Baking

I don't get to bake very often: with young kids, most of my cooking is pasta with cheese sauce/meat-potatoes-veggie that sort of thing. Inexpensive, nutritious food for younger people with undeveloped palates leaning toward the bland. I did make a nice chicken curry a few weekends ago, and I made a nice broccoli soup with chicken stock from the remains of the same roast chicken that contributed its leftovers to the curry, but baking? Not so much.

Tomorrow, I'm going to a potluck brunch, and I promised a pastry, so I'm making a real pastry: wienerbrod (Viennese bread, in Danish, so the Danish call a Danish a Viennese, so there you are) with a vanilla custardy center, only because I thought I had some almond paste, but I don't, so I have to make a filling of my own. Danish pastry dough is similar to puff pastry dough, except the Danes are smarter: they make it easier to have the dough turn out okay because in addition to the dough layers and the butter layers (yes, layers of real butter) to make it fluffy, the Danes have yeast in the dough too. It makes a nice buttery dough that you don't have to treat as gently as the puff pastry dough. The dough will rise even if the butter intermingles a bit with the dough, which can't happen too much with puff pastry.

I roll out the dough, layer the butter in, and then roll it out some more and then fold it in thirds, chill for 30 minutes, and then do it all again. After two roll outs, there are nine separate layers of butter in the dough. I'll do two more roll outs, which will leave me with 81 layers of butter in the pastry, or I could just stop with 21. Either way, it'll be a good pastry dough, and tomorrow I'll bake it up before heading out, so that everyone gets a nice fresh pastry.

Nothing half as good as what Champurrado, in his cooking-god-mode could do, but I think people will be happy to eat the food I bring. We'll see.

More Metro Happenings

Yesterday, I had a man ask me about my knitting on the Metro. Foolishly, he waited until I was packing up to get off at Dupont Circle, so I just said: "I'm knitting lace, but I need to get off the train." He wasn't hitting on me. He was sitting with another woman, older than me, and they were talking about work. I understand someone in their office was dodging being given his annual review by a variety of techniques, like he thought the bad news wouldn't come if he just avoided the meeting long enough.

That avoidant attitude toward facing unpleasantness lets you know that this employee was a bad employee. Take it on the chin, big guy. Anyone who has ever worked in a variety of jobs for a variety of employers has had jobs that he or she hasn't done well. Or bosses who you couldn't please. Don't run from the bad news.

Of course, I could have been that guy's wife or sister, so the pair chatting about personnel matters in public really needs to think about discretion and confidentiality. I know, they're just having a conversation on the train. I just have had a year of not overhearing much confidential stuff during my commute, and now that bad penny has turned up again. The avoidant guy was named James. I didn't catch his last name, but James, if you're out there: accept the email meeting invitation and go to the meeting. Whatever they tell you, you need to know, good or bad. Unfortunately, it sounds like bad news. But man up and show up. Thank you.

Metro Exposes Derailed Narcissist

It was almost too good to be true. I got to listen to a cell-phone conversation of an upper middle class middle aged white guy in shock.

Why was he in shock? A woman he had worked with in some prior job didn't recognize him.

I almost felt bad for the guy -- his "I'm the center of the universe" perspective was not working. He kept saying to the person on the other end of the cell phone: "How could she not recognize me?" Oh, I don't know -- you just don't fly above the radar for whatever reason? I almost wanted to tell him that he didn't need everyone to recognize him.

So We'll Go No More A-Roving

Even though I think George Gordon, Lord Byron, was a truly loathsome man (and a pretty good exemplar of white male privelege, although the term didn't exist yet for him), I do love his poetry. I do get a bit of a whiff of what drew people to him (despite, or partly because of Lady Caroline Lamb's bon mot that he was "mad, bad, and dangerous to know").

I'm actually thinking of no more a-roving because it seems like my normally peripatetic nature has become pretty housebound. I used to, when home due to wisdom tooth extraction or flu, get cabin fever on the first day home and go out for walks. Quiet weekends were anathema: I had to be out and about.

