Closer creeping

December 23....can't remember giving anyone anything.

December 24 (which, incidentally, is my birthday) I gave solid lotions to my relatives on my mom's side of the family. Gave a BIG hug to one of my favorite cousins, who I had not seen in more than a year.

December 25 gave presents to my MIL and FIL. As much as I would like to rant about various things that happened on 12/25, I'm giving you all the gift of not ranting. (Or at least not much. Not today.)

December 26 gave one unlucky soul a copy of The Catholic's Guide to Marriage at a Yankee Swap; much amusement was shared.

December 27 I met up with an old, old friend and bought her a coffee...but more valuable was the time we spent together.

December 28...as noted above, I am gifting teh interweb publics by not ranting and raving about people being more than an hour late to a dinner which they had set the time for and then not apologizing for being late and complaining that the food was not at an optimum temperature ....breathe.....breathe....

I am also finally giving my niece & nephew their Christmas presents, an event much delayed due to further idiocy that I won't be telling y'all stories about any time soon.....

Stay tuned for more entertainment and holiday cheer!

On dealing with holiday stress gracefully.

Oh, have no doubt, my pretties. All of the hassle of the holiday is officially here. The traffic. The lack of parking spaces. The grumbling, grumpy shoppers in my way. I even witnessed a shouting match today, mother vs daughter, mom in a wheelchair. Nice.

So that makes my two small mitzvahs -both car/traffic related - seem inconsequential, but I hope they were helpful. A harried-looking lady in a van was cruising the parking lot at Target, looking for a parking space. I waved at her - party to make her smile and partly so she'd see me heading to my car. She cottoned on quickly, hurried to where my car was, and waved her thanks.

The other one was letting someone in front of me at a busy intersection. Little things, small details in a busy day, but perhaps easing someone else's stress.

Love it / am irritated by it.

Every year for about the last 8 or so, I've made a solid lotion that I usually give to people in conjunction with the lavender bath salts. I have to explain what it is to them, because I usually give it to people in tubes that look like lip balm tubes, but are much larger. The manufacturer calls them deodorant tubes, which made no sense to me. Think of a tube of Chapstick. Now imagine said tube of Chapstick with a diameter of 1-1/2 inches (3-1/2 cm) instead of the usual 1/4 inch (1-1/2 cm). Imagine it being about 3-1/2 or 4 inches tall (7-10 cm). So it looks like lip balm, but clearly isn't lip balm, and the idea of a solid moisturizer is odd to most people. Consequently, I get a lot of reactions that sound like this: "Cool! What is it?"

A sidebar here to note that moisturizer in a solid form is freaking brilliant, because unless you left in a hot car in the summer, it will never spill. Ever. Lots less messy to apply, IMO, as well. Unfortunately, it wasn't my original idea, so I'm not sitting on a million dollar next-big-thing enterprise. I have no plans to sell my solid lotion, no desire to deal with the legalities of trying to sell such a product. And I need to note that I bought the tubes someplace else for a less expensive price this year and they are the exact same size as lip balm tubes.

Anyway, most years I buy a kit for the solid lotion, add some stuff of my own (that-there's the technical term, 'stuff') pour the liquid into tubes, allow it to cool - room temperature solid, but melts on contact with your skin - put the caps on it, and away we go. When I couldn't find the kit on the website that I usually get it from, I sent the owner of the company an e-mail to see what was going on. She told me she isn't making the kits right now, but doing it on your own is dead easy, and she sent me the links to recipes. (Here and here.) Fair 'nuff. It isn't rocket science; a wax (such as beeswax) combined with a butter (avocado, mango, shea, cocoa) and oils (olive, apricot kernel, almond, walnut, soy), plus any fragrance and or colorant. She told me I could use any butter, any oils, so the fact that I didn't have mango butter or cocoa butter called for in those two recipes wasn't an issue. No artificial fragrances for me, thanks. I use lavender essential oil, for the aromatherapy benefits as well as liking the scent. Absolutely no colorant. I do put some colorant in the bath salts, but not ever in the lotion.

I have no idea which of those two recipes the kit contained, but I think it was probably the Easy Lotion Bar. I've added shea butter to the kit and the lavender, and that's worked well. Until this year, I've never measured the shea, just added it and tested a tiny bit until I felt it was 'right'. This year, I used the Extra-Rich recipe, using my super-duper kitchen scale to weigh the wax and butter. I measured the oils, added the lavender and when I tested it, it was far too hard and not the silky-yet-slightly-grainy texture I associate with "my" lotion. Hmmm. I'd put some of it into the tubes by then, and was irked that I needed to melt those back down and tinker. Using the smaller tubes seemed like a good idea, but they're difficult to fill. My hands shake quite a lot these days, a nice side-effect of my Wellbutrin. Some days it is bad, some days it is worse, and some days it doesn't happen at all. Filling those little tubes with an eyedropper and shaking hands meant I got that stuff all over the outside of the tubes, making them look like used candles, all over the countertop, and on my scale. Well, not exactly all over the countertop; I had a heavy cutting board out because the beeswax came in one ginormous block and I needed seriously 3 oz of the stuff. So there are dibs and dabs of solid lotion on the (fortunately plastic) cutting board. I think it'll come off in hot water and with a scrubbie.

The shea butter I bought several years ago on eBay. It came in an 'unrefined' state, which meant that there were little twigs and other things in the butter, requiring me to melt it down, and strain it through a cheesecloth. I wanted it that way, refining takes away some of the natural properties of the butter. I had it stored in the freezer in a Tupperware container, and each year I'd pull it out, let it hang out on the countertop a day or so, add it to the kit. Bam! Over, done.

In order to make the extra rich lotion bar recipe seem more like what I've been making all these years, I ended up tripling the amount of butter from 2 oz to 6. That was the very last of the shea butter. Like a complete fool, I had added the lavender before removing a small amount of the mixture for my 10 year-old nephew, who would rather not smell like flowers, thankyouverymuch. Last year or maybe 2 years ago, I made some with sandalwood essential oil specifically for him after spending some time researching less girly scents and an essential oil that wouldn't hurt his skin. He has eczema, and skin that is more sensitive than mine. The shea butter has absolutely amazing properties - like being absorbed easily in to the skin, and it helps with the itching of the eczema - so the solid lotion can be used on his skin with no worries.

I've given a lot of the solid lotion away already this year, and that's today's mitzvah. That and making the special batch for my nephew; something I really love to do, but it has seemed like work instead of fun this year. I'm doing it anyway because I'm mostly boycotting the over-commercialized gift grab that Christmas has become and am doing my best to give NO gifts that are purchased. Hand-and-homemade, all the way.

In a token recognition of the season, I leave you with these wise words:

Fear less, hope more.
Whine less, breathe more.
Talk less, say more.
Hate less, love more.
And all good things are yours. ~Swedish proverb

Who knew?

That the mitzvah challenge would be so much fun? Today's happened in seconds, but provided me with a lot of amusement.

I was baking cookies ('tis the season, after all) and I ran out of powdered sugar. Also known as icing sugar. Trying to substitute granulated sugar for powdered sugar in icing recipes results in crunchy icing - never a desirable result. So I needed powdered sugar, but I didn't want to do a grocery store expedition; usually, trips to the grocery store are to a store across town from me, and I'm doing major grocery shopping. It takes a few hours - worse when I'm messing about with coupons.

One grocery chain holds a pretty tight monopoly in this region. Stores that aren't SuperAnnyoing MegaMart tend to be small, and lacking a lot of the hoity-toity fussy ingredients I'm usually looking for. As much as I dislike patronizing the super annoying mega mart, trips to the smaller stores usually result in frustration. But there is one of those smaller stores really close to my house, and I know that they're going to have powdered sugar, so off I went.

