Well, since I've been sitting here staring at the screen for almost ten minutes, maybe I'm not as ready to start posting again as I thought I was. But for those of you who caught my mini-meltdown on Monday, thank you for being concerned. I had a bad experience with a group of people I work with here locally, and (how utterly silly this sounds) got my feelings hurt.
Social interaction is just beyond me right now. I want to say something melodramatic and self-serving like, I just don't get all these games people play, but honestly, from their perspective, it's possible that they think I'm the one playing games. That's the way complicated situations work. They're complicated.
It was an easy enough problem to solve, at least temporarily. It's a group that has functions twice a year-- around the holidays, and in the spring. I helped out with the holiday functions, and it was no big deal to bow out of the spring season. It will give me time to figure out what happened and maybe I can participate again later. Or maybe not.
That seems to be all I have to say at the moment. I do have three half-written posts in my Drafts folder, so maybe I will start up again next week. Have a great weekend!
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
END THE SHUTDOWN. GOOD GRIEF.
We interrupt our regularly scheduled break to bring you this public service announcement. If you, like me, are not financially affected by the government shutdown, you may not know that the Department of Agriculture has found a way to pay February SNAP benefits (the program commonly known as food stamps, which are now paid out on debit cards), but they can only do it by distributing those funds early-- this week, in fact.
If the shutdown continues, those funds are the last that SNAP recipients will receive for the foreseeable future. At our local food bank today, I listened to the staff try to plan for the inevitable result of this news: an enormous increase in people needing the food bank. It's not pretty. This affects millions of people nationwide, including well over 100,000 in Montana.
You can claim the moral high road for awhile, and I certainly have my opinion on which side has it (hint: if you ask me, building a wall would be a huge waste of taxpayer dollars). But that time has ended. Get your butts back to the table and figure this out. This is about children being able to eat.
If both sides compromise and present a plan to the president (which I sincerely hope does not include funding for a wall, but at the moment, that's not my highest concern), it will be clear that the problem is the president. He will sign. And one suspects that he will figure out a way to call it a win, because he always does.
That's all. This has to stop.
If the shutdown continues, those funds are the last that SNAP recipients will receive for the foreseeable future. At our local food bank today, I listened to the staff try to plan for the inevitable result of this news: an enormous increase in people needing the food bank. It's not pretty. This affects millions of people nationwide, including well over 100,000 in Montana.
You can claim the moral high road for awhile, and I certainly have my opinion on which side has it (hint: if you ask me, building a wall would be a huge waste of taxpayer dollars). But that time has ended. Get your butts back to the table and figure this out. This is about children being able to eat.
If both sides compromise and present a plan to the president (which I sincerely hope does not include funding for a wall, but at the moment, that's not my highest concern), it will be clear that the problem is the president. He will sign. And one suspects that he will figure out a way to call it a win, because he always does.
That's all. This has to stop.
Friday, January 11, 2019
7ToF: ding dong the decorations are dead
1. Finally got the Christmas decor put away. It seems like it took 7 or 8 hours divided between last night and today, but that can't be right, can it? No wonder I was dreading it. I do love all my Christmas tchotchkes but that seems a little excessive. If I had to do it again next week, I would do something about it. But by next December I will have forgotten, so I will do it all again. Happily.
2. Do you keep up with food and nutrition news? In the past few years, many of the sacred cows of healthy eating have fallen -- it's OK now to eat eggs, fat is no longer the big demon it once was, and more and more signs are pointing to sugar as the real problem in our diets-- and then did you notice that it's OK to eat full fat dairy products again? (as long as you can handle dairy, I guess. I have several lactose-intolerant friends/family.)
Montanans were never fooled. The dairy industry has been part of the local economy for decades, and long-time locals have never varied from their preference for full fat milk. If we have full fat milk at the food bank, it gets grabbed off the shelf so fast you'd think there were $20 bills inside. I used to think they were uneducated, but turns out they were right.
3. But you know what food advice has never, ever changed? Eat your vegetables. No one has ever come along with a fad diet that said to avoid vegetables. (Have they? given the insanity of the diet industry, maybe they have.) I was raised in the sixties and seventies in Middle America, when veggies were usually soggy and canned, or frozen and then overcooked. I was not a fan. Is there anything more disgusting than canned spinach? What was Popeye thinking? I didn't experience fresh veggies lightly cooked until I was in college. I liked those just fine.
