Random

I only seem capable of food blogging these days . . . let's try something else.

Partly it's because all of the stuff at work goes on, but I've become more wary about going into detail on the 'tubes (not that I've ever had any inkling that any coworker even knows I have a blog, much less has stumbled across it, number one, and, number two, the people about whom I would be most dismayed stumbling across this thing don't have enough internet savvy to find it--most probably don't know what a blog is, much less how to find mine; but you never know). Some things are going quite well--the new middle lord (my direct supervisor) has turned out to be quite good; I like hir personally and professionally, and zie seems intent on finding ways to use my talents to their fullest rather than just letting me continue to do three or four jobs in obscurity. Which, hey, all good. But it's too soon to even try to talk about it here; it remains to be seen what can or will be done.

So I go to work, submit the next thing, come home and provide a lap for the cat (Friend's cat is living with me for a little while, as I think I mentioned), work out, watch the hockey game if there is one, watch Top Chef on Wednesday night, maybe go out for dinner with Friend one night, maybe do some cooking or baking if I'm inspired.

My tile-making class started this past week, and I'm already feeling weird about it. Part of it is that I know that what I need to do is to sit down and do some drawings, start doing something, anything, really, but, instead, I dink around. The one tile I made last year actually came out reasonably well for a first effort, and I'm looking forward to making it even better, but that was a goddamned expensive tile. And now I'm in a class where I'm surrounded by people who are Genuine Artists--or it feels that way to me--and I'm just a schlub with no ideas about what I want to create. And I know that that approach violates the Top Chef Rule--cook your own food and don't worry about what other people are cooking--but my brain keeps going there anyway.

Well, there's only been one class, so maybe I'll get my head out of my own head and actually do the drawings I need to do, and create some fun playful stuff just to amuse myself, and take a couple of afternoons off of work and spend some time in the studios (which doesn't cost anything extra if you're taking a class). I also know that I do my best work when I have the opportunity to just fuck around, play, see what evolves, and I didn't have much of that last spring. I have a ton of vacation time--nearly three weeks, plus five personal days--so we'll see. And did I mention that I want to just have fun with it, fer chrissakes?

This week's other task is to find out what the weird patch on my leg is. I called my dermatologist today and got an appointment for Thursday. I'm perfectly willing to pay my co-pay only to be told that it's just a patch of, I don't know, eczema or something, but it doesn't look like anything I've ever had on my skin before, and it's in a location that isn't a good candidate for plain old dry skin, and I moisturize after my showers, and I've been treating it for 10 days or so with no results, so I figure it won't hurt to have an expert take a look at it. It's probably something stupid and routine--and that would be absolutely fine with me.

As for cultural commentary: Lately I've been reading Eliot Pattison's Inspector Shan series, and absolutely loving it. I've worked my way through the first four, I think, and I alternate with other stuff, of course, but it's way fun. The other thing I've discovered--and, yes, I realize I'm late to this party--is "Big Bang Theory." I've been getting it on Netflix and watching it while I row, and it makes me laugh out loud. I just finished season two (I alternate with the BBC's Inspector Morse series), so I have a few more disks to go. But it cracks me up, and I've always had a crush on both Johnny Galecki and Sarah Gilbert, so it's even more fun. I got a new TV, too--a big-ass sucker--but I'm using the old TV in the back bedroom with the rowing machine, i.e., I only get to watch the little TV while I row, but I have the rowing machine out of my living room. No furniture yet, but the furniture maker was here the week before last, and as soon as I figure out what I'm getting back on my taxes I'm going to order some stuff.

Okay, that's the best I can do without involving food.

And then . . .

It was, in fact, very nice. It was also funny, because the guy who waited on me earlier in the week--and whom I'd told that I'd gotten married there (but was now divorced)--saw me and came over and said, glad you made it back again, and I said, and here's my ex-husband. He was a little taken aback, I think, but amused as well. It was also bittersweet, of course, but it is what it is. We know each other's lives so well, and much of the fundamental liking for each other remains, so we can have a good time talking to each other. Apparently I don't know how to be divorced any better than I knew how to be married, given that most people don't seem to manage amicability. Then again, we've both worked hard at that, and struggled through a lot of difficulty, so it's not as though it happened by magic, and it certainly hasn't happened easily. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, if I use the generally available narratives about relationships and divorce and marriage and whatever, but if I throw them out and accept it, it works a lot better.

