Nostalgia for the musical past

Once upon a time.....

My dating history (what little there is of it, since I met DH when I was 19) is filled with musicians.  DH is not a musician, although he was a band geek.  No harm there, all of my friends were band geeks, and I was nuts about choir.  Music has always been a central part of my life.

In high school, I dated a guy who introduced me to BritPop, specifically new-wavey sort of stuff, Squeeze in particular.  He gave me a tape that he had dubbed of Squeeze's Play album, and I played it over and over and over in the tape player of my first car, a two-seater.  I loved that car, and there are a few bits of music that remind me of being 17, driving like a maniac down the highway in my cute white sports car, sun roof open, long hair blowing all over the place, music blasting at top volume.  Mostly the bad pop of the day, (En Vouge, I'm looking at you!) but a few gems like Prince's I Wanna Melt With You, Modern English, Tori Amos's Take To the Sky, and this Squeeze tape.  

Because the tape he gave me was one he'd taped from the original album on a dual tape deck, the sound was pretty crappy, and I had no idea what the name of the album was, or what most of the songs were.  I mean, you can usually guess with pop songs by the chorus of the song, but not always.  There were two songs in particular, Crying In My Sleep and Wicked and Cruel that I really liked.

Teh interweb is great for being able to vomit up the title of a song, the name of the album, and the artist's name from a few poorly remembered lyrics.  (Sorry for that imagery.)  iTunes is great for tracking down old stuff too, and I've written before about finding The Stone Roses on iTunes from the same process....type the lyrics into Google, hit enter, and within the first few hits from the search engine is the information you're looking for.

I knew that the old tape that the old boyfriend gave me was by Squeeze.  I no longer have the tape, much like my entire Janet Jackson catalog, it has disappeared into the sands of time.  I found two other Squeeze tracks I liked on iTunes, Black Coffee In Bed and Tempted, but there was no locating Crying In My Sleep.  Maybe I didn't remember the name of the song correctly.  So I searched.  I HAD remembered it right, it just wasn't out there on iTunes.

I've run into that a time or two before, but been able to locate the music I wanted digitally through begging friends to search their collections.  But with one or two exceptions, most of my online friends had never heard of Squeeze.

Amazon it was, then, et voila there was an import copy of the Play album, new, never played, from an import CD store.  Woooot!  

I have not purchased a CD for years.  Years and years and years, probably around 8 or maybe even 10 years.

So when it came (finally!  how on earth is it that something takes 10 days to get from California to Ohio?) I promptly popped it into the computer, uploaded it to iTunes, and spent the rest of the day playing the disc over and over.

One of the kind of fun things about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or my particular manifestation of it, anyway, is that I can listen to something over and over and not necessarily get bored with it.  I can re-read novels, or watch a particular movie, and not have it be super annoying.  Music in particular, though, I get particularly OCD about and have been known to put one song on repeat for an entire day.

It doesn't annoy me.  But it does annoy most of the rest of the world, and I know that, so I try to not inflict that obsession, the obsessively repetitive listening, upon others.  

I have long since stopped trying to analyze this behavior.  Why do I listen to something repetitively?  I don't know.  I just roll with it until the urge passes; I'm perfectly happy usually with the music just in the background.  It doesn't interfere with my ability to concentrate on other things, or rule my life.

But it does make me wonder.....on a scale of one to insane, where, exactly, am I?

Shattered

I am thisclose to declaring a moratorium on the news until the election is over.

Besides being sick unto death of the back-and-forthing over the longest presidential election in the history of the world, I'm also highly distressed over what seems to me to be a rising tide of ever-more bad news.

I heard this morning about an American-style school shooting in Finland.  Finland!  Western Finland, someplace that is close to my heart because my sister spent her exchange year in a little town called Karlby in Swedish (or Kokkala, in Finnish).  Scandinavia doesn't have the same problems that we do here in the US with gun violence, largely, IMESHO, because handguns are exceedingly difficult to get your grubby mitts on.  I'm about the farthest thing from an expert on guns; personally, like any warm-blooded liberal lunatic, I think they're pretty unnecessary.  I know my viewpoint is not universally shared, so let's move on, shall we?

It shames me deeply that in addition to exporting what is good about the US, we also export that which is bad.  School shootings get lots and lots and lots of world-wide media coverage; copy-cat crimes follow not far behind.

I had to spend quite a bit of time explaining to schoolkids in Sweden that MY high school wasn't exactly like the fictional West Beverly High in the old Beverly Hills 90210.  Perception...what is seen on the telly...ends up seeming like daily reality when viewed from so far away through the telly screen.

Obviously, someone who totes a gun into a school full of children (and these days?  I'm counting pretty much anyone under 25 as a child) with the intent to do serious harm has, what we might politely call issues.  Ya think?

Which spins me off into the tangent of the tendency of the media to treat mental illness as the demon in the middle of the room, but let's save that for next year's Mental Health Awareness week, mmmkay?  I don't want to lose my primary point here.

Which is?

My worldview is getting a serious ass-kicking these days, and I don't like it at all.  At ALL.

Somewhere in there is the explanation for why I like fandom so much.  Escapism...my daily sanity-saving drug!

Come to the Darkside....we have cookies!

Finally, I must admit de-feet (pun intended) over some of my sillier high-heeled shoes.

I bought a pair of (gasp!) Crocs.  In the name of comfort.

(You may expect the world to end at any second now.)

I first became aware of Crocs through Dooce & Blurb, aka Heather and Jon Armstrong.  Jon - - - loves them.  Heather - - - hates them.  A while back, they had an ongoing back-and-forth Croc war on their blogs.  Jon had (I think) a yellow pair.  Blazing, sunshine yellow.  Or at least that's what I remember the pictures of.

Readers of both blogs chimed in, and the comments made for highly hysterical reading.  When I actually saw pictures of the shoes, I wrinkled my nose.  Ewww.

And then I went to visit my baby sister in Cal-i-forn-i-a, and she had a pair.  My sisters and I all wear roughly the same size shoe, and I stole those Crocs the very first night, when we sat 'round a campfire on the beach.  Reluctantly, when I left the island where she lives, I left the Crocs behind, too.  Mostly because she threatened me with death if I took them back to Ohio.  These things inspire passion, I'll tell you that.  

You see them everywhere.  They match absolutely nothing, look terrible, and remind me a whole lot of Swedish trädskor, which literally means wooden shoes.  That gives you a false impression of wooden shoes that are carved and boat-shaped.  But trädskor are clogs, with wooden soles, leather uppers, and open heels.  Swedes wear them everywhere.  Even sometimes with dress-up clothes, which, I must point out, is very un-attractive.  But, they're practical, comfortable, and with the wooden soles being about 2-1/2 inches tall, they keep your feet out of the slush in the winter and away from the mud in the spring.  I brought a black pair home when I was 17, and when I went to visit in 1999, I brought home a brown pair.  They're great for gardening, and that 11-th hour trip to the grocery store for a missing ingredient in something you're trying to pull together for a dinner party.  (Not that I'd know, of course.  I always have everything I need.  *eyeroll*)

I went to visit my sister in 2006.  Two long years ago.  Since then, I've looked at Crocs in sporting goods stores and shoe stores, online, just about all over the place, and I just could not bring myself to spend $40 on a pair of shoes that are so ugly, I don't want to be caught dead in them.  I freely admit to a shoe-shopping problem, and having spend scads on far less practical shoes, you'd think that I wouldn't blink at the price tag.  "Reason" (of a sort) asserted itself, however, because the nagging voice in my head that wants me to be lots more frugal kept saying, "$40?!?!  Are you KIDDING me?  Put those back!"

As with all consumer goods, though, the price started to come down, and with news stories this year about people getting injured in Crocs (although I know nothing about the details, just remember it was in the news) they started to become a bit more reasonable.

In addition to a shoe-shopping problem, I also have an Amazon.com shopping problem.  I lurves me some Amazon.  I browse there nearly daily.  I buy things from them less frequently than daily, but often enough that when I log in to the site, it says, "Welcome, Lucy.  We have recommendations for you!"  I know, it does that for everyone.  But it tempts me frequently, and I have been known to purchase things based on wise and all-seeing Amazon's recommendation alone.  They know my buying habits, which ought to scare me a little, but strangely, does not.

So they had a picture on their gateway page, what you get when you type amazon.com into your browser, and a little SALE! notation, and so, I went and had a look.  Amazon had Crocs in every color of the rainbow, even in some colors that should never be considered for shoes.  

My current favorite color is a fire-y red.  I used to think I couldn't wear red, but I've darkened my hair a bit, and I like what I see in the mirror when I'm wearing a blazing red.  So I bought a red pair.

Comfortable doesn't really cover how these things feel.  I had sided with Dooce in the Croc war, but having worn them, I now take Blurb's side.

That does not mean I'll be wearing them outside of the house, at least not regularly, but man, those are some soothing shoes.

Of the Not Christian persuasion

I went to a lecture given by a survivor of the Holocaust, one of the so-called "Schlinder's Jews".  I say so-called, because quite honestly, he would vastly be preferred to be known as a renowned Cantor than a Holocaust survivor.  As he explained to us, he lost everyone - - - uncles, cousins, his mother, his sister, ev-ry-one - - - during those horrible years, and it is painful enough to live with his own memories, he neither needs nor wants pity from the rest of us.

Ever since someone gave me a copy of Anne Frank's Diary when I was 11 or 12, I have been a voracious reader of everything I could get my hands on about the Holocaust.  I studied German in college for a few varied reasons; it was the closest thing to Swedish my Uni offered, it was taught by someone I admired....but also in the hope that I would someday be able to read historical documents of the time in the original German.