4. But you can only get fresh, in-season veggies a few months of the year in Montana. So I am making a concerted effort to investigate creative ways to use winter vegetables, or frozen out-of-season ones. Maybe I will even try some canned ones. I read an article that with modern canning techniques, less time elapses between harvest and processing canned vegetables than getting them to your grocery store. (I'm still not doing canned spinach, though. I have my limits.)
5. The first try was cabbage. When I was a kid, cabbage was always a soggy, overcooked mess that smelled terrible. I was determined to try it, though, so I found a recipe in Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons cookbook for steamed cabbage. Result: I was so worried about overcooking it that it was still practically raw. The recipe called for coring and quartering the cabbage and then steaming the wedges and drizzling with butter, lemon, and thyme. But it was almost impossible to eat those big chunks (possibly because it was still crunchy-raw). I think I need to give it another try, because the outside leaves that were reasonably cooked tasted pretty good. What doesn't taste good with butter and lemon drizzled over?
6. However. It was also a perfect illustration of the problem with organic produce (at least after it has been shipped three or four states over to Montana). The 3 lb head of organic cabbage was nearly $7. I bought a 2-pound pork roast (hormone- and antibiotic-free and no additives) that was less expensive than the cabbage. It's ridiculous. (The pork roast was also an experiment, I'd never cooked one before. It was OK. We are not big eaters of roasts.) It's not going to break our bank to pay $7 for a head of cabbage, but that puts it out of the reach of many. We're talking about cabbage.
7. Lots going on around here. It always seems a little silly to announce that I'm taking a break, because why don't I just do it without feeling like I need to tell everyone? Plus, I'm not sure how long I'll be offline. Maybe a weekend will be enough. Or maybe I'll post once a week instead of twice. But since I'm in the sort-of habit of posting on Tuesday and Friday, it always feels like I should give you a heads up if I'm going to miss one or two. Or ten. Last time I said I'd be gone at least a month and it only ended up being a couple of weeks (did you notice?).
This week's interesting read: hope vs. cynicism (from 2015)
Have a great weekend.
2. Do you keep up with food and nutrition news? In the past few years, many of the sacred cows of healthy eating have fallen -- it's OK now to eat eggs, fat is no longer the big demon it once was, and more and more signs are pointing to sugar as the real problem in our diets-- and then did you notice that it's OK to eat full fat dairy products again? (as long as you can handle dairy, I guess. I have several lactose-intolerant friends/family.)
Montanans were never fooled. The dairy industry has been part of the local economy for decades, and long-time locals have never varied from their preference for full fat milk. If we have full fat milk at the food bank, it gets grabbed off the shelf so fast you'd think there were $20 bills inside. I used to think they were uneducated, but turns out they were right.
3. But you know what food advice has never, ever changed? Eat your vegetables. No one has ever come along with a fad diet that said to avoid vegetables. (Have they? given the insanity of the diet industry, maybe they have.) I was raised in the sixties and seventies in Middle America, when veggies were usually soggy and canned, or frozen and then overcooked. I was not a fan. Is there anything more disgusting than canned spinach? What was Popeye thinking? I didn't experience fresh veggies lightly cooked until I was in college. I liked those just fine.
4. But you can only get fresh, in-season veggies a few months of the year in Montana. So I am making a concerted effort to investigate creative ways to use winter vegetables, or frozen out-of-season ones. Maybe I will even try some canned ones. I read an article that with modern canning techniques, less time elapses between harvest and processing canned vegetables than getting them to your grocery store. (I'm still not doing canned spinach, though. I have my limits.)
5. The first try was cabbage. When I was a kid, cabbage was always a soggy, overcooked mess that smelled terrible. I was determined to try it, though, so I found a recipe in Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons cookbook for steamed cabbage. Result: I was so worried about overcooking it that it was still practically raw. The recipe called for coring and quartering the cabbage and then steaming the wedges and drizzling with butter, lemon, and thyme. But it was almost impossible to eat those big chunks (possibly because it was still crunchy-raw). I think I need to give it another try, because the outside leaves that were reasonably cooked tasted pretty good. What doesn't taste good with butter and lemon drizzled over?
