Nurse Husband

One thing I really miss about being a kid is having someone pick you up and take care of you when you're sick. Somedays the thought of driving myself home from work is enough to... well, enough to make me want to stick it out, oddly enough, although the drive can never be avoided. And while when I get home all I usually want to do is crash in the guest room bed with the cats and sleep, occasionally I've really wanted someone to pick up comforting food and a good movie. So it was a treat today, on migraine day #7, to finally throw in the towel and come home and to have Husband here to dote on me. He fetched me water (with a lime), brought me flowers (purple tulips-excellent choice), ran the errands that needed running (including getting me some cash), and is in process of procuring comforting food--soy cheese pizza, from local hip pizza joint. With Anne of Green Gables, The Sequel on the screen and the cats in my lap (it's kind of hard to type, actually), what more could a girl ask for?

Chocolate

I feel like something out of those terrible chick lit novels. The ones that are pink or yellow with cartoon girls or close-ups of shoes and lipstick fonts. But I was reminded today that I am, truly, a chocolate addict.

Husband and I annually embark on a detox diet that forbids such things as chocolate, among other sweeping categories like dairy, refined sugars, and processed grains. Not because we think detox is necessary, just because we like to remind ourselves of how we want to eat (and to fit reasonably well into the swimsuits that are a regular part of our spring vacations). But today when I realized at 2 p.m. that I couldn't nurse my headache/jet lag/something-I-picked-up-on-the-plane? with the handfuls of mini-Butterfingers from the treat basket that I've become accustomed to, I became very sad.

Note: Immediately after writing the previous entry (where I described just how lead-filled my head felt), I stumbled out of the 80-degree computer lab, pushed through the double doors of the bathroom, and beheld a row of urinals. Shaken out of my stupor I rushed back through the doors, did a quick sweep to see if anyone saw me, and dived into the ladies.

Oslo

is the pure white crisp cold snow-covered cloaked-in-darkness city that you always imagined. Fjords and fishing boats everywhere, red-checked Norwegians toting skis around the city (presumably heading to catch trains out of the city). To be fair, there was more racial diversity in the city center than I'd have guessed. K and her friend NB and I walked along snow-covered sidewalks all around the dark city--by the icy harbor, through the fortress still guarded by gun-toting sentries (seriously, there have been guns everywhere I turn the last few weeks. And people say Americans are the ones with guns), by the palace and shops.
The motherland, as my brother called it, looked surprisingly like the hilly parts of my home state. The streets shared names with the class rosters of my youth.
I was left wanting, of course, and will go back once I've become a millionaire. I feel like I'm talking about $ all the time, but you can't pay $10 for a glass of local beer, $2 for the use of a toilet, or have noticed that the local pizza chain offers individual pizzas for $40 each without mentioning it.
Before crossing the North Sea, K showed me a fabulous time in England. She took me to the Bronte moors and the Peak District. She and her friends took me out drinking, twice, during which I had a stomach-churning mix of drinks (from Pimms and lemonade to Mojitos to chambord martinis to Aftershock shots and absinthe shots) but managed to keep my feet on the ground and not be hungover for the 7 a.m. 90 mph drive to Newcastle to catch the plane.
Although our time in Oslo was pretty tame, I feel today as if most of my brain has been removed and replaced by lead. The twinkling dizzy spots are a regular part of my existence.
I think I need to go home.

