Etiquette is there to prevent people from screaming at you legitimately.

My husband's crazy ex-girlfriend sent him a strange email today.

This is the crazy ex-girlfriend who was a high school girlfriend who continued to have a friendship with his family after they broke up, even though she didn't want to speak to him ever again. Then they became friends again then she befriended another girlfriend of his with whom she became so close that they even took a bath together at one point. They called his mother during the bath (I think  that neither girl was involved with Ryan at this point). The crazy ex-girlfriend informed Ryan, when he started seeing me, that she didn't want to hear anything about me unless/until he was serious about me. So he didn't mention me until he emailed her to say that we were getting married. Which made her very, very angry and she told him to never talk to her again, mainly because of the pain he must have caused his mother by getting engaged to someone that this girl hadn't heard very much about. I know this seems to not make any sense, but believe me, it doesn't make sense to us either.

There is so much more to this story, but that contains the juiciest bit of gossip (who takes a bath with their ex-boyfriend's more recent ex-girlfriend and then calls said ex-boyfriend's mother to tell her about it?) and covers the main points.

It doesn't cover how weird the whole thing was for me and how weird it still is for me, to a certain extent.

The weird email that was sent today (as opposed to the flurry of weird emails she sent initially, how ever many years ago that was) basically said something about realising that they haven't been in contact recently and not particularly wishing to be in any contact but here's a Tim Minchin song she bought recently and she thought it would be a "dick move" (her words) not to share it with him.

I'm not going to speculate. I mean, I have speculated. Obviously. The first words out of my mouth were speculation and judgement. But there's no point in guessing because we'll never know. Ryan simply wrote back, "Thanks, Tim Minchin is fun." or something similar. He thought that perhaps she was upset that he hasn't told her about the baby and possibly considers this neglect a "dick move".

It's funny because the other day, I thought about the "social obligations" of pregnancy which are similar, but not the same as getting married. When Ryan and I were engaged we talked about the "etiquette" involved and how there really isn't an accepted rule for telling people but there should be. Engagement etiquette was invented before people had lots of premarital relationships, particularly not serious premarital relationships, there were no rules for making sure that you didn't get yelled at for or for not telling an ex that you are getting married. Babies are a little different though. I had thought that there was no reason to tell an ex you were having a baby unless you are actually good friends with them, in which case they are a friend and you would have told them anyway. But apparently, you may also be supposed to tell exes who hate your guts but still feel that they have some sort of claim on your personal life.

Since there is no accepted rule for babies or marriages, one has to go on a case by case basis. I opted not to tell Al I was getting married because the most recent email I'd had from him was a year prior, informing me, among other things, that he now had a concealed weapon license. Not that I think he'd ever have hurt me, but he definitely was scary at the end of our relationship, too scary to want to engage in dialogue for any reason, let alone telling him you've found someone you want to marry after a 6 month relationship. When I finally felt guilty enough to send him a quick email letting him know (maybe a year after the wedding), I got one back almost immediately, saying that he already knew and was "ecstatic" (his word) for me. It irritated me to no end because ecstatic was surely not the word he meant. And he was always misusing words.

Towards the end of Al's life, we were actually corresponding a bit, as even he seemed to understand that our relationship had changed and it wouldn't be appropriate to call me from various blues clubs telling me I needed to come and get him because he thought he was going to get beat up - something he did repeatedly after we broke up (but never before). I would send him maybe a Bob Dylan related email and he'd write back with some news. Or he'd post on my facebook wall. He mentioned coming to see me and meet Ryan at one point but I didn't encourage it. Al would have done it purely for the pleasure of going on a road trip; that was just who he was but I didn't want to actually see him or for Ryan to meet him. They would have not gotten along, having almost nothing in common and it would have been awkward.

I don't know how I would have told him I was pregnant though. He would have misused some other exclamation probably and I would have been irritated. Obviously, I don't really have to worry about it though. And regardless of what social convention says, Ryan shouldn't have had to worry about it with this particular crazy ex because she specifically told him never to speak to her again.

Offbeat Mama

I found this blog/site called "Offbeat Mama". I don't care for the name, but the sentiment seems like I've finally found a publication that doesn't make me feel totally alienated in reference to motherhood. For example, at the midwive's waiting room, I found an article in a magazine that polled readers on whether or not they intended on wearing make-up in the delivery room. This is not a thing I had even considered nor did I consider that other women might consider it. I wasn't even sure why you would consider it (for the other people present? It's possible you've just crapped in front of them, who cares about makeup??) until I read one response "regretting that she wasn't wearing any in her post-birth pictures."

Anyway. I found this article on Offbeat Mamas on the topic of egalitarian parenting and I strongly identified with the sentiment of the author, despite the fact that I don't have experience in the actual scenarios she describes (yet). She describes the odd feeling of talking to other mothers pre and post birth and having it turn into a partner-bashing session, rather than anything productive. Partner-bashing, specifically on the topic of male incompetence when it comes to anything domestic, particularly baby-rearing.

Obviously, I do not know how Ryan is going to handle fatherhood but based on statements like, "I'm going to teach her to tie knots. Knots and math." tell me that he has definitely got some plans for her. And though he makes a face when we talk about nappies, he's also and this is important and (was an important factor in my choosing to marry him) a grown-up. So, I imagine nappies will get changed as needed the same way the dishes get done as needed and he will watch her and feed her and look after her because she is his daughter, the same way the dogs get walked and fed as needed because they are his dogs.

However, I have been present for conversations about how incompetent male counterparts and there's not much I can do besides smile sheepishly and mutter something about Ryan not doing that, silently thinking to myself, "Why are you with someone who bugs you so much?"

I hate the cultural suggestion that men are incompetent just as much as I hate the cultural suggestion that women are killjoy shrews.

Wrong Texts

I got a strange text this morning. It was a picture of a girl - maybe middle school age - holding up candy. The text portion said:

sour
soccer rox

I texted back:

Think you may have texted a wrong number.

I assumed that this would be enough to end the conversation, although I was getting prepared to be annoyed any potential, "Oh! Sorry!" reply.

Then,

is this helene or no
soccer rox

I had thought with the first text that "soccer rox" must be because she was excited that she got sour candy at soccer. As in, the candy I received at soccer practice was sour, which is a what I like, therefore, soccer rocks. Now, I have a suspicion that it is a signature of some sort.

Nope. This is Alice.

Once again, I assumed that this would be enough to end the conversation. Once again, I overestimated this person.

oww w do u play soccer on palo alto and go to jordan
soccer rox

Here's the funny thing: I did go to Jordan. But probably several years before this girl was born. I never played soccer, though. I'd like to think that when I was a student at Jordan, however, I did realise that there was a world beyond Jordan*. That the likelihood of someone who was at the other end of a misdialed phone being just like me was probably fairly low. Surely my use of capital letters and punctuation must have tipper her off?

No. I'm 30 and I live in upstate NY.

Result. No 12 year old wants to text with a 30 year old. Most of the 12 year olds I've interacted with don't believe that old people know anything or do anything "cool" so what on earth was I doing text messaging?? Mutton dressed as lamb.

Like when Maria at the barn (42) mentioned to Karin (12) something about instant messaging.

"WHAT? You're too old to instant message."

"Um. I have to use it for work. Also, what does that even mean?"

I realise that I could have just stopped responding to the texts, but part of me wanted to embarrass her into using her brain a little. Particularly after the Jordan question.

*In fact, I know I realised it. I spent day after day after day wishing I could leave that horrible school. I couldn't wait to go to Paly, then I found Paly just as unbearable, probably because the same people went to Paly as went to Jordan.

Roasted White Bean Salad and Pear Cheesecake

Roasted White Bean and Arugula Salad:
(the amounts are all estimates except the can of beans - this is a forgiving recipe and should be cooked to the cook's own tastes. Just make sure you have enough oil in your pan so you don't burn the beans.)

1 can white beans, drained thoroughly
2 large cloves of garlic or 4 small (or as much garlic as you like...), chopped.
2 tbsp neutral-flavoured oil
handful of arugula (complimentary amount to the amount of beans you have)
2 tbsp sundried tomatoes, chopped
1/2 olive oil
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp sugar or to taste
mustard seeds, black pepper and salt.

Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F. Heat up the neutral-flavoured oil in a large oven safe skillet over medium heat. I used my largest cast iron - it needs to be big enough for all the beans to all lie flat on the bottom of the pan. Once the oil is hot, add the beans, garlic, a pinch of salt and some fresh ground black pepper (and make sure the beans are all flat on the bottom...). Once those have gotten going, move them to the oven. They should be nice and browned up in about 15 -20 minutes, but check on them in 10 just to be sure.

While those are in the oven, prepare your vinaigrette. Red wine, olive oil, salt, fresh ground black pepper and mustard seeds, and sugar all in a peanut butter jar* with the lid on. Shake until it emulsifies, taste add more of anything it might need.

Prepare your arugula (rinse as needed) and put it in a bowl with the chopped sundried tomatoes. Once the beans are done, pull them out of the oven and let them cool down otherwise you will end up cooking your arugula. They don't have to be room temperature, just not 400 degrees!

Once they've cooled down to warm instead of really hot, combine with the arugula and tomatoes. A few minutes before serving, add the vinaigrette. Yum.

*Ryan and I use peanut butter jars instead of drinking glasses and I save the lids. They also serve as storage vessels for things like dried beans or grains and as vinaigrette shakers. Also, when they break you aren't sad because you can just eat some more peanut butter to replace them.

Eggless Pear Cheesecake take 1.

I had some frozen cream cheese from a long time ago. I also had one pear and no eggs. And some almond flour that I love, but never remember to use up.

So, this is what I did:

Filling
8oz cream cheese
1 pear, chopped but not necessarily peeled (I didn't)
1/2 c confectioners sugar
1 1/2 tsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Crust
1 1/2 c almond flour
1/3 c butter
1/2 c sugar

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the almond flour and sugar. Melt the butter and then pour into the almond flour and sugar mixture. Give it a good stir to combine but don't "mix thoroughly". Press it into the bottom of a spring form pan. Put the pan in the oven for 5 minutes.

While this is in the oven, combine the cream cheese, chopped pear, sugar, vanilla and cornstarch in a food processor until smooth. Once this is ready and the crust is done toasting, pour the filling into the spring form pan.

Put in the oven for 20 minutes or until the top is nicely browned and cooked-looking. This is a thin cheesecake - the crust and the filling are about equal parts. If you want a thicker, on the more filling side, you could easily make more filling - maybe half again what I have called for here or perhaps even doubling the filling recipe. Of course this will require more cooking time.

Once it is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool to room temperature, then put it in the fridge for at least an hour, to set.

I wasn't completely happy with this version. Or rather I was happy with it, but I think I will tweak it a bit in the future. Mainly, I want it to be fruitier.

*Edit: I tried again. Doubled the cream cheese, added a bit more cornstarch and this time, used frozen raspberries that I tossed in the food processor to chop up finely before anything else, instead of the pear. YUM.

Today's Walk.

Today, my dog, Jeeves, peed on my foot.

Luckily, I was standing right next to Fall Creek, so I screamed at him, he scowled, then I ran into the creek, shoes and all.

Once, he peed on Barnaby's head. Barnaby was in the middle of his own micturation and Jeeves just walked up, lifted his leg over Barnaby's head and peed.

Barnaby moved on, as one would expect.

On my way back from the creek, I walked past the Tiny House. It's a house at the end of our street that consists of a front room, a tiny bedroom and in the mudroom at the back, the tiniest kitchen I've ever seen*. A strange couple lives there, they don't speak the same language, but they are involved because I saw her professing her love to him one morning from the front steps of the house. She sounded like Marta from Arrested Development. The guy looks like a reimagining of the Dude, if the Dude listened to Whitesnake instead of CCR. His partner is a tiny brown woman who looks about 25 years younger than him.

Today, there were 8 full garbage bags outside their house. Which seemed SO WEIRD. I mean, 8 bags of garbage from a house the size of an average garage seems excessive. Then I realised the bags were full of leaves.

They probably aren't anywhere near as weird as I think they are. 

*I'm not a creepy stalker (at least not in this regard) - it was on the market when we were looking for a place to buy. It was some ungodly amount of money considering the fact that it needs a lot of work and it's an absurdly tiny house.

Celeriac Puree, 2 ways.

I made a yummy two dish meal component the other day: celeriac mushroom puree. I turned it into pasta sauce the first day and then 2 days later, it was delicious soup.

2 celeriac roots, cubed
2 small onions (or 1 large...) sliced
~1/2 cup dried shiitake mushrooms
white pepper
salt
olive oil

Toss the onions in a pan (I used my trusty 12" cast iron) with the (heated) olive oil on medium-low. Once they have started to soften, add the celeriac. I turn the heat up a little bit, but not too much. The point is a long, low cook with occasional stirring to get everything sweet and caramelly.

While this is happening, rehydrate the mushrooms. Put them in a bowl and pour enough hot water over them to cover.

Once the celeriac has started to brown up a bit, you can add a bit of water and cover - I did this instead of parboiling, just to make sure it was getting cooked all the way through. The water also helped deglaze the pan, next time, I might try stock or white wine.

When the celeriac is done getting very nearly close to done (everything should be a nice goldeny brown colour and the celeriac should be soft and break apart easily), drain the mushrooms and reserve the liquid. Put the liquid, along with the celeriac and onion mixture into a blender and puree. You may need to add water.

Return the puree to your pot, slice up the mushrooms and toss them in with the puree. Flavour, to taste, with white pepper and salt.

For pasta sauce, I made a roux, included some nutritional yeast with the flour and added my delicious puree. Remember to cook it to a point where it is less thick than you want it as as soon as it starts to cool, it will thicken up.

For soup, I melted several cubes of leek stock that I made and froze a few weeks ago and added the puree. Simple, quick and delicious, we had it with yummy Gary's Bread (a sort of whole wheat sour dough made from locally grown and milled flour) from Wide Awake Bakery.

begin rant

If one more person takes an ordinary, completely normal statement that I make and attributes it to my being pregnant, I will have to find some further measure to take besides just complaining about it here.

The balcony smells like squirrel pee because a squirrel spent the winter hibernating in it, not because I can smell it more easily now that I am pregnant. Homemade cheese on homemade bread is something I would enjoy whether or not I am currently gestating a foetus. I am vacuuming/folding laundry/mopping the floor/tidying up/doing dishes/scrubbing my toilet because I am presumably, by most cultural measures, an adult and adults clean their houses and non-pregnant adults can do this without it being called "nesting" - why can't I?

/rant over

Cutting spending

Ryan and I are trying to spend less money. We went to the grocery store last week and had a conversation in the car that went like this:

"I'm going to stop getting my hair cut at that expensive salon."

"Yeah. We should probably cancel cable."

"Also, those gym memberships - we never go anyway."

"I'm going to stop buying fancy cleaning products and just start using old rags, baking soda and vinegar."

"We should start eating at home more often and making our meals from scratch."

"No more clothes shopping sprees!"

"I'll start walking to work and bringing my lunch"


The thing is, we were laughing, because we don't do* any of these things anyway but it's also kind of sad, because I've been racking my brain trying to come up with things we can cancel or stop buying or whatever and I've not been able to come up with much.

One thing we actually did was combine our mobile phone plans - a big commitment, I know, but we felt we were ready. It's about $25/month difference. I've also started tracking our grocery store expenditures. I know we could spend less on certain items, but some things, I'd rather compromise on quantity than quality. For example: I'd rather buy less yoghurt or milk from the local dairies than buy more of the mass produced stuff. 


Of course "treats" get removed from the shopping list - things like ginger beer and ice cream. I'm attempting to get better at making them myself: last week, I made raspberry honey black tea coconut milk sorbet/ice cream (the raspberries were ones we picked last summer - the advantage to not working is that one has time to make sorbet without an ice cream maker!) and yesterday, Ryan used up some sad little lemons and made us some lemonade. 


*or already do? The point is, I haven't had my hair professionally cut since my wedding, I've never belonged to a gym, Ryan already packs a lunch and walks, I've only bought new clothes in the last year because I needed maternity pants in order to be able to leave the house, we don't even own a television much less pay for cable, I have been using vinegar and baking soda to clean for years and neither of us would know how to eat if we didn't cook our own food.

Eating clay

From BabyCenter.com:


"Finally, some studies have found a link between severe iron-deficiency anemia and cravings for non-food substances such as ice, paper, or clay (a condition known as pica). If you do have these cravings, don't give in to them, and be sure to tell your healthcare provider."


I like how they have to tell you not to give in to your cravings to eat non-food substances.


"Hmm. I could go to the doctor. Or I could just eat this clay."

