The Summer of Upholstering

This is the summer of upholstering. Originally, my plan was to reupholster a big wingback chair that Chris and I picked up from the side of the road last summer. It was sitting next to a dumpster, but it looked like it had good bones. We're all about recycled furniture.

Originally it was a pink floral patterned chair with a tear in one arm. I'm guessing it's previous owner hated pink because they'd used fabric spray paint to make it blue...except they didn't get enough paint to cover it thoroughly, so the pink is bleeding through and is fully visible under the seat cushion which they didn't even lift up when painting. It's been sitting in the garage, waiting for me to have the time (and to figure out where we would have the space to put it).

Recently, we got the news that Chris's sister is ready to take her futon back. She made it in high school, and it's been in our living room for the last year. I'll admit it's been nice to have one couch per person, but it's also nice to be back to just one couch because we actually sit together now. So the futon is out, and we moved a chair from the the guest room and the wingback chair into the living room, which also works out because it made room for me to put a desk in the guest room.

Both chairs immediately got covered in sheets. The wingback chair is hideous (the picture doesn't make obvious how bad the color is), and the texture is gross from the fabric paint. There's no way anyone would sit directly on it until it gets new fabric. The other little chair was my grandmother's, and while it's not horribly worn except for some frayed corners, I hated the fabric--it's tan with little purple and rosy flowers on it. It used to have a skirt around the legs too, but I tore that off a couple years ago because I like the look better with the legs showing. Still, it's not really my style, but it went with the guest room because everything in there is from my grandmother. Now that it's in the living room, it needs a change.

I started with the little chair because it was much simpler. For budgeting reasons, I'm limited to super on sale fabric only, so that's definitely reducing design choices, but I really like the fabric I found on clearance at Joann's for the little chair. It turned out pretty classy, and I taught myself to use my sewing machine for the piping in the process.

After finishing this little chair, I worked on making a cushion for the chair in the guest room (aka my office). I didn't take a picture because it's not great. At first glance no one will notice, but it's definitely amateur sewing--though it was great practice for future projects. Three of the four corners aren't bad, but one is pretty wonky.

Due to an order snafu with the wingback chair fabric, I decided to also reupholster the couch. Fabrics.com (my absolute favorite place to buy discount fabric) sent me 11 yards of the super on sale green fabric I ordered for the wingback. It's thick upholstery fabric, though kind of a limey green, which probably accounts for the discount. I only ordered 7 for the chair, but since I got extra, I made the bad decision to reupholster the couch. They sent it in 2 batches, and I dumbly assumed they sent me a double order of 14 yards. I did send them an email before the sent the second batch, letting them know I'd already received my 7 yards and that they hadn't charged me for it, but I never heard back, and then the second batch was shipped. Unfortunately, I didn't get a full order in the second batch.

Here's the couch before (this picture is from a few years ago, when I lived in Grand Junction):

So I started the couch, but I don't really have enough fabric for it, and I can't find more anywhere. My plan is to do the cushions with something else on one side only. I haven't found anything that coordinates with my other fabrics yet that I think will look good on the couch, so I may have to treat my cushions as one-sided cushions and put something on the other side that is okay but that I prefer not to be visible. I'm also considering getting the same fabric in camel (unfortunately not on sale) because I think that might look good, but Chris crinkles his nose at the idea of a two-tone couch.

Here's my couch progress. I haven't done the cushions yet because I have to figure out the second fabric, and I'm practicing sewing zippers right now. The lighting in combination with my phone camera doesn't do justice to how green this sucker is, so here's a picture of the fabric I found on Amazon (I wish I could find more, but this fabric is genuinely unavailable online).

What's funny is that the first thing I planned to upholster is the wingback, and I've only taken off the back and part of one side. The new fabric for it did arrive the other day. I may do the seat in a solid brown to tone down the patterns though.

I've also ordered fabric to reupholster the headboard and footboard of the guest room bed. I hadn't intended to tackle that project. My plan had been to make a new duvet cover that the coordinated with the existing fabric on the bed. The grandmother-provided duvet cover had a tear in it when I got it, which I'd fixed a year or more ago. Recently it re-tore, and I discovered another tear. The fabric of the duvet cover clearly needed retired (and Chris hated it). I went to Target to find sheets that I could sew into a duvet, but I wasn't really liking it, and I found a yellow and gray duvet cover on clearance for $20. I really like yellow and gray, so I couldn't pass that up. Unfortunately, it doesn't match the upholstery on the bed at all, so I've ordered fabric to redo it.

So, after all these projects, it's definitely the summer of upholstering, and it may not be the summer of me finishing my novel. I suppose it's also the summer of librivox.org because I don't want all this upholstering to interfere with my reading goals. I've been working my way through George MacDonald fairy tales. They're fairly entertaining.

Broken-backed Fish

Writing is the great escape. At least, it is for writers. When my students sit down to write, they feel tortured. The more tortured they feel, the less their sentences make sense. How do I give them the sense of freedom and power that I feel when I write? Or once felt.

I keep wanting to write a story. But when I sit down to write the narrative is bare-bones, the outline of a story. My writing is all bulleted lists and concise sentences. I teach business writing, and I'm often unsure that I know how to write any other way anymore. When I write a story now it's too efficient--all poetry that might make a moment real and beautiful--or ugly, whatever the moment needs--has been stripped away for concise sentences. Like my students, I too am tortured by my writing, ashamed by my own lack of skill.

