday was Run Around and Buy Shit day. I left the house at 11 and got back a little before 7. It was pretty nuts out there.

Party City: Decimated. No purchases. May go back for a couple of silly items.
Michaels: 2 rolls wrapping paper. Box of cards. Saved something like 19 cents using coupon.
Bed Bath and Beyond: Several miscellaneous items (rainbow Twizzlers? Whaaaa?). Refrained from buying paper plates with Spode Christmas tree on 'em, even though Mom would have thought they were a hoot, b/c they were $5 for eight freaking plates. Got to bust out the really good and hard-to-find $10 off a $30 order coupon. Alert: At the end of January, BB&B is going to stop honoring expired coupons!
Target: Ok, I went in there to use their clean restroom with the crazy hand dryer, to get change, and patronize their Starbucks. I stayed a LOT longer. Bought Spouse adorable card with Far Side cat cartoon, and three types of pretty paper plates.
Then there was a short walk baaaaack to Michaels to put $5 in the Salvation Army bucket. Because the bell-ringing man had been caroling, and it was lovely, and reminded me of hearing people perform on streets and in train stations. Promised Spouse this was the only really silly thing I did.
Sam's. Sam's is never fun. But I did get some a-freaking-dorable stamps with nutcrackers on 'em. And a hunk of Gruyere. And five pounds of honey for $10.
Fancy Schmancy Booze Store: Was looking for grog, or mead, or something else piratey to go with really cool skull-and-crossbones coffee mug I found at Ross. No luck. They did have a brand of Belgian ale with a pirate on it. I did a pick-your-own six pack and, since I was going basically by Names or Labels I Thought Were Cool (e.g., "Yeti Imperial Stout"), made sure to check with someone to make sure I didn't get all the same kind of beer. Also got, for Spouse and me, some Belgian lambic fruit beers that I knew were tasty. Also got, impulsively, three minibottles, and that was not a good move, because they were like $6 each but hadn't been individually price-tagged.
Publix: They had almost everything. Apparently there has been a run on red hots (a.k.a. "cinnamon imperials") in this area, as this was the umpteenth place I'd looked.
Kroger: Score on red hots! Yes!

I'm now going out, for what should be the last shopping trip, to find TEN chocolate oranges, an OXO can opener, and a tiny can of Crisco, for to grease the Bundt pan. Hopefully I can knock both these out at...the other Kroger.

And then I have to bake challah and get one zillion cookie doughs going. I am so not gonna make it to yoga tonight.

Other stuff I've cooked or baked, of late

2008-12-15T17:17:00.004-05:00

1. Dad's birthday cake, or maybe the "Oh My God Cake": This was the All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: My Home to Yours. A version of the recipe, with some slightly goofy adjustments (almond meal? 5-spice powder? Greek yogurt instead of canned pumpkin?), was recently featured in Bon Appetit. Pop's birthday falls close enough to Turkey Day that we generally do both at once. His specs were simple: something "in a Bundt pan, maybe with pumpkin?" Things learned:

Sometimes doing the whole Food Netnerdy, mise-en-place thing--that is, actually measuring everything out in advance, or at least pairing the right measuring spoon with the right ingredient--will totally save your ass. I realized, at 10:15 p.m. Thanksgiving eve, that I had NO CAN OPENER*, and therefore wouldn't be able to get to the crucial pumpkin puree. This would have been a complete crisis if I had already started throwing the batter together, but I hadn't. Keep in mind that I NEVER do the organized, professional, French-chef thing. But something in the back of my head told me to, I guess because it was a new recipe with lots of steps. (*This is our THIRD can opener, by the way, and I finally splurged and got the OXO one. Despite this, I was still unable to get to the damn pumpkin, and so mangled the can that by the time I asked Spouse to step in, he got some IN HIS HAIR and had to take a shower. Oh my GOD.)

While chopping fresh cranberries (as they BOUNCED all over the kitchen), I made the mistake of tasting one, and was so profoundly disturbed by the horrid taste and big honking seeds that I decided to use Craisins instead. (See, something had TOLD me to get extra Craisins! I stood in the aisle for MINUTES fretting about buying them and they saved my bacon!) More on fresh crans some other time.

I did not stick the landing; a teeny bit of cake stayed behind in the pan, which I had carefully buttered. Mom says Crisco works best.

I "finished" the cake with a dusting of powdered sugar. If you are holding the cake that is so dusted, when the birthday celebrant blows out his candles, powdered sugar will dramatically burst all over your shirt and spectacles. The comic effect will be enhanced if you happen to be wearing a black long-sleeved top with tastefully glittery reindeer on it, and it will completely make Thanksgiving. Oh my GOD.

The verdict: Dad reported the cake was "exactly what he'd had in mind." Kid: Teared up and got him seconds.

2. Candied orange slices, which are made by bringing a syrupy mess to a boil on your stove and then waiting for hours and hours. Do NOT start something like this at something like midnight before Thanksgiving; I don't care how much you think people will be impressed. Thing learned:

Candied orange PEEL might actually be possible, but by the time the peel is actually candied (soft and sort of translucent), the actual fruit part of the slice will become fibrous and grody. I cut the peel from a few of the slices and and it did taste surprisingly like candy "fruit slices." So much so, in fact, that I will probably just buy those instead.

3. Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies; recipe and review available here, from Smitten Kitchen. These are a chocolate-chocolate-chip slice-and-bake, and they are salty, and the salt is supposed to send the chocolate into the stratosphere. I don't know if I buy that, but they are damn good, OCD-inducing cookies. That is: If you have the cookies, all you can think about is eating the cookies; if you have the dough in the fridge, all you can think about is baking some more, or maybe just eating a slice right off the log (and there's no eggs, so why not?). In the Thanksgiving craziness, I wanted to make something I knew for sure I'd like, and we got up early enough that morning that I had time to make the dough, chill it, and bake a few specimens. I could tell from the recipe that Spouse would find them "too chocolate-y," and too chocolate-y for him is right about where I like it. I am probably going to call these PMS Cookies, or Gateway Drug Cookies, or something else clever if I come up with anything. Things learned:

I learned the hard way that if I put plastic measuring cups in the dishwasher, one of them will fall out of the rack, hit the element, start to melt, and set off the smoke alarm. I also learned the hard way that both my 1/3 cups fell victim to this phenomenon. The first time I made the dough, I just guesstimated using percentages and our other cups. The second time through, I converted everything exactly with teaspoons and tablespoons. I think guesstimation is fine, but see below.
The directions are kind of weird. You are supposed to mix as little as possible once the dry ingredients are added--the directions call for five one-second pulses, followed by a 30-second mix. This made me wonder why I should dirty up the stand mixer. So, if you're following along, Batch 1 was guesstimated and done in the KitchenAid; Batch 2 was exactly measured and done using a hand mixer. Result: Go ahead and dirty up the stand mixer! It is probably possible to properly "beat butter until creamy" and incorporate the sugars with the hand mixer, but I don't think I have the patience. The first batch came out MUCH better than the second one.
The first time, I used roughly 1/4 teaspoon (guesstimating again--all I had was a 1/2 tsp.) of supermarket coarse sea salt that I tried to crush in a mortar and pestle. I wasn't getting the salty effect, so I sprinkled a little salt on each cookie slice before baking, which looked really nice and tasted awesome. The second time I used 1/2 tsp. of kosher salt, and this was a little much. You are supposed to use either 1/4 tsp. "fine sea salt," or 1/2 tsp. fleur de sel, which I have yet to invest in. I just read in entirely another cookbook that if you need to substitute regular ol' salt for fine sea salt, you can do so in equal measure.
I got to pick out gorgeous, stainless steel, throw-in-the-dishwasher sets of measuring cups and spoons for Christmas, thank gosh, because all this mathy crap is for some other baker. Unfortunately, I won't receive them until, y'know, Christmas, so if I want to give away any of these, or to get my fix anytime soon, I will have at least one more round of guesstimating.
If you use chopped-up bar chocolate instead of chips, don't go too crazy with the chopping. You want some chunkitude. Go too small, as I did with Batch 2, and the chocolate will just disappear into the cookies.

More to come!

Christmas cantankerous

2008-12-14T21:47:00.002-05:00

Dear Marketing Geniuses at Bath and Body Works:

What led you to name a fragrance "Black Amethyst"?

Because, seriously, amethyst is supposed to be purple.

Yours truly,
Bring A. Torch

P.S. Some of us feel like crap at holiday time and simply cannot handle songs like "2,000 Miles" by The Pretenders. Please keep this in mind when programming your Muzak. Thank you!

How to trigger yourself:

2008-12-08T12:27:00.005-05:00

1. Have a really stressful, at times splendidly life-changing, at times unspeakably horrible, law school experience that leaves permanent scars. Struggle to find the right mix of chemicals and therapy that works for your slightly irregular brain.

2. While on continuing quest re your slightly irregular brain, spend three years trying to pass bar exam. Eventually find superb therapist and superb chemicals. At long last, pass exam. Wait over a month for good news to sink in and horrible self-talk to lighten up.

3. Watch already not-booming economy go completely kablooey. Scan want ads and law school career center websites for jobs that simply do not exist in your town. Try to maintain perspective. Freak out, cursing decisions you made years ago, about which not a whole lot can be done.

4. At the precise moment when you are finally coming to be at peace about the whole she-bang, and finally easing up on the self-flagellation, and finally learning to be constructively kind to yourself, read this book by a law professor about her harrowing struggle with schizophrenia.

I'd been looking forward to reading this book ever since I heard the author on On Point, and I would love to go through and do an in-depth review of it, something that would encourage others to go out and grab it, but I just can't go there and read it again. I knew from the first chapter that it was upsetting me, and I just couldn't quit. I was totally unprepared for how much we had in common.

I suppose I've always thought of myself as having some friendly, garden-variety type of mental illness. My diagnoses and treatments are fairly familiar and (I'd like to think) non-frightening to reasonably educated folks. When I really get going, anxiety-wise, the distortion in my thoughts probably approaches the level of delusion, but the thoughts at least originate from some basis in reality.

And I suppose I identify MIs that involve psychosis, which a therapist described to me once as a break with reality, as scarier than my own. If I may refer to The Prince of Tides: you can get your head around most of the Wingos, but sister Savannah, with her frightening visions and her razor blades, is a little out there. If I'm honest, it's almost like "I'm over here with my depression and my worrying, and those people over there, the muttering homeless, the people committed involuntarily, those who get prescribed things that aren't advertised in glossy magazines, are The Other." This shames me, as I like to think of myself as both pretty darned open-minded and pretty darned empathetic.

I was hoping Professor Saks would be able to make me understand what it's like to have The Other kind of mental illness, because I think of it as so very different from my own. And I guess what freaked me out is that it wasn't all that different. Not at all. Granted, I don't hear voices I'm not supposed to hear, and I don't think I've ever worried about having killed anyone with my thoughts, and okay, yes, at my most effed-up, I have thought about the s-word, but I've never felt uncontrollably, forcefully compelled to make any attempts. But the devastating, horrible self-talk she recounts? On page after page? That is me. That is totally me. And literally, days ago, it had started to let up, and then the book came in from interlibrary loan. That's not to say it's back in full force--I've gotten a lot better at redirecting my focus--but man, it was really disquieting to read.

There's one part where she recounts feeling utter terror at finding herself home alone, and I had an eerily similar incident when I was a kid. I visualize it at about age 8 but suspect I was even older. It was a Saturday afternoon, and it turned out that my parents and brother had just wandered over to the site of a house that was being built nearby. They probably weren't gone an hour. But when I couldn't find anyone anywhere, and both cars were still in the garage, I went completely apeshit. I called our nanny, who lived several towns over, I was so freaked, and she was so selfless that she dropped whatever she was doing and came.