Another reason I don't usually go to the smaller stores is that I end up spending too much time hiking up and down the aisles searching for something. I know the layout of the mega mart. Happily, though, I found a bunch of things that mega-mart doesn't carry and ended up spending about $50 rather than the $2.69 I'd expected.

While searching for a soup flavor I know the mega-mart never has, I heard a man and a little girl in the next aisle over having a conversation about why they were in the grocery store. The child sounded like she was perhaps 2. She was having a great time. Daddy, on the other hand, was frustrated. He had been sent to fetch egg noodles. He couldn't find egg noodles. He wasn't sure where to even look for egg noodles. Did he say all that? Not exactly, but you could tell.

I happened to be standing in front of a display of all kinds of pasta. I found egg noodles - by this time they were in the same aisle as me - and I handed them over to him with a smile. He thanked me, laughing, and asked if he just looked that lost. No, I told him, I'd heard him, but he did look like a deer in headlights! We had a shared chuckle over his daughter's comment --"Daddy, that's it? That's all we needed?" -- he thanked me again for saving him the hassle of hunting through the entire store, and we went our separate ways.

Fun, funny, and helpful to someone. Mitzvah? Check!

Time to make the cookies!!

Remember the Dunkin' Donuts commercials from the 80s, where the poor guy got up every morning at an ungodly hour, with the tag line, "Time to make the donuts."?

It has been 'time to make the cookies' for several weeks now, and I've been busy doing just that.  I don't feel like the Dunkin' Donuts man, though, I truly enjoy making the cookies.

There was a cookie exchange earlier this month, and I pulled out my Swedish cookbooks in search of that elusive something different.  I found a great recipe (yes, I'll share, but not in this post, sorry) that translates to the unfortunate-sounding Nut Logs.  I made a test batch, and figured out quickly that those suckers couldn't stay at my house.  Way too buttery, way too good, way to get fat!  

I took them in to work, along with every other cookie I've experimented with this season, and I should have been prepared for the consequences.  Take the cookies, and everyone moans about how I'm ruining their diets.  Don't take in cookies, and they're annoyed that there is nothing to nosh on along with that all-important 3 o'clock cup of coffee to keep you going through the late afternoon.

Either way, they make me laugh.  The whining and moaning and complaining about how I'm ruining their diets mean that they're eating and, better, enjoying the cookies, so I take that as a compliment.  The whining that there are no cookies in the office kitchen (horrors!  whatever shall we do?)  also means that they like 'em.

There are 2 standbys for holiday cookies for me.  Coffee Cookies, which I have written about pretty extensively in the past, and Rose's Crescents, which I don't think I've written about before.  

In an attempt to at least stay awake until after 7 PM on Sunday night, I made the dough for the crescents, but they require a stay in the fridge, so I wasn't going to actually bake them that night.  Monday morning, I realized that it was Monday, and for about the last 6 weeks, I've taken a batch of cookies in on Mondays.  Uh-oh.  

When I take in cookies, I don't want to take just a dozen; first of all, that isn't enough and secondly, that isn't enough.  So I shaped and baked two dozen mini crescents at 6:30 in the morning.  Clearly, I'm nearly as insane as the author of the christmas cookie cookbook from which the crescents come.  The gingerbread house in the back of the cookbook is the Cathedral of Notre Dame, for heaven's sake.

Worth it, sure, for the happiness the crescents give anyone who eats them, but silly to fire up the oven and bake during the six o'clock hour.  I mean, really.

The crescents use ground almonds in place of some of the flour, and the resulting cookie is buttery, crumbly, and ohmigod delish.  This is good cookie to make if you're looking to impress someone, and actually have the patience to shape the crescents.

Almond Omigod Crescents

(adapted loosely from Rose's Christmas Cookies)

2/3 c finely ground almonds

1/3 c sugar

1-2/3 c flour

2 sticks of butter, cut into small cubes

1/4 tsp salt

Her directions spell out the way to make these either in the food processor or with a mixer.  Go with the food processor.  Trust me, easier.

I buy blanched slivered almonds, and grind them up in the food processor.  Add the sugar, and process until it is crumbly looking.  Add the butter (using the food processor, it doesn't necessarily need to be softened) and process again, briefly.  If you allow the dough to come together in a big ball at this stage, you will have to spend considerable time kneading in the flour by hand.  Again, trust me.  So minimal processing on the butter.  Take the lid off of the food processor, and sprinkle the flour over the top, along with the salt.  Process again, and this time, it is OK to allow it to come together in a ball.  Run it too long, though, and your food processor's motor will be unhappy with you.

Dump the contents of the working bowl out onto a big sheet of plastic wrap or wax paper, and shape into a large round flat disc.  You might have to knead in some of the bits no matter what you do, so if it looks like panko breading, allow the warmth of your hands to help it become more cohesive.  Spend 10 minutes or so just patiently kneading it until it has a consistent texture.  Let it hang out in the fridge for about two hours.

I use a small ice cream scoop (I think it is a #100 disher, to be exact) and use that to make little balls of dough.  Then I shape them into crescents by rolling them into a short snake between the palms of my hand.  I make it crescent shaped by draping it over the back of my index finger.  The book says 325F for 12-14 min, and even making them much smaller than the book's instructions with my #100 scoop, they still need just about that much time.  They should be only lightly browned on the bottoms, and hardly even golden on top.  The final pain-in-the-ass step can't be avoided, and perhaps makes these even fussier than they need to be.  You roll them while they're still warm in cinnamon-sugar.  Gently.  Really gently.  They're still kinda fragile.  Cool on wire racks.  Eat.  Rinse & repeat.

The recipe claims that it makes 5-1/2 dozen 3-inch long crescents.  I don't know how the heck that happens, because when I make them following the directions to the letter I still don't get that many.  And people, I never follow directions to the letter.  Ever.  Recipes and patterns are a starting point, a road map, but not the be-all end-all.  The recipe directions say to shape 3/4 inch diameter balls into 3 inch long crescents; but the picture in the book shows big, big fat-looking cookies, and making them 3 inches long makes for skinny puppies.  To illustrate how much I followed the directions to the letter, I even used a ruler for a few of them.  Finally, in the end, I threw up my hands and decided I'd make them like I want them to look.  Really you could skip all the fussy-fussy shaping and just make them round.  They won't work as cut-out cookies, but you could make them any shape you cared to.

Secrets to spill

My friend S owns a salon.  I found her in the phone book, but in yet another demonstration of how small my hometown really is, S was close friends with my cousin J when they were both in high school.  J wasn't really one for having her nails/hair done, but before she passed away, she used to spend time hanging out at the salon.  I didn't discover this until I'd been going to S's place for a couple of years, hilariously.  

After going there for more than 10 years, I consider S a good friend.  She teases me during the holiday season, because I bring cookies and other hand-made gifts to her and her staff; she tells me all the time: "You're so crafty!" and I snark back: "Martha Stewart is crafty.  I'm creative, which is way cooler than 'crafty'!"

But I've never thought that the stuff I make for holiday giving is all that difficult.  Bath salts, hand lotion, sometimes vanilla sugar, always cookies, usually one or two knit things.   Nothing that requires a degree in food science, chemistry, or really, a high skill level.

I don't know where I got the idea for the bath salts.  Can't remember.  I've been doing it for about 9 years now, and it couldn't be easier.  The ingredients are 4 things.  Yeah, seriously.  

1. Epsom salts (from any big box retailer or drugstore)

2. Sea salts (from an online supplier, or sometimes the health food store)

3. Lavender essential oil (again online or health food store)

4. Water-soluble colorant (totally optional, but fun.  From the same place as the sea salts.)

Equipment required:

2 buckets, 5-gallon size work well for me

a large spoon, like they used in your elementary school cafeteria for serving food (one you don't care about, because really, you don't want to use it for food after making bath salts)

about a half-hour of time

jars to put the finished product into

a funnel to get the salts into the jars (one of these works best if your jars have a wide enough mouth)

I don't really use a recipe; I've just done it long enough that I don't need directions.  You can Google "making bath salts" but many of the recipes call for glycerine (so not necessary) or baking soda or obscure soap-making ingredients like rhassoul clay....I call all of that "trying to re-invent the wheel" because they're making it so much harder than it needs to be.

