Friends and Family

I'm so glad it rained. Its been hellish lately, and as someone who is out a lot during the daylight hours, I can say with authority that weeks straight of 90 degrees, blazing sun and hideously high humidity are exhausting. Some rainy gray days are just what the doctor ordered. I'm meeting Adam for lunch and I'm so happy it's nasty out I might even try to walk the 100 blocks to meet him.

I've realized lately that being alone so much during the day lets me indulge in my predilection for pop culture all too freely. And then Jen comes home and all I have to say to her is "The L word is getting a spin off! Maybe! Sort of on the internet!" Or "I saw Tina Fey's yearbook photo today!" and I'm starting to be ashamed of myself. So I started to read some feminist theory, which wasn't something I ever went in for much before, being mostly wrapped up in the queers...and its interesting. Not ALL for me, but useful in some ways, and its nice to feel like I'm not the first person to have the thoughts I sometimes have about how frustrating it is to try to operate in a world where the dominant theories of behavior and culture don't always consider gender in a way that's relevant to my personal experience.

Interesting that I've started to look at this stuff now, because Jen and I have hit some new snags on our babymaking journey and we're talking more about the possibility of me carrying the child instead of her. I must admit, because of my own hangups, I've been ambivalent about this idea in the past. But now I'm getting really excited about it. And the way I'm getting excited about it is by removing the idea of pregnancy or motherhood from the preconceived notions I've usually associated them with, which really made them rather discontiguous with my identity and sense of self, and beginning to reframe them in a way that's relevant for me and me and Jen. Which is actually, literally THRILLING.

Oh no. Its getting sunny out again. Fuck.

Ugh.

Ok, so I had pounds of zucchini to use up and I’d been planning on a very veg-heavy absorption pasta, but then I saw a variety of posts the web about boiled pasta with zucchini and I gave in to the always gorgeous photos at Smitten Kitten and went with a julienned zucchini spaghetti.

First of all, don’t be fooled by how nice all this julienned zucchini looks:

While the results are better than if I’d cut by hand, the mental anguish was far greater. I have the STUPIDEST OXO Mandoline, with a clunky finger guard that I ended up having to use because it was so hard to force the zucchini through the julienne blade that I was sure I’d slice off a finger if I didn’t use the guard. UGH, the whole thing is bulky and awkward and the only part I like is how the legs fold out. It’s easy to twiddle the dial to adjust the thickness, but nearly impossible to pull out the piece that lets you either thoroughly wash the flat blade or flip it around to get wavy cuts. Argh.

Look at what the finger guard does to the vegetables:

That is a much smaller leftover piece than usual, because I was tempting fate and not really using it as directed at that point. The one time I tried to use this for onions about half of each onion was unusable. Grr.

Anyway, I wish instead of looking at Smitten Kitchen’s photos, I had actually read her recipe. I was in a coma and cooking without paying attention and I ended up not using any garlic or….anything that would give this flavor. Bleck. It was so boring. Had I read her directions or used a lick of common sense I would have cooked garlic in olive oil and then tossed the pasta/zucchini in THAT. Instead I just tossed olive oil over the pasta and zucchini, gave it a stir, and ate it alone while nursing my mandoline-wounded feelings in front of the TV while Ben was at band rehearsal. Tragic.

It was the first time I used some of my basil, though. That was a bright spot.

Happier times ahead: Since I was home for the weekend there is lovely Oregon Food Porn to come.

Oh, for shame, Kate! I swore to myself that I would do some posting while I was home in Oregon (for a very, very lovely wedding, in which I was participating and at which I gave a toast–eep–and ate wonderful food and danced a lot and my feet hurt), but I was too too busy and didn’t. Very briefly, here is the final result of the magnetic blackboard saga. I painted 5 or 6 coats of the magnetic primer, one coat of white primer and one coat (plus touch-ups) of homemade blackboard paint, from Martha Stewart Living per Germi’s tip. The chalkboard works, but not that well–the wall is just too textured to get a smooth line from the chalk. I love the idea, though, and will definitely use the recipe for future projects–it is super easy and I bet it works great if you have a smooth surface and, um, use matte paint instead of eggshell heavily doctored with regular acrylics. Ahem.

Anyway!

This before picture doesn’t show the blank wall very well–the blank wall where the board went, anyway. But it does show the messy office and how badly I needed to hang art.