Despite young children, work, and a generally busy schedule and life, in the first year and a half after my divorce, I got out a lot. Dating and just getting out and about. I can't figure out if exhaustion or ennui has caught up with me or if I'm just in a phase of my life where I've just lost interest in outreach (not good), but nothing but Innana or the FoilKids can get me out and about. Nothing piques my curiosity. Very little makes me think: "Oh, I want to do that."

I'm not depressed: I'm enjoying my kids, books, cooking, music, and life. I'm just not feeling the need to seek out interaction, admiration from the opposite sex, sex, new experiences, or anything other than really cheap groceries (I found some roasting chickens for $.59/pound the other day -- that was exciting). Is it menopause? Single motherhood? Something in the water?

As an example, yesterday, PiousMan called. I parted with him on a friendly basis, but I thought it was pretty clear: I wasn't converting, he needed conversion for a further relationship, I wasn't willing to do that. A year and change hasn't altered the situation. So the phone call was a bother. And I had gotten home only in time for the tail end of the debate, and I wanted to see it. Yes, watching John McCain refer to women's health issues as something we use as a ploy to get those abortions we just want to have really was something I wanted to do.

A year ago, I probably would have agreed to go out with PiousMan, even though I knew that this is a blind alley. But now, I don't want to waste his time or mine. I'm not sure what he thinks he wants. I view this as proof that we want things, all the time, that will do us no good. If he marries (or has any kind of relationship) outside his religious community, he'll be ostracized, members of his suddenly-former community will mourn him as a dead man. He won't see his children or family. I'm pretty clear that he doesn't want to give those things up.

I pretty flatly rejected the idea of conversion to his "we follow a text that is the actual word of god" religion (I think anyone can interpret "Fuck, no" as a broad and all-encompassing rejection of an idea) right before we parted ways. So what does he think has changed, other than the diminution of our 401(k) plans, in the last year and a half? We want what we can't have, that's what. And we want that which is bad for us.

Fortunately, my disinterest in many aspects of connnections with others liberates me. I don't have to please this man or fit him into my life, and I'm not going to try to please him or fit him into my life. Still, I wonder: it's been about fifteen or sixteens months. Why now?

October Light

No, I'm not referring to the John Gardner book October Light, although I'm well aware that it is a book I should read. I'm just referring to the light the last few days. The sun on a clear day in October is a beautiful thing.

I'm feeling much better after a road trip to Gettysburg with Innana, hiking about a bit in beautiful weather, having a nice meal, and having a visit with MVBFITWWW.

Also, I remind myself that I'm doing the world a very good turn (and not just being a perennial mooch) by raising the two pinnacles of human evolution, and I'm doing little bits of good by giving blood and platelets.

My mood is also greatly improved by reading Alice Munro short stories (I checked Friend of My Youth out of the library). I had been trying (and successfully doing so, I was on page four-hundred something when I chucked it) to read Dick Russell's Eye of the Whale. There's some good factual information on gray whales in that book, but way too much breathless prose about everyone's spiritual communion with whales. I'm sure whales are very intelligent and very spiritual, whatever that means, but telling me all about Christopher Reeve and Robert Kennedy, Jr. communing with the whales and about how having the whale look at you "transforms" you is just a bunch of new age crapity crap crap crap. I feel much better having giving up that book.

Apparently Dick Russell is a well regarded writer and environmentalist, but the book spends as much time physically describing the beautiful people observing the whales as it does detailing information about the whales and their lives. And everyone's reactions to the whales has to be detailed. Ugh.

So that's history, and I'll be reading Gore Vidal's Lincoln and Everitt's Cicero next, if I get to the before they're due back at the library.

So I'll finish off this Sunday looking out over sunlit trees while I do some good knitting. Works for me.

Depression

Shrink, my internist, and MNOT have all given me a diagnosis: Depression and ADD/ADHD. The ADD/ADHD diagnosis is five years old. The depression diagnosis has been with me for twenty-odd years.

At this point, I'm pretty good. I seek treatment when I need it, I am pretty good about taking my medicines, I try to remain physically active, I seek sunshine and fresh air, and I try to avoid global negative thinking.