I mix the two kinds of salts one bucket.  I should probably note here that I use equal amounts of sea salts and epsom salts.  That's an important detail, sorry.  I measure out the required amount of lavender. Which really is a personal preference kind of thing.  For roughly 20 pounds of salt, I use about an ounce or an ounce and a half of essential oil.  Yes, it is strong.  Yes, it makes the whole house smell like lavender (and that's a problem....why, exactly?).  

No one has ever complained to me that hey, Luce, the bath salts are great, but couldja scale back the lavender?  Ever.  

The next step almost requires three hands, but I manage OK by myself.  I pour the salts in a steady stream from one bucket to the other, and pour the lavender oil into that stream of salts.  Of course this results in clumps of heavily-saturated salts, so that's where the spoon comes in.  You stir.  And stir.  And stir some more.  When the oil is fairly evenly distributed, I use the same process to add the colorant, pouring carefully and slowly, and then stirring some more.

So your spoon ends up purple-ish, and smelling like a perfumery.  I strongly suggest washing it by hand several times before putting into your dishwasher, or all of your dishes will end up with a soupcon of lavender-scent.  But it has taken me longer to type this out than it does to make the salts.

The vanilla sugar is even easier; plain old white granulated sugar and a couple of vanilla beans are the ingredients; cut the vanilla beans in half lengthwise, scrape out the seeds, combine the sugar and vanilla in the food processor, pulse to combine, put into clear glass jars.  Whoa, rocket science, eh? This year I used half-pint mason jars, which hold about 2/3 of a cup of sugar; I used 4 vanilla beans and using a measuring cup that is a 2/3 cup, scooped eight of those 2/3 cups into the food processor's working bowl.  Somehow, though, I ended up with 9 half pint jars.  Maybe I can't count.  I wanted 12, but the food processor wouldn't hold that much, and the food processor is very noisy, so because I finished the first batch after 9 PM and DH was trying to sleep, I decided to make the rest another night.

The funny thing to me is that people are so impressed with this stuff; the vanilla sugar takes maybe 10 minutes to put together, and that's if you're slow cutting the vanilla beans.  The bath salts take a few minutes longer, but the ingredients are cheap, easy to come by, and folks, this is simple.  

The hand lotion is easy too, and I wish I could claim that as an original idea.  Nope.  I buy a kit from the same online supplier, although whilst searching for the kit today, I can't find it on her site; good thing I bought two of the kits when she had a sale this summer!  I don't make it exactly per the directions (oooh, shocker, right?) I add Shea butter, usually purchased on eBay, and lavender.  Thematic, anyone?  But the incredibly cool thing about this stuff is that it is solid at room temperature, which means that it will never spill.  It can melt, but doesn't spill because the kit comes with little tubes, slightly larger than a chapstick tube, with a solidly-closing cap.  So very very clever.  Also takes about a half hour to make.

Most of my holiday gift-giving secrets, shared with teh interwebs.  I'm just not telling you about my re-gifting plans.

*snip*

Further proof, if any was really required, that I am out of my mind.

Despite not being into the religious part of the holiday (heck, the material part isn't all that interesting to me either) I do enjoy the holiday season for a number of reasons: people tend to be nicer in December, my birthday is in December, I love finding unique presents for my friends & family, I enjoy the orgy of cookie baking.

For many years, I've sent a ton of Christmas cards.  Since I came back home from Sweden, it has been a way to keep in at least vague touch with a worldwide network of friends.  Because many of those friends are not Christian, I've always been careful to find a message that is kind of neutral as far as mentioning Christmas/Hanukkah/Eid, but I want to at least let these people know that they're in my thoughts. 

As the years have gone by, the list has changed, grown, expanded, and it now encompasses more than 70 names, in 4 countries.

People, this is insane.

I worked on the cards this week, and while it isn't an ordeal, it is a lot of work.  I cheat by NOT addressing the invitations by hand; you can't read my handwriting anyway, so what's the point? Usually, I order cards in August-ish, they get here in October-ish, and I send them out over Thanksgiving weekend.  When I order cards, I have them printed with a message from DH and I, and have our return address imprinted on the envelopes.  This year, sometime around April, I stumbled across a bunch of Product (Red) Christmas cards at a Hallmark store that were 90% off.  I bought all they had, figuring it was far cheaper than what I normally did and since I was working on commission at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

Amazingly, when it came time to send out holiday greetings, I actually remembered that I'd already bought cards, and was even able to find them in our storage room.  Wonder of wonders.  I could not find my pre-printed return address labels, but that's OK, I made more.  

I use a mail-merge to print out labels for the cards, and once this was done, they sat around for a few days until I got to them.  When I started slapping labels on the envelopes, there were more than a few names that made me stop and go, "huh?!".  These are people that I used to work with years and years ago, or old high school friends that I have not actually spoken to in years, or even in one case, the children (well, adult children, but still) of old neighbors of my parents.  Come on!  This is patently silly.

DH refuses to have anything to do with the holiday card insanity; he won't even sign the ones addressed to *his* family.  It is a fight I'm not interested in having, so I just leave him out of it.  But he always asks if I've remembered to send out cards to a few old friends of his and a business contact or two.  Yes, they're still on the list.  When I was going over the list with him, there were one or two people that he raised his eyebrows over; again, people we have not actually spoken to in years.

So in my infinite wisdom, I've decided that this is the last year for more than about 20 people on that list.  People I still talk to, fine, they're staying.  Relatives; well, can't leave out so much as a single cousin or there would be hell to pay, so they're staying too.  People that I have some semblance of a relationship with, even if it is just inside the computer, they're staying.  Old co-workers from 4 jobs ago: gone.  High school friends whose parents still live in town but they never bother to call when they're around: gone.  People that I sent cards to out of a sense of obligation (i.e., I sent one to their best friend, so I should send one to them, too) also: gone.  People that I send cards to that I don't actually like: gone.  

Wow, that was liberating!  Sad, too, but incredibly freeing.  

Self-stressors

Even though my family has declared a moratorium on gifts for the holidays this year, and DH and I managed to convince his family that we should all just buy for the kiddos, that does not mean I'm exempt from the gift-giving madness.  Which is OK, mostly, because I like doing nice things for people during the month of December.

But I decided earlier this year (maybe....August?) that I could manage to make something for everyone that I work with AND my friends, knitted somethings.  As soon as I made the decision, I started knitting.  Part of the method of my madness, too, is that I'd like to use up some of my stashed yarn.  (stash yarn = Ravelry-speak for yarn that you already own, most likely stashed in boxes or plastic bins about your house.)  I'm making good progress and using up yarn I've had for years and years.  I've made several scarves, a handful of dishcloths and face-scrubbie wash cloths.  The wash cloths are small, and I put a little bar of handmade soap (not soap *I* make, c'mon, I'm not that nuts) in the middle of the washcloth, take a complimentary yarn and run it through the 4 corners, tie it up, and it makes a cute little packet.  Easy, easy, easy present, takes no more than an hour to knit one.

So why am I stressing over it?  

The main reason is that like almost everything in my life, I have defined parameters, rules about the knitting.  I don't allow myself to have more than about 3 projects on needles, because it makes me f-ing batty if I've got too many projects going.  It stresses me more than I need to be stressed.  

How many projects are on needles right now?  

1. a scarf 

2. a hat 

3. a washcloth 

4. and 5. baby blankets (although those shouldn't count because I'm not actively working on them)  

6. another hat, 

7. a shrug that is 99% done, and 

8. a shawl I started last night and then ripped apart because I can't figure out the pattern.  