(Don't worry - I'm not craving non-food substances)

subject: re: I don't regret it, but I both rue and lament it.

To: Ken


I lifted my temporary boycott of Northstar* tonight. I may never return. At the very least, the boycott is back on. 


To: Alice


Oh dear, what happened?


To: Ken


Aside from the insultingly bland mushroom stroganoff (Ryan made a better mushroom pasta dish two weeks ago, out of stuff from our freezer and powdered milk), it took them over an hour after seating us (at 6:25) to bring us our mains (~7:40).  


To: Ken


Also the french fries were far too salty and far past done. 


To: Ken


And they burnt the toast that came with the stroganoff.


To: Alice


Ewww.


*The temporary boycott was because the last time we went, the waitress was so condescending and awful when I asked her to point us in the direction of the hostess (it was super hard to tell the difference between all the girls in peasant blouses and dangly earrings) that I walked out. The place has notoriously snotty waitstaff and this was sort of a camel breaking straw incident, however, I was willing to try again. This time it wasn't the waitstaff so much as it was the slow kitchen.

This happened at a restaurant in the Fall Creek neighbourhood of Ithaca, New York called Northstar Public House, a place I used to love and frequent regularly, but it has sadly fallen from my graces. 

Secret Shame

A few weeks ago, I mentioned my shameful preference for British crime dramas. I'd like to come clean today and bring up another fascination of mine:

Agony Aunts, also known as Advice Columns.

I read them for, well, a number of reasons. Number one, I am a voyeur. Other people in my major and I used to joke about it in college: anthropologists are just legitimizing pathological voyeurism. I don't read celebrity magazines but (I imagine I am having the same kind of shock-horror reaction that those are designed to solicit). Celebrities are boring and I don't really think it's right to take an active, unsolicited, interest in their personal life. Advice column advice seekers, however, are literally asking for judgement, so it's fair game.

Sometimes, if I'm in a hurry, I don't even read the advice given. This is particularly true of the long-winded and often boring Cary Tennis, who never seems to actually give advice, he just suggests, over and over again, that there isn't much we can do anyway about anything, so just continue existing. I'm not saying it's not good advice, one just doesn't need to read it over and over again.

Prudence from Slate is usually pretty good, except when it comes to anything that is outside vanilla sex problems. But we all know who really should be fielding sex questions and that is Dan Savage, who is mine and probably everyone else's favourite advice columnist.

Today I read the Friend or Foe column by Lucinda Rosenfeld. I'm pretty sure that it's just a performance art piece, because her advice is often so poor. Right now, it's fairly subtle, but I imagine that it's just going to get worse and worse until finally, it's just her answering, "I think you should probably just kill yourself." to everyone who writes in. The idea is that it will be so gradual that no one will notice. Slate's pretty much entirely troll bait anyway. Here's an example of her shitty advice, this one in particular caused a huge stir, but I don't think it's really all that much worse than what she normally advises, it's just the situation was so extreme.

Today, she advised that someone to try talking to their single-mother cokehead best friend and roommate and asking them nicely to make sure not to do coke in the house, after apologising for calling the roommate a junkie. To be fair, I doubt Lucinda has ever spent anytime with a cokehead but there is such a thing as a cocaine asshole which is a very special kind of asshole that can only be created by the careful and steady cultivation of a coke habit. This asshole is not your friend and they do not care about you, although they are in possession of the body of your friend, so it is hard to disconnect the two. They should not live in your house and they should not be allowed to drive your car nor should they be trusted with the deposit on a house (I speak from personal experience). You can feel badly for them but feel bad for the person that they were not the person they are. If you think about it this way, it makes it less painful for you because it is easier to see that their poor behaviour is inarguably not about you, it is about them and it makes it easier to forgive them when/if they finally stop doing cocaine and start attempting to be not an asshole again.

I digress, although, the above is exactly what I do, in my brain, when I read advice columns. I think about the people involved and come up with my own conclusions. I do it over morning tea when Ryan has left for work early or I do it while I'm eating my lunch. Sometimes, if the advice seeker is really crazy, I tell Ryan about it and we both throw up our hands and say things to each other like, "People are idiots!!"

Maple Sugaring and Monkey Bread

This weekend we tapped the maple trees on Casey's farm. We're hoping to get 100 gallons of sap, which will mean about a gallon and a half of syrup for us. If all goes according to plan, anyway. It is so amazing - the syrup tastes like Casey's woods. Much better than the storebought stuff and that stuff is pretty awesome. I don't know what we are going to do after next year's season, when we most likely will not be living in the northeast anymore.

I also made monkey bread this weekend for the first time. It is something Ryan's mum used to make when he was a kid and we found the recipe in the Kind Arthur flour book.

I made bagels last week and they turned out pretty well - I need practice. I will make them again soon and post pictures/instructions, but right now I have to get ready for the dentist.

Shabby Apple's Shabby Art Director

Ignoring the weird dress and inappropriate shoes, this model for Shabby Apple is wearing a hunt cap and leading a cow pony with an ugly Western bridle. She's also wearing English gloves and carrying a broken crop, not to mention committing a series of pony-club-don'ts in the other pictures. Surely there are enough horsie people in the fashion industry to fix these glaring mistakes. She just looks like a moron. 

http://www.shabbyapple.com/p-1277-grand-national.aspx

Bread and Pregnancy

I made a butternut squash gallette the other night. I fried up some onions, threw in some cubed squash and Mark Bittman's chili spice mix (ancho chilis, cumin, coriander, black pepper and oregano), tomato paste and water and put the resulting mixture in a whole wheat crust.

I have some of the filling leftover, so Ryan's getting a special treat for his lunch tomorrow: a squash pasty.

We've been so excellent about not only remembering to put things together for his lunches everyday but also baking the bread for his lunches - so even if there's no leftovers or the leftovers are a bit meager, there is fresh bread to make sandwiches. We do get our weekend loaf from Wide Awake Bakery, but that is for Friday afternoon tea with Ken and Saturday and Sunday morning breakfasts. Their bread is better than ours, but they also have a giant brick bread oven instead of a crappy, poorly insulated one.

Last week I made a batch of olive oil dough. That plus rosemary from the CSA (although once I used za'ta) meant we had focaccia for a few meals - it never lasted more than an evening.

My mood has been a little better this week although I did have another meltdown on Saturday. I know I've spent a lifetime feeling like I didn't get some memo that every other girl seem to have gotten, relating to things that are stereotypically associated with women, but pregnancy fucking takes the cake. Sure, I can read in the books that it's perfectly normal not to be radiant and excited and a blithering idiot, but that is no help when you are dealing with the well-meaning advice givers in-person.

"Oh you're cleaning your bathroom/doing laundry/cleaning house? You must be NESTING." (No, from time to time, I clean my house because I am an adult.)

"Oh I've been waiting for you to get excited! How exciting that you are finally excited!" (I just told you I had an ultrasound and that I still feel like shit after eating.)

"Oh you need to eat TONS OF FAT. It will make your baby smart." (Do not counter this argument with, "actually that's not a good idea for a number of reasons".... otherwise you will be called out for your vanity. Never mind the omega-3 supplements you are taking.)

As annoyed as I sound, the tears on Saturday were because I can't figure out how to be as excited as everyone else seems to be. I'm just existing and the baby is existing and soon the baby will be born and that is what happens. I guess I just want to be left the hell alone, but (I imagine) people get awfully touchy when you scream at them "Please for the love of all you hold sacred, talk to me about SOMETHING ELSE." Not to say I'm banning the subject - obviously it's on my mind a lot and I do have questions/potentially interesting things to say on the subject and I really don't actually mind talking about it, but the subject does get tiresome when it is the only thing people can talk to you about.

Maybe it's partially my fault: I don't have a whole lot else going on right now. I keep meaning to get on with certain projects, but I still feel sick or tired or both most days. Things about the second trimester, so far, that are annoying: it is still quite possible to have morning sickness and be too fucking tired to stay up past 8pm. These instances are just less frequent or less severe (I can manage food if I don't think about it afterward and sometimes I'm just too fucking tired to stay up past 10 instead of 8). Sleep is increasingly uncomfortable: I am an "active" sleeper, meaning I sleep on my sides, back and front throughout the course of the night, the front is increasingly not an option and the back is not recommended. So sides it is! If I can remember, while I'm asleep, not to roll onto my back (I usually can't). The books say, get pillows! People who suggest this are not familiar with the members of my family, who are quite happy to roll and roll and roll until they are completely tangled up in the duvet, pillows flung to the far corners of the bed. Pillows will do nothing to stop me. The only thing that works is Ryan occasionally waking up in the night and noticing I am on my back, then gently prodding me, hopefully onto my side. He is so brave.

