Week 2

Things are not well at UMB. I don't know a person who is not walking around stewing and furious. Things started out looking promising even perfect for pretty much everyone during the last week of Christmas break but by the end of week two everything had been upended. Those told they would not be teaching have been pressed in to it. Those told they would have days free for doing research or field work now have to come in. Everyone I know has been screwed in at least one way and most of us in several very large ways.

The problem now is that there is this pervasive undercurrent of anger. And from what I can tell everyone is trying their various ways to cool off and it isn't working. Tears, prayer, meditation, drinking, therapy, talking things out with others, trying to reason with the offending party. Everyone is still PISSED OFF and its leaking out in to the rest of our lives.

In the past 2 weeks I have been so angry I could not cry, so angry I could not stop crying, so angry I could not eat, too angry to be able to eat anything at all, so angry I could not speak, so angry I swore in front of my students, so angry I could not move or function or consciously think of the next reasonable step to take to move forward, so angry I almost went out and bought a shelter cat (I have no idea?).

I think part of the problem is that everyone is unhappy and everyone knows it and everyone does not have to be unhappy and we also know that too. BUT because of poor planning, last minute readjustments, miss communications and other human errors everyone got screwed over and now that the second week of the semester is drawing to a close the schedules are pretty much set in stone. Whatever you were dealt, you are now stuck with it. Suck it up and deal with it. But I think it is the overwhelming knowledge that it didn't have to be this way AT ALL that has everyone stuck. That and the fact that every other person you interact with has a similar story. Somehow that keeps fueling the angry and not letting it die out. Like an infection or something that keeps mutating slightly and reinfecting the host.

It also isn't the type of anger that is useful in fueling you to move forward or change things because you have to move forward in to the broken semester schedule and you can't change it. It is the "suck it up wuss" type of anger that requires rallying up more energy to throw at quenching the anger, It is energy draining, productivity sapping anger. And its everywhere I need to be productive.

I have a tremendous amount on my plate the semester and my ability to check off all of the boxes was tenuous at best when I signed up for it. Now the odds are stacked that much higher against me and resources that I need from other people are also starting to fail. Commitments are being broken, deadlines are not being met, expectations are not being made clear, and agreements are being invalidated to a shocking degree. While this comes off as a pity party it isn't meant to be. This is what I am facing and what I am seeing and what I am trying to figure out how to deal with. The majority of the people I rely on are facing the same problems and some of their problems are ME. I think that the general overall fuck-up has completely undermined everyone's trust. That is a hard hard thing and I think that is the root of why we are all stuck in angry gear.

A dear friend sent me this note last night. Then they told her she didn't have enough credits to graduate in June and would have to wait until December, long after they told her that the courses she took were approved. Now it looks like they might revert to the original plan but things are still painfully up in the air. (One step forward, two steps back, one step forward...)

Today she called me to get/give a pep talk and our homework is to get off our asses and move forward so our theses don't ruin our lives. So it is with that in mind that I post her list and my response...

AK's Life Decisions
1. I'm going to start painting. Sunsets, beaches, trees, water...all the things I love.

2. I'm going to listen to more Jazz...it makes me feel alive and sophisticated. (Download Eva Cassidy)

3. When I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. (Thesis, thesis, thesis).

4. I'm going to stop picking my mutha fuckin fingas!

5. I'm never going to eat a Twinkie again.

6. I am going to get a puppy and name him Mulligan and he will sit by my side while I do #1 and sometimes #2.

7. When I get frustrated with life, I am going to take a deep breath and thank God for all my blessings.

More to come...this was to wet your whistle (say it like Rabbit on Whinnie the Pooh).

I think I'm going insane.

Jn's Life Decisions
1. I'm not going to start painting. But I will write more. Sunsets, beaches, trees, water...all the things I love.

2. I'm going to listen to more Jazz...it makes me feel alive and sophisticated. (Download Eva Cassidy)

3. When I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. (Thesis, thesis, thesis). I am going to keep a CURRENT to do list so things aren't forgotten, misplaced or mismanaged in to the ground and so I get back to being dependable.

4. It is unreasonable to think that I will ever stop picking my mutha fuckin fingas! but I am really going to try. (AK and I share a frightening number of neurotic tendencies.)

5. I'm am not going to eat another Twinkie for 362 days. I am never going to enjoy a Twinkie. I am going to post the Twinkie pictures...soon.

6. I am going to get a puppy and name her Ruger and she will go with me everywhere I can possibly take her.

7. When I get frustrated with life, I am going to take a deep breath and thank God for all my blessings. There are more blessings than just "I can still walk" and "No one that I know has died this week" and I will actively look for them.

-Jn

Tomorrow is Groundhog's Day

If you don't know what this means to me then you don't know me. For reference see this: http://jnkcmd.blogspot.com/2009/02/wheres-cream-filling.html

Aimee does not yet know that she is going to be documenting this tomorrow when we meet to thesis but she will. More on this tomorrow obviously.

Also, dear facebook readers I still cannot log on. I love you very much and you can email me. I will respond. Also my cell has not changed so you can try that too. (This is particularly directed at you Anna and MelKel and Misha. Misha I got your text and yes we need to hang out.)

Themes of the kitchen

So we’ve been trying to do more with less. It’s a good moto when you have a choice. When you crunch the numbers and figure out that you cannot both keep a budget and cover your needs on your current income it isn’t really a moto any more.

I will go in to the details of how we are attempting the whole more with less thing a bit later. More than one step and each sorta deserves its own attempt to shine.

For now know that we had to eat our groceries in reverse order of priority after our last shopping trip. We had more frozenables than our freezer would hold and while it started out nice and frosty outside, it didn’t hold long enough. So we have been in a race to eat food before it went bad since we bought it and now we are at the end of the road and the few remaining fresh fruits and veggies were ready to sprout legs.

Today was all about using up every little thing possible before it was too late. Even if it things didn’t make culinary sense. There is also a birthday which needed tending.

Garbage Can Stuffed Peppers… Dos
(I don’t remember how I made uno any more but I know I used both WINE and KETCHUP in the same recipe. I have no shame.)
Ingredients
(whatever is going bad in the kitchen?)
6 Green peppers minus the one you already ate
1 Onion
7 very small vine tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic (or however many you can find in the corners of the fridge)
1 pound ground meat. Try turkey or beef or woodchuck if you have it.
½ C uncooked rice. I used jasmine basmati rice
½ a baby can of tomato sauce
An artistic amount of Ketchup
Worcestershire sauce
Feta Cheese (however much cheese you want)
Parmesan Cheese (ditto)
Spices: Chili Powder, Crushed Red Pepper, Oregano, Ground Coriander, Parsley, Ground Pepper, Salt

Start some water boiling in a big pot. Cut the tops off the peppers and remove any edible pepper pieces from the tops before you pitch them. Scoop the seeds and ribs from the peppers and cut out any bad spots. (Note: you really shouldn’t use peppers with bad spots because the goodness will leak out the holes. Damn) Drop the hollowed out peppers in the boiling water for 3 minutes (longer is NOT better here). Finely chop the remaining pepper pieces from the tops and set them aside. Use a slotted spoon or tongs to get the peppers out of the pot. Drain the water from the insides and set aside. Dump the rice into the water where the peppers just were and add a heaping helping of the above spices. Cook the rice for about 13 minutes or until it starts to get soft but not done. Finely chop the onion to match the pepper tops. Add some olive oil to a 12 inch, well seasoned cast iron skillet of awesomeness and throw in the chopped onions and peppers. When the onions start to become translucent add in the ground meat product. Drain the water from the half cooked rice and set aside. Dice the tomatoes. When the meat is almost completely browned add the garlic and tomatoes, then the tomato sauce and quantity of the above spices that you wish. Use the ketchup to sketch something interesting on top of the mixture and then use it to sign your name on your work. Throw on two splooshes of Worcestershire sauce and turn off the heat. Mix in the rice, feta and parmesan cheese. Place the parboiled peppers…in a muffin tin. Stuff them as full of the meat rice concoction as possible. Put any remaining meat/rice into a bread pan and pretend it’s a meatloaf. Bake everything for 25 or so minutes at 350 until everything is warm and gooey and wonderful all the way through.

Note 1: If I had more garlic I would add it. Then maybe some tomato paste and red wine in the meat mix .And mozzarella. Lots of mozzarella. I would even sprinkle mozzarella on top of the peppers so that it could get all melty and brown. For spices I would add garlic powder and basil to both the meat and the rice mix.

Note 2: I prepped and packed my parboiled peppers in my pepper pan and popped the peppers in the fridge for the present. I will bake them when I know what train my boyfriend is getting on.