There's another scarf that I don't have on needles yet, but it is my next project, swirling around in the back of my heard.  Urgh.  That'd be 9.  Then I have two skeins of a soft yet sparkly yarn that I plan to make hats with, one red and one black.  I can't wait to get started on them.  Which, for those keeping track, would be 11 projects.  It is with the crazy-making.

There are not enough hours in the day to get them all done.  

And then I have to figure out when (and what) I'm going to bake for the people I give cookies to every year.....

Att sticka

Swedish, verb: to knit

Earlier in the year, I thought that my enthusiasm for knitting would wane with the oncoming summer months, as the weather warmed I'd be less than excited about carrying 'round some knit project, whatever it may be.

Instead, I am spending lots more time knitting. I'm actively trying to win converts to knitting. I have this nutsy-koo-koo idea that I should, between now and the Winter Solstice, be able to make enough dishcloths, scarves, hats, even a shawl or two, to give as holiday presents to friends and co-workers. My family has declared a moratorium on gifting this year; we're going to be together in Florida for a week, and that is present enough. But that does not mean that I'm exempt all together from the insanity that envelops the western world come December, the frenzy of shopping, wrapping, entertaining, running around like a lunatic in a frantic effort to get everything done before December 24.

I feel obliged to mention that although I am an atheist, most of the rest of my friends and family are not, and I would never diminish their joy in this holiday. I'm not one of those nuts who snarls at you when you wish me a "Merry Christmas." I like finding gifts for those I love, year-round. But the Christmas season is the only time in the West that you can give someone an extravagant gift, or do something profoundly nice, and it isn't a big deal. It is almost expected. I bake, hundreds of cookies every year, and give them to people that I want to give gifts to, but don't want to buy anything....like my hairdresser. The paper-delivery person. (If I had one, which I don't.) Volunteers, at my old non-profit job. People that deserve a 'thank you' and would feel uncomfortable accepting something at any other time of the year.

So of course, I have a mental list of the persons that I need to make things for: co-workers...hmmm....counting our interns, volunteer staff, and full-time staffers, that's 14 people. In-laws....7. Friends....some real-world, some inside the computer....at least 15, and I'm sure I'm leaving someone out.....

Holy shit! No wonder I'm spending most of my free time with needles in hand rather than writing. My math skills are poor, but I used a calculator to add all that up, and I count at least 36 things to knit.

Guess I'd better get to the knittin', eh?

Atone

In a holiday greeting, a friend urged me to remember those we lost this year, and celebrate those that are still here. We do that around New Year's. That and make new starts, new resolutions.

Generally, for a reason that remains unknown to me, I tend to think of fall, rather than the new year, as a time for resolutions and changes in habit. Probably just 'cause I like to be contrary, more than any other reason. However, since most of the rest of the world does it now, I'll indulge in a bit of it as well.

I'd like to be able to let go of the guilt that I carry around.

That's my resolution, to feel less guilty about any and everything. There's a website I discovered years ago, I don't know if the domain is still active and I'm not about to check; it was called Catholic Guilt, and it was a porn site.

The name stuck with me, though, making me wonder at the time if the Church created guilt in its practitioners, or if those who practice the religion are just prone naturally to more guilt.

It starts young, this whole guilt thing. It varies from parish to parish, of course, but the sacrament of Confession, a Catholic's FIRST confession, takes place anywhere from 8 to 12 years old. Mine was in the 4th grade, at about 9 years old.

Confession is all about receiving absolution for your sins. Now please tell me; what sins could the average middle class American 9-year-old possibly commit? Lying, fighting with siblings, OK, I'll give you those. I imagine that the priests tasked with hearing those first confessions howl with laughter as soon as they're able....the kids are so nervous, and the sins so petty, I'm sure it is an exercise in hilarity for the most part.

I dutifully made my first confession with the rest of my class, but the strains that became fissures, then cracks and finally breaks in my faith started not long after that first confession.

I was about 12, and playing with a new friend in our neighborhood. I'd gone to school with her for a while, and like most of my suburban schoolmates, she was Catholic like me. Her parent's new house was within walking distance of mine, and we spent a lot of time together in the summers.

"I have to go, I have to get to Confession," I told her one afternoon. The local parish had open time for confessions on Saturdays, and I went from time-to-time.

"Why?" She asked, hugely startled. "I don't believe in Confession. How can a priest grant forgiveness? Only God can do that. Priests are human; forgiveness is divine. I don't believe that they really have the power to grant absolution, do you?"

(Yes, we really talked like that. Bright kids, with big vocabularies...dorks...shoot me.)

"Um, yeah..." I trailed off. She was by far cooler than me during the school year, and I didn't want to seem provincial. "That's what they teach us..."

The more I thought about it, the more I decided she was right. How did saying a few Hail Marys fix some petty wrong that I'd done? God somehow was closer to the priests than the ordinary people? With typical pre-teen sarcasm: What-ev-er! And: plur-eze! That was the end of confession for me. I've never been back.

It is a really nice idea, though. That with a few simple prayers, you can atone for wrongs done, whatever they may be. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way for me.

What guilt am I carrying around? Oh, a few things. I feel guilty that I'm not as good at many things as I think I ought to be. That I'm not perfect, which who knows where I got that idea, I ought to be absolutely perfect at everything I try on the very first attempt. Or that I'm insanely jealous of the lives my sisters are leading, I feel really guilty about that, how jealous I am of them, because it is patently ridiculous. I should be proud of them, happy for them (and I am) and able to leave it at that (but I'm not).

The times that I know peace from this cacophony are only when I'm able to enter into a meditative state of some sort; either during my yoga practice, or when I'm running. Both of those things being times when I can concentrate solely on what I'm doing just that second, and nothing else.

Not even when I'm sleeping does it go away; I had way, way, waaaaay too vivid dreams the other night that I feel very guilty about. And yep, there ARE limits to my over-sharing, because I'm certainly not about to share that one.

So the question remains; how to let go of the guilt? And the only answer I can come up with is to increase the amount of time that I spend running and doing yoga. An answer that I like a whole lot, incidentally.

In my spare time (hahahahahahahaha) next year, I am going to get my certification to teach yoga. As well as apply to several graduate programs, after taking the GRE.

hmmm. perhaps the guilt factor comes from setting expectations far too high, then feeling like I've failed when I fall short.




Nah.




Listening to: Rent soundtrack, Seasons of Love

Stress, seasonal or not.

Headache, n. (hed-ake)

The feeling you get when your body responds to stress that you have piled needlessly upon yourself.

When I worked for the olde evile bank, I realized after I'd been there and working full time for a few years that I really didn't like working full time. But, then, who really does? Even when you love your job with all your heart & soul, you'd still rather do things other than work.

I didn't love being unemployed. I was bored, bored, bored most of the time. But neither do I really love working full time. Besides seriously cutting in t the time I've got for my hobbies (ha!!) it also cuts into the time I have for mundane household chores - - - laundry, keeping my house in good order. Things that aren't truly important in the grand scheme of things....not important like having a roof over your head or heat in your house is important, but things that do need done. I, for one, like having clean clothes.

I'm also OCD enough to admit that the sight of dirty dishes in my sink, or too much clutter in my rooms makes me crazy. Twitchingly crazy. When there is nothing at all to do, I'm climbing the walls. Then when I've got too much to do...I'm still climbing the walls.

I love to entertain. And I love my family. So having the holiday celebrations at my home is no big deal. Even having both families, mine and DH's, isn't a problem.

What is a problem is the sum of the whole. Baking. Cleaning the house. Putting up not one but TWO Christmas trees. Buying and wrapping all the presents. Grocery shopping in overcrowded grocery stores for ingredients for party food. Decorating the rest of the house. Sending holiday cards.

