TdJ: Music

Today's post was to be about music.  Well, it will still be about music, but it is being written at 4:30PM in the afternoon after I have trained new hires all day, so it may be less coherent that my other posts.

When it comes to writing, I am a morning person.  Who knew?

To simulate the morning experience, I am having the morning tea (sans milk, as I am at the office and milk is hard to keep at the office).

Music is one of those things I enjoy as a matter of course during the day.  After a particularly long day I have been known to blast some metal.  But most of the time, the music nearest and dearest to my heart falls into two categories: Classical (actually, Baroque, but this may mean nothing to most of you) and 1980s alternative.  I could - and do - spend hours enjoying this heavenly art.

Back in the day - meaning in my early teens - I played in orchestra and band.  And I don't mean marching band.  I enjoyed hanging with musicians even at that young age.  For a while I entertained thoughts of going to college on a music scholarship.  If I had stuck with it, I probably could have pulled it off.  But my parents moved us out to the middle of nowhere where the county high school had no orchestra and nothing but marching band.  I sang in the chorus, but my heart wasn't in it.  It wasn't like I was a child prodigy - I got started way too late for that.  Hell, even in elementary I failed "flutophone" class.  I hated that damn plastic whistle.  Strings were more my thing.  After all, my mother's Siamese and I shredded my mother's guitar when I was just a toddler.  Good times.

I still like listening to things I played in orchestra thirty years ago.  I find that calming and soothing, and - hello - if you have read my blog you know I need all the soothing and calming I can get.

I also like listening to things I liked in high school.  I was never much for the Top 40 or overplayed stuff.  While some were oohing and ahhing over Def Leppard, I was listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees.  I absolutely hated country music.  Still do.  And most Top 40.  Mention Taylor Swift to me and I throw up a little bit in my mouth.  I've only heard one song in the last year or so that got popular radio airplay that I liked.  Then they played it to death so people hate it.
I also had a major girl crush (which continues to this day) on Adam Ant.  I defy any red-blooded heterosexual (or bisexual) female to watch his "Wonderful" video and not be happy.  Sure, it's a sad story, but it is a beautiful thing.

And I think I will leave you with that for today.  I know this wasn't much of an entry, but this is all I have for the moment.  Watch this and forgive me:

TdJ: Writing

Writing is the only topic that appears in this list twice.  On the 12th of the month, it is listed as a joy.  On the 20th of the month, it is listed as something to pay attention to.

So writing, something I need to pay attention to.

First, it made this list because it is something I enjoy, but do not do for pleasure -or non-work-related endeavors,  For the last week, this has changed, as I have blogged every day.  However, in the most recent past, I have been really lax about the blog, even about journaling, which I was doing only slightly more than blogging.  So at last week's Night of the Mothers, I had very little to give meat to my year.  Where had it gone?  It was lost in a soup of long days of work, bitterness, and physical pain.  My regular calendar was full of work events and days bills were due.  Even my We'Moon calendar just listed my useless menstrual calendar and my headaches, fibro flares, and toothaches.  Only two entries on the calendar about something wonderful.  So I vowed the next day to get a Slingshot organizer and therein to write things positive.  However, it has sadly sat empty this week.  It's time to change that.  I don't want to be looking on 2013 as a lost bitter year.

Second, writing made the list of something to pay attention to because I want to get MUCH better at it. In the last year, I have developed less obsession with my own words.  I can scratch out or hit the delete button with the best of them.  I can do what Natalie Goldberg instructs, just wild free writing and hate it all and not be saddened by it.  I am learning I have to exercise the writing muscle like any other and hopeful it will be lithe and limber some day, not arthritic and sedentary.

Third, writing made this list of something to pay attention to because I would love to do it more.  I still have hopes that someday I will be able to make a little money at it and not have to work such long hours for someone else, or at least be in a life situation that supports me having time to write.  I don't want to be sneaking off furtively to do it forever.