Several times lately I've read--in Newsweek, in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink--about how desperate we are, as humans, perhaps particularly as American humans, to have explanations for inexplicable things. This is supposedly why so many rely on religion, or on less conventional supernatural tenets. We'd rather have an explanation that veers into the unprovable, even the whimsical, than no explanation at all.

And what's so scary about certain mental illnesses is that there is no why. My therapist would prefer I not delve into Why I'm Like This, because he's very focused on The Now, and on what I can change. But if you were to listen in on Christmas dinner at either of my parents', I think a few things would be fairly obvious. It wouldn't necessarily explain precisely why I'm this way, nor why my brother is comparatively even-keeled. But it likely would explain certain obsessions, certain thought patterns, certain well-worn paths of self-bashing, certain failures in self-care.

The fictional Savannah Wingo suffers terrible traumas at the hands of family members, society, and strangers. Her illness doesn't make sense, and yet it sort of does, because of those traumas. Professor Saks's illness frighteningly began to manifest when she was very young, but she is careful to emphasize the wholesome, loving family environment she grew up in, the fact that she wanted for nothing. Her illness doesn't make sense and likely never will. She writes powerfully about the facts of her life: Sometimes things just unravel. Sometimes the bottom drops out. Despite our best mythology and our best therapies, some things simply cannot be overcome, nor can they be explained. She will be on drugs for the rest of her life, no matter how hard she fights her illness.

I don't know if I will always be on stimulants and antidepressants. I've wanted to be off drugs pretty much ever since I got on them. This is probably due to the fact that when they were first prescribed--I was fourteen--the meds were presented to me not as a remedy for a sickness, but as a punishment for bad behavior. I have received mixed messages from my family ever since then: "Obey your elders and doctors and take the meds," but also, "Why can't you just [exercise] [diet] [socialize] [read] [bake] [12-step] [something] yourself free of it?!" And I've always been conflicted and guilty about how much of me is bonafide crazy, which would be somehow excusable, and how much is just lazy (the result of not fighting it hard enough). None of this worrying is particularly helpful, and I suspect that eventually, like the professor, I will come around to the point of view that dictates seeing mental illness like we see diabetes or other chronic disease, and that I am simply just taking my insulin.

Thanksgiving Frenzy One: Hooray for Stuffing (and Pioneer Woman!)

2008-12-02T15:13:00.005-05:00

Holy crap, it's been a lot longer than I thought it had been.

Anyway, this is the first of a series of posts on Stuff I Made for Thanksgiving, and the only one that will literally be about Stuff(ing, that is).

My mom has a rule that once you turn 30, you have to bring something to Thanksgiving. Last year was my first year "on," and I was assigned stuffing. Spouse doesn't do onions, nor does he do nuts, so I scoured the Web for something inoffensive. It involved shallots and white wine. I made cornbread for it from a Jiffy mix (mit lard!). It didn't kill anyone, and it even received compliments, but I don't know that it was anything to write home about.

This year Spouse informed me that he doesn't really dig stuffing, onion-free or otherwise. So I decided to make a fairly normal stuffing, but throwing in, er, stuff I would really enjoy. Pioneer Woman had been running a Thanksgiving series so I checked out what she had to say on the subject. (I'd consider PW an authority on food, period, but especially on traditional types of dishes that are meant to please a crowd.) I printed out her recipe and wondered how to reduce it, since she cooks for something like a baseball team.

Her recipe calls for crusty Italian white bread and for traditional unsweetened cornbread, 8 cups of each, in 1" cubes. I decided rather randomly to just halve it and go for 4 cups of each. I love cornbread but I don't have a skillet (yet--getting one for Christmas!) so I didn't feel like making it from scratch, and frankly the Jiffy mix wasn't that great last year. (In my 8" square pan, it went completely flat.)

For the crusty bread, I went for Cuban bread from Publix, which is a huge long, light-as-a-feather loaf, so full of air that if you can't eat it all in about 36 hours, it will become hard as a rock. (That's not usually a problem for me, put it that way.) You want your stuffing fodder somewhat dry so it will absorb whatever liquid you throw at it, so I thought Cuban bread would be perfect. (Someday I will write a paean to Publix, particularly its bakery department that always seems to be making chocolate chip cookies when I walk by, but that is a story for another day.)

I had a harder time finding cornbread. Publix stopped making it, the lady said, because it didn't sell well. I found some at a Kroger and was so stoked that I made the fatal error of not checking the ingredients before I bought. Problem: Sugar was listed before cornmeal. We sampled it and it was like yellow layer cake. So that was out.

I called the Somewhat Hippie-fied corporate grocery and all they had was jalapeno cheddar cornbread, which is probably tasty but not what I was after. I called the Fancier Gourmet one next, and the bakery person was knowledgeable enough to tell me that theirs was sweet and probably not right for stuffing. This was Wednesday at something like 3 pm, and I still hadn't made it out of the house. I decided to do What the Locals Do, which is go to the nearest meat-and-three and buy some of their cornbread. I asked the friendly young lady at the counter if she had heard of people doing this and she nodded and said, "All the time." Back in my car, I took a sample (for research purposes! How often do you actually get to do that?!) and it was perfect. Good and gritty.

And then I went to Big Lots, ostensibly to buy a cooling rack, and spent an hour looking at $4 Christmas CDs. I had 3 in hand but thought better of it.

Later that evening, I had more than enough Cuban bread to make 4 cups of cubes, plus a good-sized sandwich or two. Six pieces of restaurant cornbread, minus one corner, were exactly enough to make 4 cups. I spread the cubes out on cookie sheets. That night after I took our frozen pizza out of the oven and turned off the heat, I put the cookie sheets in to get the bread a little crunchy. (Paranoid of any complications, I also stuck a Post-It on the oven controls, lest I forget I had stowed things in there that probably would not benefit from a round of pre-heating.)