I'm also a complete language geek, but y'all knew that already.

Due in part to that language geekiness, I even know a few words of Yiddish.  He peppered his lecture with the occasional Yiddish word, and is it wrong that I felt exceedingly smug for knowing what the words meant without a translation?  Probably.

At the end of his remarks, he took questions from the audience, and they were interested in many things about his journey; but a dominant theme, asked several times and in several different ways, was this: how had he survived?  What gave him hope?  What made him able to get through each day, through the thousands of indignities foisted on them, great and small?

Perhaps not surprising, considering that he is a world-renowned Cantor, his answer was that his faith had sustained him.  His spirituality.  Or maybe that is surprising, because you might think that music would have helped him significantly.  After the war, he came to the US and studied at Julliard, and in that, I envy him.  There was a time when I would have killed for that honor.  But he said no, that he had not discovered his musical talents until after the war.

I waited until almost the end of the question-and-answer session to ask my question.  Since he had talked a whole lot about his work as a Cantor, (although he's retired now) and he made a point of telling us how he'd rather be known for his singing than for his survival, I wanted to hear him sing.  So I asked: "Do you still sing, and would you sing for us?"

"I'm retired!" was his immediate response; several people in varied places in the crowd called out (hilariously, completely in chorus) "We don't mind!"  He looked at me and said, "Young woman, you put me on the spot!"  I smiled, completely unrepentant, and apologized.  I was really surprised, though, when the crowd began to urge him along, and began to applaud.

So he did.  I had thought to ask him to sing something joyful, as a counterpoint to the tragedy and horror he spoke of, but decided at the last second that just might have been pushing it, a specific request.  

He sang of faith, how those of the faith never walk alone.  

It was, in a word, glorious.  

I'm always surprised when people's singing voices differ greatly from their speaking voices; I think I sound the same no matter if I'm speaking or singing.  His singing voice was deeper and richer than his speaking voice, and almost without accent.  While when he was speaking, his accent was thick and obvious.

In addition to my language geek issues, I'm also a music geek, so I appreciated what he sang for the sheer musicality of it.  Singing a capella, with no warm-up, no advance warning, on pitch and on key?  Damn near impossible.  And therefore, impressive.  Extremely so.  Moving, too, there was barely a dry eye in the house when he finished.

Mostly due to my sheltered upbringing, I've never run into anyone who was as fervent about their faith as evangelical Christians are.  While I know that there are plenty of people who are as zealous about their non-Christian faiths as the evangelicals, I'd never met one before.

I feel much the same way about his deep faith as I do about the Christians I know; I can admire their faith without sharing it.  It was a beautiful thing to see.

After the lecture, several people thanked me (!!!) for asking him to sing, saying they'd wanted to ask but weren't brave enough.  I waited in line to speak to him, and apologized again for putting him on the spot.  In the most Continental fashion, he winked at me, kissed my hand (which was incredibly cute) and told me he hadn't minded.  I thanked him for indulging me, and told him I felt very lucky to have had the chance to hear him sing.

I left the lecture feeling as if I'd had an epiphany; how about that?  There are other faiths that feel as strongly about their religions.  Who knew?

Replay

A comment left on the delightful Mrs. G's blog the other day made me giggle, and then sigh, because while clever, it made me realize that yes, I've got that little voice inside my head.  

Mrs. G had solicited comments from her readers for advice for her college-bound daughter.  One of the respondents suggested that Miss G listen to that little voice inside her head, y'know, the one that sounds like your mother?

I have a conglomeration up there, of my Dad, my Mother, my Swedish Mama, and my grandmothers, both of them.

My father despises fast food.  Actually 'despise' isn't strong enough of a word.  Abhors, that might come close.  When we were kids and traveling in the car (which we did often, from Oh-hia-ia to Florida and from Oh-hia-ia to northern Michigan, and back again.) Dad would never want to stop at Mickey D's, BK, Taco Bell, or any of the other zillions of fast food outlets.  On the very seldom occasions when we DID do a fast food joint, there was ABSOLUTELY no eating in the car.  We went inside.  Without fail, when we were done, Dad would wash his hands.  Every time.

My sisters and I thought that was hilarious.  As we moved to our teen-aged years, it was a reason to roll our eyes.  Vociferously.

And then.  Of course.  I have started to feel the same way.  I had a quick taco at Taco Bell the other day, and when I was finished eating it, I wanted to not only wash my hands, but I also contemplated a second shower.  Ugh.  Gross.  

I avoid fast food as much as I am able, but modern hectic life means that sometimes, that's what you do.  I try to make the best choices I can among the very bad options, minimizing my fat intake, and trying to keep my daily caloric count down, too.  But recently, I've started to feel that ugh-I-need-to-cleanse-myself-of-this-grease feeling after even just an Iced Coffee from Mc D's.  

Bleagh.  

Hurt

Is it too much to ask to be able to run without pain?  I'm starting to think so.  I'm back on the daily grind of gym at an ungodly hour, work, home, dinner, knit for a short while, and bed.  I try to ride my bike to work at least 2-3 days a week, but Oh-hia-ia's weather, as usual, has been tres un-co-operative.

I can't seem to manage an entirely pain-free run.  Either I get stabs and twinges in my knee(s) or I get shin splints that are excruciating.  I'm using Podrunner: Intervals to train this time around, following their very sensible regimen of running 3 days a week and strength training on alternate days.  

I know I've written about Podrunner before, but it bears frequent repeating: this is phenomenal music to run to. (Linkage in the sidebar under Music, Bands, Radio.  I'm too lazy to type the html this morning.  Deal.)  Podrunner: Intervals are the brainchild of DJ Steveboy, and the idea is to take you from couch potato to running a 5K in 10 weeks.  As I've not done much running during calendar year 2008, it seemed prudent to just start all over, as if I had never run.  I had debated jumping in to Intervals around week 3 or 4, and I'm glad that I didn't.  I can only imagine how much pain I'd be in if I'd decided to just skip ahead.  Lots.

Intervals continues after the 5K as well, training for an 8K, a 10K and, I'm sure, in time, will also work its way to a half and a full marathon.  

I've tried all sorts of things for the shin splints.  I was advised to: eat more bananas (yuk), drink more water (more?!?!),  get new shoes (yeah, did that, too) and none of it has worked.  Shocking, I know.

I despise bananas.  Just....ick.  Unless, of course, we're talking about a banana milkshake.  Then, yeah, I'm all for it.  So what I've done about that is incorporate them into the protein smoothies I make, where they're not the predominant flavor.  I use those as a meal replacement sometimes, or I use them when that 10 AM or 3 PM I'm-so-hungry demon shows up.

I really thought with the last new shoe purchase, back in April when I was in Florida, that the shin splint problem would be over.  I went to a store that sells only running shoes.  I took my old shoes, to show them the wear pattern.  They spent over an hour with me, watching me walk, jump, sprint, and jog in place.  They gave me a pair of shoes that were heavier than my old ones, which was weird until I got used to them.  I did use them to run around in Florida, and had little trouble.  That honeymoon didn't last long; after I got back to OH, it was the same story.  Clearly?  I need to run only in Florida.  Heh.  Too bad that's not really an option.

As for the water, how much more can I drink?  I get far more than the recomended 6-8 8-ounce glasses every day.  @ work, I have a 24-ounce tumbler that sits on my desk, and I drink usually 2.5 of those in a day.  I drink at least 16 ounces while I'm working out.  Another 12-20 at dinner.  99.9999% of the time, I'd rather drink water than anything else.  I do have my morning coffee, but not every single day, so we can't blame caffine for draining all my hydration.  I don't drink soda.   My eyeballs will be floating if I drink more water.

For curing the pain after it has occurred, I do all sorts of not-really-helpful things.  I stretch, after every run, far more than the casual exerciser will stretch.  Because it feels woooonderful.  I have tried hot baths (in the winter) or sitting in the sauna after my runs.  Also feels good, but doesn't cure the pain.  Lavender oil, massaged into the legs along with a base moisturizer.  Smells nice.

I go to see my physical therapist (PT) when the pain is out of control.  What does he say?  Don't run.  Full stop.  Running's bad for your body.  Tell me something I didn't know, genius.  Life is hazardous to your health, FFS.  I'd rather be skinny and have bad knees from running than fat and unhappy.  Sorry, PT.

Suggestions for pain-free running gladly accepted in the comments box.

Immigration. Again.

I heard a news story that was preceded by the pundit wittily noting that this election season, Sarah Palin's lipstick is more of an issue than immigration.  And ugh, he was right.  That is dammed annoying.

The report was about yet another right-wing nut job "we're against everyone who isn't just like us" group.  An anti-immigration lobby, that has taken out ads in Harper's and The New York Times and I've already blocked what their name was from my memory.

The thing is....the United States is a nation of immigrants.  I've ranted about this before, probably ad nauseum, but it still bugs me every time I hear someone talking about how all of those (Mexicans, Africans, Syrians) insert your favorite social minority here are ruining this country for the rest of us.  What-ev-er!  Isn't it a good thing that no one felt that way about their grands and greats?  Unless you can trace your ancestry to waaaay back before the Mayflower as being entirely Native American, guess what?  There is an immigrant in your family tree.

Is the far right really that dumb?  Whoever this group was, they are taking out ads warning of overpopulation, and how massive immigration just might destroy the environment.  Riiiight.  Because it is the recent immigrant population that is living in McMansions, driving giant SUVs, and continuing to push along the consumer-driven economy by purchasing ever more stuff at Wal-Mart.  Silly me.