So what's done on the list of things to do? The baking. The house is decorated, and the trees are both up. Don't ask me why the hell I do that to myself; one tree should be enough for an agnostic, no? But that is all that is done. The house still needs a stem-to-stern cleaning. None of the shopping is done, and you can't wrap what you haven't purchased. Not one holiday greeting card purchased, addressed, or mailed.

Oh, the holiday cards. Sigh. I'm feeling particularly guilty about that this year. I usually begin looking for something unique and serene in August. I usually get cards imprinted with our names, and a nice little greeting. I have whoever prints them put our return address on the envelopes. I print out the addresses to send them from an excel spreadsheet. THEN I write personal messages inside each one. And then I send them to 4 countries on 2 continents. Why? Well, I really like getting cards. I like hearing from people that I might have lost touch with over the current year.

I guess you could say it is part of the ritual of the season for me.

Please don't ask me to reconcile the fact that I don't believe in a higher power with the fact that I completely love the holiday season. Just add it to the list of things that make me lovably nuts.

I haven't done the annual sending of the cards (yet) this year for a couple of reasons. Laziness has to figure in there somewhere. Then there's the sad fact that when I lost my old job, my PDA lost its memory. I lost everyone's everything. Birthdays, anniversaries, snail-and-e-mail addresses. I sent a pleading mass e-mail to my entire e-mail address book that gmail has saved. Most everyone responded; but I haven't input the data into my new computer yet. And then there's the little detail that I was running out of money right around the time I would normally do my card-ordering, because I had been out of work. Lack of time, too. So holiday cards weren't so high on the list of what was important.

They aren't really moving up the priority list, but the fact that I still haven't done them is adding to my current headache.

Baker's Dozen

I read cookbooks as if they were novels. (Funny how they all end the same, no? Those gripping indices!) One shelf of my library is solely cookbooks. Several Swedish cookbooks in both English and Swedish, several ethnic cookbooks, including Greek, Thai, Indian, more than ten about eating and cooking healthy, tasty food. But the preponderance of cookbooks on the shelf are dessert cookbooks. Cookies, cakes, one dedicated only to chocolate, half a dozen that contain recipes for "celebration desserts" for any sort of themed party you would ever care to throw.

With so many of them, you'd think I'd never notice if one were missing. And were it any other time of year, you'd probably be right unless I was searching for a specific recipe. This time of year, however, the cookie cookbooks get pulled off the shelf and scattered about the kitchen and sometimes around the entire house as I attempt to decide which cookies to bake for the holiday gift-giving madness.

I give cookies to people that I want to give a gift to, but don't want to get into the habit of buying something for. My friend who does my nails. My hairdresser. Co-workers. Business colleagues. That makes it sound as if I give them away casually, but such is not the case. My hairdresser has been my hairdresser for more than a decade. My manicurist friend is as close as if she were family. I bake between 12 and 16 dozen cookies annually. Last year, I didn't think I'd be able to resist the urge to eat the dough and hundreds of baked cookies if they were in my house, so I didn't bake at all. This year, I've tasted one of each of the three varieties I've made thus far, and don't want any more. I suppose it helps that I've got a stuffy head and everything tastes "off" due to that, but I don't think I'd want more than that in any case.

For the first time ever, I'm participating in a cookie exchange this year. When the invitations went out, I told the hostess that I'd be bringing Coffee Spice Cookies and Pumpkin Cookies, two standbys on my holiday list. The pumpkin cookies are so easy that I could recite the recipe from memory; I usually bake them throughout the fall in addition to Christmastime. They're so evocative of the season, being made primarily of pumpkin, that I can't resist. Plus, bonus, they're egg-free, so my nine-year-old nephew who is allergic can make and eat them with me. The coffee spice cookies, on the other hand, are more complex and time-consuming. But they make the whole house smell like Christmas, with their allspice and cinnamon and nutmeg.

Unfortunately, the cookbook that contains the coffee spice cookies (and the almond crescents, and the molasses crinkle cookies and about 6 other kinds that I like to make) is missing.

Horrors!

Where could it have gone?

I called a friend and asked if I'd lent it to her; no. I searched the house, even our room dedicated to storage. It isn't on the bookshelf in the bedroom, nor in any of the drawers under the end tables I inherited from my maternal grandparents, the cubbyholes in which turn up the most unlikely things. Every likely hiding place was sussed out, and I even enlisted DH's help, showing him a picture of the cover from Amazon. "Oh, I remember that one," he said. "Do you remember seeing it recently?" I asked, hopefully. "No," he said, looking crestfallen. Then he got a crafty look on his face and disappeared for a few minutes; he admitted to stashing several of my books in cabinets in the library when picking up around the house. Unfortunately, Cookies: A Cookie Lover's Collection was not among the books he hid away.

Amazon and eBay both have the out-of-print book available. Talk about adding insult to injury, I can't just walk in to any of the area's mega-bookstores and replace it. Yes, I've placed an order, but it won't come in time for the cookie exchange.

No one would be the least bit upset if I didn't bring the coffee spice cookies to the exchange; but I want to make them. A search of the rest of the cookie cookbooks turned up a kinda-sorta-not-exactly similar recipe, or at least the picture looks alike. I read the recipe, and thought, "That could work." and set to making it.

Experimentation in the kitchen is one of my greatest pleasures. But you can't mess too terribly much with the recipes for baked goods unless you're prepared for unusual results. See Pie Crust, whole wheat for an example. Baking is chemistry. Mix the wrong stuff and, well, you could end up looking like Wylie Coyote after an explosion.

I didn't alter the chemical parts; kept the sugar/flour/butter ratios the same. But I added a whole lot of spices and flavors, doing my best to re-create the original. There are two minor problems with this. One, we're supposed to bring the recipes of the cookies we bake to the exchange. Two, the base recipe came from the 1963 edition of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book. (That isn't a typo, that's the title on the cover. Google it yourself.)

The first is a problem because for the first time in forever when tinkering, I didn't keep detailed notes. What? Yes, I'm that anal. I'm a Capricorn; we practically come out of the womb as organized, mature little adults. I'm also the oldest of three children; if you tell me that birth order doesn't matter, I'll....I'll...I'll tell you that you're wrong, that's what.

The second is a problem because apparently any baker worth her or his salt in 1963 must have had homemade cookies by the bazillions on hand at any given time. Even halving the recipe after noting the ridiculous yield in the initial read-through of the recipe, I've got about 20,000 of these things. If no one likes them...I'll be stuck with thousands of them. They taste fine to me; but that aforementioned head cold might be helping me fool myself.

So, anyone for a cuppa and a few hundred cookies?

Att banta

When I was learning to speak Swedish, various things confused me as a non-native speaker. It made me appreciate how incredibly difficult learning English must be. I can never remember which is which, but homophones, homographs...you know, words that sound alike but are spelled different, or are spelled the same but pronounced different...how confusing that must be for someone to try to figure out. Then there are words that mean the same or similar things, like red and crimson. I can't remember what those are called. Homonyms, maybe?

One of the things that I love about English is its richness of vocabulary, the fact that there are hundreds upon thousands of words, the many descriptors available for your use, for free!

Yes, I admit it. I'm a grammar geek. I love all this stuff. No apologies for it either.

Swedish has these little quirks too. The words for ugly and drunk are both ful, but I can barely hear the difference between the two. (Context...so important!) In order to avoid having to say ugly, I would use the word horrible, so that I didn't mispronounce it. Again. Then there are the words for ice cream, glass (like in a window) and glasses (for vision correction), which all sound like the English word glass, but they're spelled differently. I think. I can speak it much, much better than I can read and write it.

Words that had similar meanings threw me from time to time as well. To diet in Swedish is att diet; but then there's this other word, banta, that seems to mean the same thing. My host father explained it to me like this; diet was the word you would use for what you were doing when you were trying to lose weight, but to banta was to just hold back. As best I can figure, banta-ing is somewhere in between leaving something on the plate so you don't feel gorged and starving yourself. Kidding!! OK, so not starving yourself, but not eating all that you want to, either.

