An Improvement. Of sorts.

Well, I still don't have a chance in hell of having the report designed and printed and distributed by deadline, but such is life sometimes.

My boss, who is so very merciful, told me to do the best I can. I hate that the best I can do will not be good enough, but again -- SUCH IS LIFE.

My day improved, however. I suppose. I was presented with an opportunity to face a particular fear of mine. I was presented with an opportunity to do something that I could later brag about to A.

I ate a meal worm.

Yes, you read that correctly. I ate a meal worm that had been fried in sesame oil and garlic. It wasn't bad at all. It was a tad crunchy, but crunchy in the way popcorn is. And it tasted good, with all that garlic.

(Just how the hell did this opportunity walk itself across my desk at work? A professor down the hall had fried some worms up for a class and asked if I'd like to try one. He is also the guy who won't touch canola oil. Do with that what you will.)

Word traveled fast around the department. No shit, within three minutes I had heard from every other women in the department, all surprised I ate the little bugger.

As I gloated to A. that I had actually eaten a bug, it dawned on me that I no longer have a foot to stand on when insisting that he keep his meal worms for ice-fishing out of the refrigerator.

At least I was presented with a small personal triumph -- yes, yes I could compete on Fear Factor! -- to take the sting out of an otherwise crappy day.

What's a Week?

About twenty minutes ago I realized I put a deadline on my work calendar - a week later than it really is.

Nineteen minutes and 15 seconds ago I realized I am not going to make the (real) deadline.

Those 45 seconds that my mind journeyed to the final realization? Painful.

Seven

Last evening, during my hair appointment, the extraordinarily BORING routine of my life as of late became quite clear to me as I “updated” my stylist on what I’d been up to since my last visit.

Reading. Baking. Laundry. Not enough writing. Work.

Need to remedy this. Need to break out of this Rut of Blah.

One unfortunate and predictable result of having a BORING LIFE is that I have very little blog fodder. So, Thank the Heavens! I’ve been tagged! Tagged for the Seven Random Things meme by Flibberty. THANK YOU.

The desperation, so apparent in this post, has me really considering going to the gym tonight. At least it would be something different. And misery always makes for good blog content. Now, let’s see if I can come up with a whole seven random things about me. Er.

The Rules:

# Link to the person who tagged you
# Post the rules on your blog.
# Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
# Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.(I am sure I will repeat some folks, and I can’t promise I’ll hit seven folks. Sorry!)
# Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged. (In my case, this may be delayed by a day or two…)

1. Thirty-seven is my favorite number. Actually, the 3 and the 7 together are my favorite number. Let me explain.

I love the number three because of my sisters. My mom had three daughters, no sons. Just us. She was always very proud of this fact. My sisters and I were proud. My father positively beamed at his girls. Three. Yes, we were a family of five, but there was something really special about being three sisters.

After my mom died and my father re-married, we became a family of seven. And though I would never wish that my mother was gone, I am so thankful for the blessings that have been a part of our lives as a result of what my family is today. Including yet another (step) sister and finally! a (step) brother. Not to mention a kick-ass step-mother. Needless to say, I am a true believer that Grace comes to us in many ways.

So, 37.

2. I desperately want to become “a runner.” I daydream about how good I will feel in my own body again, how I won’t feel trapped by this extra layer that just GETS IN THE WAY, DAMMIT. I want to shed this alien that has latched onto me in the past year and a half. I can’t wait to cross that threshold from “flailing around the track painfully while panting mightily” to “running gracefully and purposefully through the pain.” I want to feel strong again.

Please don’t let me give up on this.

3. I have daydreamed about – and even tried to figure out how to – set up a radio/CD player/MP3 player/record player/tape player of some sort to solar power once life as we know it comes to a nasty, messy halt. Because I want to still be able to dance to R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” during The Revolution.

4. I inherited a fair amount of Crazy and Paranoia regarding the End of the World from my father. Thanks, Dad. Love you!

5. As a child, nothing held my heart or imagination with such steadfastness as unicorns. At one point, I had more than 50 unicorns, in some form or another, in my bedroom. Dear Lord.

6. I want to travel by myself, at least once. I want to know I can do that. It would mean a lot to me if that trip were to Turkey.