Last Christmas, I was chatting with the smile-of-a-woman who was my creative non-fiction professor during graduate school. She remembered an essay I had written about ferret spotting (searching for ferret eye-shine with a spotlight while hiking around in the dark) on a population survey with the Colorado Division of Wildlife (now Colorado Parks and Wildlife). I'd gone back to work for them after grad. school, so she wanted to know if I had any new stories. I did.

I'd gone electro-fishing on the Colorado River, but I can't capture the experience. I want to express that those two days of work were the most fullfilling of my life. I can say it, but that doesn't give any other person the vaguest sense of the experience. And the more time put between me and those two days of netting fish, the less real it is for me. The harder it is to explain. The thing that sticks with me is the guilt, the shame.

Somebody, broke the back of a fish, and I suspect it was probably me.

It was two days of the hardest work of my life. My boss and I volunteered to help with population surveys on the Colorado River. We were all hoping to find a few endangered fish--humpback chubs, razorback suckers, bonytails, and the especially elusive Colorado Pikeminnow. We met with the crew at 7am. Netted, weighed, measured, and recorded fish until 7pm. Those two days of work were harder than any work I ever did on my family's farm. It was harder than any workout I ever did for a sport or in a gym.

My back and arms have never been so strong. I stood most of the day, holding a long pole with a net on the end, netting zapped fish as they floated to the surface, scooping them out of the water and lifting them, their weight magnified by their distance down the pole, up towards our boat to dump them in a trough with one quick fluid motion--or at least I sought to be fluid. I was an oaf compared to my companions, clumsily dumping my fish in the tub. Sometimes it took me multiple attempts to swing the net just right, to flip the writhing bag of fish over and dump them into the trough. Several full nets made it into the water, still right-side up, the fish trapped in its bounds. Sometimes the boat operator would help out by reaching in an arm and flipping my net from up close. Sometimes, I just had to keep trying, and fast. My slowness was letting fish slip past the boat uncaptured!

The researchers did this for two or more weeks, depending upon their role in the project. Some of them were volunteers who were between seasonal research positions and relied on the hotel and food stipend from the research fund to feed and house them for a couple weeks. I love biology, but every time I volunteer for a research project, I'm so glad I did not commit myself to a life of underpaid seasonal work, waiting for a permanent position to open up until I'm thirty or forty. Some people wait forever.

Two days was more than enough for me. I was physically exhausted, and yet mentally I felt energized, fully human, significant even, from those two days of hard labor. As each of those two days ended, I felt more fullfilled than I ever have from any other day of work. Physical labor is indeed good for the soul, and I was learning too--learning about the fish that lived in the brown-green water of the Upper Colorado River.

Carp are a fish with which I am initmately familiar. As a kid, I would visit Lake McConaughy in Nebraska to go sailing with my Grandma and her boyfriend. My sisters and I would dangle our toes off the dock and let carp suck on them like popsicles. They came in writhing clusters--unafraid, calm fish looking for a snack, but all they found were our round white toes. We called them trash fish. They ate trash, so we didn't eat them. I guess in the UK, they are a sport fish. Who'd a thunk it?

On the river, I saw carp and all kinds of trout. And we did capture quite a few endangered fish. For every hundred trout, we'd find a bonytail or humpback chub. Once you see one, they're easy to spot. You might think a trout with large back hump is a chub or a fish with a thin tail a bonytail, but when you actually see a true humpback or bonytail, you won't make that mistake again. Their distinctive features are pronounced and bizarre--they genuinely look deformed in that way mysterious sea creatures often do. The chub could be cast as Quasimodo--it's back rises up away from its flat head sharply an inch or more. The bonytail looks like its tail growth is stunted, and you worry you might just brake its thin tail right off--how does it propel its large body with such a tiny tail? We gathered razoback suckers as well--you really have to watch out, those razors will cut you.

But we never captured a pikeminnow. The potential sighting of one had the whole team in an uproar--three boats all focused on trying to find one fish--they are bigger than many of the other fish we caught, so it's possible to see one from the boat and be fairly sure it's not one of the other fish. Pikeminnow are historically one of the major food sources for local people living around the Colorado River. They're also threatened because of historic efforts to stock the river with non-native sport fish--in the mid-twentieth century the fish were even poisoned to clear them out to make room for desirable sport fish. Recovery efforts aren't seeming to make a difference. The Colorado Pikeminnow is probably doomed.

Despite spending two days handling amazing endangered fish, they're slipping away from memory. I have to look them up to remind myself how extreme their appearances are. But I remember the poor carp with a broken back--it's yellow-green scales warped into a swollen hump a few inches down its spine. I think I broke its back. With my clumsy net swinging, more than a few fish hit the side of the trough. I still feel so much shame and sorry for the damage I brought to this thick, grassy-colored, sucker-mouthed fish.

Is this a human adaptation? My brain is wired to remember my faults and mistakes so that I don't make them again? Why is it so hard to remember what's good, to revive the sense of self-brilliance created by those two days of hard labor? Perhaps this is why I can't write. My past sorrows are not what I want to escape to. I want to escape to places of magic and wonder, but I can't find them, and so the writing is as stale as my ability to re-experience the emotions of good.

The broken-backed carp has become me. Because I killed him, I have absorbed him into myself as Zeb absorbs the bear in MaddAdam. I am the wide, round, yellow eyed fish with the gaping mouth, sucking for air, struggling to swim. I am afraid where once I was fearless and calm. Writing is scary because I can't look at the world the same way that I used to. My experiences have changed me, and now it is hard to see the wonder--I'm too busy worrying at other things.

