I got busy today and now here it is, fifteen minutes till midnight and I have to think of 7 things. Let's see if I can do this.
1. As of this afternoon, MadMax is on spring break. As if to celebrate, the weather was absolutely lovely. The eastern half of the country got our weather this winter, this has been the mildest winter we've had in years. It was nearly 70, and the sky was blue as it could be. Sadly, tomorrow we are back to our usual for this time of year-- it's supposed to be about 50 degrees and raining.
2. Originally, we had planned to take the week off to drive out to the Oregon coast, both for fun and to do a few college visits for MadMax. So Dean took the week off. Then for several reasons, the trip to Oregon got nixed. We're doing a three-day swing out to Spokane, but otherwise this will be a vacation at home. Usually the idea of wasting a vacation at home would bother me, but for some reason at the moment, it sounds pretty nice. I'll report back and let you know how it goes.
3. For the first time ever, I did a status update Facebook about that last post. I'm not making this up: I got almost ten times my usual number of pageviews. Now I know how to increase readership if I decide I want to. It didn't occur to me until it was too late, though, that a number of local people would see it, and that now they will be looking at me to see what my makeup looks like. I may wear a paper bag over my head for a couple of weeks. (obviously I'm assuming that most of the new viewers won't see this if I don't do another status update, so if you're one of them and you're here... ummmmm,... hi.)
4. Taxes are done. boo-yah.
5. So we sat out on the deck with a drink tonight because it was so pretty, until it finally got too chilly around 7:30. Then we watched the Duke game. Remember in yesterday's post I mentioned living in North Carolina? Yeah, well, we became major college basketball fans while we were there. Usually we cheer for the other blue team, but they lost earlier this week, so Dean is now rooting for Duke. I'm usually a big March Madness fan, but for some reason this year I just can't get excited about it. I didn't even do a bracket, for the first time in years.
6. March reading report: American Savage by Dan Savage, four stars (out of five); Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, four stars; Trade Me by Courtney Milan, three stars; First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen, three stars. And then Ulysses and Jane Eyre, but I already told you about those. I also re-read Chasing Fire, which is Nora Roberts' take on the Missoula Smoke Jumpers. It's better than I remembered it. American Savage is getting its own post at some point, I'm still working on it. And there are still four days to go, so maybe I'll get another one read. We're on vacation, right?
7. I'm addicted to a new game I found this week: Seven Little Words. It's just hard enough to feel challenging, but not so hard that you can't finish a puzzle in ten or fifteen minutes. You get seven clues, and then there's a grid of parts of words ARG PLU SI TIES -- etc. You put them together to form the words that match the clues. You get one free puzzle per day, then you can pay for more if you want.
OK, it's actually 12:03 so technically I didn't make it in time. But I'm going to cheat and backpost this by six minutes. After I proof it. And think of a title.
Have a great weekend!
Friday, March 27, 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Make-up and Me: A History in Five Acts
PROLOGUE. Seventh Grade. Pre-braces, pre-contacts, pre-puberty (hey, I was a late bloomer). I spy the most beautiful frosted baby blue eye shadow ever created in the history of the world. I haven't tried wearing makeup much, but this is the most beautiful color I have ever seen. It shimmers.
I buy it, gentle readers (given that this was almost forty years ago, it was probably about 79 cents). I coat my eyelid with it, from my eyelashes to my eyebrows. I blink lingeringly so that the people around me will be sure to see it and admire me, because who wouldn't want to see such a lovely shade of blue?
Finally after a couple of days, my mother, who up to that point somehow had managed to resist shooting down my dreams, tells me to knock it off. I subside back into make-up-less ignorance.
ACT I. Ninth Grade. I hit on the combination that will last me for the next ten years, give or take. Mascara (because with blond eyelashes you otherwise have no eyes), Cutex gel blush, and Cover Girl lip gloss. I can picture that lip gloss still--it came in a little plastic pot that matched the shade of the lip gloss, Frosted Watermelon (was everything frosted in the 70s?). You applied it with your pinky. Under no circumstances could you use a different finger. I try foundation, but have the same problem that I still have today: I can't stand having it on my skin. Almost as soon as I get it on, I find myself scrubbing it off. Even if I manage to wear it a couple of hours, I can still feel it on my skin. *shudder*
ACT II. College graduate. First job. I'm an adult now, right? I get a little fancier. I try some different things, go to a friend's makeup party (can't remember what brand she was selling), buy $20 worth of makeup at the drugstore every six months or so. I settle on eye pencil and gray eye shadow in addition to the mascara, lip liner with my lipstick. I graduate to real blush instead of the clear gel. Still no foundation.
The problem: then as now, I absolutely am not a morning person. The longer I'm at my new job, the harder it is to get up in the morning, and the more my make-up routine suffers. Finally I just go with mascara and forget everything else. Occasionally, I apply mascara as I am driving on I-40 to Research Triangle Park, NC. Not kidding.
ACT III. Stay-at-Home Mom. Yeah, good guess. Make-up? what make-up? I'm lucky if I get a shower.
(repeat ACT II and ACT III as needed when I switch between working and staying at home about a dozen times over the next 25 years.)
ACT IV. At age 48, I decide to go back to school to get a Master's degree. The first week, I'm standing in front of the mirror in a large public bathroom on campus. Standing next to me are three young women, gorgeous, 19, and ... gorgeous. How come nobody tells you how gorgeous you are when you're 19? You have collagen. You have even skin tone. If you got five or more hours of sleep the night before, there are no bags under your eyes. You have thick, shiny hair. I am depressed, because none of those things are true of me. Those bags under my eyes? They are permanent. Amount of sleep is irrelevant.
I capitulate. I must find something makeup-ish to wear on my skin. I go to Target (I know. Go ahead and laugh. The thought of going to a make-up counter at our one department store is about as appealing to me as sticking hot pokers in my ears.) I find Tru-Blend powder. Since it's cheap, relatively speaking, I buy two different shades and take them home to try them out. Neither of them works, but on the second trip I find a shade that doesn't look too unnatural, and --best of all-- I don't feel it on my skin, so I don't end up scrubbing it off within 20 minutes of putting it on. I am saved.