Off & On & Up

Even though my depression is mostly regulated thanks to modern medicine, I still have days here & there that are difficult.  Sometimes I know what triggers it.  Sometimes I don't.  When I'm having a difficult day, I often say that I'm "a little rough around the edges."  I picture single-celled organisms from my high school biology days, with spiky outlines.  Usually the meds soothe this; the meds make it easier to deal with things that would otherwise be catastrophes of epic proportions.  When the meds weren't quite right, or before I sought treatment, something as mundane as losing my keys could send me tail-spinning.

These days, it doesn't have to be anything in particular; I've decided that hormonal surges can account for days when I'm sarcastic and snarfy and snarky with everyone and everything.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah, how would you be able to tell the difference from any other day, Luce?  There, I beat ya to your snark!)  

Today is one of those rough around the edges days.  I looked in the mirror this morning whilst getting ready for work, and I noticed the bit of weight I've gained in my face.  That bummed me out.  Then it is an overcast day, rainy and miserable, and it is going to be like that for a few days around here.  That grey, oppressing sky!  It makes me feel like the clouds themselves are pushing down on me, dark forces un-named making it hard to see out of the gloom.  

I frequently get songs stuck in my head, and this morning I woke up humming the harmony from a Dave Matthews Band song, #41.  I know I mentioned it a few weeks ago, but the sax player from DMB died recently, far too young, and there's an evocative solo he had in that song, and thinking about it made me sad.

Add those three things up, and bam, not such a good day in the offing.

Folks who haven't walked down Depression Way will say very un-helpful things like, "Snap out of it.  Its just the blues." or "C'mon, how bad can it be?  Get over it."  Which, as I said, isn't helpful.  Because then you feel guilty for feeling this crappy.  How difficult, truly, is my life?  A roof over my head, enough to eat, I get out of bed every morning, put my feet on the floor and walk.  So much more than so many others, that I shouldn't feel crappy.  That somehow, I ought to be able to 'snap out of it.'  

As I drove to work, I kept saying things to myself like, c'mon, you're going to a job you love.  You're doing well there.  You like it.  Little mind games, to, indeed, try to snap myself out of it.  A little coffee with chocolate (have I mentioned Bellagio sipping chocolate?  Milk+ Bellagio + coffee = yum.) and avoiding listening to the news, instead listening to my "happy" playlist on my iPod, and yeah, it is going to get better.  But I wish it didn't get to the low end of the spectrum in the first place.

On the evils of HFCS

I saw a commercial the other day, produced by a pro-farming lobby firm about high fructose corn syrup.  It features a guy and a girl, on a blanket, in a park, sharing a picnic.  The girl pulls out a Popsicle, and offers the guy a bite.  He declines.  She then offers him two bites, and he responds by saying, "I thought you loved me."  

"I do." she says.  

"Then why are you trying to give me something that is full of high fructose corn syrup?" he asks, all plaintive.  

"What's wrong with corn syrup?" she asks.  

He flounders around for an explanation, and she gives him a rapid fire litany of facts about HFCS, that it has the same number of calories as sugar or honey, it isn't bad for you, everything in moderation, blah blah.

If you hadn't known before that second that the commercial was produced by some corn conglomerate, you did at that point. *eye roll*  But they are kind enough to put the words on the screen at the bottom, at the end of the commercial.  

Sure, HFCS probably does have the same number of calories as honey or sugar.  And if HFCS was the ONLY sweetener in that Popsicle, it wouldn't be as bad.  But the problem is that there is sugar, HFCS, fructose, and sucrose in a whole lot of sweet treats.  You're getting sugar on top of sugar, and would you like more sugar with your sugar?  Plus, HFCS has been refined ad nauseum, and is a pretty far removed thing from the cornfields of Iowa and Oh-hia-ia.  

What is making us fat, America?  Soda, processed sugars, fast food, gargantuan portion sizes.  Guess what is in the average can of soda produced and bottled here in the US?  HFCS.  And sugar.  And at least one or two other sweeteners.  

Guess how I lost a whole lot of that 43 pounds?  I didn't eat anything that had HFCS in it.  I read labels, obsessively.  I put it back on the shelf in the supermarket if HFCS was in it, I asked for ingredient lists at my favorite restaurants, I searched foodie websites to see what has lots of corn syrup.

Granted, I did a whole lot of other things, too.  Worked my tail off (literally!) in the gym.  Controlled my portions.  Removed a lot of the processed, prepackaged stuff from my kitchen and my life.  Focused on fresh veggies and fruits, not fruit juices and canned gunk full of salt.  Avoided fast food as much as possible.  Denied myself desserts and didn't take every. single. opportunity. presented to indulge my sweet tooth.

Is HFCS dangerous?  I dunno.  I do know that as a conscious consumer, I can (and do) choose to not eat it.  But don't tell me that it is as good for you as honey is.  I know better.  You do, too.

Of Labor

as in, to work hard, not to give birth

As a little girl, I often watched my dad work on cars.  I learned early what the difference was between a clamp and needle-nose pliers, what a socket was, how to turn a wrench and a screwdriver.  That knowledge has served me well over the years, as I can manage small home improvement tasks around the house, and minor car repairs, too.  

I bought a headlight and taillight for my bicycle, because it is getting to be sort of dark in the mornings.  The lights shall become a necessary evil as the year moves on, and, I'd like to continue to ride the bike for as long as I can, until it gets really bloody cold.  The packet claimed that  installation of both items needed no tools.  

They lied.

I was excited about installing them, so I ripped open the package as soon I got home.  I read the instructions, and moved my bike to a spot where it could be worked on.  

Tyvarr, inte, I figured out almost immediately.  (Sorry, not, in Swedish)  I needed assistance to get the batteries into the headlight, and the tail-light, you needed a screwdriver to open it to put the damn things in.  Once I managed that, when I tried to put the tail-light on the bike, I discovered it wouldn't fit with the existing reflector that sits under and behind the seat.  Fair 'nough.  I could handle taking the seat off and removing the reflector.  I'd watched someone else adjust a bike seat once, and they'd accidentally pulled the seat all the way off, so I knew it came out, and once it was, the reflector would be a cinch to take off.

DH has an impressive collection of tools (although I do have my own, too, but they're kept inside, and his are in the garage, where the bike was) and because he is as OCD as I am, they're well organized and properly labeled.  I had no trouble locating a 13 mm ratchet, which I used to loosen the nut holding the seat in place.  

I took the seat off, got off the reflector, and managed to place the tail-light.  It was a pain in the ass, and required standing at odd angles.  By the time I was finished, my legs ached, my hands were dirty, and I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment.  

Masterstroke

After the appointment of Joe Biden to the democratic veep, I was feeling....blah. Sure, sure, Biden's foreign policy experience balances Barak's inexperience nicely, and yeah, yeah, being an Irish Catholic from Scranton, PA works for him, for the ticket. It is just....*I* don't care so much.

And then Friday, when John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate...pandemonium. Without divulging details about my job, I can tell you that there is cable in the office, and we watched Ms. Palin give her speech at Wright State University, right here in Oh-hia-ia. It is a well-known fact that I'm a die-hard liberal, and as we watched the telly, we also watched each other for reaction.

(Gentle Goddess, I love working someplace where I'm not the only political nut, as well as someplace where I'm not the only intellectual. Heeee, heee, heee!)

I hate to say it, but Palin said a lot of things that made sense to me. I'll never vote for McCain, because he's anti-choice, but this was a masterstroke because Palin will appeal greatly to those who feel disenfranchised by the Democratic party keeping Hilary off of the ticket.

I've heard die-hard Clinton supporters say that they'd vote for McCain rather than Obama, because they're still pissed at the party. To that I say: what-ev-er. How dumb can you be? Do we NEED four more years of Republican economics, the Republican version of women's rights, the Republican version of foreign policy, where we've become one of the most despised countries in the world? No. We. Do. Not.

Palin's got a son in the military. A kid with Down's Syndrome. She's a maverick, like McCain, and she's extraordinarily articulate. She doesn't have the power that Obama does in front of a crowd, but his charisma is nearly....supernatural. I've never seen crowds respond to anyone like they respond to him. Those who were around at the time tell me that it is very Kennedy-esque. But with her son in the military and heading to Iraq, that makes it hard for anyone to bash the war. With a kid with major medical problems, she's going to be seen as an advocate for healthcare. She didn't come off as brash, or pushy, or overbearing, walking that fine line that women in public life must with exquisite care.

Then, as I was running this morning, I saw a flash on CNN that Palin's 17 year-old daughter is preggers. They're saying she's going to get married and have the baby....let's hear it for abstinence-only sex ed!!!

All I can say is that it is going to be a hell of a ride. I plan to stay tuned.

Neue Fruende

~German, new friend. (may not be spelled correctly. Its been a loooong time since my last German class.)

This is the usual Tuesday post, brought to you a few days late courtesy of a hectic, crazy schedule that does not allow nearly enough time to write.

In Girl Scouts (yes, yes, yes, get over it, I was a Girl Scout) we used to sing a song that went:

Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
The other is gold

I've made a few new friends recently....local ones, believe it or not....who are great women that I feel thrilled to have met. Some of them share my knitting obsession hobby, one shares my love of the German language, all of them are diverse and interesting folks.

It seems, though, that this comes at the expense of losing one old friend. Which is heartbreaking. And it stops me in my tracks, too. Typing that sentence, and then re-reading it leaves me at a loss for words.

Y'all know how rarely that happens, right?