Getting Older and Girl Scout Cookies

Today I was trying to describe my friend Jane to my friend Ken. I assumed they had met, but he didn't remember her.

"She was at my birthday party. Very pregnant."

Then I remembered that there were two very pregnant women at my birthday party, so I amended the statement by declaring she was the brown haired very pregnant person as opposed to the blonde haired very pregnant person.

"I do remember pregnant people at your party."

Then I thought about how old I am to have pregnant women at my birthday party without it being totally weird.

There are things that I do differently now that I am older. I just had a conversation with Ryan where my roommate situation in Santa Barbara came up. I described calling someone back who had called to inquire about our loft space. We (roomate Casey and I) had talked over breakfast and decided to put off renting the loft for another month - I think because there was the possibility of our old roommate and good friend moving back in. So I called the person who had left a message inquiring about the space and said, "Yeah, well, my roommate and I decided that we aren't going to rent the space after all." The man immediately launched into a weird rant at me about how I was being "ageist" (I had no idea how old he was) by refusing to rent to him and how uncool that was and how rude and on and on....

Ryan said, "Why did you listen to this man enough to hear the whole thing?"

I said that I didn't know. It was a strange thing to have happen. Maybe that's why.

Then he said, "How old were you?"

I must have been about 20.

"Ah. So not old enough to know you could just hang up and not listen."

It reminded me of my sweet friend Georgi, a 19 year old freshman. She told me about being on a bus, getting in a conversation with a grad student and him asking for her phone number. She said she didn't really want to give it to him, but felt she should to avoid being rude. I said, "Georgi, you do not have to give your phone number to anyone you do not want to. It doesn't matter if they think you are being rude or not."

Which is something that I think a lot of 19 year old girls should hear. You do not have to do that shot and you do not have to go home with that person. Unless, of course (!) you WANT to. In which case, do and have fun.

So, at 20, I didn't know I didn't have to listen to some stranger's abuse on the phone but Georgi will know that she is allowed to not give her phone number out to just anyone who asks for it.

***

In other news, I'm buying some Girl Scout cookies. I'm buying them from a kid whose parents are homophobic social conservatives. Mainly because I don't know many Girl Scouts (just the one, really) but the irony is not lost on me - but it will probably be lost on them. Which makes it a little funny. 

Battles with healthcare

Just tried to watch Bridesmaids. Completely unrelatable. I had to switch it off because everyone in it, so far, including Matt Lucas, was too high-pitched.

***

I tried to get a counseling appointment this morning. I'll just say this: the last few months have been less than fun for me and it occurred to me, on Friday, that sobbing my way through doing the dishes for no apparent reason was perhaps not normal. I mean, I don't like doing the dishes, but it doesn't normally result in tears. I'm sure it's bad brain chemicals, but all the things I normally do to clear them out are either unavailable to me or nor working or part of what is making me cry so much. I signed up for a counselling appointment through MyGannett, which is an electronic appointment service. The appointment was a phone assessment and made for 11:40 this morning. I dutifully called in on time and was connected to a psychologist whose first question was, 

"What year are you?"

"Um [I clear my throat] I'm actually a spouse of a grad student."

"Oh. I don't think we can assist you, unless you are coming in for couples counselling."

"But, all my health care services are provided by Gannett."

"That's strange. You shouldn't be able to received services through Gannett *, but either way, we aren't part of Gannett. Let me put you on hold and go and check."

"I'm so sorry for leaving you on hold for so long. I'm still confused as to your receiving healthcare from Gannett, but as I said we only provide counselling for students. I can refer you to Family and Children's...."

And there I cut her off, thanked her and hung up.

*Also, she is entirely wrong. Gannett is the only place I can go with my insurance and receive full coverage. 

I can't go to Family and Children's because I know some of their counsellors and staff socially and at least one of the counsellors should never have been granted a license to practice, because NO ONE who is that unfriendly, rude, humourless and insecure should be counselling other people.

"Try being bitchier. It worked for me!"

And here is the crux of the matter and should be noted for anyone considering being a Cornell Graduate Student  Spouse.

Cornell doesn't care about you. You are extraneous. They don't wish you to be happy, they don't even know you exist. Despite a study done AT CORNELL, showing that married grad students are both more likely to finish and finish faster than unmarried grad students, they do nothing for this admittedly small population. They don't even provide counselling or job seekers assistance, despite the fact that moving here is more likely to be hardest on the spouse, which means the spouse will be unhappy which will result in unhappy grad students that take forever to not finish their degrees. No effort at building a community or connecting said spouses is made and no forum is provided for us to even to this on our own effective. 

I had sort of gotten over this sentiment until I discovered that they won't let me see a counsellor - the counselling services is separate from the university health insurance, and paid for by the university (I assume to allow students to go and not be forced to inform their parents, should they still be on their parents insurance) so if I want to see a counsellor, I have to go outside the system pay, instead of it being covered like it would be, were I a student. Nice one, Cornell. Force me to pay for your shitty student health insurance and yet don't allow me the same access that you do the students.

British crime dramas.

Confession: I watch a lot of British crime dramas. 

They are sordid. 

Lately, I've been re-watching Waking the Dead. I like that the forensics anthropologist is apparently always some kind of crazy auto-didact genius who has managed to build up an expert knowledge base not only of forensic anthropology, but also cryptography, ballistics, radiology, botany, dentistry, serology, toxicology, pathology. Also, Spence is hot. 

I also like Midsomer Murders - not quite a drama as there is often some comic relief. The premise is basically some grisly, sordid murder happens in a quaint tiny village in the fictitious county of Midsomer. Somewhere around the half hour mark, a second murder happens and then, before the third murder happens, our hero, DCI Barnaby figures out who the killer is and rescues the potential victim in the nick of time. It doesn't matter that all the episodes are the same.

Unlike a lot of American shows, British crime dramas are often a lot more graphic.

So you see quite a lot of "murders" and "rapes". And I never think the victim struggles hard enough: If someone attempted to garrotte me, I'd probably reach behind and gouge an eye or grab a throat and squeeze. Maybe attempt to grab testicles. 

At least: I think I would. a former student of mine published a piece about almost getting raped. She felt disappointed that she didn't do anything to help herself. No kicking in the balls, no screaming. I blame so many pathetic TV victims for this attitude. My friend Mark described a study (I do not have a link) that looks at cops and criminals being shot in exactly the same way. Cops fall over and "act shot". Criminals run for miles. 

So, I've been thinking about reversing the patterns put in my brain by these TV shows. I have a plan in my head, as I mentioned above. Eyes are good. So are throats and testicles. And screaming.

Garden Plan

I'm working on planning the garden for next year. Last year, we didn't do much in it because our garden is so crappy sun-wise and I didn't really have time to get into a pissing contest with our downstairs neighbour (she kept trying to plant things where we had already planted things...."I was thinking about putting some garlic here, what do you think?" "Um. That's my herb garden. See these plants I'm picking right now? I put them in my food to make it taste better." I won't talk about her destroying our mint - it's too upsetting.

This  year, however, I will have time to stake my claim properly. And with carte blanche from Steve to do whatever we like to the garden in the name of vegetable growing, I intend to get rid of the ugly, invasive tiger lilies from the front patch and plant tomatoes there. Beans and peas in the area we have previously used for tomatoes (they will supposedly do better with less sun than tomatoes). The really exciting part of the plan is that we are going to experiment with container gardening on the roof of the garage: eggplant and sweet pepper.

Cookie Exchange

I'm going to a friend's cookie exchange party this afternoon. I am a good cook, but not being that into baked goods besides pies, I don't make them very often, so I'm not all that practiced and I don't have a "special secret killer cookie recipe". I made 2 kinds: glazed lemon and snickerdoodles. Ryan wanted snickerdoodles. They are never my first choice - I just do not see the point in them, eternally not cinnamony enough, I always feel that I could do just as well eating sugar on toast. I added extra cinnamon this time, still not cinnamony enough.

Anyway. I talked to Casey yesterday, who introduced me and the other friend and found out that I am going to meet a girl, my age, who just had a baby and "is very active".