Thursday morning, I chopped one yellow onion, about half of a bunch of celery, a peeled and cored Rome apple that a produce section sign told me would benefit from being baked, and one cup of toasted pecans. (Joy says you can toast nuts in the microwave. Don't believe it. It's not the same.) I put three tablespoons of unsalted butter and a good dose of olive oil in a pan. I was at the bottom of my jar of minced garlic and elected to just clean it out [deviation from PW's recipe]. Then I added the celery and onion.

When the onions were starting to turn clear, I added a two-cup container of reduced-sodium chicken broth. Then I started shaking in dried herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme, basil, and oregano, I think) and fresh ground pepper. At this point it smelled wonderful, but exactly the way I recall Stove Top smelling, and I wondered why the heck I was bothering with all this.

Things got a little hairier once the broth was at a boil, because I was waffling about how much to actually add to the stuffing. I had my giant bowl full of crunchy bread cubes at the ready and started adding the celery and onion with a slotted spoon. Then I ladled in some broth. Then more of the aromatics. Etc. Etc.

Then I threw in the pecans, the apple, and most of a jar of Hormel real bacon bits. [All deviations!] If I did this again, I'd save about half the jar to garnish the top with. I saved maybe a fourth, and that wasn't enough to really create a top layer of bacony goodness. (It is probably cheaper and better to just fry and crumble your own bacon, but that would not have been well received at my house, given that the goods would be going into a dish that Spouse wasn't going to eat.)

But I still had some liquid in the pan, and not knowing where the line between too dry and too wet was, I decided to throw it all in. I might be more conservative with this next time, because I think the stuffing came out a tiny bit too wet. And yet, you don't want to risk it being dry, either. (Hence the waffling.)

I did a taste test and with the bacon in there I felt that I did not need to add salt.

The coolest part was that the mixture fit perfectly into my 9 x 13" pan. That was just plain luck.

When we got to Mom's, the pan went in the oven for about half an hour at 350 degrees. It didn't take on much color but I think that is because there were several other things sharing the oven space.

And my family thought it was mad crazy good. Dad even called Friday to tell me how much he liked it. (In fact, he said it was "Off. Da. Hook." No joke.)

Our grocery store plastic pepper grinder, which we've had for over a year, seems to be on its way out, because occasionally, eating the stuffing, you'd get a big POW! of pepper, which I am guessing means that the grind is too coarse. But nobody seemed to mind, and I actually really liked it.

Good Things (edit)

2008-10-31T10:35:00.006-04:00

Before law school, in my capacity as an administrative muckety-muck at a stodgy private university on the South Side of Chicago, I used to have to email Professor Khalidi to schedule quarterly meetings for a committee my boss ran. Much as I hate his name being dragged through the mud, I find this connection incredibly amusing.

On my very first visit to the Gothic campus, a matter of blocks from where I lived, I was in my City Year uniform and had to demonstrate what they called "PT" by doing jiggly jumping jacks in front of wildly overprivileged undergrads.

Sometime after I had been hired, at a breakfast for University employees in student services, I was seated at Mrs. Obama's table and actually spoke with her. I said I had met her husband when he spoke to us at City Year. Since she ran community service programs, I asked if the school had an alternative break program, because that was something I had helped run at my much less tony undergrad school.

In the sad in-between period, after I had quit City Year but before I had found anything else to do, I called the Obama campaign office, looking for work. This was back when he was running for the Illinois Senate against former Black Panther Bobby Rush. In interviews, he describes the outcome as "getting spanked." The guy I spoke with asked me, logically enough, to tell him about myself. Somehow I got to the co-op house I lived in, and he asked me to explain that. All I needed to do was say that instead of paying rent to a traditional landlord, the residents effectively "owned" a share of the house.

That was pretty much what I did. Only instead of saying "a traditional landlord," I said "The Man."

I could easily have volunteered for the campaign, but I was so terribly embarrassed, I never called to follow up.

I have spent a lot of this campaign season kicking myself for not following up, for losing touch with my lawyer relative who was part of the Daley machine, and for ever having moved away from the place I loved so much, especially for something like law school.

Just before Election Day, on Halloween Friday, bar results were posted and I learned I had passed. I had spent the weeks beforehand trying to assure myself that I would be okay no matter what the outcome was, and occasionally taking the risk of imagining what it would be like to call people and give them good news.

Friday afternoon I left my poll-watching post at 3:15 and got home at 3:40. I started the computer, checked the mail, and wheeled the trash cart around to the back of our townhouse. A dear friend, my partner in Bar Exam Purgatory, was waiting on her State A results, which I knew would be up early. At 3:55 p.m., I learned she had passed. I took this as a good omen.

State B's results went up at precisely 4 p.m. but I had to wait until about 4:06, because I'd promised I'd wait until my husband got home. I clicked the link as soon as the door opened. When he came into the room, I clicked on my letter. And there I was. And it took me a long time to believe it. And to a certain extent, I still don't.

I got to make my happy phone calls, and it was better than I could have ever imagined. Then we went out to dinner.

Saturday I went a little insane. I had plans with my mom and grandmother and my husband wasn't coming. I got extremely upset, not about that particular evening being ruined, but more about the larger patterns. It was fairly miraculous that Spouse thought to come home early Friday, and knew to take me out that night; I should have focused on that instead. There are certain things that I have to let go of worrying about because I cannot change other people's behavior. I can only change my response to said behavior. I hadn't yet come to that conclusion, so Saturday and a lot of Sunday sucked.

And now? You'd think I'd be in some kind of wonderful happy haze but I'm not. I'm freaking out about finding work because lawyer jobs aren't advertised here. Isn't that great? It's hard enough submitting resumes and getting through interviews, but imagine trying to find work when you literally can't find the work. Seriously. The answer, of course, is NETWORKING! Wahhh.

Yesterday was my birth-control shot. My blood pressure is always taken beforehand, and I was expecting it to be lower after my good news, and it wasn't. That sucked.

Tomorrow is therapy and I know exactly what it's going to be about--my need to be willing to get my shit done even when I don't feel like it. That and what to do about meds, because Vyvanse Sucks Ass. Focalin gave me a tad too much energy but I feel completely sapped on Vyvanse, and it hasn't helped with the Evening Grumpies anyway.