Meanwhile, my dad is going through some changes of his own. The bladder cancer keeps reappearing, and he's reaching the point where they're going to want to take it out completely and replace it w/ a bag. At first, he was absolutely opposed to that idea, but my mom was telling me today about a conversation she overheard. Some friends of theirs were visiting, and the other guy also has bladder cancer--more advanced than my dad's so they're pretty much stuck with removal--and my dad was telling this guy that it would be okay, that you have to do what you have to do, that he golfed with someone in Florida (my parents used to spend a few months each winter down there) who had a bag and it was okay, and so on. My mom was kind of (okay, totally) eavesdropping, because this was a rather significant change of position on my dad's part.

My dad's a pretty sensible person, and I think he's capable of evaluating quality of life and figuring out what it's worth to him. The thing for him is that he'll be 80 in a couple of weeks, so his balancing act has different constraints than someone who's younger, for example (or older, for that matter). As my mom and I were discussing, chances are pretty good that he'd have a pretty good quality of life with a bag--he'd still be able to do all of the things he likes to do, he'd get to hang with his grandkids a while longer, so . . . there it is. I suspect he'll go for it.

Of course I'd like to have him around awhile longer--I like my dad! But I also know he'd rather die sooner and happier than later and more incapacitated, either mentally (especially mentally) or physically. One of the great advantages to having spent so much time working on my relationship with my parents is that I don't feel like we've left a lot unsaid. We don't have unhealed wounds in our relationships. To be fair, we haven't had many to begin with; my mom and I have always had the most difficult relationship--remember when she didn't speak to me for more than a year?--but even that is bounded by the knowledge both of us have of the love we have for each other. The other contributing factor is that we talk nearly weekly, and have done so for the 24 years I've lived out here. Some weeks there's not a lot of conversation, other times we talk for awhile, but it means we have a dense fabric of interaction to sustain us.

The difficult part of our relationship is, and always has been, that I haven't lived my life in a way that she completely understands. It is so different from what she would choose for me, and, in some ways (more ways than she knows, actually), so different from what she considers a proper life, that she can't always get her head around it. I've known this for 40 years, and, when I'm not having difficulties of my own, I can deal with it. We have problems when my life is going to shit in some way--she tries to help, but her suggestions are so contrary to what makes sense to me, for me, that I get defensive and upset and she gets more entrenched. In my heart of hearts, I know that she just wants me to be happy--what all parents want for their children--but she cannot for the life of her figure out how I could be happy doing the things I do.

The other thing for her is that, all things considered, the patriarchy has been very good to her. She married someone she loved, they've been happily married for 54 years, he's more of a feminist than she is in some ways. This makes it difficult for her to identify and recognize the subtle (or not-so-subtle) incursions of patriarchy into people's lives. She played by the rules and she hit the jackpot, so she sees a causal conneciton there, where I would argue those things are really not causally connected at all.

No matter. At heart, I know she loves me, despite the many challenges I pose for her, and that's the important part.

More Nothing

Okay: we haven't had much food blogging of late, so let's talk recipes, shall we? Last night's concoction is from the Moosewood Low-Fat Cookbook, which may be my single favorite cookbook ever; it's certainly in the top five. The recipe is for Lentil Sambar or some such, and it includes lentils, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, and a bunch of spices. The pot I used is quite large and does not have a lid, so the potatoes and cauliflower took forever to cook, but it was quite tasty.

I didn't have the mango peach chutney (recipe in the book, too), but I had some apricot ginger chutney in the fridge--only four years old--and threw some of that on it, and I added some brie while I was at it, thinking the ammonia of the brie and the creaminess would make a nice complement to the warmth of the spices. I liked it a lot, because of the complex flavors, but it may not have been to everyone's taste; hard to say.

Tonight's dish, from the same cookbook, is supposed to be garlicky black-eyed peas and greens (kale, in my case, though you could use collards or mustard greens or presumably even beet greens or swiss chard). You cook the beans with some cloves of garlic, saute the greens quickly with more garlic, mix them, serve over rice.

I, of course, must fiddle with the recipe. I added some fresh ginger to the pot in which the beans and garlic cooked, and I added a diced sweet potato (I had bought two, but they were large, so one was enough last night0 and an onion to the pan in which the greens were cooked, and served tonight's over whole wheat pasta instead of rice. It was quite tasty, at least to me.