6. However. It was also a perfect illustration of the problem with organic produce (at least after it has been shipped three or four states over to Montana). The 3 lb head of organic cabbage was nearly $7. I bought a 2-pound pork roast (hormone- and antibiotic-free and no additives) that was less expensive than the cabbage. It's ridiculous. (The pork roast was also an experiment, I'd never cooked one before. It was OK. We are not big eaters of roasts.) It's not going to break our bank to pay $7 for a head of cabbage, but that puts it out of the reach of many. We're talking about cabbage.
7. Lots going on around here. It always seems a little silly to announce that I'm taking a break, because why don't I just do it without feeling like I need to tell everyone? Plus, I'm not sure how long I'll be offline. Maybe a weekend will be enough. Or maybe I'll post once a week instead of twice. But since I'm in the sort-of habit of posting on Tuesday and Friday, it always feels like I should give you a heads up if I'm going to miss one or two. Or ten. Last time I said I'd be gone at least a month and it only ended up being a couple of weeks (did you notice?).
This week's interesting read: hope vs. cynicism (from 2015)
Have a great weekend.
Monday, January 7, 2019
Bingo! Tag'em and Bag'em! aka the entertainment report
I know it's Tuesday (actually, it's Monday as I'm writing this), but I don't have the energy to think up an entire post at the moment, and I am so far behind on the basic life tasks (laundry, replacing my lost driver's license, etc etc). So I'm doing a list. Maybe it will turn out to be seven things but it might not.
➧ Status report from the convoluted depths of my brain: one of the most difficult things for me to manage is the balance between routines and change-ups. If I have to do the same thing day after day, I go nuts. Not kidding-- routine makes me wiggy and depressed. But if I change things up and I'm out of my comfort zone for too long-- say we have house guests for more than 4-5 days or the Christmas decorations are still up on January 8th-- I go a different kind of nuts. It's like my brain starts shorting out. I can't get anything done because things have been abnormal for too long. So, definitely have to get the decorations put away before poor Dean has to peel me off the ceiling.
➧ We were fans of the original Transformer movie-- the crazy parents, the neurotic kid, the military guys-- and we have a dozen lines from it that have entered our family lingo. Left cheek! Left cheek! and Shut up, Grandma! and Sam's happy time and the chihuahua with the bandaged foot who wears a jeweled collar (it's his bling!). Judy, Sam's mom, is possibly my favorite cinematic character ever. We re-watch it at least once a year.
➧ So we had high hopes for Bumblebee, especially since it is getting such great reviews. But don't bother. Like all the subsequent Transformers movies, it was disappointing. I might have liked it better if I hadn't gone in with high hopes. (It did, admittedly, have some good moments.)
➧ Aquaman was also thoroughly average, but I wasn't expecting much from it so it didn't bother me as much. Typical superhero origin story. It had a few good moments (like the edible roses) but was otherwise just a decent way to pass 2 1/2 hours on a rainy day. (because in case I haven't told you often enough, it rained every. single. day. we were in Florida.)
➧ I don't usually read suspense or horror novels, because I like to sleep and I can't sleep after reading that stuff (or watching the movies, either). So I wasn't sure how I was going to do with The Marsh King's Daughter, which was our book club book for this month. A woman who was responsible for putting her psychopath father behind bars years earlier goes out to hunt him down when he escapes from prison. I will admit that I avoided reading it right before bed, but it ended up being a really good story. It has some seriously dark moments, but it also has some redeeming moments, and it makes sense, which counts for a lot. If you like that stuff, recommended. It has not, however, convinced me to read any more suspense/horror novels. One every twenty years or so is plenty.
So maybe once the wrapping paper is back in the store room I will be able to write something interesting again. Hope your new year is off to a good start.
➧ Status report from the convoluted depths of my brain: one of the most difficult things for me to manage is the balance between routines and change-ups. If I have to do the same thing day after day, I go nuts. Not kidding-- routine makes me wiggy and depressed. But if I change things up and I'm out of my comfort zone for too long-- say we have house guests for more than 4-5 days or the Christmas decorations are still up on January 8th-- I go a different kind of nuts. It's like my brain starts shorting out. I can't get anything done because things have been abnormal for too long. So, definitely have to get the decorations put away before poor Dean has to peel me off the ceiling.