English countryside

Today I decided that having only become minorly lost on my last two ventures around town, I could finally go on a run without stopping every 100 ft to consult my map in frustration. So I set off, jogging through campus and then finding myself alongside a beautiful green field. "Mmm... English countryside," I thought, ignoring the creepy vine-covered brick wall to my right that a sign confirmed enclosed a Quaker Retreat (a.k.a. graveyard).
Then I turned the corner and followed the path into some sort of industrial area. "Hmm," I thought, as I spotted barbed wire curls and army trucks. Then I nearly ran into a sentry carrying some large automatic killing machine.
I stopped. The other walkers and bikers carried on, the picturesque path apparently wandering right through the middle of an army station. Since this didn't fit in with the merry-countryside-pleasant-run thing I had going, I turned around and followed the path signs to innocent-sounding Osbaldwick instead. Mmm...Osbaldwick.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the most amazing city I've seen yet. I walked out of the train station and found myself in a teeny valley buttressed by huge old grey buildings and castles. After finding a hotel I sat at my little table and made myself a cup of tea (not surprisingly I've become an addict) and just gaped. Then, of course, I set out and climbed up to the castle and gaped some more. The next day I climbed up this craggy old bit called Arthur's Seat and gaped again.

In between gaping I ate (trying to get some protein, I tried the veggie sausage. It was the same as the veggie burger I tried previously: veggie bits mixed with mashed potatoes, breaded, and deep-fried. Mmm... healthy,) went on a ghost tour (all the gory lore of Edinburgh punctuated by people in costume jumping out and scaring you. I.e., fantastic,) and shopped.

If that weren't enough, the accents were dreamy. All men sounded like that cute John Hannah from Sliding Doors and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Mmm.

London minute

I've meant to post more but we're so busy, busy, busy! all the damn time that this is the first chance I've had. So far we've been to London (5 days), Bristol (2 days), and now we're in York for the rest. We're also visiting Liverpool and Hull, and I'm going to Edinburgh and Oslo on my own for the next two weekends.

Brief highlights:
London - Am so impressed with my savviness on the tube. Thank you, Japan. Am a real pro at finding quick routes and also putting on my bewildered American face when oops! my train ticket is expired. I don't know how many exits I passed though on this pretense alone. Spent a lot of time with Brit friend K, who saved me from many solo travels by taking me out and getting me very drunk and then trying to help us recover with dodgy curry. Made the last train home - yikes. Also shopping and went to loads of museums and ate yummy food.

What else... the guy to my right is spending $6/hr to play video games at an internet cafe. How lame is that. It's not even a good game.

I'm learning a lot--my brain is very very tired. I've been to an average of at least one museum per day. Ahh. Am also drinking a lot of tea and eating a lot of sandwiches and digestives (but was very unimpressed with Jaffa Cakes, EC and SQ).

It's bloody damn cold here. My fingers are frozen at all times. Also so expensive (bus ride $5, regualr curry dinner $20, etc.) Will be poor just on food alone. Oh well. Must live it up while I'm here, eh.

And we even speak the same language

-----Original Message-----
From: XXXXXXXXXXXX
Sent: 28 December 2005 20:56
To: university@some uk city
Subject: RE: accom question

Regarding this reservation, do we need to bring towels or pillows? thanks!


-----Original Message-----
From: university@some uk city
Sent: 01/03/06 2:37 AM
To: XXXXXXXXXXXX
Subject: RE: accom question

No towels, pillows etc are provided in the room.
Regards,
Central Reservations


-----Original Message-----
From: XXXXXXXXXXXX
Sent: 03 January 2006 16:37
To: university@some uk city
Subject: RE: accom question

Thanks so much for this reply. What else is not provided? Or, to put it another way, what is provided?


-----Original Message-----
From: university@some uk city
Sent: 01/04/06 2:37 AM
To: XXXXXXXXXXXX
Subject: RE: accom question

All bedding and towels
Coffee & tea making facilities
Colour TV
Hairdryers

Reckoning

Yesterday I ate double chocolate ice cream cake, manicotti, appetizers that were little more than savory shortbread smothered in cheese, pizza, and chocolates. I drank sake, wine, a melon ball, blue raspberry Jello shots, and gin and tonic.

That was 2005.

Today is 2006. I took a shower, scouring away the symbolic dirt of the last year with a sugar scrub. I drank a pot of green tea.

Mmm.

Then I remembered that it's a day of reckoning.

Although blogging has nearly replaced my personal journal, I am stalwart about New Year resolutions. And sure enough, there is my cheerful and optimistic handwriting setting out how 2005 is going to be.