I think that people are conspiring because I put a facebook post up the other day that read, "Hello mini-retirement/last 7 months of freedom" and this was cause for concern: some people don't understand my sardonic sense of humor. Also: I'm a little resentful because it's not like I don't already have enough fucking people telling me exactly what pregnancy is like/going to be/how I will feel/etcetera. Also: I feel annoyed that I can't complain, darkly, jokingly, as I do about everything else under the sun, but this subject is some how taboo. I come from the perspective that there is humor in every situation. And if I can't laugh about this then I will probably cry, because so far (this is for you all those women that say, "Oh I loved being pregnant, it was so amazing), it has sucked a lot.

However, just because I've been a miserable pregnant lady so far and not gushing about babies to everyone or rushing to pick up stranger's babies and posting pictures of my uterus on twitter, it really doesn't mean that I am not going to love my baby or not be a good mother. Promise.

My week.

I've given myself 4 days: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and today. These 4 days were for indulgences, particularly today: I have not done much today besides read 67%* of "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion.

On Monday, my boss, fed up with me missing work due to morning sickness, declared me useless, implied I was untrustworthy and asked why I even bothered coming in at all. I won't lie: it hurt at the time. I'm not really all that upset though, because, despite the shock of having a grown man childishly storm into my office, rifle through my things, hurl insults at me and then storm out, I also know exactly what I did at that job and know that I am a) useful and b) trustworthy. I just got pregnant, which, as far as I can tell, I am allowed to do. So, these 4 days haven't been me wallowing in depression. I'm pretty sure. After he left my office, I emailed him a note saying I wouldn't be returning.

At the time, I didn't know how I was going to react. I came home in tears and lay down on one of the dog beds with Jeeves for awhile. Rather sadly memetic and cliché, I sobbed into his fur. He's a good sport and puts up with this from time to time. Then I rolled over and stared at the ceiling, wondering if this was going to be one of those weeks or months where I couldn't face waking up in the mornings or going to sleep at night.

I pulled my shoes off and crawled into bed.

People keep asking me if I'm excited to be pregnant. I can't give them the "correct" answer because excited isn't really the word for it. I'm never excited about things until after they've happened. I'm not overly friendly to people I don't know that well and I have always had a revulsion towards the false, immediate intimacy that is so expected of women these days. False emotions go along with that and I simply can't say,  "Yes! Oh my god, I'm over the moon!"

What I am is: Apprehensive. A little scared about a number of things. Looking forward to it. Anxious about a number of things. Curious. Aware.

Anyway. I woke up after my nap and Ryan came home. He seemed pleased not to find me bawling. I was a bit surprised myself, but, I really think I'm not all that stressed because my boss was and is just plain wrong. It would be more upsetting if I had actually screwed up. Believe me, as someone who has spent a lifetime perfecting turning feeling horribly guilty about things that have barely anything to do with me into catalysts for debilitating, crippling, depression, I am certain that if there was a grain of truth to what I was accused of, I probably would have jumped out a window.

Instead, I did the dishes and ate some lasagne ad thought about what I plan to do next week, after my miniature holiday is over.



*I have a Kindle, so I know.

I'm retiring.

My boss informed me on Monday that my job was ending in December. He wants it to be a full-time position, with half of the time assisting the grant people. He let me know I was welcome to apply, but because it was full-time, benefits eligible, they had to open it up to other people.

I will not be reapplying, for various reasons. One, in particular, but I'll not go into it here.

Yesterday, he emailed me a lot of letters that I was expecting a little less than a month ago. I duly printed them on letterhead and sent them to his office to sign. This morning he let me know (nicely) that he'd expected me to add his contact information to the signature.

And here is why I will be damned if I ever take another job that has any hint of administrative support. I had the same frustrations at a different admin job I had. Mainly, I somehow missed the mind-reading class that all administrative assistants seem to have taken. When I worked for the hedge fund, my life was constantly reliving that scene in Office Space where Jennifer Aniston isn't wearing enough "pieces of flare".

"So, more then."

It's not quite like that here, but I still find myself visibly irritating my boss when I haven't done something as, for example, unintuitive as add contact information in a signature block. Obviously this is a minor example, but it is not "correct" to have contact information in a print letter signature block, particularly if it is printed on letterhead. I'm not even sure what he wants in the signature block - a phone number or email address is inappropriate, his title is already there and the address of our institution is in the letterhead. Of course, it's his letter and he can have it however he likes, but I can't possibly assume what that is, if it is not what is the traditionally accepted manner. What if he wants a small drawing of a giraffe at the bottom of the page or wants his name to be written in a coMbInatIOn of uPPer and LoWer cASe?

The reason I say I missed a class is because I get this impression from people that someone else would have known. It might be in my head, but I can't shake this feeling that someone else would probably have had this all knowing ability. Other people manage to be happy in administrative positions and don't seem to irritate their bosses.

Bacon is not health food.

Okay, I know, lately, I've been complaining a lot about Paleo dieters, but my frustration keeps bubbling up because of being annoyed by facebook posts from a particular person (A quote from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee: "“You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family..." neglects to mention that you also can't choose your husband's friends unless you are a shrew).


This rant's topic: bacon. In all it's sugary, salty glory, it could not have been eaten by pleistocene era homo sapiens sapiens because, well, salt was a rarity. So was fat. And sugar? Certainly not in any refined form. So much for the "lean meat" clause.  So stop smugly pretending you're eating bacon for health reasons.

Strange Lump

I've had a strange lump on my right pinky for about 2 weeks now. It hurts when you press on it, but it's one of those strangely satisfying sore hurts, almost like a sore muscle. Pressing on it, despite causing more pain, feels like some release. I don't know if other people experience pain the same way, but sometimes something sore just wants to be worried, poked at and prodded.

The other night, I was watching a recent episode of Doc Martin (I just love watching my stories! You never know whose long lost relative is going to show up and replace a character who left at the end of last season for some ambiguous reason explained hastily at the beginning of an episode!) and I yelled to Ryan, in the kitchen,

"I think I have arthritis. What's arthritis like?"

You may think this a strange thing to say to someone, but I come from a long line of hypochondriac, hysterical, medical quasi-autodidacts, so "I think I have [blank highly improbable ailment]"  is not an unusual utterance of mine.

He said, "You don't have arthritis."

"How do you know? I have this lump on my finger. It could be a Bouchard's Node."

"Okay fine. You have arthritis."

"No, look at it."

"I think it's broken."

He said this and has continued to say this to me since that evening not because he thinks it's broken, but because once, a few summers ago, he banged his toe while sailing and came home and casually mentioned that he thought he'd broken his toe. I didn't believe him and the reason I didn't believe him is because if I'd broken my toe, I'd have complained a considerable amount more than he did. So, good wife that I am, I dismissed it as a sprain. It actually was broken, though and has caused him some amount of discomfort since.

 I can actually trace this pinky pain back to a specific incident, but it happened so long ago, I'm not sure why the painful bump has arisen recently - or if it has been there all along, why I'm noticing it now. Web MD has nothing to say on the subject.

The incident is this: Nelly is a big brown horse who takes after her big grey mother, Henriette, in a lot of ways that neither of them have any pain receptors in their big heads (I'm afraid to lead Henry - she just doesn't care where she puts that thing and it could kill seriously someone). They are both a bit territorial too. Henry once swung her big anvil of a head over the fence and bit my thigh while I was riding Firefly (to be fair, she thought we were too close to her foal; to be even fairer, she was standing by the ring with her foal despite a huge pasture behind her when she decided that I was too close to her foal - there is just no reasoning with warmblood mares!). I was loud and unpleasant to her for it, and she decided that attacking me was a bad idea (although I could tell she still sort of wanted to - I'd see a glint in her eye when we passed her the next few times). Unfortunately her much younger daughter, Nelly, has less sense and when she tried the same thing on me, I went as far as to wallop her across the nose. She barely blinked; I was in excruciating pain and had to cut my ride short so I could go an put my hand in a cold bucket of water.

It hurt for a while - I don't remember how long - and then I forgot about the incident. Until that discussion on the couch.

Just now, I let him know it was bigger today than it has been. I think he's tired of me diagnosing myself with absurd ailments (hey, we've all got our coping mechanisms) and said, "Cancer" which is probably one of those internet memes, like Godwin's law, something like, "Every medical discussion or question on the internet will eventually lead you to a diagnosis of cancer".

I don't think I have little finger cancer. I probably did break it when I walloped Nelly. I will keep everyone informed.