Which is always an issue on some level. I put combinations together that I wouldn't necessarily serve to anyone else. Friend is pretty willing to try my experiments, and, for that matter, Chuck was, too, but I try not to come up with anything too crazy if I know someone else is going to be eating it. I think part of that is because I don't necessarily make the same thing the same way twice--the brie was quite good in last night's dinner, but I wouldn't go out and buy brie just for that; same with the chutney. I happened to have both around, and I thought the flavors and textures would complement the curried cauliflower, and I was right, but it would have been quite tasty on its own. Tonight I ended up with more of the beans/potatos mix than I had greens to go with it, so I froze some of the beans/potatos in separate containers and I'll mix it with spinach or whatever I have handy when I make it for dinner, or I could have the beans/potatos over rice. And so on.

Part of the point of yesterday's and today's cooking was to fill the freezer with lunches. I'd depleted most of my stores before the move, to reduce the amount of food that had to be moved, but it's time to stock up again and start eating (and exercising!!) in a more healthy manner.

This weekend's other challenge was convincing my mom to take my dad to an acupuncturist. His full-body rash continues; it can only be kept under any kind of control when he's taking steroids, and, even then, he's itching all the time. It's been going on for six months, and no one seems to know what it is or what to do about it, and it's getting him down. I pointed out to my mom that it wouldn't hurt him--it might not help, but it won't hurt--and that western medicine hadn't actually done much for him so far. And I think I got through to her. I'm going to try to find a few accredited people near where they live (the google is a wonderful deity), and I think she's ready to go for it.

The biggest problem is that the person who sounds like he might be best is Taiwanese--which is a problem only because, if the website is any indication, his English isn't terribly fluent. My dad is already nearly deaf, even with hearing aids, so thick accents pose an additional difficulty in understanding. Given that it's a modality with which he has no experience, understanding is probably key. The other part of that is that nearly everyone will want to give him herbs, and I can tell you that ain't happening.

I'll keep looking, though; the fact that my mom is agreeing with it is a sign of just how bad it's gotten for my dad. And, really, it would be nice if something helped.

The other thing I got, from my acupuncturist, is a list of foods that supposedly help with "yin deficiency." I was laughing with my mom today, because a number of things on the list are not things that my dad is going to be eating (he loathes asparagus, for example, and I don't expect my dad to be eating mung bean sprouts any time either). But other stuff, yeah, so I'll send the list to my mom, along with some dead sea salts (for bathing) and some cream with calendula in it. Cross your fingers that something works.

Have a Cup

Things are proceeding, though not apace: the inspection was scheduled for this morning at 9:00 am, but the inspector called at 7:30 am, while I was in transit, to tell me that he had been up all night sick, he could usually work through being sick, but they were sticking an IV in him at the moment, and he was really really sorry. My agent said he was very apologetic with her, too. So, no big deal, we asked for an extension of the 5-day period, we rescheduled the inspection for Saturday morning, and I continue to take care of other bits (getting the last bits together for the mortgage; lining up homeowner's insurance; that kind of crap).

We may be looking at an early- or mid-April closing, which means my new place and my apartment lease would overlap for seven weeks or so, which is perhaps a little more than I'd like, but not enough to fuss about too much. Let's face it; I don't actually have a single thing packed yet, I don't have movers lined up (which I can't do until there's a closing anyway), and there may well be things I want to do in the new place that would be done more easily in an empty apartment. I'll take notes on that Saturday during the inspection, though offhand I can't think of much.

I am going to hire people to clean the place before I move in. I normally get squeamish at the thought of hiring people to clean my space--I've never done it, as a matter of fact--but I'm going to make an exception, I think. I may clean the carpet in the second bedroom (or tear it up). But I'm not going to do any painting or anything like that, and, even though I intend to replace the backsplash in the kitchen with handmade (by me) tiles, that's something that will have to happen over time, not something that can be done before I move in.

So, I'll try to ootch the closing date up a week or two--maybe mid-April or so--if it comes to that. The office people have already said it's unlikely the owners will let me out of my lease a month early, which means, fuck 'em, they'll get the keys at midnight on the last day, no matter when I move out. But none of this is all that important, in the long run.

For a complete change of subject, I had a new experience Tuesday: my acupuncturist treated me with cupping, rather than needles. The explanation of the supposed mechanism of action makes me roll my eyes--are you really going to claim that this procedure is drawing out unspecified toxins that are causing my back pain?--and it definitely looks weird. Did it "work"? Hard to say.