Recently, I've officially reached a big number in my weight loss quest. 40. I am 40 pounds lighter than I was a year ago at this time. I had been at a plateau with the losing weight since about May or June. It seems after the death of my Auntie H in October that the scale has been showing smaller numbers, finally, and very slowly. We're talking initial changes in ounces. I've finally invested in a decent scale at home instead of relying on the gym's. I have no earthly idea what to attribute this resumption of weight loss to; I haven't changed anything that I've been doing for the last year in the last few weeks. It is a huge relief to see those numbers going down again.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and yes, even atheist-leaning agnostics celebrate Thanksgiving with their families. My Auntie G cooks twice a year; Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is an event not to be missed. Her stuffing? To die for. Better than your granny's or your mother's, I promise. Since I only have the opportunity to eat it twice a year, I tend to overload my plate with it.

Thanksgiving is a carb festival, isn't it? At least, it is for my family. In addition to the stuffing, which is bread-based, there's mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, corn...all starch-y, not good to overindulge in. Plus this is the Slovak side of the family, so noodles and butter with gravy are also on the table. Like haluski, without the cabbage. Don't ask why we do this, I couldn't explain it to you if my life depended on it. But trust me, it is good. Gooooood!

When people ask me how I've lost the weight, my answer is always the same: "The really, really hard way." Sweating my ass off (quite literally, hahahaha) at the gym, cutting my portion sizes, paying lots more attention to food labels, both for the nutritional value and for the actual ingredients, trying not to eat pre-packaged food, staying away from fried anything. Banta-ing, essentially.

I did not take the opportunity to overindulge yesterday. My attitude about food and relationship with food have changed so much in the past year. It isn't that I no longer derive pleasure from good food, it is that I don't need quite so much of it to be satisfied. One of my cousins, for hours after dinner, moaned about how overstuffed she felt, and I couldn't help but think to myself, "Why the hell did you eat that much, then? No one was forcing you to."

Did I eat the stuffing? You bet. Wouldn't miss it for the world. But there were more carrots from the veggie tray than there was stuffing on my plate. I even ate a little bit of the noodles. I passed on the mashed potatoes. If I eat those these days, it is going to be my own recipe that includes sour cream, cream cheese, garlic, and butter. But was my plate so full yesterday that I had to make a separate trip for a roll? Nope. Didn't eat one of those, either. The fat content and other icky preservatives that are in them aren't worth the taste to me anymore. (They were those rolls that come in the can, that you shape into little quarter-moons.)

Overall, I think my relationship with food and my attitude about it are so much more healthy now than they've ever been. Even when I was a size-0-wearing skinny little bit of a thing. I think about the word banta often. I ask myself all the time; Do you really need that much of that? I turn things over and check out the label, and if it has corn syrup (evil, evil, evil) or tHBQ (dude, two words...PETROLEUM DERIVATIVE!!!) in it, I put it back on the shelf. There's some magic number of fat grams that I won't go over on a single serving of anything. I don't really know exactly what that number is, but impulse buying of a candy bar isn't something that I do much these days. Not worth the calories and fat, and if I'm going to eat chocolate, it is going to be chocolate that has a list of ingredients that I can actually pronounce.

I don't suppose that I can go around answering the question "How'd ya lose the weight?" by saying "I banta-ed," and not just because the Swe-Eng nonsensical word won't make sense to people. I've changed my philosophy, my daily routine, my grocery-shopping habits, my cholesterol levels, my blood sugar, my number of asthma attacks, everything, to get where I am. Much easier to say 'the really, really hard way.' But my favorite upside of it all? Not the fact that I'm stronger and healthier, not the fact that my asthma is under control. Nope. As vain and shallow as it is, my favorite benefit is that in addition to the laundry list I've made of changes, I've changed my dress size, too.

Being thoughtful about Pres Idiot's War On Terror

I heard several speeches today from military veterans in advance of Monday’s observance of Veteran’s Day. Listening to people who have actually served in the country’s military was a humbling experience, especially for someone who is adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, as well as W’s idiot war on terrorism. (what the hell does that mean anyway?)

There were veterans of nearly every major conflict over the last 50 years, including an adorable old fella who stormed the beaches at Normandy, in attendance. Two Vietnam veterans and a 59-year-old veteran of operation Iraqi Freedom gave speeches. All of them were excellent speakers, and most of them refrained from political commentary.

I have said many times before that I support the people who are in uniform, even while being opposed to where they are stationed and their missions. I know full well that all of the current military personnel have volunteered to be where they are. Some of them may have been forced by circumstances, lack of opportunities, to join the military, however many of them voluntarily stay in the military long after their original enlistment is up. They are extraordinarily proud of the work that they do. Rightfully so, because what they’re doing is damn difficult.

I don’t think that we should be in Iraq. Period. It is my belief that if there were no oil in Iraq, we would not be there. It is also my belief that we are creating a bigger mess the longer that we’re there, and it is not belief but simple fact that we are creating an entire generation of people who despise the United States.

But the speeches today made me see things from another point of view. I was astonished to learn that more than half of the country’s homeless people are veterans. That statistic is disgusting. Deeply. Whether or not you agree with any conflict (and I disagree with most of them) the country has a responsibility to care for those who have put their lives on the line to protect it.

I was also astonished to learn that funding for the veterans administration is not an automatic thing. Congress must allocate funds to pay for health care for veterans, physical or mental, annually. We all know how well Congress does its work.

The gentleman who just returned from Iraq talked about the media’s coverage of the conflict. According to him, the media is 110% on when it comes to the coverage in Iraq, however they are only reporting 10 to 15% of the story. Apparently, there are plenty of good things happening there that no one talks about. I find that difficult to believe. Every day, there are reports of more very young soldiers dying. The government does not keep statistics on the deaths of Iraqi civilians who die needlessly either in the crossfire or from mistakes made on bombing runs. Yes, the insurgents kill innocent civilians too, but the insurgent’s cause is not my concern. I think that the military should be held to a higher standard of accountability, especially when the claims of being the most technologically advanced military force in the world are constant.

The fact is that we can’t leave Iraq now. But as I whispered to a friend during these speeches when someone asked when we’ll be out of there…I think everyone will come home when my friend’s kids are grandparents. What a quagmire. It is a weirdling line that I’m walking here…admire the selfless service of all of the military branches, despise the conflicts, opposed to the policy.

I know my own mind, anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, the voice recognition software IS learning. I dictated this up until a few paragraphs ago, and the errors were very few. Teh technology is teh cool.

Twilight

Growing up, L. M. Montgomery was one of my favorite authors. I read the Anne of Green Gables books over and over, and then, as now, I was astonished at her ability to describe things so fully that you could SEE them. You got such a sense of Victorian Canada from her books, transported to a time and place not my own, I felt as if I could have lived there. Her use of imagery is still unrivaled by many modern-day authors.

When I visited Prince Edward Island, where the books are set, in 2002, I had the sense of returning to a place that my very essence remembered, even though I'd never been there before. DH and I drove my car, from our home in Oh-hia-ia to PEI. We still own the car, and every time I wash it, even 5 years later, I still get island red dirt off of my blue car. So much of it caked the undercarriage that I'm fairly certain it'll never come completely off.

There are at least 7 books in the Anne series. In one of the last ones, "Anne of Windy Poplars" the title character, Anne, writes in a letter to her fiancee that she reads his letters at dusk, her favorite time of day. She likes the word "dusk" better than "twilight."

I so disagree. "Twilight" has so many possibilites, the fulfillment of the day's promises and yet hints of the night to come.

I live in a heavily wooded area. A major road runs behind my house, but in the summertime you would never know if it weren't for the noise of the traffic. You can not see the road at all, nor see flashes of the cars driving by in the daytime, sun winking off their shining exteriors. You don't even see their headlights when it is dark, so dense are the woods behind the house.