ACT V: About a year and a half ago, I gave in and finally went to the makeup counter at our department store. I had talked to a salesperson at a Sephora when we were on vacation somewhere, and she recommended Lancôme Teint Idole Ultra 24H foundation (who thinks of these names?) for people with sensitive skin (who knew? I didn't think I had sensitive anything). She was right about one thing--I could wear it without wanting to scrub it off--but it was clearly the wrong shade and it was too expensive to do my old trick of buying four different shades and taking them home to find the right one. So I had to go talk to someone who knew what they were doing. Hence, the dreaded trip to the department store makeup lady. But it worked. She got it right on the first try.
Having the makeup and actually wearing it are two different things, though. I couldn't figure out how to put it on without looking like I had on too much makeup. Finally, just in the last few months, I've come up with a method that seems to work. Both my moisturizer and that makeup (I'm not typing the name out again, dangit) come in pump bottles. I do two squirts of moisturizer and one squirt of foundation in the palm of my hand. Then rub my hands together to mix them up, and spread it on. It seems to work. I won't ever look like a 19-year-old again--hell, I don't even look like a 42-year-old--but it's a noticeable improvement. Sometimes, when I'm feeling really frisky, I even do mascara and foundation on the same day.
THE END.
This has gone on long enough, but I didn't get to some of what I was going to say. So in spite of the fact that I am a person who wears as little makeup as I possibly can, apparently I'm going to have not one but two posts about makeup. Probably next week.
I buy it, gentle readers (given that this was almost forty years ago, it was probably about 79 cents). I coat my eyelid with it, from my eyelashes to my eyebrows. I blink lingeringly so that the people around me will be sure to see it and admire me, because who wouldn't want to see such a lovely shade of blue?
Finally after a couple of days, my mother, who up to that point somehow had managed to resist shooting down my dreams, tells me to knock it off. I subside back into make-up-less ignorance.
ACT I. Ninth Grade. I hit on the combination that will last me for the next ten years, give or take. Mascara (because with blond eyelashes you otherwise have no eyes), Cutex gel blush, and Cover Girl lip gloss. I can picture that lip gloss still--it came in a little plastic pot that matched the shade of the lip gloss, Frosted Watermelon (was everything frosted in the 70s?). You applied it with your pinky. Under no circumstances could you use a different finger. I try foundation, but have the same problem that I still have today: I can't stand having it on my skin. Almost as soon as I get it on, I find myself scrubbing it off. Even if I manage to wear it a couple of hours, I can still feel it on my skin. *shudder*
ACT II. College graduate. First job. I'm an adult now, right? I get a little fancier. I try some different things, go to a friend's makeup party (can't remember what brand she was selling), buy $20 worth of makeup at the drugstore every six months or so. I settle on eye pencil and gray eye shadow in addition to the mascara, lip liner with my lipstick. I graduate to real blush instead of the clear gel. Still no foundation.
The problem: then as now, I absolutely am not a morning person. The longer I'm at my new job, the harder it is to get up in the morning, and the more my make-up routine suffers. Finally I just go with mascara and forget everything else. Occasionally, I apply mascara as I am driving on I-40 to Research Triangle Park, NC. Not kidding.
ACT III. Stay-at-Home Mom. Yeah, good guess. Make-up? what make-up? I'm lucky if I get a shower.
(repeat ACT II and ACT III as needed when I switch between working and staying at home about a dozen times over the next 25 years.)
ACT IV. At age 48, I decide to go back to school to get a Master's degree. The first week, I'm standing in front of the mirror in a large public bathroom on campus. Standing next to me are three young women, gorgeous, 19, and ... gorgeous. How come nobody tells you how gorgeous you are when you're 19? You have collagen. You have even skin tone. If you got five or more hours of sleep the night before, there are no bags under your eyes. You have thick, shiny hair. I am depressed, because none of those things are true of me. Those bags under my eyes? They are permanent. Amount of sleep is irrelevant.
I capitulate. I must find something makeup-ish to wear on my skin. I go to Target (I know. Go ahead and laugh. The thought of going to a make-up counter at our one department store is about as appealing to me as sticking hot pokers in my ears.) I find Tru-Blend powder. Since it's cheap, relatively speaking, I buy two different shades and take them home to try them out. Neither of them works, but on the second trip I find a shade that doesn't look too unnatural, and --best of all-- I don't feel it on my skin, so I don't end up scrubbing it off within 20 minutes of putting it on. I am saved.
ACT V: About a year and a half ago, I gave in and finally went to the makeup counter at our department store. I had talked to a salesperson at a Sephora when we were on vacation somewhere, and she recommended Lancôme Teint Idole Ultra 24H foundation (who thinks of these names?) for people with sensitive skin (who knew? I didn't think I had sensitive anything). She was right about one thing--I could wear it without wanting to scrub it off--but it was clearly the wrong shade and it was too expensive to do my old trick of buying four different shades and taking them home to find the right one. So I had to go talk to someone who knew what they were doing. Hence, the dreaded trip to the department store makeup lady. But it worked. She got it right on the first try.
Having the makeup and actually wearing it are two different things, though. I couldn't figure out how to put it on without looking like I had on too much makeup. Finally, just in the last few months, I've come up with a method that seems to work. Both my moisturizer and that makeup (I'm not typing the name out again, dangit) come in pump bottles. I do two squirts of moisturizer and one squirt of foundation in the palm of my hand. Then rub my hands together to mix them up, and spread it on. It seems to work. I won't ever look like a 19-year-old again--hell, I don't even look like a 42-year-old--but it's a noticeable improvement. Sometimes, when I'm feeling really frisky, I even do mascara and foundation on the same day.
THE END.