1 Bad Banana 9 Good Cupcakes
Dry Ingredients:
1 C flour (Use whole wheat and pretend its healthy)
¾ C sugar (Brown sugar compliments the whole wheat pretty well)
¾ t Baking Powder
3/8 t baking soda (or ¼ and half of ¼ t since no one owns 1/8 spoons but me)
¼ t salt
1/8 nutmeg (or just give the shaker some authoritative shakes)
¼ t cinnamon

Wet Ingredients:
1 banana mashed to oblivion (~0.5 C)
¼ C milk and 1/8 t lemon juice
¼ C butter
1 Egg beaten
½ t Vanilla
¼ t Almond Extract

Preheat the oven to like 350ish. Combine and mix the dry ingredients. Do the same with the wet ones. Then thoroughly mix the 2 together. Slap some muffin papers in a muffin tin or grease the wells. Add the batter to the tin and bake for about 18 minutes. This made 9 muffins for me. You might also elect to make a mini cake. This should be the right size for a 9x9 pan…just bake the thing for longer. Feel free to double the recipe since that’s how it started.

DISCLAIMER: I have no idea how good these are. You tell me. I refuse to eat them. Last time I tried the original recipe I gagged. I can’t make myself like these any more unlike banana bread. Every time I make a banana baked good I think I am going to upchuck.


Posing as Healthy Cream Cheese Frosting
(I pretty much stole this one straight up aside from the fact that I added copious amounts of cinnamon as well)

Ingredients
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons butter (called for unsalted but whatever)
2 tablespoons brown sugar (called for light but goodness they were picky)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (do people really measure vanilla and almond extract?)
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon honey
An over healthy dose of cinnamon

Melt butter and allow to cool. Or just melt it and toss it in. Why not? In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, butter, brown sugar, vanilla and almond extract. Beat with an electric mixer. Or since you don’t own a mixer use a fork. When mixture starts to stiffen, stop mixer fork and add honey and copious amounts of cinnamon. Continue to beat until light and fluffy. Do not over mix, or it will collapse (I can’t vouch for this). Spread immediately and store cake in refrigerator.

DISCLAIMER 2: Use extreme caution as the frosting is highly addictive and more than one coal miner’s daughter has become sick from eating too much at a sitting. I wonder if you could freeze it in to ice cream! Mmmm. Death.

-Jn

Been a long time since I rock and rolled

I took a break to try to get my shit together. Turns out that to get your shit together properly you can’t actually take a break. Funny that. All I really got out of the repose was the revelation that if I am not actively writing I suck at it. I stutter in text. Can’t keep a thought rolling to a finish. And I tend towards not starting at all. If I can productively procrastinate enough the day is done and the writing isn’t…but I didn’t have to suffer through my own mediocrity. Which in turn breeds a new form of mediocrity.

Let’s try and be done with that.

In the coming months I need to write for a handful of scholarships and there is that whole evil thesis lingering…looming…lurking…waiting to grab and wrap my foot around a root under the water until I run out of air. I don’t think I will ever be in the mood for that but ima do if only because I have to.

And since my audience of 5 is primarily in tune via Facebook I thought I might pass along to you that Facebook and I are not on speaking terms. It’s not me. Facebook somehow dissociated all of the email addresses from my account so I can’t sign in. I still get some email notifications but I can’t do anything about it. I waste less time but boy is it a pain in the ass.

Also I had to re-pierce my nose today. I think things have reverted back to the way they were before the ring got put in, when everyone told me that it was a bad idea and that they wouldn’t like it and neither would I. But seeing as how it’s the only piece of jewelry that I wear that I can regularly see and the face happens to be mine, it’s my choice. And I still like it. Enough to withstand the involuntary blood and tears and near loss of consciousness that go with acute pain that close to the eyes. Maybe someday when I have a two year old, or an interview for a real job…

I spent most of the day in the kitchen so you will get the results of that shortly. Use it as you will.

-Jn

If nothing else- Pray for Haiti

For updates on HAFF and the missionaries see here:
http://www.haffdetails.blogspot.com/

For a good charity see here:
http://www.missionaryflights.org/

Attempt one

...at canning applesauce was sort of a half success. I make apple sauce all the time in the pressure cooker but it looks like more sauce in the pan than it actually is I guess. Instead of 2 quart jars, 2 pint jars. Instead of 2 properly canned jars, 1 properly canned jar and one that exploded all over the kitchen when I dropped it with the crappy plastic tongs that aren't made for picking up anything, especially not boiling hot jars. But what was left of that jar went great with dinner.

...at making yogurt was only successful in the learning. The most important lesson, do not drop the digital thermometer into the milk. Digital thermometers are not water proof which also applies to milk. Without a thermometer you have to guess at temperatures and I guessed high. Live and active cultures aren't so live and active over 55 degrees. Oops.

I am with Honduras

Leave the country to govern itself by its own laws.

http://www.halfsigma.com/2009/07/article-239-of-the-honduran-constitution.html

http://www.hondurasthisweek.com/editorial/1186-honduras-united-to-defend-their-constitution-and-democracy

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/honduras-removal-president-legal-constitution-has-vaccine

Technicoloring the treetops

June was awash with rain and the clouds that ferried it from place to place. Colors were all muted in shades of grey and the world seemed out of focus from the fog. Flowers blossomed sparingly and mother birds willed their children to stay in the nest so they did not die from the elements. Basements got wet and rivers rose. All people seemed to be able to talk about was the weather. “Welcome to Seattle, Massachusetts.” “It is supposed to be 100 in June.” “I heard in a dream last night to build an ark.” But I suppose this was actually to be expected since the showers drowned out dreams of something more exciting. Weather seems to be the most neutral topic of conversation and so when the world shifts into greys and softer shades perhaps the neutral topic is natural.

The morning of the fourth found me in Ipswich after Isolating Thunderstorms had stalled our egress one or two hours longer than was safe for riding. The weather had turned overnight. There was a sun. It was a warm sun. And the breeze through my jacket vents was for the first time necessary to keep temperatures in check.

As we twisted between treescapes and river views it became apparent that the sky had never been this blue before and the clouds never so purely white. The greens were striving to be the greenest they had ever been and the red-browns of the forest understory were so vibrant they seemed as alive as the trees themselves. The world was soaked in pure earnest color radiating from all corners. Stone walls had cloaked themselves in green ivies and the river was made up in reflections of the sky and trees both refusing to maintain dull colors after the break in the weather. The only grey left on the landscape was that rightfully owned by the well worn road to anywhere. And even then, as the pavement wove its way through the colors and ducked out of site around corners or at the edges of the horizon, perspective took over and all that remained of our path was the vibrant yellow stripes guiding the way forward.

Tomatoes and trees

First you buy tomato plants. Then you gain permission from the land lady to put in a garden for which to plant said plants. Then you weed a small plot until the rain gets too rainy. Then you go buy more plants because if 6 tomatoes are ok then 10 should be fine too and some peppers and beans and cucumbers and zucchini shouldn’t hurt either. After that you pull up all of the not-grass that is in the “backyard” because now you can fill it up. Then you find yourself unable to requisition a shovel but it is raining anyway so it doesn’t matter much.

But now you have a shovel and a tray of plants that need planting. So you begin turning the soil and find lots of rocks and even more glass. But for every shard of glass there is a nice healthy earthworm so it can’t be all bad. The ground is moist and dark, full of nutrients and animals to shuffle them around. And while you work you even out the strangely sloped earth until you are about halfway through. This is when you first meet the tree. The tree quickly loses a few roots and you move on without much thought. But there it is again and again. And now the roots are growing around and through each other and now they are growing into each other. The first one is perhaps 2 feet long, then 5, now 10. And now for every solid shovel of dirt to turn there is another shovel that hits roots and stops dead.

This tree was planted perhaps before the houses themselves or at least at the same time. It is large but not regal. It is a city tree with boils and galls for all its shady branches. It grows at the junction of 3 lots. Above ground it is forced this way by a garage wall, and that way by a fence, and growth is limited on another side by a driveway. Restrictions and rules in place to keep it growing ever taller and straighter if not healthier. But beneath the soil the tree was given no tending, no direction. Roots were free to do as they desired, first up now over, now through left and back right. A driveway may limit direct nutrients but not the persistent quest for them. And so a sprawling net of subterranean hardwood has crept from the parent trunk in all possible directions.

What could be removed from the small plot in the small time allowed with the small amount of energy left in the shoveler, was removed with gusto. Now the vestiges remain at the edges of the land waiting to be turned. Perhaps this is ground enough for my chosen green things to grow. The possibility of sharing will be considered after the application of a tape measure in the morning sunlight. If a compromise cannot now be made a new battle will unfold with a re-energized shoveler. But the outcome of the war is not in question.

The trees will always win. Unlike fickle flesh, trees can afford to be patient. I will be around tending and toiling on my small plot for a few years more at the most. The ground left behind will be more rich, even, and aerated for the effort. And so the root edges will reclaim territory in a slowly meandering way. The tree is surely older than I am, and may outlive me by a number of years. The tree has time to wait. Trees always have time.