At twilight, the deep places in the woods hold shadows that are green rather than black, and look warm rather than foreboding. We have a small expanse of grass behind the house, but the rest of the property is in its natural state, with trees and all sorts of brush, honeysuckle vines growing over everything. The grass looks lush, emerald green at twilight, as if it is thick and luxurious. Any other time of day, it looks as it truly is, sparse and struggling to grow in the mostly shaded backyard.

When the honeysuckle blooms in early spring, the smell of the blossoms is intoxicating on the air. Bees are thick back there, gathering pollen. I'm allergic to bees, so I stay away until the blossoms wither and die.

Today, during the late afternoon and before the magic hour of twilight, I poked around back there, wondering, if there were any blackberry bushes. There are! And they are full of fat blackberries, still unripe, mostly red, but a few green ones too, meaning that I should be able to gather them in the coming days. Yum.

The twilight vanishes so quickly, swallowed up by the promise of night and the coming dark. One moment it is dusk, and in the next, dark. It is particularly at this time of year that I miss Sweden. I think about Sweden all the time, of course, but during the time around Midsummer, which was yesterday, the 23rd, I remember the sun rising at 2.30 in the morning, the complete lack of night that was amazing to experience. Twilight comes there, and never disappears. It just gets light again a few hours later. It is really neat, but it does make sleeping difficult. Of course, who wants to be sleeping when the light has returned, finally, after a long and dark winter? Almost no one! Parties last long into the twilight hours, making a late-day nap a necessity.

Our Midsummer party this year didn't go as late as a Swedish party might have, but still late enough that DH and I didn't get moving today until far later than our usual time. The result is that it is now what should be around bedtime for me, and I'm feeling like it is just time to get started. It is a good thing that the magic hour of twilight does not last as long here in Oh-hia-ia as it does in Sweden, or I might not get to sleep at all. There is something about the dark that eventually will force me to bed. But until then, I'm quite content to watch the shadows deepen, feel the temperature ease, and contemplate nothing much at all.

Memorial Day

Full disclosure: I am NOT now and will never be a fan of the newspaper USA Today. When I'm traveling and hotels or airlines give away free copies, I don't even bother to glance at it. It is just too close to tabloids for me, a dumbed down version of the national news with far too much focus on superficial stuff. If I want gossip, I'll check the gossip sites I've got in my links list. If I want news, I'll pick up the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal. Don't even get me started on the horrible rag that is my hometown paper, a bare few steps above the USA Today.

That said, yesterday I was waiting for my number to be called at what used to be my favorite lunch spot, where I'd ordered a sandwich and a cup of soup, to go. Really hard to make, right? Right. Anyway. I waited nearly 40 minutes, and out of desperation and boredom, so I didn't start screaming at the staff, I picked up their copy of USA Today and paged through it. This article caught my eye, providing inspiration for a post. Unfortunately, you've got to spend money to get the full version of the article, so allow me to sum up what the author says at the end. He's grateful for Memorial Day because it gives us the opportunity to remember those who are no longer with us. Me too.

I didn't mark the anniversary of my cousin J's death this year with a post about her, not wanting to dwell on her passing, but instead trying to just remember good things about her and her life the week that marked two years since we lost her. And I still don't want to get maudlin about her, were she alive she'd be telling me to "get a fucking grip." (Really. Not one to sugar-coat, our J!)

I've always thought of Memorial Day as more of a patriotic thing, that we were supposed to just think about the service men and women who died for the good ole US of A, but I'm going to ignore that from this year on. Yes, recognize those who died for the freedoms that we enjoy, but also remember those who you loved who aren't here anymore, and remember how fleeting and precious life is.

I want to make a list of those that I miss dreadfully, when they died and who they were to me, but that would be entirely too depressing. So instead I want to talk about what each person taught me, hoping that it will be inspiring rather than a downer.

Grandpa L, not really related to me, but the father of my dad's best friend, my 'surrogate grandpa'; taught me that friends are the family you choose for yourself. He was a big influence on me, treating my sisters and I as little different than his own grandkids. And he taught me that popping bubble wrap is one of life's greatest simple pleasures. He was into mail-order stuff big time, in the days before computers, and he would order stuff from catalogs, send it back, order other things...there was a closet in his office which held mail supplies, from boxes to mailing tape, and he never hesitated to allow my sisters and I to pull out his entire stock of bubble wrap and stomp on it. Try it sometime as a stress reliever.

Grandma S, my mother's mum. A love of making homemade strawberry jam, canning and preserving. Picking strawberries with her and Grandpa S are some of my fondest very early memories. She was a quilter, and some of my love of the domestic arts are from her.

Grandpa S., my mother's dad. He did this hilarious little self-deprecating monologue all the time, about who was the boss in his household, which taught me that you should always be able to laugh at yourself. A vital and important lesson, to be sure.

Grandpa B., my dad's dad. One of the lessons he helped to teach me was the importance of work first, play later. The family spent some time in Florida when I was in second grade, which caused me to miss some school. I did the schoolwork for each day early in the morning with him watching, and then we would ride bikes to the beach as a treat when I was done. No homework, no bike ride.

Great Auntie G and Great Uncle R, on my mum's side of the family. I can still hear Aunt G's laugh, years and years after her death, a great, booming, very not girl-y ha HA ha ha HA, which if you heard it in a store and didn't even see her, you'd know she was there, just from that laugh. She taught me to find humor in almost any situation. Uncle R., a gentle, steady presence, proud of our accomplishments and supportive of our endeavors, his death was my first lesson in mortality. His quiet support was a lesson in how to 'be there' when someone needed you.

"Uncle" L, again no relation, but the father of a very close friend in Sweden. He spoke no English whatsoever, and my first week in Sweden, he was looking at coffee table books I had brought to my host family about America and Ohio. I could see his interest, and sat down beside him and proceeded to tell him, in English, all about the places I'd been in each book, and pointed out pictures of my hometown in the Ohio book. I didn't find out until WEEKS later that he spoke not one word of English. (Dope-slap!!) He taught me that nodding and smiling will get you by sometimes, but also that sometimes keeping your mouth shut and not embarrassing someone is one of the greatest gifts you can give them.

And J, last but not least. I learned so much from her about motherhood, watching her with her children, after having known her as a rebellious and, frankly, difficult child and teen herself, was an amazing and beautiful thing. Her no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is style, inherited from her mother, inspired me as well. You got the unvarnished truth from her, like it or not. I admire that still, wishing I could be that ballsy sometimes.

Isn't it interesting, the varied and diverse things that the people who touch our lives, in ways great and small, teach us?

Alterations and Altercations

There will actually not be any disagreements in this post, I just liked the alliteration.

MotherMe posted a muffin recipe the other day, and upon reading it, my first thought was YUM! And my second thought was a wistful, (sigh), I haven't baked anything in forever, due to my self-imposed weight loss program. I love to bake. But cookies, muffins, cakes and quick breads are not the stuff that weight-loss dreams are made of, so I've been abstaining from doing much in the kitchen besides making dinner. Dinner is usually boneless, skinless chicken, or grilled fish. And yes, that can be rather dull, but the idea of becoming a Type 2 diabetic is terrifying enough that I've been highly motivated to stick to the program of gym, every single day, and eating right, making big changes that must be lifelong changes if I am to avoid the traps that my genes have set for me of obesity, diabetes, knee replacement, heart disease and osteoporosis.

Yet again, however, I'm wandering off topic. Boy, I'm good at that.

Back to the muffins. These appealed to me because they have both carrots and zucchini in them, and I have a tough time getting all of the servings of veggies that I need each day.

Here's the recipe as MotherMe posted it.