This has gone on long enough, but I didn't get to some of what I was going to say. So in spite of the fact that I am a person who wears as little makeup as I possibly can, apparently I'm going to have not one but two posts about makeup. Probably next week.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Reading Ulysses
You know, I'm still figuring out where this blog is going. I have three half-written posts sitting in my drafts folder, another half dozen in my head, and I'm still not sure exactly what I'm going for here. Literary blog? Snarky take on middle age? Breezy observations for women of a certain age?
I'm kidding myself if I think I'm going to be able to stick to one topic, so probably I just need to start finishing them and posting them. In the meantime, I'll tell you about reading Ulysses.
I finished reading it for the fourth time a couple of days ago. (There's no way to say that without sounding like I'm bragging, but damn it, I did read it and it's a lot of work, so I'm bragging.) The first two times were required by classes I took during grad school. The third was also during grad school, but wasn't required. I felt like I needed to read it again before I could write a thesis on it, even though my adviser was telling me to stop reading and start writing (which, in hindsight, was probably good advice).
This time, it happened because I proposed a seven week Ulysses Reading Group to the continuing ed department at our community college. I didn't think it would actually happen--I figured maybe two or three people would sign up and it would get cancelled. But for some reason I thought I should make the effort.
To my surprise, seven people signed up (which is a lot for this type of class), and only three of them were students from previous classes. Apparently more people than just me felt Literary Guilt about reading Ulysses. I'm a literary person, I should read it, right?
So, what's it about? At an old military tower south of Dublin, Stephen Dedalus starts his day with an uncomfortable conversation with his witty, profane, dubious friend Buck. In Dublin, Leopold Bloom decides he wants a pork kidney for breakfast and heads out to the butcher to get one. With those small acts, each begins a journey that will lead them, much later in the day, to each other.
During the day, Stephen walks along the beach and picks his nose, and Bloom's wife takes a lover. Stephen teaches a history lesson to a bunch of snotty kids, then talks to the headmaster at his school and decides to quit his teaching job. Bloom roams around the city, going to a friend's funeral, running errands, trying to sell newspaper ads, eating dinner while he listens to a glorious rendition of an operatic air. Along the way, Stephen thinks great thoughts about life and literature and art; Bloom, ever practical and ever aware, bumps along being his Bloom-y self. We get to listen in on their thoughts, which is by turns fascinating and irritatingly difficult to follow.
Bloom, who is half-Jewish, almost gets in a bar fight when he reminds an increasingly irritated bar patron that Jesus was Jewish. Stephen gets totally trashed drinking with medical student friends in the dining room of a hospital. They both head to the red light district in Dublin, where a blackly comic series of (fantasies? hallucinations?) take place. Everyone else disappears by the time Stephen passes out in the street, so Bloom picks him up, dusts him off, and takes him to get something non-alcoholic in him, then ends up taking him home for a cup of cocoa. Stephen then takes off, Bloom goes up and goes to bed, in the process waking up his wife Molly, who gets the last 40 pages as she sleepily thinks about her lover, her marriage, and life in general. And that's about it.
Here's my verdict, after reading it four times. If you like complicated jigsaw puzzles and you like words, and especially if you know something about Irish history and culture, then plunge in. Get Harry Blamires' New Bloomsday Book and Stuart Gilbert's book and go for it (there are several dozen others, but they tend to be really expensive. Those are the two that will give you the most bang for the buck). Jim Norton's narration of the audiobook version is a work of art in itself. Oh, and Shmoop and the Joyce Project will come in handy, too. In fact, e-mail me and I'll send you the reader's guide I wrote for this class.
There's no doubt in my mind that Ulysses is a masterpiece and that Joyce is a genius. It is jaw-dropping, not just once but over and over again, what Joyce accomplishes in the pages of Ulysses. It is a huge, sprawling, intimate, joyous, intricate 700-page ode to words and what you can do with them. (It is also mind-numbingly complex and sometimes tedious.)(And it has to be said: you don’t really start to comprehend what he’s doing until you’ve read it more than once, which is totally unfair since it’s such a monumental task.)
So, given the number of works of genius out there, for most of us, is it worth the massive effort required? There are thousands of other books you could be reading. Hundreds of thousands. And even having read it three times before, it took me nine weeks to finish (we ended up going an extra two weeks to get it done). I will probably lose my place in the great literary point keeping system in the sky for saying this, but you know, for most of us, honestly, it's probably not worth the amount of time it takes.
I'm waiting for a bolt of lightning to strike me so I think I'll just stop right there.
I'm kidding myself if I think I'm going to be able to stick to one topic, so probably I just need to start finishing them and posting them. In the meantime, I'll tell you about reading Ulysses.
I finished reading it for the fourth time a couple of days ago. (There's no way to say that without sounding like I'm bragging, but damn it, I did read it and it's a lot of work, so I'm bragging.) The first two times were required by classes I took during grad school. The third was also during grad school, but wasn't required. I felt like I needed to read it again before I could write a thesis on it, even though my adviser was telling me to stop reading and start writing (which, in hindsight, was probably good advice).
This time, it happened because I proposed a seven week Ulysses Reading Group to the continuing ed department at our community college. I didn't think it would actually happen--I figured maybe two or three people would sign up and it would get cancelled. But for some reason I thought I should make the effort.
To my surprise, seven people signed up (which is a lot for this type of class), and only three of them were students from previous classes. Apparently more people than just me felt Literary Guilt about reading Ulysses. I'm a literary person, I should read it, right?
So, what's it about? At an old military tower south of Dublin, Stephen Dedalus starts his day with an uncomfortable conversation with his witty, profane, dubious friend Buck. In Dublin, Leopold Bloom decides he wants a pork kidney for breakfast and heads out to the butcher to get one. With those small acts, each begins a journey that will lead them, much later in the day, to each other.