Right now, with my 401(k) and other savings accounts back where they were in, say, 1995, with PdeFF fighting with me in battles he's going to lose but are really, really going to annoy and exhaust me (tax related), with a small raise and big inflation (at least at the grocery store), with various financial restructuring going on, with the recent death of someone I love, I'm just too worn down to maintain my resilience. My lack of interest in others and inability to seek out contact other than with those with whom I am already close is a clear indicator to me that I need to regroup and come up with a new plan of attack.

Some things I need to do: exercise more, eat more fruits and vegetables, reach out to others, even when I'm too tired, be careful about not drinking too much, and enjoy the good in life. I have good in my life and I do know it, so I'm not in the truly terrible clinical depression that drowns. But it's there, in the background, hovering behind the curtain so I need to be vigilant.

One of the nice things about being older, however, is the ability to draw on past experiences: I've been through worse times than this (maybe not with the economy, but in my life). I know I can get through this, even if I don't enjoy it. So that's what I plan to do. One foot in front of the other, until I can fight off this gloomy miasma.

Sanguinary

I cheered myself up today by giving platelets at my local blood bank. It's a donation: I don't think blood banks are allowed to pay for blood anymore. I view it as my contribution in a world where I get a lot of freebies and support from others. At least I contribute to the blood supply.

The nurses and techs at the bank know me by name at this point. I no longer have to check in. They just yell at me which cubicle to sign in at, and someone hands me a diet Coke as I sit down. I've been dinged a few times for a low iron count, so I took vitamins + iron this week prior to attempting to donate. And my iron count is fine.

Giving blood (even platelets with the double needle stick) is painless compaired to committee work.

Somebody Help

Whenever TigerGrrl or DestructoGirl says: "I'm bored" or "This is boring", I tell them they need to figure out how to make things interesting. [Cliche Alert.] I tell them that if they can't find something to interest them, that says more about them than it does about anything else. Of course, this goes right over DG's cute head (she's still three) and I'm not sure TG pays any attention either, but I then set about trying to get them interested in the ordinary around them rather than provide some dramatic scene shift. And then DG will start to sing a song about a tree or draw a picture or TG will decide now is a good time to read a book or do some karate or play some music and all will be well.

This advice isn't working so well for me. Yesterday, I sat outside at lunch people-watching and nobody caught my eye. On the Metro, a guy sat in the outer seat, blocking the inner one, and I didn't pay him any mind (although I still made him let me sit down). A loud group of young people discussed their totally unrealistic career ambitions (they didn't seem to think that their employers' objectives and opinions of them would have anything to do with their work-life choices). Boring. Which says more about me than it does about them, hoist in my own petard.

And I'm Still a Pissy Bitch

Innana doesn't like celebrating her birthday. I don't know why. She's been turning 29 for a while now, so she should have it down. But she's modest and I wonder whether she thinks she shouldn't be celebrating herself. She should. Fortunately, I'm not the only person who feels that way.

Last week, Innana came and had dinner with me on her birthday. We had a good time. We had Chinese food and beer. The FoilKids were with their father, so it was a just the two of us bash. This weekend, the girls are with me. Their first question this morning was "Is Innana visiting?" Just so I know how I rate (lower than Innana, that's for darn sure, but that's just fine). I mentioned that she was indeed going to visit, to universal acclaim (well, the only two people in the universe whose opinion always matters to me, no matter what). Then TigerGrrl looked at the calendar and noted the missed birthday, and got quite angry with me.

DestructoGirl joined in totally disliking not having been invited to Innana's birthday beer bash. DG began making a birthday card. TG got out the cookbook and announced that Innana needed a birthday cake.

So poor Innana, hating birthday celebrations (she shouldn't -- take it from me, her arrival in the world was one of the few events in the twentieth century truly worth celebration), was, thanks to me, forced to endure two birthday celebrations. With cake made from scratch by a nine-year old and a three-year old. Frosting by the nine-year old. Cake decorations, in the abstract style, by the three-year old.

I'd feel mean if I didn't think the anniversary was worth celebrating well more than twice.