Dropping the Ball (in NYC and elsewhere)

Okay.

I saw Chuck and the kid last night, so I could deliver the Kid's Christmas present (and a baguette, and a stollen), and I also got to have dinner with them, which was at a cheap Mexican place around the corner from Chuck's apartment. I think it went okay, which would be good. I know that sounds weird, but the reality is, with these outings, it seems like it went okay, and then I get a ration of shit from Chuck, usually a couple of days later, because the fact that I'm nice and so on apparently makes the breakup harder to deal with. Or something. Chuck looks and sounds good, though, so I'm hoping it'll be okay this time; perhaps the fact that he'll be off to his mom's today with the Kid (they're doing their Christmas this weekend), then back to a New Year's day party with his current Special Friend, will help. (Yes, when we do talk/see each other, I often get updates on his love life, which is fine with me. I don't provide any information of my own, however.)

I was in a good mood today, for awhile. My coworkers all wished me a happy new year (with a firm handshake, no less, which I found strangely touching), I got out of work early (noon! yay!), which means I got my groceries (back to that in a minute) and I'll get some editing done, which is good, because I have to work tomorrow (boo!), but also must get some editing work done. Turns out that BT's restaurant wants much bigger wads of mini croissants than usual, and I didn't have enough stashed in the freezer, so I made some dough, which is fermenting in the walk-in even as I type, and I'll go in and laminate the dough, make up two orders of mini pastries (for customer orders), and cut up the croissants, which should get me out of there by 11 at the latest, I'm hoping. I'm going to a friend's house tomorrow, and I'm supplying a bunch of the food (except the ham), mostly because I like to cook. In addition to the aforementioned ham, he has some squash (probably acorn; I haven't seen it) that he wants to use up, so I'm going to make a mushroom/brown rice/wheatberry pilaf, throw in some black-eyed peas, carrots, and spinach, stuff the squash, and throw some cheddar on top. Avocados were on sale, so I made an executive decision in favor of guacamole, which means I also got a tomato and some cilantro (which I can also use with the mangos in my refrigerator, and some black beans, to make something to bring for lunches). Pears were on sale, too, so I think I'm going to poach them, perhaps in white wine with some ginger, honey, cinnamon, and vanilla, and then serve them on gingerbread, which I also have to make. With whipped cream, even, maybe. And there's half a loaf of cinnamon-raisin brioche in the freezer, which makes excellent French toast.

So that all had me humming (INSIDE my head; I try not to hum out loud), but then I came home and found out that one of the insurance companies has declined to cover me. If the other one says no, too--and, really, why wouldn't it--then I'm seriously fucked. Really, it's a good thing I'm not seeing Chuck today; if he'd paid the fucking COBRA on time, and/or been willing to sign me up on his new company's insurance (he starts on January 2, I guess), then it probably would not have been nearly as difficult to switch. All I can do is hope the insurance agent with whom I'm dealing can help me. It is so fucking depressing.

But I can't think about that now, not least because I can't do a thing about it until Tuesday at the earliest, and, second, I have a ton of more productive things to do and think about. (Tomorrow would have been my sister's 47th birthday, but I don't feel like going down that road today.) If I don't get around to posting before the new year comes along, I wish you all the best of everything. May this year be better than last year.

One New Project

I did it--I bought this, in preparation for turning it into a needlepoint. I wasn't able to find a cheaper print (and I wanted something resembling true color), but I saw they had a sale going on, so WTF. Now I have to suck it up and get an Ott light, and I notice that Blick has cheaper prices on them (plus I get a discount there, and I'll see if they'll ship to a store for free), but I need to decide whether to get a floor model or a table model. The latter is cheaper, but the former is easier to move around, especially in my apartment. And, of course, I have to get the scrim and draw the picture and get the thread, so I won't actually take the first stitch for at least two weeks, I'm guessing. And I don't know where I'm going to find the time to do all of this, but I've been missing having a needlepoint on which to work, so it's time to start a new one.

I keep thinking I'm going to do something today--and I've managed to do the laundry and make my tea for the week--but mostly I'm sitting around. Given that sitting has not been a prominent part of my life for the past two weeks, I don't feel particularly slothful. I may even sit some more later, the better to watch the rest of "Slapshot," so I can send it back to Netflix, and possibly break open one of my presents to myself (I used a gift certificate to get "This is Spinal Tap," "Animal House," "Caddyshack," and Bruce at the Odeon in London, the first two of which arrived today; yes, I know, not exactly what you'd expect an old broad to select, but there you go). What I wish I could do is find my father's pocket watch. I know where it used to be, at the old apartment, but I have no clue where it is now. I've looked in all of the likely locations--at least three times--and several unlikely ones, and now I'm at a loss. I have no clue where I could have put it, and I have no idea where else to look. Either I've outsmarted myself and put it somewhere Safe, in which case it will presumably show up at some point, or I've truly lost it, which would upset me.

It's becoming apparent that I'm not going to come up with anything more profound than this drivel, so I'll spare you any more of it. Do any of you have any plans, exciting or otherwise, for New Year's Eve? Does anyone actually go out? Someone must, given the hordes of people you see on television.

Gifts

Well, I canned the laundry goal, as well as the yoga goal--but I did get up and practice some yoga this morning, which felt good. I also decided to go to Jane's this afternoon. Mostly, I'd been waiting to make sure i was okay this morning, i.e., not maudlin and weepy and crabby, because I really don't want to "share" that with anyone, thanks so much, and I don't want to expect others to pull me out of it, and I don't want to mingle with others when I'm feeling that way. But, it turns out, I'm not feeling that way at all, so I think being social might be just the thing.

Meanwhile, I spoke with my mother this morning, for quite a while, and we had a lovely conversation. I was wondering whether she'd send a Christmas check this year, after our little run-in in August, and, apparently, though the mail has not brought it to me yet, she has not only done so, she's increased the amount, to "make up for what they gave my brother to help him redo his house." Thanks, mom--that's very, very generous of you, and I appreciate it tremendously. (Don't worry; I'll tell her again myself.) I'm certainly not going to run out and spend it willy-nilly (I probably won't spend any of it, if you want to know), but it definitely provides a little breathing room; hell, I might even join the Y after all, especially since there are no joining fees for the first two weeks of January. Ed pointed out that I can join for a couple of months, see if I'm actually managing to work handball or exercise into my schedule, and, if I'm not, drop the membership.