During the day, Stephen walks along the beach and picks his nose, and Bloom's wife takes a lover. Stephen teaches a history lesson to a bunch of snotty kids, then talks to the headmaster at his school and decides to quit his teaching job. Bloom roams around the city, going to a friend's funeral, running errands, trying to sell newspaper ads, eating dinner while he listens to a glorious rendition of an operatic air. Along the way, Stephen thinks great thoughts about life and literature and art; Bloom, ever practical and ever aware, bumps along being his Bloom-y self. We get to listen in on their thoughts, which is by turns fascinating and irritatingly difficult to follow.
Bloom, who is half-Jewish, almost gets in a bar fight when he reminds an increasingly irritated bar patron that Jesus was Jewish. Stephen gets totally trashed drinking with medical student friends in the dining room of a hospital. They both head to the red light district in Dublin, where a blackly comic series of (fantasies? hallucinations?) take place. Everyone else disappears by the time Stephen passes out in the street, so Bloom picks him up, dusts him off, and takes him to get something non-alcoholic in him, then ends up taking him home for a cup of cocoa. Stephen then takes off, Bloom goes up and goes to bed, in the process waking up his wife Molly, who gets the last 40 pages as she sleepily thinks about her lover, her marriage, and life in general. And that's about it.
Here's my verdict, after reading it four times. If you like complicated jigsaw puzzles and you like words, and especially if you know something about Irish history and culture, then plunge in. Get Harry Blamires' New Bloomsday Book and Stuart Gilbert's book and go for it (there are several dozen others, but they tend to be really expensive. Those are the two that will give you the most bang for the buck). Jim Norton's narration of the audiobook version is a work of art in itself. Oh, and Shmoop and the Joyce Project will come in handy, too. In fact, e-mail me and I'll send you the reader's guide I wrote for this class.
There's no doubt in my mind that Ulysses is a masterpiece and that Joyce is a genius. It is jaw-dropping, not just once but over and over again, what Joyce accomplishes in the pages of Ulysses. It is a huge, sprawling, intimate, joyous, intricate 700-page ode to words and what you can do with them. (It is also mind-numbingly complex and sometimes tedious.)(And it has to be said: you don’t really start to comprehend what he’s doing until you’ve read it more than once, which is totally unfair since it’s such a monumental task.)
So, given the number of works of genius out there, for most of us, is it worth the massive effort required? There are thousands of other books you could be reading. Hundreds of thousands. And even having read it three times before, it took me nine weeks to finish (we ended up going an extra two weeks to get it done). I will probably lose my place in the great literary point keeping system in the sky for saying this, but you know, for most of us, honestly, it's probably not worth the amount of time it takes.
I'm waiting for a bolt of lightning to strike me so I think I'll just stop right there.
Friday, March 20, 2015
7TOF: lifestyles of the obscure and not-rich
1. Even though Dean and I are no longer poor grad students, and thankfully haven't been for a long time now, we've never left behind the urge to save pennies whenever we can, especially while traveling. I drive myself crazy trying to book cheap flights, we rent an economy size car, I comb through the travel sites looking for great hotel deals. There's no way that I can claim that our long weekend in SoCal was a bargain, but we cut corners wherever we could.
For one thing, if you're going to go to a professional sporting event, there is probably no better deal in the country than the Indian Wells tennis tournament (which was our destination). For the price of a general admission ticket, you can sit ten feet away from Roger Federer while he practices his serve on the practice courts. Or Djokovic or Nadal or Andy Murray. You can watch amazing tennis all day long in the smaller stadiums. And if you time it right, you can sit in the general admission section (otherwise known as the nosebleed seats) of the big stadiums and watch the big matches. It was great.
2. Except it was so dang hot. It hit 96 on Saturday. Part of the reason we went was to get some sun and some warmth, but that was a bit much. We sought out shade wherever we could.
3. I've had pretty bad sunburns while using SPF 50 and SPF 70. I read somewhere a couple of years ago that the higher SPF sunscreens use a different type of ingredient than the lower ones. Whatever it is, I guess it doesn't work for me. So I've gone back to using SPF 30, and this past weekend it worked great. No sunburn at all, even in the heat and blazing sun, and I even got a little bit of color.
4. I don't think I've ever told you that I got my braces off. In retrospect, it wasn't so bad, but that last month was pretty miserable. I had to wear them a month longer than originally planned, and I was not happy about it. But now they're off and I don't have to carry wax around in my purse to keep from tearing up the inside of my mouth. *bliss*
5. MadMax's prom is this weekend. He's a junior, so it's not quite as big a thing as it will be next year, but still. We went and rented a tux a couple of weeks ago and picked it up yesterday. He will look amazing. Some of the other moms were complaining about how much tuxes cost, but I'm just relieved we didn't have to buy a dress. PellMel was a good bargain hunter, but a tux is not so bad.
6. This is fun. (and since apparently I'm not smart enough to figure out how to embed a video, I'll tell you that it's a video of a graphic representation of popular girls' names since 1880). I had no idea that Barbara was so popular back in the 40s. They're not done with the one for boys' names yet or I would post that, too.
7. Easy recipe for the week: Dump a yellow cake mix in a bowl and stir in 3/4 cup melted butter, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, half a teaspoon of salt, and 2 1/2 cups oats (not instant). Press half of that into a 13x9 pan. Microwave a 12 oz jar of jam or preserves (flavor of your choice) for about 30 seconds until it is easy to spread. Gently spread the jam over the stuff in the pan. Sprinkle the remaining cake mix over the top. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes. Not fancy but they disappear in a heartbeat.
There were supposed to be a couple of other posts in between the seven-things-on-Friday posts, but oops! I haven't finished them yet. Have a great weekend.
For one thing, if you're going to go to a professional sporting event, there is probably no better deal in the country than the Indian Wells tennis tournament (which was our destination). For the price of a general admission ticket, you can sit ten feet away from Roger Federer while he practices his serve on the practice courts. Or Djokovic or Nadal or Andy Murray. You can watch amazing tennis all day long in the smaller stadiums. And if you time it right, you can sit in the general admission section (otherwise known as the nosebleed seats) of the big stadiums and watch the big matches. It was great.