Now:

Closer look at the board–I had no idea I was on a citrus and orange-colored-things kick until I put up a pile of things I’d been saving in one place. The power of the inspiration board!

In addition to not writing very well on the bumpy surface, the chalk is not well served by my horrible handwriting–I need penmanship classes. There is a girl in my office with the most astonishing handwriting, and I always think back to my friend Margaret’s gorgeous perfect cursive with longing… I am too impatient!

Funny synergy thing: I just caught up on my bloglines from the last 5 days and saw that Mrs. Limestone just did a magnetic blackboard, too. And then I saw blackboard walls all over at The Kitchn today. Odd.

Some dickface on the street called me a spaz today. He almost ran into me and then we did the little "oops, trying to get around you but keep running into you" dance and then he said "Whatup SPAZ!?" And I was like, who the fuck calls a grown lady a spaz? I was even wearing a cute dress and shit, for once not looking like an urchin. Dick.

Speaking of cute, Jen got her hair cut and dyed and she looks adorable.

I'll write the rest of this up later, but while it was fresh on my mind. I went hiking this weekend, and because I missed the train that goes to "Applachian Trail Station" I looked up the closest next station and found it to be only 1.9 miles away so I got a ticket to there and hiked back. However, when I got to the train station... there was no there, there. Nada. I back tracked, I forward tracked, I circled around. I was carrying ~40lbs of crap on my back, and 2 hours of this bumping around Rt.22 was getting old. And while I can be proud in this case I was ready and willing to ask directions, but this was the side of a highway.

Finally caught someone in their front yard and they set me straight, I was off by more than a mile. Or rather, google AND the MTA are both off by more than a mile. They correlate, reality doesn't.

Here is a map from the "Appalachian Trail Station" to "The real Appalachian Trail Station" - sattelite view shows you the pavillion that is the station.

More later - with pictures!

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Since neither of my breasts lactate, I've been trying to help Laura out as best I can. What's worked so far is to have her go to sleep early and I stay up with the lil' guy so she can get the first couple hours of sleep. Laura takes over until the early morning and then I have him from the early a.m on.

This has worked out pretty well, and to my great relief, I've discovered that Freddy shares my interest in this year's Tour De France. While I let out a series of expletives when I found out about Ricardo Ricco's doping scandal, Freddy was so upset he crapped his pants.

I need to start reading more to Freddy. At this point, it's all about hearing the sound of my voice, so I can be selfish in choosing the reading materials. My last attempt at reading to him, I pulled "The Commitments" by Roddy Doyle off the shelf. The book is one of my favorites, but reading it out loud is difficult if you can't pull off a decent South Dublin accent (which I can't). I've been looking for an excuse to crack open my Shakespeare, this just might be it.

It is so fucking HOT. Relief is allegedly in sight, thunderstorms predicted for tonight and tomorrow, but right now every time I go outside I feel like I am literally in an oven.

Yesterday I fortunately had a mostly air conditioned schedule. I proctored a practice exam for a few hours. I had forgotten to bring a book, which seemed like it was gonna make the hours crawl, but I did remember to bring my L word fanfic notebook, and I happily entertained myself for three hours writing out longhand some ridiculous "L-word goes to summer camp in the nonexistant past" adventures. I don't often write on paper for that long at a stretch and it was so much fun and tons easier to focus with no internet available. I had been thinking of trying to spend more time reading and writing not on a computer, and this clinches it, its a whole different ball game and one I enjoy playing.

After the proctoring, I went to see Mamma Mia at the Ziegfeld with Jen and my cousins and my mom and my aunt and some other family friends. That movie was FUN. I was giggling and singing and I didn't even care that it was a ridiculous plot and sort of a poorly made film. Who cared? I thought Meryl Streep sort of rocked it too...and her pals too. To see oldish chicks just really having a great time and romantic dramas and jumping on beds and getting drunk and being the heroine...it was really great.

After the movie dinner and some music outdoors at Lincoln Center and then over to Darby's boyfriend Jason's birthday drinks at what used to be my laundromat in a former incarnation of Avenue A. The bar was chill for a while and it was really nice to see the always lovely and elusive Ms. Jessica Glazer, but then it got packed and Jen was like, lets blow this pop stand. So we went home and had pizza and cuddles.