My mother seems to be becoming reconciled to the notion that I'm doing what I'm doing. I've known all along that her freaking out has more to do with worry about me than anything else, but that doesn't make her expression of it any more pleasant. We even talked about my impending divorce, which we hadn't discussed much at all.

Oddly enough, what I think is at the heart of her reconciling herself to me is being around my younger nephew. It's becoming clear that he's exceptionally smart. His teachers certainly say so, and I've been telling anyone who would listen that he is--devising scientific experiments to prove something is not what 6- (now 7-)year-olds typically do, for example. (As a side note, there's apparently a joking debate about the source of his intelligence, with my brother and my SIL each claiming responsibility--my mother claims it's from me, however, which I find entertaining, seeing as how I had no hand in it.) My mother will often point out that my older nephew is smart, too (which he is), but I pointed out to my mother that it's a lot like me and my sister. My sister always got good grades, she was clearly quite smart--but it was clear, to her and me and to everyone else, that I was smarter, that I had something--call it what you will--that she simply did not. I don't know how to describe it, really, and living with it is sort of an adventure (and my mom said it was kind of scary to her, having me as a kid), but I also know it's there, and I often forget that it's not something everyone has. (One could also say, if I'm so smart, how come I'm not rich, and that's a good question.) Anyway, I think the fact that I pointed out how smart he is, way back in May, sticks in my mom's head, and, as he goes along in school, the parallels become easier to see as well, which somehow works to reconcile my mother, again, to what appear to her to be my oddities and what, to me, is my life.

The other chore I did this morning was sort through and pay my bills and reconcile the budget, which always makes me feel better. Even when money is tight, knowing where I stand helps me. I hope, for his sake, that Chuck learns how to do that some day; he inches closer to it, I think, but then he has episodes of shutting his eyes and plugging his ears and singing la-la-la really loudly, and my experience has been that that never improves the situation.

I realize I'm getting ahead of myself by a couple of days, but I think my "resolutions" for January are to figure out how to work yoga and aerobic exercise (possibly handball) back into my life and to set up a website for the editing work, so I can try to solicit business from the local universities and colleges. I'd thought that this past year would be about getting some solid experience in the baking business and developing a business plan for my own baking business; I certainly accomplished the first part, but the second part was dependent, at least in my initial assumptions, on Chuck helping to support me while I started that business. As a result of the disintegration of my relationship with Chuck, the past year has been about getting the experience in the industry, but it's also been about survival.

On my bad days, I feel like a complete loser. I've never owned a house or a car, or, indeed, anything worth more than a couple thousand dollars. I've earned (and paid for) several degrees I don't appear to be using. I spent my savings on a marriage that didn't last a year, and I loaned most of the rest of my savings, over time, to the person I married and will soon be divorcing, which isn't exactly a testament to my judgment. I won't be able to live on my Social Security earnings. My relationships have been . . . other than normal, and I don't seem to be able to manage a partnership in the usual sense of the word. Not only do I not have a "career," I've made a series of choices that would make it difficult for me to find a normal office job at this point, were I to want, say, a regular schedule, paid vacation days, etc.

On my good days, I feel resourceful. I've managed to go through some difficult times with a good credit rating, which makes certain kinds of transactions easier to manage. At the moment, I actually seem to have two careers, and I could start my own business in either one of them eventually, were I to want to do that. (I also recognize, better than many people, I think, just what it would take to do that, which is why I'm not leaping into it, even as I don't rule it out completely.) I have an incredible array of friends and a wide variety of relationships. I have a pretty incredible array of ex-bosses, for that matter, all of whom would or do help me. I know how to do a lot of different things (though I'm not as good about sharing or passing that stuff on as I'd like to be--which reminds me, one thing I will do with my Christmas gift from my parents is start a new needlepoint, and, perhaps, even get a full-spectrum lamp so I can work on it when it's dark). I may not have a lot of material possessions, but I really don't feel deprived. I feel lucky, most of the time, and wealthy, even if my wealth isn't of the material kind. Like my maternal grandfather, I'm managing to squeeze a lot of entertainment into my life.

And, you know, despite the occasional sadness and depression, I'm pretty happy. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop somehow, and, some days, the ache of sadness is pretty strong, but it doesn't seem to make any kind of sense to me--rational, emotional, psychological, whatever--to wallow in or chase after something that has shattered so badly. Some broken dishes can be repaired and used; some chipped dishes can be used anyway; but shattered dishes, well, you're better off sweeping up the pieces and resigning yourself to the loss of the dish, no matter how much you loved it. Chuck and I had some very good times together, and we were able to give each other the best of ourselves, at least for a little while. My biggest regrets are the other people who got dragged into it--the friends and relatives who came to our wedding; our families; his son--and the legal hassles we still have to manage. It's embarrassing--and it's difficult to discuss, given how short a time the marriage lasted. Yes, fine, we were "together" for longer, but I'm sure people wonder what the hell went on, and I have no desire to tell them, not least because I don't have any idea how to tell that story fairly, and I have no desire to tell it unfairly.

I also must say to you all that your readership, your comments, knowing that you're out there, has been a wonderful gift to me this year, and I thank you for it.

Sitting is Good

Lordy.

It was kind of like a force of nature. I was (relatively) exempt from a certain aspect of it, in that I planned ahead and was able to stock up on croissants. For items that can't be made ahead of time (e.g., baguettes and ciabatta), however, that wasn't an option, and there's just a certain amount of stuff that can be made in any given day. Friday and today I was basically a utility infielder; Friday, especially, I lent a hand to whomever seemed to need something right this minute (mostly Phil), and I cleaned up after people a little (like sweeping the walk-in, which was filthy).