2. Except it was so dang hot. It hit 96 on Saturday. Part of the reason we went was to get some sun and some warmth, but that was a bit much. We sought out shade wherever we could.
3. I've had pretty bad sunburns while using SPF 50 and SPF 70. I read somewhere a couple of years ago that the higher SPF sunscreens use a different type of ingredient than the lower ones. Whatever it is, I guess it doesn't work for me. So I've gone back to using SPF 30, and this past weekend it worked great. No sunburn at all, even in the heat and blazing sun, and I even got a little bit of color.
4. I don't think I've ever told you that I got my braces off. In retrospect, it wasn't so bad, but that last month was pretty miserable. I had to wear them a month longer than originally planned, and I was not happy about it. But now they're off and I don't have to carry wax around in my purse to keep from tearing up the inside of my mouth. *bliss*
5. MadMax's prom is this weekend. He's a junior, so it's not quite as big a thing as it will be next year, but still. We went and rented a tux a couple of weeks ago and picked it up yesterday. He will look amazing. Some of the other moms were complaining about how much tuxes cost, but I'm just relieved we didn't have to buy a dress. PellMel was a good bargain hunter, but a tux is not so bad.
6. This is fun. (and since apparently I'm not smart enough to figure out how to embed a video, I'll tell you that it's a video of a graphic representation of popular girls' names since 1880). I had no idea that Barbara was so popular back in the 40s. They're not done with the one for boys' names yet or I would post that, too.
7. Easy recipe for the week: Dump a yellow cake mix in a bowl and stir in 3/4 cup melted butter, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, half a teaspoon of salt, and 2 1/2 cups oats (not instant). Press half of that into a 13x9 pan. Microwave a 12 oz jar of jam or preserves (flavor of your choice) for about 30 seconds until it is easy to spread. Gently spread the jam over the stuff in the pan. Sprinkle the remaining cake mix over the top. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes. Not fancy but they disappear in a heartbeat.
There were supposed to be a couple of other posts in between the seven-things-on-Friday posts, but oops! I haven't finished them yet. Have a great weekend.
Friday, March 13, 2015
odds and ends: there's a neon light at the end of the tunnel
This one ended up being extra-ordinarily about food and weight and etc. Since I hate being obsessed about that stuff, I'm feeling a bit apologetic. But it's what I was thinking about this morning, so you're getting it anyway.
1. Last summer I tried going gluten-free and dairy-free for ten days, but I never told you what happened. I have to tell you, I was not unbiased. I find the whole gluten-free thing to be a little irritating, even though I have friends and family who truly feel it has made a difference in their health—a big difference. So I was a little surprised that there was a difference. Not a huge difference, and certainly not enough to make me rearrange my entire diet, but there was a... , ....., hmmm, I'm trying to think how to describe how it felt without making into more than it was. I felt --lighter? maybe. About 5% lighter. Noticeable, but not really enough to worry about.
Anyway. When I started adding gluten and dairy back in, I found, to my surprise, dairy was making the difference, not gluten. Happily, it is much easier for me to give up dairy than pasta and bread. I'm not too terribly strict about it, but I pretty much avoid dairy these days. I've never been a milk drinker, ever—and maybe that should have been a hint—so mainly that means cutting out yogurt and cheese. Which means I don't make yogurt anymore. Local people, if you want a yogurt maker, let me know.
2. OK, since we're talking about food. I decided a long time ago, no more diets for me. Diets, I abhor you. But I'm not happy about my current weight. It's a dilemma. I think I found a, um....., system (I'm not calling it a diet because it doesn't have anything to do with calorie counting or major restrictions) that will work for me, but at the moment, I'm not in a place where I want to deal with it. I'm a little chubby, but my health is otherwise great (which is exactly what the guy who did my "Healthy Measures" test at our athletic club said after measuring all kinds of things like cholesterol, BP, muscle tone, etc). So.... yeah.
3. But in one of those endless articles people post to FB, I read that the problem most people have with maintaining weight loss after they lose weight is, they don't know how to eat a healthy maintenance diet--i.e., a normal diet that doesn't cause you to either gain or lose weight. So *My Brilliant Idea* for the moment is to pretend like I already lost the weight and learn how to eat a healthy maintenance diet. It's actually kind of fun. Pretend I'm at my ideal weight, and now how am I going to eat? Successful so far, and if I do lose the 20 lbs at some point, I'll be all set.
4. And the other thing I'm doing (sorry, for those of you who hate endless discussions about health and weight)(usually I'm one of you). For Lent, almost as a joke, I gave up beating myself up about my weight. It has turned out to be a surprisingly positive experience. Every time I catch sight of myself in a mirror and am a little bit depressed to see the frumpy, 53-year-old woman looking back at me, and I start to tense up and begin the internal harangue about how awful I look and how bad I feel about it, etc etc etc, I just make myself stop. STOP. And substitute something more positive: I'm pretty damn healthy. I'm actively enjoying my 50s. That kind of shit. :-) So then the day after Easter, I'll start right back up with the weight bashing again. (Kidding.)
5. Cheery-o and I have been challenging each other to read books that aren't exactly easy to read. We started with The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen, which I had been avoiding for years), and then moved on to Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel). So far, so good. Both of them are books I wouldn't have finished without some extra motivation, but I'm really glad I stuck with them. I really intensely disliked the first part of Corrections, but once I got past that, I think it might be one of the best books I've read in a long time. Wolf Hall was less my kind of book, but it was definitely worth reading, and had me googling all kinds of things about the sixteenth century. Both recommended. We're doing Jane Eyre now because I could kill two birds with one stone since I'm teaching it. Join in if you want and we will discuss at a future date.