Notebook: Morning Coffee with My Former Self

This morning, I need to be providing feedback on application letters for jobs, which my students wrote for the job search unit we just completed. I haven't graded one this morning.

I was feeling exhausted, and when I'm feeling so mentally weary, I write, read, and get organized to just let go of the stress for a minute. Now I'm feeling better, relieved.

I read an article on adjunct instructing, and I'm reminded that I work in one of the absolute best places to be an adjunct instructor--I have an office (albeit shared) with my own desk that is always mine where I can leave things. I have a full course load at one school rather than commuting between two or three. I have health insurance. I am genuinely one of the best cared for adjunct instructors in university academia. If the burden of cover letters is weighing me down, at least I don't have to commute home for an hour and then grade. My home is a 10-minute walk from my office.

I also decided to clean out a hoard of scribbled on pages in the old notebook I use to write down my lesson plans. I know, I know--this is the modern era. People type lesson plans. But for me there's just something about using paper. I use a paper calendar; I hand-write my reading notes; and I lesson plan in a notebook. Perhaps its a necessity--I'm doing most of my grading electronically.

Anyhoo, as I tear out pages of the notebook, I skim them to make sure I want to throw them away. There are some story drafts and brainstorms in this notebook, and I never throw out a story. (You should see my collection of idea sticky notes. It's getting quite large.) The pages of this notebook are such an odd and broad-spanning preservation of my past.

The book is largely concentrated on the tail end of my sophomore year of college, but it extends into my junior year. There are notes between my friends Curtis, Bret, and myself. We talk about strange things: muffins, tattoos, which branch of the military is sexiest, mockery of our classmates. There is a sketch of a penis drawn by Bret, which I reframed into a squirrel because I didn't want anyone to see a penis in my notebook. We didn't focus much during Brit Lit I.

There are also genuine class notes--homework assignments, sketches of neurons, a line-by-line interpretation of some unlabeled sonnet. There are waves of fitness and food logs. What a health nut I was! By comparison my penchant for health is quite tamed now. There are sentence diagrams of every sentence I found interesting or significant during the semester I took Traditional and Modern Grammars. Perhaps my favorites snippets of text are quotes from my friend Jesse when we were studying for grammar: "I am smart, whearas Cheryl is not." She was demonstrating the use of a subordinating conjunction.

There's a bad short story with my friends Jackie and Curtis cast as hobos. I'm guessing they were mocking me, and I wrote that to mock them back--I'm sure they read it as I wrote, or I read it aloud. The word "junkitude" is written in quotes, and I'm not sure why or in what context it made it into the notebook. Perhaps the oddest line is "Psych appointment - I always wanted to be Teddy from Peter Pan." All I can say is, huh?

I have torn out all of the pages to take up to the shredder box. Perhaps the greatest strength of finding my past preserved in a notebook is that I can revise it with finality. When the page is destroyed, the content is gone, which is what I want to do with some of my more emo journalistic entries. I know that, for the most part, I don't want to be that person, except I want the stories. I want the creativity. It's the only part of myself I will preserve from that notebook, perhaps because I am vainly seeking to regain that portion of my former self.

Now that I've written this entry, I've exhausted the mechanisms of relief, and I must grade, but I wish I was writing a story. Or wishing I still knew how to write a story.

My Mystery Moth

I am not a super sleuth.

Peering out the window, I saw an amazing bright orange moth sitting on my porch, soaking up the sun. I bolted out the door to take a photo with my phone.

But he folded himself into a crispy brown fall leaf, swaying lightly in the breeze.

I froze and waited.
Slowly he unfolded.
I inched forward.
Again he folded up.
I inched forward, thinking I would get closer while he was folded and then wait for him to open again with me close enough to capture his splendor.

But he fluttered off to sit on the neighboring porch.

I followed slowly, admiring the large orbs on the top of his antennae. A few feet away, I snapped a photo, hoping it would turn out despite the distance.

Too dark.

I inched foward some more.

He fluttered off, deciding distance was the best way to lose me.

So far, I cannot identify him in a search, and my memory of his details are fading as a peruse through endless images of moths with red-orange and black wings that fold into a crispy brown leaf.

Grilled Cheese Heaven!!!

Today, I got home pretty late, so I wanted something quick. I made something quick.

O. M. G.

I made grilled cheese ...with potato rosemary bread.

I grilled it in a ton of butter and spread mascarpone cheese on the bread. Then I put a couple slices of colby jack cheese on it. YUM!!!

Did I mention that I made roasted red carrots to eat on the side?

Five carrots sliced up, tossed with olive and sesame oils, cayenne pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, smoked paprika, and tobasco. I laid them out on a cookie sheet, salted them, and put them in my pre-heated 400 degree oven. More yum!

Life is good.

Wonky Stomach Sick Day Productivity

I'm home today with a wonky stomach, which is uncomfortable, but feeling not so well has it's perks.

For example, it is almost noon, and I am still in bed in my pajamas. I finished one of the books I was reading (Asimov's The Gods Themselves, if you were wondering--it was really good). I have had ample cuddling time with my cat. I gave my blog a generic makeover because I'm sure nobody appreciated the chaos it was except me. I read some emails, which included a feed from one of my favorite blogs.

Yummy Books  posted a new entry about a wine-braised leg of lamb with wild mushrooms inspired by The Secret History. I haven't read the book (I'm not sure it's my kind of thing, but the food sounds genius, if a bit expensive and difficult to put together here in Wichita, KS. I'll have to do a lot of fudging to make such a meal happen, but I'm going to make this Friday night. Lord knows I don't want to make the moon food from The Gods Themselves. Man-made substances that taste of peanut-flavored veal just don't appeal to me. Yuck.