➧ We were fans of the original Transformer movie-- the crazy parents, the neurotic kid, the military guys-- and we have a dozen lines from it that have entered our family lingo. Left cheek! Left cheek! and Shut up, Grandma! and Sam's happy time and the chihuahua with the bandaged foot who wears a jeweled collar (it's his bling!). Judy, Sam's mom, is possibly my favorite cinematic character ever. We re-watch it at least once a year.
➧ So we had high hopes for Bumblebee, especially since it is getting such great reviews. But don't bother. Like all the subsequent Transformers movies, it was disappointing. I might have liked it better if I hadn't gone in with high hopes. (It did, admittedly, have some good moments.)
➧ Aquaman was also thoroughly average, but I wasn't expecting much from it so it didn't bother me as much. Typical superhero origin story. It had a few good moments (like the edible roses) but was otherwise just a decent way to pass 2 1/2 hours on a rainy day. (because in case I haven't told you often enough, it rained every. single. day. we were in Florida.)
➧ I don't usually read suspense or horror novels, because I like to sleep and I can't sleep after reading that stuff (or watching the movies, either). So I wasn't sure how I was going to do with The Marsh King's Daughter, which was our book club book for this month. A woman who was responsible for putting her psychopath father behind bars years earlier goes out to hunt him down when he escapes from prison. I will admit that I avoided reading it right before bed, but it ended up being a really good story. It has some seriously dark moments, but it also has some redeeming moments, and it makes sense, which counts for a lot. If you like that stuff, recommended. It has not, however, convinced me to read any more suspense/horror novels. One every twenty years or so is plenty.
So maybe once the wrapping paper is back in the store room I will be able to write something interesting again. Hope your new year is off to a good start.
Friday, January 4, 2019
7ToF: make it so, number one
1. We've all sometimes seen the disconnect between someone's online presentation and their real life. Some present a carefully curated front to the world, some seem to be genuinely themselves, although I suppose you can never really know how real it is. Here, in this blog, I hope you can tell that I make no claims that this is an accurate representation of my life-- it's just whatever I'm thinking about at the time I'm writing.
2. But in case it isn't obvious, I have bad days. Weeks. Dean and I have rough patches in our marriage, more often than we probably should after 34 years of marriage. I sometimes lose sleep worrying about my kids. I can drive myself to distraction obsessively trying to figure out what I'm doing next-- back to work? more volunteer work? three months in the UK? (you have no idea how much that last one tempts me). There are days when I have a hard time thinking of a reason to get out of bed.
3. Some people-- for example, the Bloggess-- can turn their bad days/weeks/childhood into hilarious, touching, meaningful posts, but when I try to do it, it turns out maudlin and boring. It bores me, so lord knows I'm not inflicting it on you. At least not very often. But in case you can't tell, it seems important to put it out there. I don't think I'm projecting an image of a perfect life here, but if I am, now you know. Things can be (and often are) a mess around here. So there. That's enough about that.
4. I don't do New Year's resolutions because I can never keep them, but having a theme, something I want to work on, has been a good thing in the past. My word/theme for 2019 is action. Be active. Take action. Participate. Engage rather than observe. Do instead of think. Or at least, don't just think. Maybe engage is a more succinct way of putting it, and it has the additional benefit of invoking Captain Picard, which is never a bad thing, right?
5. About this time last year, I read Dan Harris's book 10% Happier, where he describes how he has used meditation to cope with anxiety and stress. He talks about one of his mentors, Mark Epstein, in a way that intrigued me, and I just finished reading Epstein's book Advice Not Given. I'm gradually becoming convinced that a more serious meditation practice than my usual half-assed attempts would be a good thing for me, but I think I need a little more structure than just thinking, hey! I should meditate more often! So I've been poking around various meditation apps and I downloaded Dan's 10% Happier app a few days ago. So far, I like it. I'll let you know how it goes.
6. I think I told you awhile ago about hearing Whitney from the Unread Shelf Project on Anne Bogel's podcast What Should I Read Next. I think last year when I started on Bookstagram (a subset of Instagram found by following the hashtag #bookstagram), I became much more aware of new books that were being published, and pretty editions of old books, and instead of buying fewer books last year I think *cringe* I actually bought more. So inspired by Whitney, I'm renewing my intention from last year to not buy new books and instead read the ones I've got.
