Morning Devotions

Many people make grand new year's resolutions--I'm going to go to the gym 43 times each week! I'm going to go to yoga classes every day! I'm going to eat nothing except carrots and wheat bran and filtered water! Did I mention going to the gym???--and, in part because the commitments are unsustainable, they don't last very long. Generally, by mid February, at the gym the lines at the various pieces of equipment or the crowds for a particular class or activity would diminish. We regulars would have the place to ourselves again.

Don't get me wrong: If that kickstart works for someone--where "works" = helps someone find a sustainable change of habits--I'm happy about it. It's not at all that I want those crowds of people to Fail. It even bums me out a bit that so many of them are going to fail, because I think that they'd be happier if they could figure out a way to notFail. And, really, it's even possible that many of them will keep trying and will eventually find a way to incorporate some kind of exercise in their lives in a way that is pleasant and sustainable.

In any case, it's because i remember those crowds of people in January who disappeared by February that, when I try to make changes, I aim to set very small, very specific goals for myself. (I don't have crowds around my rowing machine, however.) I'm still not always successful, mind you, but the advantage of setting isolated goals is that, if it does fail, it's easier to identify the reasons why and, maybe, make another, possibly-more-successful attempt.

One of my mini goals for this new year--drink at least one, preferably two, glasses of water when I get up in the morning and at least twice more during the day--has had subtle but significant benefits. I can't point to a specific effect, but, overall, my innards seem much happier about the whole thing. The first-thing-in-the-morning solution works pretty well for this particular effort, probably because I can just pour a glass of water and drink it.

A second mini-goal was, as mentioned before, a few minutes of yoga. That one has hung in so far, as well, and this one, too, is more likely to be accomplished if I do it in the morning. I miss the occasional day; I sometimes do it in the evening rather than the morning; and I haven't really expanded beyond the original sequence I assembled for myself. But--and this is the important part--I keep doing it. I had two mats, so I took one to Friend's house, which facilitates keeping it in the morning slot. (His cat isn't entirely sure she approves--she'd much rather I chase her around and wrestle with her, which is one of her preferred post-breakfast activities.)

The third thing I've been doing, though it wasn't a goal, exactly, is eating a bowl of oatmeal (steel-cut oats, because I love the chewiness) in the morning, with blueberries cooked right in. Remember that 10 pounds or so of blueberries I bought this summer at the farmers' market and froze? That's what's going into the oatmeal. This one has the added benefit of actually using the damn blueberries and eating more stuff out of the freezer, so it's pretty much an all-around win. For awhile I was making oatmeal at work (in the microwave), but some days I didn't feel like fussing with it, or someone was using the microwave, or whatever. At home it seems like way less of a hassle, somehow.

Basically, I've been trying to restructure my mornings a bit. I hadn't quite conceptualized it that way, but an examination of the above three things made me realize everything I'm doing is a morning thing. One of the things I really don't do in the morning is work out. I've tried it, sometimes I've even sustained it for a little while, but, in general, it's not a good fit for me. I'm an early-morning person (I typically wake up before 5 am, and I almost never set an alarm), but I'm even less flexible in the morning. I'm going to try to do it tomorrow morning, though, because I'm supposed to go out to dinner in the evening, after acupuncture, so it would be useful to get a workout in. (Especially because I hoovered everything in sight today, for some reason.) And, hey, if I end up not going out, I will have already done my workout for the day, so a win there, too.

Anyway. We're in the middle of a snowstorm; we're expecting a bunch more tonight. You people on the east coast got your share already, so I guess it's our turn, but I can't get terribly bent out of shape about it. I don't have to drive in it, and, on some level, it's just snow.

CondoMe, Part 1

So the first batch was interesting. There is/was one place that I kinda loved--I woke up Sunday morning thinking about it--but, as I continued to truly contemplate living there, the rational part of my brain was able to remind the rest of my brain that, although there are, indeed, many windows and a lake view, nearly all of the windows face north. That is, this place will get absolutely no direct light, which, ultimately, will make me unhappy. I should add that, if it had faced south rather than north, I might have written a check on the spot.

That is useful information, at least in my head, because it helps me refine what I want. Seeing actual places helps me figure out which things are REALLY important, and by how much. For example, another place has a balcony--except it's facing a courtyard, and the people across the courtyard are quite close, and there's a taller building past that, so not a lot of light there, either. A skylight helps, but, all in all, it didn't excite me that much, especially for the price. Point being, a balcony isn't the most important thing.

I think we're going to see some more places on Thursday. There are a few seemingly fab places we couldn't see on Saturday, and it's early in the search. It's not as though I have to decide RIGHT NOW, which is what I've generally had to do when I'm moving.

The other project for the weekend was a synergistic blend of "use some of the canned beans and tomatos, already, maybe starting with the ones you bought three fucking years ago when they were on sale and you stocked up" and "how about making some dinners and, especially, lunches, so you have some stuff you can just grab and go, okay?" The real estate agent dropped me off at the Whole Paycheck on Saturday and I did my usual buy-so-much-stuff-my-arms-get-longer, and Sunday morning I went nuts. I ended up making:
*a black bean and sweet potato thing (it's supposed to be pureed but I just mashed it up so it's more coarsely textured), some of which was used for our dinner last night while we watched the game (along with chips, melted cheddar, avocado, mango, salsa, and some slightly freezer-burned chicken breasts from my freezer that were sliced into thin strips and spiced with a jerk chicken blend)
*french vegetable and bean stew, made with leeks (which I've never used before), white beans, tomtaos, carrots, potatos, fennel seed, and fresh tarragon
*tuscan beans with sage--basically, white beans with garlic and sage, and I dumped in a can of tomatos there, too, and maybe an onion
*chickpeas with spinach--again, a can of tomatos, some garlic, as well as cumin, coriander, and a pinch of saffron
The stew will make nice lunches, especially with a hunk of bread. The chickpeas or the black beans can be combined with some brown rice for lunch, and the beans with sage can be combined with pasta for a quick dinner. Everything is packed into little serving-size bags or containers, so I just need to make a batch of brown rice--and possibly prepackage and freeze that, too. All of the recipes were from the Moosewood Low-Fat Cookbook, though I modified a couple of them a bit.

And? I did it all in about three hours, maybe less. I wanted to do some baking, too, and then decided I'd save that project for another day. But I did manage to use up a bunch of stuff--several cans of beans and tomatos, in fact--so I managed to implement both parts of the plan. And the plan has two ulterior motives: further improve my eating habits, in ways that are easy to maintain, and use up as much of the stuff in my freezer and cabinets as possible, thereby reducing the things that will need to be moved.

Meanwhile, my motivation is still missing; give me a call if you find it, 'k?

Time Flies

like an arrow; fruit flies like my apartment. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the fuck is attracting them, and it is getting on my last damn nerve. Looks like I have a project for the weekend.

Other than looking at condos, that is. I am working with an agent--my boss just bought a place, and this is the person who helped him, and he, in turn, got the recommendation from his brother, who is a loan officer. She says we're going to look at five places on Saturday; we'll see how that goes.

Clothing descriptions that annoy me:

boyfriend (used to describe pants, jackets, and shirts) What the fuck is a "boyfriend" style? My favorite in the current jjill catalogue is a "boyfriend" jacket with "princess" seams. Honey, if your boyfriend is wearing things that have princess seams, then he may be more a friend of Dorothy than a boyfriend of yours, if you know what I mean.

authentic fit Because what would an "inauthentic" fit be, exactly? For that matter, what makes the fit authentic?

weekend Especially when used to describe a sweater that is nicer than some of the shit I wear to work. If it's the weekend, unless I'm going Out, I'm wearing a t-shirt or sweatshirt or fleece, or possibly some combination of all of those (depending on the season and whether I'm at Friend's house). I am not wearing a drapey cashmere sweater.

