"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.