What the fuck is my problem? Seriously! My guy actually won, and I passed the freaking bar exam! These are great, wonderful, amazing, life-changing things. What am I so afraid of? I'm supposed to be feeling invincible right now!

I have to remember that I have nothing to lose by calling people and asking for help, or by sending out resumes, or by looking all over the place for jobs, or by calling the few attorneys I have tenuous connections to and asking them where the hell the work is. I have nothing to lose but this lazy life I hate but have gotten comfortable in.

Now I am going to go call the clerk of court and arrange to get sworn in next week. And then I am going to call and make haircut appointments.

Bonk, Jiggle, Bonk (baking while angry)

2008-10-26T15:33:00.008-04:00

So last night I was trying to bake something good enough to give away, because our neighbor across the street just had something weird happen. Technically it wasn't a death in the family but the situation was similar enough that my Southern-fried brain went into Must Bake Something mode as soon as I heard about it.

'Twas my second attempt at making an orange-flavored quick bread with dried cranberries in it. I don't know how I got stuck on this. Some time ago I stayed at a hotel that gave away Otis Spunkmeyer* cookies at the front desk, and I had an oatmeal cookie made with dried cranberries instead of raisins, and it blew my mind.

I found a recipe online, and for some reason I cannot bake just one bread, so I doubled it. And the dough came out very wet and sticky, such that I thought about adding a little more flour, but decided "Nooo, best not to futz with it." I don't know if that would have done much good or not.

So I took them out when they seemed done, and let them sit in the pans, on a rack, as instructed, for 15 minutes. The Pyrex loaf pans seemed to hold their heat a lot longer than the nonstick metal pans I use for brownies and such. At 15 minutes they were still too hot to touch without mitts, and didn't move at all when overturned. I decided to wait. At 22 minutes, the breads looked moist and sticky and I thought that the longer they stayed in-pan the gooier things would get. I failed to make the connection between "These look kinda sticky" and "These don't seem inclined to come out." So I ran a knife around the edges, turned the pan over, bonked the pan edge on the counter, jiggled, bonked again. Nothing. I ran the knife around more thoroughly and tried again, and, well, most of the loaf came out.

I got Spouse up from WOWing to try the other one, and it was worse: most of the bottom half of the loaf stayed stuck in the pan. He looked at me, shrugged wordlessly, and went back to his cave. (Have I mentioned yet that our fights consist of me yelling and swearing, and him going nonverbal? No? My bad.)

The breads are a bit overdone on the edges, but squishy in the middle. And I put pecans in both loaves**, which means I have two big, dense, sweet breads all to myself, unless I give the less-addled one to Mom.

Apparently a lot of women bake to console themselves on bad days. Sometimes this results in pretty output, good enough to give away, and sometimes not. I've had two disasters in a row now--I burned brownies, for gosh shakes--and I think I may be resorting to Publix the next time I need carbohydrate consolation. Maybe I will just write our neighbor a card.

________________

*Seriously, man, what marketing genius came up with that?
"Okay, team: we need a name that connotes wholesome tasty baked goods."
"All right. Let's try a soul music icon's first name, a slang term for a bodily fluid, and then a German-sounding ethno-snippet."

**Those would be the Goddamn Nuts my husband won't eat (as in "Goddamn it, I'm putting the Goddamn Nuts in both of 'em!"), chopped with alarming force while listening to Tori Amos. Did I mention I was angry? And that bar results come out next Friday? And that Vyvanse doesn't appear to be doing anything at all, and my face still looks like hamburger?

Notes to Self: Baking

2008-10-25T22:29:00.004-04:00

Note the First: I love our little townhouse, but my one non-negotiable for wherever we choose to live next, whenever that might happen, is going to be a danged window in the danged oven door.

Note the Second: When baking something that must be absolutely, completely cool before it is wrapped in foil, because otherwise it would get gummy: do NOT start bonking around in the kitchen at 8:30 at night, such that the item doesn't come out of the oven until 10:30 and won't be cool until who knows when.

Note the Third, not so much to myself: I am, at this point, thoroughly perturbed at Joy of Cooking. Its snickerdoodles were a disaster, its orange bread mediocre, its crumb cake...kinda crummy. (Spouse deemed it Not Good Enough for His Office.) And as for the previously discussed Mocha Ice Cream Cake? You are to make it with coffee, not mocha, ice cream. Grrrrr. They have the edition I learned on at my branch library and I just may bring it home my next time out.

And yet: Its method for sautéed boneless skinless chicken breasts is easy and delish. I've only messed it up once, and that was after getting it right a couple of times. I also was able to poach BSCBs just fine by improvising on their instructions. So maybe it's not a baking book, but it's better for real food? I suppose I should withhold judgment for right this second.

Cooking the books

2008-10-19T14:21:00.008-04:00

Joy of Cooking was essential to my first learning about cooking. I moved into a co-op house after undergrad and hadn't cooked much other than hot fudge cake before that. So when I learned to cook, it was by preparing vegan meals for twenty. The house had a threadbare, battered copy that eventually split in two. When I say it was "battered," I mean both that it was beat-up, and that it bore actual batter spots. This was a well-loved book and newbie cooks who were "on" to make dinner--people like me, who needed a recipe for basic steamed rice--would get frantic if they couldn't find it. When I left the co-op for law school in another city, and eventually got settled into a shared apartment, one of my housemates had a copy and didn't mind sharing it. Hers was pristine, so I took to copying recipes down in the big blank book I use for food-related notes and magazine clippings.

So I learned from the 1997 Joy, which was apparently controversial, because it departed from prior versions that featured droller copy, more Rombauer family lore, and sections on how to tastefully prepare a meal made of furry woodland creatures. I've had the new 2006 version for a year now--a gift from my grandmother. I'd be lost without it, but I think I may try to hunt up a copy of the prior one. The current version is organized a little differently, but it's hard to describe how with any accuracy without both versions. I do remember there used to be a separate section just on "American fruit desserts," which I miss.