A year or more ago, I managed to figure out that I was most likely experiencing sacroiliac joint dysfunction, for which there are two treatments: (1) stab a needle full of novacaine into the joint, and, if it eliminates the pain, it confirms that it is a SI problem; repeat as necessary, because it won't stay pain-free, or (2) surgically bolt the spine to the pelvic bone. Neither of these necessarily works all that well, either. Needless to say, neither of these alternatives appealed to me at all, so I've been trying other strategies, mostly focusing on exercise and acupuncture. The January commitment to daily yoga was a part of that as well, and I was prepared to try physical therapy if none of these other strategies worked.

Back in September, my back pain was persistent, it often radiated down my leg, and I found myself taking ibuprofen nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day. My initial exercise-plus-acupuncture effort at treatment (I resumed regular exercise after September, when my social life at the time kinda drew me away from it) definitely reduced the pain quite a bit, most of the time. Much as I personally liked the old acupuncturist, the one I started seeing in November/December seems to have done an even better job in further reducing or eliminating the pain. Since the beginning of this year, I've added a very small amount of yoga practice to the mix: I haven't stuck to the every-day part of the program, but I do it probably 4 or 5 days out of 7, and I've added some asanas to the original mix.

And I've gone from pain that sometimes shot up to a 6 (on a 10-point scale) and that was a least somewhat present at milder levels nearly all the time, to discomfort that mostly stays around the 2 range and often disappears completely. (The acupuncturist switched strategies/meridians a month or so ago, which made a noticeable difference.) I take ibuprofen or aspirin less often than once a week, maybe two or three times a month.

In other words, this strategy seems to be working. I rather doubt that any one part of it--yoga, exercise, acupuncture--would have done the trick completely, though of course there's no way to tell for sure. Frankly, I don't care. Sitting here right now, for example, I can "feel" my right hip--the whole joint, radiating very slightly down to my knee and around my back--but it's not stabbing pain, more of a very mild discomfort/awareness, mostly because I'm thinking about it, as opposed to the pain, which was unavoidable and intrusive. So did the cupping help? I have no fucking clue. On the other hand, if I go back to the acupuncturist and say, hey, this thing we're doing isn't working so well, he'll try something else, and it won't be any more intrusive than anything else we've tried, and it will be a fuckload less intrusive than a bolt in my hip, so, I say it's a win.

Adverse Events

My back and hip are hurting again--between not exercising, and no acupuncture for a couple of weeks, and Wii bowling (don't ask), it's really pretty annoying. So did I come home and work out, which, as noted, I haven't done for a week and which helps? Of course I didn't--neither yesterday nor today. Yesterday I at least had the excuse of putting away crap from the weekend, sorting laundry, and generally dinking around, but tonight it was sloth, pure and simple.

I think one of the things on which I'd like to work this year is being more . . . focused, I guess is where I'm heading. I have a tendency to double or triple or quadruple any given list of things to do, and then, not surprisingly, I don't get to everything on the list. Take tomorrow, for example: the original list included doing a (as in "one") load of laundry, testing the Cooks Illustrated banana bread recipe (and I even have bananas, thanks to donations at work), returning a cooking scale that failed after only a few uses, going to the bank, working out, and maybe cleaning things up a little, though it's not too terribly bad in here. That's a manageable list: a few things to do, a couple of errands, nothing too taxing, especially given that I'll throw the laundry in as soon as I get up, maybe do the bread then too, and, voila, half the list is done before 9:00, and it's a nice day off.

So then I start . . . adding things. Clean a couple of pair of boots. Maybe pick up some polish while I'm out, and polish them, too. Repot some plants that desperately need it. Vacuum. Maybe make a batch of breakfast muffins while I have the oven on. And, oh, I really need to review the financials before Tuesday's Big Stressful Meeting, so maybe I can go to a coffee shop with my laptop and spend some time looking at that stuff. Suddenly, this relatively short, totally manageable list becomes this floppy unwieldy thing, something that will require Planning to even accomplish two thirds of it, and if I get all of it done, it will be because I raced around. That whole relaxing-on-a-day-off thing? Gone.

Unless I organize it really well, in which case, well, yeah, I maybe might could do it all.