Tall other wouldn't approve either, and he's coming for a visit this weekend. Since he loves lamb and he also loves mushrooms, what luck I have that the wine-braised lamb blog came out today! I had been planning on making red roasted carrots and lamb for Friday anyway, but I hadn't begun to plan how to make the lamb. Mushrooms are a stroke of genius that hadn't occurred to me while planning this particular food adventure. It's a good thing Yummy Books came to my rescue.

I think I'm going to have to drive out east to get fancy mushrooms, but the butcher shop I want to get the lamb from is out west. Blergh evil driving. Oh well. I'll do it for the tall one. He's been super stressed on his job hunt, so I think he deserves some fancy feasting.

If I spy any blood oranges at the uppity east side grocery store, I might try my hand at making a blood orange jello with panna cotta--something he had for dessert the last time we dressed up and went out to indulge our gluttony. Or we can just eat girl scout cookies.

He also requested bacon and waffles on Saturday morning. That's definitely a food-want I can resolve without any extra stress or expense on my part. I do love that he also has simple tastes.

Well, I think this wonky-stomached individual is going to fill a bath and soak while listening to an audiobook. I may even do a little lesson writing for work since I brought some home.

Spiced Molasses Muffins

Cooking Light put out a recipe called Tuscan Lemon Muffins. They are some of the lightest, fluffiest, flakiest muffins I have ever eaten. Pure genius. I give credit to two things: the use of ricotta cheese in the recipe and large quantities of baking powder (double what you see in a lot of other muffin recipes).

I could eat a creamy, lemon muffin every day. And yet it seems like such a nuisance to go buy a lemon to make them.

Enter cupboard ingredient I need to find a use for--molasses. Don't get me wrong, I love molasses. I actually drizzle it on a fried egg over-medium, sprinkle a little cayenne pepper on top. It's like pure heaven of sweet, spicy, creamy goodness with the earthy bitter aftertaste of the molasses cut by the creamy egg. It's one of my favorite things.

Unfortunately, not all molasses is made alike. My breakfast egg is best served with Brer Rabbit Mild, but my grocery store was out, so I bought Grandma's Original--the only molasses they had that day. It's a good molasses, but not for eating so exposed on an egg. The bitter aftertaste is more than I can take, so it's been sitting in the back of the cupboard, waiting for some other use. I keep thinking I should bake it into bread.

Yesterday, I ate my last little cup of lemony, muffiny heaven, and I decided the next batch of muffins should be made with molasses, but as I perused muffin recipes, I noticed that a lot of the muffins made with molasses looked dense--not puffy and fluffy like I would prefer.

So I thougth to myself, what would happen if I applied some of the principles of the Tuscan Lemon Muffin to the concept of a Ginger Molasses Muffin?

It turns out, I am totally out of ginger, so I had to deviate on the spices quite a bit. I also spent quite a bit of time reading about baking powder and baking soda to decide how much I wanted to include in my recipe. I asked myself questions like "Do I need to add vinegar to have some of the effect that the lemon juice has in the lemon muffins?"

After some slight pondering, I rushed in and just did whatever I wanted. The end result was amazing. It's taking so much self control not to eat another right now.

Here's the recipe:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper cups and spray with a non-stick spray.

In a large bowl, mix together:

• 2 cups flour (I used 1 cup all purpose and 1 cup whole wheat).
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp clove

Make a well in the center. In another bowl blend together:

• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup ricotta
• 1/2 cup molasses

Pour the liquid mixture into the dry and mix together. Fill the muffin cups almost full with your mix, distributing evenly. Sprinkle sugar (turbinado sugar is recommended but not essential) over the top of the muffins.

Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes back clean. Remove hot muffins from the pan and allow to cool on a wire rack. Eat at least one while it's still warm.

If they're anything like the lemon muffins, they'll be best over time if frozen, then popped in the microwave for 30 seconds when you want to eat in the morning (my microwave takes a whole minute, but it's...special).

Today's muffin adventure also inspired what I'm hoping to call a "Chai Tea Muffin," but I'll wait to report on that until after I actually venture to make it--think an increase in the spice level, changing out the milk for cooled black tea (brewed dark), and replacing the molasses with a lesser quanity of honey. Mmmmmm.

Off Beat with the City

Bundled up, I am a rainbow: yellow coat, pink hat, gloves in two shades of blue. I have a green backpack. I'm ready to brave the cold and ride my bike to work.

I hop on my bike, begin to pedal. No soft clicking. The chain is off. I'm immobile.

I hop off, pull at the chain, and snap it back onto the gear. On again, click-click-click-click, the soft sounds of the gears pick up pace until they whirrrrrrrr, and I race to get to work, to make up for the brief delay of the off-chain.

Click-click-click-click, the tempo increases, but the sense of urgency is pulled back, slowed, by the soft huuuuh, of each panting breath. Click-click-click-click-huuuuuuuuuuuuh.

The rhythm is Zen, and I'm lost in it. I can't even hear the irregular wuuuuusssh of the cars passing by because there's only the clicking and panting. All other sounds are blocked out. The blood rushing through my ears denies them entry.

But the light up ahead turns yellow. I stop pedalling and the click is silenced, but my breath is still going...huuuuuuuuuuuuh, pause, huuuuuuuuuuuuh.

I squeeze the brakes kshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The noises of the city regain hold--all sounds of the movement of cars. No birds. No wind stirring grass or trees. I alone seem to be living in the concrete and rubber and metal.