The major problem with the new book: it's riddled with typos--in the basic bread recipe, even!--and one problem that's not addressed by this errata sheet is that there are incorrect page numbers all over the place. And I am very cheesed off about this: To make Mocha Ice Cream Cake (p. 731), you need to make 2 quarts of Mocha Ice Cream. One is referred to p. 832 for that recipe, but it does not exist on that page, nor anywhere else in the ice cream chapter. There's coffee ice cream, and chocolate ice cream, but no mocha. From perusing food blogs, and my own experimentation, it can be difficult to get mocha ice cream right, and I could use a real recipe for it. I'm riled up enough now that I think I'm going to email them about it.

There used to be a recipe for barley with toasted pecans, and co-op people used to really like that. It's gone, but you could just toast some pecans in a skillet, prepare the basic cooked barley from the gigantic grains chart on p. 364, and then mix the pecans into the pot. The 1997 version used a little tree symbol to indicate those cookie recipes that were especially suited to holiday baking. Personally I thought that was charming, but I have some particular neuroses about holiday baking, and if you saw my mother's annual operation you'd understand why.

Anyway, the consensus seems to be that the current version has corrected the problems of the 1997 version. I didn't know enough of the backstory to even know that the 1997 version had problems, and I think I might like it better.

SNAQ Installment One

2008-10-18T00:36:00.004-04:00

I just started this thing and exactly one person other than me has looked at it (thank you dearly, kind soul, whoever you are--come back and leave a comment and I will mail you some cookies or something), so I am not entitled to a FAQ. Hence the SNAQ section for SNarkily Asked Questions that I will pose to myself.

So, "Bring a Torch"? WTF?

It's...okay, look. It is neither revolutionary nor bad-ass. It's a danged Christmas carol, ok? And it's in French. And if you went to Catholic school like I did, and got French instruction beginning in 7th grade, you probably would have sung this song at your annual extravaganza of carols and inspiring readings. The song involves two girls, Jeanette and Isabelle, and they are supposed to bring a torch and tell the whole village that Jesus is born. Okay? Sheeze, I'm not even settled on the God thing, and my blog title is from a Christmas song. But...if you didn't grow up doing Christmas, maybe it will still sound tough. Whatever.

Ok, but why call your blog that?

Because I went through almost twenty pithy phrases and they were all either already taken, or too general, or too obscure, or too close to profanity, or too Viennese, and I really wanted to get started, and my husband was tired of hearing pitches. He came up with an adorable name that I absolutely love, but I don't have the stones to use it because it's vaguely reminiscent of certain slang terms that, um, anyway, maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.

Whatever. So, how many times have you taken the bar?

I sat for the bar and failed it, in February 2006, July 2006, and February 2007. Then I kind of had a fit and threw out the state-specific materials.

I studied for the February 2008 administration of another state's bar but pulled out the Friday before because I knew I wasn't ready.

And then I sat for that state's bar in July 2008. There's some variation by state, but results for February exams come out in April or May, and results for the July exams come out around Halloween. If that sounds completely, unbelievably horrible, that's because IT IS.

Damn, woman. Are you completely insane?

Pretty much. I don't know exactly what my current diagnosis is but it probably includes ADD, generalized anxiety disorder, and major depression. And maybe some OCD and social anxiety.

No, I mean, why do you keep taking the bar?

Because I feel like I have to at least try practicing law before I give it up and try something else.

Why are you up at 1 a.m?

Because I'm on a stimulant for the ADD and I slept really late today so I didn't take my pills until noon.

Uh-huh. Do you always talk in run-on sentences?

Pretty much.

How the hell do you pronounce "Vyvanse," anyway?

2008-10-17T16:08:00.019-04:00

Edited 11/17/08 to add this N.B.: Welcome! I have no freaking clue how to pronounce Vyvanse; personally, I say "viv-VANTZ," but whatever floats your boat. I tried the stuff for a month after having some afternoon wear-off issues with Focalin, and I cannot overemphasize how much VYVANSE SUCKED FOR ME; I could barely get out of bed, much less leave the house to get stuff done, and basic tasks like cooking dinner (or, gulp, showering) became these huge, unapproachable monsters that I avoided like crazy. I'm now back on the Focalin and feeling a lot better. For the part of this entry that actually covers my Vyvanse experience, see the final four paragraphs. For valuable layperson perspective on psych drugs, go read CrazyMeds, or The Trouble with Spikol, or if I may be so bold, some of my very own entries, helpfully labeled "drugs" and/or "therapy." For professional advice, ASK YOUR SHRINK, for crying out loud.

I finally understand this Twitter thing, I think. (Although if I ever sign up, I will never, ever refer to anything I post as a "tweet." That's just silly.) I believe the popularity is because of how FAST it must be to post something that little. Because unless you are doing a one-off entry, like "Hey, go watch these
[choose one: adorable/grumpy/furry/scary/disgusting/ninja]
[choose one: lorises/babies/otters/bears/cats/candidates for executive office]
[choose one: sniff for a sandwich/dance with Ellen/hold hands/get caught lying/eat lemons/act stoned/fatefully fingerquote/creep stealthily]
on YouTube," it takes freaking forever to write something and settle on it. Or it takes me forever, anyway.

I've been trying to leave comments places where it seems relevant and appropriate to do so, and to even summarize a quick little anecdote, recapturing maybe 90! freakin'! seconds! of conversation, I have to fiddle with it, hit preview, change something, hit preview again, fix it so the entire thing is not italicized, preview to make sure it took, blah dee blah blah blah. I do almost everything the roundabout way, but sheesh.

And if it takes that long to write up talk that people actually uttered, how long does it take a novelist to make it up completely? I heard an author talking on NPR years ago about how he had tried to write fiction and got stuck on how hard it was to get a character successfully across a room. That would be me. (Also, hello? My life is not goofmoid enough, I have to go making shit up? Iiiii don't think so.)