I've realized, however, that the fundamental problem maybe isn't totally a lack of planning, or even the ever-expanding nature of my lists, it's that I don't spend enough time at my house to get things done AND relax. Some of it is the time I spend at Friend's house; some of it is that I don't take days off--so, really, what needs to change in the coming year are those two things, despite the complications inherent in both of them. In the latter case, I end up not taking off days to do errands because I know the work continues to sit on my desk--I could describe three major projects and two minor projects, other than the things I've already mentioned, that are time-critical and pressing down on me. Taking a day off isn't relaxing, it merely puts me even further behind, and more stressed, at work.

In the former case, Friend and I have gone around on this one somewhat, The short version is that he's not really willing to hang out at my place; let's leave it at that. But I have things I want to do, things that can't be done if I'm not here, so . . . more time here, less time there, and, therefore, less time with him. Not my ideal situation, but neither is spending a lot of time in a place where my chores aren't.

I wish I had accomplished more at work today. In addition to talking to a friend and generally fucking around, I ended up spending significant amounts of time on the phone, either with my mom or on behalf of my dad. His nearly-full-body rash has returned, for a third time, so he's taking steroids again. The doctors at Sloan-Kettering say they've never seen a rash as a reaction--and, indeed, it is listed as "rare"--but it's clearly a reaction to the chemo. Neither his urologist nor his internist have seen anything like it, and he's seeing a dermatologist in a couple of weeks, I think. I called the drug company today and talked to a pharmacist there, and ended up helping her submit an adverse reaction report to the FDA (patients and doctors can report or not, but drug companies must report them), but she really didn't have any treatment suggestions. I found a couple of articles on PubMed, which led me to some docs at UC SanFran, which I suggested to my mom that my dad's doc call, but who knows whether that'll happen or whether it would do any good. (I'd really like to talk to my dad's doctor, but I don't know if I can finagle that.)

I also told my mom to get some aloe gel--pure aloe, not a cream of some kind--and use that on his skin; it won't hurt him, and very likely will help, and it's not more steroids. The only thing that really concerns me is that your skin is your biggest organ: if it's compromised too much, you can die, and tissue necrosis is a possible side effect of this drug. It's typically a result of touching the stuff rather than the contact dermatitis/allergic reaction dad clearly has, but still. And it agitates my mom, who really does not need to be agitated at this point. So, let's hope the steroids do their thing, and the aloe does its thing, and everyone gets through the weekend okay.

Whew

As you might imagine, it's been a rather eventful week. I talked to mom this morning--she came home from the hospital last night (!!), less than a week after she received the new kidney. She sounds pretty good, and the fact that they sent her home tells me that she's doing well; my brother told me she was sitting in a chair the day after the surgery, and I talked to her a little on Sunday as well. Meanwhile, my dad's full-body rash--a reaction to the chemo he had at the end of September--has returned, for the third time. He's already been through two courses of steroids (which helped each time, but steroids have their own risks, of course), and the doctors keep saying, oh, gee, they've never seen that reaction before. Well, be that as it may, it IS a listed side effect of the drug, and just look at his skin, ferchrissakes. The good news, though, is that Monday's exam of his bladder didn't show any spots, so that's a good thing.

So, no, I did not try to race to my parents' house. I asked my mom before she went into surgery when she wanted me to come out there, and she said, well, you were just here, so . . . so I'll probably go visit in February or March. If there had been some way for me to actually be useful, of course I would have done it,

I spent a few days with Friend's family, however, which was entertaining in its own ways. I'd met his siblings and their spouses before, so it wasn't as though I was meeting everyone for the first time. Mostly, I tried to be pleasant and helpful. I brought sticky buns, which came out WAY better than I'd hoped: I adapted my grandmother's recipe with some adjustments from a school recipe, and I made some other changes. In particular, I replaced some of the white flour with wheat flour, I added apples to the filling, because I needed to use them up, and I added some maple syrup to the sticky part of the recipe, and I will use all of those changes the next time I make this recipe.

On Saturday, I made crepes for everyone, which was fun, too; the fruit (raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries that Friend's sister and mother had in their freezers), a fruit compote I made with some of the berries, and powdered sugar were on the counter, and everyone assembled their crepe in whatever ways made them happy. Everyone had one, a few people had two, and there were a few left over (which made breakfast for a couple of people yesterday). The other nice thing about how it worked out was that, because the crepes were being made one at a time, people had to wander into the kitchen to get one, which kept people circulating, but there was no pressure for everyone to sit down together. And it was a way to make a contribution, so that was fun for me, especially because I hadn't brought presents for anyone. (Friend typically keeps people supplied with alcohol, including champagne and orange juice for mimosas on Christmas morning, and I contributed to that effort.)