6. MadMax, perhaps in rebellion against his parents' love of rock, has developed a taste for country music. I was horrified at first, but I've started to kind of enjoy it. The current stuff isn't like the country music I remember from high school. As long as it isn't too twangy, I'm OK with it. (I draw the line at baby take a ride in my big green tractor. just sayin.) The odd thing is, with country music you can actually understand the words, so I find myself wondering, hmmmm, am I OK with this? when I know good and well it's way less offensive than some of the rock and hip-hop I listen to on the treadmill. It's just that with my treadmill music, I have no idea what they're saying.
7. We're headed south for the weekend. Usually we want to get out of here in March/April because the weather is so awful--the snow is gone, but it's raining and 45 degrees. Nothing is green and certainly nothing is blooming. This year our weather has been so beautiful (relative to our usual, not relative to anywhere else in the country), escaping the weather isn't our primary motivation. It will just be good to get out of town. I've been using self-tanner on my legs to try and get to the point where I won't be embarrassed to wear shorts (it's supposed to be 90+ in SoCal, where we're headed). When you live in the frozen north, by the time March rolls around, your legs aren't just white, they're some sort of fungal-looking pasty beyond-white that is downright scary. The self-tanner won't make me look bronzed but at least I won't look like something that crawled out from under a decaying log.
And that's it. Have a great weekend, because I'm pretty sure we will. :-)
1. Last summer I tried going gluten-free and dairy-free for ten days, but I never told you what happened. I have to tell you, I was not unbiased. I find the whole gluten-free thing to be a little irritating, even though I have friends and family who truly feel it has made a difference in their health—a big difference. So I was a little surprised that there was a difference. Not a huge difference, and certainly not enough to make me rearrange my entire diet, but there was a... , ....., hmmm, I'm trying to think how to describe how it felt without making into more than it was. I felt --lighter? maybe. About 5% lighter. Noticeable, but not really enough to worry about.
Anyway. When I started adding gluten and dairy back in, I found, to my surprise, dairy was making the difference, not gluten. Happily, it is much easier for me to give up dairy than pasta and bread. I'm not too terribly strict about it, but I pretty much avoid dairy these days. I've never been a milk drinker, ever—and maybe that should have been a hint—so mainly that means cutting out yogurt and cheese. Which means I don't make yogurt anymore. Local people, if you want a yogurt maker, let me know.
2. OK, since we're talking about food. I decided a long time ago, no more diets for me. Diets, I abhor you. But I'm not happy about my current weight. It's a dilemma. I think I found a, um....., system (I'm not calling it a diet because it doesn't have anything to do with calorie counting or major restrictions) that will work for me, but at the moment, I'm not in a place where I want to deal with it. I'm a little chubby, but my health is otherwise great (which is exactly what the guy who did my "Healthy Measures" test at our athletic club said after measuring all kinds of things like cholesterol, BP, muscle tone, etc). So.... yeah.
3. But in one of those endless articles people post to FB, I read that the problem most people have with maintaining weight loss after they lose weight is, they don't know how to eat a healthy maintenance diet--i.e., a normal diet that doesn't cause you to either gain or lose weight. So *My Brilliant Idea* for the moment is to pretend like I already lost the weight and learn how to eat a healthy maintenance diet. It's actually kind of fun. Pretend I'm at my ideal weight, and now how am I going to eat? Successful so far, and if I do lose the 20 lbs at some point, I'll be all set.
4. And the other thing I'm doing (sorry, for those of you who hate endless discussions about health and weight)(usually I'm one of you). For Lent, almost as a joke, I gave up beating myself up about my weight. It has turned out to be a surprisingly positive experience. Every time I catch sight of myself in a mirror and am a little bit depressed to see the frumpy, 53-year-old woman looking back at me, and I start to tense up and begin the internal harangue about how awful I look and how bad I feel about it, etc etc etc, I just make myself stop. STOP. And substitute something more positive: I'm pretty damn healthy. I'm actively enjoying my 50s. That kind of shit. :-) So then the day after Easter, I'll start right back up with the weight bashing again. (Kidding.)
5. Cheery-o and I have been challenging each other to read books that aren't exactly easy to read. We started with The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen, which I had been avoiding for years), and then moved on to Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel). So far, so good. Both of them are books I wouldn't have finished without some extra motivation, but I'm really glad I stuck with them. I really intensely disliked the first part of Corrections, but once I got past that, I think it might be one of the best books I've read in a long time. Wolf Hall was less my kind of book, but it was definitely worth reading, and had me googling all kinds of things about the sixteenth century. Both recommended. We're doing Jane Eyre now because I could kill two birds with one stone since I'm teaching it. Join in if you want and we will discuss at a future date.
6. MadMax, perhaps in rebellion against his parents' love of rock, has developed a taste for country music. I was horrified at first, but I've started to kind of enjoy it. The current stuff isn't like the country music I remember from high school. As long as it isn't too twangy, I'm OK with it. (I draw the line at baby take a ride in my big green tractor. just sayin.) The odd thing is, with country music you can actually understand the words, so I find myself wondering, hmmmm, am I OK with this? when I know good and well it's way less offensive than some of the rock and hip-hop I listen to on the treadmill. It's just that with my treadmill music, I have no idea what they're saying.
7. We're headed south for the weekend. Usually we want to get out of here in March/April because the weather is so awful--the snow is gone, but it's raining and 45 degrees. Nothing is green and certainly nothing is blooming. This year our weather has been so beautiful (relative to our usual, not relative to anywhere else in the country), escaping the weather isn't our primary motivation. It will just be good to get out of town. I've been using self-tanner on my legs to try and get to the point where I won't be embarrassed to wear shorts (it's supposed to be 90+ in SoCal, where we're headed). When you live in the frozen north, by the time March rolls around, your legs aren't just white, they're some sort of fungal-looking pasty beyond-white that is downright scary. The self-tanner won't make me look bronzed but at least I won't look like something that crawled out from under a decaying log.