A small man, wearing all blacks and greys, shrunken into himself with the cold, crosses the street, and as he steps up onto the sidewalk in front of me he looks up and says, "Don't ride too fast now." He smiles. I smile. Though silent, the smiles sing, they blare joy as loud as any trumpet. Two races, two classes, two genders, two ages--two worlds in fact, but this man is my neighbor, and I love him for silencing the city with his smile.

He continues down the sidewalk, and the cars resume their insect buzzing. The light changes. Cliiiick-cliick-click-click-click-click-huuuuuuuuuuuuh. Gone is the city once again. There is only me, the pumping of my calves, and the rushing of my blood.

But a few blocks later a light goes amber, kshhhhh. An abrupt cutoff of my inner beat. I focus on the orange hand, telling me not cross, holding my pause. This light is my conductor, and I am frozen until it releases me to continue the song.

Beebeeeeeeep!  I look right to see the driver of an SUV waving at me and pulling up along the curb nearest my bike and me. I think he needs directions, so I unstraddle my bike and walk over.

"I've seen you before. And I wanted to stop because I didn't think I'd see you again. My name is Akeem. Can I give you my number?"

I'm awkward so I take the torn corner of a book cover with his number hastily written on the inside and find myself offering my own name and number. I am not interested in a date, but I have an irrational fear of confrontation, so I default to being congenial even when I just want to mind my own business and maintain seeming invisibility.

He drives on. I look up. The orange hand tells me to stay where I am. I missed my cue and must wait through another light.

When I resume pedalling there is no click, no panting, no rushing blood. The city has broken my song with intruding thoughts of "I should have said no." The words sever the beats of my rhythm all day.

When I ride home, the halting thoughts are still there, alongside an urgency to outpace the fading sunlight. There is no music for this ride, so loud are my worries. As I pedal the last block, in my rainbow of winter gear, the unsettling knock of "I should have said no; I need to get home" is interrupted by a long deliberate haaaaaahaahaaaahaaaaaaaa.

A head stuck out the window of a red truck is laughing at me. What do they find so funny? Do they think because I'm riding a bike in the cold that I cannot afford a car? Is that funny? It shouldn't be. Regardless, I am riding a bike in the cold because it is good. My blood is flowing. I am healthy. No noxious fumes do I throw in the air.

No matter. I am feet from my door. The ride is over. The day is done. The city has won, and its song is in my head--a steady drumming of anger offset by irregular taps of anxiety.

My beat is off from this city. My rhythm cannot move here, cannot play out a song.

Updating My Five Goals

New Year's Resolutions, by nature, are usually about self-improvement. People want to lose weight, or read more. I'm okay with that, except on those issues I'm pretty happy right where I am.

I have in the past, however, kept five goals going at any one point in time. Last year I abandoned those goals. My goals were difficult to complete, things that required changes of habit that should be ongoing--essentially resolutions. And like New Year's Resolutions, my goals were doomed to failure.

So this year, my only resolution is to change how I set my goals. I will only set small measurable goals. There will always be five goals because I am sure there will always  be five good things I could be doing.

So here are the goals I have in mind thus far:

1. Recycle old electronics. I have a box of archaic cell phones, digital cameras, and random cords to nothing that I have been moving from apartment to apartment for about five years. I've just added a twenty-some-year-old TV which cannot produce sound to the junk pile. (Ask me about my elaborate sound-rigging that kept that TV in action anyway. Like any cheap-skate, I'm insanely proud of my ludicrous work-around.) Anywho, with a TV now on my living room floor, I need to finally haul the e-junk off. (I'm also going to need some help. The TV is quite large.)

2. Read classic books I have never read. This goal has the nature of being ongoing and unmeasurable, so I am tasking myself with assigning one classic at the beginning of each month. I expect myself to read 2-3 books a month, so one classic won't kill me. I can still devote the larger percentage of my reading efforts to science fiction.

3. Volunteer for something. I haven't decided what yet, but I need to find a way to do external good. About a year ago, I looked into Big Brothers, Big Sisters and similar programs to see if I could get involved in tutoring or anything, but with a long-distance relationship that requires regular out-of-town travel, I couldn't commit to something that needed all my weekends. I could volunteer grant-write for one of these programs, but I genuinely miss tutoring because I like having exposure to people that I never imagined existed. I should probably ask around at schools and the libraries.

4. Bake something new. I keep telling myself I will branch out into pastries or some such, but I haven't done a darned thing. Like reading, I might set this as monthly or biweekly (fortnightly) goal and assign myself with a new dish to bake each period.

5. Take my cat to the vet. My cat lives a very secluded life. I don't let her outside (letting her outside in this Downtown environment would be a bad idea, but I didn't let her outside when we lived in smaller towns in residential neighborhoods--mostly because she is incompetant at being catlike). I've always figured I didn't really need to force her to go through the torment of visiting a vet because she has exposure to nothing, but I also freak out and get paranoid when I think she's sick. I'd feel much better if we had a kitty doctor I felt comfortable with that I could go to when she feels down and out. If I need to get my generally quarantined cat vaccinated to foster such a relationship, so be it.

I have some other goals in mind that can replace 1, 3, and 5 when I get those done, but it's not worth planning ahead too far. No need to overwhelm myself--I do tend to exihibit a certain degree of laziness that I need to account for.

2013 Resolutions

I started 2013 with style.

Some people blow kazoos to bring in the new year. I was blowing my nose.

The new year is brought in with fancy drinks and champagne. I had camomile tea with honey and lemon.