Pancakes

2c trader joes multigrain baking mix
1c oatmeal
2T ground flax seed
2T oil
2 eggs
1.5c milk
cinnamon or nutmeg to taste

Serve with berries and real maple syrup.

Basically its the TJ's recipe plus oatmeal and flax seed and enough milk to make the consistency right again. But the bonus is that they are high in fiber and relatively good for you. I'm sure it works with other baking mix too or you could be less lazy and make them entirely from scratch. What intrigues me is that the TJ's box recipe is supposed to make between 12 and 14 cakes and I added a bunch of stuff and still only got 12. Shrug.

-Jn

4 seconds finished

Night comes slowly to this city
Washed with clean spring rain
Grey, Grey-blue the clouds dispersing
In sunset pink the foremost framed
And the buildings, mirrored, reflecting
Green and steel, green and grey
Save the few sun's light directing
Gold on gold to end the day

-Jn
I-93N
4/23/09

I hate bananas

We had nastier than usual bananas in the apartment this week so I decided to make bread with them. Keep in mind that the last time I made a banana inclusive recipe I gagged several times- pretty much whenever I could smell the bananas- so this was a big step. Also I had no pecans or walnuts, no coconut, no almond extract, no mixer, and a mostly white flour/refined sugar avoiding household. I knew mixing was going to be a problem so I made sure my wet and dry ingredients were homogenized before I put them together. That seemed to work well and I don't actually think a mixer would have made it any better (more to clean up and put away).

I was told that the bread came out perfectly and that I shouldn't change anything- no nuts, no coconut, no messing around with the flour or sugar ratios. I even had a few pieces and it was tasty which should tell you something.

(And as always 5L feel free to skip the DEATH ingredient.)

Jenn’s Perfect Banana Bread- adapted from Mom’s recipe

1 C White flour (I only use King Arthur Flour now for everything)
1 C White whole wheat flour
½ C White sugar
½ C Brown Sugar
1 teas. Baking soda
½ teas. Salt
1 T fresh grated orange peel (actually about 3 teas- more doesn’t hurt)
½ teas. Cinnamon (Didn’t actually measure this out)
¼ teas. Nutmeg (Didn’t actually measure this out)
½ C butter, softened (1 stick)
¼ C milk
1 C (4 small) mashed bananas
1 teas. Vanilla
½ teas. Amaretto (because we don’t have almond extract)

Preheat oven to 350. Combine all dry ingredients and mix evenly. Combine all wet ingredients and do the same. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix well. Turn into 9x5 bread pan which has been greased on bottom only. Bake at 350 for 60-70 mins- or when toothpick comes out clean.


Use this one if you are resistant to change...
Original Recipe (Mom’s)

1 C flour
1 C sugar
1 teas. Baking soda
½ teas. Salt
1 T grated orange peel
½ C butter, softened
¼ C milk
1 C (2 med) mashed bananas
1 teas. Vanilla
½ teas. almond extract
1 C flaked coconut
½ C chopped walnuts

Combine all ingredients except coconut and nuts. Blend at low speed- beat at med speed 3 mins. Stir in nuts and coconut. Turn into 9x5 bread pan which has been greased on bottom only. Bake at 350 degrees for 60-70 mins- or when toothpick comes out clean. I use 4 small pans and bake about 45 mins. Remove from pan immediately. Note: you can leave out the orange peel and coconut and even the nuts if you don’t have them.

Wrote this days ago...

The east coast is unique in North America because the geological composition is such that we can build underground. It is understood that this changes the structure of buildings. For instance, you rarely see basements in Florida. However, this also effects transportation. In Boston we have, as a result of the Big Dig, a maze of roads beneath parts of the city. So large, ugly highways have been hidden beneath historic buildings, and the city is more aesthetic.

In addition to burying our cars we are also permitted underground trains. Phoenix has a train system resting gently on the fragile desert soil and Chicago has trains attached to buildings several stories above the ground. They have the light rail and the El….we have the T.

For what it’s worth I have been taking the T more often lately and it puts me in the mind of dystopian societies. The system is well designed and trains should come often enough so that rowdy crowds do not build up on platforms but not so often that they are empty and thus wasteful. However, the trains themselves are aging and break down with almost daily regularity. Conveniently for the state, the delays seem confined to rush hour periods when people are still groggy from waking to early or tired from the day’s drudgery. The crowds are thus desperate and frustrated by a need to be anywhere else save where they stand, but the lack of energy drives them into suspicious and hopeless passiveness instead of riotous action. Youth maintain more energy throughout the events, but they resent cooperation and lack focus. They respond to the situation with furtive vandalism and little else. Still the effects of such street art are not always empty.

Posters highlighting or perhaps mocking the grey dystopianism are sprouting around the city. The image is a stern but portly face something like the synthesis of Che with Buddha. The eyes are watchful and the expression borders on angry, but it is rendered in a way that it cannot be taken seriously. Many posters contain only this face while others are underscored with the word OBEY in large, bold letters. Big Brother has come in the form of an overweight man and he is watching you from bridges and from rooftops. He is with you while you are on the highway, crossing a pedestrian bridge, or shuffling through the train station. He sensors the mail you slide into the mailbox and he peers in to the coffee shop where you access the internet to check your email.

I assume few acknowledge this bit of vandalism. At best they label it poor street art and dismiss it. And again I assume that these same people fail to notice the cameras in the tunnels reading license plates and those mounted on building corners near busy crosswalks. Signs denote train cars under surveillance and train stations watched as well, but these notices are lost amid one hundred other signs, posters, and graffiti scrawls. If the overzealous person does manage to read and understand those words they will be translated as “safety” anyway for watched means protected to most.

But perhaps this is all tainted thought. A bias brought on by reading too many of the wrong type of books in my youth. Had I read cheerful sentences my outlook might reflect the same. Instead I am left with sad images from sad pages that are brought into alignment with the current situation any time I step into the underground.

The underground, where the color is always washed in soot or concrete grey and pigeons huddle against the breeze that must be coming from someplace outside or above. The underground, where people wait idle and wary and water seems to always trickle down the walls from some other place into another unknown. The underground, where ugliness of all types is hidden.

Where's the cream filling?

The state of the Twinkies.
(One Twinkie a year for 10 years. However one of my Twinkies was stolen about 2 years ago so there should be 5 under that box.)

The Twinkie of the day above the sell by date that mysteriously lacks a year.

What I am theoretically still eating.

The guarantee that it will be good.
Twinkie number 6: Looks normal, feels like a cracker, crumbles like a cracker.
Like last year the cream filling has been absorbed into the cake. The outside is again crunchy but unlike last year the two ends are also pretty crunchy until you get about 2 bites in. The center right around where the filling would have been is still chewy and not as sacchariny. Actually it tastes a lot less like anything. Some residual nasty absorbed cream taste but everything else is pretty subtle.
Last bite. Crunchy.
And the clock resets.



Conclusion: Better than last year.

-Jn

See Also: Hostess Twinkies and Twinkie Recipes

Sort of like a snow day

I am still on school break. I get well over a month to sit on my duff and get bored. Went to my parents, went to the boyfriends parents, went to my place, went to the best friends, redecorated and refunitured a pair of apartments, hosted a playoffs batch, all interesting things with interesting people. I also did a lot of procrastinating writing a paper and a letter of recommendation. Writing with a quality assurance checker. No good. I have one more week minus the time I have not used productively today to get myself squared away. I am sort of flailing and splashing a lot with no structure to my days. It is hard to get up and hard to get moving and hard to start doing things I don’t want to do. There is a nebulous deadline floating out there over my head that I can see if I squint but like the deadline all of the steps to get there are fuzzy. Starting school again will be good for me.

Today I was hanging out at the boyfriend’s and he was busy being boring doing interview related things pretty much all day. The house was pretty much immaculate due to preparation for the aforementioned football bash and so I had to go outside to productively procrastinate. I carried snow and thought about nothing. Then I carried snow and thought about more nothing. Then the neighbor from the squirrel infested house came home, talked to me for a while, and took his smiley pooch for a drive. So I carried snow and thought about a little more than nothing. Then the neighbor came back and fired up his snow blower to help me. He did laps with the blower and I cleaned up in between his lanes in a comfortable steady manner enveloped by snow blower white noise which was much more like silence.

We were done to the point of having to ask other tenants to move vehicles so that we could get the last vestiges of snow when the land lord showed up to shovel. The landlord proceeded to wrestle the blower away from the neighbor and conscripted another tenant to shovel which was odd all around. We were almost done anyway so why bother? Plus with 4 people walking around carrying snow and talking to each other and to me it was difficult to keep carrying snow while thinking about nothing. I started thinking about carrying snow and how I didn’t want to carry snow because it was wet and heavy and I was cold and sweaty. Consequently, shortly after I started thinking about carrying snow I also started thinking about not carrying snow anymore which is also about when I stopped thinking about carrying snow because I stopped carrying snow and moved back inside. Problem solved. I do however need to do something Normal Rockwell-esq and make some sort of baked good for the neighbor with the smiley dog named Christy who chases the squirrels that live in the eaves of her peoples’ house.