Suffice to say that I never ever name names here, and she isn't a regular reader of Well Behaved, but she'd know who she was by reading this. By 'an old friend' I mean one that I've had since before high school. Seventh or eighth grade, I'm not even sure which. One of those friends for whom a word or a phrase or even a facial expression bring back memories, evoke a particular time and place. Someone who was there with me during that part of my journey that involved such a confusing time, adolescence, who walked along the same road I did, who was someone for a long time that was the first person I talked to (outside of the fam, natch) each day, and often the last person I talked to before going to bed. Remember that point at which you spent hours on the phone each day, and your parents would ask, "You were in school together all day. What could you possibly have to talk about for 2 hours?" And you'd roll your eyes and say, "Mooooooom, you just don't get it." One of those friends. If I've known her since seventh grade, then this is someone I've been friends with for twenty years.

Whoa.

Anyway. Over the last ten years, she's drifted further and further away, until I would see her only twice a year, maybe. We'd exchange e-mails, and talk on the phone, but it wasn't the same as it had been. Which was sad, but kind of inevitable when you're living more than 500 miles apart, and your lives take pretty divergent directions. That's sometimes called growing up. But the shared experience of youth often keeps those friendships alive even when there isn't much else two friends share outside of that anymore. I always felt that she was just as concerned? Maybe that's not the right word. I always thought that she was as interested in keeping the friendship alive as I was. Because we all know that any relationship, be it friend, significant other, sibling, requires some work by both parties involved.


It has been a slow process, but over the last two years, I've realised that she just....isn't. Interested at all. I've put forth the effort, and the response I've received has been resounding silence. She has family here in Oh-hia-ia, so I know she's in town several times a year. Her Facebook page keeps me up to date with what she's doing....but even there, she was friended with my younger sister (who she didn't really like when we were kids) long before she deigned to friend me.

And I don't like that I find out from Facebook that she's in town. Here's why: my telephone number hasn't changed in about 15 years. Seriously. I've had a cell phone since 1994, and even when all the phones went digital, (remember that?) I kept the same number. I had to fight with the wireless provider, but I managed to retain that number. I've even changed carriers, and kept the same number. Ten digits. Not so much to remember. Or even if you do forget them, the rest of the high school crowd knows that my number is still the same. Call one of them. Send me an e-mail. Hell, even call DH, you've got his number, too.

I joke frequently about our electronic gadgets making idiots of us all. I don't remember phone numbers well these days. My phone has the ability to save lots of speed dial numbers, so most of the people I care about and have frequent contact with are speed dials. Wanna call my sister in California? Yeah, she is speed dial 7. What's her number? I dunno. Without my phone, I am hard-pressed to remember all of her digits. But I don't have to remember, the phone does it for me. The gadget is smart enough that if I tag a picture I've taken with the phone with someone's name, by calling up the picture on the screen I can call that person. Amazing shiz, no? I even have this friend stored as a speed dial.

She was here last week. I know that from Facebook. I even saw her on-line, b/c FB will tell you who of your friends is signed in to the website, and you can instant message them inside of FB. We had a quick 3-4 line chat. I saw on her profile that she was leaving the next day, and I said, hey, we should at least have a drink if not dinner or even just hang out at my house tonight if you're leaving. Cool, she said. I told her that my cell phone doesn't work in my underground office, and gave her the new number at the office. I told her that after 5, the cell phone works fine, and BTW, you've got that number, right? Yeah, she said. I'll call you, she said. Sorry I've been so lame the last few times I've been here, she said. I miss you. Life's busy, and I'm all lazy and stuff when I come to Oh-hia-ia, my family mises me, so it is hard to get together, but I'd really like to see you, she said.

You're shocked to discover that she didn't call, aren't you?

I wasn't surprised, but this time, unlike the other 10 times or so over the last few years, I was hurt.

We haven't had a disagreement. We don't have wildly divergent political or social views. She might even be more liberal than me, so I know the stuff I have on my profile over on Facebook about supporting same-sex-marriage, about how W's an idiot, about my radical feminist ideals, those things aren't offending her. I don't think there's really even a problem, necessarily, other than we've just.....drifted away from each other.

But it feels like a breakup. Like I've been dumped. Like I've been judged and found wanting. Like I'm not cool enough, living in flyover country, to hang anymore. (Although she lives even further in the midwest than I do!) Maybe what I mean there is that because I'm still in our hometown, and haven't moved away like 99.99999% of everyone else we went to school with, that perhaps I'm just not worldly enough. I don't know. It makes me sad. And I despise having to "justify" to someone why I'm still here in the rustbelt. She knows why I'm still here. She knows just about everything about me. And yet, she's walking away.

This time, instead of standing still, looking forlornly back, I'm walking on too. I wish it hadn't come to this, but it seems that I have no other choice.

Were I wise and sagely, I'd have some way to put a perspective on this turning point. I don't. But I do still have great friends from those old days, and a few new ones to fill that hole left by her moving on, new stories to write, new adventures to have with old friends and new.

So often, when my own words fail me, I turn to music to better express what I can not. Although I'm NOT a country music fan, I do like Jimmy Buffett, and this one sums up a little of how I feel about this simultaneous gain and loss.

Hear 'em singing Happy Birthday
Better think about the wish I made
This year gone by ain't been a piece of cake
Every day's a revolution
Pull it together and it comes undone
Just one more candle and a trip around the sun

I'm just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning
And it's good to know it's out of my control
If there's one thing that I've learned from all this living
Is that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go

No, you never see it coming
Always wind up wondering where it went
Only time will tell if it was time well spent
It's another revelation
Celebrating what I have done
With these souvenirs of my trip around the sun

~Jimmy Buffett, Trip Around the Sun, License to Chill, 2004

THAT'S the ticket!

All eyes on Denver this week for the Dem convention. I'll be watching bits and pieces, but as I do actually work for a living, I won't be glued to the telly the whole time.

I'm feeling very 'meh' about the choice of Joe Biden as veep. I wanted Kathleen Sebelius, but y'know, Barak's people just didn't consult me on their choice. The nerve.

Gone far too soon

LeRoi Moore, 1961-2008



I shall truly miss his musicianship.

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?

And we all fall DOWN!

Is it just me, or is the earth more unstable these days? Unstable as in the ground beneath my feet seems like it is rockin' and rollin'. You may not know this, but earthquakes DO happen in Oh-hia-ia. I remember one that was a 4.0 on the Richter scale a few years back. Unfortunately, I can't blame this one on a quake.

Returning to my car at the end of the workday (on the days that I don't bike) is apparently treacherous, and hazardous to my health. I stumbled crossing the street the other day, wrenching my heel in a pothole that was just large enough to grab on to the heel of my shoe. But the pièce de résistance was falling in a parking deck. In the middle of the day. I was NOT walking and CrackBerry-ing. I know that's hard to believe, but it is true. I was NOT wearing shoes that are eleventy inches tall. Again, I know that strains credulity, too. (Mucho thanks to MotherMe for the word eleventy, I plan to use it often!) I *WAS* wearing my glasses, something I frequently forget to do, so I could see just fine. I wasn't drunk. (Hey! Quiet down out there in the peanut gallery! I don' wanna hear that you don' belief- belief - trust me on that.) I don't have an ear infection, or an inner ear imbalance, and I wasn't any more clumsy than I usually am.

What I *did* do was miss a step. Fell coming out of a stairwell, by missing the last stair, the one that takes you from the LEVEL base of the stairs to the LEVEL floor of the garage. The one that is the EXACT. SAME. COLOR. as the garage floor. The one that is lighted rather poorly, too.

Now since this was at work, that means I have to fill out paperwork, but only if I tell someone, right? I mean, my pride was far more damaged than my body. Here I am, elegantly dressed, hair done, makeup in place, accessories to match, striding confidently to my car that is going to take me to a meeting. Next thing I know, I'm sprawled out on the garage floor, sandals off of my feet, glasses around my neck instead of perched on the bridge of my nose, purse dumped, BlackBerry in several pieces scattered around me. (No BlackBerries were injured during this stunt. Just in case you were worried. I sure was!) I'm on the very dirty garage floor, and DAMN did my hand hurt when I picked myself back up. I landed, you see, on my right hand first, then my left knee, and finally my right knee, skinning all three quite nicely.

After that, I'm pissed. Really ticked. At my own clumsiness, but also at the people who manage the parking deck. The deck has been closed all summer undergoing "repairs". What repairs? They weren't painting, or refreshing the safety features of the garage. They weren't fixing the gaping holes all over the garage. They certainly weren't cleaning the garage. (Took me quite a while to scrub the dirt out of my knee!) So seriously, WTF were they doing?

I called the parking management entity. I explained the problem. They were fairly un-moved by my request to fix said problem. I then explained that I had fallen as a direct result of the problem. That got their attention. But also: Ooops. Because now they want me to fill out all kinds of paperwork and promise on the soul of my firstborn that I'm not going to sue them. Joke's on them right there, eh? Not going to have a firstborn!

All of that necessitated me also telling the colleagues in my office, as I had to have a "supervisor" sign the paperwork. Again, I say: Ooops. Because I am never ever going to hear the end of this....they'll harass me about not tripping over stuff for the next....well, forever.

Feel free to join in.

17

I don't have the time for a proper post today, but I cannot allow the day to pass without making note of the date.

Today is August 4.

Seventeen years ago today, I boarded a plane that took me from Pittsburgh to New York, and then another that took me on to Stockholm, arriving in Sweden on August 5th.

Without this experience, I would not be the adult I am today.

I feel nostalgic, and astonished to realize that I was 16 when I did that; it is now longer ago than I was old at the time. Um. I'm not making much sense there, but *I* understand what I'm trying to say, even if I can't adequately communicate it with you.

I celebrate this day as I do any other anniversary, as it marked a turning point in my life that is as big as the anniversary of the date I graduated from University, or the date of my first full day on the job at my first "real" "grown-up" job.