Yesterday I had to make a ton of croissants--fill in the gaps for our usual batches; make up for the unbelievable amounts we sold in the store on Friday and, to a lesser extent, yesterday; and make sure there were enough mini croissants to fill orders (usually we use frozen crappy ones for customer orders, but, since I was making them anyway, Bossman asked me to make the good ones--about nine dozen extra, to be precise) and send them to BT's restaurant. Today I wrapped two chocolate mousse cakes in sort-of-tootsie-roll stuff (which was almost a disaster, because the batch that Bossman made yesterday, he made wrong, and it was Failing, in the sense of tearing and being unworkable, all over the place, but luckily the rest of the batch I made a couple of months ago was still around somewhere), then filled a bunch of mini pastry orders (which would have gone more smoothly if Brad hadn't tried to Help), made up a piece of mini chocolate croissants, and left, at about 11:30.

Friday night was the memorial service for my handball friend, and it was quite nice, if also--of course--sad. I saw many people I haven't seen in awhile, many of whom seemed genuinely glad to see me. And my friend's wife--whom I also know and like tremendously--had put together two collages of photos, which was nice, too. It's still sort of surreal. He would have turned 72 on the 8th, as I noted, and he played handball just before he and his wife went off to visit their daughter, so he appeared to be doing just fine. I saw him over the summer, when I went to the handball gathering, but I didn't talk to him after that--too wrapped up in my own crap. I'm really sad to think that I won't get to see him again, that I won't get to tell him what's going on.

And, while a lot of the past week has actually been nice (and I'll get to that in a minute), tonight is difficult. Chuck and I used to dress up and go out on Christmas eve, to a local restaurant that had a big fancy Cuban dinner; we usually picked up the kid on Christmas day before heading to Chuck's mom's house, so we had the eve to ourselves. The food was delicious; we stuffed ourselves and waddled home. Last year, given our (even more than I thought) precarious financial situation, we decided that would be our gift to each other--our last gifts to each other, as it turned out. And that's been an undercurrent, off and on all week--I'm sad. It's not that I somehow want him back, or secretly want to reconcile: I've become convinced that that's not desirable or possible. It's not anger at how he lied to me or betrayed me or whatever; I could work up a rant, if need be, but I don't have a lot of anger left. It just takes away my breath to think about how quickly things just fell apart. How we went from Apparently Okay, Even If There Are a Few Issues, to Almost Divorced, from joyously happy at our wedding, to barely speaking, in no time at all. And I've discovered I hate telling people about it, because there's no way to discuss it without it sounding like All His Fault, but I just don't want to deal in blame. What's the point? To make it Not My Fault, somehow? And, really, I don't care what he did, we were in the same relationship. kstyle sent a link, in a comment to the post below, to a poem that really expressed a lot of it for me (thank you muchly, k). So, yeah, tonight's kind of difficult. I still don't know what I'm doing tomorrow--I'll see, in the morning, whether I feel up to going to Jane's house. I'm fairly certain that's what I want to, and will, do, but if I'm too exhausted (I'm nodding out, and it's only a little after 5 pm) from this week's marathon, or if I'm too antisocial, I'd be better off staying home.

Other parts of this week were quite nice, though. Friday night, after the memorial service, I met a friend for a beer, and he later rubbed my tired, aching feet for me (thus earning a place in my personal pantheon). Last night, I met a friend for a pleasant, low-key meal at a local place; it was nice to have a meal and a beer knowing that I only had to get through today.

And only one more week of Brad, which pleases me and everyone else at the bakery (including, I think, Bossman). He was trying to be pleasant today, but we're all so tired of him that it's just wearing. I'll have to work pretty closely with him next week, so I get the invoicing crap down well enough, but I can manage that.

Eh; whatever. Tomorrow I want to do a load of laundry; sort through my finances (one of the things that I had to neglect a bit the past two weeks); call my family; possibly (but not for sure) go to the yoga class; and possibly go to Jane's. Modest goals, but about what I can manage. And, hey--a belated happy solstice to you all.

If feet could talk . . .

mine would be whining up a storm right now.

Only 10.5 hours today, so, hey, practically a vacation day. It also turns out that I (along with everyone else) have to work on Sunday, too, so no three-day holiday after all. The intensity is really pretty amazing--I haven't seen anything remotely like it in the past year. It's like a mid-July farmers' market Friday, except it's been going at that pace for more than a week, and I have a feeling that Sunday's culmination is going to be completely over the top. Today I tried to stock up on regular-sized croissants to get us through until next Wednesday, and Saturday I'm going to stock up on the mini croissants we're making for BT's restaurant. We don't have their order for the weekend yet (though BT stopped by the other day and said they had 290 people coming for brunch on christmas day), so I decided to hold off until Saturday, in the hope of not making too many or too few. I expect I'll spend Sunday putting together sweet table trays and boxes and generally being a utility infielder.

All I know is that I'm tired. I can't always remember what day it is, and my feet hurt all the time. Jane invited me to join her gathering on christmas day, but I don't know if I'll be up for that (and, sundry deities bless her, she's willing to let me decide either way at the last minute). Doing a lot of nothing sounds like a fine way to spend the day--though (did I mention this here?) one of my favorite yoga teachers is teaching a class in the morning, at a studio where I have a bunch of class passes and could therefore attend for free, so I could do that. It would be a good way to get myself back into some kind of healthy experience. I've been getting plenty of weightlifting and stand-on-my-feet "exercise," but no aerobic exercise and no yoga, and I've been eating a lot of crap. And a massage: I want one of them, too.

And i want to get through the "holidays" as best I can, which is even more of a challenge this year than it usually is. But I don't feel like writing about that now.

Ehhh

That was my transliteration of a whine, of which is about what I'm capable. I worked 10 hours Tuesday, picked up the kid's present, had beer with friends, and slept, oh, about four hours. At least I wasn't laying awake Fretting, but it's still not enough sleep, and I couldn't get back to sleep. Yesterday I worked 11 hours, much of it spent trying not to smack Brad upside the head. Today, probably more of the same (though I slept like a stone last night). And Bossman will be gone most of next week, which means just me and Brad. But then--he'll be gone.