7. I love color. I mean, I really love color. My favorite part of any art project was mixing paint. One of my professors called me a Color Wizard. That nickname meant so much to me. More than it should have. I could match any color. This professor would whip up “challenge colors” for me, just to see if I could match it. FUN.

I become mesmerized by color. My favorite technique in painting watercolors is to actually build the color. Because watercolors are transparent, the color you see is what happens when light bounces back off the paper and through the layers of transparent paint to your eyes. Amazing, yes? Using watercolors, I like to build layers of color on top of each other, so that the color you see is actually a process. To a degree this is always the process in watercolors, but I like to make it a very deliberate part of the process. So instead of mixing a kind of green, I like to paint many, many alternating layers of different mixes of blues and yellows to let that green I am looking for literally glow through the paper. The theory behind this literally makes my heart race. It is so fun. I am not nearly so talented as to get the results I am looking for most of the time, but the challenge is always there and is such a thrill.

I need to paint again.

TAGGED: Whimsy, Erin, Lisa, Bibliodiva, James, Pann and PixelPi

Friday Five: Ahead of Schedule

1. Buster and Belle were both asleep on the couch earlier tonight (so strange). Both of them had their legs simultaneously stretched out and curled around and cuddly. (How do they do that?) I thought, with such clarity and conviction as to be both startling and settling: These are my babies.

Weird, no?

2. I need to get much work done on The Thesis this weekend. The situation is rapidly approaching the category of DIRE. A. will be out of town ice-fishing in the northern part of the state so I should be able to hunker down and work. I hope.

3. I swear I heard A. mention to a friend on the phone that someone died going through the ice last week on the lake he will be fishing.

Dear God, how am I going to concentrate, what with all the fretting I will be doing?

4. I made Sloppy Joes for dinner tonight (Thursday). I used butter instead of oil. It was yummy. Here is the recipe for your own enjoyment. (Make them. They are YUMMY.)
A.'s Mom's Sloppy Joes

• 1 1/2 lb. hamburger (we used ground moose)
• 1/4 cup onion (I just eyeball it and use about half of an average yellow onion)
• 2 T. shortening (I've never used shortening, used to use canola oil and just this time used butter. Mmmm... the smell of onions cooking in butter...SO GOOD)
• 1 C. celery, diced
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. pepper
• 1 tsp. dry mustard
• 1 C. catsup (How do you guys spell ketchup?)
• 1 C. water
• 2 T. vinegar
• 2 T. lemon juice
• 2 T. Worcestershire sauce

Brown hamburger and onion in the fat of your carefully informed choice. Add other ingredients. Simmer for 30 minutes.

5. Oh, how I love A. I am ridiculously fond of his nose. I remember, quite clearly, falling in love with that nose on our first date.

Doesn't he have a great, stupid, fake-for-the-camera grin? *sigh*

He had this picture filed under "family." Damn, I love this man. I sure hope all this butter keeps him around for a long, long time.

Sleep Deprivation

It was another craptastic night of sleep. It all started when the 60 MPH winds (and I am NOT exaggerating) blew the power out. Buster decided this turn of events was VERY SCARY. And he proceeded to wet the bed, then run around the living room coffee table, peeing all the while. The power came back on just in time for A. to witness the splashy laps around the room.

After throwing in a load of laundry and scrubbing up yet more carpet, we all snuggled back up to bed. Buster kept yawning. He yawns when he is nervous. And we are all now very well aware of what he does when he is nervous! Every whimper and snort and yawn and stretch made by Buster jolted me out of sleep. Thankfully, but also infuriatingly, there were no more accidents throughout the night.

I can't wait for exactly 6:20 p.m. tonight because that is when I am going to bed. Bah.

***

A. opened his birthday gifts last night. (His b-day is Friday, but he will be up north ice-fishing.) I got him an Absinthe glass and spoon.



He is rather fascinated by all the folklore surrounding this newly-legal-again-in-the-States spirit. Unfortunately, when I swung by the liquor store last night to pick up a bottle, I was greeted with empty shelves. Apparently, just yesterday, someone came in a bought up all 12 bottles in stock. What in the hell could they have planned?

