Better than fruit salad

THE GREATEST PART OF MY GREAT DREAM LAST NIGHT

Dustin Hoffman (in Megorium character, though not dressed as such) appears, cooking bacon for me in a pan over “low” heat in my living room. He breaks off pieces as they cook before they burn, which I think is a very good idea. He is telling me things, things about life, and he breaks into a list of All Things, and mentions “rabbit backup”. The young boy (?) asks, “rabbit backup?”

[Dustin Hoffman, with deadpan gravity, whilst turning a rather large piece of bacon that looks a lot like a lobster]: “Yes! Just think, we could lose all our rabbits all in a single blow. It’s frightening! I don’t want to think about this, I want to think about balloons.”

Why do I always cut the roof of my mouth with frozen pizza crust? Presumably this does not teach me to eat frozen pizza less, hence the use of the word “always”. TRY AGAIN, COSMOS.

I only ate one fifth of the pizza. Well, roughly one fifth — I had to sort of eyeball it and so really it was a little less than a forth since I didn’t read the serving sizes until AFTER I cut the thing into slices. I would have cut it into fifths if I’d have known. I observed serving sizes today, as an experiment, since lately my hypoglycemic requirement to basically eat all day has not been jiving with my actual appetite. And nothing sucks more than eating when you aren’t hungry, and then later binging on something ultimately unhelpful (blood-sugarly speaking) like cheezits. Normally I can be pretty liberal with my diet, but this weekend was pretty rocky and that plus stress a healthy/happy Maggie does not make. So today I ate precisely on the multiples of three, (6am, 9am, 12, 3pm..) and I observed the serving sizes. This makes it sound like I’m shifting psychosis, from schizotypal to OCD, but parish the thought: I see it as a game rather than Something I Have To Do, and I fudge it enough for some of my genuinely OCD pals to get twitchy. And it is an oddly satisfying exercise to measure your cereal to get exactly one cup of multi-grain cheerios. It is not really about cutting down on the food so much making sure I eat enough when I want to skimp on meals, and that I don’t throw myself off by gorging on something if I have. Skipped a meal, that is. And! Seeing if the USDA regulations constitute “enough”. Regulations! Regularity! Yea Verily! I hope to carry out a fuller report later this week.

I AM COLD

How cold am I? I wore thick stockings, with my skirt, a knitted woolen sweater which I covered with a wool blazer most of the day, and walked to school with a scarf and gloves despite the fact that it was a rather pleasant 45*F. This is no good, since we are but on the cusp of Real Winter, when it actually gets cold — subzero cold — and if I am wimping out now o ho ho I am in for a rude awakening.

Currently I am fully dressed, plus an additional sweater, plus my bathrobe. The tip of my nose is cold. My toes are cold, despite the shows and socks. What the hell, body. Shape up. My house has been at 62*F which is about where I like it, but apparently the low end of room temperature is technically 64*F, according to Google, so I suppose I should crank it up a few notches and leave it there come what may. No sense in enduring a drop in the core body temperature or anything to drastic for the sake of saving five dollars on my gas bill. I can cut corners in less life-threatening ways.

Work was much better than I had been anticipating. I did have a slight panic when I realized, again, that I will be OUT OF THE OFFICE from Dec. 16 – 23 (or possibly 26, depending on how Christmas fits in and how well my minion does) and oh God have I trained her enough? Will she do okay on her solo test run next week? Then I ate part of a Twix and felt better. (Hmm, no wonder I was having some sugar problems…)

Later there was a quick meeting with myself and two important people at my desk. There was no reason for me to be involved really, since it was a business office issue that didn’t even have anything to do with money but rather inches printed/booked, and other abstract things that I never deal with yet are undoubtedly important. I did my best to calm person #1 down, but she needed to hear it from person #2, which was fine, though I wasn’t sure why she wanted it done around my desk. But she was put at ease and if my presence helped, well godspeed. Then I had some words with person #2, who is really my boss even though my timecard claims otherwise, and we affirmed some stuff and she said she had full faith in me, blah blah blah you don’t care. But I did because I like it when other people notice I am doing a good job and tell me.

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP!

1. Mom found my cut of the Christmas ornaments. Neither of us could find them and this plus complications from The Great Thanksgiving Disaster had me in quite a state last night. I was absurdly close to tears. But Mom found them, and she is mailing them to me, and so my little scrawny tree will glow with the handmade ornaments I’ve grown up with, and all is well.

2. Anthony’s grad school essay seems to be working itself out, which is a relief for him and for me by extension. When you have chronic empathy like I do, it’s nice to see people working stuff out, and as a human being it’s nice to have a companion who’s happy.