I've had kind of a strange week. I'd noticed recently that at the end of the day--unfortunately for my spouse, it was usually right when he was getting home from work--that for no reason I'd suddenly start feeling weepy. I'd be at the produce stand, or on my way home from getting milk, and blam-o. I'm pretty mood-swingy anyway, which is probably why it took me a long time to discern an actual pattern. Like if I'm in the car and "Gypsy" comes on the radio? It wouldn't be out of character at all for me to cry then. What made me take notice was the fact that I could be having a perfectly good day and ZOT--I'd suddenly feel like crying.

So I mentioned this when I saw my shrink last week, and she suggested we try a different ADD med, one with an easier transition from day to evening, and I started it Monday morning. I spent most of this week sitting in front of this computer, looking at blogs, and trying to write for this one. And I'd look up and it'd suddenly be four in the afternoon and I hadn't showered yet. I can't believe it's Friday already.

In my experience, futzing with meds is like walking a tightrope. Without a net. Over a pit filled with alligators. This is the first time I've ever been able to just switch something out, instead of having to titrate down on the old med and gradually phase in the new one. It's slightly less weird this way, and yet. On Wednesday SB [Sugar Bear, or Spouse of Bring] came home and, like clockwork, I was in a strange place mood-wise. I started mewling, "M-m-snorrrk maybe it was a dumb idea to change my medications this close to Ha-Hal-snifffonnnk-Halloween."

Because on Halloween, or maybe a day or so before that, I am going to find out my bar results.

things I am weird about: the phone

2008-10-15T11:11:00.014-04:00

You know how lots of voicemail systems allow you to play back your message, so you can hear every little "um," "like," and "you know"? Yeah. I had to learn to Just Freaking Hang Up unless it's a total flameout situation, like if I had to clear my throat while giving my phone number (or gave the home instead of the cell, or entirely forgot to give one at all).

I'm supposed to check in with my therapist on weekdays by leaving him a message, and his voicemail cuts you off at three minutes. There was one day I filled it all the way up twice, erasing it twice, before realizing: it's my therapist, he's already well aware I'm crazy, and he'll deal. And then I filled it up a final time, and hung up when I was done.

The last time I had a real job, I was constantly having to genuflect and supplicate to people on the phone, because I needed information they had, a client was entitled to something it was their job to provide, or because I needed guidance from my boss, who worked in a different city.

I am horrible at the phone, even on my best day. I am unsure of myself, my high voice makes me sound like a five year-old, I stammer and trip over my own tongue, and if I catch the slightest hint of "no" in someone's tone, I get thrown off and discouraged. This is a sad combination of factors anyway, but it is fatal if your job success hinges on your ability to phone a complete stranger, explain a sad situation, and persuade the stranger to do something about it. If your target ass-hauler perceives, via super-sensitive ass-hauler antennae, the slightest possibility that no ass must be hauled, no comfortable thumb disturbed, if only you can be eased or forced off the phone, that is precisely the outcome you can expect. In other words: To get anyone to haul ass, you have to make it abundantly clear that you will not hang up unless or until you get what you need.

I was an utter failure at getting anyone to haul ass, and I developed a huge complex about making phone calls. Eventually, unless I was ordering pizza, I couldn't dial the phone without making out a list of exactly what information I needed, doodling a checkbox next to each point. I would spend half an hour formulating these lists in what I thought was the most logical order, to make for the most efficient call possible, preparing for every conceivable question, with rebuttals for every possible "no." I would work myself into such a lather worrying about each call that it would take three tries to dial the damn phone. And of course the conversation never went like I wanted it to anyway.

My Boss's in-box was Where Email Goes to Die, I learned too late, and there was nothing I could do about it. I would spend hours carefully composing emails, designed to be answerable merely by typing a "Y" or "N," and couldn't even get those answered. Important concerns would sit until they could wait no longer, and I'd frantically place a call to Boss, who'd dispense whatever wisdom I needed to hear, usually in reproachful, calm-down tones. I got the distinct impression I was being a bother every time I called. I began to dread calling Boss more than calling strangers. I would hurry, hurry, hurry to get off the phone as quickly as possible without pissing Boss off, hang up, sigh with relief, and then realize I'd forgotten something essential from my list. Necessitating another call. Crap. I said "Crap!" so often in that job it became my signature catchphrase.

Maybe I should go straight to letters or faxes and leave the phone to those able to speak in short sentences. I am amazingly talented at leaving the type of message that no one wants to return. When I call attorneys trying to network, they don't call me back, and I'm too chicken to call them again. Not only did I suck at advocating for other people, I can't even do it for myself.

Here's another example. I last saw my primary-care doctor in early September. He wrote me a prescription for Retin-A after I pointed out the dark spots on my face from the huge cysts I got while I was studying. I waited about a week, until I needed refills on other things, and then I dropped off the slip at my pharmacy. When I got home from running errands, the pharmacy had already left a message: under our insurance, I needed prior authorization to get my skin goop. They'd already faxed a form to my doctor's office but I should call to make sure it got there.

So I call the doctor's office and everything sounds fine. They promise to call me once the form is signed and sent off wherever it needs to go. So I wait. I put myself through major stress worrying about ever getting a job, and my face explodes like it hasn't done since before the exam. I wonder if the problem is that I saw the doc on a good skin day. I pick at everything. I get huge, dark scabs, one smack in the middle of my nose. I cry when I see myself in the bathroom mirror. I call the doctor's office again. And again. And again.

More than a month after I submitted the prescription for the gorram skin goop, I call the doctor's office for the fifth time. The nice lady (they're always pleasant and patient with me) says they've just received the paperwork from InsCo, and they'll fax it to the pharmacy once my doc signs it, and they'll call me when all this is accomplished. Yay. I hang up.

Wait a minute. What about the paperwork the pharmacy originally faxed over? Like, weeks ago, back when I originally tried to fill the prescription? Did it never get there at all? Was that not the right paperwork? I don't know. If I needed this medication to breathe or something, I'd be in serious trouble.

