I love that every morning i have 30 minutes to sit in the quiet of my house, listen to NPR, surf the web, read my emails and watch the dogs go back to sleep.
I love that we actually got a real autumn this year. The climate was certifiably ‘cool’ and ‘chilly’, the leaves turned real fall colors.
I love the way my dogs smell. No one else on the planet loves dog smell the way I do, I bury my face in my dogs and inhale.
I love chick pea patties with chevre, roasted sweet potatoes, sauteed kale and mint chip ice cream.
I love songs about escaping and starting over (you’ll have to scroll down the “train to chicago” this is the only page I could find with the lyrics to that song) especially in the fall when the dread boulder of winter threatens to chase me down the hill. I live my escape fantasies in my songs and get it out of my system and come home and look at the dogs and the boy and the dishes and happily realize that all I could never fit it all in my car for a fast getaway.
I love shopping for legos online.
I love wearing a black bra with a white shirt and not caring how trashy I look.
I love that i am ending this post simply because I have to pee
Monthly Archives: November 2005
So achingly simple…so complexly sweet
Tonight at Target I gave the cashier a quickie-mini-lesson in how to cook kale. She’d never seen it before and was confused by it. I gave her a few methods and stopped after telling her to add it to risotto, I didn’t want to explain risotto.
I will probably add it to risotto. Maybe. I did pick up a butternut squash and curried squash risotto would be good. We’ll see. Tonight is my night off, I made a frozen pizza, I did add tomato, extra cheese and herbs so I was nt a total slacker.
I also bought Maddie a new dog bed. I think she’d had one before and I think ghengis is old enough to not hump everything that will bear his weight. She hasn’t laid on it yet, she’s far too excited by my proximity to lay on it.
So, it’s the month of the growth. My sister went to the doctor in amazing pain and they discovered a 4cm cyst on her ovary. They are in wait and see mode. If it gets bigger, they go take it out, if it doesn’t they leave it to burst on its own. I used to get these fairly regularly, I know her pain.
Then my old friend, Ron, dropped this frightening bomb on me this morning. Fuck.
There is not much I can do for either of them but show my support and fret and worry. So, there you have it guys, the eternal worrier now has something to focus her worry on.
Progress on building my new site has slowed, I’ve been distracted. The same could be said for goat pictures. They’re coming along slowly.
I don’t have much more to say. If anyone would like to join me in my worry for April or Ron, please sign up in the comments section below. I’ve mentioned many times how dear my sister is to me, but I’ve probably not said much of Ron since he moved his punk ass so far from me. Ron is truly one of my favorite people and he is definitely one of those people where it does not matter how long you’ve been apart, you’ll pick right up where you left off…which I suppose is watching him play Castle Wolfenstein at 4:20.
ps. no, i’m not doing NaNoWriMo. One day I’ll write a book, it won’t be this year and it won’t next.
the nerves
The campus where I work is in a not so great part of minneapolis, not the worst part but definitely one riddled with drugs and crime. We have 3 institutions on theis campus, the art college where i work, the art institute and the children’s theatre. We are a 6 square block oasis in the midst of the ‘bad part of town’.
There’s always crime on the periphery, usually one drugged out thug on another, occasionally a mugging of one of the students or residents.
This past week or so there has been a definite and alarming increase in the incidents. They are all pretty similar, two perps coming up behind the victim and either grabbing them or knocking them down. Occasionally a gun is flashed. These happen suddenly, they steal purses or wallets or whatever and take off.
A few weeks ago there was an unrelated series of assaults by a man who was kidnapping the victims, taking them to their homes and stealing their stuff. He was caught.
I don’t like being scared, I refuse to be paranoid, but this is very real. The route from my office to the parking ramp takes on an poorly lit path between buildings where no one is really watching. I don’t want to get robbed, I don’t want someone to knock me down and take my purse. There’s not much in there, a few credit cards, many many many receipts, my cell phone, I never have more that $40 cash on me.
I don’t want to get grabbed from behind, I don’t want to get knocked down, i don’t want someone to take my purse.
A few people have mentioned getting guns. What’s the point? If I had a gun on me and I got knocked down and my purse taken I would then also be the owner of a stolen gun. Even, if the world were a magical place and I actually had the chance to pull a gun and aim it at someone, would I want to trade a life for my purse? Or, more realistically, would I be willing to get shot over a cell phone? It’s a nice cell phone, but I like my liver and spleen, I don’t want them harmed.