And that's it. Have a great weekend, because I'm pretty sure we will. :-)
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
reluctant Kindle convert
I've been reading more than is good for me ever since I figured out around age five what those funny marks on the page meant. Not long after, I was over at a friend's house for a playdate and I could halfway-hear her pleas to come play with me as I read my way through the shelf of picture books in her bedroom. Oy. My kids know exactly how she felt.
Needless to say, I resisted e-readers for a long time, because I love the smell of a book, the feel of it in my hands. I love re-arranging books on the shelf. Or I should say, shelves, plural, because we have endless shelves of books in our house, and extra books shoved in between shelves and stacked on bedside tables and hiding in corners. It's not pretty.
Oh, sure, there was one advantage that was immediately apparent when Dean gave me my first, somewhat unwelcome, e-reader in 2009: it is an entire vacation library in a 10-ounce package. Any book lover who has ever had to deal with half a suitcase full of books could see the value in that. But for reading at home, why would I want to give up that beloved book in my hand?
So it came as a great surprise to me last week to realize that I prefer to read on my e-reader. Since you asked, I'll tell you the reasons I finally crossed over. For starters, there are advantages for those of us with aging eyes. You can turn the backlighting up (or down), you can adjust the size and spacing of the text. If you have a color screen, you can change the background, or reverse from white-on-black to black-on-white. You can even change the font.
And if I can't think of a thing I want to read, I can go to our public library's Lib2Go website any time of day or night and download something for free in about a minute. What's not to love about that? No epic quest for a parking place, no searching frantically for overdue books, no having to remember exactly what hours the library is open (not to mention that our library is closed on Sunday).
But most importantly of all, I can read in bed at night without disturbing Dean. Or at least without disturbing him as much. We've been on opposite schedules--he's a morning person, I'm a night owl--for our entire marriage, and it's only getting worse as we get older. I spent the first 29 years of our marriage trying various fancy booklights, bedside lamps with targeted beams, or --my default-- a flashlight resting precariously on my shoulder. I own probably twenty flashlights, none of which I can find at any particular moment.
But no more. The e-reader with its backlighting eliminates all that. And there's no rustling pages to turn. It's night-owl book-lover nirvana.
I didn't realize I had turned the corner into preferring the e-reader, though, until last week when I was looking for something to read and the half-dozen books sitting on my bedside table just didn't look appealing. I've even found myself borrowing books from Lib2Go that I have sitting here on the shelf so that I don't have to deal with the physical book.
Oh, dear.
I guess there's no turning back. There will always be certain situations where a book is better--for example, when I'm reading a book for class, I need to be able to write in the margin and flip back and forth between locations. I also use those post-it flags with abandon--the books I carry to class often look as if they are sprouting colored post-it hair. But for the most part, I've made the switch. I feel a little guilty.
Needless to say, I resisted e-readers for a long time, because I love the smell of a book, the feel of it in my hands. I love re-arranging books on the shelf. Or I should say, shelves, plural, because we have endless shelves of books in our house, and extra books shoved in between shelves and stacked on bedside tables and hiding in corners. It's not pretty.
.jpg) |
| Lest you think I'm exaggerating |
Oh, sure, there was one advantage that was immediately apparent when Dean gave me my first, somewhat unwelcome, e-reader in 2009: it is an entire vacation library in a 10-ounce package. Any book lover who has ever had to deal with half a suitcase full of books could see the value in that. But for reading at home, why would I want to give up that beloved book in my hand?
So it came as a great surprise to me last week to realize that I prefer to read on my e-reader. Since you asked, I'll tell you the reasons I finally crossed over. For starters, there are advantages for those of us with aging eyes. You can turn the backlighting up (or down), you can adjust the size and spacing of the text. If you have a color screen, you can change the background, or reverse from white-on-black to black-on-white. You can even change the font.
And if I can't think of a thing I want to read, I can go to our public library's Lib2Go website any time of day or night and download something for free in about a minute. What's not to love about that? No epic quest for a parking place, no searching frantically for overdue books, no having to remember exactly what hours the library is open (not to mention that our library is closed on Sunday).
But most importantly of all, I can read in bed at night without disturbing Dean. Or at least without disturbing him as much. We've been on opposite schedules--he's a morning person, I'm a night owl--for our entire marriage, and it's only getting worse as we get older. I spent the first 29 years of our marriage trying various fancy booklights, bedside lamps with targeted beams, or --my default-- a flashlight resting precariously on my shoulder. I own probably twenty flashlights, none of which I can find at any particular moment.
But no more. The e-reader with its backlighting eliminates all that. And there's no rustling pages to turn. It's night-owl book-lover nirvana.
I didn't realize I had turned the corner into preferring the e-reader, though, until last week when I was looking for something to read and the half-dozen books sitting on my bedside table just didn't look appealing. I've even found myself borrowing books from Lib2Go that I have sitting here on the shelf so that I don't have to deal with the physical book.
Oh, dear.
I guess there's no turning back. There will always be certain situations where a book is better--for example, when I'm reading a book for class, I need to be able to write in the margin and flip back and forth between locations. I also use those post-it flags with abandon--the books I carry to class often look as if they are sprouting colored post-it hair. But for the most part, I've made the switch. I feel a little guilty.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Meet the Family
If you're new, these are my people. And animals. If you were around for my previous blog, this will update you.
Older child PellMel is in graduate school in Seattle. We miss her, but she is happy doing what she's doing. This summer she's starting a series of training rotations all over the Pacific Northwest. I am, of course, figuring how many times I can travel to visit her.
Younger child MadMax is a junior in high school. He's in band, and his track and field season is about to start up. He throws things--discus, javelin, shot.
We have the greatest kids. I'm not prejudiced or anything.
Dean and I have been married for 30 years. That is one heck of a long time. Every time I think about it, it amazes me. We met when we were 20 and married 2 1/2 years later, so we've been together well over half our lives. Clearly, the man is a saint. He's a medical type, an athlete and a tinkerer-- he usually has some kind of hands-on project he's working on.