3. My oral report I was worried about went swimmingly, and I finished two papers this morning. On to the next! I was strangely able to stay on task and get stuff done, which is rare for the sleep-deprived me. Huzzah!

SOME PERFECTLY NORMAL FOOD MADE BETTER WITH CAREFUL RECHRISTENING

1. Burritos (those large-scale mass marketed kind, since real burritos come from local places, slathered in pico and cheese) and pitas from Pita Pit are both called “food tubes” or just “tubes”

2. Gnocci? I had no idea how to pronounce it for the longest time. We just call it “lumps”.

3. The last box of couscous I had said that “couscous” is actually the word for “food” in some middle eastern language. It has returned to the grocery list as “food” ever since.

TIME OUT FOR A PRE-THANKSGIVING WEATHER REPORT

Okay so it’s not huge nor did it bar me from driving for 3 hours that night. But it was pretty in it’s own way, and I was happy to see it.

I’m sort of surprised, since we have had — for the last FIFTEEN YEARS I’ve lived in this region — had an epic snow/ice episode in October. We actually get it around Halloween. Without fail. It ices up the porch steps just in time for the children to teeter up them and demand sweets. So it was weird to only have one frost in the whole of Autumn.

We settled down to watch some netflixed Sopranos last night. Only, instead of having the four-episode marathon, the “season finale” was the only thing on the disk — one long episode. I feel a little cheated.

I think I’ve briefly mentioned my deadlines here — that at work, I am two days ahead. What that means is I build things two days ahead, or that my absolutely last possible last minute thing has to go before that “day” passes. My deadlines for submissions are four days ahead, so that I have time to get things formatted and into the system (which often includes waiting for someone else to start the account in the business office,) so on any given day I am actually processing two different dates. Dates that are NOT THE CURRENT DATE. So for me, it’s been this week since last Wednesday. It gets even more complicated when I try to schedule a few days off for Thanksgiving like I did last week. No one called me with an emergency so I can only assume everything went okay, but I am a little nervous about going in later today.

(OH MY GOD WHY?)

So Thanksgiving. Yup. The holiday where we gorge. My trip home was filled with dissonance and awkward silence from the house and family. So, not relaxing so much as tense and stilted. I think two things were to blame on my end, namely: a.) mentioning to Mom that I hate school (okay, true but not the best time to talk about it, considering the Art Class Wars have me all frothy and mean about the subject,) and b.) I let it slip that Anthony and I were staying in a hotel in Eugene to my Dad. Again, tactfully unsound. But what was I supposed to do, lie? Yes father, we’re staying with my friend in Newberg, and we’re going to drive for four hours every day to spend time in the city we’re visiting. That sounds chaste and logical.

So I got quiet anger from my Dad, and careful tiptoes from my Mom, and I saw my brother once since apparently being nocturnal is acceptable now. GREAT TIMES GUYS I’LL HURRY RIGHT BACK.

Or not, since the Eugene trip nearly overlaps Christmas. We were looking over the itinerary last night and it looks like I will have to drive straight from this trip down to the Springs in order to make it to Christmas. (Provided I don’t work on Christmas Eve, which uh, I will have to.) I cannot tell you how tempted I am to BREAK TRADITION and STAY HOME AND SLEEP this year, but judging by the way this holiday was spent someone would probably blow a gasket. Or disown me. Or both. Though at the moment that doesn’t sound at all bad.

I kid mostly. I am just all flustered by it since we usually all get along swimmingly. I didn’t really want to spend all this time snarking about it but I was unable to stop myself. We are coming into Crunch Time — that time between Thanksgiving and Christmas where college students everywhere commit hara-kiri. OH YEAH. GOOD TIMES HERE. I cut my home-time short, drove back as fast as I legally could, and spent a lot of the remaining weekend listening to StereoLab and watching this again and again, which made me feel better.

I wrote this charming thing Friday night when I was buzzed on Margaritas but I think I must have hallucinated posting it because I can’t find it anywhere. It was the happiest buzz ever. It made me want to RUN. My need for speed is something I get pretty frequently, when I’m sober, except I’m usually armed with espresso and my car when that happens, not tricked out on tequila with a vehicle safely back at the bar. (THANKS DANI!) I also wanted to clasp the face of my comrade in my hands, press his face to mine, and make a big HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM noise. Sweet vibrations. Unfortunately he had a date with Dani to discuss living arrangements* so it was just me and YouTube videos of old skool stand up comedians, and a sluurd msg on facebok. Maybe it’s a good thing that I lost that entry…

He raped me…with SEXUAL ASSAULT!. I guess I shouldn’t complain, he only raped me with condescending diction.

