I wrote about coffee for my Sunday Brunch piece at All Things Girl today (link: Sunday Brunch: Oh, Coffee! ), and I’d love it if you all went and read it, but right now, I want to share a bit of J.S. Bach’s “Coffee Cantata.”
Taking Myself to Bed
There are days when I wake up in the morning and am disgustingly perky, bouncing in and out of the bathroom, dancing my way to the kitchen, making coffee because I want it, and not because I need it.
Then there are the days like today, when I woke up aching from head to toe, feeling like my brain was wrapped in gauze, and that every movement required me to swim through pudding. I have these days about once a month, but this one snuck up on me, although, in retrospect it explains the meltdown I had via email with two good friends. Hormones are SO much fun!
Fortunately, today was a day where I had no deadlines, so I was able to take myself off to bed as soon as I’d finished wrangling the dogs (the three older ones have to be fed before the puppy can be let out in the morning, or no one eats the right food, and since the four dogs have three different types of very expensive grain-free dog food, this is an important part of my mornings).
I had every intention of doing some writing, but my brain and body joined forces and dragged me into sleep, and so, I spent most of the day curled up on the bed with a stack of books remaining largely ignored, the computers all turned off, and three of the four dogs curled up near me.
Around five, I began to feel slightly more human. Or at least, I felt hungry, so I had a tuna sandwich and part of a ginger ale, took a shower, read magazines for a while, and ran to the grocery store, though I still had that pudding-feeling.
The house is devoid of chocolate (with the exception of chocolate protein shake mix), and I made a point of NOT buying any at the store, but when we got home, I brewed some lovely Kusmi tea which had come in my last Birchbox. The flavor was called “euphoria” and was roasted mate with chocolate and orange. I added a level teaspoon of turbinado sugar, and while I didn’t feel euphoric after drinking it, I did feel a bit more grounded and centered.
Another mug of tea followed about an hour later, along with a cup of strawberry Chobani yogurt, and a ton of water.
And now? Now it’s just after midnight, and while several layers of the brain-gauze have been lifted, I’m still tired and sore, so I’m taking myself back to bed.
Sometimes sleep really is the best medicine.
Wok’s It To Ya?
Pollen season has hit North Texas which means I either have itchy ears (yes, ears) and watery eyes, or I’m in a perpetual state of Benebriation (you know, that post-benadryl brain fog).
This means I sometimes have to schedule work around my need to sleep off the antihistamine haze.
It also means that quick and easy become the operative word for mealtimes.
Tonight? I cut two organic boneless, skinless chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces, threw them into the wok-pan (it’s not a true wok) with a bit of heated olive oil, and tossed them around til they were browned. Then I added a liberal slug or two of my favorite teriyaki sauce, Soy Vey, and let them simmer another ten minutes.
I’m about to add a bag of frozen “Asian-style” veggies to the pan, stick the lid on, and let it all cook together for another few minutes. We’ll eat when the veggies are hot through.
Should I be using fresh veggies? Yes. But when it’s just the two of us, the frozen veggie combos are more cost effective because we can’t use large quantities of fresh veggies quickly enough.
Dessert, in a few hours when we need a snack, will be sliced fresh strawberries tossed with balsamic vinegar, a bit of granulated sugar (cane sugar, of course), and accented with a dash of ground black pepper.
What’s on YOUR table tonight?
Got Verse?
Vintage Typewriter | Credit: MorgueFile.com | Click to embiggen
From my Sunday Brunch column at All Things Girl:
April is National Poetry Month, at least in the USA, and the eighteenth is the day we’re supposed to acknowledge the poems we carry in our pockets. Most of my clothes don’t even have pockets, and the only poetry I write is not for public consumption, but I’ve loved poetry since I was young enough to embrace A.A. Milne (he wrote SO much more than just Winnie the Pooh) and eschew Dr. Seuss (sorry but his silly sing-song-y stuff does nothing for me), so I thought I’d chat about that today.
Click to read the rest of Nostalgic Verses (Or Marmalade, Shadows, Silverstein, and Shakespeare)
Thursday 13: But it went on raining.
It was grey and damp over the weekend, which meant it was the perfect weather for Saturday’s International Tabletop Day board game party, and the rain returned Monday night and is still going on as I write this on Wednesday night. Rain and I have a special relationship, so this week’s list is all about that.
1) I grew up on A. A. Milne’s children’s books. Most people know him as the creator of Winnie the Pooh, but my favorite of his works is the book that was published right after Now We Are Six. It’s called A Gallery of Children, and it’s comprised of short stories that are all character studies of different children. My favorite is “A Voyage to India.” Here’s an excerpt:
To-day was the day. To-morrow will be too late. Perhaps even now if it cleared up – but each time she has said this, down has come another cloud. She tried shutting her eyes; she did try that. She tried shutting her eyes and saying, “One, two, three, four – I’ll count twenty and then I’ll open them, and please, will you let the rain stop by then, please, because it’s too terribly important, you know why.” Yes, she counted twenty; quickly, up to twelve, and then more slowly to fifteen, and then sixteen…seventeen…eighteen…nine-…teen…and then, so slowly that it wasn’t really fair, but she wanted to make it easier for God, twe…twe…twe…TWENTY!