The fires at work aren't burning quite as strongly, pretty much. There are still two piles of debris that are in flames--no; wait; three--but I have high hopes that I can extinguish at least one and possibly all three today. We'll see. I have had so little motivation this week to begin with, and once I started on this findacondo project, I lost all remaining interest in doing work. I manage to focus periodically, though, because various projects Must Get Done or People Will Be Upset. And, really, rightly so; these things really truly must be done. I just wish I could muster some motivation to do them.

Space Station

As you know, I've been contemplating a move, and it has taken an unexpected course. As I rummaged in the "for rent" ads, there was a bifurcation: a fair amount of stuff at my current rent level, give or take a hundred bucks, then a gap, then some more stuff at rents about $500 or $600 more than I'm paying. So I could either move to another shitty apartment--with, presumably, a different array of less-than-desirable factors than my current apartment--or I could nearly double my rent for a nicer one-bedroom apartment. Which is a fuckload of money, so I idly wondered what kinds of prices condos were getting in my neighborhood.

Answer? Sufficiently cheaply priced such that I have decided that I'm buying a place to live, and it'll likely happen within the next three months; I'm actually looking at some two-bedroom places on Saturday with an agent. So, yes, I will likely be moving when this lease is up (or before), but to my own place, rather than to another rental. And, most likely, I'll end up paying less each month for all of the bits (mortgage, assessment, taxes, etc.) than I would pay to rent a similarly nice two-bedroom apartment.

On one hand, it feels a little weird, but, on the other, once I did some simple math, it was a pretty obvious thing to do. I'll be interested to see the actual spaces, rather than pictures, so I can really evaluate my options.

And I'm kinda excited. Part of what was making me not want to move--despite my various peeves with my current apartment--was the knowledge that I really had to go through things that are crammed in drawers and closets. When I moved four years ago, I just heaved things into boxes and brought it along (much like I did in 1993). Periodically I have tried to go through stuff, but there are things I've never looked at or opened since I moved in, and I know there are piles of crap rid of which I must get. (Do I really need three old cell phones? No; I do not. One of them isn't even mine--I found it on the street and tried to return it, but was unable to do so.)

I really was not looking forward to weeding through the boxes and piles of stuff; it's an onerous job, not least because hauling things that can be recycled to the places that will take them requires friends' vehicles. But the thought of hauling things I don't want or need to a recycling location so I can move to a new place that is NOT another crappy rental is magically less onerous. Yes, it will require exactly the same amount of effort, but it's still a different feeling.

So, yeah. Not really what I expected to be doing at the moment, but sometimes you gotta say what the fuck.

Refrigerator Bingo

I have some more bakery rules for you, but I cannot focus on them tonight. Despite not leaving work until nearly 6:00 (and getting in early this morning), I fully intended to work out tonight. But my back suddenly became so painful that sitting and doing nothing is actually about a 3 or 4 on the 1-10 scale, and trying to row shot it way-the-fuck up the scale to a 5 or 6. (Especially weird because most of today was relatively non-problematic.) So I took some ibuprofen and ate some cookies, which will probably take care of the pain, but by the time it kicks in, it will be too late to work out.

This week's episode of Iron Chef: Friend's House required that I use a cabbage and some bacon as my Secret Ingredients, and the usual rules applied (make do with Friend's equipment and pans; create something that has some nutritional value in it, particularly in the form of vegetables and fiber). Friend often buys some bit of something at the local produce store--which isn't that great of a produce store, but he's enamored with it because, when he was unemployed, he'd buy the battered, bruised, brown, and/or slightly soft or moldy vegetables from the Really Really Cheap rack and create stews and otherwise feed himself for very little money--without any clear notion of what he's going to do with it. And, as with the bacon and the cheese in what follows, there may be little bits of things left from something else.

Then, when we're contemplating making dinner of a Sunday, he wants to use whatever it is he bought, along with whatever other scraps are sitting around--and, often enough, I'm the one who ends up figuring out what to do with it. Last week, for example, as I think I told you, I rescued a butternut squash that had a lot of moldy and brown spots on the outside but appeared to be otherwise okay (he cut off the oogy bits and I threw it in the oven, which was already on for the tart), and used the rest of the rutabaga, an onion, some fresh ginger that was sitting around, a little bit of leftover sweet potato (possibly from New Year's, but it wasn't moldy or anything), the juice from some oranges that were starting to go soft, and some of the applesauce he'd made from apples from the produce store rack. It made a lovely puree after it was all cooked together, it got rid of multiple odds and ends, and he now has several lunches' worth of soup in the freezer.

In principle, I like the thought exercise, and I like using what's available, and I particularly like not wasting things. I also know that having healthy lunches in the freezer, in easily grabbable packages, means healthier eating. But sometimes it feels like more of a chore, particularly when I'm the one who is doing all the work (Friend needed to do some work yesterday--several hours of it, it turned out), even though he is very appreciative of that. I was just kinda melancholy anyway yesterday (and today, too, for that matter), so that probably had an effect.

So: I cut the cabbage into thin strips and steamed it somewhat (though not till it was completely soggy). Meanwhile, I made some rice (a mix of brown and wild) and thawed a package of ground venison. The cabbage had to be steamed in batches, because of the small steamer; as I pulled it out, I put on some salt, pepper, and a little butter, as well as chopped-up cheese bits (probably no more than an ounce or two, of I have no clue what kind of cheese).

I added a can of black beans to the rice when it was done, and cut a few thin slices of semolina sesame bread, which I then cut into small cubes. I cooked the bacon and removed it from the pan, then poured off some (but not all) of the grease. I cooked a diced onion in the bacon grease, scraping up the fond as well. When the onions were soft and a little brown, I threw in the venison; when that was browned, I put the chopped-up bacon back into it. I spiced it with some venison sausage seasoning from Penzey's which is largely pepper of various sorts, I think. To assemble, in a lasagna-sized pan: a layer of cabbage; a layer of the meat and onions; a layer of cabbage; a layer of rice and beans; a final layer of cabbage, topped with some grated cheddar and the bread cubes. Baked the whole thing for a while--basically, until the top was a little crusty and bubbly, and I was guessing that it was more or less heated through, at least around the edge.

It tasted pretty good, though it does NOT retain its shape (e.g., like lasagna), and ends up being a heap more than a slice of anything. I would definitely make it again, though I would--of course--make some changes. In particular: I would use a grain other than rice--barley, farro, or cracked wheat would all be good choices--because rice isn't densely flavored enough. (If i did use rice, I'd perhaps do something with tomatos. But then you'd start losing the flavor of the venison.) Friend suggested adding corn, and you could do that, too, but I'd rather add some kind of dried fruit or tomatos. I might cook the cabbage a little longer. Definitely retain the bacon/onion/venison mix; that worked nicely to add some meaty complexity without being a big Wad O Meat. You could also do stuffed cabbage--leave the leaves whole and make the same mixture, but roll it up in the leaves--but this worked fine, even if it was less pretty.

Dessert included more of the bitter lemon tart, topped with a compote of orange juice, blueberries, and honey, and that definitely worked. I've now made that recipe at least three, and possibly four times, and each time it has had a too-bitter edge to it. I've decided I'm only going to make it if I also have oranges and can do a citrus mix. Brazen Tart has had good luck with that recipe, IIRC, but I'm not doing something right--and not doing it right the same way each time, apparently.