Vacation in two weeks!

Aoi's frame is small. Very small. It was built for someone about three inches shorter than me.

Not too much of a problem, because I can still adjust it right. Unfortunately, she came back from the shop out of adjustment, so I now have to find the sweet spot again.

Other than than: she rides like a dream, she still wants me to go faster, and I'm way, way, way out of shape.

Last night my mom called to ask me to do her a favor and wait for her furniture delivery on Thursday. My mom is great and I don't mind doing it, but I have plans to have lunch with my father on Thursday, and I haven't seen my dad in over a month, not even on father's day, so I said, "well, I have plans with dad." I also have a standing agreement with Jen to pick up our CSA delivery on thursdays, so if I did wait for my mom's furniture it would not only derail my plans w. my dad, but also mean that I had to do a lot of rushing uptown and downtown to meet all the deliveries and make it to work on time. Which I would have done, but again, not ideal, which i mentioned.

Now. Lets keep in mind I never said no to my mother's request. I just sort of hemmed and hawed and said, we'll I've got this other stuff, but it sounds like you're saying I have to do this pickup for you, so I will "but it fucks up my plans." were the exact words I used.

She didn't like that.

My mother sometimes accuses me of being cruel. That's the word. Cruel. Now. Maybe I could have used some more elegant language to express myself, but I don't think that pointing out that I, as a grown woman, who had made some plans already, was reluctant to break them is really cruel. And its not like I made these plans with casual acquaintances or something, like who gives a shit if you break them. Its a plan with my dad and a commitment to my girlfriend, people who I love. Which probably made it worse actually, cause if my mom was seeing it as a them over me thing, then I do seem like a shitball. But that wasn't it at all of course.

Whatever, the whole thing blew up and she was like, forget it, don't do me any favors. And I was like, gggrrrrrrrrrrr! What the fuck am I supposed to say? I felt awful, because I know I'm not cruel, and even if I were, not waiting for someone's furniture wouldn't be a good example of cruelness...but I feel bad that my mom feels and thinks that I'm hurting her, let alone on purpose. I love my mom and admire her and I want her to be happy and feel loved by me. But somehow I just don't express myself in a way that is perceived as loving. Or I do sometimes but not enough of the time? I don't know. It makes me feel shitty.

When I picked up the CSA share last week I found myself facing a replay of the previous two weeks:

-1 head lettuce
-1 bunch beets
-1.5 pounds summer squash/zucchini
-1.5 pounds cucumbers
-1 bunch chard
-1 bunch sage

Sadly I had fallen a bit behind and still had beets from two weeks before languishing in the produce drawer, along with zucchini from one week before (we hadn’t eaten at home much). Eek! Time to do some processing.

I was on the phone with my mom and we looked up ways of cooking the beets without using the oven, because it was wickedly hot and humid out. She found instructions for microwaving them, and I decided to go against every instinct I possess and give it a shot. All I did was scrub the beets and cut off the greens about an inch up from the root, then put them in a pyrex baking pan (I have a smallish square one) and covered it tightly with saran wrap. I cooked them for ten minutes, then pulled out the little beets that felt tender and gave the big ones another ten. I then allowed them to cool far too much before I put on gloves and peeled them, which meant I was sweating profusely while clutching my cellphone to my ear with my shoulder and desperately trying to finagle the skins off (note: peel beets as soon as you can handle them without burning yourself; don’t let them cool). To top off this vision of grace and loveliness, I was wearing my ratty around-the-house clothes with a pair of 3.5 inch silver wedges that I’m breaking in for a wedding this weekend. Thank god I was home alone… Anyway, the beets looked like hell but tasted just fine.

I’d have to do a side-by-side test to see if the flavor is more concentrated in the oven, but honestly these tasted great dressed in a vinaigrette as a side dish.

After I had recovered from the traumatic beet peeling endeavor, I hauled out my mandoline (slicer, not instrument), and cut up about half of the zucchini and summer squash into 1/4 inch ribbons, which I tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper:

Ben grilled steak and the zucchini and we ate outside, desperate for a breeze:

Still to come: Dull zucchini spaghetti and my mandoline rage

The third week (two weeks ago, ahem) injected a trace of color in with the greens:

-1 head romaine lettuce
-1 bunch collard greens
-4 small cucumbers
-2 zucchini
-2 summer squash
-1 kohlrabi
-1 bunch thyme
-1 bunch scallions

Have you guys cooked collard greens? I’m a Northern girl; I’d never encountered them before. They are HUGE–check out the bunch filling the entire drainer:

I didn’t feel like boiling them in a classic “mess o’ greens,” nd I didn’t have a ham hock or anything on hand for flavoring, so I looked up how to sauté them instead. I washed and cut up the greens:

And then boiled them in salted water for 15 minutes or so.