Off to the croissant mines.

Lost Knowledge

This article fascinated me, and it also made me think of lost knowledges. The people interviewed in the story were old--many in their 70s, 80s, or 90s--and it was THEIR grandparents and granduncles who actually had the knowledge to identify the stuff. I've heard that it's hard to find people who know a lot of construction techniques--stonework of various sorts, for example--like the stuff that would be on churches or the like, for the same reasons, i.e., the knowledge isn't being passed along, and, most likely, it needs to be passed along in an apprentice-like fashion, rather than in a book, say. The "old" knowledges with which I work most frequently--cooking, baking, and needlework--seem to have lasted better.

Food preparation is a mixed one, I suppose. On one hand, some things have gotten much easier because of refrigeration and industrial canning, but fewer people know how to preserve foods without refrigeration. (Even the latest revision of Joy of Cooking leaves out that stuff, IIRC, which is a shame; I've long regarded Joy as a great basic resource.) And while machines and the mass production of food are killing everyone's taste buds (or drowning them in chemicals, salt, and sugar), some machines make life much easier. You really need a big mixer to make 100 pounds of detrempe for croissants, for example, and a large two-way sheeter, as well. (Detrempe is the dough into which the butter is laminated, and this is a sheeter, or, rather, the site of the company that made our sheeter. The one in the upper right corner looks sort of like ours, except ours is old.) Can you make croissants without a sheeter? Yeah, of course you can, but not one person, at the volume I'm producing.

What is that volume? This past week, I made approximately 675 plain croissants, 285 almond, 335 chocolate, 120 cinnamon raisin, and 360 ham and cheese. Those numbers are about a third higher during the farmers' market season (except for the ham and cheese, which we can't sell at the market), such that I'm making well over a thousand plain croissants a week in July and August. Thanks to BT's restaurant, you can add somewhere around 400 plain, 360 chocolate, and 170 raisin each week to those totals, although they're about half the size of our regular croissants (which basically means separate production runs, at some point).

Bossman likes to automate as much as possible. Thus, for example, we've found a way to use the makeup line to make the mini chocolate ones, and we have a handy rolling pin/cutter for the full-size filled ones (a tool that I think was custom-made), and we have cutters for use on the makeup line for filled ones, as well, but, labor-wise, it's a wash between having me do them and running them down the line, because the latter is faster but requires several people. But we've been unable to find a good machine to roll the plain ones--he had an old one, and it was awful, and he got another one recently for cheap, and it also sucked. To his credit, he doesn't say "use the machine anyway," just to save time--he recognizes that the product is seriously inferior. I have to say, it's one of the reasons I really like working with/for him: he wants to make money, certainly, but he really likes making a good product.

I'm trying to convince him that he needs to focus more on the things at which he excels and not do things like make pastry cream. Yes, I greatly appreciate working for someone who will do any task--and I told him that on Saturday. But a friend of his dad's always says to Bossman, "Make the expensive stuff first." That is, spend your energy on the things that will bring in the most money--which is why he got a new display case, so we can display the cakes that Johnnie is decorating where customers can see them. I told Bossman it also means he should be making pastries and decorating cakes--same principle. Which I think surprised him a little. It's going to be interesting working with him without Brad around.

Anyway, despite today's productivity so far (I've done three loads of laundry; portioned out and frozen my chicken stock; repotted an aloe plant that was very badly potbound; and made all of my tea for the week, which, since I've found more containers, amounted to 7.5 liters), I still have to take a shower and go pick up the Kid's christmas present, though I could do that tomorrow, I suppose. The shower cannot wait until tomorrow, however.

Nope, No Bar Fights

Last night i was suddenly visited by pain in my left jaw joint, and it's still there today. It's more a numbness or stiffness than a searing pain (except if I try to chew something hard). Nevertheless, I took ibuprofen all day and tried not to clench my teeth, which is what I strongly suspect has caused this. If I weren't such a slug, I'd be doing yoga right now instead of typing. I logged over 50 hours at work this week, and that seems to me to be the most likely cause--the work itself, plus Brad's pain-in-the-assness, plus the increased stress from trying to get things right for BT's restaurant. (The title of this post is from Bossman, who wanted to know if the jaw pain was from having been in a bar fight.)

Brad wasn't there today, so everyone was happier. I broke down and told Bossman what Brad said about "no more bullshit" at the new job, which entertained Bossman to no end--we giggled about it all day today, along with the "we'll just get [frozen product] from the supplier" remark. I made Bossman promise not to tell Brad about the bullshit comment. We discussed Brad's lack of taste--and Bossman has noted this before, saying that Brad is "such an American." Which is a little interesting, given that Bossman is about as American as they come, as am I, in several important dimensions. I understand what he's getting at, of course, though I wouldn't put it quite that way.

After work, I hauled my ass to Whole Paycheck and bought groceries--primarily so I could make chicken stock tomorrow or Monday, because I'm nearly out--which meant I lugged 437 pounds of food a total of about a mile (from WP to the train, and from the train to my apartment). Even though I generally don't like baths, I'd take one now if my tub didn't take three days to fill. What I am going to do is a couple of minutes of yoga, and then I'm going to make some dinner; I never did get around to eating a proper meal today. I didn't make any lunch for the crew today, either, so I really haven't had much more than a couple of mouthfuls of croissants or scraps. Then again, I'm not going to be wasting away . . .

Taste

I'm still in health insurance heck, which means I'm faxing permissions to examine my medical records, and waiting on hold so I can talk about my cervix (or whatever other body part is of interest today), and so on. One of the forms required an e-signature, which is fine--except they require a Windows machine for said operations. Sorry, campers: I don't have one, and I won't use one to transmit things like my social security number anyway. They're going to mail it to me and I'll send or fax it back (I suppose I could have gone to the library or something, but there is no WAY I'd do stuff like that on a public computer). But also: What are they thinking? I am certainly not the only person with a Mac. My guess is that they've got some kind of windows-based database behind their forms or something; that's the benefit-of-the-doubt guess. But still. Figure out a workaround, people.