Sweetly, Friend's sister got spice boxes (from Penzey's) for each of us--grilling spices for him, and baking spices for me--which was very thoughtful. I promised her she'd get them back, in a transformed state. I also told her that we'd make bread together at some point, either when we visited her or when she visited Friend--because she said she'd tried it but it didn't come out, so she's never tried again. And, really, if you've never done it, and never seen anyone else do it, you don't know what state you're trying to achieve; many baking (and probably cooking) things are easier to do if you've actually seen someone do it and have seen how each step along the way looks. Once you have a certain amount of experience, of course, you can extrapolate, but not everyone has had that.

Because of the sheer number of people milling around--16 plus a baby, at the max--it was easy to fade into the background a little. Well, okay, maybe not that, exactly, but I definitely did my best to stay somewhat inconspicuous, or, at least, as inconspicuous as I'm capable of being. Of course everyone--especially Friend's mother, who hadn't met me before and who was madly curious about me, given that his siblings had met me--was probably a bit curious, but, really, what am I going to do at this point in my life? It's not like there's much I can change about my personality. I try to be aware of what I'm saying and doing, but, realistically, life is an ad hoc exercise, not a considered performance.

So today was back to work, in an effort to finish the proposal that's due on Monday; I'm hopeful that I can finish it completely tomorrow. I may need to add some bits--our most recent audit--but if I can leave work tomorrow with everything done except that, I'll be happy.

Meanwhile, thank you to all of you who sent good wishes my mom's way; I'll be getting back to each of you over the next few days.

It's In

My SIL called a little while ago. Apparently mom has a new kidney installed, and it's already doing kidney-type things, i.e., producing urine. SIL said my brother and dad talked to her in the recovery room, and she was waiting for an ICU room, where she'll be for a couple of days (to make sure it's not rejected, perhaps? dunno).

So, really, I have to avoid going out tonight, because I have this urge to grab complete strangers and tell them, which is probably a little excessive.

One thing that occurred to me today, though, is how technology has changed the way we live--and I don't even mean the installation of previously used organs. When my parents and grandfather were going to and with my sister as she was sick and dying, I basically sat near a phone as much of the time as possible. Transit times--to and from work, for example--were always fraught, because suppose someone called then (and, of course, no answering machine, either). And no call waiting, for that matter (though I don't have that on my land line now, I do have it on my cell), so no tying up the phone lines. For that matter, my mom didn't have to live her life next to a land line, either: she has a cell phone, and maybe a pager? I don't remember.

In any case, she also has a new kidney, so here's a big thank you to everyone who is and has been an organ donor, and to the doctors and researchers who figured out how to do this, and to the union that provided my parents' health insurance, so my parents could afford to do this. And thank you to all of you, because I know your good wishes have been sent her way, too.

Waiting for . . .

If all has continued to go well overnight, my mom is getting ready to get a kidney.

Yeah; I know; wouldn't that be a great solstice present?

She called me yesterday morning and said she was second for a specific kidney and she couldn't eat or drink anything after noon. Last evening she said she was a match for it, and last I talked to her, about 10:30 last night, they were on their way to the hospital. The organ was coming from out of state and she was supposedly getting it this morning if all goes well. Obviously, there are any number of ways that things could fuck up--is it really truly a match for her? how will the surgery go if it is? will her body accept the kidney?--but in the several years she's been on the list, this is the closest she's ever gotten. And our grim sense of humor is intact--she was saying yesterday that they already had her blood, and I pointed out that they could have saved the sponges from cleaning up her hospital room a few weeks ago.

Friend and I took off on Monday to celebrate his 50th birthday--and by "celebrate" I mean we went out for breakfast, got the oil changed in his vehicle, got a couple of carpeting issues solved for him (a rug under his computer stuff, instead of the patchwork of throw rugs under various table legs and chairs, and a runner near the back door, rather than another patchwork of small rugs, and a couple of those draft-prevention thingies), took a long walk in the woods--at two different points, we were surrounded by about 15 deer, with the closest about ten yards away, and we easily saw 40 deer over the course of the walk--and then went out for a fabulous dinner at this little hole in the wall. Sunday we went to the hockey game, and Saturday night we went out to hear some live music. Last night we were out again--for the fourth night in a row, so how about a personal shout-out to my liver for hanging in there.