Would that I were a wizard...I'd be sending up red sparks from my wand today.

Rhythm

When we wore a heart of stone
We wandered to the sea
Hoping to find some comfort there
Yearning to feel free
And we were mesmerized by the lull of the night
And the smells that filled the air
And we laid us down on sandy ground
It was cold but we didn't care

'Cause we were drawn to the rhythm
Drawn into the rhythm of the sea
'Cause we were drawn to the rhythm
Drawn to the rhythm of the sea

~Sarah McLachlan, Drawn To The Rhythm, Solace, 1991

I've fallen in to a rhythm, a routine with the new job, that feels right, somehow, as if things should have been this way a long time ago. Days fly by. Often, the first time I look up after lunch it is after 4. Weeks have disappeared.

"Busy" would be an understatement. If I could tell you, interweb, all about the neat-o projects I'm working on, I would. I can't. Y'all know I don't ever talk about my current employer. That's danger, Will Robinson, danger!

I'm thanking the powers that be for my OCD, though, because my list-making obession skills come in handy to make sure that I don't forget to do something. I feel like a juggler who is having a partner toss them ever more things to juggle, and as if I'm being watched to see when I start dropping balls. Sort of. I don't feel as I did when working for Ye Olde Evile Bank, where the paranoia knew no bounds...Big Brother? Ha! Try Big: Brother, Sister, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin....around every corner was someone waiting to sabotage you. Rather, I feel like I'm being tested, to see where exactly my limits are. She's handling that? Cool, let's see if this overwhelms her. No? Well, add that.

I hate to even say things like this out loud for fear of tempting The Fates, but so far I feel like I'm passing with flying colors. (Does it count if I type it? Hmmm.)

Each week has its goal, things that need accomplished, and while there aren't Monday tasks, Tuesday tasks, et cetera, there is a certain pulse to what goes on each day. It is an odd combination of structure and ever-changing that seems to suit me, as if it was tailor-made.

I've even managed to become an early riser again, tossing off the lingering after-effects of the Lex. I maintain that it was the Lex which caused the complete alteration of my diurnal clock, changing me from a morning person to a night owl. Despite ANY scientific evidence to support that belief. Whatever. I know my own body, and I know how I felt while taking it and once quitting it. I also know that it has taken nearly two months for that inability to rise and shine to fade. It was beyond weird. I didn't want to get out of bed because there wasn't much point (as I saw it) and that was/is part and parcel of depression. But the Lex made me tired, so tired that I couldn't wake, let alone get up. I'd wake when the alarm went off, and think, "Five more minutes." And the next time I opened my eyes, three hours had gone by. Ugh. That really didn't work for me. Bad rhythm!

This rhythm is more subtle, and more to my liking. An ebb and flow that I don't feel like I'm fighting against. Finally.

The point of most of this rambling was to let you know that I won't be able to post daily for a while in the near future, when things get exceedingly hectic for a few weeks. The rhythm then will be a little more staccato, a little more hurry, hurry. I want you to know I haven't slipped back down that well, that I am, in fact, back among the living. Just crazy-busy.

HOW many years?

Eight.

DH and I had an anniversary coupla days ago. It is hilarious to me that no one but you remembers your anniversary, so I try real hard to remember to send at least a 1st anniversary card to my friends who have married. I was surprised on our first anniversary that only a few folks remembered the date, outside of DH and I.

I could make a bunch of statements about how time flies, how I don't know where eight years have gone, but I shall restrain myself and note simply how grateful I am that he's stuck with me over the last year, which has been one of the hardest in my life.

The Bluest

Blueberries are in season in Oh-hia-ia.

That one, simple statement is enough to get a mile-wide grin on my face. I love blueberries. I love them lots. I'll eat them just until I make myself ill, or just almost to that point. Blueberry muffins. Blueberries in my protein smoothies. Blueberry sorbet. The only thing that I'm not particularly keen on is blueberry jam. Meh.

The muffins, though, those are such fun. I use an old recipe, one that has a story behind it.

When I was a kid, we would spend part of every summer in a cottage on a lake in Michigan, a place that is a long haul from my Ohio home. A place whose name is magic to my sisters and I. There was no television. An old radio that was usually off, unless we wanted a weather forecast, sat in the living/dining room. The telephone was a party line phone. Really. Even well in to the 80s, the line at the cottage was shared with several neighbors. An oddity, but we loved it, because no one could reach us there. At home, from time-to-time, a ringing phone would pull my dad out of bed and into the night for a customer of his business, or some disaster happening there. At the cottage, no one could get in touch with him for 4 AM emergencies. My sisters and I loved that.

The very air there is magic. As an awkward teen, I always felt like I might actually look pretty when we were there. Certainly I felt much less of a need to hide behind a made-up face, the flaws that I saw in my skin were somehow diminished while staying at the cottage. It was a place where the rules were relaxed. A. Whole. Lot. Junk food we weren't allowed to have at home was fair game at the cottage. We wandered much further afield than we were allowed to at home. No one nagged about chores, homework, or stuff that needed doing at the cottage.

The family who owned the place was a large extended clan, presided over by a matriarch who was a force of nature. The last time I saw her before she passed away, I was in my early teens, and she was 90-something. She was a hell of a lady. The muffin recipe is hers.

It was written on a scrap of paper, in Palmer Method handwriting (hers, of course) taped to the inside of the kitchen cabinet where the flour, sugar, and baking spices are kept. In my mid-to-late teens, for several years running I tried to remember to copy it down so that I would have it at home, but I didn't remember until the summer that I had a blank book with me most of the time.

We were usually in Michigan for at least part of the blueberry season, but not always. And sometimes blueberries show up in the grocery store in the midst of winter, frightfully expensive and completely irresistible. So I needed to have a copy of my own, because it is my favorite way to make blueberry muffins.

That said, the recipe has two faults, as I see it. One, the muffins have never risen like I think they ought to; there are no muffin tops on the tops of these muffins, even with a decent amount of baking powder called for in the recipe. Two, the blueberries have a tendency to sink to the bottom, which kind of irritates me. I get around that these days by putting 1/2 of the blueberries in the batter, and sprinkling the remaining half over top of the filled muffin tins, which means that at least a few stay floating on the surface until they're baked.

Grandma ____'s Blueberry Muffins

Beat two eggs until foamy. Add 1 cup sugar and continue beating until the eggs are light yellow, adding 1 heaping tablespoon of softened butter. (The original calls for shortening, ick.) Add 1 cup milk, 2 cups flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder and 1-1/2 cups blueberries. Fill regular sized muffin tins 2/3 full, after either greasing well or lining with paper liners. Bake at 350 F (175C) for 15-20 minutes. Makes approximately 12 muffins.

I like making them in mini-muffin tins, bite-size. That recipe makes roughly 4 dozen (give or take, YMMV) mini-muffins, and the baking time is shortened. I just keep a super-close eye on the minis, sometimes they take 10 minutes, sometimes longer.

When I made them last week, I discovered too late that I had no milk, so I used vanilla yogurt instead, and I used my Really Raw Honey because I have an aversion to granulated sugar. I ran out of my regular unbleached flour, too, so about 1-1/4 cups of the flour was whole wheat pastry flour, which I thought would work better than the bread flour, or the cake flour, that were also in my pantry. They were still very tasty. Someday, I will remember to try using baking soda or a combination of baking soda and baking powder to see if they will rise like I think they should.

Eat them with abandon, the small amount of butter in them means that they're relatively low fat. If you can pick the blues yourself as opposed to buying them in the mega-mart, so much the better. Be warned, blueberry stained fingers are part of the fun.

Justice Delayed

It isn't often that I post more than once a day. I wrote the post below yesterday, so technically, I guess I'm not writing two posts today. Something pretty important has to happen for two posts.

And important this is. I am both happy and relieved by the news this morning that Radovan Karadzic is under arrest. Need a history lesson? I'm happy to oblige.

During the Balkan Wars, Karadzic was one of the Serbian generals, he orchestrated the siege of Sarajevo. But don't take my word for it. From NPR:

Karadzic has been twice indicted for genocide. He is accused of playing a key role in the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, which claimed 12,000 lives, and of orchestrating the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

I lived in Sweden during the start of the Balkan Wars, with a Croatian family. So yeah, this hits kind of close to home. I watched the news from Zagreb (Croatia's capital) with my host family, learned the words in Croatian that explained the numbers of people killed each day, listened as my host mother talked to her mother in one of the seaside provinces of Croatia and heard the news that her nephew had been drafted, cried with her over her terror that he might not make it home. I was there when they heard about the deaths of old friends, and helped them bid farewell to a fellow expatriate who went home to Croatia to defend his hometown.

Both the nephew and the expat made it home safely, but so many others did not. One of my most treasured possessions from my exchange year is a patch from the expat's army uniform, that he pulled off of the sleeve of his fatigues and gave to me. He handed it to me and said, "This is so you never forget. I want you to remember how ugly and stupid war is, how useless the divisions betweens Croats and Serbs, Christian and Muslim truly are. We're all human. The ethnic divisions are meaningless"

I have never forgotten. The violence escalated in the years after I left Sweden, the horrible tragedy in Sarajevo was several years after I came home. I was always disappointed and confused by what I perceived as apathy in America about the situation in the former Yugoslavia. When I came home in 1992, my friends mostly didn't know what I was talking about when I talked about Croatia. I learned to just keep my thoughts about the genocides to myself.

I still have harsh words about it; there's no oil in the Balkans, and therefore, the US didn't get involved until things were really bad. IMESHO, anyway.