*Basically, she is moving out to move in with Nicole. You know, like long-term partners do. What would make the most sense would be for Anthony to move in here, although a close second would be for him to GET HIS OWN PLACE just so he knows how. (Anthony is what you would call book-smart, almost exclusively. Not much on the street-smart side.) While I approve of plan the second in a hearty fashion, I did get rather frustrated at my Mom, who did not respond to my email in any sort of intelligent way when I brought this up, but rather parroted back “Yes, your father would freak right now”. Oh really, Mom? And when WOULD it be okay, I wonder? When I am 47? And why do you have no opinion on the matter? There is also a chance that Anthony will just move in with one of his new friends from work, which would be okay if they weren’t deeply misogynistic or a creepy sociopath. So the whole thing is kind of okay but not okay, and I can’t even do anything to help.

And speaking of parents! Did you know that the turkey holiday is coming up at the end of this week for us Yankee Doodles? I used to be kind of “eh” about this holiday but for the last few years I’ve appreciated the free feast aspect, as I get to bring home a lot of the leftovers in my trusty cooler. I am going home for what I hope is the last time, for this holiday. Nothing against my parents explicitly — although now I get to have this Stupid Non-Conversation hanging over my head — I’m just getting tired of the whole gig a little. I’d like to pool my funds and have a big friend banquet. I’d like to start my own “traditions”. I’d like to not have to RUN ALL OVER THE STATE during my rare time off. Or maybe I’m just cranky. But I’ll be there. And I’m staying for a decent stretch of time so I can hit up all the thrift stores with my yard work money.

There’s been some nasty goo floating around at school and work lately. As far as I can tell it’s flu-like, although I got my flu shot so we’ll see. Exactly half of the people I talk to tell me that flu shots are the tool of The Man, and that people wouldn’t get sick if only they would eschew the horrid shot. The other half just as stridently inform me that the flu shot has been the only thing to save their lives on several occasions, and that they make small sacrifices to preventative medications on a biweekly basis, Alhamdulillah. My symptoms change everyday — this morning I seem to be experiencing Acute Nostril Failure of the left sinus, Erratic Ear Blockage, and Difficulty Swallowing.

So on the one hand I am thinking maybe I will get too sick to go, but on the other that free food/yard work money thing is nothing to be sneezed at, and of course deep down it would be good to see people.

We used a gift card to eat at Olive Garden last night. Don’t you make the same mistake. Now I know you are thinking: why was it so horrible? How is it that you, gleeful frequent diner at The Egg and I and Perkins for breakfast, cannot deal with the squinky horror that is a Big Corporate Italian Restaurant? I’m not sure. Maybe it was becuase we were just at the little Italian place last Sunday, and I was wistfully recalling the candlelit dinner on the twilight-dim patio where we sat for several leisurely hours. Maybe I was thinking longingly about their plethora of menu choices, and HOW DIFFICULT it was to narrow it down to just one thing because the quality of all the said choices. Maybe I was thinking of the foil-wrapped Garlic Bread Of Champions, all toasty and cheesy and crusty. There was nothing like this at the brightly lit, beige interior of Olive Garden, with it’s sparse menu and phallic bread and irritating waitstaff. Why do big chain restaurants force the staff to bother you [x] times during your meal? And why did they have “chicken scampi,” and why did I order it? And why did they have nothing with pesto, Gorgonzola, or shrimp + pasta? And why did the “chicken scampi” have a bunch of onions and peppers sliced in irregular hunks and placed haphazardly on the top of the plate? And why did we bother?

I had great dreams last night. I bought Gouda, I rode a train, I ran around with dogs. And before that I painted a picture, which made me nice and happy.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE IRRESPONSIBLE CONSUMER ECONOMY

“For every dollar we get, we spend it like a thousand.”

- Janette Huckabee, NPR interview for All Things Considered, Nov. 9, 2007.

The “duh” moment I had today: I am kind of a freak about plastic bags. I live mostly by myself so I end of freezing a lot of stuff in individual plastic sandwich bags. I make my own sack lunch (and sometimes dinner) everyday, and put it in my homemade cloth lunch bag and fill it as much as I can with good local produce and foods, but a lot of that ends up going into plastic bags. I have fashioned a fresh-fruit-wrap and a sandwich thing out of fabric, but loose crackers and goopy stuff like applesauce is just a problem usually. Until! Today! When I was packing everything and I remembered that I save all my jam jars. And that some of these were relatively small, about (my tiny) fist sized, since I received a strange jam sampler last Christmas. So things can go in jars and we can all be just a little less wasteful. Huzzah.