Tonight and tomorrow morning I have some baking to do, because we're heading up to his family (mom plus sister & family live there, and brother and family are coming in). I've met his siblings before, but not his mom, so no pressure there. He keeps telling me not to fuss too much trying to bake too many things, and I take his point, but I really cannot bring myself to show up to someone's holiday celebrations empty-handed. So tonight I'm going to make some kind of graham crackers--probably shaped as very small tart shells--that I can fill with chocolate ganache and top with some meringues, because who doesn't like little chocolatey snacky things. I'm also going to make a batch of "toast bread," as they called it in school, and probably do a loaf as cinnamon bread and part of it as pecan rolls, because the formula is close enough to my grandmother's sticky pecan rolls that I can adapt. The bread is a nice basic bread recipe and doesn't require any kind of preferment, so I can put it to multiple uses. I have a couple of apples I need to use up, so I could even use those as a filling for the rolls or something. We haven't decided whether we're going up tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning; that decision is weather-dependent, and, given that I'm not doing the driving, I'm also not the making the decision. Either way, I need to be prepared to head out tomorrow.

I'd really like to make the soft pretzels, but they're a Project, what with the boiling in baking-soda-infused water (because, no, I'm not going to be using lye at home, thanks so much). Maybe over new year's or something. And I want to make sure to bring the crepe recipe, in case I get an opportunity to whip up a batch for breakfast one morning. That's enough contribution to make me happy. If Friend and I get a chance to take over the cooking for a meal or two, hey, all the better, but showing up with a desserty thing and a couple of breakfasty things in hand will do.

I'm exhausted at the moment, however, not least because I woke up at 3:30 or so this morning, and my brain informed me that there would not be any more sleep. Work has been an annoying hassle: I have a few things that must be done in the next three work days (I'm taking off next Monday as well, and we get the Thursdays and Fridays off, so it's today, and next Tuesday/Wednesday), but of course actually getting to those things has been challenging, not least because our financial person is running around setting everyone's hair on fire--deficit! debt! problems!--but not providing any actual fucking detail for the panic, so I end up having to drop everything to deal with the fires s/he is setting. Whereas, you know, s/he could actually do some useful analyses, say, and determine just what the problem might be, if, in fact, there IS a problem, about which I have yet to be convinced. Because I actually review our financials, line by fucking line, and my hair has not combusted, spontaneously or otherwise. Also? This person does crap behind the scenes, doing accounting tricks, and then we're supposed to deal with them. Which, again, more pain in the ass for yours truly.

Not that I'm annoyed by this or anything.

So, today, I will try to get the proposal written, and I'll do the monetary things I need to do, and I'll carry my cell phone around, hoping that it rings and that the person on the other end is a family member telling me that mom has a new organ.

Never Mind the Chores

Just talked to mom, who's still in the hospital but who sounds pretty good. Now she has pain in her finger, on the arm where they put in a new graft (and, as noted, she's not one to complain about pain), so she's a little worried about possible nerve damage, and the cough persists, but the fever appears to have broken. She wants to go home, and maybe will get to do so today. (And here how about a shout-out to the health insurance my parents have--courtesy of my dad's union, thankyouverymuch--such that they don't have to worry about paying for any of this shit. I wish everyone had the coverage my parents have.)

Other chores that need doing include cleaning my boots (I borrowed some saddle soap and mink oil from Friend) and repotting some plants, plus cleaning the ceiling fan and replacing the burned-out bulb . . . and then there are the closets full of crap through which I must sort at some point. Unless I decide not to move in May when the lease is up, of course, in which case I can ignore the crap awhile longer. I wish I knew why I'm already fibrillating about this.

I say yes, absolutely, I'm tired of living in a place that leaks, that has an old, cold, bathroom, that doesn't get as much sunlight as I would like (though it does get some), and so on. I rummage around online and find apartments that look to be pretty fabulous, for $100-$300/month more than I'm paying now (and my rent will almost certainly go up, as it did not this past year), and I start to fantasize. Then I think about the hassle of moving (cue Louden Wainwright), going through crap and packing it up, and unpacking it, and it all seems like too much effort.

Anyway. I'm going to work out and shower and make my way over to Friend's house (venison tenderloin for dinner tonight!), so those chores will have to wait a few more days.