We got our first order for breakfast pastries for BT's restaurant today--for Monday. I hadn't planned on making any croissants tomorrow, but Bossman just called to tell me about the order, and he's going to mix up a small batch of dough so we have enough on hand for Monday and Tuesday. In addition to plain and chocolate, they're ordering raisin croissants, some muffins (about which I don't need to care), AND gibassier, which I know will gladden BT's heart. Bossman noted that the gibassier we have in the freezer weren't very nice, primarily because Brad's heart isn't in it (Brad made the gibassier) and hasn't been for awhile, so Bossman was making the sponge for the gibassier, too.

Today's Brad episode: As I mentioned yesterday, Bossman and I cut up some plain croissants yesterday, trying to get the size/weight correct, and he baked them this morning. They were quite lovely, though a teensy bit large (they weighed about 1.3 ounces baked, and we need to get a little closer to an ounce). As we stood there looking at them (and admiring our work, if you want to know), discussing the size thing, Brad walks into the discussion--and suggests we just get frozen ones from a food supplier. Um, no. If they wanted crap, they could continue using what they use now. He also made a big deal about how I didn't offer him a croissant (i was urging coworkers to have one, because we couldn't sell them)--and then of course said he didn't want one when I offered to get one for him. Asshole.

I figured out today that the problem with learning the ordering/invoicing system is that Brad is trying to teach me the steps without making the principles behind it clear. For example, some number of invoices have to be treated differently. Why? They just do. Okay, but how will I know if someone else falls into that category somehow? Basically, my plan is to learn enough to be competent, and then, as noted, switch systems as soon as possible. It also helps that I am bright enough to figure out that I have to push him for the principles, not just the steps.

I have discussed (with BT as well as with other pastry school friends) the importance of passion when it comes to food. You really must be in touch with the sensual aspects of eating and of taste, and you have to be passionate about creating a good product. Brad seems to be missing both of those things, somehow. I can't tell how much is burnout from this particular job and how much is a simple lack of passion, but I think that it's both things, not just the former. Bossman has been making and eating this stuff for years, and he still enjoys it. I cut one of the mini croissants today (so I could check the lamination inside) and he grabbed half of it (I grabbed the other half) and ate it and said, "What could be better than that?"

Here's another thing about the holidays this year that's a drag. The bakery is closed six days during the year, and three of them are Christmas, the day after Christmas, and New Year's Day. We get paid for closed days if we would be scheduled to work that day--and of course, since I'm off on Sunday and Monday, I only get paid for the 26th this year. Eh; I'll be racking up enough overtime in the coming weeks to make up for it--I'm already over 40 hours this week, and I still have tomorrow to go. But it would have been nice to get some money without having to stand on my aching feet to earn it.

12 Days

until the holiday music goes away . . .

Only another buck an hour. Oh well. If it looks like it's going to be too much work, too much time, or in some other way not worth it, then another conversation will be had. And Brad cannot leave too soon. He is so petty, and such a pain in the ass, he will not be missed. One of his most annoying traits is when he says "we" have to do something when what he means is "you" have to do something. Dude, if you want me to do something, ask or tell me to do it. Don't think that by saying "we" I'm going to somehow miss the point that you punched out while I made the fucking challah dough. At 5:45 pm today. After punching in at 6:30 this morning. The funniest thing Brad has said, though, was when he said Tuesday, while describing his new job (at my request) that he wouldn't be putting up with bullshit any more. I didn't say anything, but I nearly laughed out loud. Um, Brad, there is ALWAYS bullshit, especially at your job: that's why they have to pay you to show up. He thinks that, because he's going to be in charge at this new place, he'll get to run everything and it'll be perfect. He's young--can you tell?

Also: my loathing for holiday music has only become more intense. The store radio and Artie's radio are tuned to a station that plays ONLY holiday music now. As a result, I heard "Frosty the Snowman" FOUR TIMES yesterday. Same with Rudolph. I'm ready to smack somebody by the end of the day. Given that the days are getting long--11.5 hours today, and a total of more than 30 hours in the past three days--the music only makes things worse. When i got home from work, my across-the-hall neighbor was playing old Aerosmith ("Sweet Emotion") so loudly I could hear it inside my apartment. S/he played it, oh, 10 times? in the subsequent two hours. A few minutes ago I heard someone pounding on the door, and the music is gone now, so apparently I'm not the only person who'd had quite enough.

I'm starting to learn the invoicing system, and it's a little bit of an adventure in tedium. The current system will be in place only until everything can be switched to Quickbooks, and I'm going to implement that as quickly as I possibly can. Once I finish up the two side jobs I have at the moment, I'll spend a Monday or two at the bakery just working with that shit. One of the side jobs is copyediting, but the other is writing web copy for my old boss, and that may turn out to be problematic. I'm not getting it done as quickly as I think he wanted it done, but I'm also not getting feedback from the development guy with whom I'm supposed to be working. Plus, the development guy is kind of not taking what I send him--he adds my stuff to the crap that he already has, which is not what I had in mind. I'm not sure how much to push back on that, and I haven't been able to talk to my old boss about it yet.

Bossman and I also did test runs yesterday and today on the mini croissants for BT's restaurant. (We also had an order for a bunch of minis for someone else, so we had plenty of opportunity to figure it out.) It's fun working on this shit with Bossman. He gets bored eventually and leaves it to me to finish it, but he's definitely involved in the working-it-out portion of the program--and, perhaps not so surprisingly, I think that's one of the things that gets Brad's shorts in a wad. BT and I had dinner last night, and she was talking about someone she knows who doesn't have any passion for food, and, oddly enough, I think Brad's the same. He's always on some diet (he wants to build muscle), so he rarely tastes anything at the bakery, and you just can't make good stuff if you don't taste it. You have to avoid chowing down on it, but you really must taste it.

Eh; I don't want to think about him right now. I want to grease up my hands (which are dry and sore) and watch the end of the Blackhawks/Redwings game (the Hawks just scored, so they're down 3-2), and watch "The Daily Show." I forgot to tell you all that I went to the Hawks game Sunday night, and liked it immensely; they have $10 tickets, so I think I must go back.