TODAY I WANT TO MAKE SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS AND SPEAK FRANKLY

1. Living by yourself is an interesting exercise. In some ways you have to play all the “roles”. You have to be the annoying Dad asking you how school was, telling you to TURN THE GODDAMN RADIO DOWN, doing obscure outdoor chores and paying bills. You have to be the housewife/Mom making lunches, filling the bird feeders, cleaning, and you have to monitor everyone else, making sure everyone gets enough to eat and leaves the house dressed and gets to bed on time. And you’re the kid just doing stuff and enjoying life (and of course, sometimes you’re the surly teenager saying but I don’t WANT to clean my room). This is not the absolute truth in my case though, since Anthony is a nice guy and pitches in quite a bit here despite his separate rent/house/groceries/roommates/cats situation.

2. Did you know my state is trying to make a fertilized egg a human? A bi-cellular organism. I don’t know, to me the replication of DNA does not seem to be the same as “of, belonging to, or characteristic of mankind, distinguished from animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright posture” (OED). I don’t know if this makes me want to attack people who have miscarriages (save your tissue! Your body has no respect to life!) or point out that many people I’ve talked to here on Earth had consciousness kick in at about age 3. And while this is no reason to stop taking care of infants (they are by no means Not Creatures) I feel like it puts things into perspective a little bit. I guess people are okay with a microorganism as humans but not women, as this definition reduces them to “hosts for parasites”. It is also probably not a long shot to presume that most of these pro-lifers eat steak on a regular basis, which is interesting to me. Certain types of killing is survival! Certain types of killing is evil!

3. I listened very intently to Consumed all last week. And between that and the economic reports pointing in the direction of IN THE TOILET, I have been spending a lot of time sitting around clutching my head and moaning. Strangly enough we managed to start reading Robinson Crusoe right in the midst of all this. So becuase of my context the book managed to be kind of inspiring despite the imperialist rhetoric that usually makes it a load of unwashed fecal rubbish.

And I guess really: I feel like I will be coming out a little ahead. I am teaching myself to sew. I am going to have a garden and compost when I move to Oregon within the next few years. I primarily thrift rather than buy retail. I recycle, I have several cloth reusables for my lunch, (see the “duh” moment above), and I do have some cloth shopping bags (though I forget to bring them more often than not.) Plus, the combination of Girl Scouts and being an undergrad have taught me a lot about survival and DOING WITHOUT.

They mentioned that some of the problem is getting marketed to. I get a little irritated with that one, since that segment was about the evils about getting ads, make calls to do not call lists, and so on. Disappearing completely is impossible! You are trapped! We’re all doomed to become stupid mindless consumers! Do you know what though? The whole point is to become, as my 8th grade English teacher used to say, savvy consumers, not just blind and breathless consumer. Make choices, be smart, and DO NOT BUY STUPID SHIT FOR NO REASON.

I’ve had quite enough of November. Stress levels are getting critical and I haven’t even really begun to hunker down and focus on PASSING CLASSES like I do every semester. There is another battle to be fought with the art department soon, I have some unusual things to do at work that require a lot of time, and somehow in the midst of this I got stuck with planning the Eugene trip — something I explicitly said needed to Not Be My Deal, since I had so much other stuff going on. Human relations have also slipped, I have managed to accidentally bail on several proposed outings within the last week. When I finally did put on pants and go out last Saturday I was met with a rather awkward and floaty Anthony, and when I became exasperated and said “God what is your PROBLEM?” I got much more than I bargained for. However, being exasperated and cranky as I was, I basically ended up saying some Rude Things and leaving. Uh, sorry there friend. I didn’t realize. Next time I’ll try to ask when I’m feeling more sympathetic.

The good thing is it wasn’t anything about US really but about BIG STUFF that he’s having to deal with, and while it would have been very easy to counter with I’LL SEE YOUR GRAD SCHOOL APPLICATION AND RAISE YOU TRAINING AN UNDERLING, WRITING THREE PAPERS AND TRYING TO SIGN UP FOR ART CLASSES, that is unsporting and I refrained. The very next day we hopped in the car and drove around on some scenic highways. The leisurely pace (we like to stop frequently and ogle at neat things), the picnic, and the eventual stop in Boulder made everything much better. We had lunch by some reservoir that looked like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and we spend a lot of time uprooting stones in the loose sand. Have you ever run around uprooting stones in sane? It is the very best activity, particularly if you shriek, hoot, or bellow triumphantly.