***

I opened my final birthday present last night, too. A. and I were both very excited to try it out. We wondered how much it would tickle. We giggled.

Afterword, we were amazed at the power. We both sighed, totally refreshed.

I am a lucky girl to have one of these for my bedtime routine:

Where I Go On and On**

Well, hell. I didn’t mean to spread a contagious round of insomnia with my post about late-night musings regarding the supposed virtues and evils of saturated and unsaturated fats. I forgot that many of you who pop in here at Sagebrush and Serendipity are health conscious and have a genuine interest in nutrition. Smart folks, you.

For the record: I am not a nutritionist. I am just a nerd with a touch of paranoia who was raised by a father with a passion for conspiracy theories. I have no formal education or training in nutrition, I just love to read about all things nutrition. A lot. (I am also growing more and more obsessed with food ways, local foodscapes, what is involved in both individual and community commitments to locavore food ways and systems, food traditions, etc. I don’t think I am exaggerating, either, when I choose the word obsessed.) In fact! Next week I am sitting in on a lecture called Ethics, Economics and Public Policy for the Global and National Food Systems. The title is a bit dry, but the abstract for the lecture is positively sexy. I have circled and starred the date on every available calendar and have invited everyone I work with and A. to join me. OBSESSED.

A few weeks ago, I ran across this post via Pann (with, what looks to be, a yummy recipe to boot!). In the post, Pann links to this post by Michelle S. Michelle’s post gives a lengthy and well-written argument against using canola oil. I always give information like this consideration but I don’t usually change my diet without further investigating claims myself. (Why I trust myself to decipher all of this shit, I don’t know. It is kind of like trusting yourself to drive more than anyone else, I guess.) I take what health columnists in newspapers and magazines write with more than a grain of salt, too. I really think their interpretations of health studies are often questionable at best. Not to mention the original structure and framework of said studies… But maybe I am just being an arrogant snot. It is not unheard of.

Even though Michelle’s post includes a lot of information, she does not include references and that always gives me pause. I still have one foot in the Pool of Academia, after all. To be fair, it would be a lot of work to include all of the references I am sure she has come across. And she has posted this to a blog rather than submitting to a journal, etc.

Nonetheless, Michelle’s post piqued my interest. Her arguments did not appear to be unsound. Just unreferenced. I decided to keep my eyes open for more info and my ears tuned to any mutterings in the nutrition world regarding canola oil.

If you glance over to the right at my “what I am reading” section, you will see I am reading Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon – for fun! The title of the book caught my eye; I thought the volume might be about traditional foodways in a time of convenience and fast foods. Rather, it is a cookbook with a referenced introduction that challenges conventional nutritional guidelines. I am always up for challenging the status quo, so I snatched it right up. (Also, I am curious about the food choices A.’s little sister, B., and BIL-Twice Removed* make for their son, The Most Darling M. This book appeared to be in line with their thinking.)

Much of what Michelle S. talks about in her post is brought up in this book. Hmmm. Fallon goes into enough detail regarding the different molecular structures of oils and why some are better and some are worse to further convince me to dig through more research on the effects of canola oil in our diets. I like that she didn’t brand anything (other than hydrogenated oils and trans fat) as unequivocally, unconditionally bad. Nutrition and health and environmental factors seem far too nuanced and sophisticated to allow such rigid proclamations. Her arguments and illustrations definitely keep the lay reader in mind, which is both nice and problematic. I like lots of references, casual readers probably do not. But there are enough sources included in the back of the book to get me started on my own little journey toward Dietary Validation.

So, I am not advocating throwing out your canola oil and slathering your naked body in butter. Unless you want to. *devilish grin* I would encourage you to keep your eyes open for solid, well-referenced and rigorously examined information, though. Hopefully without sounding too preachy about it?

I haven’t even started the section about sugar. Shall I post about the next Dietary Crisis I find myself in when I look through all of my cookie recipes?

* A.’s little sister, B. has a child with K. They are not married, and neither are A. and I. Hence why K. and I are in-laws twice removed. I rather like the nickname BIL-Twice Removed.

** Was this the strangest mix of nerdiness and snottiness in one post, or what?