Watching the Wheels

This morning, Bossman gathers us around the worktable for a minute to inform us that Brad is leaving, and that we'll be fine, except we'll need someone for the Friday night bake for the summer farmers' markets, and he'll need some help downstairs with the computer stuff. I, of course, said I could help with the latter, and he said we'd talk later, so we talked about it this afternoon after everyone else had left. Yes, of course he'd been figuring I could do the invoices and such, and help with the ordering, and whatever. He said there'd be more money, but I don't know how much; I'll try to get a number from him tomorrow. So that's good news thing number one.

Second, while we were in the middle of the above-mentioned conversation, the pastry chef at Brazen's restaurant called--and they want our croissants. Lots of them. And mini-muffins, too. That's good news thing number two. Both of these things mean more work for me, but they also mean, in addition to more money (and more hours), that Bossman can further appreciate what I can do. Hell, he already appreciates it; that's not an issue. It's not that he couldn't have gotten the work at BT's restaurant without me, it's that he'd have a hard time doing it, or, rather, he'd have to do it all himself, and he doesn't want to do that. And I did bring in the other work this week, for that matter.

So after the worktable gathering, Johnnie says quietly to me, grinning, "Congratulations." And I say, "Why?" and he says that I'm going to be the next boss. He was sort of joking, but sort of not, and he seemed genuinely glad about it. Later he said it again, and I said, okay, but if I start acting like the professor (which is what they call Brad), he has to tell me. It was really kind of nice.

I'm excited--and I have some trepidation, too. Partly I'm wondering just how much more he'll pay me. If it isn't at least $2/hour more, it's a lot of hassle for not a lot more money. I'm going to keep doing the side work regardless--there's no way he's going to pay me enough so I wouldn't have to do any work on the side--but maybe I can be less anxious about getting enough of it. What I'm really hoping is that I can balance all of this, keep all these balls in the air, and come out ahead. Being able to actually save some money would be a Good Thing. I know I had given myself until January to start figuring things out, but it looks like things are sort of being decided for me.

That is, it looks like I might have the opportunity to spend the next year or so working like a dog, but maybe being able to save a little bit of money. I could do that, i think. Any number of things could fuck up, of course--my mother's waiting for a kidney transplant, for example, so there's that to worry about. But there's always something; that's life. And it's not like I'm going to be able to save a whole bunch--but, again, that's still better than not saving anything, or falling behind. And adding this experience to my repertoire? Also good, no matter whether I open my own business or keep working for other people. One of the things we're doing, for example, is switching ordering/invoicing systems. Brad's computer runs Windows 98, I believe (need I say more . . .). Bossman wants to switch the invoicing to Quickbooks, because all of his other stuff is in that. But no one's figured out how to do it, yet, and there will still be the transfer of all the info to accomplish. Which will presumably be done by me, which is fine.

What I will need to do is figure out how to take this all into account in my own accounting. I'm certainly not going to spend the side money willy-nilly (as in, "Oh look! I made $500 more than I needed to this month! Let's go spend it all!"), because I'm sure there will be dry months, too. On the other hand, if the work is steady, and I'm managing to save some each month, and I'm a few months ahead, even, then why not treat myself to something? Not wildly, just a little--a massage, perhaps; something like that--or a yoga class followed by a massage. I'll probably try to come up with the proper algorithm for assessing it. It's like my current budget: I budgeted for going out and playing each month. It's not a huge amount, but it's not nothing, either, and it's right there on the spreadsheet, along with what I'm actually spending. Similarly, I budgeted for miscellaneous crap--birthday presents; doctors' bills; the new glasses I'll need soon. If my budgeting is accurate, then I have a pretty good idea what I need to make outside the bakery. It seemed like a better idea to assume ahead of time that I need to make X dollars on top of the bakery, in order to live a reasonable life, rather than assume a bare-bones budget, knowing I'd want to have a beer or two once in awhile. Eh, I'm tired, and need some sleep.
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On a completely different note, the handball friend who died over Thanksgiving would have been 72 today. And it was 26 years ago today that John Lennon was murdered.

Sadness

First off, Brad MADE MY DOUGH FOR ME TODAY. Just up and offered to do it, as I finished up shaping the last of the croissants. I was quite thankful, as it got me out of work at least a half hour earlier than I otherwise would have left, and these 9.5-hour days are, indeed, tiring. No idea where that generosity came from, but I thanked him nevertheless, and more than once.

Second, the place where I go on Tuesdays? They're going to be getting three deliveries a week from us, starting on Monday. Woo-hoo! No word yet on Brazen Tart's hotel--they were going to check out the stuff Bossman dropped off and get back to us. He said today that the goal of today's exercise was to be asked back--i.e., not to have them call and place an order. He took an array of miniature croissants, all baked this morning; miniature pecan rolls; miniature gibassier; some muffins and Danish and the like; and some full-size croissants, I believe. There was supposed to be brioche as well, but when he mixed the dough yesterday, he left out the salt. Oops. Originally we were just going to send plain and chocolate croissants, but I decided at the last minute to make some almond, as well, seeing as how I had the dough, and they were lovely; I sent the extras to the Tart, who, I hope, feasted well upon them.

I'm tired today, because, in addition to all of the commotion getting the above samples ready, and in addition to having to gather another batch of stuff for Web Guy to photograph, it was Ham and Cheese Croissant Day, which is always a pain. I have to slice the ham and the cheese--approximately 330 slices of each today--and our slicer is not particularly cooperative. No matter--they got done.

I'm also dealing with sadness again today. I had several more paragraphs about that, but I think they don't belong here.