I drained them and pressed the water out:

And then sautéed them with garlic and olive oil until they tasted good. (How specific!)

With a good amount of salt and pepper, they made a nice side dish with sausage and funny O-shaped pasta from Trader Joe’s:

I must say I prefer kale or chard, though.

I'm not even finished with my first 8 hour shift in forever, and I'm already toast right now. My head hurts, and my body is wanting me to get out of the chair and move already. My brain has the consistancy of chocolate pudding, and my mouth is having problems with forming words.

Guh.

Oh yes, How could anyone have possibly known this would happen!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121599777668249845.html

Really folks, we've known for over 6 years, that these guys were playing poker with the new improved "Taxpayer's Gambling Insurance" and almost exactly nothing was done to stop it. Incidentally, that implicit knowledge of a bailout gave them an approximate 40% edge when raising money from investors.

If you want big money, don't bother stealing it, get the feds to back you then drive your company into the ground.

Am I sick? I can't tell.  Well, I know I feel like shit...I just am sort of hoping its an illusion, a trick of the wind.

My prescription for myself has been ignoring it and having tons of fun. TK and Andrew are back from the UK, they came for a sleepover last week. This weekend we had a lovely picnic in Fort Greene Park, complete with perfect weather, apples to apples and empanadas. And you know, friends. And then yesterday I tutored and had office hours, a surprisingly pleasant workday, and then Jen and i treated ourselves to a date at a wine bar. We even took a CAB home. That rarely happens with our tight budget these days.

And yet. I still feel pretty hideous. Sore throat. Wicked headache. Really exhausted. Pleh.

Laura's mom came to town to help out when the baby was born. Among other talents she's an amazing cook and since she got here before Freddy arrived, I was finally able to put on the sympathy weight that the books describe. As Laura and I have been trying to set up a routine for our lives, she's made it that much easier helping us around the house, giving advice, basically keeping the place from becoming an absolute sty. Really, I would advise anyone thinking about having kids of their own to first consider having Valerie Cass as a mother-in-law!

Me: "So, I'm planning to bike across the country at some point."

wendolen (paraphrased): "I think you should go to Butte."

Me: "But why? That's just over the passes. Everything is flat after that."

wendolen (paraphrased): "Exactly."

---

Well then. I'm taking this as a challenge. Butte it is.

I've not been very good about photographing everything, luckily my friend Rich is, enjoy:

There are three things left to do in the kitchen:

-Install a hood
-Replace the lighting over the sink and in the middle of the room
-Hang art

I find the first two things totally overwhelming, but the third I can handle. Looking at the kitchen photos with the new shelf really made me aware of how bare the wall above the sink is, so I want to make that a priority. I have a whole pile of amazing prints and posters I’ve been buying from people like Keep Calm (the tea print), Amy Ross, Renee Garner of Wolfieandthesneak and Kate Bingaman-Burt. It’s an embarrassment of riches and I can’t seem to fit any of it in normal-sized frame (except the Amy Ross Manshroom, which is just languishing in my office waiting to be hung up).

I got the Kate Bingman-Burt and Renee Garner stuff just this week and both ladies sent along lovely little surprises with my purchases. I thought I’d post some photos since I was charmed.

From Kate I bought four of her “Obsessive Consumption” drawings, of things we like to eat. (The bananas are for Ben only. Yuck.) She is moving to Portland, OR as we speak and was having a moving sale in her Etsy shop. She included two issues of her Zine, which chronicles a purchase every day, each month. The zines are tiny and so fun and charming, I really enjoyed them.

For now I’ve propped the wrapped drawings on the kitchen shelf–once I frame them they may still live in the same place! Or I might try to hang them low under the shelf; not quite sure.