• 2 cups unbleached, unbromated white all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 T ground cinnamon
• 2 t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 20-oz can crushed pineapple, drained well
• 2 cups grated carrot (approx 6 medium)
• 1 smallish zucchini, grated (approx 1/2 to 1 cup)
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup canola or vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla

Butter or grease 18 muffin cups, or line with paper liners. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly together in a large bowl. Add pineapple, vegetables, raisins, and nuts and stir well. It will look a lot more like a pasta salad than a muffin mix, but trust me on this.

In another bowl, beat the eggs well and stir in the oil and vanilla. Add to the vegetables and fruit and mix well. Forget that stuff about mixing muffins until “just combined”. It doesn’t apply when you’re making muffins out of cole slaw.

Spoon the slaw batter into the muffin tins or papers. They won’t rise a whole lot, so fill them fairly full.

Bake approximately 30-35 minutes until a knife or toothpick poked into the center comes out without any goo on it. Let the muffins cool on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before eating. Pineapple chunks will be very hot.

Here are the changes that I made....

• 1 cup unbleached, unbromated flour
• 1-1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup turbinado sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce and 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup zucchini
• golden raisins (because regular raisins are icky.)
• I omitted the salt. I almost always do in baking recipes. You get enough salt from other sources...ahem. Let me get off my soapbox.
  
• I omitted the vanilla. Not because I intended to, but because I forgot about it until filling the muffin tins.

Now since I haven't tasted MotherMe's version, I don't know if my alterations made a significant difference in the texture of the finished product, but I'm guessing that it might make the muffins a bit more coarse-textured with more whole wheat flour. But it gives them a higher whole grain content, too, which means fewer simple carbs.

Turbinado sugar is just a fancy way of referring to what is sold commercially as "Sugar in the Raw" and I have a bunch of it from the health food store, so I used it instead of white sugar. It is less 'processed' than white sugar. Again, this may make a slight difference in the final texture, but the benefits, IMO, outweigh those minor consequences.

My prep time was reduced as well, because I purchased matchstick carrots instead of grating my own. I'm pressed for time in general this weekend, so while I the grocery store I took the opportunity to purchase chopped nuts and shredded carrots, making this one of the easiest quick bread recipes I've ever thrown together.

The taste? Delicious. I couldn't resist them straight out of the oven, being wildly curious about how cole slaw turns into yummy muffins, so yes, I ignored the caution that the pineapple chunks are hot and burned my lip. Worth it, though. They're good cold, too, I've been munching a second one as I've written this post. The cinnamon is a nice touch, the nuts an unexpected crunch here and there, and the carrots are not so cooked as to be mushy and gross. (I despise cooked carrots.) These are nearly ideal breakfast food if you ask me, a nice veggie addition to my usual 2 hard-cooked eggs-and-a-banana breakfast.

Further experimentation will probably be in reducing the amount of sugar, as that's important to me. I also might try adding a scoop of soy protein or wheat germ to see what happens.

I'm pressed for time this weekend because somehow, the family gathering for Easter dinner is at my house. I'm not sure how the only pagan heathen in the family ended up hosting the most important Christian celebration on the calendar, but that's life for you sometimes. So I've been busy cleaning and cooking, and will probably not have a second to spare to be on the computer tomorrow at all. Let's not talk about how traumatic I think the withdrawal will be, OK?

Listening to: The washing machine. As it spins endlessly, sounding like a small jet is going to take off from my kitchen.

International Women's Day

With apologies to anyone who is looking for more SN ranting, today I'm focusing on my core issue, women's rights.



International Women's Day is today, Thursday, March 8, 2007. From the website:

IWD is now an official holiday in Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother's Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers. The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women's and society's thoughts about women's equality and emancipation. Many from a younger generation feel that 'all the battles have been won for women' while many feminists from the 1970's know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy. With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.


NPR had a blurb this morning as part of the hourly newscast that said that the focus of many events around the world today will be to encourage less violence towards women. Great, yeah, but here's a thought...how about encouraging the elimination of violence towards women. That just struck me as...reaching for the low fruit on the tree. Less violence would be great; elimination would be better. Why not strive for the loftier goal?

I've been meaning to link up another women's rights blogger, Twisty Faster, of I Blame the Patriarchy. She is INTENSE, and completely rockin'. I wish to all the powers that be that I could write about 1/10 as well as she does. I'd strongly encourage my male readers to stay the heck away, though, because really, dudes, you can't handle it.

Kind of switching gears...

I've always been really bothered by pay disparity. International Women's Day seems like a good day to talk about this. What gives? Since I have a va-jay-jay, I can't possibly do the job as well as someone who has a penis? Give me a fucking break. Women, on average, still earn only about 70% of what men earn, and that's just the way it is. It is an accepted fact. You don't hear very much about the equal rights amendment any more, and that is a damn shame.

When I talk to younger women about the 'feminist movement', I get eye rolls and much spewing of anti-feminist rhetoric. The perception that feminists are man-hating, butch lunatics who are in desperate need of a shag is pervasive and extremely offensive. I've been given more strange looks than I can count when I identify myself as a women's rights activist. I've said frequently before that I don't much care what other people think, so it doesn't 'hurt my feelings' when someone wants to bash me for standing fast in the belief that women have the right to the same opportunities that men do.

But I'm in my 30s. Where are the younger women? Where are the fiery radicals in their 20s? Where are the girls still in high school, angry that the girl's softball team won state champs, but the football team gets a new weight room?


Why haven't we broken out of the mold of the patriarchal society? What are we waiting for?

HOOKY DAY!!!

Because I am a very firm believer in caring for my own mental health, today I am taking a hooky day today to go skiing. See ya on the slopes!

No Time

There's an old pop song, maybe by The Byrds, about "Got No Time" that is running through my head. I feel like I have no time. I used to say all the time that I didn't have time to work out, and my dad used to say to me, (very irritatingly, I might add) "You have the same amount of time as everyone else, 24 hours a day. You have to make time." OK, so I did. I've made time to work out every day, or at least every weekday, taking most Sundays off.

Now I feel like I have no time to finish everything that needs done for the upcoming Christmas holiday. Add to my insanity the fact that my family celebrates the holiday on Christmas Eve, as all good Scandinavians do, and that means that I have one less day than everyone else does to get ready. Or at least one less day than most Yankees, anyway. Here's the number of Christmas presents that are wrapped: 0. The number that are purchased: about 5. One sister, the niece and nephew, a girlfriend, and another girlfriend's kids. Number left to purchase: about 30. Cookies baked as of today: 0. Number left to bake: about 20 dozen. Decorations put up: 0. Decorations left to put up: thousands. I have two Christmas trees, innumerable knick-knacks and doo-dads, and hundreds of tree ornaments. The current plan is to do all of that on Friday, which I have taken off just in order to have some time to do these sorts of things. ARRRRGGH. Number of days left until Christmas: 20. Nineteen until Julafton. (Christmas Eve)

I've got almost nothing to say on the political front; the lame duck session of congress may or may not vote to give Washington, DC a congressional rep, in exchange for another rep in Utah. Utah, apparently, was annoyed that the missionaries were not counted in the last census, and feel that they are owed another congressional rep, and are willing to give DC one in exchange. The fact that Washington, DC does not have any representation in congress is, excuse the pun, REP-rehensible. When we were at Rocky Gap for the Thanksgiving holiday, I noted the DC license plates, which have the cute tag line "taxation without representation" which was maybe Patrick Henry's battle cry, "No taxation without representation" about the way the Brits taxed the colonists waaaay back when we were still "the colonies"

There just isn't too much going on politically that I feel like making waves about; the confirmation or not of Gates for Rummy's old job, the stepping down of UN Ambassador Michael Bolton (yay, he's an idiot), and the fact that Rummy stepped down all are interesting, but I'm not up to thinking about it.

Scary wrote a great post about World Aids Day a few days ago on Duck News, which is definitely worth a read. Go check it out.