Gulp. Let's take a look. Yep, it's pretty much all-around failure. I could copy these resolutions down again for next year. I haven't been a better wife, sister, friend. I haven't learned to relax better or remain mindful of eating. I haven't really pushed myself professionally.

Hmm. Usually I kick resolution butt. I reread my 2004 goals first (since in the entry I review how I did before making new ones) and I've thoroughly kicked 2004's ass.

Maybe I need to celebrate my successes anyway, even if I didn't make resolutions about them.

- I learned a lot of new things professionally and had many new challenges
- I learned a lot of new skills. I really learned to knit and bake bread (not the half-assed efforts I lauded last year). I expanded my gardening skills, grew a good garden, and learned how to can.
- I kept up with exercise, and learned (albeit briefly, so far) a new sport, broomball.
- I took two camping trips (one short, one real)
- I expanded my palate, enjoying kale and beets, and bought locally.
- I made some new friends (yea!)

That's not bad! 2005 was a kind year, at least to my friends and family (not to the many plagued by natural disasters). I think nearly everyone is better off than last year.

So here's to 2006! May you be good to us as well, and may we rise to your challenge.

Personal faults

I believe that everyone is entitled to one personal fault. One simple thing they cannot and will not overcome.

For me, it's driving stick shift.

I know, I know... millions of people do it everyday. Whole countries do it as a rule. But me and the clutch do not mix.

My hatred of the H-shift began at sixteen when I tried to learn to drive Stinky, the CJ-7 Jeep that I shared with my brother. I sucked. I once stalled over and over through an entire green light, all the while being heckled by a van full of third grade boys. Even the mom laughed at me.

I was lucky to get another car and successfully avoided manuals until just after college. I was going to visit high school buddy AP in Maine, and we planned a road trip to PEI and Nova Scotia. She warned me that I would have to learn how to drive stick.

A week before I left, I practiced on Husband's old car Bubba on country roads. It wasn't pretty, but I could do it if no one else was watching.

I started off OK, driving through Maine and even pulling off for gas. My second shift took us across New Brunswick to PEI. But it was in Anne-of-Green-Gables-land that I fell apart. I had eluded the evil stick shift, and now it was time to pay. AP drove us all the way up Nova Scotia and all the way back down again (i.e. a very long way).

It got to the point that on the way back, AP stopped on the on-ramp and we hopped out and swapped places. She'd driven for the last three days and there was no choice. I carefully made my way down the New Brunswick coast, dreading the evitable: the toolbooth at Saint John.

I started sweating at 100 km, watching for the "Toolbooth ahead" signs and trying to psych myself up. Finally there it was on the horizon. I slowed way down and eased in, so I didn't have to stop behind a car. I fumbled for the change, hands sweaty, and ignored the cheery greeting from the tollman. Focused intently on getting out of there without stalling, I slammed my foot on the gas. The car lept, the tires squealed, and the toolman yelled "Ride 'em cowboy!" at my jerkily departing form.

As I finally put it in fifth and let out my breath, I thought, yeah, everyone's entitled to one fault, right? It's not like I'm afraid of heights or hate puppies. I can give myself permission to fail at this.

And so I've never operated a stick shift since.

As you like it

Potpourri Day!

Book: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Read the first page and if you can stop, do. If not, continue blissfully along.

Random info plus new vocab word: Merriam-Webster tracks which words are looked up most for a given year, and they offer sort of a microcosm of the issues that plagued the nation that year.. This year: natural disasters (tsunami, refugee, and levee). We also appear to be pretty tired of incompetence (insipid, contempt, and inept). Last year was all about the election (incumbent, electoral, and partisan) and Iraq (insurgents and sovereignty). 2004 also had "cicada" and "blog" and "defenestration," and a new vocab word! "peloton" (the main body of riders in a bicycle race).

Kittens: still pesky. To be fair, I crushed Cadbury last night because he was sleeping in the crook of my arm and I had a dream I was swimming and attacked by eels.