And, sure enough, as I've been sitting here, the pain has receded and nearly gone away completely. Which is definitely a good thing.

Bakery Rules

It turns out that a number of things I learned at the bakery apply in other realms, including the office where I now work. Feel free to use them if they're useful to you.

1. Not every day can be a good day.

Bossman says this when something fucks up (or someone fucks something up). I particularly appreciated this when I was the person who fucked things up, but, in general, it's a useful thing to keep in mind. People make mistakes; it's just one of the things we do. Ergo, any plan that requires that everything go absolutely perfectly is a shaky plan. It's a much better idea to have some backup systems in place, though even they are going to fail you sometimes.

2. Blame won't laminate the dough or bake the bread.

It's kind of a corollary to the above. Bossman didn't say this, but the "not every day can be a good day" thing is, I always thought, a way to deflect that blaming. On one hand, if someone consistently fucks up a product, or consistently fucks up, then s/he isn't going to be a great fit--perhaps they should be packing cookies instead of mixing dough. But the kind of blaming and finger-pointing that has been going around in my office is really a waste of time and energy.

3. The person you think of as "that asshole" may still be the person you need to mix your dough.

In the bakery, despite the various tidbits I narrated for the amusement of you guys, people were pretty much expected to just deal with each other. The kind of backbiting and throwing people under the bus that we've been seeing in my office job weren't as prevalent. Everyone had their buttons, of course, but mostly everyone got along, especially once Brad was gone.

Part of this was structural, in at least two ways: For one thing, the "hierarchy" was nearly non-existent. Bossman was working right there alongside everyone else, not sitting in an office "downtown." He might be down in the office doing the books or something, and he was much more able to take off a day or a few days, but, in general, he worked hours that were almost as grueling as anyone else's. Thus, jockeying for "position" was kind of pointless; there weren't positions for which to jockey. (That's also why Brad was a problem: he imposed pointless hierarchy, and it just annoyed everyone.)

The other structural reason for this was that there were just enough tasks that required others' cooperation to complete that it wasn't a good idea to completely piss off someone else. This guy may do all the cookies or all the cakes, but he needs that guy to do at least some of the baking for him. The other person may need help making this product. Everyone may need to gather around the line to make bear claws, which means the person in charge of the bear claws better have his ducks in a row before taking everyone away from their work. I tacitly referred to this when I gave Phil credit for baking the croissants (and I could always tell when it was him and not one of the night guys who had done the baking, because Phil did it better)--I knew that, while my lamination was crucial, baking was a huge part of their beauty, and giving him credit for it acknowledged that. You can take the most beautiful product in the world, and if you bake it wrong, it's going to suck. Same thing is true in office-world, but not everyone seems to realize that.

Finally, though, it was a really good crew of guys, who had known each other and worked together for more than ten years--more than 15 years in some cases. It wasn't terribly difficult to get along with them, at least in my case. If you work hard, do your job, lend a hand, and don't be an asshole, you'll get along just fine. This is more a personality thing than a structural thing, but it does speak, a little, to Bossman's selection of people to work there. He was tolerant of people's personality quirks--basically, he ignored them or, when necessary, worked around them--which definitely set a tone.

4. It takes four times to get it right.

Bossman always says it takes making a new recipe four times to get it right, and that proved itself to be true so many times. Even if you get really close the first time, you're still going to want to do some tweaking--fill the mold a little less, bake it a little longer, use a different shape or size, whatever. You can't change everything at once--especially if you don't know exactly which thing will get you closer to where you're trying to get--so you're going to have to do it more than once or twice. Sometimes, of course, you just have to take a shot and go with it; you don't have time to tweak. But if you take notes, then next time you're going to get a little closer. And, on the flip side of this, expecting perfection from someone else the first time out of the gate is a pretty sure road to disappointment.

5. Meetings are generally fucking useless.

A few months ago, when I stopped in the bakery, we were laughing about how a "meeting" at the bakery was when Phil was loading the oven and I was cutting croissants and Bossman was making galettes and we talked about when we were going to make the rolls, because I was needed to be part of that operation. I'm completely making up the example, but the reality is, the real work didn't stop for "meetings." In my current job, managers--especially at my boss's level--go to so many fucking meetings that it's not even funny. Every time I turn around he has to meet with someone else in the organization, often at another location; what meetings mostly do is take him away from his actual work. As a result, the actual work takes even longer, because the people who need to do it are stuck in stupid meetings. It kind of blows me away sometimes.

The other part about it is the amount of hand-holding that seems to be needed. Some of that is structural: we need some systemic solutions to many of the issues we've been facing, and there are no systems in place, so everyone's kind of struggling a bit, but there's still a notion that when person A has a question, person B--and sometimes person C and person D--need to drop everything to solve person A's problem or question. I try not to fall into that myself, and I recognize that sometimes you really do need an answer before you can go on with your work, but it can make it difficult.

Anyway. I need to get some sleep. I should be packing and watering my plants--Friend and I are heading out of town tomorrow for part of the weekend--but I don't feel like it. There will be time tomorrow.

Simple Solutions to National Problems

If you are a Representative or Senator who votes against health care reform (by which I mean a plan that covers every goddamned person in this country, no ifs ands or buts), then (a) you lose your own health insurance coverage, as do all your children and your spouse, and (b) all the citizens in your district also lose their health insurance coverage, no matter whether their employers provide it or not. If you vote against it? then no one in your district/state, including you and your family, can have it either.

How's that sound?

In Which More Things Suck

Be forewarned: I have other, possibly more-profound, thoughts rummaging around in my brain, but I'm out of the patience necessary to write them down, so you're stuck with yet another narrative about how work sucks, how my parents are doing, what I'm reading, and what I baked and/or had for dinner the past few days. Specifically:

Despite my best intentions--and, for that matter, at least some of my desires--I did not come home and work out tonight. Also? No yoga today. And whatever, is all I can bring myself to think about the whole thing. And? Popcorn, dried strawberries, cheese, and cookies for dinner. Also don't care about that.

Why, yes, you're correct; the suckage continues. We're beginning to piece together all the problems--or, rather, diagnose them--but it's still going to be a very long haul. If this were the only thing on which I needed to be working, it would suck, but would be manageable; as it is, though, there are several other important things I must be doing that I need to squeeze in where I can. There are several good, or, at least, useful things about the current annoyances, however. For one thing, I have sent people crap, kept people informed, showed my work, distributed spreadsheets, and so on, all the way along. If I have made mistakes--which I surely have--I have at least provided my work to other people, giving others the opportunity to identify those mistakes. That has not happened--if anything, I'm the one who has identified my mistakes. But the point is, I have shown people what I'm doing, rather than hiding it, which makes it very difficult for someone to say that we haven't inFORRRMMMMed them what's going on. Second, all those years where I wrote detailed accounts of shit, and tried to assemble my facts to make an argument? Turns out that comes in handy, and not so I can point my finger at someone else and say gotcha.