Pleasure

Ron's got me thinking again. She's right about the strangeness that often befalls the comments over at Twisty's place. I find Twisty's commentary to be interesting, and thought-provoking, and I often agree with a substantial percentage of what she says. Our tastes on some things may differ, and we could have an interesting discussion about how much taste is constructed by patriarchy (and, i would say, capitalism--I regard them as complementary but not identical by any means)--if patriarchal capitalism is really totalizing, then, I might argue, we shouldn't differ even as much as we do. We should be lined up for whatever product(s) and belief(s) we're fed. I'd argue that humans are messier than that, our desires are less easily codified, and neither patriarchy nor capitalism has managed to control all of either the horizontal or the vertical. Although I'm also not about to break into song celebrating the Unquenchable Human Spirit or anything (and, trust me, you do not want me to break into song about anything; a quiet hum, perhaps, that no one else can hear, but that's about it).

But what I really wanted to discuss was blojobs (yes, I'm misspelling it intentionally). Twisty commented some time ago--August, I think--that BJs were . . . not to her taste. She might have been more vehement than that (she might have called them disgusting, for example), but I do not remember her description and I'm too lazy to go find the post. Teh Internets blowed up. There were hundreds of comments, many of which detailed the commenter's preferences and practices (which, trust me, was often way too much information). Many women wrote in, in defense of the lowly (and, apparently, about to be outlawed AND discredited) BJ. (Personally, I didn't realize they were so endangered as to require such defense, but what do I know.) This, in turn, invited others to point out that these defenses of BJs were yet another aspect of the patriarchy that the defenders had, uh, swallowed, i.e., that women who claim to like giving BJs suffer from false consciousness (because no woman could possibly like giving them), or that women who claim to like giving them merely say that for the same reasons that women claim to like wearing spike heels and ripping their pubic hair out by the roots and so on, i.e., the patriarchy has trained them successfully.

I felt like I'd stumbled down a rabbit hole, if you want to know.

I finally figured out (I think) that many young (by which I mean "10+ years younger than I am") women have, indeed, swallowed the patriarchy-and-pron(again intentional)-influenced prescriptions regarding applying their mouths to male genitalia. Apparently (so far as I can tell), BJs are featured prominently in pron, and given the much wider availability of such visual fare these days, many young men want what they see, and many young women feel that they should provide it, no matter what their own preferences happen to be. That is, many men want sexbots, and many women believe they should be sexbots. (Yes, I know, YOU don't feel that way; me neither. It's only benighted Others who ever feel any pressure to be attractive.) Thus, an activity that, for some of us, might well arise as part of the generally pleasurable touching and such, has been reappropriated by the patriarchy in such a way that, for a whole lot of young men and women, it has a whole other set of meanings involving dominance and so on.

It was always thus, of course--that's how a patriarchy works; the only thing that changes is the definition of sexbot and the comparative ability of women to resist or defy sexbotification. Until the 1970s, for example, women could not get credit cards in their own names. Many single women had trouble getting mortgages. While women continue to be underpaid for the work they do, it was way worse back then, when it was difficult for a woman to support herself alone. You can't be independent if you can't buy your own food. On the other hand, after a brief period of feminist free-for-all and free love (back to that in a second, too), patriarchy reasserted itself. That's why so many women engage in feminism-bashing, and why so many women adopt the gear of the patriarchy and defend it as their "taste" or their "preference." Like Twisty, I'm somewhat loathe to blame women for what is essentially a survival strategy, but it also saddens me to watch young women twist themselves into knots and strap themselves into sports corsets all while insisting what they're doing is (to borrow a Twistyism) empowerful.

And sometimes I think I've had a glimpse of a better way.

For a brief period of time, there was a moment of freedom: between the old patriarchal "Leave it to Beaver" vacuuming in pearls standard and the new patriarchal "pearl necklace" standard, before herpes and HIV (but, alas, not before HPV) and after contraception became legal and available. Yes, dearies, contraception was illegal in many places, until 1965, when the Supreme Court said, in Griswold v. Connecticut, that there was a right to privacy that covered such things--this is controversial because that right (a) is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, as such, and (b) is part of the eventual justification for Roe v. Wade. It's also why, if you read the writings of the people who want to control your uterus, you've started seeing mention of Griswold. The godbag wingnuts want to eliminate access to contraception completely, which is tucked in among the reasons why they attack Planned Parenthood so vehemently. They're not just opposed to abortion, they're also opposed to contraception, and, essentially, to women having any control over their own bodies.

But I digress.

Part of "women's lib" (and, yes, I'm old enough to have been asked if I was a "women's libber") was sexual liberation--"Our Bodies, Ourselves" came out of that impulse, I'd argue, insofar as it was a move for women to reclaim their bodies from the medical (and mostly male) establishment. Sexual pleasure was a part of that, and it was about sexual pleasure for its own sake, and sexual pleasure that wasn't about pleasing men. Was it always successful? Of course not. But there are a bunch of us--women AND men, I'd say--who discovered, for the umpteenth time, that rubbing up against each other can provide all kinds of great fun (and that one didn't have to be In Love to do that, but that's a different part of the argument, into which i won't go today, even though it's not unrelated). The whole BJ dustup was puzzling to me, until I began to suspect that for many younger women, the patriarchy has (not surprisingly) coopted women's rediscovery of sexual pleasure and once again turned it into a tool for pleasing men. Somehow, I mostly missed that boat, however.

And I think the patriarchal structure (insofar as a structure can be said to have wants or desires) wants to squash the impulse toward uninhibited sexual pleasure. Not just to oppress women for the hell of it, and not just because women can have multiple orgasms, but because sexual pleasure, especially of the ecstatic kind, is wild and a little uncontrollable and powerful--for men AND women. And we wouldn't want people, especially female people, feeling powerful, now, would we--much better that they wear a sports corset and feel empowerful instead. Much better that women's sexual experience serve the patriarchy. And much better that men be worried about maintaining their dominance than giving themselves up to ecstasy (and, trust me, the patriarchy doesn't want individual men to be powerful in any way that does not serve the patriarchy).

But sometimes I like to think that there's this little group of renegades out here, men and women both, who have taken a walk on that ecstatic side (and I'm not saying that that's not possible within a Relationship, though I would say that some aspects of marriage, etc., definitely serve the patriarchy). Neither the men nor the women want to be told that that pleasure is bad or wrong--we know otherwise. I'd also add that we know that that pleasure isn't about power, or about dominance--it's contrary to those things, IMHO. Is it possible to experience sex outside the confines of the dominance that defines the patriarchy? Yeah, sometimes, for a little while, anyway--as long as the scripts didn't come from patriarchally produced pron, but instead came from more primal or immediate experience of touching.