Knitting: a cat toy. Realize this mixes two scary personas: knitter and cat lady. But it's OK! Only one toy.

Recent mishap: Losing a needle inside my favorite down pillow. Luckily, crisis averted. Also getting stuck in the snow trying to pull into the garage from the alley. Luckily, nice boys out shoveling for cash rescued me.

Up next: winter sports extravaganza. Anyone looking to ski or snowshoe knows who to call. Also, risking of life and limb (and tooth): broomball starts this weekend. Also: Christmas recaps, then it's UK ho!

Thanksgiving

My freshman year of college, I sort of... forgot… to make female friends.

I'm not sure how it happened.

I made a lot of female acquaintances, I had guy friends, and I had a great boyfriend, but I sort of missed the part when you spent hours giggling and telling secrets with a gaggle of girls.

I had never had a shortage of female friends before, so it took me almost the whole year to realize that I didn't really have any good female friends.

Throughout the rest of college, I'd make lists of women I wanted to get to know better. I eventually made a few good friends my junior year, then got the hang of it and made camp friends and Japan friends, then reacquainted high school friends, and finally work friends and post-college friends.

So many girl friends that when entertaining a camp friend a month or so ago I effortlessly put together a cracker jack pub quiz team of female friends. I realized that to my camp friend, we probably looked like a regular group of girls, the kind that I used to gaze at in the cafeteria at college.

As I sat there, perched on my barstool sipping Guinness, surrounded by my smart and gorgeous friends, I remembered those sad little lists. And how glad I am that I don't have to make them anymore.

Stilton takes after Husband

Who doesn't love a cat with a martini shaker? This photo could have been one in a series (cat licking beer bottle, stealing nip of vodka tonic, tasting wine) but I had exercised restraint until I saw this just hours after shooing him away from a Summit Winter Ale.

Holiday spirit

I have no holiday spirit.

Me, the person who was so taken with the clever seasonal containers at Starbucks that she wrote about it in her blog.

The tree is up. The decor is in place (such as it is, a candle and a knick-knack). I even bought a pine-filled planter for the front step (after noting that all the other houses on the block had some type of front-step decor).

Where art thou, Christmas cheer? Residing in some volunteer opportunity I should explore? In church? In eggnog? In a viewing of Love, Actually?

I think this all might have started with the discussion with my dad about the where-when-how of Christmas. It was all schedules and driving times and fitting everyone in and obligations... when what we both wanted more than anything was to spend Christmas with our family how it was a few years ago. With my uncle Fred. With my aunt and cousins, happy and getting along.

I have one good picture of it... the last Christmas we had like that. We’re all looking into the camera with pure, honest grins, it never occurring to anyone that this picture will be different from the hundreds we’ve posed for before.

Shopgirl

Jesus, I thought, spying my alarm clock as I pushed Cadbury off my face (What is his deal?). 5:10 a.m.

Twenty minutes later I was on my way to the car, absently noting the beautiful dusting of snow as I slugged my Hansen’s smoothie.

When I called my parents Thanksgiving night to confer on the meeting time for the annual day-after-Thanksgiving-shopfest, I was expecting the usual: 8 a.m…. maybe 7:30 for coffee.

“We’re going to be at Walmart at 5, Herbergers at 5:30, and Marshall Field’s at 6,” my dad chirped.

My god.

“I’ll see you at Marshall Field’s?”

By 12:30 p.m. we’d filled my parent’s trunk with bags, hit two malls and one restaurant, and guzzled six coffees between us.

While the day fell short of our glory years (at SuperMall before opening for breakfast, hitting a record four malls in one day…) there is nothing like sprawling book in hand, kittens in lap at 1 p.m. with a full day of shopping behind you.

Wiener roll-ups

Husband and I, for all of our cooking skills, were not being taken seriously at family holidays.

"Oh, if you really want to bring something, you could bring the relish tray," we'd hear biannually.