It's supposed to be spent with loved ones and friends. My favorite person was curled up under a pile of blankets hacking his lungs out, but he was here.

I'm tired. I have things I need to get done at work, but I don't feel at all ready to return.

The idea of setting any New Year's Resolutions seems stupid. I just want to be able to breathe through my nose.

Mac and Cheese Feet

Tall Other and I are making mac and cheese...with shells and fancy cheese. It's presently in the oven.

I don't think I want to eat it, which is weird. I'll eat anything.

We made this Addictive Mac and Cheese Recipe. It has a key ingredient I believe in for mac and cheese--nutmeg. It also uses a lot of milk. We substituted some half-and-half for some of the milk because I believe mac and cheese should be death by calories and fat.

Chris picked the cheeses--a fancy gruyere and sharp white cheddar (the recipe gives options). This is where I think we went astray. The gruyere smells and tastes like rotting feet to me. It's tainting the entire recipe.

I tried the creamy, beautiful looking cheese sauce...yuck, just yuck. It's a mouthful of athlete's foot as far as I'm concerned.

Chris thinks it smells and tastes wonderful. I'm questioning his judgment as a gourmand. I'm also really sad that he'll be eating mac and cheese, and I will be eating leftovers.

Sad face.

"Chicken Noodle" and Art

The tall other came to visit this weekend. We usually cook with each other, but my cupboards were bare, and the fridge was pretty empty. My food amounted to some carrots, celery, and a coupon for some organic chicken, so we decided upon chicken noodle soup.

Then I remembered I had potatoes and Chris requested what he knows as "chicken noodle." In elementary school they used to serve up chicken noodle soup over mashed potatoes with a buttered roll on the side. The kids would fill their roll with the taters and soup and have a pretty carb-tastic sandwich.

My school had no such delicacies. In fact, I don't remember a school hot lunch from my childhood that I would recall as delicious the way he did chicken noodle.

We decided to skip the rolls for our childhood school lunch cooking adventure and ran off the grocery store to gather the goods needed--a whole chicken, a white onion, and some egg noodles. Chris chopped up the chicken then browned it and the veggies. The whole mess went into the crockpot, and we ran off to the art museum to wander around while it cooked.

The art was so-so, and I thought it was strange to see an Egyptian bust from 860 BC right next to a weird painting from the 1980s, but I suppose it's hard to organize such a small museum.

One of the security people at the museum pointed out to us a painting on exhibit that showed, in its background, another painting (by another artist). The painting that appeared in the background was of the first artists wife, and it was kind of cool that he included a painting of his wife by another artist in the background of his own painting. 

Post-museum wandering, we returned home to a pretty tasty-smelling apartment. We hadn't eaten anything but a snack since breakfast, so I started the mashed potatoes and Chris started the noodles so that we could finish our dinner. The taters were whipped up with with butter and cream because we both eat indulgently.

The end result was heavenly and definitely had a home-cooking comfort to it--creamy, and salty, and messy.

Sweater Election

So on facebook (before I ditched fb--over 2 weeks ago!), I had a bunch of people vote from a select few striped sweaters that I liked. When I went to buy the sweat that won, it was sold out of my size. :(

Here is a creepy and poorly done photoshop of me in the sweater for you to imagine the potential joy I was denied.

 

 Here is a sweater I bought instead in order to try on and potentially keep. the armpits and shoulders are really big, so it's going back.

Here is another sweater I actually bought. It's comfortable and soft, so I will probably keep it.

This is the sweater that in appearances I loved the most. Actual physical comfort in this sweater leaves something to be desired. I felt like it was too short and worried that it might shrink. I will probably return it for a bigger size.

 

Your thoughts on the sweaters? Which do you like best? I should really only keep one.

Screwtape Letters of Fitness

For a while, I was running 3 miles before work every morning. Then I stopped. I'm not sure why or when or how. It was roughly a month ago.

Post-Thanksgiving, I was ready to get back on board, so the immediate week following, I did cardio kickboxing on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday I did Zumba. Friday I went to a class called "Fierce" that physically made me sick and so sore it hurt to move for three days.

This week, I'm back to a whole lot of sitting around doing nothing. I think I will blame some demon, tempting me to sit at home and vegetate. Let's blame Screwtape's nephew Wormwood, Junior Tempter. If you haven't read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, it might be worth your while.

Monday, I knew I had to buy groceries, so I didn't work out. Wormwood and I had a little chat, and we decided that going to the grocery store is time consuming, so I didn't have time to work out. After shopping, I would need to go home, make some dinner, and then relax after the arduous trials of 30 minutes in a grocery store.

Tuesday (yesterday), work was just awful. Wormwood told me I needed to go home and relax, or there's no way I would survive the week. I concurred.

Today, well, Wormwood was kind enough to remind me that I needed to return some books to the library. I forgot to do it on Monday (though they're not due until Sunday), but it takes all of 5 minutes for driving there, parking, and walking inside to return the books. And I have laundry that needed doing (which I am post-poning until Friday for some reason which actually makes no sense when I try to put it in words). There was just too much to do. The gym must be put off.

In summary, I am sitting, vegetating, as usual. I'm off the hook the rest of the week because the Y is closed. How convenient is that? Wormwood can take the rest of the week and the weekend off. He deserves it. He's been successfully keeping me away from the gym for over a month, only sliding the one week.

Hat Crafting

So my hat project of last year never really got very far. Mostly I found myself in a standoff with some curly yarn that was interfering with the attachment of some eyeballs onto a frog. So I chose to ignore the project for almost a year.