Fourth, writing made this list for an interesting reason.  When I write, I am get along better with others. It makes me feel okay about truly being an introvert at heart.  When I write, it is perfectly fine to see human interaction as a social experiment, interesting but not devastating.  It helps me get distance between me and my temper, or my need to think aloud, or blurt out every thought that enters my head.  (This last habit gets me into alot of trouble, let me tell you.)  When I write, it's okay for me to be a curmudgeon or for me to like people globally but be misanthropic on a personal level.  Well, it may not be okay, but it can make for slightly entertaining writing product.  When I write, I can take time to parse and present my words, thoughts and intended deeds in a format that is more palatable, understood, and even more acceptable.  It shuts up my monkey mind in a kind way, and yet still lets my cerebral chimp have its say.

Yes, I need to pay more attention to writing.  I need to journal more, keep on blogging.  No one may ever read the blog, but at least I am actively putting words together.  And that, my friends, is like wordy sit-ups.

TdJ: Weight

This may or may not be an emotional post for me.  I'm glad it fell on a weekend so I wouldn't have to get up at 4AM to have time to write it before dashing off to work.  As it is, I have gotten up and enjoyed a cup of tea while giggling through an episode of The Green Hornet and another episode of The Invisible Man.  Good stuff.

Okay, weight.  As a woman I have been conditioned to hate my body.  No surprises there.  The surprising thing is how seduced I, the chick who always wants to subvert the dominant paradigm, have become with the idea of being wafer thin (for Monty Python Meaning of Life fans, an allusion).

I was not overweight as a child.  I was not the most active child, always preferring a book to whatever else was going on.  I liked being outside, but if it was especially hot or cold, I liked being in air conditioning or heat with a good book more.

Sometime in my high school years I started thinking I was fat.  The first culprit was looking at fellow female classmates.  Some were thinner, some were the same, and some were heavier than I was.  But I couldn't get past the idea that some were thinner.  This became secondary only to grades where I felt the competitive edge..... Don't panic, it passed.  Not the desire to be thinner, but the desire to compete with others.

To put this in perspective, I submit the following photo from the evening of my high school graduation:

Funny, isn't it?  The dress was a vintage, one that had belonged to my aunt in the 1940s, I believe.  It was a size 8.  I felt 300 pounds.  But I was happy to be finished with the social experiment others called high school.  

Fast forward through almost 26 years, and my inner image of myself then is much closer to the outer reality.  No, I am nowhere near 300 pounds, thankfully.  But most days I feel like there is nothing I am doing or not doing that would prevent me from weighing 300 pounds.  Weight in general seems to be a mystery to me.  I don't feel fat, I don't feel thin.  All the same, I avoid photographs like the plague.  Case in point, I tried to take a "vacation" for the first time in 7 years this past summer.  It consisted of walking around the town I live in, as I had no money and still had to carry the emergency on call phone so ended up working at least 5 hours a day anyway.  Tim snapped a photo with Tara and me in the capital, which is less than a half mile from our house.  

I was horrified!!!! Who was that fat woman holding my child?  And the hair, oh lord, save me from that hair.

So I managed another six months away from the camera.  However, in the interim the scale says I weigh about 10 pounds less than when this photo was taken.  I feel thinner, as I try to stretch and be as physically active as the fibromyalgia will allow.  But who knows.  I still feel mushy.

The bottom line for me is that I am not about what is on the outside.  But at this stage in my life, I have to live with what is on the outside.  So I either make peace with it, or I go screaming into this good night.  And every time I try that, the phone rings or someone needs something.  So damn.  Here I am, deal with it.  Maybe this is MY grumpy cat photo?  

TdJ: Baking Bread

When Chloe, my 17 year old daughter, was a toddler, I baked my first loaf of bread.  I used the recipe found in the bread bible of my twenties, The Laurel Kitchen's Bread Book.  It was for a yeasted whole wheat, just the basic loaf.  I was one of those rare lucky ones, and my first loaf turned out almost perfect.  It had heft but also a crusty fluffiness as well, with an almost nutty aftertaste.  I was enamored. My ex-husband was intrigued but alas not sold, as he grew up with plastic white bread and to this day, well into his forties, will consume nothing else.  My little blonde, blue-eyed enigma however, toddled into the kitchen and devoured a slice slathered with herb butter.  Thus an informed, more nuanced palate was born. A fact which I am sure she both blesses and curses me for.