And from that point things look much better indeed. I am requisitioning my routine, since brain things and unnecessary strife are often solved (in my world anyway) by rigidity and rules. It comforts the bits of me that are still a child. There has been malted milk in the evenings if I’m up later than tea, there have been frequent walks, lots of contemplating colors in the world.

SOME FINAL NOTES

1. A friend of mine is remodeling her basement, and I got to help paint yesterday. It sure is great to attack a wall with rollers. After doing smallish canvases it’s amazing to use you whole body to paint. It’s like doing jumping jacks or something. Very satisfying.

2. Something about the smell of cooking fish is very comforting to me.

3. On my taskbar there is a missing icon. I’m not sure what usually goes there. In between my backup drive icon and “WinZip Quick Pick” there is just a space.

Back to Mighty Leaf tea, for a little while. Despite my GIANT SACK OF EARL GREY I did break down and get some Mighty Leaf, becuase I can’t not when I see it. Though I have a slight stuffed up nose so Orange Dulce tastes more like Froot Loops.

Saturday, I forgot to mention, was all about outdoor pick up. Besides the charcoal, there were several flowerpots of things that had gone to seed and then died, or just pots I’d meant to use and didn’t. So I rounded them all up on the stoop, scraped out the bugs and the caked dirt, repotted the thyme and trimmed it, and the put all the unused pots away in the utility closet. I’m a little worried about the thyme since the pruning was rather dramatic, and the repotting was pretty iffy, since I moved it a slightly shallower pot, and I didn’t really have more potting soil so I just sort of hard to squash it in there. We’ll see. It acts like ground cover so it should be happier with a shallower pot, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost it mid-winter. Ah well.

So now my three herbs — mint, chives and thyme — are all safely situated indoors, though I haven’t quite found a place where the mint will be happy. However it’s kind of fussy anyway, so I may never. I do have lots of chive seeds. I’m not sure what to do with them. I don’t really cook with chives all that often, but they’re good to have fresh and they must be somewhat easy since I’ve never had any trouble with them. But it seems like a shame to waste them, and I certainly can’t plant them outside, because my landlord would rip them out like he did the coreopsis.

WE PAUSE TO REFLECT

My uncle sent us an email a few weeks ago about this time of year, and how as we receive less daylight and as the earth becomes colder on our hemisphere it is a good time to reflect and slow down — a sort of Autumnal lent for us Catholics. Of course since my Aunt has two boys in fall sports and Mom is in DECORATE! DECORATE! mode, it was not received entirely open-armed, but I’e been thinking about that lately. Between some Big Difficult Things at work, some uncertainty regarding school, and all of the Friend Stuff, there have been several nights where Anthony sit and talk about a long time ago, instead of stuff that’s happening now. It’s not really nostalgia — we aren’t saying geez I wish you still lived in the dorms and we had to sneak in and worry about roommates popping in at unexpected times — but more of a Wow look how far we’ve come, but look how far along we were even then. We don’t usually discuss stuff like this so it’s been an interesting exercise.

In the meantime I did get bit with the nostalgia bug a little bit, and broke down and began cutting out paper fall leaves to hang around here. It’s a little late, I know — almost a moot point — but damn it, November is November, not December, and autumn is not over yet.

NEARLY UNCONTROLLABLE URGES OF LATE AND HOW I ATTEMPTED SATISFACTION

1. Roll up someone in a giant tortilla, or pancake. (Nothing, though I did spoon with Anthony on the tiny TV couch, wrapped in the small quilt, which is almost the same.)

2. Go to the Peppercorn, go broke on FANCY COOKING STUFF. (Nothing, since I’m broke all by myself.)

3. Visit the zoo. (Totally visited the zoo, with people.)

4. Chew a giant head of lettuce open mouthed. (Nothing yet.)

SOME INTERNET THINGS

Geez. Just when I thought Ms. Alicia of Posie gets Cozy couldn’t get better, she does. Apparently she is also all about ALL THINGS WEE, and while before I was kind of half heartedly popping over to her site whenever I remembered too, I will now be a full time reader. Between this and her frequent pictures of my geographic heartthrob (SE Portland) her book mark is moving farther and farther up my list.

Here is why Tin Toy Arcade is awesome. First: they have the cheapest (as far as I can tell) prices, and the biggest selection of little tin windables. Then, yesterday I received a small package in the mail, and it turned out to be a TINY TIN BLIMP with a little sting on it, as a thank you for shopping with them in the last year. I realize that this is a brilliant marketing ploy, to get me to pop over to their site a few more times before real Holiday shopping begins, but hey it works for me. Free tin blimp. I’m down.