I also never wrote up the recipe for my pumpkin soup. Hmmm…

-Jn

January was so long that it lasted into March

Have you ever wondered why we celebrate the new year in January. It hasn’t made sense to me when I was a child. I remember when I was young a made a comment to my mother about how it was strange that every year has two winters. She didn’t understand what I meant and corrected me but I wasn’t incorrect. Every calendar year is book ended by a winter either coming or going.

Why don’t we choose an equinox or a solstice, a changing of guard of the seasons. End at an established end and start with a true start instead of making up our own. I understand that these events are not set days but they stay close to each other and are bound by celestial movement not human designation. Other cultures and other times have used planting and harvesting seasons, or rainy and dry seasons, but nearly always season to demarcate the passage of time. We choose not to start at a season nor the mid-point of a season and this has been so for most places since before the Gregorian Calendar (the one you are most probably most used to) was introduced. But there is not a great deal of reason for why January 1st starts the year and not another first...or similarly why January 1 is in the middle of the front half of winter instead of some geometrically or celestially more logical place.

Apparently calendaring is not an easy business. It starts with the moon spinning round us out of sink with us spinning round the sun such that you cant always fit months with moons and not have seasons shift quickly. So there must be the extra days and the too few days chasing each other. And the craftsman must try to get all months to have a moon and to be odd numbered to pacify the gods and superstitions. Pagans and Christians and Republicans (roman) and Mathematicians all causing commotion if their holidays and symmetries are forced to shift. And the commonest man constantly confused by the push and pull of additional days or months by papal or pontifical decree such that his birthdays are never the same and letters come in the mail dated later then they were received.

While we are on the subject, why did we stick with the superstitious Roman choice of making February so short when the Catholics and other religious folk were clamoring for a proper calendar that didn’t lose days and shift important Holy Days around. We could have rounded out the months 31, 30, 31, 30 and stuck a leap day in any day we pleased. Why 31, 28(29), 31, 30 with a stuttered 31 later on. Perhaps at the mid year point. Why even give it a month. Make it a day outside the calendar. If at the new year point it would be a day between years. Name it after a king or celebrated figure.

This may seem strange for children born on that day but not really. Feb 29th babies are already forced into cruelties like being 1/4th their true age or celebrating their birthdays on off days. We other day babies have the same number of days in each of our years but face not the same issues because our dates don't drop of the map. Worse still for the Romans born in a month that was added or subtracted often at random to keep the seasons straight. How do they age. Better to have a true unbirthday, to be born outside of the calendar and never age at all.

awing

Once a way and a way to away round the world with no dirty sole
Twice a trip and a dip and a skip and a tightly spun swirl
Third for a wing and a sing and a bird alight to extol
Four for slight sound, whispers settling down
Fifth flies on to safe, solid bole
Six rests, soft breaths
And seven keeps sleep
Until comes again a once dawn

-Jn

And then it was over

I am finally starting to be back in control of the night time again. Last night I dreamed and it had the potential to be lucid except I declined conscious control. This was for the better.

It was a drawn out dream with many disjointed places and people but most of the people in my high school graduating class and others who left us along the way were there. And they were all this age but as if there had been no disconnect, no graduation and going separate ways and becoming married. Maybe we all had gone away but we still knew each other as if we were together daily.

We were in a bunker of sorts in the mountains outside of a city for a tour and dinner. Mid tour we met the president (who is actually one of the professors at UMB) and I spoke with him for a while. Then we had a really good dinner and were briefed on our mission.

It is one of those classic good versus evil struggles where most of the human populace does not know about the threat and does not care except that they DO NOT want the struggle going on. And if the good guys don't fight the bad guys the bad guys will ruin everything for everyone including the apathetic masses. And we got in to our aircraft that were shockingly like TIE-Fighters from star wars and just as agile. We met our foes (I have no idea who we were fighting? Aliens? Another race? Another country?) outside of the city, with a goal of keeping them from leveling it. There was a chaotic dog fight. They manned stealth bombers and flew in formation making them a solid wall. We flew at random but like a school of fish ever conscious of our proximity to the others so collisions were avoided. They had a distinct leader and plan. None of our pilots was designated leader; we moved as necessary and received suggestions from our base.

We were in control of the fight and they were being pushed back. Then they were running. And we realized that we were being drawn away from the city so that a few could sneak in behind us. I broke off from the chase with two others and met three enemies at the city limits. At first we were chasing them but somehow they looped back around and were chasing us. My ship started losing power and I managed to set it down in an alley by a park where some transient shops were set up. I snuch in to a pot shop and bought a AA battery from the dred-locked hippie who made the jewelry and other merchandise. $3.18 for one AA battery. I remember specifically. But none of the other prices stayed the same or made sense. Thats when I realized I was dreaming. I bought the battery and fired up my ship again. In that time my comrades had been trapped by the three ships and were hovering and spinning nearer and nearer to each other as the other ships closed in. Apparently I had been forgotten and I used that to my advantage. One ship was was sent skittering into a tall sky scrapper shearing off the top 10 floors as it went. Another spiralled down and out of the city into the mountains and the third took off after it with us in pursuit. And then I woke up.

And then it was over.

But TIE fighters run on one AA battery.

Coffee shops close too early

And so one sits at a coffee shop, because a coffee shop seems like a nice place to sit when one has to wait. And it is Peet’s which means it is better than other coffee shops automatically. And it is in Lexington which means that it must be better than a normal Peet’s because zoning prohibits par chain stores from taking up space. And one sips a chai tea that begs to be swum in and slept in and hugged. And since you cannot do these things it does them to you instead.

I have been told that purgatory is a place of waiting. I wonder if purgatory is like a coffee shop. People sitting and waiting and sipping and chatting. And the book club going on mindlessly about some blather that wasn’t worth one reading let alone the nine it received. And the half Goth flirting with the baristas while the obnoxiously toned woman orders skim foam. The classical music piped in overhead being overcome by a ringing phone, a grinder, steaming milk and an oven timer. The people walking by in the half drizzle glaring angrily at you because you are warmer and drier and sipping more chai and they have a place to be and you are just waiting. All of these would drive one mad if one was wont to be driven. But the music is peaceful and the book club monotone and ignorable, the half-Goth awkward and interesting and the passersby colorful. And this is a warm waiting steeped in chai tea. Waiting is far from paradise but there are worse waitings and worse than waitings.

My Christmas cravings are on the shelves here. Myriad warm beverages and the tools to make them. Thermoses with tea infuser baskets. French press travel mugs. Tea pots. Infusers. Mugs. Coffees. Teas. Cocoas. In the moment, holding this chai tea, I cannot imagine anything else I could want for Christmas (except the ever present puppy in my mind). What else could one want for Christmas? Maybe wool hats, wool socks or another alpaca.

AH HA! The half-Goth WORKS here. That explains why he looks so familiar. That and he looks and awful lot like Wayne when you ignore the Goth half. And Makayla the barista not flirted with is now on break working on her novel…or maybe her geography homework. Maybe I should be too.

Desperation Meal

1/2 Package of whole wheat spaghetti
1/5 a package of frozen cream cheese (more or less)
2 cubes frozen basil
4T left over pizza sauce that may or may not belong to you
2 splooshes of milk
a little olive oil
1 can salmon that has an unfortunately strong flavor

Make the spaghetti however. While it is draining in the sink use the already heated pan to try to melt the cream cheese and basil. Add in the pizza sauce when you discover the cream cheese starting to burn. Add in the milk and olive oil when you discover the pizza sauce starting to burn. Mix in the salmon at some point. You end up with this pinkish reddish paste eventually. Mix the spaghetti in with the paste and you have a desperation meal. Actually 2 or 3 of them.

Rating: Borderline tasty. Definitely ok. The salmon flavor is tamed by the other flavors and ends up more like tuna. (MUCH better than trying it with mac n cheese). Mom would still probably gag.

-Jn

(If I had a gun I would shoot all the gulls because they will NOT SHUT UP. AGH!)

Tell me a story

I have been writing a lot lately but not for you. At least not for you yet.

In my selfishness I want you to write ME a story.

Yesterday after lunch I was wandering around behind the dorm building setting waders out to dry when I heard a snatch of Jazz music come over the bluff in a wind gust. I figured one of the sailboats had a radio up way too high but then I heard it again. When I climbed up to the balcony porch I could see a guy standing at the waters edge in shorts and a white tee shirt playing Jazz music from a saxophone. He never finished a song, though the little blurts and burst of music were good music. There were other people on the beach further down but no one was paying attention to him. I also don't know how he got there, from some other private access or from the public way about a half mile down the beach but not from our stairs.