Karadzic's arrest is NOT a case of too little, too late. It is a case of better late than never. Some of those families might have a bit of closure and peace now that he is in custody.

Now it is time for the Serbian government to track down Ratko Mladic, and hold him accountable, too.

Daily Dose

I had a conversation with someone who suffers from an anxiety disorder, quite different from my depression struggles. He takes Xanax for the anxiety, a dosage of it that I consider quite high, knowing how Xanax affects me. That's not passage of judgment, just observation. I think he needs a lot of it to quell the anxiety.

Like so many folks being treated for mental illnesses, he doesn't want to take the Xanax. Again, I empathize. Unfortunately, the entire class of meds that Xanax springs from don't lend themselves well to quitting cold turkey. You must, must taper the dosage of the benzotropines, because quitting just doesn't work.

Even knowing as I do that quitting my dosage of the anti-depressants would be stupid at best and fatal at worst, that doesn't stop me from foolishly, recklessly, wanting to tamper with my dosage. I'd like to not need the meds. That would be nice. I am not optimistic about my chances of being able to quit the meds at any time in the foreseeable future, though.

With the longer days, and the fact that we actually see the sun in the summer in Oh-hia-ia rather than 100% gloomy grey skies, I'm feeling better. Fantastic, most of the time, actually. As long as I continue the meds. Without them, things aren't so fantastic.

Last week, I had a day where I only took 300 mg of my 450 mg dose of Wellbutrin XL. It wasn't intentional; somehow, I have a bunch of the 300 mg pills from my prior refill, but none of the 150 mg. As a result, the 'old' 300 mgs are upstairs, and the 'new' 300 and 150 mgs are downstairs. I took an allergy pill and a 300 mg, intending to take the 150 mg as soon as I went downstairs, but I never remembered to do that, and I could tell by the evening that I was "off," somehow, like a puzzle missing a key piece.

Another day, I got up and got going, dragging a little, but didn't remember to take the meds until late in the afternoon. Gee, wonder why I was so off my usual form that day? Interestingly, small things that don't bother me when I am taking the meds take on the forms of crises of epic proportions when I am off them. I am more snarly, more apt to make cutting, biting, stinging sarcastic remarks when I don't take them. I struggle to put the bitter queen back into her box when I've not taken the drugs.

All of this brain chemistry alteration bothers me, but like something we know is looming and don't want to think about, I push it away to be concerned about another day. Call it whatever you like, but the fact is that the SSRIs are altering your brain chemistry.

I remember one of my early biology classes, grade 7 or so, where one of our vocabulary words was "drug" and it was defined as 'anything that alters the body's chemistry.' Christo, under that definition, anything you eat or drink is a drug. Food, water, even that sip of iced tea you just took. (Oh, wait, that was me. Have I mentioned? It is so effing hot that I can hardly breathe.) So any medication, then, alters your body's chemistry in some way. Insulin, allergy pills, the analgesics we take for our aches and pains, all of it. If you look at it that way, I suppose, then the alteration of brain chemistry that the SSRIs do isn't such a big deal. Or is that just me, rationalizing?

Acquisitional Desires.

I Want:

Aldera
by Nine West

Zappos is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

Have I mentioned before that I have a problem with shoes? {Considering that you have a label for posts about shoes, yeah, Luce, I think you've mentioned that. Once. Or twice. A DAY. ~ed.}

I like shoes. I like frivolous, silly, can't-walk-a-mile-in-'em shoes. Shoes that match outfits, shoes that don't match outfits, shoes purchased just for a particular dress, shoes bought for everyday wear. In many colors, and the taller the heel the better. Standing at just 5'6", shorter than most of the rest of my family, I've worn heels since the parents allowed me to do so. I own maybe 3 or 4 pairs of shoes that are flat; my runners, of course, a pair of hiking boots, a pair of ballet flats, and a pair of construction boots. The rest of my shoes are tall shoes.

Zappos allows you to search for women's shoes based on heel height. Or color. Or size, or style, or brand.....

Oh, the myriad possibilities.

Must. Stop. Looking. At. Shoes.

10-speed

File this under the "WTF were you thinking?" headline.

I'm not the only nut in my office who bikes to work. There are three of us. When everyone's bike is in the office, it gets entertaining with the storage of the bikes. Yes, we all could park the bikes in our individual offices, but mostly, we don't want to, so we stash them elsewhere. There's an uneasy truce with a neighboring department, with bikes parked in the hallway between. Talk around the water cooler (figuratively speaking, as we don't have a water cooler) often centers around routes to and from the office and elsewhere around the city.

My route takes me on a well-traveled, busy byway, and I think I've mentioned before that it is mostly downhill on the way TO work, which means that the homeward journey is UPhill, a drag in many senses of the word.

The other day, a co-worker said to me, "Why don't you go through the park? Wouldn't that be a little more even, up and down on the way there and back?"

Well, yes. It would. Problem numero uno, though, is that although I've lived in this city for most of my life, I still get lost in 'the park'. Yes, really. The park's roads are well taken care of, but not well marked; often, driving in the park, I'll look around and not be sure where I am. Getting out of the park in the car is easy; usually, if you just start driving uphill, you'll exit the park in fairly short order. On a bike, that's not so easy or fun.

I spent some time looking at the maps of the park online, and thought, yeah, that's not only doable, but would probably be a hell of a lot cooler on the way home too, because there's shade a-plenty in the park, and on the road route, there ain't so much. I knew it would take me longer; driving though the park is never ever a shortcut, rather, it is something you do either when you want the scenic route or have time to kill.

So I left earlier than I normally would, and with the route I'd chosen firmly in mind, I pedaled my butt through the park. I did NOT take the park map with me. (Clever, eh? My family likes to joke that I could get lost trying to get out of a paper bag, and I admit that they're not far wrong.)

I'm proud of myself for making only one mistake, and having to turn around and go back, a mere 1/4 mile detour. But the park's hills are torture. Huge, un-ending, and ow. Ow. OWW! I actually got off the bike and walked twice, which is quitting, in my ever-so-humble. Unfortunately, it was either walk, or fall over.

On the downhill stretches, the speed is intoxicating.

The route through the park took me nearly an hour. AN HOUR! The street is about 35 minutes. Even without my erroneous turn, it would have been at least 45 minutes. It is definitely the better workout, because once at my desk, my legs let me know how unhappy they were, even whilst just sitting in front of the computer.

I've learned, though, the way around the gears on the bike. All ten of them. I thought that the bike might be a 12 or 15 speed, but up until taking the bike for more than the occasional recreational trek, I'd never used any of them.

My bike, you see, is a found bike. I did not buy it. My father is the king of found objects, and knowing this as I do, several years ago when we moved from our miserable apartment to our current lovely condo, I asked him to please find me a bicycle. A few weeks after my request, his truck showed up at our house, with a very dirty, greasy, green Huffy, with straight handlebars, not the curved ram's horns that I associate with a traditional 10-speed. An employee of my father's had a child who had outgrown the bike; short-stuff me, it fit perfectly.

A spritz of a de-greaser, a scrub with a scrub-brush, and a gentle hosing off, and the bike was shiny and as good as new. I had a local bike shop check it out, grease the gears, test the brakes, and then the bike sat in our garage for two years.

About the second day I biked to work, I started experimenting with the gears, working my way through five of them. It wasn't until the third week of biking that I figured out how to shift through the additional five.

(Yes, really, I *DO* have a reasonably high IQ, but....saying I'm not particularly mechanically inclined would be....polite.)

Cycling through the park required quite a bit of use of the lowest gear.

Near the office, back on the city streets, a pedestrian I rode past said, "You're in good shape, girl!"

I laughed.

"Not really," I said, "But I'm gettin' there!"

What WAS I thinking? I was thinking that since the street ride has become if not easy, then easier than it had been, and that I could hack the high hills. And I was thinking that yes, I *will* have thin thighs. I will.

But the only thing that kept me going through that last set of torturous hills was the thought of a cool shower once I finally DID get to the office. A long, cool, soothing shower.

Does anyone have any ideas for soothing my poor rear end? Damn, that bike seat is hard.

Drawing a blank

Sitting in front of the computer screen, cursor blinking, and no ideas for a post.

The news is bad, and I'd rather not dwell on the mortgage crisis, Fannie and Freddie, Iraq, Iran, Israel....especially because I'm feeling pretty good these days, so then I feel guilty for feeling good and being happy when the rest of the world is going to absolute hell in a handbasket.

(Which, as an aside, how freaking ridiculous IS that? Pretty freaking silly.)

There isn't much happening in the presidential campaigns, and aren't we all tired of that anyway? This is the longest presidential campaign in history, and I for one am sick unto death of "Barak Obama said/did XYZ and John McCain's response was ABC. And I'm a political nut; I love this shit. If I'm sick of it, how do those who can't stand politics feel about it?

I heard a news story about the Italian government trying to round up and register the Romany who live in Italy, a blatant racist initiative, and I have no commentary on that, either. (other than hello, Italy, whatcha thinkin'?)

Other things that I would really like to write about, I can't. Either they're work-related, things that may be, but I don't have confirmation about, or things that even tendency-to-overshare me is not about to write about for teh interweb at large to read about. (Sorry, y'all.)

I did manage to write a few paragraphs of a short story the other day, but a few paragraphs is all I have, I don't know how to resolve the major dilemma/conflict in the story. Urgh.

I looked at my little book about a week ago, re-read what I've written. I can't believe I wrote all of it, about 150 pages of what might eventually become about a 400 page novel, but I just can't write as easily as I used to. I marvel that the story sprang from my head; and I remember with nostalgia the hours and hours I spent writing it, hours that positively FLEW by as I clicked away on the keyboard.