Editorial from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on Hunter-Gatherer Diets

This editorial articulates my point regarding the Paleo Diet much more concisely and clearly than any cocktail party rambling I have been guilty of.

Lists: Things on the brain

-Autumn is here. I want to make apple butter, among other things.

-I want to get back into making almond milk and cooking beans on Sundays. The almond milk fell by the wayside because R wanted to order it from the bulk place but never got around to it. This is one of those things that really frustrates me: sometimes he won't do things because he's thought of a better way to do them, but the better way requires a little more effort in the beginning, so it doesn't get done at all. The beans will be easy to do though. I made a fabulous split pea soup last week, just split peas and a little bouillion and a lot of time. It was even better the second day.

-I keep reliving a course I had on Saturday with Ruby. It was perfect - we were the best we've been. I'd put together everything I'd learned from riding her and getting through all the tests she constantly throws at me. Then I failed, big time and was thrown into a coop. See, Ruby asks you a question before every single jump. About 6 strides out, maybe 7, maybe 5, she says, "Really?" What she is looking for is confirmation from you that you really do mean to jump it. Then she grabs the bit and drags you to the fence, so your next job, after answering her question is to keep her feet on the ground for as long as possible. So there she was asking and there I was answering. We jumped the hay bales and galloped down the hilllock and back up to the top of it, turned right and faced a coop that had the sun hitting it so it was glaring. "Really?" she said and I said, "Yes." She looked a little harder at the fence and asked again, "REALLY?" I said, more loudly, "YES". I thought this would be enough, but we arrived at the fence and there was no trouble keeping her feet on the ground. She stopped dead and I slid right down her neck and onto the coop. It's all on video.

-I have a list of things in my mind that I need to get the where-with-all and pantry space to make. One is bouillon from the River Cottage Preserves Handbook. It's a beautiful book that I bought at Powell's in Portland when I was there for my friend's wedding. I bought that book and Putting Food By, which has given me a very healthy fear of botulism. The River Cottage book suggests one or two methods of jam making that are, in capitalised letters, expressly discouraged by Putting Food By. 

-I also want to make apple sauce.

-R and I are talking about buying an allotment next year. Since I, in all likelihood, won't be working, I can contribute to the household by growing food, namely the things we do not get from our CSA. I can grow things and preserve them which sounds like a much more rewarding use of my time than trying to get reporters to by junk remedies or completing competitive renewals for grants. Maybe I'll be able to even sell a little and get that project going. Who knows how much time I'm actually going to have though. 

-I'm going to knit a bunch this winter. I have this idea that if I knit a 100% wool afghan, I'll be constantly warm, because I'll have it covering me as I knit. The flaw in this plan is that I have an idea to make a sort of sampler quilt by knitting a bunch of squares with different stitch patterns and in different colours and then bringing them together.

-I have a plan to have an indoor herb garden. Ryan is skeptical* and discouraged me in the past but a downstairs herb garden is just not practical when one cooks like me. Usually the thing is on the stove cooking before I think, "ROSEMARY!" and, as I am usually barefoot and in my pyjamas at any given time when I am at home, running downstairs and around the corner to get to the entrance of the yard, in full view of all the Northstar patrons enjoying their cocktails, isn't all that practical. I don't even care about being seen, really, it's the fact that I'm already in the middle of cooking. Sometimes, these days, it's dark when I finally start dinner, so I'm not really going to be all that great at finding whatever herbs I need, anyway.

-*Ryan is a sensible, very intelligent, pragmatic person who is almost always correct. Sometimes I am lazy and just believe him about things. This has bitten me in the ass more than once. I had an experience this last summer involving bringing bars of special soap for laundry from the Asian shop his sister goes to in Sacramento. He was convinced that the security people would think it was weird to bring several bars of soap in our carry on and that we shouldn't bother. His sister and I colluded and concluded that he was being a bit of a ninny and I went with her to buy the soap anyway. The worst we would be out would be the 80c I paid for the soap. There was no problem at the gate. In short, sometimes my husband is a little too cautious, so I am going to try an indoor herb garden.

Perfectionism

I am an absent-minded person. I also have an inability to pay "attention to detail" (apologies for the use of that hackneyed job board cliche), in certain circumstances. I can actually have "attention to detail", I just don't seem to have a lot of choice in what I pay attention to... my horses, when I had them, were always spotless, my tack room, when I had one, was organised down to the alphabetised-according-to-ailment medicine cabinet and I make some excellent jam...but tossing lemon juice into the compost and keeping the seeds or doubling a cheesecake recipe that I've already doubled make for some hilarious after dinner stories that have given my husband a lot of mileage. I am not someone suited, ideally, for administrative work. However, combine a degree in physical anthropology and a personality that is singularly unmotivated by money or prestige and these are the jobs one gets.

I have been lectured at work for things I accidentally do, such as misspell a name or put something in the wrong place on a chart. It's not an often occurrence but it does happen occasionally.

At the moment, I am supposed to be doing something (procrastination is another fault of mine...) that involves going through files (hard copy) that were put together by my predecessor.

I do not feel so badly anymore and the next time I am sent into a spiral of shame and self-loathing by a supervisor, I will remember that other people are possibly just as forgetful or absentminded. One file has someone's name misspelled on every piece of correspondence, despite receiving correctly spelled correspondence from the misspellee.  Others are missing swathes of necessary papers. One even has the wrong first name for someone in several places.

In short: I may not be perfect, but other people aren't either. Also, I just spilled water all over my lap.

Cornell Companion Animal Hospital is now on my enemies list.

Cornell Companion Animal hospital, you may have saved Jeeves life in June, but sending us scary emails following up on positive test results from six months ago that you neglected to inform us about in the first place and not having actual documentation of said test results (or other, similar tests!) and thus, no way of verifying whether it was in fact a positive test is too much to bear. Once you have given us our retest (which I do not expect to pay for), we will be taking our dogs elsewhere.

Begin vaccination rant/

I read a post on the facebook page of an old friend Liz Ditz (her daughter and I rode with the same trainer for years) that was in regards to vaccinations:

My two eldest children are patients of Dr. Baskerville. I have also declined to vaccinate them. As the article suggests, Dr. Baskerville has gently and kindly recommended vaccination for them and has graciously accepted my decision not to follow her recommendation. We've discussed the relative merits and risks of the practice and she continues to provide excellent care to my children in the rare instances that they need it.


My concerns regarding vaccinations do not center on autism, though I'm not convinced that there is no link. Rather, I believe that my children's immune systems, evolved over millions of years, in conjunction with good hygiene, nutrition, and adequate exercise, is their best defense against infectious diseases . Given that vaccines have a known, quantified risk (though it's likely that the risk is greater than what's published due to underreporting). I'm not willing to play Russian Roulette with my children's health by exposing them to a known, possibly fatal risk to possibly (since no vaccines are 100% effective) prevent a disease to which they may never be exposed.


I've asked medical professionals if they can point me to a scientific, peer-reviewed study that compared the overall health and well-being of vaccinated and non-vaccinated populations. So far, none has been able to cite such a study.


Obviously, to anyone who has an actual grasp of how evolution and statistics work, this woman is clearly an idiot wrong. What's surprising to me is that her sentences are complete and her punctuation is correct. Because usually, this kind of anti-science absurdity comes from the illiterati Tea Partiers that want the guv'mint out of their bidness.

But a certain core group of the anti-vax crowd in their be-sweatered, minivan driving, organic produce buying, highly educated glory are, in themselves, part of the so-called liberal elite. And these folks, in the  under the guise of fashionable scepticism and possibly out of a desire to feel somewhat in control, possibly through perceived "subversion", choose to believe the likes of Jenny McCarthy over less well known people who happen to understand the concepts of the scientific method, evolution (hint: you can use viruses to demonstrate it) and statistics (or even the fact the large numbers are in fact larger than small numbers: the amount of people who dye of measles today is a smaller number than the amount of people who died before the vaccine was invented).

This woman above is not willing to play russian roulette with regards to vaccinations which have a much lower rate of killing/causing damage to people than measles but she is willing to play russian roulette with the actual disease itself.

/end rant.

Happy Birthday to me.

When I was about 16, I had to go to the doctor for some reason or another. The doctor went through a list of normal health history questions and then came to the one that said, "Do you have a partner?"

I paused. Partner? Lab partner? Partner-in-crime?