But it went on raining.
2) On rainy days, I prefer tea to coffee. I love the way the sugar hisses as it falls into the tea (I don’t typically sweeten coffee). I love the way the rain hisses as it falls into my swimming pool.
3) When there is no actual rain outside, on really hot, dry days, I have movie marathons of weather disasters. A typical choice would be a double feature of The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow.
4) When I was a kid, I had no idea what a rain barrel was. When my friends and I sang, “Say, Say, My Playmate,” we would sing “Slide down my rainbow,” instead of the original line. (How do you slide down a rain barrel, anyway?)
5) Langston Hughes on rain:
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
6) My idea of the perfect afternoon is a pot of tea, a stack of books, and a driving rainstorm. A fire in the fireplace is nice, but not necessary.
7) My ability to willfully suspend disbelief is so well-honed that if we see a movie with significant weather, I expect it the actual weather to be the same when we leave the theater. This is especially true for movies where there’s a lot of rain.
8) Despite the above, I actually have a very low threshold for movies where people are tired, hungry, cold, dirty, and wet for long periods of time.
9) A significant part of my childhood was spent in Colorado, where, during the summer, it rains every day, but only for about fifteen minutes. There is NOTHING like a Rocky Mountain rainstorm.
10) I didn’t start getting storm-related migraines until I moved to Texas eight years ago, but the funky purple-grey-green light that comes with storms has always made my eyes hurt. I don’t wear sunglasses at night, but I do wear them on rainy days.
11) I’m not a fan of power-outages, but on dark, dreary rainy days, I like to enhance the mood by keeping the lights dim and lighting candles. There’s something so magical about flickering flames inside and flashing lightning outside, and the combined scents of ozone and candle wax.
12) For my Sunday Brunch post at All Things Girl on March 31st, I wrote about rain. Read about My Romance with Rain.
13) On rainy days, my musical tastes run to instrumental jazz or classical music, rather than anything with lyrics, but my favorite rain-related song ever is Vienna Teng’s “Lullaby for a Stormy Night.” Here’s the video:
With One Hand Tied Behind My Back
I woke up this morning with my right elbow throbbing with pain. It hurts to bend it, and if I try to lift anything heavier than my iPhone, tears spring to my eyes.
Icy Hot Balm, ibuprofen, and a single, leftover flexeril got me through the day, mainly because I logged off everything and spent the day doing laundry, reading, watching comfort television (currently Season 3 of Gilmore Girls) and napping. Max was so worried about me (possibly because he hit my sore elbow causing me to send a glass of cranberry juice flying across the kitchen) that licking my face clear of tears wasn’t enough; he curled up on Fuzzy’s side of the bed, under the covers, and let me rest my sore arm on his warm, soft back.
Dogs make everything better.
Even when you essentially have one hand tied behind your back.
Walking Dessert
In preparation for the annual summer lightening of my hair color, I’m allowed to use hot water to wash my hair again (my usual technicolored dyes require tepid-water washing) and I’m also once again able to use mint shampoo (mint strips moisture and color).
My current minty fresh hair products of choice? Organix Mint and Tea Tree Oil, which come in curvy green bottles, and smell almost exactly like Girl Scout Cookies…Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies, to be specific.
The Dove body-wash I’m currently using, is made with pomegranate but smells like raspberry Zingers.
Combine them? I’m a walking dessert.
Musical Monday: These Foolish Things…
I thought about doing a prank post, but frankly, I’m cooler than that. So, for this April Fools Day, I give you the divine Ella Fitzgerald singing “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)”
Thursday 13: Connections
1)
We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree. ~Pablo Casals
2) The word “inkling,” which we think of as a creative spark as much as a mental hint, is supposed to come from an old word that means “utter in an undertone, hint at, hint.” I, however, prefer to connect it to the word “ingle,” which comes from an old Scottish word meaning “fire.” The hint of an idea, the spark that lights the flame.
3) While my drawing skills are poor, my closure skills are not. Games that involve pattern matching, or connecting literal or figurative dots always make me happy. (This may be why I love Seurat’s pointilistic art.)
4) For years, I’ve loved the music of both Jason Robert Brown and Georgia Stitt, because they write catchy melodies with complex lyrics that tell compelling stories. It’s only in the last year that I learned they’ve been married to each other for more than a decade.
5) Like most North American children, I grew up knowing how to play rock-paper-scissors.(Apparently kids have been playing versions of it since the dawn of time.) Similarly, I was aware of the existence of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock before I ever started watching The Big Bang Theory. What I never really understood (mainly because I never paid attention) until recently was that there is a specific mathematical logic to the game, which requires that there always be an odd number of gestures.