The animals:
Jazz, the elderly pound mutt. Jazz was quite a fiercely loyal dog back in her prime, but now she is mostly deaf and mostly blind. You have to clap really loudly or stomp on the floor near her to get her attention. She's also pretty decrepit-- her back hips don't work too well. But she's still game. She no longer goes on runs with Dean, but she goes on walks, and she mostly keeps up. Sort of.
Sadie, our two-year-old lab. Like all labs, she has more energy than we know what to do with. Also like most labs, she will fetch a ball endlessly. We buy tennis balls at Target in bulk net bags. She weighs about 60 lbs, but she's pretty sure she's a lap dog.
.jpg)
The chickens. With absolutely no idea what we were doing, three years ago we bought six chickens. We've lost a few to predators and illness, added a few new ones, then lost a few more. At the moment we have three. They're Black Astrolorps and they lay extra-large brown eggs. They're pretty sociable. Their coop is down the hill from our house, but if they're out and we're out, they come and hang out. They like to be friendly.
And that's about it.
Older child PellMel is in graduate school in Seattle. We miss her, but she is happy doing what she's doing. This summer she's starting a series of training rotations all over the Pacific Northwest. I am, of course, figuring how many times I can travel to visit her.
Younger child MadMax is a junior in high school. He's in band, and his track and field season is about to start up. He throws things--discus, javelin, shot.
We have the greatest kids. I'm not prejudiced or anything.
Dean and I have been married for 30 years. That is one heck of a long time. Every time I think about it, it amazes me. We met when we were 20 and married 2 1/2 years later, so we've been together well over half our lives. Clearly, the man is a saint. He's a medical type, an athlete and a tinkerer-- he usually has some kind of hands-on project he's working on.
The animals:
Jazz, the elderly pound mutt. Jazz was quite a fiercely loyal dog back in her prime, but now she is mostly deaf and mostly blind. You have to clap really loudly or stomp on the floor near her to get her attention. She's also pretty decrepit-- her back hips don't work too well. But she's still game. She no longer goes on runs with Dean, but she goes on walks, and she mostly keeps up. Sort of.
.jpg) |
| (I'm not much of a photographer, obviously) |
Sadie, our two-year-old lab. Like all labs, she has more energy than we know what to do with. Also like most labs, she will fetch a ball endlessly. We buy tennis balls at Target in bulk net bags. She weighs about 60 lbs, but she's pretty sure she's a lap dog.
The chickens. With absolutely no idea what we were doing, three years ago we bought six chickens. We've lost a few to predators and illness, added a few new ones, then lost a few more. At the moment we have three. They're Black Astrolorps and they lay extra-large brown eggs. They're pretty sociable. Their coop is down the hill from our house, but if they're out and we're out, they come and hang out. They like to be friendly.
And that's about it.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Done. Begin!
Hi! I've had the name and the general idea for this new blog for a couple of weeks now. But I haven't managed to actually start writing posts again. Apparently a brilliant series of posts to kick off this new space is not going to happen. So I decided this morning that I just needed to start.
As usual, when I finally get around to writing a post, it's because I'm avoiding doing other things I need to do. This week I am teaching not one (my usual) but three classes, and it's about driven me round the bend.
The longest running one, a Ulysses reading group, was supposed to end tomorrow, but since we got behind--no surprise there--it will go on for another week or two. My original plan was that we would read the first seven episodes during the seven-week class, but on the first day, the group decided unanimously that they wanted to read the whole thing. No small project.
Then I'm co-moderating an adult education class at our church using the DVD series Living the Questions, a collection of theologians discussing progressive Christianity. I've been a little disappointed in the material, but the discussions in our group have been great. That will end this Sunday.
And this past Monday, I started a 4-week class on Jane Eyre, which has always been one of my favorite novels. A great read, plus you get to study the Brontës.
All three classes are test-less, quiz-less, and paper-less, so at least I don't have to do any grading. But I seem to be unable to stop myself from compulsively preparing (over-preparing?) for class.
Until I start feeling overwhelmed, and then my brain shuts down and I sit and read trashy romance novels (or write a blog post) instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
At least they are all three topics that I enjoy, and I'm learning a ton. You always hear that teachers learn more than the students do, but I didn't really believe it until I started teaching. It's true.
So there. One post down, lots to go. I will try to be more interesting next time but I just needed to get the first one done. I will explain the new blog title some other time, but the short version is: it's a line from the end of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Today's post title (Done. Begin!) is a line from Ulysses, episode 11.
As usual, when I finally get around to writing a post, it's because I'm avoiding doing other things I need to do. This week I am teaching not one (my usual) but three classes, and it's about driven me round the bend.
The longest running one, a Ulysses reading group, was supposed to end tomorrow, but since we got behind--no surprise there--it will go on for another week or two. My original plan was that we would read the first seven episodes during the seven-week class, but on the first day, the group decided unanimously that they wanted to read the whole thing. No small project.
Then I'm co-moderating an adult education class at our church using the DVD series Living the Questions, a collection of theologians discussing progressive Christianity. I've been a little disappointed in the material, but the discussions in our group have been great. That will end this Sunday.
And this past Monday, I started a 4-week class on Jane Eyre, which has always been one of my favorite novels. A great read, plus you get to study the Brontës.
All three classes are test-less, quiz-less, and paper-less, so at least I don't have to do any grading. But I seem to be unable to stop myself from compulsively preparing (over-preparing?) for class.
Until I start feeling overwhelmed, and then my brain shuts down and I sit and read trashy romance novels (or write a blog post) instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
At least they are all three topics that I enjoy, and I'm learning a ton. You always hear that teachers learn more than the students do, but I didn't really believe it until I started teaching. It's true.
So there. One post down, lots to go. I will try to be more interesting next time but I just needed to get the first one done. I will explain the new blog title some other time, but the short version is: it's a line from the end of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Today's post title (Done. Begin!) is a line from Ulysses, episode 11.
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