Then I realised she was talking about a partner in sex and I blushed and mumbled yes. It was meta- embarrassment: I was embarrassed because I assumed my pause had led her to believe I was embarrassed about the question and I really wasn't, I was just having trouble understanding it.

+++

Anyway: I have a medical appointment with a nurse midwife (before anyone gets all excited congratulatory weird - I am not pregnant. This is only the planning stages) in a few days which involved a lot of paperwork for me (none for Ryan! I realise that one has to be sensitive about these things, but surely his medical history is pertinent too). It was full of similar questions. I made the appointment a month ago, they sent me a whole bunch of papers and said please bring these along, filled in and I thought, they expect me to keep track of this paper work for a whole month? (I am so incapable of filing things that once they make it off the kitchen table onto the living room side table that is on the way to the filing cabinet and then off the living room side table, further in the direction of the filing cabinet, they make it into a basket, that I keep a pile of papers in, on top of my filing cabinet that I call my "basket-of-shame". Every six months to one year the shame becomes overwhelming, boredom and a desire to be perceived as an adult set in and I convince myself to file it all away.) Then I remembered what the appointment was for and realised that this may be some sort of test. Are you organised enough to keep track of this paperwork for a month? Okay, step one completed, you may have a baby. 

What drove me to make this appointment? A desire to quit my job and my 30th birthday (today!). Well biology, really more than the actual age thing.  It's not anything I am actually conscious of - I just have baby dreams every single week and have done for about 3 years. I burst into tears over this one during one of our discussions, claiming that I was struggling with my own biology. I spluttered: "I should be above this!" then Ryan said, "Why? You're a biological creature." And I realised that once again I had been operating under assumptions that had been placed on me at a young age, by someone else.

***

So I have these baby dreams, despite the fact that I don't actually like babies. I have no interest in holding them, looking at them or cooing at them. I don't like the idea that stuff can come out of them, from any orifice, without much notice. Casey told me about "not minding" when they sick in your mouth and I turned white and then tried not to sick up lunch. "I will mind." I told her, she assured me I wouldn't (I will). Before you ask, I do like children and babies are only babies for a short time. I used to think there was something wrong with me (another assumption, placed on me at a young age by someone else)and then I decided that there wasn't and that it was okay not to like (human*) babies. Also: I have been told by reliable sources that I might actually like my own baby.

***

So, I can say it now, I want children. I am also terrified of screwing up, particularly in the beginning (What are babies? We just don't know). So, I am doing this the only way I know how. Lying awake at night worrying about it, meeting with a doctor first, taking vitamins and reading prodigious amounts on the subject. (Did you know that the baby gets to taste the flavours of the things you eat through the amniotic fluid and there is some evidence that that effects what kind of an eater they are when they are born? So it's a really good idea to eat a wide variety of foods when you are pregnant if it is important to you -as it is to me- that your child not be a picky eater? NEAT).

***

Ryan worries a lot less than I do. I had these concerns that my riding goals would have to be put on hold indefinitely ("No - I imagine I'll come home from work, you'll hand me the baby and go off riding.") or that the dogs would get neglected (he seemed doubtful over this as well and I think about it now and he's right. I'll be home with all of them all day. We'll go on walks. The baby will be the familiaris version of Mowgli).  Also having a messy house full of crap I don't want and don't need**.

My friends who are expecting a baby any minute now are instituting a no-plastic rule for toys in the hopes that it will cut down on some of the crap they are bound to receive. Of course, I mentioned that to someone else who thought they were nuts (I do not).

I mentioned my not wanting a lot of baby crap to Casey and it was like that scene in The Jerk... "Oh you don't need a lot of stuff. Except a co-sleeper. And a [some other item I don't recall]. Oh and a [another item I don't recall] is really great too" etcetera. But I really think that with our two forces of will united against plastic garbage and space takers in general, we will be able to avoid the problem of too much baby crap. Maybe I'm a fool to think that I can keep a grown up looking house and children, but I'm pretty sure it's possible (now I just want to go home and throw away a bunch of things).

So anyway. Happy birthday to me, I've decided to reproduce.

*and here is my assumption I am placing on you puppies, kittens and foals it is not okay not to like. If you've never seen baby horses frolicking, you've never actually seen frolicking and that is a shame. Also, look at their tiny, whiskery, puckered, little mouths while you are at it. And their butts.

** It's time to do the fall clear out. I've noticed some shirts in my drawers that I haven't worn in six months, so away they must go. Also, I need to move the warmer clothes back into rotation soon, get the old couch downstairs to make room for more storage in the pantry and hang Robert's painting. And dust the bookshelves.

Tomato Tart with goat cheese

Last night we made a tomato tart. We started with a whole wheat crust, prebaked. Smeared a bit of olive oil and about 4oz of Lively Run goat cheese across the bottom and then put a layer of caramelized onion followed by a layer of thinly sliced heirloom tomatoes that had been tossed with salt, pepper and fresh oregano. That went in the oven for 20 minutes or so and came out heavenly.

The combination of caramelized onions, goat cheese and tomato are an amazing combination, almost on the level of a *holy trinity (all though I'm not sure it could really count because it wouldn't work as a versatile flavour base which I think is a major criteria of a holy trinity).


*holy trinities: ginger, garlic, chilies; celery, carrots, onions; garlic, onions, olive oil; etc. - I'm sure everyone has their favourites.

Tomatoes and supporting women.

We are in the midst of the delicious season around here. I keep making a tomato salad by chopping up the lovely fat, juicy heirlooms that come from my CSA. I leave them tossed with a bit of salt for a bit, to bring out some of the liquid and it becomes almost a rustic gazpacho, to which I add bell peppers, crushed black pepper and crushed garlic. I try and chill it in the fridge before serving although this is not absolutely necessary. If you've done it right, you need to serve it in a bowl and with a spoon. The best part is drinking the leftover tomato water at the end when you've finished the pieces of tomato and pepper. Ryan and I jokingly call it "Fruit Salad".

****

I am working on a letter for work to a well-known person whose politics I do not agree with. It's a female and when I groaned about it (via IM, so my groan was probably not actually perceived: if no one is there to see you roll your eyes, did you actually roll them?) she said, "Oh! I love her!" and I said, "Really? I can't stand her."

I think my friend feels that anytime a woman reaches any level of national attention in a field usually dominated by men, it is a success and we should support her. I don't think my friend has actually ever paid attention to some of the things this person has done (sorry to be so enigmatic, but I don't want to get fired), just the fact that she is female is enough to garner my friend's support. Which is a pattern of thinking that has never occurred to me until I started working on the letter again and thinking about the conversation. It would never occur to me to support a woman principally because she is a woman.
***
 

I need to figure out how to get paid to write.

It seems odd to me that these people picked their Great Dane puppy because he was a runt. Surely, if you are going for a breed that is known for being huge, the hugeness is part of the appeal. I'm just going to chalk it up to the barely coherent article and then sulk for awhile that someone was paid to write this drivel and it wasn't me. 


Someone was also paid to write this, which I didn't finish reading. In fact I stopped just after the words "intellectual disabilities" because one can't take anyone seriously if they are using "intellectual disabilities" as a "polite" way to refer to people who are developmentally disabled. 

Ryan is in Portland and More About Horses

Ryan is in Portland at a conference. He had a paper to present. I have been faithfully looking after the dogs but really not doing much else other than watching Poirot mysteries (Five Little Pigs is great! Well, if you ignore the horrible acting by Aimee Mullins, but she's not in it very much so it's not that big of a deal. Big Suze is in it too. You can watch it here). 

I've been so tired recently and I think it's because of a sinus infection in combination with my hours not being suited to what my body wants.

I have Friday, Saturday and Sunday to sleep normally and by Sunday evening, I feel normal again. Human. Energetic! Then, Monday morning happens and I spend the next 4 days being a zombie. 

I'm not sure when the early birds got the upper hand, but I hate them all. The smug bastards who just tell you to "Go to bed earlier! That's what I do!". The ones that act as if they have evolved beyond the need for sleep and are therefore more evolved than you. I'm not sure why we all have to operate according to their schedule, but I seem to have the misfortune of having one as a boss a lot. My old boss didn't require sleep and his second in command pretended he didn't require sleep. The boss ended up inducing heart arrhythmia once or twice and the second in command was just a cranky jerk half the time. I had to be at work at 6am every day. I honestly don't know how I did it. I can't even imagine doing it now. I can barely imagine what I do do which is wake up at around 7, to get to work before 8. 