For example: if you tell me that I am "over budget," what exactly do you mean by that? In our context, that could mean:
(a) When we developed the FY budget for the organization back in May, we estimated our costs for widgets for the fiscal year to be $100. After six months, we have spent $60 and it looks like we're on track to spend $120 for the year. We are just plain buying too many widgets, and we need to cut back for the next six months. (Alternatively, we planned to spend more in the early months and less in the later months, but the dollars budgeted were spread evenly over the fiscal year, just for convenience.)
(b) We budgeted $100 back in May for this fiscal year, but, since then, we've reconsidered, and submitted several grant budgets, which allot a total of $120 for the fiscal year for widgets (more or less, because the grant budgets don't exactly line up with the FY budget, by dates). Thus, we are over budget on the FY budget--which the board examines--but just fine according to our grant budgets.
(c) We budgeted $100 back in May, and we've submitted grant budgets that allot $100, but we've seen more patients with insurance than we predicted, so we can afford another $20 in widgets, i.e., we are "over" budget on income as well as expenses.
(d) We budgeted $100 for widgets and $100 for mergatmacaters, both in the FY budget and the grant budgets. However, it turns out we need $120 for widgets and $80 for mergatmacaters, and both of those fall into the "supplies" lines of our grants. (In federal grants, you can move things around within your large categories, e.g., buy more dental supplies and fewer medical supplies than you originally said in your contract budget; you can also move things between categories--e.g., between supplies and salaries--but not quite as much. It's based on percentages, rather than dollars, and you can move a higher percentage of dollars within a category as opposed to between categories.) Thus, while we're over budget for widgets and under budget for mergatmacaters in the FY budget, we're absolutely fine in the grant budget, and we may draw down all $200 from our grant; the current internal rules say we can still only draw down $100 for widgets.
(e) We budgeted $100 for widgets, in both the fiscal year and grant budgets, but we should have budgeted $120, because that's just the cost of widgets, and we can't reduce that cost.

The solution to the "over budget!!11eleventy!!" crisis depends on which of the above scenarios is the case; no one solution will fix each of those issues. Thus, just telling us that we are "over budget" does not help us. In fact, it leads to us being told (as we have been) that, on a given grant, we are both over budget and under spending. Um, well, no, both of those things can't be true simultaneously, folks.

In any case, this is precisely where my analytical abilities come in handy (or we hope they do, anyway). What I've laid out above will actually be reasonably useful in this exercise, I suspect, and, in fact, each of the above is probably true in different parts of the budget. As noted, I'd be enjoying this more if I didn't have several other important things screaming for my attention.

However, some good food was also had this weekend. Saturday night we went out to a local hip expensive restaurant and had some fabulous food. Sunday Friend made some of his gumbo, which included wild turkey, venison sausage, andouille sausage, two kinds of beans, onions, celery, okra, corn, tomatos, rutabaga (my idea), and carrots, and I made the lemon tart again, and, once again, was disappointed by its bitterness. Monday we made squash soup (butternut squash, leftover sweet potatos, the rest of the rutabaga, onion, orange juice, homemade applesauce, all pureed), cracked wheat (I'd thought it was barley when I brought it over; oops), and a bit of wild turkey breast and a bit of venison tenderloin (garlic, black pepper, and a sauce of reduced wine, onions, and shitakis), both pan-fried in a little bacon grease. I had reduced some blueberries with orange juice as part of our breakfast, and the rest of that compote turned out to be a fine addition to the lemon tart; I suggested to Friend that he simply warm some honey and orange juice together to put over the tart for the rest of his enjoyment. I'd also made a batch of the barley sugar meringues, and these failed in a whole other way from the last batch, but were even better eating, so that wasn't a total loss, either. I also made a batch of soft pretzels and pretzel rolls Monday, which turned into more of a project than I really wanted but ended up being reasonably successful.

So, really, working out would have been a useful addition to tonight's program, in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, I'm reading "Get Real," by Donald Westlake, and I'm finding it kind of . . . sad. The book itself is quite funny (it's another Dortmunder and Kelp novel), and I keep laughing out loud at various bits, but, as you may remember, Westlake died a year ago New Year's Eve, so this is the last of the Dortmunder books, which bums me out. For 30+ years my dad and I have been reading Westlake and keeping each other apprised of the latest one. And Westlake was so prolific that he wrote under several pen names--he could write four or more books a year, but the publishers didn't think people would believe that he could write that many good books. In any case, I strongly recommend him.

Speaking of dad, apparently the dermatologist has decided that, yes, the rash is an allergic reaction, but likely not directly a reaction to the chemo. I pointed out to my mom (and apparently the derm guy said the same thing) that it's possible that when the chemo whacked dad's immune system, that basically facilitated an allergy to one of the other meds he takes (the usual blood pressure/cholesterol/etc. combos that men in their late 70s who have had a quadruple bypass would take). The doc also did a skin biopsy (which I had also recommended, thanks to one of the NPs at work, but mom dismissed), but the results weren't back yet.

So, back to the salt mines tomorrow, or the spreadsheets, anyway. I'd actually kind of enjoy it, because it's a kind of puzzle-solving, if the consequences of being wrong or fucking up weren't so bad (e.g., needing to make major budget cuts).

Random Thoughts Make a Post

I am tired of the smell of burning hair. Whenever I smell someone's hair burning these days, it's a pretty good bet that I'm going to have to be involved in the firefighting, and I am tired of that.

I am tired of our finance person playing the game of "Let's you and her fight." I am tired of asking for someone with different/relevant experience to review the budgets we are preparing and tell us what we're doing wrong, and getting absolutely no response whatsoever. Most of all, though, I am tired of being told that the way to solve problems that are obviously systemic is to throw time, effort, and more time and effort at them, rather than devising a system that fixes the problems.

I am tired of hearing about Tiger Woods' genitalia and what he does with it. I. Do. Not. Care. Really; I don't. If he were telling others what they should do with their genitalia, and it differed from what he is doing with his, then we could criticize him for being a hypocrite, but he is not doing that.

I am peeved at hearing someone disparage Mark McGwire for the "carefully orchestrated" way he revealed that he used steroids. Of course it's carefully orchestrated; did you expect him to blurt it out? He fucked up, and he knows he did, and he kinda hopes he gets to get credit without an asterisk for his home runs. (I don't really know how I feel about that. It's not as though we can go back and test everyone who held a record at some point, so it seems unfair to only punish some people. On the other hand, the Tour de France has been pretty relentless in drug testing and in throwing out offenders, so it can be done. I really think that, players' stupidity or cupidity aside, the message hasn't exactly been clear.)

On a related note, I find it disingenuous, at best, for McGwire to say that he only took steroids to help heal injuries, that he would never ever have used them solely to boost his performance. Look, dude: my dad has been taking steroids to address a rash that resulted from his chemo. When he was on the (legitimately prescribed) juice, his knees felt MUCH better. Within a day of stopping the juice? Back to the aching, nearly-80-year-old, did-physical-labor-for-45-years knees. Even he could tell a performance difference. Also, McGwire's claims that if there'd been drug testing in baseball then he wouldn't have used them kinda conflicts with his claim that he needed them, don't it? If you "needed" them, then the testing shouldn't have mattered, no?

I am pleased that my specific plans to drink more water are resulting in more water being drunk by me. My body seems happy about this, though the "happier" part is subtle and possibly related to the other things I've been doing as well.

I am pleased that I have managed to do some kind of workout for 9 of the last 10 days, for at least 30 minutes a day. It hasn't always been as long or as intense as I would prefer--45 minutes and a bit more intensity would have been nice on a few days--but I did it.

I have practiced at least a little yoga every day for the past 10 days. My specific commitment was to two sun salutations (a version a little different from the classic/standard sun salutation) each day, and I have done that. Yesterday and today I modified that a bit to incorporate a couple additional asanas. As I pointed out to myself, two sun salutations isn't all that difficult to fit in. Friend and I are going out of town next weekend--leaving Friday after work, coming back Sunday--so I don't know what I'll do on Saturday, as we'll be staying with friends of his, but I'll deal with it. Missing one day won't be an issue if it comes to that.