I want to know why he was there and all of the other details about him. I have my own version that I am quite fond of and I will share it when I get around to polishing it and making a few lies longer.

(The picture is of where he was standing but at HIGH high tide. He was there at low tide, imagine lots of big rocks and tide pools...less water :P )

-Jn

A cormorant's green glass door

Yesterday morning when I awakened the world seemed to end at the bottom of the bluff. Everything had been white washed in a thick fog and the wavelets seemed frozen on the water. There was no definition to any landmark and no horizon line to give the eye perspective. The only visible features in this expanse of nothing were two pointed rocks, holding their heads above the high tide line. They were parallel to each other and slightly skewed from the bluff. Perched atop each rock was a single cormorant, gazing out at the world’s end. It seemed as though they were sentinels entrusted with guarding the passageway to another time or place. If the mighty, bold, or stupid could bring a raft thus far one bird would warn and the other encourage, and both would watch the soul slip through the gateway into danger.

You would have been able to feel the magic in the air. It was breathtaking. Then you would move to quickly to get a better view and get caught up on the air because it didn’t deign to move with you. That’s when you would realize that the world was cloaked not in a cool morning fog or misty after rain but the hanging, deadening cover of humidity that was impenetrable by the sun and impervious to the breeze. This is how magic dies.

I am told that yesterday it got up to 95 F in my area which those who keep track call a record high for the day. And while the previous day was warmer, ringing in at 99 F on my car thermometer, I was no longer in waders and the heat was less morally and mentally deadening. I suppose I should offer some space for the heat turning people stupid, but yesterday four people caught me in casual conversation and asked the same question. “Is it hot enough for you Jenn?” It took everything in my heat stroke damaged mind not to say, “No actually, I don’t start to enjoy myself until it is over 100 degrees and at least 95 F the shade.” This is rude and I did not say it. I told Meghan instead.


-Jn

Different Place, Different Weather

The air is still on this side street as it is throughout this history laden town. The dishwasher is keeping time with the traffic, and I cannot hear the sound of my own typing for the sake of it. The steady background hum is occasionally overlaid with a hurried siren or the bwap of a motorcycle speeding up, but the dishwasher chinks dishes in reply.

I have most recently been mixing, mashing and chopping, making a green paste for my supper. Now I am composing for my benefit and consuming the thick salsa for the same reason.

Try this:
4 zabocayo (or avocados or paltas for those otherwise traveled) mashed
1 tomato chopped
¼ a large red onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic pressed or minced
Heaps of chopped fresh cilantro
The juice from at least half of a lime
Salt and pepper to taste
Chop, mash, season and stir together. Serve with anything that will scoop including crackers and spoons. It doesn’t keep well so either eat it all or pack it up in the following way. Find the smallest container that will hold all leftovers. Flatten the surface of the mole and cover it with lime juice. Press plastic wrap tight onto the surface and otherwise cover the container. Do not use metal.

Less recently I was painting a living room in the same heat conditions. Earlier in the day you could more clearly see through the hang of humidity; however, sweat chose to flow instead of kindly evaporating. Curiously enough the paint was still drying almost as fast as it was applied. We managed to even out the streaky spots, cover the cracks, and blend all of the dirty shades of Previous Tenant Quick Cover Up into a uniform presentation of Arcadia White. The calming effects of solid color walls are amazing. Before the paint went up I did not realize how stressful and distracting the ugly patches of poorly painted wall mixed with dust bunny dirt were to my eyes. Now if only we could buy the paint for the kitchen to cover up the Smurf-threw-up-on-the-wall paint color testing patches. And maybe procure and air conditioner. That would be good too.

-Jn

Promised rain never came...

It is a few past eleven and a storm is rolling in. The winds are building in the tree tops and along the water. Down the bluff there are whitecaps seen by faint glints of light coming from neighboring houses. There is no moon nor are there stars. Unless the tide is out all of the way, water must be crashing against the rocks below, but it can’t be seen.

The storm is coming in fast. Fifteen minutes ago I walked from the other building and it was calm. I was temped to stay longer in the garden to look at the night blooming flowers, but there was an eerie feel to the air. It was not so much a chill in my spine as an overwhelming desire to be back inside. Perhaps the same unsettled energy is what hushed the frogs and halted the chirring of the insects. Or maybe what I felt was heard silence driving me indoors. Regardless, by the time I gathered my laundry and made my way upstairs the wind had begun. Now the sound of it against the cliff face and thrashing through the trees is drowning out the hollow iterations of the fog horn.

Scattered in patches of brush and trees between the well hewn banding trails mother cardinals and other nesters will be huddled against the coming rain. A night like this may promise respite from the dangers of sharp-eyed night fliers. And the rain will compliment the cranberry bogs and their swampy surrounds for the frogs. More water lends time for breeding and frantic tadpole growth. It will also pool in depressions too small for much else but healthy crops of mosquitoes. And while the adults feed on banders and other woods wanderers, they will soon become food for the swift birds, and any young that hatch in deeper water will supplement the diet of tadpoles.

But the rain is not as committed to this night as the wind. No thunder cracks through the trees or against the bluff as yet and no lightning has chosen to highlight the cloud edges. There is still time for the drops above to reconsider falling here before the wind blows itself into stillness. They may merely be waiting for a moment of peace and a vertical fall instead of a complicated, muddling sky dance. Or they may decide this watershed has not issued the proper calling and follow the wind further until they find a suitable resting place. Storms are fond of our befores and linger at our afters but they rarely pause here above us for long if at all. Who can know the mind of the rain? And who can map the lightning’s course?

5/30/08 Manomet



...The winds blew all the same.
-Jn

Sip it

Some days are just made for nestling in a comfy chair with an oversized mug of tea and reading. Near enough to the windows that you can see the drizzly grey sky and the misty after-rain and watch the droplets race down the panes. Some days require driving to other peoples’ backyards in a van with a broken everything and a distinct potpourri of mixed molds. Then hiking through wet scrub to get to reach extra large puddles that may or may not be filled with special creatures and standing in cold water until you forget what feet feel like. The van was wet, the papers were wet, the range finder was wet, the people were wet, the waders were wet and the pools were dry-almost. I still don’t want an office job thanks.

My partner at arms is headed back to the frozen North on Sunday and today was my first day without training wheels. It also appears that my fearless leader has been incapacitated for maybe a week and unknown quantity = intern Matt comes on Monday afternoon. But I got a birthday pie, a grad school acceptance email, a perfect little spitfire birthday present, a jar full of tadpoles and planarians, left over Thai food for breakfast and a 14 year old kid who wants to volunteer with us. After we bailed when the rain started again I spent some time pretending to band birds (which I will do more of on Monday while waiting for intern Matt). Tomorrow should look like whales and sweet, sweet laziness.

That time of year

My friends here follow bird calls- they are mostly banders by trade. They seem to know every which mating noise and from whence and who it came. And yes you wonder how such a small beastie could make such a big racket. But birds are flying machines and they are made to hold a lot of air- maybe it isn't so crazy that they could cause a ruckus.

But I follow a different set of romance songs. First and always it is the peepers. Then the wood frogs, then the green. Now the tree frogs and the American toads. Peepers are the smallest frogs around but they consistently make the biggest noise. Unfortunately they all sound the same on the surface except for the occasional excited trill. Wood frogs sound more like ducks and while tree frogs sound happy their burbles don't exactly inspire. My favorite songs emanate from the toads. Long echoing trills stretching in to minutes and all toads at a different pitch and timing harmonizing with each other. But I guess this makes sense too. Honestly if you want to get some action, you need to sound fantastic if you look like a Bufo.

"I have always liked frogs. I liked them since before becoming a zoologist, and nothing I have had to learn about them since has marred the attachment. I like "looks" of frogs and their outlook. And especially the way they get together in wet places on warm nights and sing about sex." -- Dr. Archie Carr

Jn has a Job and 2/3 of a place to live

This post is for the uninformed which is most of my friends because I suck and the last week was also crazy busy. So was the week before that.

Two Wednesdays ago I had a phone interview about a job I had already kissed goodbye because it was supposed to have already been a week underway. Thursday I got coffee and then my motorcycle permit with JJ (I completely forget now why he is JJ in shorthand but I remember that he is). Later that day I got a call while buying high quality produce at Wilson Farms after visiting with the super pregnant, buck-toothed llama and the 2 super pregnant goats who like to bite chickens because I was locked out of my boyfriends house on the day before corned beef and cabbage day which I guess makes it the 27th and this a run on sentence. Regardless, they wanted me and I wanted that job more than any other job I have applied to during my lengthy term of unemployment. As I mentioned they intended to start work before they interviewed me which means they wanted me a week ago then...or about 2.5 weeks ago now which will be this Wednesday. We start from behind and race against time.