I was so involved in the writing of it that when it was going well I would, from time to time, need to stop whatever else I was doing and write, be almost overcome with a possessed spirit that had to get out, forcing me to write. I know I acted like a zombie for that period of time, eyes going un-focused, attention wandering far afield, losing the thread of conversation around me.

Now I'm back to sitting in front of the screen, with the cursor blinking, the field ahead blank.

At least there are possibilities in that blankness.

Reinvention

I have a bunch of posts sitting in my queue. Things that I've written a few paragraphs about, and then either ran out of time to finish, or got hung up on a spot, and moved off from it thinking that inspiration would come along and I'd finish it at some future point.

But a few of those queued posts have been hanging out for more than a year.

Part of my OCD is that I don't like unfinished projects hanging about. They bother me.

When I wake up in the middle of the night, often I can't go back to sleep because I lie there and think about what's gone wrong, what's undone, what I've screwed up, what I can fix, what I can't change, what I should do tomorrow....shit that I can't turn off. It was worse, lots worse, when I was more of a mess. Now it is more of a mild annoyance than a debilitating, paralyzing problem, but it IS an annoyance.

It makes me want to reach for the sleeping pills. They don't turn off the inner monologue, exactly. They do make it harder to hear, though, because they force your brain to kind of shut off. The problem with that is twofold. First, I've weaned myself off of the Ambien, a process that was by no means fun, and I've no desire to repeat it.

Secondly, well....there isn't really a secondly. This is kind of like the real estate axiom, that location, location, location are the three most important things when it comes to purchasing real estate. I've weaned myself from the Ambien, and I've weaned myself from the Ambien. Granted, without it this past winter, I'd have slipped farther and further, because I couldn't sleep. I could NOT sleep. Without the prescription, I'd get about an hour, maybe three at the most, and the pills gave me about five at a stretch.

Depression makes sleeping hard. Lack of sleep makes the depression worse. It is a miserable cycle, one that feeds on itself. Hearing that internal "you didn't do XYZ" nagging at me didn't help, either. Inte alls, as we'd say in Swedish. (Betcha can figure that one out without me translating.)

So what to do with all those dangling posts? I see them every time I log in to Blogger. Maybe I should delete them. That feels like giving up to me, though, so they'll probably hang out until I finish them, or until I decide that they are indeed worthless, and delete them.

I have a novel from the library where the author talks about the book having been re-purposed from its original incarnation. Id' be nice if I could reinvent some of those posts. My current focus, though, is outside of the computer and away from my writing. Which is OK for now.

Traditionalists vs Reformers

I heard a news story about the Anglican Church's recent vote to allow women to become bishops. The report both angered and appalled me. The reporter explained that the Anglican communion in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have all already approved women as preachers AND bishops; the holdout for female bishops was in the Anglican's bastion, the cradle of that church, Merry Olde England.

Aunty Twisty has a label she puts on her posts from time to time that says, "Men hate You," where the 'you' is understood to mean women. Twisty's right. Nowhere is this more evident than in religion, it seems to me. The "traditionalists" in the Church of England wanted to allow a loophole for so-called super bishops, men, of course, who would be able to overrule or supervise female bishops in places where male godbags couldn't accept female leadership. Reason and common sense won out, however, as the reformers kiboshed the super-bishop idea.

It appalls me that something like this would even be open for debate. Pat the ladies on the head, there there dearie, don't worry, the big, strong men will take care of everything, don't bother your pretty little head about it. I thought that the Catholics had a lock on the chauvinistic head-trip in Christianity. Silly me. Just because John Paul II wrote missives about proper roles of wife and mother for women, and nothing else, not single, not working, not anything else but wife and mother, you're either a virgin or a slut, nothing else, according the Catholic leadership (...oooo, this pisses me off, can you tell?) does not mean that the Catholics hold the monopoly on chauvinism, apparently.

It also appalls me that the holdouts are labeled traditionalists, which by very nature of its meaning seems to imply that sacred tradition is right and proper. Urgh.

I am sick unto death of the argument from men that Eve ate the apple, therefore women are inherently inferior. If that argument is valid, what about the guy that God told to kill his son? (Issac and Abraham, yes?) Do we keep fathers and sons separate because there's a chance that Dad might knock off sonny-boy? C'mon. There's even a Midol commercial running on TV that talks about symptoms of PMS being, "the curse," which had me hurling things at the TV screen the first time I saw it. Way to come into the 16th century there, Midol. As if there aren't enough idiots out there who want to make sure women remain second-class-citizens, we have a major national advertising campaign from a drug manufacturer re-enforcing that particular stereotype. Beautiful, thanks, 'preciate the help.

I reject the argument that because I have two X chromosomes there are things that I just can't be or do. Don't hand me that old saw, "women can't" or "women shouldn't" because it will hold no water with me.

Is equality such a distant and impossible dream?

Javla eeediot

On my way home from work, I noticed two women standing on my street's sidewalk in a heavily overgrown area. What were they doing? Picking wild blackberries.

That reminded me that there's a lovely strand of blackberries in the heavily overgrown area of MY back yard.

Last summer, I noticed them while sitting on my back patio, drinking wine with a neighbor. I took the empty wine glass and filled it with the wild berries, and we ate them while finishing the bottle. They were yummy.

At my grandparent's house when I was a little girl, there were lots of wild blackberries, and I remember picking them with a cousin, putting them in bowls and dumping milk and sugar over them, eating them with a spoon.

So I thought I'd have a look-see, check out if there were ripe blackberries in my little patch. Sure enough, there were. I told DH that after dinner, I'd don long pants and sleeves (in the miserable heat, fun, yeah, sure) and pick the ripe ones. Should there be enough, I'd make a cobbler.

The reason for the long sleeves and pants? There are also bits of poison oak and sumac back there. DH is one of those folks that are highly, highly allergic to the poison plants, and he shuddered in revulsion when I announced my intentions, even with the promise of blackberry cobbler, or potential blackberry cobbler.

I reminded him that I'd picked them last year in work clothes (skirt, heels, short sleeves) with no problem. He smirked, then shuddered again. He suggested that I divest myself of my long sleeves and pants immediately upon re-entering the house, and turn on the washing machine forthwith, to destroy any possibility of him picking up the dreaded poison ivy. He is so allergic to the stuff that contact with clothing that has been worn in the vicinity of the poison plants will give him the rash.

Fair enough.

I even found shoes, real shoes, not my usual cute summer sandals to wear while in the blackberry patch.

I was quickly reminded of one of the problems of blackberry-ing: the thorns. Yow. I got stabbed once or twice, but no blood drawn, so no real problem. I kept watch for poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, but saw no evidence of it.

Then, quite suddenly, I felt a burning, piercing sensation on the inside of my left wrist, as I reached over and under to grab a few more precious berries. Reaching had pushed the sleeve of my long-sleeved shirt up near my elbow. Ooops. I yanked my hand back, inspecting for rouge spiders, mosquitoes, bees. Nothing. Not a bug in sight. But a red welt, the size of an eraser on the top of a #2 pencil, was already forming. We're talking instant. Unsure of what it was, but certain it wasn't poison ivy, I kept on picking berries, even as the spot swelled and burned and burned some more. I got similar sensations across the fingers of my right hand, jabs, but no welts there.

It wasn't until I got a third shot, again on my left wrist, that I realized what the heck was happening. When and where had I felt this before? On a walk in the woods when I was about 11. What was it? Stinging nettles.

I'd had tunnel vision for the ripe berries, and had forgotten that yes, there are plants other than the poisons that can kinda ruin your day. When I looked around, I recognized the evil plant in question, taller than I am, and reaching its painful protection over some really lovely ripe blackberries.

I had wondered why the deer that are the bane of my garden hadn't eaten the berries, why the raccoons hadn't stripped the bushes bare. That would be because they're smarter than me, and know what they should stay away from.

When I was stung as a kid, the remedy was to rub the juice from a touch-me-not plant into the sting, thereby soothing it. Touch-me-nots are also called jewelweed. They produce very pretty yellow and orange flowers, and the seed pods that form after the flowers bloom are explosive, showering seeds in all directions when you brush up against the plant. They often grow in tandem with nettles. There were plenty of touch-me-nots with the blackberries, but rubbing the juice from the hastily ripped off branch did not provide the cool relief I remember as a child.

Instead, the welts continued to swell and burn like hell, and I backed out of the blackberry patch as quickly as I could, heading for the house at a run.

I called out to DH as I came in the house; what did he remember from his Scouting days about nettles? What did he remember? That they sting. Thanks.

I turned on the kitchen faucet, and allowed cold water to run over the painful spots, which had expanded from two welts on my left arm to four, and two fingers of my right hand. The water soothed, but did not remove the sting. I stood with my hands submerged until they were nearly numb.

When I showed the welts to DH, he recoiled in horror, moving as far away from my arms as the couch would allow. I explained that nettle stings aren't contagious like the ivy, but he wasn't buying it.

Both of my sisters are more outdoors-y than me, so I called the one in New York to ask her how we'd cured it as kids. Her answer? Touch-me-nots, or wait it out. Google said the same thing, with the additional caveat that sometimes the stings fade in minutes, but sometimes they take as long as 24 hours. Great. Some species that grow in Great Brittan require the treatment of a doctor. FanTAStic. And ouch.

Not enough berries for a cobbler, either, even if I hadn't been stopped by the nettles. Ow. Seriously.

Doesn't it go by in a blink

I added a Blogversary calendar a few days ago, after seeing it pop up on bunches of other folks' blogs.