I recently resolved that conflict by giving up on the curly yarn and doing all the stitching on of details with white straight yarn. This hat, of all my hats, defintely has what we in the yarn art world like to call "homemade charm." It looks much cooler on, and I am pretty pleased with the spots on the back. I will say, that considering the yarn, this is the hardest hat I have made. I am still tempted to removed the eyes and redo them.

 

(Forgive the quality of the photos. My only camera is my defiantly outdated phone.)

 

I also recently completed this bear hat, with which I am quite pleased. It turned out fairly well. 

 

A blanket is also in progress. Take that worldy demand for productivity!

Cat Frisbee

My cat has made a recent discovery: cat frisbee.

It's unlike other forms of frisbee because cats, as you well know, lack opposable thumbs, making regular frisbee impossible.

Their small size and puny jaws make fetch frisbee of the dog variety all but impossible.

Ahh but cats have an amazing aptitude for turning any flat object on a smooth above ground surface into a frisbee.

Stack of papers or mail on your coffee table? That could be a frisbee.

Notepad on desk? Frisbee.

Book on nightstand? Frisbee.

You get the point. It turns out though, that the ultimate frisbee is a stiff woven placemat. Boy can those things launch off of a kitchen table.

The irony is that the cat generally has no interest in playing frisbee. It's only a side effect of rapid departure...usually because the cat is caught somewhere the cat is not supposed to be, like on the kitchen table playing with the string tied around the neck of the decorative vase.

Breaking Out of Poverty: An Exercise in Imagination

In the US, we've got a serious problem with poverty. I see it every day--dirty men curled up on bus benches or meandering the sidewalks. I rarely see women, unless they're old. The younger ones may have better access to resources, or perhaps they're in hiding. If I take my bike, the street I go down passes the shelter. There's often a group of guys hanging out in the shade of the building across the street.

I usually try to say hi.

The early morning street meanderers often don't respond. They, quite frankly, often seem a bit off--crazy. If you think they're lazy bums that need to get jobs, I think you should try talking to them. They need help, serious mental help. Judging by their ages (mostly 60-ish), I think there is a good chance they were in the Vietnam War. My patriotism tells me that I have a debt to these men, regardless of my feelings about that or any other war. Our nation sent them abroad, forced them to witness and carry out terrible acts, and then returned them here. PTS might keep them from working. Or maybe it led to a drug addiction as a means of coping. If they were convicted of drug abuse, they lose veteran benefits. Is their homelessness their fault for drug use? I don't think a nation can violate the mind of another human being with war and then abandon them for showing basic symptoms of that violation.

The group I often pass by near the shelter is younger, late 30s through 50. They are cleaner, saner, willing to engage in a hello. They're even jovial at times. Unlike the crazy wanderers, these men form a community. They are not alone. They also look like they get a shower now and again, like they're a little better fed, like given the right opportunity they could get out of their predicament. Are you upset that they hang outside the shelter waiting for a handout? I'm not. The shelter is the primary tool that helps these men to maintain the social presence that makes them seem normal to me, like they are middle class people my parents could be friends with. Perhaps they lost jobs and then homes, but they are temporary. They're not stuck. They're using the resources available to get out.

Sometimes I ask myself what if I lost my job and home and ended up on the street. How would I get out? I would be right there where those men are, taking handouts from those willing to give it so that I could rise out and up. Without such resources, there's no way I could do it otherwise, but I would be hellbent on paying back that debt when I was done.

Those men, quite honestly, seem better off even than those with places to stay near where I live. The men by the shelter are educated. You can tell they have more opportunity awaiting them. There is hope in their eyes. Go a few blocks further north and you'll see others walking or riding bicycles to work, sometimes driving rusty cars. These folks look beaten, tired. They are working hard and gaining nothing--one paycheck away from starvation or homelessness themselves. These are the ones the system fails most. They can't possibly work harder than they're already working, and somehow, we think working harder will pull them out of this mess.

I'd like to see each presidential candidate sit down with these folks and ask them how they got where they are. Those folks to the north won't have a tale about what went wrong that put them where they are. They've always been there, lacking the resources to get out. One would gladly do it. The other might claim that he would not indulge the excuses of those who would not help themselves.

Then I'd like to see each presidential candidate imagine himself in that position and describe what he could do to get out. I know which candidate can realistically anticipate the barriers of ascension. And I know which candidate does not understand that borrowing money to invest in an unsure future is not a reasonable plan of action for some and that borrowing money to invest is not even an option for others. This candidate is not alone in his failure to imagine this reality outside his own. Millions of American are ill-equipped to understand the difficulty of poverty.

I know barriers exist for these unknown neighbors of mine, and yet I cannot fathom my life with such barriers. Even if I become homeless someday, I am educated and have no physical or mental limitations, preventing me from bouncing back. I have the advantage of middle class culture. I can only image myself as one of those men outside the shelter, equipped to get back into the game instead of lost in a hopeless struggle to survive.

We have human beings here in the US, suffering. I see them. They are not bums. They are not drug addicts. They are not lazy. They are human beings. And yet, it takes seeing them every single day to remind me that they're there and that I should do something. Otherwise I might forget.

But what should I do?

The Ugly Face of Politics

The ugly face of politics has been my face. I get all fired up and reason fails, and sometimes I say brilliant things, but they are often hanging right there in the air next to dumb things. And sometimes I get mean and ugly. I hate it when other people do this, and I hate it more when I do it, but I just keep doing it, so I'm going to try to be one of those classy folks who never says a thing about politics and discretely does their civic duty and keeps it all to themself (not that the whole world doesn't already know how I feel).