Home and Not Home

I was sitting in D.C. yesterday, waiting for the train home, when SIL called: mom is in the hospital. Again. She was running a fever at dialysis, so they took her to the hospital. They did some blood cultures (the results of which will take 48 hours), chest x-ray (because she had a persistent cough), and . . . what? The vascular doc thinks it's a bacterial infection in the chest port, aggravated by dialysis yesterday; they gave her some IV antibiotics, but didn't release her. Which turned out to be just as well, because she apparently bled a little from the chest port, too, about which the vascular doc is not concerned.

They also gave her something (I don't know what) for the cough, which made it go away over night, though I guess it's back--but she got some sleep, which is probably one of the things she needs most. In any case, she's still there; according to my dad, doing okay, and according to my brother, her "I'm-fine-don't-fuss" self. (I didn't call her, because I didn't want to wake her if she was sleeping.) It occurred to me that she may have a cold, on top of the port leak and maybe even a bacterial infection on top of that. She has so many things going on, it's easy to forget that she was around 20-30 people on Thanksgiving and may well have just caught a cold, especially given her somewhat weakened condition. In any case, let's hope that she starts to get better, without leaking from anywhere, coughing, or developing a new or worse infection.

I got home expeditiously this morning; I was in the door before 10:00 am. As I walked in, I was struck by just what a pit this place had become. I have a high tolerance for dust and clutter, in general; I manage to arrange things more or less in piles, so basic cleanup can occur quickly when I'm motivated, but there were just too many piles of things I had left around. Plus, laundry. So I started with that, and then steadily picked away at the rest of it through the day, until it's actually in pretty good shape right now. I need to vacuum the bedroom and clean the bathroom (and maybe seal the window in the shower), and it will be nearly clean. By my standards, anyway, which admittedly are a little on the generous side. I even managed to work out a little, while watching the last bit of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," which was much better than I expected it to be.

Except to do the laundry, I didn't leave the apartment today. I talked to dad and bro briefly, and a friend at great length (it's been three or four days since we spoke, so there were many bits up on which we had to catch), but mostly I've been glad to be in my own home. I love my family a great deal, and I definitely enjoyed the baking and cooking this week--it's nice to be able to bake with abandon, knowing that someone who actually appreciates the food is going to eat it. My dad got his mince pie, for the first time in 10 years or more, and I got to try some new things and invent a couple of things, so yay.

Mostly, though, I'd like my mom to hang around for awhile longer.

I don't seem to have much else tonight. I intended to take a shower but never got around to it, and now it's really time to sleep. I'm just pleased that I got so many chores accomplished today, because that means I can lounge with abandon tomorrow.

No, Really, DO NOT Let It Bleed!

Any day where your mom almost dies is going to be a little iffy, though I will say that it most likely is much better than a day when your mom actually dies. Dad and I went up to the hospital yesterday afternoon, and ended up waiting around until mom got back from dialysis. She wasn't in great shape--she was tired, weak, and freaked out. Apparently, before she could say "don't touch that," some resident ripped off the bandage covering the leaky spot and she started to spurt blood all over the room, which terrified her (sounds like the right reaction to me). They ended up having to put a tourniquet on her arm to keep her from bleeding out (which she said was excruciatingly painful--and she's not a complainer--and that resulted in petechiae on that arm), and they got her into surgery right away. So, basically, they got the new graft in a day early, but with a lot of associated trauma. She called this morning and sounded MUCH better--she almost certainly slept last night, and maybe ate something. They're taking her into dialysis this morning, and she'll come home this afternoon, so that's good.

The really annoying thing is that her regular vascular guy was out of town last week, so when she went to the emergency room, as instructed, last Friday, she sat around for four hours and no one ended up doing anything about it. And, meanwhile, she and my dad, both of whom are immune-system-compromised, were sitting around sick people for four hours, which pissed them off mightily. Most of the people who looked at it said it wasn't anything to worry about (yeah, except for the ALMOST DYING part), or didn't have anything helpful to say about it, more most likely, had no clue at what they were looking. Guess everyone got a few lessons.

I didn't do a lot of baking yesterday (and my dad and I got cheese steaks for dinner last night, from a local place that has been in business since 1938, which, despite my hinkiness about commercial beef production, tasted incredible). Today, however, is going to be a baking production line. The mince pie and the cherry pie are in the oven, along with some cinnamon-sugar pie-crust scraps. When that's done, I'm going to make the pastry cream, then I'm going to do the pretzels. (I may mix the pretzel dough before the pastry cream, though, now that I think about it, so the dough can rise.) I think I'll do the cauliflower and the barley tomorrow. I may do the cream puffs today, too, depending on my ambition and the timing.