One Wednesday ago the Red Queen drove up from her castle in PA to help me pack (and go to a hockey game, a book store, an ice cream stand, and a reptile show-things that NEEDED to happen in order to pack properly I swear). We (NP included) shuffled most of my belongings in to a 5x10 storage room since I now have furniture and can't keep everything I own only in my car. However, it says in big letters on the wall in the office that you cannot sleep or cook or really have any fun at all in the storage space so this does not count as a place to live. The stuff I will actually need or desperately want to have with me is in Catsby who is reluctantly about 1/3 of a place to live. I will sleep in a dorm for the summer with 3 other people hence the other 1/3 of a place. We finished mopping the floor and cleaning out the fridge this morning and RQ and Gurgles were on the road this morning at 8am.

The Job:
I am working for the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences and I am doing this. If choose not to follow the link here is a summary. I will drive around to vernal pools on privately held lands in the Taunton and Charles River watersheds and them for presence/absence of animal species, test salinities, and take water samples that will be tested for fertilizers, pesticides, and road chemicals at another lab. The goal is to hit roughly 100 pools twice between now and when the pools dry up around mid June. Then I will hopefully get to help crunch numbers for data analysis. You should still chase the link because it has cool pictures and a video describing the project. They run out of funding to pay me in mid July sometime, at which point I move back to the north shore or someplace else and reacquire my belongings and a black and white cat.

-Jn

Variations on a Mango- Updated Recipe

2 Large Ripe Mangos, cut in to pieces
2-3 Peaches, cut in to pieces (Optional)
Peach schnapps
Trader Joe's Multigrain Biscuit mix
Oil
Farm Fresh Whole milk
Cinnamon
Vanilla Ice Cream

Cut up the fruit and put it in a bowl. Soak liberally with schnapps and let the fruit bits get thoroughly inebriated. Make the biscuits according to the package (Oil, Milk, donno what else or in what proportions sorry) and add about a half of a cup of sugar (I didn't add the sugar I wish I had). Sprinkle with cinnamon and a little sugar before baking. After the fruit has floated for a few hours dish it in to bowls over ice cream with a warm, wonderful biscuit. If you make enough you can have the same thing tomorrow night too. Bonus!

Some of these events occur in the future

1. I have a job for the summer and I am super stoked. 2. Yesterday was seriously the best day ever. 3. I bought corned beef and company for St. Patrick’s Day and never made it because I joined a Pub Crawl instead. Today is try-to-make-this-meal day and I have included the recipes for your perusal and future use should you choose to trust my culinary skills. Like most of my recipes what follow are compilations of other recipes modified for my good pleasure.

Tonight’s Menu:
Corned Beef and Cabbage (Made following the Ideal or Real World recipe depending on your particular universe)
Horseradish, Chive, and Dill Sauce
Farm Fresh Marbled Rye Bread
Farm Fresh Whole Milk (from a glass bottle)
Dessert- Variations on a Mango

Ideal World Corned Beef and Cabbage:
5-6 Whole carrots cut in large chunks
10-15 Small red potatoes halved
1 Med onion cut in wedges
1 Small Cabbage cut in wedges
1 hunk corned beef (~ 3 lbs)

Enough water to cover the goodness
2 T apple juice

3 Garlic cloves minced
2 Bay leaves crushed (3 small)
3/4 T cracked black pepper corns
1 t Thyme
1 t Paprika
1 t Yellow mustard seeds
½ t Whole coriander
½ t Allspice
¼ t Celery seeds
Pinch of crushed red pepper

Wonk the beef into the crock pot and surround him in with the friendly carrots, potatoes, and onion. Mix the spices with the apple juice and about 2 C of water and pour it over the pot contents. Add enough water to cover the beef and most of the veggies. Cook on high for 2 hours then drop to low heat for 7 hours. Add the cabbage about an hour before you plan to eat (sooner if you like it mushy).
Prep time: about 15 Minutes
Cook time: 9 hours

Real World Corned Beef and Cabbage
(Same ingredients list as Ideal World Corned Beef and Cabbage)

Start preparation at least an hour late because of weird weather causing traffic and talking to your mother. Realize that you left necessary spices at home. Wonk the beef in the crock pot and add the veggies. Add 3 cups of water and turn on high. Make a shopping list (Bay leaves, thyme, paprika, mustard seed, whole coriander, allspice, celery seeds, rye bread, sour cream, chives, whole milk in a glass bottle). Go to Wilson Farms amid hail and rain. Stare at spices for at least 15 minutes. Fail to find yellow mustard seed. Marvel at the size of the snowflakes that are now falling. Discover that pickling spice is primarily mustard seed and coriander. Purchase contents of basket. Walk out of the store into freezing rain. Return to store to purchase a chilly, red tulip and save it from the nastiness. Walk out of store into non-freezing rain that changes to ice pellets half way across the parking lot. Drive home. Place tulip on the window sill between the sprouting white onion and the wee prickly pear cactus. Begin to mix spices. Have an Oh Shit moment over the mustard seed pickling spice dilemma. Dump half of the pickling spice into an empty bay leaf container. Remove the cap from a curry container because it has smaller-than-whole-coriander sized holes. Hold the cap over the now pickling spice container because it is too small to fit securely. Shake mustard seeds and other riff-raff spices into a bowl. Measure out the soloized coriander from the make shift shaker and dump the excess back into the package. Gently shake the bowl containing the remainder of the spices to group the mustard seeds. Tip the bowl slightly to take advantage of gravity and the round properties of mustard seeds. Scoop separated mustard seeds into a 1 t measuring spoon using an inverted ¼ t measuring spoon. Repeat mustard seed separation process until the 1 t spoon is full or madness ensues. Return the riff-raff spices to the original package. Finally add spices to the crock pot two hours after starting the heating process. Eat lunch. Mix sauce to serve with the beef. Type up “improved recipe.” Discover that the tulip is so pleased by its current company and the warmth of the kitchen that it has bloomed. Leave on high for 3 hours total then turn temperature to low. Realize you failed to add the apple juice. Add the apple juice. Add the cabbage just before leaving to pick up your significant other from the train station. Eat when you are too hungry to wait any more.
Prep time: about 2 hours
Cook time: approximately 7 hours

Horseradish, Chive, and Dill Sauce
1 carton (8 oz) of sour cream
1 T prepared horseradish
2 T chopped fresh chives (Use the kitchen shears. It is more fun and faster)
½ t Dried dill
Combine ingredients in a bowl and stir well. Chill. x1 Bonus Multiplier: Return the contents to the sour cream container for storage. (This stuff is really good. I have no clue how it will actually taste with dinner but if it is not a good corned beef pairing is makes one hell of a good veggie dip.)

Variations on a Mango
2 Large Ripe Mangos
.:I will get back to you with the rest of the details when I figure out what the hell I am actually going to do:.

It's quite sunny today by comparision

I ride the train. Other people ride the train. To note this fact is unnecessary. People have private cars, boats, jets, and even busses. Trains are for sharing. I ride the train.

I watch people. I listen. People interest me, their mannerisms, movements, modes of speech. In my opinion this is a better way of investigation than studying by nose. This is possible and it is done. Some do this as a vocation and call it research. Some have a passion. Some just have a misfortune.

Yesterday dulled the eyes and muffled sound. Yesterday chose to force scents. On train one a person nearby gave off the essence of cooked celery. Train two featured someone with the air of stale soup. Free Shuttle Bus air was overcome with the pungent and vibrant scent of ginger (as in fresh cut or candied- notably eatable, not a lotion or perfume). While this was a more pleasant olfactory gift, none of these smells mesh with the nature of a morning, albeit a bustling city morning. I think I would be more accepting or at least less begrudging of these intrusions on my personal space if the odors fit better with the time of day. Before 10:30 or maybe even 11 a day should have traces of syrup and coffee with perhaps some cinnamon or maybe citrus if it must carry a scent in the first place.

A home-bound train paused respectfully at South Station while another sluiced by on shared track. When I joined this train, one of my concomitants spread odors of soggy bread. I mention South Station specifically because during the wait at this junction a youth boarded the train and sat beside me. He deemed it socially necessary to cover whatever natural essences he might carry with his person in a cloak of cologne. The overzealous powers of his scent dampened the influences of any others in my vicinity for several hours afterwards. Perhaps he should be thanked, but at this point it can only be speculation. In fact, the only reason the prior soggy-bread air even remains in my memory is visual impression left on me by the smell bearer. It was unclear which of the people across from me actually held the mantle, but it was either the aged, nearly hairless woman with wan blue eyes or the aged Chinese man with mismatched leg warmers who was worried by the aforementioned woman. Both characters looked like they might be composed, at least in part, of moistened bread. Of all the day’s olfactory twinges, this one was not unnatural. It fit not only in excerpt (because of the physical presence of the bread beings) but also in the context of the whole day.