Instead of this ugly face, I'm going back to focusing on food, my cat, books, and on occassion whatever I'm crafting. I shall revel in the glory of my premature old-lady-dom. It shall be glorious.

The other day I made squash while spouting a narrative of being the squash god in the style of genesis. No, I was not alone. I had a friend present. I shall endeavor more to bare such quirks in lieu of the ugly face of politics. Quirky, squash-god Schurl is much preferable.

Serious Apartment Hunt (sans Ego)

I've been saying I want to move so I can save more money for forever, but I don't move. Not moving is nice. Why should I really move?

My apartment is secure, and clean, and my neighbors aren't too awful, though sometimes I wish they would spontaneously combust (yesterday morning the two lovebirds next door woke me up singing an off-key duet. Note: these are not actually birds, but mid to late 30-something humans). I also have this great shower with a smooth surface that is so easy to clean. It has a nice low-flow showerhead that still offers pressure, too. I have had some plumbing issues, but maintenance here is great--super quick. I have garage space that I pay a small fortune for, but it's already prevented my car from taking a hail beating and now that I have a new bike, I can put that bike in the garage.

In other words, my life is peachy, but my budget is kind of tight to manage. When I selected this place, I was a single person with no obligations. Now I have committed to a tall awkward other that's 5 hours away, which means budgeting gas to visit and eating out (or buying fancy things to cook fancy at home). This has been a strain, but I manage, mostly by paying off the credit card debt accumulated during unemployment much more slowly than planned. Then yesterday, I committed 5% of my income to a 401k because my employers match the most at that rate, and I'm finally eligible to contribute. I kept doing my budget and thinking, 3% is all I can afford and then I input 5% on the enrollment form anyway. I'll make it work, I said to myself.

So my next step after committing myself to serious retirement savings was to cancel the automatic transfer I have scheduled to my pre-existing IRA. I will re-institute it if I find an adequate place with adequate savings. I also kind of hope to increase what I auto-transfer to my regular savings account and to increase monthly transfer to paying of my credit card. The sooner I pay off my credit card, the sooner I can pay extra on my student loans, which I will be paying off forever, so I don't even imagine life without it as a bill, but I do often dream a few years out when my car will be paid off. It's such an exciting thought.

I've had all of these goals all along, but I rented a secure downtown apartment with codes to get in, and cameras in the halls, and a deadbolt on my door. It's hard to give that up. Lately though, I think to myself, what would I do if I made what I did at my last job? I wouldn't have a choice. I would have to live in one of these other less desirable places that are available. A less secure place where I would watch my back as I walk from my car to my door and probably clutch pepper spray in my hand, mostly out of paranoia, but also because it's better to be safe than sorry.

I had those habits during my undergraduate college career, and I've already moved so far beyond that lifestyle into a land of privilege that I turn my nose up at such living and the people who live in those places, but there are plenty of nice people in poorer neighborhoods. In fact, I miss my old neighbors from my last apartment. They were nicer, and friendlier, and quieter--in interaction they behaved more like people and there was a sort of unspoken pact that we watched out for eachother because there were some unsavory types around. Other than a nod in the elevator, my current apartment is full of people who are just too busy and wrapped up in themselves. Of course, they don't have to worry about me, and I don't have to worry about them, so there isn't a whole lot of necessity for such elements of humanity.

So I've reminded myself that I am not too good to live cheap. People do it every day, and if they're smart about it, they're fine. I do kind of wish I could get a dog for an extra sense of security. I remember one summer living alone in a basement apartment with no roommate, and I used to worry someone would come in through a window in the unused room or something, so I kept a frying pan by my bed and counted on my cockatiel to squawk the alarm from the hallway. Maybe a new cockatiel would be more feasible than a dog?

Outdoorsy Materialism

Lately, I am experiencing a new surge of materialism, which is a reminder that one purchase does not quell the desire for stuff but enhances it.

Chris and I both have recently become the proud owners of the material possessions known as bikes. I am very, very happy that we have them. I've been riding mine to work and the Y. Chris has been riding his about 10 miles a day (21 yesterday). I'm sooooo pleased about us having bikes and actually using them.

So am I content to go out and use my bike all the time and forget about making any other purchases? Nope. Yesterday, I bought new sneakers. To be fair, I bought my old pair 5 years ago and have worn the soles smooth-ish. My feet and knees have been hurting after zumba. It was time. After hours reviewing sneakers online, I ordered a pair from Dick's Sporting Goods online.

That should have been enough, but while on their website I also looked at a resistance band and earplugs for swimming. I almost bought both, but I found out I was $1 away from getting a reward that would cover most of the resistance band, so I put that on hold. I convinced myself I need it so I could get a better workout with one of my Denise Austin cheesy 90s workout videos. The earplugs I had been planning to get for some time because I do swim and I also tend to get swimmer's ear, so I feel like that's okay--and those are super cheap.

Materialism quelled? Again, no. I went to track my order to see if they were super fast and had already shipped the items yesterday and somehow found myself looking at canoes and then grills. Ridiculous. Both would be nice, except I would never use them with my partner in crime being five hours away. I'm not very good about doing things by myself.

Instead I made myself a list of activity gear, then I made myself some rules for purchases. Big ticket items like the grill and canoe cannot be purchased until my car is paid off. Little items like tennis balls, reflective gear for biking, and new fitness clothes must be earned. I haven't decided just how yet. I'm thinking maybe a short story or five must be written, polished, and posted on my blog in order to earn such things.

I may have to apply this reward system to clothing shopping too.