And bring the relish we would, god dammit. We'd bring the world's best relish trays, overflowing with carrots with the tops still attached, stuffed olives, marinated peppers... a rainbow of organic goodness complete with homemade dips.

Last year we decided to corner the roll market. No one on my side of the family made rolls, so we were going to stake our claim in baked goods.

That year we were up to 2 a.m. the night before making three batches of rolls at once, a complicated schedule of rising and resting times scrawled all over our white board. Our criteria were 1: rolls that raised properly and 2: tasted good, and we succeeded.

This year, several other experiments with yeast successfully behind me, I decided to up the ante and add in 3: look pretty.

My first attempt (one batch honey wheat cloverleafs, one batch butter crescents) reminded me what I didn't like about the crescents last year.

They looked... well... wiener-y.
















Eww.

As we'd decided to make two batches of the crescents, I tried again Thanksgiving morning. (Tactic: decrease size, make crescent shape more pronounced, omit egg glaze).

And despite my poor photography skills, you can see I was successful.
















Yummy rolls. Not at all wiener-y.

Medium rare

Kate Spade peony vases, 2
Le Creuset cast-iron baking dish, red
Oxo measuring cups, set of 3

My eyes scanned down the registry list, looking for a good shower gift. The marble mortar and pestle, paired with some spices from Penzeys? Perhaps. Then my eyes alighted on the prize:

Rosle meat hammer

How could I resist? How tempting and wonderful those words sounded... meat hammer. With sneaky meat even hidden in the latter part of the title!

But it was my friend with whom I've giving the gift that came up with the piece de la résistance.

Actually giving meat as a shower gift.

Her dad raises cattle and she has one of his big-enough-for-two steaks in her freezer. How romantic! And it's a gift for the groom as well!

Let's hope the bloody juices don't leak through the white wedding bell paper.

Garden hopeless

After weeks of warm gorgeous weather,
I choose the first real day of winter
a nice hearty frost overnight
a snowstorm imminent
[i.e. the very last day possible]
to go outside after work,
[i.e. in the pitch blackness]
shivering, swearing,
wielding a pitchfork,
to finally dig up my calla lily bulbs.

Cats for sale--cheap

I took up knitting because I like crafty old-timey things and I have a lot of excess energy sometimes and thought that it might be nice to have something to do while chatting with friends or riding in the car.

I wouldn't call myself a knitter yet--I've only completed two projects, and they've been scarves. (Scarves are to the knitting world what macaroni and cheese is to the cooking world, or what Uno mas is to the foreign language world.)

Here is my second scarf, The yellow scarf.




















Oooooh. Pretty exciting, eh.
And here is my work-in-progress, Legwarmers in blue.




















At the rate I'm going, they'll be ready in March.

Unfortunately, after taking this picture I returned to blogging.
I just went to get a glass of water and found this:















So, any takers?

Breaking out of my "shell"

I'm a black turtleneck sweater sort of girl. Or a black v-neck. I like the basics--the clean lines that go with anything. And I look good in basics.

But today when I dug out the black merino wool blend v-neck sweater from the sale rack at Banana Republic ($19!), I knew I had to put it back.

Because I've faced it: basics are boring.

Would anyone compliment me on the black sweater? No. Because although it looks good, it looks like everything else in my closet. It resembles a similar shirt I bought five years ago.

So I made myself try on things today with embroidery, sequins, and bits of ruffle. I ignored the black and reached for teal, forest, plum, chocolate, and that pink/brown color. And while much of it was cringe-worthy, there were a few things I liked. And they didn't scream "Banana Republic!" or "Ann Taylor!"

While I'm not pinning on flower brooches or buying sequined shoes yet, I'm making progress.

I'd share

Ever at a loss for birthday or Christmas ideas? If you have to get me something, I'd take one of these. It doesn' t have to be this fancy, though. Simple metal or even ceramic would do. I'd even let you use it, as long as you obeyed the proper ofuro etiquette.
Only one month to my half birthday, and eight weeks until Christmas. You'd better order now.