6) I love fairy tales. The classic Grimm kind, you know, before Disney got their hands on them. When I was considering making folklore into a field of study (literary anthropology, anyone) I learned that some fairy tales are universal. Pretty much every culture in the world has some kind of vampire/succubus mythology. Every culture has a shape-changer (werewolves, and others.) Coastal cultures always have some kind of mermaid tale. “Jack and the Beanstalk,” however, is limited to a very small geographical area because climbing beans are not grown in very many places.
7) Fuzzy and I argued (playfully) for two weeks about whether our new puppy, Teddy, was a Theodore or an Edward. Chris, who likes animation, argued for the former, referencing a certain group of Chipmunks. I, who generally do not like animation, lobbied for the latter, because Edward is my grandfather’s name, and I’ve always liked it. We ultimately decided on “Theodore Edward Bear Bartell,” which makes me happy because “Edward Bear” is one of the many aliases for one Winnie-the-Pooh. And it makes his name a pun. Ted E. Bear. Teddy Bear. Which toys, of course, are so named after a former U.S. president of some notoriety. (I refer here to BOOK Pooh, from the classic A. A. Milne series (!) of books. Not the fluffy Disney-ified Pooh.)
8) One of Teddy’s littermates was Maddie. I don’t know if the woman who owned their mother was feeling literary, but I love the idea of Maddie referencing the French orphan Madeline (there were nine in the litter). Of course, if we’d taken home Maddie I would have been compelled to speak to her in a bad French accent.
9) In Russian, the word “chai” means “tea.” In Hebrew, the word “chai” means “life.” Coffee is my higher power, but tea is life.
10) I love science shows, and my all-time favorite is the old James Burke series, Connections, which explores things like why monks raising sheep led to the creation of computers. Here’s a link to the first episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOp-nz3lHg
11) Despite the fact that their math progressions are NOT the same, Roshambo (rock paper scissors) always reminds me of the Circle of Fifths, which, in turn, reminds me of a discussion I read about the “tempering” of musical instruments (as opposed to merely tuning them).
12) A friend recently posted a quote from A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle, that made me remember why I loved that book so much (as I told this friend, this book was my gateway novel into sci-fi and fantasy when I was eight):
Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. ~Mrs. Whatsit
13) Two parables, the first, from the 500 Kindnesses community; the second, one I was reintroduced to at the UU church in Ames, IA a few years ago:
Two mice were sitting watching the snow fall and settle on the branch of a tree.
First Mouse: How much does a snowflake weigh?
Second Mouse: A little less than nothing.They continued to watch the snow falling, eventually the snowflakes lessened and then they stopped. A final snowflake fell on to the branch of the tree. The branch creaked and snapped, and fell to the ground.
First Mouse: So a little less than nothing can make a big difference!
The lessons are clear:
Many people are doing little things.
Little things are laying the base for a big difference that is very much in the making.
~Weiser
Frogs lived in the ponds around a village in Africa. Frogs lived in the damp fields. Treefrogs lived in the trees. At night, the frogs croaked and peeped their mating songs—the village chief could not sleep.
In the morning, tired and irritable, the chief called all his people together. “These frogs offend me! They must die. All of you: take sticks and nets. Search everywhere. Kill those frogs!”
The villagers hastened to follow his orders, all but one — a very old woman. “Why don’t you do as you’re told?” demanded the chief.
“Everything is connected,” said the old woman. “I have lived long enough to see that you can’t make a big change in one thing, without causing changes in other things.”
“I don’t care,” said the chief. “I need my sleep! Go kill frogs.” But the old woman wouldn’t go. The chief grumbled, “She’s probably too old to be much good at frog hunting.”
That night, the pond and fields and trees were silent. Everybody slept well. But after a few nights, another sound interrupted the villagers’ sleep: ZnnnZnnnnZnnnn. Mosquitoes!
The people had no mosquito nets. They spent their nights slapping, and their days scratching. The chief was miserable. The old woman paid a visit to the chief, who was covered with welts from the mosquito bites. “You see,” she said, “everything is connected.”
~ As told by Fran Stallings
Avocado Adoration
I remember when I was around 12 I learned about the three A’s for the first time: asparagus, artichokes, and avocados. I think I tried all three for the first time in the same year, and they’ve been favorites of mine ever since.
– David Reilly
I’ve been on an Avocado kick since Sunday morning, when we went to CostCo and they were shamelessly pushing large, nearly ripe, fruit at us. There’s something so satisfying about the creamy goodness of an Avocado, whether you turn it into guacamole, slice it into a salad, add it to an omelet, or layer it on a sandwich.
So far this week, I’ve done three of those, and it’s only Tuesday.
The thing about Avocado is that when I eat them, I’m less “snacky” during the rest of the day, so yes, they’re a high-calorie fruit, but they’re still healthier than all those tasty-tasty sugary carbs that I love, but don’t love me.
On the California Avocado website, I saw mashed avocado on multi-grain toast, topped with a sunny-side-up egg.
Guess what I’m having for lunch tomorrow?
(Breakfast is a protein shake, because I don’t DO breakfast otherwise.)