The day I did it, I realized that MY blogversary was just around the corner. July, 2005. Long before depression, before losing my old non-profit job, before I thought about losing weight. Before so much. Things change. Time moves on. So slowly, sometimes, and at others moving by at lightspeed.

Writing nearly daily has changed me, too. I go nowhere without a journal that I write ideas for posts in, or jot down a few words that will later jog my memory. Any time that I have to myself, I'm often thinking about things to write about. I think my writing has evolved, gotten better. Or I hope it has.

The web's changed all of us. Changed the way we work, shop, research, spend our leisure time. I've spent some time talking about my undergrad days recently, reminiscing about classes and various idiocies with a classmate, but also talking about the administrative details of going to school. Registering for classes, buying books, paying tuition. That's all changed so much since my undergrad days. This dates me so much, but it also amuses me to no end. When I started university, there were black and white television screens in the registration hall that listed endless series of numbers, class codes. (Please note that color television DID exist, was widespread, just not needed in this case. We're talking about the early nineties, people.) As a freshman, there were a handful of "musts" prescribed by the institution: freshman comp (English), remedial maths if you needed them (and I did), human phys (sex ed). The "good" classes filled quickly, and you had to scramble around to get the requirements whilst still finding a class or two that you were actually interested in.

Today, they register online. They buy their books online, they pay tuition online. Heck, they even take some classes online, and professors have dedicated spaces on the universities' servers for subject-specific websites.

I picked up a book about my alma mater for my dad, as it is his alma mater, too. The history of the university, pictorial and narrative. Flipping through it, looking at pictures of co-eds in white dresses, graduating classes of 17 people, football players in leather helmets, I wondered what the class of 1928 would think of the class of 2008.

When I think about new technologies and advancing time, I often think of my grandfathers, both of whom are no longer with us, and what they'd have to say about my Crackberry, and the internet. Grandpa S hated computers. <i>Hated</i> them. Remember some of the early computing acronyms? Like GIGO? (Garbage in, garbage out.) He said that all the time, pointing out mistakes that they made. GIGO is still a true-ism. Databases are only as good as the data entry operators who populate them. HTML coding doesn't write itself. But it is amazing, heady stuff, something I'm glad to have taken the time to learn, if only in the most rudimentary fashion.

Trying to predict the future is a waste of my time. But I look forward to the next few years with hopeful anticipation for what is to come.

Like, life-altering, man!

My sister in New York City rides her bike to work on a daily basis. The journey is six miles from her Brooklyn neighborhood to her Manhattan office. I think of NYC as being pretty flat, but there are a few hills here and there. Going over the Williamsburg bridge is halfway uphill and halfway down. Not a bad trip.

When I changed jobs, my commute shortened significantly, and I wanted to ride MY bike to work once I figured out that it was 5 miles from my front door to my office. DH was radically opposed to this idea, after I'd outlined my planned route to and from the office. Too dangerous, he said. I'm stubborn, though, and disagree that the neighborhoods I want to ride through are dangerous. I talked to my sis about it, and in typical R29 fashion, she said, "Lucille, ride your bike to work. It will change your life."

After DH stopped ranting and raving, he agreed that if I took a busier byway he'd be OK with me riding the bike. Very well; I drove that way to and from work on Monday, checking to see if it was doable on the bike. There's a spot of construction that could be a problem, but the sidewalks are all open through the construction zone. I don't like riding on the sidewalk, but it is either ride on the sidewalk or get smooshed by cars that CAN'T FUCKING SHARE THE ROAD. Ahem. Sorry. Maybe I should tell that part of the story another day.

Tuesday morning saw me hunting for a backpack and packing up everything I'd need to clean up after a 5 mile bike ride. I stopped carrying a backpack long before I got my undergraduate degree; I was a business student, remember, and worked full time at Ye Olde Evile Bank for the last two years of college. So I had a nice messenger bag when I was finishing up my degree. I still have it. But I'm not keen on carrying a messenger bag on a bicycle, and the bags o' stuff I've been carrying around wouldn't work well either.

I found the backpack in the attic. It is a throwback to my hippie days, made from hemp. I made the mistake of tossing it in the washer once, years ago, which shrank it, and made the already rough fabric even more coarse to the touch. It never really recovered from the washing. There's a red tag sewn into the natural-toned fabric. It says, "cannabis hemp." No wonder I quit carrying that when I started working in the business world.

The ride TO the office isn't bad. There are some uphill spots, but there's a lot and I do mean A WHOLE LOT of downhill coasting. The trek there took me roughly 35 minutes. The trek home...well, that took me about 35 minutes too. It is mostly uphill, and I rode the whole way, never getting off the bike and walking it. It was torture. My thighs were burning even BEFORE I crossed the bridge that is uphill, less than a half mile from my office.

Torture, and yet, I see exactly what my sister means. It was awesome, riding through very quiet city streets in the morning, just me and a few cars, getting to work before 7 AM (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), a productive day, and an incredible sense of accomplishment when I finally stopped in front of my garage and was home. I was as euphoric as when I crossed the finish line at my 5K on New Year's Eve. (Took me about the same amount of time to catch my breath too!)

I had a motorist yell at me to "GET OFF THE ROAD" just a very short distance from my house on the way home. I yelled right back. "Kiss my butt, jerk, I've got as much right to the road as you do!" Or I might have yelled something a wee bit more salty. Maybe. I was NOT in the middle of traffic in the middle of the road. I was as close to the curb as you can get without ramming the bike's front tire into the curb. Plus I needed to make a left-hand turn in fairly short order to get home, so the sidewalk wouldn't have been the place to be anyway, even if there was one there, which there is not.

I think I'll do it again. Because I need the exercise. Because I feel fantastic, better than I have in a long, long, long time. Because I think I'm going to sleep better than I have in quite a while. And not least of all, because it will save me gas money, too. The only way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels is to find alternatives to them, my friends. Provided, that is, I can walk in the morning. If not, I'll try again next week, and give myself a day's rest in between cycling 10 miles a day. Lance Armstrong I am not. And never will be. But maybe I'll have the chiseled thighs I've always wanted. Eventually.

Oh, and if you're wondering....yes, there are shower facilities at work. Very nice ones. I would not do this if I couldn't get a shower after that ride, phew, stinky!

Noxious Reek

I have been itching to try my hand at making sushi. There is a point of order here, though. 1. Not all sushi has raw fish as an ingredient and 2. sushi is actually the name of the rice, not the rolls themselves. Sashimi is the raw fish. I would not ever try to make sashimi at home. Leave that sort of thing to the experts, please.

I wanted to make maki-zushi, the rolls that have nori (sheets of seaweed) on the outside. They look easy enough. I'd put carrots and cucumbers and whatever else occurred to me at the time inside the rolls with the rice on the outside, cut them, and put them in my bento box for lunch. Awww, how cute, sushi in the bento box, right? Yeah, that's what I thought.

It took several different tries to find nori in the grocery store. Sushi rice, that's very easy to come by. A bamboo mat for rolling, yep, that's easy too. Nori, not so much. When I finally found it, the packet was filled with what felt like brittle sheets of rice paper, and they weren't quite the same color as what I've been used to in restaurants, but what do I know about nori? Not much.

I stashed it in the cupboard until I had time to mess with it.

I purposefully made more rice than would be needed for dinner one night, and after cleaning the kitchen from the mess I made making dinner, I cleared a workspace, laid down the bamboo mat, and found the kitchen scissors to cut open the packet of nori. The nori packet had detailed instructions (in English, natch) and looked fairly simple. No more complex than making a jelly-roll. I can do that.

I laid the sheet of nori on the mat, and covered it with rice as suggested, laid out my fillings, and rolled the roll. It was easy, but as I gave the roll a firm little push to seal the end, a smell rose from the nori that literally turned my stomach. Ulk. I'm going to eat this? Hmmm, perhaps maki-zushi wasn't such a smart idea. But I persevered, finding a knife to cut the long roll into little guys that look like the traditional roll.

Cutting it made it worse; I walked away from the roll TWICE to breathe some better air before I admitted defeat. I was never going to eat anything that smelled like that. Into the trash it went. But it released more of its eau de stench in the trash can in my kitchen, quickly permeating the whole kitchen. So I hustled it outside, better in the dumpster than making me nauseous every time I walked through the kitchen. I hate to throw away food, I hate contributing to the excessive waste in this country. I didn't see much of an alternative; I bet if we had a cat, the cat wouldn't have eaten it either.

It smelled like dead fish, but worse. Three days floating on top of the water dead fish. Plus something else, something like an earthy rotting vegetable smell.

What went wrong here?


Those of you who are smart-asses are saying, "Well, Luce, what went wrong is that you were trying to make sushi." Yeah, thanks. Bastards.

You'd think that Ohio wouldn't be all that culturally diverse, and mostly, you'd be right. But the nori took several attempts to find because everywhere I went, they were out of it. Yeah, they carried it, and yeah, there's the shelf tag that says NORI, but there was no nori.

I think the problem is that there's not such a great demand, and the stuff sits longer on the shelf than it ought to. The color should have tipped me off, too. Any time I've had maki-zushi in restaurants, the nori is a green so dark that it is nearly black, and smooth. This was a dark forest-y green, and bumpy. Should you soak them first? I can't imagine that would help; they'd fall apart as soon as they got in the water. As noted above, as well, the smell got worse as it sat there, absorbing some of the moisture from the rice.

Most of the time when I have a culinary boo-boo, I'll figure why it didn't turn out as I expected, make a few notes on the recipe if there is one, and I'll try it again. Sometimes again and again and again until I figured out where the misstep was.

I'm not so sure I'll be giving maki-zushi with nori a second shot.