It’s just frustrating to think about. I was never really scared before, the bulk of the incidents before involved people who knew each other, drug deals gone bad, the occasional gang rivalry. I came to work, did my work and went home. I engaged in no behavior that would invoke the anger of a thug. Now that does not seem to matter.
So, we’re going to move in numbers. I might start parking elsewhere, though my options are limited, i cannot parallel park to save my life.
Not much else to report, the mundane details overwhelm us all. Tonight I must haul ass to the SuperTarget and get dog food and groceries. this morning the dogs got a bowl full of treats as I had been remiss in my dog food buying duties. I don’t think they minded. Levi told me he gives his dogs peanut butter sandwiches when there is no food. Good idea.
SuperTarget, Dishes, Laundry. I will not be making dinner tonight, there is leftover eggplant parmesan for David and frozen pizza or pierogies for me.
Ghengis’ ear is getting better. The more I think about how much pain he was in on monday morning the more my stomach hurts. He was in so much pain he was shaking, his jaw was quivering. I know what I feel like when I have an ear infection or a sore throat, but I can tell someone, i can drive myself to the doctor or ask someone to do it for me. he is without words, what if I had missed it Monday morning? It had been bothering him the whole weekend while I was gone, what if I had made him go all day monday as well? I feel awful not knowing what he needs.
Puppy guilt, it’s a terrible thing.
Lastly, Maddies birthday is coming up on the 12th!! She will be a big girl 5! Of course we will have a party with cake and frosty paws and presents and spinning in circles! Ghengis will get presents as well, and at is party, maddie will get presents.
Seriously, folks, this is what happens when you are 32 and you have 2 dogs and no kids. Sad.
She says it gets easier
My mom, that is, she says it gets easier to cook regularly and keep things tidy. I don’t know, I hope so. I need this cooking. I need to feel as though I can accomplish something. I need to produce something that is appreciated by one other person on a fairly regular basis. I need to produce something in which I feel a certain amount of pride.
And to be honest, I need to be pro-active about dealing with this nagging, low grade depression. I need to keep it under control. No one likes being around a depressed person, no one even likes saying “sorry you’re feeling blue, buck up!”. Thing is, since I started this self regulated program of cooking more often and listening to my books and all that, I DO feel better. I am accomplishing something, I am producing something that I am fairly confident David appreciates, I feel proud of the meals I work on.
The thing about cooking is that there’s a rhythm. You cut and peel and bread and fry and bake and whisk and consult and measure. You plot two steps ahead, especially when you have a poorly laid out kitchen like I do. You taste and experiment and season and hope. There’s a dance you do with onions, eggplants, cutting boards, ovens and sinks. When you finish this dance you put the result on a plate and you cha-cha over to your special person and you hope they dance too.
Tonight I danced with eggplant parmesan, it is currently resting in the oven, getting ready for the finally. On the side I will make sauteed spinach with garlic.
Goat pictures on the way! I promise. Also, apologies, I’ve not been keepign up with Ephemeral Photo. Both are n the agenda, both will be dealth with. Huzzah.
Okay, someboday buy me the Alien Quadrilogy just because. Tell me it’s because you think I’m charming!
i rule
I just finished dinner.
Dang.
Pumpkin Gnocchi (or dumplings as they call them) were amazing. I doubled the recipe, added a tad more flour and seasonings and sauteed them in sage brown butter.
The grocery by my house did not have kale but they did have collard greens. I sauteed thinly sliced onion in butter until golden, added a chopped apple, garam masala and more butter. The collard greens were deveined, cut into a 1/4 inch chiffonade and added to the apple and onion and mixed briefly until bright green.
I also roasted some salmon but that was uninspired and I probably should have gotten a pork chop.
If David does not get home soon, there will be no leftovers for him. Those gnocchi are screaming for me to eat them.
Also, completely unrelatedly, I’m totally getting a tattoo on my forehead that says ‘corporate whore’. I’m sitting here in my green Old Navy track jacket, rocking the faux-hawk and accessorising with those little plastic barettes you had when you were a girl. I suck.
Oh well, I can drown my sorrows in pumpkin gnocchi and cheap red wine. what have you got?