And like all meaningful events, that first loaf of bread has eclipsed all others.  My last loaf was born almost 7 years ago.  The last baby was just a baby, and her father was nonplussed (as he is only slightly more adventuresome in palate than the other one) and my heart wasn't in it.  I had baked it in response to drunken taunting from my husband, "You say you can do it, but I've never seen it.  You're probably lying about it."  In the midst of severe postpartum depression, I trudged into a cold kitchen with a baby tied to my hip and made that damn bread.  From the process emerged a hefty albeit tasty brick.  The husband staggered into the kitchen to cut himself a slice, pressing the loaf into a patty as he sawed through.  The brick was further decimated into an inch or so remnant.  I tossed it into the trash, never tasting it myself.

Baking bread is an exercise in faith.  In hope the ingredients are assembled.  It matters where and how long ago the flour was milled from the grain.  Science enters the picture as the yeast is dissolved in a bath of perfect temperature.  Like life, you have to get in there and get your hands dirty as you knead and knead again to form the dough.  There is also the time of hibernation, where the loaf proofs, the yeast working its magic, as your efforts rest under a clean dish towel like a little nap in a warm room.  And finally the risk of shoving all this work into the oven, like sending your child into the world, and not really knowing what will result when the loaf emerges from the fiery furnace.

One of these days I hope to have the time off work, a moment to myself, and some stolen moments from exhaustion and pain to bake bread again.  I'd like to exercise some faith.

TdJ: Housecleaning

I assume this post should be entitled, "Housekeeping," but I am not sure this is a topic I can write much about.

There's not much housecleaning that goes on at Chez Terre.  With my current schedule and feeling crappy or exhausted most of the time, housecleaning is usually relegated to the weekends, where I cram 7 days of living in a day and a half.  It's a lackluster effort to be sure, but it is better than nothing.

If I used the Martha Stewart measurement to assess my domestic duties, I would be lucky to get a C-.  Fortunately, I grade myself on a steep curve.  In my head, I envision the family dynamic as measured against a sepia-toned 1950s sit-com, except in this version, I am the dude in the suit.  I'm the one who shoves off each day to work while the spouse stays home.  Just like Tim doesn't wear pearls or greet me at the door with slippers and a cigar, I don't often make it home in time for dinner - unless dinner is served at 9PM or later.  And I do way more housework than Ward, and nowhere near as much as June.  I do more housework than Carol Brady however, simply because Alice doesn't live here.  Ever.

When I close my eyes and picture my perfect household, it's not perfect.  It is clean, no tumbleweeds of dog hair.  And it smells good.  Like bread baking, or soup simmering, and clean wind sun-kissed from the clothesline.

So what would it take for the housecleaning to be all it can be?  Well, me to have a normal schedule for starters.  And then for me to manage what time I do have in such a way to dedicate more time more than once every 7 days.  For example, tonight I have slept one hour and then woken up in pain and can't sleep for the pain.  If I could clean through the insomnia, perhaps.  Or if I could sleep and then feel better so I have energy for cleaning as well as working and interacting with humans....  At this late hour, it all feels like fantasy.

TdJ: Physical Health

Today's post will have to be short, as I have overslept this morning.  I came home last night and the gas had been shut off so we have no heat and hot water.  It's hard for me to sleep when the bedroom temperatures slip below 60 degrees, so I did not sleep well and woke up with severe congestion and a pounding headache.

My physical health is a concern simply because so much depends upon it.  I am not permitted to take sick days and so becoming sick can jeopardize my job.  My job takes on mythic proportions because I am the sole working adult in my household.  If I take a sick day my children may become homeless.  At least that's how I see it.  I mean, I haven't taken a minute off work and we don't have heat or hot water. I guess that's kind of telling.  It's always all up to me.  And so I can't get sick, ever.  And if I do, I have to work through it, keep doing everything that is expected and demanded of me.

As far as my physical health goes, I have the usual laundry list that a typical fat 43 year old would have: fibromyalgia, migraines, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, this weird years-long tooth/jaw/neck pain, chronic sinus and allergy issues, plantar fasciitis, back pain, sleep apnea.  Good times.