And I have been doing other things to help maintain in this high-stress environment. My back/hip are acting up again--time for more acupuncture!--but whatevs. My goal is to continue to try to work toward solutions. Not everyone is on board with that, but I can't control what other people do. And so to bed.

Habit-Forming

The junkies and alcoholics I worked with say that practice doesn't make perfect; practice makes permanent. While addiction surely has a chemical component--take it from someone who was addicted to nicotine--it's reinforced by habits. Addicts learn to associate using with a set of behaviors, with, as they say, people, places, and things. If you really want to stop using, and stay stopped, one of the things you have to do is create new habits and associations. Some things you can't really eliminate, or, at least, not easily--for many smokers, for example, the post-meal cigarettes are the ones that are most deeply ingrained, and you can't exactly stop eating.

But, obviously, it can be done, habits can be changed. For me, once the physical withdrawal was gone, it was a very slow process of retraining, of disassociating things like meals with the cigarettes that followed the meals. In my experience, the habits weren't broken so much as disintegrated (quite literally, in the sense of un-integrating smoking with the things I did during the day).

I've also observed that there are various types of habits, or levels of them, or something. The ones with a psychoactive substance involved are off at one end of a spectrum, on one spoke on a wheel--I say that because I think one's own brain chemicals are also psychoactive substances of a sort, but probably belong in a different class than, say, alcohol or nicotine. And then there are the ones that are at a macro level, of sorts. For example, for me and for many people I know, regular exercise is a macro-level habit. We don't do the same things throughout our lives, and we don't do the same thing every week or every day; I don't play handball any more, though, for nearly 15 years, I played two to five times a week. We know, at some deep level, that physical activity is really part of what we want and need, and we figure out ways to make space for that in our lives.

It took me awhile to figure out what I was going to do after handball and after the bakery--walking? a gym?--but I eventually settled on the rowing machine, and that has been a great solution. (I define a "great" form of exercise as, first and foremost, one that I actually do.) As a result, I trust that I'll get back to exercise if things get crazy and I don't have the opportunity to do much for a week or two, and I've set things up (literally, in my living room) so that I can do a quick 15 or 20 minutes if that's all I have. Basically, if I set up the general parameters--have the machine; have DVDs or television programming with which I can occupy myself as I row; aim for working out after work rather than first thing in the morning, because I know that that works better for me--I am pretty good about doing the thing.

But some things are harder for me and require a different strategy, and I've been experimenting with some of those. One is water: it became obvious to me that I am not drinking enough water. So now I'm trying to create a new habit, of drinking at least one, and maybe more than one, glass of water at specific times of the day (when I get up in the morning; immediately after I exercise; at least once during the day). (There are a couple of others, too, but we'll see whether they last longer than the first four workdays of the new year.) In this case, just setting general parameters ("have water in the house") wasn't getting it done, so more specificity seemed to be in order.

Anyway. Work has been completely insane this week; I feel like I've done two weeks worth of stuff in the first three days. The Big Meeting was way less combative than I'd feared (having one's boss around apparently reduces douchebaggery), though of course it has further increased my workload.

But? Still better than hauling sacks of flour and making thousands of croissants every week. There are a few advantages to the bakery--most notably, WAY fewer meetings--and that knowledge informs my current work, too. So, win.

Shakes

I had enough caffeine this morning to last me for about three weeks. It's one of those weird things: some days i can drink coffee and it's like drinking water; other days, the effect on my brain is like the drug that it is. (Tea pretty much never bothers me, no matter how much I drink.) In general I avoid it, precisely because I don't much like the wired feeling at all; it becomes difficult to focus on anything, and I end the day feeling kind of exhausted from trying to keep up with myself.

What I mostly did over the weekend was catch up on sleep and lounging--which aren't exactly the same thing. Friday I made stuffed collard greens (leaves stuffed with a rice mixture that included tomatos, currants, onions, garlic, cinnamon, cumin, and toasted pine nuts) and sweet potatos sliced and roasted with butter and a touch of maple syrup. Friend made a pork roast (topped with garlic, sage, pepper, and some of his homemade applesauce), thereby honoring the spirit of my maternal grandmother, who insisted that we have pork of some kind of new year's day. Yesterday for breakfast I made some maple-smoked bacon, then sauteed half an onion in a little bacon grease, then threw in some leftover sweet potatos, three eggs, some egg whites, and, once it was cooked through, a bit of cheese. Yes, it WAS tasty.

We then settled in to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and, between Thursday's and Friday's dinner leftovers, we had enough food so we only had to warm things up. This morning we went out for breakfast, and Friend dropped me off at home, where I had intended to do some work in preparation for Tuesday's Big-Ass Financial Meeting, but I simply do not feel like doing that--plus, remember that lack of focus resulting from caffeine? Turns out that looking at detailed financials isn't really compatible with that.

I think what I most need to do before Tuesday's meeting is meditate. Or something like that, anyway. There are multiple strands to this, and it's difficult to tease them all out. More to the point, it's difficult to tease them out, and come up with useful solutions, without people getting defensive and bitchy and unhelpful. So I'm going to try to get my own (and my boss's) ducks in as much of a row as I possibly can, I'm going to have a list of what I think are relevant questions, and I'm going to try to maintain my own calm.

We'll see how that plan works.

Going Bananas

Such a long, long time to be gone
and a short time to be there

If my sister hadn't died, she would have turned 50 today. Instead, she's been gone for 26 years--more years than she lived, which means I've lived more years without her than with her. And, of course, that's the case for life in general--we're dead for more years than we were alive, and pretty quickly, in the scope of the world's time. At this point, it's not just missing her qua her; of course I miss the stupid jokes we shared, and the rest of our shared childhood and adolescence, but the sadness, at this point, has at least as much to do with not knowing what she would have become, what she would have done, how she would have transformed into an adult. Would she have gone on to become a force in the world of international development? Would her budding feminism have grown? Or maybe she would have come home from the Peace Corps, gotten married, had a few kids, and had a boring office job somewhere. I kinda doubt that, but I also recognize that the work she might have done is my fantasy about her; there's no way to know what she really would have done. It's like reading a really wonderful novel, one of those big juicy ones with lots of interesting characters, and having the author quit writing after only a third of the novel, and it's not in any library anywhere, so you'll never know what might have happened to the characters.

And, of course, Chuck's mother and the mother of a close friend from college both died this year, and I knew them both reasonably well--the latter for as long as I've known my friend, which is coming up on 32 years; and Sara committed suicide. (I can't bring myself to erase her number from my phone. It'll go away when I switch phones eventually, as will the last call I received from her, but she lingers electronically.) (I have known three people who committed suicide: a cousin, a friend/lover in Philadelphia, and Sara. Is that a lot? Because it seems like it to me.)

On the other hand, my parents' health, despite a variety of bumps (some of them literal, in the case of my dad's rash; Ron, my mom doesn't have a plant, so it seemed easiest to recommend a jar of the goop, and the steroids are doing their thing), continues to be pretty good, all things considered; my mom got a kidney; my brother and I both have jobs (and I even got a promotion and raise); I saw more events this year, between concerts and hockey, than any other year in my life; and I had good company to share while I did it.

I guess, when it comes down to it, I don't know how to sum it up and reach a single evaluation: "good" or "bad" year. I try to go along with as much equanimity (and even joy) as possible, and I try to share as much of that as I possibly can, but it's not as though we can take any of it with us--which, for me, is all the more reason for dancing along as best we can, when we're lucky enough to have the basics. Not needing to worry about food and shelter and meaningful work and so on really is priceless. Given a sufficiency of the basics, it's the little things that improve our lives and that really make a difference.