You may question my last assertion, for when does a damp loaf ever fit a day unless children feeding ducks is involved. Honestly though, it was just a soggy bread day. A cold but thankfully light rain came down on and off but always at a slant. People were walking in a stooped hurry with the speed of their bustle unrelated to the actual time and staring doggedly at the ground as if the concrete or pavement might share some secret of how to better resist the wind if their gaze pierced deep enough. The pigeons were also damp and malcontent, huddling in fluffed masses under eves amid the failed anti-pigeon measures. The only dry pair in the city, an iridescent and importunate groom and his antipathetic bride, reside in North Station and are therefore exempt from paying a weather tax. Surveying the day by eye, ear, and nose, one gets the impression that even a fine loaf of French bread would be flaccid at least in spirit and wonders if the crackers being tossed at the nuptial pigeons were really as crisp as their heritage scrolled on the package claimed them to be.

Some people need an IQ boost

Nick showed me this today.

Gravity: Doesn't exist. If items of mass had any impact of others, then mountains should have people orbiting them. Or the space shuttle in space should have the astronauts orbiting it. Of course, that's just the tip of the gravity myth. Think about it. Scientists want us to believe that the sun has a gravitation pull strong enough to keep a planet like neptune or pluto in orbit, but then it's not strong enough to keep the moon in orbit? Why is that? What I believe is going on here is this: These objects in space have yet to receive mans touch, and thus have no sin to weigh them down. This isn't the case for earth, where we see the impact of transfered sin to material objects. The more sin, the heavier something is.

I can sum it all up in three words: Evolution is a lie

several million years for a monkey to turn into a man. oh wait thats right. monkeys dont live several million years.

For more check here.

No title. Bah.

As soon as I am healthy Ima buy myself some flowers.

Avoid the Plague

Warning: This post is largely about the Norovirus of Death

I am slouching here writing because I am afraid of my soup. I am slouching because I can no longer lay down without going crazy but if I sit up any further it will take much longer to catch my breath. I am also out of breath. I am out of breath because I heated up half a can of vegetable soup donated by my ever-caring neighbor, soup which I am now afraid of. It’s not exactly that I am afraid of eating the soup, it’s the re-eating that’s not so pleasant and more fear inducing. (If the thought of reeating soup makes you queasy you might want to skip to the last paragraph and save yourself some pain.)

If you would like some graphic back story, on Monday at almost exactly 1530 and without even a remote bit of warning I became violently ill in one direction and shortly proceeded to be violently ill in the other direction with little enough time in between to maintain body hydration at an even barely reasonable level. My friend Murphy was around to hold my hair back while I expulsed the contents of my stomach, which is to say that with a toilet and 2 garbage cans in front of me I managed on more than one occasion to hit none of these and had to change clothes and wash a few rugs today when I could finally stand for more than two minutes. (This also makes me out of breath.)

On a positive note I am no longer afraid of the substance that would normally make up 70% of my body and ice cubes are not the coolest and most life saving thing ever invented. I don’t need the crazy cat to wake me up every hour and a half to have a few sips of water lest I slip into unconsciousness (which he strangely, lovingly, and punctually did all Monday into Tuesday). I have conquered my fear of crackers and I will eventually try this whole soup substance. Right now I am content to glance at it cynically and suspiciously out of the corner of my eye.

I also managed to do something today that no one should really ever have to do. When you are a kid your mom or dad takes care of it and when you are in college you have a roommate and when you are old enough (but not yet smart enough) and get drunk enough there is usually someone there smarter than you or you are at someone else’s house and you sort of leave it in their shower for their mom to find and fix. I have a friend who found the rose bushes outside of the Whitehouse to be a convenient self-clean-up free location. I have cleaned up after sick friends, cohorts, and campers and oddly in this one instance of nasty ex-bodily fluids, I feel that it is so much more demoralizing to deal with your own than anyone else’s. You clean up mine, I’ll handle yours. No one should ever have to clean up their own vomit, especially if they are still sick.

By the way, the soup (and everything else that isn’t red bush tea) tastes awful. But I have Murphy tied up and gagged in my like-a-closet and so help me this soup will be properly digested. I am done with little virus demons.

Special shout outs to the neighbor who checked on me whenever possible, strongly encouraged the hospital (advice which I did not listen to mostly because I had no carriage to take me), gave me soup, etc. and to the friend who found me ginger ale as soon as he got off work and drove to the hinterlands to deliver it.

Currently

Currently bewildered
Currently unemployed
Currently enjoying the rampant honesty of the Burnside Writers Collective.

I wonder if they'd take me.

Special notice to the 151 psalm.

Reflections

I saw myself on the train yesterday.

I was taking the red line from Alewife in, sorta sitting to the front of the middle of a car. We weren't too many stops in so not many people. I was looking around reading what was posted for me to read because I figure me reading the ads keeps the prices down right? and people watching in such a way so as not to be staring at any one person and then mostly just staring off into space. (This is what I do on the T. I enjoy it. You don't have to. You can read your book or play games or music on your Ipod. Leave me be and I will pretend not to watch you.) I was staring frontwards and I could sort of see in the car in front of me and I realized that there was someone who looked shockingly like me staring back at me from that car but it wasn't a reflection because the person was wearing a blue coat with a fluffy hood and I had on my black wool coat. Now I took this in all in half a second and instead of locking eyes with the person staring I looked away slowly cause I am not an blatant in your face people watcher like some emo kids (just daring you to look them in the eye so they can think mean thoughts at you because you must hate them and you surely dont understand). And in an appropriate bit of time I looked forward again because damn, I am in that car. And that person was definitely still there but the car went around a bend as I looked up and I got to see the head, the shockingly me like head, detach from the blue coated body and hover staring at me beside a round Chinese face bundled in a blue coat. And to be truthful I sucked in a quick breath when my head got pulled off. It was me...but it wasn't me. And I know it was just reflections but it was still pretty creepy. Sigh...the existential.

I saw myself on the subway yesterday.

My clock says 8:20

Windshield wipers
…and on that account windshields
…but we will stick to the wipers for the moment.

The other day I was driving and the sun was shining and everything was going great…and unlike most stories that start with the sun was shining and everything was going great, everything continued to go great and I thought to myself…I am really glad that I have windshield wipers that work. Pause with me for a minute.

That was a pause for a swig of beer. Now think that through…why on God’s green earth does one think of windshield wipers when its not raining and they are in perfectly good condition but not needed at all. I don’t know.

But it got me to thinking…what else am I not using or not needing right now that still works and I take for granted? See its easy to complain about something when it stops working (like the other day when it was snowing and the wipers were part frozen and the part of the windshield right in front of my vision wouldn’t come clean) and when you are using something lots of times you still remember to be thankful about it (Like when I didn’t have good wipers for a couple of months and then I put new ones on and the next day it POURED). But what about all of the stuff that works and works well even when you don’t need it.

Like how about that clock. Yeah the one you just looked at. You probly hadn’t looked at it for a while until I just mentioned it and you probably didn’t need to look then. But it’s still working. And boy, aren’t you glad it works even when you don’t need it. Because if it stopped keeping time when you were in another room it wouldn’t be much good.

Windshield wipers.

More better than a cover letter

Not Every Café (Ipswich 12/04/07)

There is love and there is life and place to sit down and write and places that cant help but to be wrong.
I watch people walk and people talk and people watch each other going by.
And billboards scream commercial things. Did you know I can do anything if I just buy that lipstick cherry red?
Down the city streets a machine sweeps and discarded pink-orange cups go down the drain.
Meanwhile, my coffee cup keeps filling up by the window where I watch the rain come down.
And I think that maybe love and life dance upon a razor knife. It isn’t like a fairy tale at all.
Each step hurts and each spin cuts. Lovers, livers all are nuts, but they keep dancing lest they fall away.
And maybe to love true and deep you have to callous up your feet, walk barefoot nearly every single day.
But before I tease it in to sense my breakfast money is all spent and cream cheese clings to my finger tips.
Yes there is love and there is life and places to sit down and write, but as for this café, I’m moving on.

-Jn

From the chilly apartment

:::Editors Note::: Blogger keeps screwing up the formatting on the poem. It tells me there will be indentations and then it takes them away. Lo siento. Thats the way it its. ::End Note::

I fear this one is a little dark. Or a lot dark. I have been running around with a cadre of artists lately. Working for them rather. Raking leaves. Ripping apart quilts. Doing other peoples dirty laundry. Normal stuff. There are proper polished portraits in the studio. Children laughing on a bench together. A dignified gentleman. Normal stuff. Then there are the bizarre ones. Hubcaps with wires and a crucifix in bronze and black. A nude burgeoning attached to the roots of the earth. A portrait of a girl in a green dress who is beautiful at first look and second look and even fourth but the fifth shows her to be bound and blindfolded. Normal stuff.