I also get a bit crazed about my physical health because, as I have said before, I am not one of the Chosen Americans lucky enough to have health insurance.  I am the first person in my family in two generations not to have health insurance.  It is has been pointed out to me that my income and lack of benefits mirrors the value of my job and what I do, and I just hope that is not true.  It's not to me.  I prefer to think society is just really skewed in its priorities when people who play basketball are paid millions and people who work with people with disabilities are not paid enough to support their families or have health care.

So this is all I have time for for.  I could kvetch for pages, and have in the past, so I am going to let it go  today.  I feel too sick to write about physical health.  Ironic, isn't it?

TdJ: Cooking

And today I come to a joy.
Basically, with Topic du Jour every third post is a joy in my life.  The instructions were to alternate with a worry, then something I need to pay attention to, then a joy.  Hence, this is the third TdJ, so this is the joy.

I love to cook.

Sometimes I am fabulous.  And I don't just mean, "Damn right I am great in the kitchen, I could eat for hours."  Although I used to be able to eat for hours, but then again, that is another TdJ.

I actually enjoy the act of cooking.  I like throwing some ingredients together - especially organic, home grown (i.e., farmer's market - no garden for me the last few years), working the alchemy and then savoring the results.

Usually my results are pretty good.  They range from sublime to edible.  In the process I have been able to educate at least one child's palate.

Case in point: Sunday night I had created a dipping oil for some sourdough to go with our shrimp scampi and pasta and wilted in garlic oil rainbow chard.  I used the new bottle of olive oil to wilt the chard, but the EVOO (which has been around and loving used for a few months - not so extra virgin olive oil any more, whore) on the dipping sauce.  The husband slurped it up.  The 17 yr old took one swipe with her bread and then said, "Disgusting!  What the hell is that?" and pointed to the dipping oil. I took a tentative taste: rancid.  Husband cannot taste that oil is rancid.  I am not sure why - perhaps the 50 years of eating shitty food has ruined his palate?  Maybe because he is a yankee and eats weird shit? Or maybe because his childhood gourmet delights were shit on a shingle and creamed peas?  Who knows.  At any rate, I am proud of my elder daughter, who caught it right away.  She is the one I raised with less male interference.  The younger daughter ate pasta with cheese on it that night.  No shrimp.  A crust of dry bread.  She is fighting the education of her palate all the way.  I suspect that when I am not around, her father is telling her that food not on the dollar menu is not worth eating, or some shit.  Because she is the least adventuresome consumer I have met.  Even my mother and sister will venture out on a culinary limb more often.

However, sometimes the results of my kitchen witch alchemy are less than sublime.  I've already told you of Sunday's rancid dipping sauce.  I have made things from recipes which were hideous.  I have also gotten a bag or two of vegetables at Trader Joe's that sounded wonderful by description but fell flat in the meal.  I have made things that were perfectly fine but by the time they were served I was no longer in the mood for them.  I have also made things - and this occurs most often - that my family loves but I cannot for the life of me understand the allure.

I am an impatient cook.  I am not afraid of the high setting on the stove.  I do not panic when pots boil and a little water sloshes.  My husband, however, if he hears a pot boiling, will go shut the stove off entirely or turn it down low.  A real problem if the recipe calls for boiling for longer than 30 seconds, which all of them do.  I am not a fan of overcooked pasta, yet my husband eschews al dente for mushy.     The most entertaining experiment in my household has been the whistling tea pot.  When I first started using it again (instead of the electric hot pot I've used for years for my tea), Tim and Chloe would go insane when it would whistle, run into the kitchen, turn off the stove and yell for me that the pot was whistling.  Now he will lie on the couch and she in her bed and ignore that thing until it boils dry.

I am also in love with garlic.  It features in at least two meals I cook each week.  My herb and spice cabinet is three shelves in a dedicated cabinet, and when I cleaned and organized it - New Year's Eve, of course - I counted over 100 varieties.  I had 11 kinds of curry, which I do feel is excessive, as I only make curries a couple of times a month.

I don't cook as much as I would like.  This is usually because I am so exhausted when I get home from work, or so overwhelmed and over life in general on the weekends.  There is also the fact the kitchen is usually a mess from the culinary efforts and grazing of the rest of the family, who inhabit the house a great deal of hours per day than I do.

Cooking is comfort.  It is a way to exert a tangible effort to nurture my daughters.  And it's a creative outlet.  I am down with that.