For example, when I talked to my mom this morning, she was about to have a banana, and I suggested she put peanut butter on it as well. She was absolutely delighted at the prospect of the banana, with or without the pb. Why is that significant? Because, for those of you who haven't dealt with kidney issues, things like peanut butter and bananas are too high in forbidden elements. For several years now, my mom, who loves bananas, has had to limit herself to a few bites, and definitely not every day. Being able to eat whatever she damn well pleases, not needing to soak potatos overnight, not needing to go to dialysis three days a seek, is a radical realignment of her world. Knowing my mom, she won't go crazy--for her, it basically means she can have fruits and vegetables again, without having to worry that it will wreak havoc on her potassium or phosphates or whateverthehell. I realize that the kidney itself is a huge thing, rather than a small thing, but my point here is that the effect of the kidney is in how it alters a lot of small things about her everyday life.

Anyway. I don't have any grand conclusions today. I did manage to do the laundry and make the banana bread and clean up a tiny bit, plus I shlepped north and got some good chocolates and some collard greens. Friend and I are going out to an early dinner tonight, then heading to the sweatpants and the couch. Tomorrow we'll make pork (to make the spirit of my grandmother happy); I found a recipe for collard greens stuffed with a mixture of rice, currants, tomatos, pine nuts, and some other stuff, all of which I had around (except the greens); and I have some sweet potatos I need to use. If any (or all) of y'all were around, I say hey, come on over! That not being possible, may your new year be full of sweetness and light and joy and love.

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.

More Reviews

My personal favorite chef didn't get into the final of Top Chef, and my favorite of the final three didn't win, and the editing sucked in a major, major way. That said, one of the things I liked most about the last two shows is that all of the competitors wanted to beat the others at their best. One of the most telling scenes, for example, was when one of them told another that a sauce was boiling or burning or something. (Sorry; I forget who was involved in that interchange.) One of them--Jen, maybe--even said that; none of them wanted to win because one of the others screwed up.

Side note--one does not "cook" a cake. One BAKES a cake. Yeah, I know, what can you expect from a bunch of people who aren't pastry chefs or bakers. Speaking of which, apparently one of the spin-off series they're putting together is one that's just desserts. (Any guesses on what they'll name it?) Needless to say, I'm looking forward to that one.

The other movie I watched this week was "Imagine Me and You," the plot of which is this woman gets married (to a man) and, at her wedding, sees and falls and love with the woman who does the flowers for the wedding. There's lots of backing and forthing and so on, of what is supposed to be the usual romantic comedy drama, I think, and in the end--pretty quickly, like in less than six months, it seemed--she leaves her husband and goes racing after the florist.

Gotta say, it annoyed the fuck out of me. Let's enumerate the reasons, shall we?

First, I absolutely do not believe in love at first sight, and I say this as someone who arguably experienced it at least once in my life (many many years ago--like, 30+). More accurately, while I think that attraction can be immediate, any real relationship--with a lover OR with a friend--takes time. And it's not the big stuff, it's the everyday bullshit. A thunderbolt of attraction isn't going to get you through the crap. Thus, to me, the notion that she was willing to declare herself sufficiently in love with someone she'd barely met, someone she'd spent fewer than 24 hours with, someone she barely knew, was really pretty appalling.

Second, she seemed to regard her marriage as all but irrelevant. Oh, sorry, darling; I met this person--at our wedding, no less--for whom I'm leaving you, even though I've only been around her a few times, and I've suddenly realized I love her. Some of my puzzlement here is the notion of leaving one person to be with another person. I know that it happens, of course, and I am not judging other people's experience of that. (I do know that, for me, I really could not have lived with myself if I thought or felt that I was somehow leaving Chuck to be with Friend. I think Chuck believes that I did that, but he is simply wrong about it--and not just because Chuck moved out and left me. It's also worth pointing out that, although Friend and I have obviously continued to see each other, "baby steps" doesn't even begin to describe the circumspection with which both of us proceeded, and there's no guarantee at all that we would have ended up still seeing each other four years later.)

I have known other people whose marriages had difficulties in their first year, and it's nothing but agony, no matter the circumstances. If you really think you're going to leave Person A for Person B, mere months after you marry Person A, and you think you're going to live happily ever after, then you are a fucking fool. It's also worth pointing out that Person B should be worried--it means you're just as likely to leave Person B as you were to leave Person A, on some level.

So, third, I think the notion that she was leaving her husband for a woman is merely a senseless plot twist, and one that trivializes the crap that gay men and women have to deal with. I also find it it a bit odd that she apparently had never given any thought at all to whether she was attracted to men or women. I am sure that people's experiences differ greatly on this, and I have known a number of men and women whose recognition of their gayness took some time (and possibly some therapy), but even the people who came out later in life didn't have a whole lot question about it. They may have hoped it would go away; if it occurred 25 years ago, they may have suppressed it; they may have been in denial about it; they were maybe attracted to both men and women, but the notion that, in this day and age, in Great Britain, it would never have occurred to someone that oh, yeah, actually, I prefer to play on the other team, just seems unlikely to me.

I'm still slogging through crap at work. Tomorrow I'm locking myself in my office and chaining myself to my desk so I can write the proposal that's due on the 4th; cross your fingers that I can get 85% of it done tomorrow and thereby enjoy the holidays.

Take Away My Pants

Did you know that clothing can be cursed? Neither did I, but there's no other explanation. I have this pair of green winter-weight gramiccis, and last spring, as I ran to catch a train, I tripped and fell, landing hard enough to rip the knee out of the pants and rip open my knee as well. I got around to patching them this week, so I've been wearing them. Early yesterday morning I zipped up to the bakery to see about an order for Friday (even though it was 6:30 am, I knew Bossman would be there), intending to head over to Peet's afterwards to stock up on Winter Solstice tea. So after I leave the bakery, I'm at the corner and I hit a patch of black ice and fell; bruised my hand pretty badly, but otherwise mostly ended up with dirt on my coat and, yes, the green pants. I have fallen twice in the past four years, and both times I was wearing these pants. What other conclusion makes sense?

There's not a whole lot else to report, really. Work goes along. I have some crap to submit by the end of the year--at least one budget modification, next year's budget for one grant, a workplan, a proposal--and I have to figure out how to submit this other mountain of data, but whatevs. I didn't get much done this past week, because I had off on Tuesday (a personal day used for doctors' appointments), 3,472 meetings on Wednesday, and ended up taking off on Thursday as well (a dentist appointment in the morning, but I've been dealing with an annoying cold all week, so I just took a sick day). I should be able to crank out a few things this week, and I'm planning on working over the holidays, mostly, as well. I'll take off next Monday, and we have off both Thursdays and Fridays, but going in to the office at this time of year means I can get work done without people wanting things from me every damn minute. It would be nice to start the new year with a bunch of little crap (and some big stuff, too) off my desk.

I even made a dent today--and in more than one pile! It was very exciting.

Okay, maybe not so exciting, but still.

Friend and I watched two movies yesterday, one of which was "Into the Wild," which neither of us had seen and which I kind of wish we hadn't watched, not least because it gave me some bad dreams. I didn't know (or didn't remember, in any case) that the kid died, but it did not change my annoyance at him, at his willingness to burn his money, at his lack of compassion or consideration for his family and friends. Near the end, you see him writing, "happiness is only real when it's shared," and I, ever the sympathetic person, thought, "Well, duh; did you really need to go to Alaska and starve to death to realize that?" And, apparently, the answer is yes, which is sad.