This kept coming whilst walking back and forth from house to out buildings on one or another task. I polished from the poet throne. (Which is not a toilet- it's a longed for chair. Pictures eventually…when the cat lets me put the bed down)

While the Christ Hung Dying in Mid-day Night (Ipswich 11/26/07)

Two boys there (small)
With stones in hand
And cornered, a cat (cowering)
And the stones flew
For in the market they had seen it
Their fathers doing justice
Following the Law (perfect)
Purging the sinful from the world
Calling out the sins as sentence (stones) fell
And are not all guilty of sin
Thus this mother cat (unwed)
Must have secrets (lecherous)
Must be removed
But for the (troublesome) bent woman (ancient)
Who came cackling
Rebuking the boys
"Wanton killers
Untamed beast children
Fear you not God (omnipresent)
Or the Law (perfect)"
And they ran- but laughing
And they laughed- but also they ran
And they did not mock the hag
Away the (broken) cat limped
Into the alley (shadowed)
Where the soldier (former)
Deserter lurking
Watched the beauty (girl-youth)
About to pass by
As on previous days
Grabbed her (virginal) (screaming)
Fulfilled his deed
Ran
Fearing God (omniscient)
Fearing the Law (perfect)
Fearing the sobs (post virginal)
Fearing men (fallen)
All while the Christ hung dying
(Agonized) eyes closing at "finished" to mark the stop
God-Man (naked) perfect and dead
And the great God (omnipotent)
Closed His eyes impossibly– curtains rent
Counted to ten– children wailed
Ever so slowly– dogs howled
Opened them– (mid-day) night ended
And all could be forgiven
Though the cat (girl)– alone
Did not outlast the darkness

-Jn

Picture = Acadia

My world is working its way into rights now. I have a wee apartment and a parking space off the street. The front door is cranberry to match the juice in the fridge. I have laundry and dish cleansing machines for my personal convenience and I can make tea any time of day. My clothes have homes in drawers and on hangers which is better than suitcases because it is easier to find items and remember that they are owned and loved and should be worn more. I have pieces of me scattered everywhere to remind me of who I was and who I will be and the walk between the two places. I have a chair to sit in and ponder and write about the journey. Every time I turn around I find something new that I needed or wanted or missed that I didn’t even know was lacking but I can now claim for myself again. My soul makes little happy sighs and life is good. It’s like little waves brushing up against the beach of a cove when the tide is coming in, small push-pulls taking away the stress of hundreds of days homeless and leaving scattered treasures for a shell seeker. I know things now about what I can and cannot do and I more deeply know friendship, answered prayer, comfort, and love. And now I can scribble my collected know’s down for keeps in the battered yellow poet-throne that I have been waiting on for countless days. It’s coming back home though I’ve never been here before. It’s rebecoming human.

Look a penny!

Dirty Feet (Ipswich 10/31/07)

The world. The world. It swirled, the world, and white was black was white was color. And then the words in twos and fours impatient came and called names, laid blame. And the silence was violent and empty and the stillness was full of sounds. Alone was undone and I was the one put paid to for dirty hands.

Why? I didn’t understand.

And I righted what was left I thought and I begged and I bought but the prices were high and I couldn’t fly anymore. Dirty wings.

Oh the things I would sing and I would sing and sing and the people would bring flowers and gifts and children with fits would calm and give alms in the streets.
No.
There were taunts and jeers and I fled in tears. Streaked face, my face, my dirty face.

The colors used to dance for me in this magic book and the words would flow in to steady rows and salute. I’m destitute. I’m alone. And I go and I go. I’m trying to grow. To be bigger. To be stronger, branches get longer. Why can’t I just leave?
No.
Dirty feet.

Feet wont walk. Mouth wont talk. Eyes won’t see. Hands grope and hands touch. Hands sense and hands feel. “What is there? What is there Dirty Hands?”
Dirty hands.

“Be clean. It’s a dream. Wake up. Please wake up.” And I tear at my skin. Let me in. Let me in. Let me out. Get me out of this place. A well? A hell? A falling for sure. A down without out but not nearly the end. No final amen and a choir on high. I wont die.

“Colors stop coming! Where are your lines? Who stole the designs of this life?” A knife to the pages or better a torch. A threat in a flame. “Say my name. Say my proper name Words. I am good, though I’m sullied and not to be bullied and I know I know how to sing.”
Dirty face.
Dirty wings.
Dirty life dances in cold rain. Pleads for clean. And I spin and I spin and focus comes in for a moment, an instant and the tempos they match. Words line up as they hatch.
Exhausted.
I collapse. Still dirty. Now dizzy. But the bitter is sweet for my dirty feet.
Dirty feet washed little more clean.

Space

I have a place to live for 6 whole months…almost…and sort of…I can’t move in yet because its not done…but it will be…I hope.

Now I have to find the job that goes with the rent payments and the etc. that comes with actually living some place. That’s gonna be a bit tricky.

What I really want is a space that belongs to me. Kinda like the Ground Hog gets his own little old oak stump. I don’t have a place really…just bits of space in other people’s homes and bits of time when they might not be home. I never feel alone. I never get the type of rest that comes from sitting around in your favorite chair with a cup of tea or a beer with a worn out book or a notebook. It’s not the same when you are surrounded by other people’s comforts. Other people’s treasures don’t shine the same way. You can’t tell other people’s guests that they are ugly or ignorant and that they should leave because you are one too and maybe its better you step out.

I get weighed down by the fact that I am stuck living in places that don’t feel like home. I am tired of temporarily setting up shop and living out of suitcases, tired of lugging all of my food around in a laundry basket, tired of my car acting like a giant closet. I want a window to put plants in and I want a bed to put my quilt on. I want a closet for my stuff and a kitchen that I can keep my dishes and pans in. I want to be able to come home to silence…or to have people over or go out if I want. I am tired of being forced in to being social when I am not a social person by nature. The more stretched and stressed the harder it is for me to function like a person is expected to and the more often it seems to be required of me. I understand 5L a lot more lately. Space is precious.

Catch Up

A list I meant to post ages ago. We went up to Maine. We went to Acadia National Park. It is a wee little park compared to some of those other national treasures out west. It has a wee little tourist town associated with it known as Bar Harbor. We finally started keeping track of license plates we saw on the island when we were driving around because there were more other plates than Maine plates. I have included a map mostly so you can see who isn't cool. This is what we came up with…

States we saw:

1. California
   
2. Colorado
   
3. Connecticut
   
4. Delaware
   
5. Florida
   
6. Georgia
   
7. Hawaii
   
8. Idaho
   
9. Illinois
   
10. Indiana
    
11. Iowa
    
12. Kansas
    
13. Maine
    
14. Maryland
    
15. Massachusetts
    
16. Michigan
    
17. Minnesota
    
18. Missouri
    
19. New Hampshire
    
20. New Jersey
    
21. New Mexico
    
22. New York
    
23. North Carolina
    
24. North Dakota
    
25. Ohio
    
26. Oregon
    
27. Pennsylvania
    
28. Rhode Island
    
29. South Carolina
    
30. Tennessee
    
31. Texas
    
32. Vermont
    
33. Virginia
    
34. Washington
    
35. West Virginia
    
36. Wisconsin
    

Canadian Mini-Nations or whatever:
Quebec
British Columbia
New Bruswick
Manitoba
Ontario
Nova Scotia

And the outlier:
Washington D.C

i bid thee rise from thy indolent ass

There is some bad wiring between my ears. Most people I guess know this but it’s a certain sort of bad wiring in particular that we are talking about here. There is this little twinge that builds up as stress mounts and the increasing urge to move things around…like furniture for instance. And it triggers the reward center of the brain such that a sort of frantic calm or peaceful chaos becomes the dominant mood. However, like many other drugs the feeling wears off if doses are not increased and a melancholy, malaisc indolence sets in. This drive is a great tool to have in your closet for certain occurrences like moving out by the end of the month. Awesome, the closer I get to the deadline the more likely I am to pack and move and organize and scrub clean things because the stress grows. This is not so good around times like finals. When what is required is to sit down and pound out a paper it is less than helpful to have an urge to rearrange a room. This happened all too frequently in school. Sigh. At this juncture I am stressed but not the one project deadline stressed or the finals will be over in 2 days and it will be ok stressed. This is the sort of generalized, everything is unsettled stress that lingers about and pools in certain areas and generally coats the whole being in a thin film of slime. Solution 1 – Move in! Great that took all of 5 hours including unpacking and folding clothes. This is what you get when you fit all of your belongings into a car. I’m not complaining about the car sized amount of stuff…just the lack of doing it got me. Solution 2 – Have your boss place you in a small shed with cones and sandwich boards scattered about and myriad road signs hanging from screws in the walls and say go. Cones destapled, sorted, tallied. Sandwich boards destapled sorted and tallied. Road signs sorted, tallied, and organized via excel spreadsheet just for shits and giggles. Good thing that business only took 2 days…oh…wait….now what the hell am I going to do. Sigh.

After this overnight I am taking a nap, a shower, and a drive in that order. Then I might get to do something cool like smash walls. That would be exciting.

-Jn