I called the pharmacy to find out how much it would cost out-of-pocket just to be done with it already, and it turns out I'll save about $35 if I wait for the paperwork to go through. So I am stuck. I'm 31 years old, I suck at the phone, and I still have giant, honking acne.

Hell continues to freeze?!

2008-10-11T13:00:00.005-04:00

What the heck?! First there was David Brooks at a speaking engagement referring to Gov. Palin's anti-intellectualism as a "fatal cancer" on the GOP, covered at HuffPo. He is absolutely effusive in his praise of Senator Obama, praising his intellect, saying he is "phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team." Then his regular NYT column elaborates on how the anti-brainy attitude has hurt the Republicans, while backing off the deadly disease metaphor. Reading that, I actually learned something:

Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1.

Holy cow. Is this actually going to happen, people? Are we getting the White House?

I was feeling quite pessimistic about this. Monday I ventured downtown to Obama HQ, and they had me phonebank. I made 45 calls and actually spoke to about 30 people, all senior citizens, and it broke down almost evenly into thirds. One-third would not tell me who they were supporting. One-third had decided to support Obama. And one-third were undecided.

And I do not understand for the life of me how anyone could be undecided at this point. I've tried to think about things the way I imagine an older Southerner might, and I still don't get it. Voting for McCain makes much more sense to me than still being undecided this close to November.

And I'm scared that for generations of white Southerners it may come down to his race. It definitely did for one lady I talked to. Yeesh. I marked her as supporting "other."

Another lady said she "just didn't know," saying "they just came out with something today on public radio." That was the morning the Ayers attacks had begun, and I worried that they had started to stick.

But when I went down to vote early, it was also the last day to become registered, and at 5:00 the line flowed out the door and down the sidewalk.

I was freaked yesterday because, like a moron, I watched the "Sidewalk to Nowhere" video, of people waiting in line to see McCain at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. It was absolutely frightening. I can understand people being angry about the state of the world, I really can. What I can't understand is that in an age when there is plenty of information available, and numerous news outlets feature some kind of rumor-debunking capacity, why in hell would you base your vote on an email forward? Because it was clear from what people were yelling that they had gotten their facts via in-box. How did poorly formatted, thoroughly misspelled emails, complete with faked photos and the inevitable dozen animated flags, become a trusted source of political news? I see these things when I periodically clean out my grandma's Outlook, and it always raises my blood pressure. I'm frequently dismissive of my liberal arts background but I suppose it gets the credit for making me a skeptical, sophisticated media consumer. (That and $5 will get me a cappuccino, right?)

And then David Brooks comes out sounding like a scholar. I don't know what to think.

Hell freezes over (I sort of agree with Fox News)

2008-10-10T22:33:00.002-04:00

I emailed the Fug Girls last night about Sarah Palin's Newsweek cover, and Heather actually wrote back, which was a huge thrill. This is mostly a rework of what I wrote them. I just saw the Fox clip this morning, so that's new.

The other day at the mailbox I peeked at the cover of Newsweek and squeaked, "Ewwwwww." Suddenly I was way too acquainted with Governor Palin's pores. I desperately do not want this woman to become Vice President, and she makes me angry on a thousand levels, but seeing this picture, I can't help but feel for her. You can count the mustache-area hairs, see where any recent zits have been--it was like looking into a mirror, down to the annoying chin-crease bumps we appear to share. Granted, she had makeup on, and I almost never do, and I'm sure my upper lip is much more hairy, because I'm not about to get mine waxed.* Nonetheless, I was horrified for her.

My spouse points out that Newsweek doesn't pull punches with its cover photos, if Henry Paulsen's recent scary mug was any indication. Check out that throbbing temple vein! It's not a fashion magazine in the first place, and its content and design aren't at all stylish. I had typed "I wonder if celebrities have any right to be angry when they are portrayed this way," but then I realized: this is what Governor Palin looks like. What I'm complaining about is actually a truthful portrayal of a middle-aged face. We media consumers are so accustomed to manipulated photos that when an unretouched image is blown up, emphasizing a pretty person's imperfections, it seems pointedly, needlessly cruel.

I [still!] haven't gotten to the actual story yet, but the cover copy reads "She's One of The Folks (And that's the problem)." As if they're trying to say, "She's bumpy! She's lumpy! She's flawed!" Well, duh. After all those non-answers in the CBS clips, I thought Katie Couric was going to throw something. (I had to excuse myself for a calming cocktail during the veep debate.) There are ample legitimate criticisms of Sarah Palin's readiness to govern--so why attack her face so pointedly? I don't get it, and I don't buy that they were trying to highlight the Governor's smile, either.

Fox brought in two lady politicos to discuss the "issue," such as it is, and of course the Republican got to tear Newsweek a new one while the Democrat had to prop up Palin, remind us that it was the "Women in Leadership" issue of the magazine, and say she thought Palin looked great, "folksy" even. I don't doubt her sincerity--and according to her American U bio, she's a regular token lib on Fox, which means she's entitled to combat pay and my eternal gratitude, whether I agree with her or not.

_____________

*I do get my brows waxed because I don't have the fortitude to tweeze and my natural arch is quite severe, giving me a perpetual glare, à la Evil Bert.

Asparagus haiku

2008-10-10T19:13:00.003-04:00

Written after a night out with my mom and grandmother. First we all got horribly lost because the dang road the restaurant was on doesn't exist according to Google. Dinner was mediocre, but the evening was redeemed when we got to the show. Several hours later I visited the loo and panicked, thinking something was terribly wrong with my personal plumbing. Then I remembered: oh yeah, asparagus.

If I spear more of
your spears, will you ease up? My
eyes are watering.

I know it has been
months, but my lover will not
take a single bite.

And I cannot munch
an entire bunch alone.
I'm not a rabbit.

Tonight at Pricey
Steakhouse, I pounced. The side dish
outshined my sad fish.

A most delicious
six spears. But five hours
hence: the smell of revenge.

I'd eschew all the
other veggies if only
you'd quit pulling rank.