And that might be where I begin to diverge from Twisty, just a little. Yes, I know we experience everything within the confines of some structure or another--there's no language outside language, either--which means we experience that touching within a structure, too. But when the earth moves, all bets are off, at least for a flash of time.

Unthoughtfullyness

No, this is still not the thoughtful post.

The brioche were wonderful (how can all that butter and eggs, held together by a whisper of flour and sugar, be anything but wonderful?), and I snagged a sextet to bring home and freeze (well, I'm only freezing a quartet). I made four big brioche to sell in the store, and they came out quite well--the little heads didn't topple over or anything. Bossman is going to bake the smaller croissants tomorrow and let me know how they turn out. So we'll do it all again Tuesday/Wednesday, and we'll see how it goes. I had enough bread products today--not to mention butter and associated fats--to sink a ship. Oh--wait--oil floats: okay, then, to float a ship. Dinner tonight is going to consist of the last couple of glasses of wine in the bottle--AFTER I do the copyediting.

I made lasagna today for the crew, and showed how you can do it without boiling a single noodle (a trick I learned from Moosewood). Phil wants the recipe, which is pretty entertaining, seeing as how I didn't make a single bit of it from scratch (if I were making it at home I'd probably make the sauce myself, and use fresh spinach; I might even make a pumpkin bechamel instead of a red sauce, and/or use spinach noodles). The whole thing took 15 minutes to assemble (because I didn't make the sauce) and about an hour to bake. Chuck used to make it, too, using his red sauce (a Moosewood recipe that he perfected) and/or some chorizo; when we were on an austerity budget last year, he'd make a pan and cut it up to freeze for his lunches. All in all, I'd say it was a success.

I'm tired tonight; it's been a long week. And I'm not sleeping all that much--six hours a night is pretty much my limit these days, and it's usually closer to five hours. I don't think I've been asleep when the alarm went off (5:02 am) even once this week. I wake up around 4, sometimes earlier; when I'm lucky I fall back to sleep, but other times I just drowse for awhile and then finally get up at quarter before 5 or so. I suspect more exercise would improve my sleep, but I don't see that happening soon. I'm also not getting enough sunlight: the sun is barely beginning to make the sky light when I get to the bakery, and it's already set by the time I leave. I used to go out at lunchtime and call a friend or wander around, and I still do that occasionally, but it's too cold to sit outside, and mostly I've been going down to the basement (LOTS of light down there) to sit and read for 15 minutes. I saw full sun today for the first time since Monday, I believe. I think I need to reinstate the going outside at lunch thing. I'm only mildly susceptible to depression from lack of light, but this has been such a shitty year, and my body is already going nuts, so I think some light, even if only 15 minutes a day, is probably a good idea.

Okay, I want wine, and I've committed to doing some work first, so you're going to have to be satisfied with this lame excuse for a post. Thoughtful can wait for another day.

More Worrying

because we know how worrying actually solves problems.

I have a longish, Thoughtful post, waiting for me to finish it, but I'm freaking out at the moment. This afternoon Chuck said that (a) we cannot be reinstated on the COBRA, so he really screwed the pooch on that one, (b) he really doesn't want to put me on his health insurance come January, even if I haven't solved the problem for myself before then, and (c) would I like to join him for a cheap dinner tonight. I declined (c), on the grounds that I needed to do some copyediting, plus I have to get up early tomorrow--and both of those things are true--but I'd take a rain check, to which he muttered that it was the second one. Apparently it hasn't crossed his mind that his negligence has pissed me off royally, and frightened me--terrified me!--and that I am going to remain terrified until such time as i get at least some kind of insurance. I did not want to go into that with him. I also did not want to inquire why, now that I've told him, in some detail, that and why I want a divorce, he's decided he can be friendly after all. For months now he has vacillated between being pleasant, possibly even friendly, and being nasty and sullen. Often, we have a perfectly pleasant interaction--and it's followed by a blob of venom, presumably because the PPI reminds him of how we're not together and why and why won't I give him another chance and whateverthefuck.

I also found out this afternoon that I can't get insurance through the bakery. The current plan, then, is to talk to Bossman's insurance person on Monday and see if she can get me some kind of immediate, temporary coverage, and then go back and appeal the refusal from October, all of which will eat up my Mondays as I track down medical records, and find a fax number I can use, and so on. Of course, I also have some major writing to do, and Monday is one of the days on which I can do it. Hah! Not THIS week, either! Sunday I'm going to have to chain myself to the computer and get some things done, seeing as how I've promised drafts of stuff to people on Monday. The copyediting is less problematic, time-wise--I might even be able to finish it tomorrow night.

I was also sad, today. On some level, I miss Chuck. There were some nice parts to our relationship (else it would not have lasted for nearly eight years)--quite a few, actually. Today's interaction merely brings home to me that I've made the right decision, that I really cannot trust him at this point (and might never be able to do so), and, as I wrote to him, I cannot be happy with someone I do not trust. I think I miss the relationship I thought we had--a partnership based on honesty, trust, affection, etc.--and some of the companionship that was a part of that, even as I recognize that it wasn't a partnership, after all. Whatever; I don't feel like thinking about that. I know that I can want to end the relationship and still be sad about the ending.

Meanwhile, tomorrow Bossman and I are whipping up some of the things he's going to take with him on Wednesday--to Brazen Tart's hotel AND to the bar to which I go on Tuesday nights. Plain and chocolate croissants, for sure, plus some raisin ones, and some pecan rolls, and some small brioche. I made very small batches of croissant dough and brioche dough, so tomorrow I can have at it. It's all practice, mind you; I'll do it all again on Tuesday, except we'll presumably know what sizes to make and so on. Oh--and we're assembling stuff for the web guy to photograph tomorrow, too, because we always have to have multiple things in the works.