+++++++++++++++++++++

On Saturday, I went on a hunter pace with my current favourite - a big spooky mare named Ruby. At least we were told she was spooky and also that she was a stopper. She's never spooked particularly badly with either Casey nor me, so...her old owners were at the pace and I think they were a little shocked that we took her, on account of her apparent stopping problem and her spooking problem. Our theory is hunter paces are great for building up bravery in a horse that lacks confidence, which is really what her problem is. I also used an extra strong bit, in case she was TOO confident...  

I would like to buy her but I don't have the money and I am reticent to buy anything that has a hint of stop. I've only jumped her 3'6" once and that time she was pulling my arms out of their sockets to get to the fence, but the rumour is she has a stop above 3'. 

I have paid my dues with a stopper, starting with convincing him to jump crossrails and ending up with taking him to medal finals.The bucker I had was far, far more fulfilling to take to horse shows because all my hard work was rewarded with many, many blue ribbons and very little embarrassment. He was, to use jargon, an "Oh shit horse" meaning when you see it get off the trailer, you say, "Oh shit." A stopper is more heartbreaking than a bucker.

And I'm fed up with horsie heartbreak. 

My plan, as soon as it is possible, is to buy something trained and probably expensive. And take it to horse shows. And only sell it if and when I want to.

I'm done with greenies; I'm done with buckers, spookers, stoppers, rearers, leapers, biters, strikers and kickers. I'm also done with unsoundness, but that's a little harder to prevent. 

When I worked at a stable in college, I had a student, Catriona, whose mother used to tell us that Catriona liked to ride "spirited" horses. When Mandy took off with Catriona, bucking and farting around the ring, her mother shouted, "Ride that horse! You tame it Catriona!".

Clearly a woman who has watched too many Hollywood movies. Mandy was a feisty probably navicular quarter horse that couldn't be in lessons with other horses because she would charge at them. Once you denied her the right to charge other horses, her response was to take off, bucking and farting. We did not have good school horses at this facility, (save one, whom I rescued before I left). She wasn't a wild mustang fresh off the range who, once she realised how special Catriona was, would settle down and be her friend for life. 

Those horses you see in the movies that rear and scream? In real life, the ones that do that of there own volition are not safe to ride. Because a rearing, striking horse isn't a "spirited" horse that needs to be tamed, it's a dangerous horse that needs to be left in a pasture somewhere where it can't hurt itself or others by flipping over or coming down on someone's head. "Get rid of it! It's not worth it!" my old trainer would say when she'd hear about the latest insane horse related accident, like the one where the lady broke her leg in 3 places getting bucked off a horse that had cracked a trainer's spine 2 weeks earlier by striking at her while she was leading him somewhere. 

I know most sensible horse people already know this. It's a common lament amongst trainers, clients who insist on difficult horses - as if it shows off their ability better or somehow makes them a better rider. Everyone has to fall off and everyone has to have difficult rides, but why make it EVERY ride? Another trainer, one I worked for, used to say, "Riding is hard enough! Why make it harder with a difficult horse?"

++++++++++++++++

Car accident!

Ryan and I were in a car accident last week:

Hey! Here's a thing. Last night, the car I was in (a Subaru Forester) was slightly crunched by a car I was not in (a Ford Ranger). There were no injuries, except to the car, which will need a new fender and headlight and perhaps hood. There were four of us in the car, two of whom lived a considerable distance away. In order to get them home, we formulated a plan. We were two blocks from a Subaru dealership, so we drove the crunched car there to await repair. A friend [Ken] picked us up in his Subaru to drop us off at my place where Alice and I drove the other two to Dryden in our Subaru. Once to our friend's place in Dryden, she drove the fourth person home in her Subaru. A series of Subarus and one Ford Ranger.


That is what Ryan posted to Google+ which would be a whole lot more fun if anyone I know actually made use of it.


After we were in the accident and had pulled into the parking lot of the bank (next door to a Taco Bell), we got out of the car. Almost immediately, a man dressed in black and carrying a large shoulder bag approached us and started complaining about the idiots on the roads these days then proceeded to tell us about an accident he'd been in. As odd as he was he eventually seemed to pick up on the "now is really not a good time" sentiments that we were probably all feverishly broadcasting loudly with body language. We had a little chat with the girl who hit us and her father, who had been traveling behind her in a different vehicle. He was wearing a fanny pack and drove a large van. I think he wanted us to have been drinking (we'd split a pitcher between five adults at dinner). Then, the man with the shoulder bag returned and started to tell us another story about an accident he'd been in. I looked a little closer at his shoulder bag and realised that it was not a shoulder bag, it was a cat carrier. It had a cat inside it with its face pressed up against the mesh.


Then Ryan went into the Taco Bell to get Casey a drink. Here is what he overheard (cribbed from Google+ again):


clerk: "...also the Bell Whanger Mealy Deal. That's two forty three."
cat man: "Well, alls I have is, uh, about a dollar thirty. So, I guess I'm gonna have to go with the number 74 combo ersatz meal."
clerk: "ok"
cat man: "Unless you just want to throw in the Whanger Mealy. Cause otherwise I hafta go for the number 74 combo 'meal'. But I could owe you. I only got the dollar thirty right now, but my payroll is coming in tomorrow. I'm gonna cash my payroll tomorrow at the Citizen's Bank. I only got it today at five after the post office was closed, so tomorrow I'm gonna cash it at the Citizen's Bank. You know, right when you go in the Tops, the Citizen's Bank. So, I could swing back by tomorrow and drop off the extra, what, dollar ten. We'll call it two. Yeah, after I cash in my payroll at the Citizen's Bank right inside Tops I'll swing by here and drop off the two dollars. What I owe you and a little something for you. A little tipper, huh? What's your name?"
clerk: "Shawn."
cat man: "I'm Aaron. Yeah, tomorrow I'll swing by and drop off the cash I owe you after I cash in my payroll. And a little tipper for you. Thanks, Shawn."
clerk: "ok."

Then, when he went back to his table, the cat man scolded his cat, which he had previously let out of the bag, for getting off the table. "You stay on the table! I told you I'd be right back and you had to stay on the table. I don't want you wandering all over. Just stay on the table."

Slaughterhouse-Five banned in Missouri

A school board in Republic, Missouri, has banned Slaughterhouse-Five because, apparently, a parent complained that it is anti-bible. I'm fairly certain that this person is an idiot because the book doesn't have much to do with the bible unless the bible is pro-war (is it?). There are just some swears and a bit o'sex, but if you think that is so wrong, why can't you discuss it with your child?

I don't know how old I was when I started reading Kurt Vonnegut, but I'll just say this: he made high school bearable. 

I'm tired of seeing the pearl-clutchers win. I'm also tired of this weird attitude that parents from all areas of the spectrum seem to have regarding protecting their children from everything bad in the world. Kids need to have bad things happen to them like scraped knees or frustrating experiences with scooters so that when something actually bad happens, they can say, "Okay. I can deal with this and this is not the end of the world." 

When I taught riding lessons regularly, I'd have cross parents when their kid fell off. I'd get an angry glare before their child was whisked off to soccer practice. And I'd think, "If falling off a horse is the worst thing that ever happens to your child, your child will be very, very lucky." 

Then there were the parents who didn't think it was my fault or the horse's fault or even the child's fault - it was just something that happened. Guess which kids were more fun to teach and happier, more well-adjusted and functional human beings? Guess which kids got better at riding faster? 

Update: The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is sending a free copy of Slaughterhouse-Five to those students in Republic, Missouri that wants one. http://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/ You can help by donating a little bit of money.

Candy ≠ Sex

From this article in the Nation: 

In Cincinnati, Ohio, a high school sex education teacher carefully places a Jolly Rancher candy on each student’s desk. The 14- and 15-year-old students feel the crinkly plastic wrapping in their hands, wondering when they will get to eat their tantalizing treats.

“Don’t eat the candy!” warned the teacher, although she had just finished placing one on each desk. “You must wait until after class. It will taste much better if you allow yourself to wait.”

Obviously, this woman has never had sex. Because if she had, she would know that the first time you have sex is awkward and weird, a little embarrassing, and not all that great. For some people, it's painful. It's not candy. 

She would have been better off giving them something they could practice at. Like, I don't know, musical instruments. I bet if they practiced the kazoo every day for a week, they would find playing the kazoo a lot more fulfilling than when they first began. It might even be less embarrassing.