Renee really surpassed herself with darling packaging. I was a doofus and ordered the posters seperately, just far enough apart that she had to send them in two tubes (I’m sorry!). The first poster was the Fungi one I’ve been wanting since before Christmas. She sent it with a magnifying glass!! Plus a “No Plastic is Fantastic” fact card.

The second poster, the “pods” print, came today, and tucked inside was a little sketchbook with some of Renee’s drawings on the front, and an awesome lime green pencil. (Plus a nice note inside the sketchbook.)

(It was hard to photograph the funny pencil, but here’s my best attempt. It says “Wolfie and the Sneak Love You” but WordPress has started cropping my photos for me, so part of it is cut off.)

I can’t express how much I love Etsy; once I get around to framing everything (sigh) my house will be packed with art by people I’ve gotten to interact with, instead of random impersonal stuff. I was on the phone with my brother when I opened the new poster, and he said, “Etsy is sort of the CSA of art, isn’t it?” I think he hit the nail on the head!

More food soon, I promise…

I've been doing some thinking lately and it is leading me in a new direction on my thinkings about a fluid economy. We are in a recession. People can debate me about the technical meaning of the word recession, and those people can feel free to employ the term 'economic downturn' or 'slowing economy' - whatever; recession.

I had been of the opinion that 'economic downturns' were a fixture of a regular economy. That these things happen in pendulum swings of sorts, like the world economy breaths in and out and nations are just taken along for the ride. Breath in: growth and prosperity, breath out: recession and job loss. And that, to some degree, this was a good thing, as semantically everyone everywhere couldn't always be profitable.

But now, I feel I've been alive long enough, and have personally witnessed enough of these events that I think I can call that line of reasoning wrong. This change in thought comes at the heels of a LOT of thinking about sustainability. Every one of these economic downturn's in the U.S. has been caused in turn by a trail of overspending, poor accounting, and frankly bad common sense. That is to say, there is no chronological swing of the economy.

There are, natural economic events, that, I'll grant can cause micro-setbacks - as the recent events of the river have shown us; or rather our corn crop. But these events cause smaller ripples, and short of a long chain of natural disasters aren't going to provide the basis for a nationwide, or global economic downturn.

The difficulty lies in tracing any economic downturn to any single event and then quantifying a ruleset that is sustainable. Well, heck, what is a poor practice? I'm working my way towards a set of Sustainable Business Rules - which someday I may publish, but for the purposes of today's article, lets just look at some cases from this particular economic crunch. I like the fact that my blog has been online that I can point to some old articles where I spoke about these things as they were happening.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae just slid 18% on the market in a single day. Interestingly, recent accusations of cooking the books go back to 2004 http://www.workers.org/2005/us/housing-0505/ So, while it may seem like new knowledge now that the entire housing market was propped up on false data for an extended period of time, it wasn't. These early warnings were ignored or dismissed. Overstating profit of GSE's (government sponsored enterprises, or limited monopolies) seems to be a common factor in these things.

When Entire Stock Markets need to be bailed out by the Feds - Aug. 2007 - we should probably acknowledge that something went screwy and do something about it, instead of burying it in the news.

Congress allows National Debt to top 9 trillion (insert previous high water line here) for first time in history "The Senate voted Thursday to allow the national debt to swell to nearly $9 trillion, preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes." in Mar.2006 - currently $9,506,133,823,396.86 - National debt in and of itself isn't a bad thing. Rising national debt out of proportion with revenue is.

I realize I most recently wrote this - about poor accouting in Iraq http://www.treslervania.com/node/427 , I had forgotten that I had also written this, long before the fact. http://www.treslervania.com/node/149 - "Funnelling Taxes Through Iraq" - the point isn't to say "I told you so" but that Government Accounting in general needs to be tighter on the Military Industrial Complex - particularly the contractors.

There are many more than that, but those are just grist for the mill. The larger point is that I think a periodic downturn, is really a periodic 'forgetting of the rules and why they are there.' Wealth - Disaster - Recovery - Caution - Laxness - Wealth cycle makes a pretty good sine wave, and it is easy enough to make Time the X axis, when perhaps "Recent Human Memory" would be a better X axis.

Of note, we also have tendency to refuse to look at the bigger picture, wanting to deal with specific issues. It is too big to think of changes in the housing market, student loan market, credit card market, national spending and taxation, hedgefunds, etc, but many of us feel we have a handle on any one or two of these. Too bad it is the big picture that matters.