Having been raised without religion or deities, and in a family that had and has a strong sense of responsibility, on one hand I never questioned the notion that we--broadly understood, not just my family--must take care of one another. Of course we must; the libertarian mindset is a quasi-nietzschean notion of personal invincibility for the elite few, and, of course, the proponents all think they are among the few. But it wasn't until I found Wittgenstein that I had a way of explaining it clearly, to myself or to anyone else.

One of the basic tenets of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is that there is no private language. The very definition of language is that it is a means of communication--with others. And I came to conceptualize our connections to each other as related to that--communication is a fundamental act. I realize it's several steps from that to a public health care option, and I don't feel like detailing those steps at the moment, but I do see the path.

Or think about it this way: the kid in the movie wandered off to Alaska by himself, ostensibly on some kind of journey of purity, but he brought with him both books and a means of communication (the notebook and writing implements). He brought language with him; he brought other humans with him, even as he thought he was leaving them all behind.

Anyway. The other movie was "Bad Santa," which I'd only seen once but ended up buying this year when I saw it on sale somewhere for $6. Friend was grumpy from his cold, and i thought the movie would make him laugh, and it did, and I found it to be every bit as gloriously profane as the first time I saw it. A perfect antidote to the sticky-sweet offerings of the "season."

Especially as this has been a rough several months in the air around me--my own parents' health issues; two friends losing their mothers this year (and I knew both of them; hell, one was my mother-in-law for awhile); a coworker dealing with some serious health issues (which reared their head again today with another hospitalization, and now he's out of sick time, which is a whole other drama waiting to happen, because he's basically going to have to retire and he can't really afford to do that, even though he's 67); a friend committing suicide; and the general malaise of the economy, which affects my brother and his family pretty significantly. I have to admit that I look forward to the winter solstice, and not because it's Friend's birthday; that's just an extra bonus. I look forward to it because it means the days are going to start getting the tiniest bit longer again, and it won't start getting dark before 4:00 in the afternoon.

And just to show you that, freedom from religion notwithstanding, I still have my superstitions. I was going to wear those green pants yesterday afternoon to go to Friend's house, and I just couldn't bring myself to wear them again. Frankly, I think I have to get rid of them, which kinda sucks, as they're in pretty good condition. I don't even want to offer them to anyone else, in case the curse isn't specific to me.

Canned Goods

I'm feeling deeply grateful today, and not just because it looks like mom will be around for awhile longer. This whole episode definitely took a toll on her, and it will take her some time to get her strength back, and the tourniquet seems to have done some injury (nerve damage, maybe?), but she's still with us, and she sounds pretty good.

The other reason I'm feeling grateful, though, is that (a) I was able to go grocery shopping yesterday, (b) I had a vehicle to transport me and the groceries afterwards (I traded breakfast for a ride from K), and, most tellingly, (c) I didn't have to keep a running tally in my head of what I was spending. Given that there are millions of my fellow citizens who aren't sure exactly how they're going to be feeding themselves or their families this week, that felt like a huge luxury to me. It shouldn't--that is, everyone should be able to feed their families--but the economy being what it is, I know that it's not an experience everyone shares. At different times in my life, I've had to keep an estimate in my head as I wandered the aisles--sometimes more exact an estimate than others--so it does, indeed, feel luxurious to throw things into the cart without considering what's already there or what it will do to my budget for the week or month.

I was able to rein myself on some things, but in general I didn't. For example, I have cans of beans (pinto, black, great northern) and tomatos in the cupboard, and I knew that, but they were on sale; so, channeling my mother, I bought more. Same with pasta and a few other things. I'm determined to make some stews and freeze things in lunch-size batches. Which, really, I'm going to have to do, because there's no room in the damn cupboard for everything, and the stand-alone freezer is jam-packed. (The freezer over the fridge is empty, but it's frost-free, so it tends to suck the life out of everything so I try not to use it.) Several loaves of bread, cut into chunks and wrapped tightly; 10 pounds of blueberries divided into small bags; some cooked black beans; some chicken breasts from who-knows-when; a whole shelf of newly purchased frozen vegetables (spinach and broccoli); almond and hazelnut flours, in case I decide to get ambitious and do some baking; slow-roasted tomatos from last year; pesto; and some chicken broth in little one-cup containers.

I bought a delicata squash, even though I have three butternuts sitting on the floor, because I've never had a delicata and I've been wanting to try one. A bag of onions. Two bunches of beets (which are roasting at the moment, and the greens are cut up and frozen). Toothpaste. Shampoo, even though I have several unopened bottles, because one that I like was on sale, and, hey, shampoo doesn't go bad. Crackers (two kinds, two boxes of each). Three kinds of cheese, even though I have three or four kinds in the fridge, for those nights when cheese and bread or crackers sounds like a fine meal. Cookies (Ginger Newman-Os!). Some chocolate. Wine. Buttermilk, butter, and eggs, for baking. Sugar. I already had barley and farro in the cupboard, because I was going to bring it to my parents' but ended up not doing so, and I have quinoa and rice as well.

So, yes, I could eat for several months without buying more than the occasional onion, and, if I motivate properly, I'll use this stuff to make some of the stews I haven't made in a zillion years. Almost nothing that I bought will go bad any time soon, which is part of how I justify stocking up like that. It'll be something of a pain to move--yes, Larry, despite the fibrillation, I am nearly sure that I'm going to do that--which is even more motivation to make a dent in it. The one thing I should not have bought was almond flour, because it's expensive and I already had some (and it wasn't on sale, I just forgot I had some); guess I'll have to start doing some baking. My mom said they sent back my box of stuff--recipes, silpats, more recipes, a scale--so I'll have what I need by the end of the week; I should have asked her to send some motivation in the box while she's at it.

Eat Me

Mom finally came home from the hospital on Tuesday. I didn't really get to talk to her until yesterday, but she sounded much much better. At this point, of course, the only thing that will make a dramatic improvement in her health--and even that is (a) not a sure thing and (b) still only a way to stave off death a while longer--is a new kidney. But she's still in much better shape than a week or so ago, so yay for that.

Work has been really tediously heinous this week. I have a list of things that have to be done Right! Now! that is seriously long. I cannot actually get to that list, however, because there's handholding to do. One of my coworkers is used to having people to do stuff for him/her--people to take care of this or that bunch of details--but here in the non-profit world, we don't have that in our budgets. Thus, for example, although I have put nearly everything relevant to some questions this person must answer on our shared drive, s/he still barges into my office every time s/he has a question, rather than wading through the shared drive folders and actually looking shit up. And when something becomes urgent--e.g., money must be spent within a certain time frame--this person goes flying around like a whirling dervish, demanding that everyone drop everything so s/he can deal with it. I finally lost it at one point earlier in the week.

We have to spend our federal dollars within certain types of categories; deviations require conversations with project officers and so on (which isn't impossible, mind you, but yours truly is the person who has to do all of the contacting and supporting budget modifications and paperwork, i.e., still more work for me). We also get items from two different categories from the same supplier--that is, we get things from the widget category AND things from the mergatmacater category from Hank's House of Widgets and Mergatmacaters. If these things aren't invoiced separately, then all of the bills may get lumped into, and show up on the financials in, the widget category, which means it looks like we're underspending on mergatmacaters and overspending on widgets.