7. Because I have lots of good books sitting on my shelves that I want to read. Step one of the #unreadshelfproject2019 is to count the number of unread books you have. So I did this yesterday. I didn't count books that belong to other family members, and I didn't count ebooks. My number: 172, which is considerably fewer than I thought it would be. Which makes this seem like a much more doable project. I'm not going to get them all read this year, of course, but I can cross a few off the list. And I can use the money I would have spent on books to save for the trip to the UK, right?
What are your plans for the new year?
Previous posts about New Year's:
be forewarned that as long and wordy as my posts are now, they used to be worse.
New Year's Not Resolution (2010)
Six Days into 2014
Last year's offline experiment (2018)
2. But in case it isn't obvious, I have bad days. Weeks. Dean and I have rough patches in our marriage, more often than we probably should after 34 years of marriage. I sometimes lose sleep worrying about my kids. I can drive myself to distraction obsessively trying to figure out what I'm doing next-- back to work? more volunteer work? three months in the UK? (you have no idea how much that last one tempts me). There are days when I have a hard time thinking of a reason to get out of bed.
3. Some people-- for example, the Bloggess-- can turn their bad days/weeks/childhood into hilarious, touching, meaningful posts, but when I try to do it, it turns out maudlin and boring. It bores me, so lord knows I'm not inflicting it on you. At least not very often. But in case you can't tell, it seems important to put it out there. I don't think I'm projecting an image of a perfect life here, but if I am, now you know. Things can be (and often are) a mess around here. So there. That's enough about that.
4. I don't do New Year's resolutions because I can never keep them, but having a theme, something I want to work on, has been a good thing in the past. My word/theme for 2019 is action. Be active. Take action. Participate. Engage rather than observe. Do instead of think. Or at least, don't just think. Maybe engage is a more succinct way of putting it, and it has the additional benefit of invoking Captain Picard, which is never a bad thing, right?
5. About this time last year, I read Dan Harris's book 10% Happier, where he describes how he has used meditation to cope with anxiety and stress. He talks about one of his mentors, Mark Epstein, in a way that intrigued me, and I just finished reading Epstein's book Advice Not Given. I'm gradually becoming convinced that a more serious meditation practice than my usual half-assed attempts would be a good thing for me, but I think I need a little more structure than just thinking, hey! I should meditate more often! So I've been poking around various meditation apps and I downloaded Dan's 10% Happier app a few days ago. So far, I like it. I'll let you know how it goes.
6. I think I told you awhile ago about hearing Whitney from the Unread Shelf Project on Anne Bogel's podcast What Should I Read Next. I think last year when I started on Bookstagram (a subset of Instagram found by following the hashtag #bookstagram), I became much more aware of new books that were being published, and pretty editions of old books, and instead of buying fewer books last year I think *cringe* I actually bought more. So inspired by Whitney, I'm renewing my intention from last year to not buy new books and instead read the ones I've got.
7. Because I have lots of good books sitting on my shelves that I want to read. Step one of the #unreadshelfproject2019 is to count the number of unread books you have. So I did this yesterday. I didn't count books that belong to other family members, and I didn't count ebooks. My number: 172, which is considerably fewer than I thought it would be. Which makes this seem like a much more doable project. I'm not going to get them all read this year, of course, but I can cross a few off the list. And I can use the money I would have spent on books to save for the trip to the UK, right?
What are your plans for the new year?
Previous posts about New Year's:
be forewarned that as long and wordy as my posts are now, they used to be worse.
New Year's Not Resolution (2010)
Six Days into 2014
Last year's offline experiment (2018)
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Signs and portents
Today while busily shopping the sales in Florida, I passed a short, plump woman—she couldn’t have been more than 5’3” —who had two six foot wooden giraffes, one under each arm. I’m taking that as a good omen. 2019 will be better.
By the time you read this, the new year will be upon us. I probably went to bed at 10:30, how about you? Happy New Year! Nothing but good times ahead.
By the time you read this, the new year will be upon us. I probably went to bed at 10:30, how about you? Happy New Year! Nothing but good times ahead.
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