So, I said, can't these things be separated somehow? Oh, no, I'm told, that would mean someone has to go through the invoices line by line, figuring out which goes in the widget category and which goes in the mergatmacater category. Well, I point out (a bit testily, at this point), if s/he doesn't have someone do that, then I end up having to do it after the fact, and our accounting people have to reclass expenses on top of it, so put widgets on one invoice and mergatmacaters on a different goddamned fucking invoice, already, because I don't have anyone at all to help me.

This person is also late for every. fucking. meeting. Which I really, really, really hate. Unless you are taking a dump, stitching up someone's bleeding flesh wound, or performing CPR (and s/he wouldn't be doing the latter two, because s/he isn't qualified to do so), it will fucking wait.

I had a revelation yesterday, though, so there's that. It's a pretty tiny one, but it's important for my daily life. In particular, I've been realizing that several things are simultaneously true:
1. I cannot eat as much as I used to eat, unless I would like to go out and buy clothes that are three sizes larger than the current batch.
2. I'm actually not as hungry as I used to be, either (say, 15 years ago), or, more to the point, just don't need as much food to keep going.
3. I really enjoy food--not as a pure comfort thing, per se, but all of the textures and colors and, especially, smells and flavors. I find eating to be a wonderful, sensual pleasure. I also really enjoy eating--I've been eating with a book in front of me for decades (living alone for many years will do that to a person), and it's one of the true pleasures, though that's more about the whole experience of meal time rather than eating, per se.

What this all means, when taken together, is that I can't, and don't want to, eat as many calories as I once did, but I end up missing the experience, because there's so much less of it. I've been experimenting with focusing more on the actual eating part of the experience (instead of chowing as I read, paying less attention to the food), and that helps some, but I still end up feeling like I'm missing something. It's really not part of my nature or habits to sit there and stare at my food and eat it a tiny morsel at a time, but I'm trying to figure out how to rethink the experience so it doesn't require big wads of food, either. Slowing down definitely helps.

The other necessity is something sweet. It doesn't have to be very much, mind you, and I don't even need or want it all the time (and I have to make sure i don't start eating sugar mindlessly, either, because it's very easy for me to do that), but I definitely have a sweet tooth. I have learned how to modulate that over the years, in that I've discovered that I really don't need or want very much sugar to feel satisfied, and I've also discovered that higher-quality sugar (e.g., really good chocolate, rather than a piece of grainy, sugary stuff, though the latter will definitely do in a pinch) is more satisfying and tastes better.

See? I told you it wasn't very big. Or that interesting, either, I imagine.

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.

Some Pie with Those Pretzels?

Mom's home.

She walked in and said no, she's not hungry, and then started nibbling the bits sitting around. She eventually ate a fair amount (for her), so yay. She's sore in a number of places--from the insertion of the chest port, from the tourniquet, from the new graft--and tired and such, but we all managed to laugh about a number of things. My brother came over after work, around 3:00, and mom and dad didn't show until 5, so we hung for awhile. We actually get along just fine in situations like that. My brother is extremely funny--really, seriously funny--and he's smart, so he is always entertaining.

What were we laughing about? The fact that my mother has things stored in spots that are less than obvious. Finding things in her kitchen is a serious adventure in hide and seek, and then there are the things that aren't actually stored in the damn kitchen. You may remember that I made a batch of lemon/aniseseed/cranberry/pistachio biscotti the other day that didn't come out as nicely as I would have liked (so I eventually made a second batch, which came out much better). When I'd finished them, she put them in a container and spirited them away. I kept thinking I would run across them--especially given the hide and seek for various ingredients and implements--but I didn't. So we're all sitting around, and I say, where's the two-cup pyrex measure? Because I know I saw one, but I looked everywhere! Oh, it's in the drawer under the stove. (Of course!) Not with the other measures, not with glass, or the other cooking or baking implements; oh no. It's under the stove. (I never think to look there, because I've never had a drawer like that.)

So then my mom asks, did I find the other biscotti? No, of course not--where are they? Oh--they're in the closet in the bathroom. (My parents' bathroom backs up to the garage or the outside, I forget which, so it's cool.) Well, yes, because everyone stores their biscotti in the damn bathroom closet. At this point, we're all laughing, of course, so it was great fun.

What did I make today?

Three pies (cherry with a lattice top for the older nephew; mince for my dad; and shoofly pie for my brother). Two batches of pie crust scraps rolled out with cinnamon and sugar. A batch of pastry cream for the cream puffs. A batch of pumpkin pastry cream (I made that one up as I went along, and it ROCKS THE HOUSE). (No, really, it is fucking amazing.) A batch of soft pretzels (two are gone, two went home with bro for my nephews, two are in the freezer, and the other three were actually pretzel rolls, and they're in the freezer, too). An egg for mom and an omelet for me (dad made his own omelet). Tomorrow will include the barley (with caramelized onions and dried cranberries), cream puffs, an apple cake (I keep forgetting about that one), creamed cauliflower, and, if I get ambitious and have time, caramel sauce and/or a roasted butternut squash and/or some meringues with all the damned egg whites.

Yes, I know that sounds like a lot of work, but it's actually a tremendous amount of fun. I'm making all kinds of fun stuff, for people I love. I can make a cup of tea and seat near the pellet stove when I want a break. I have my recipes, mostly. My dad keeps coming up with more stories I didn't know. There's good beer in the fridge (Rogue and Flying Dog). My mom didn't die yesterday. We all know how to amuse each other. There are other kinds of pleasures in life, some of which I also enjoy tremendously, but these are really among the best.

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.

(Don't) Let It Bleed

Dad and I went up to see mom last night, and she was doing fine. The phone rang at 6:00 this morning, though--a nurse was calling to let us know that they tried to change the bandage over her leaky graft and it started bleeding, and they couldn't get it to stop, so they were taking her into surgery this morning. She was apparently awake and conscious and so on, so no one is freaking out completely--and we haven't been able to reach anyone, so we're assuming they actually got her in to surgery. Dad will go up there in a little while, most likely. Basically, everyone's just glad that she was in the hospital when the leaking started (remember that "could bleed out" thing?).

I'm going to be in charge of the creamed cauliflower (something my mom makes every year and that I also happen to love). She likes to make it with American cheese. I asked her last night if I could make it with cheddar instead; no, she likes American. (I was also informed that I can't steam the cauliflower ahead of time, I need to make it fresh, on Thursday. This is all said with a smile; I am completely not wrapped around the axle about this.) So a little later we're discussing her bleeding arm, and she says she's going to keep an eye on it; I point out that she's going to be sleeping. She says, well, she might kick the bucket then. And I say, in that case, I'll make the creamed cauliflower with cheddar cheese. We're nothing if not a little flippant.

When dad and I got home, I made some dinner (some stuffed shells that mom had in the freezer) and we sat at the kitchen table drinking wine and talking. I showed my dad the bakery cam, which got him talking about when he worked in a bakery (when he was 13); later he was talking about seeing various races up at Pocono, when Indy and other types of fast cars used to race there, and that my one uncle used to race a stock car, and seeing various types of race cars over the years (I had no idea dad's interest and experience were so extensive). My dad hasn't talked that much in a million years--partly it's because he has a hard time talking on the phone (he has hearing aids in both ears, and has to take one out to even talk on the phone), so I don't really get to talk to him when I call on weekends. It was great.

This morning, I made my pie crust dough and the preferment for the soft pretzels. Meanwhile, dad just left to go to the hospital and see if he can find out what's happening with mom. I'm hanging here, waiting for the cleaning people (my mom finally broke down and hired some help, given that neither she nor my dad can do anything more than picking stuff up and doing the laundry). I'm going to jump in the shower while he's on the way there; maybe more updates here later.