You're Doing It Wrong

Last week I was reading some cultural stuff about the Karuk tribe and I commented to Bob how interesting it is that the culture was primitive but very complex. He said, “Yeah, didn’t they take the acorn about as far as it could go?”

I fixed the stuff on Billy’s page today. I had gotten duplicate photos in there somehow and it took forever to figure out the correct dates where I screwed up. I asked him if he could possibly wear red pants or shave his head on photo days to help make a more dramatic difference. You have to spot the changing foilage out his window or his moving furniture to note the changes. Bob saw what I was doing and said he had no idea I had such “conceptual” projects going on.

Other things I did today:

I got up early and went to Fred Meyer and bought a few more bags of bark dust. I have put tons of bark dust on my major backyard plant bed in the hopes of making my life easier come spring. For some reason the grass loves to grow in the plant beds but only weeds grow in the actual lawn area. Also some sort of “fairie” (Bob’s word) weeds have taken over most of the rest of the backyard. I don’t know. If I spent another half day per week on the yard I bet I could make it look a lot better … there just seem to always be more interesting things to do.

In addition to yardwork I cleaned about 20 lbs of cat shit out of the front yard. Since the two cute cats across the street moved in the shit has multiplied dramatically. I sprinkled the area with a generous layer of pepper flakes which actually works although you have to re-apply often. Too bad cute little kitties. Shit elsewhere!

I also did a D- (D minus) job of cleaning out the shop. I broke down some boxes for recycling and re-stacked various boxes of crap so that we have lots of space for more junk. (Bring it on, Priscilla!) And I swept.

Then I watched the very last special feature on my last Angel disk (the best show ever!) which was the director’s commentary on the season 4 finale. It was completely awesome. Good thing I only have one more season to re-watch and then I can get on with my life b/c my obsession with this show is unhealthy. I think season 5 will be out in February. You can bet I’ll let you know when that happens.

This afternoon I went to the Clark College library and finished some research I’m working on and read a bunch of stuff. Now I’m roasting an “Amber Cup” squash and reheating leftover pizza for dinner. Yum.

There are only two seasons up here: hot and cold. The in-between parts are hardly worth mentioning except that they are generally less cold. Now that it’s cold again there’s a whole bunch of stuff I need to keep handy: umbrella, coat, lip stuff is critical. As soon as the air cooled my lips started chapping. I just bought a whole bunch of new lip supplies and Agatha Ruiz De La Prada is godhead. Also tissues, especially in the purse or on walks. I don’t like a runny nose with no tissues. I also always have a hat on outside. Head warmth means more to me than how my hair looks. Finally, hand salve. My hands get so dry and my skin so rough — I have some primo salve that Mom got me in Orleans and I slather that on before bed, put on some cotton gloves and voila! Soft hands in the morning. I take the gloves off in my sleep. In the morning I find them on the floor or under the pillow or kicked to the bottom of the bed. My sleeping self doesn’t like them.

I thought I once wrote a post about pairing wine with cookie dough. You know when you’re depressed and feeling sorry for yourself, you curl up in front of the TV with a bucket of cookie dough and a bottle of wine? I had suggested chocolate chip and Chardonney or snickerdoodles with a nice Merlot … or something like that. I just tried the search thing that was added to my blog and it came up with nothing. I don’t think it works.

The reason I bring this up is because there was a hilarious article by Frank Bruni, the NY Times restaurant critic, about going to Alaska and being game to try the local cuisine. It was published Nov 3, 04 and titled Chewing the Fat While Its Still Fresh. I’d give you a link but the NYT is notoriously stingy with its articles. I think you can get it free the first week if you register for their site, otherwise they’ll probably ask you for $3 (as if). If you have a library card your library might have access.

While preparing for his Alaska feast Bruni realizes “the difficulty of matching wine to whale.” He and his friend go to the local general store and ask “What goes best with sea mammal?” The cashier shrugs and suggests white wine. Then they ask about bear and he says: beer!

The highlight of the article is Bruni’s heroic sampling of blubber: “I did as told: grabbed the hide and bit into the blubber. It tasted like a wedge of solid rubber that had spent several months marinating in rancid fish oil.” His host takes away his wine and says, “You’ll be needing Jack Daniels.”

I paid $6.50 so I could see the trailer for Revenge of the Sith. It was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

While I was at the theater, I watched the movie: The Incredibles. It’s very good. I liked it way more than I expected to. It’s hilarious. Sorry I can’t write a better review at the moment but I don’t want to sit here any more.

Tonight I got home late and as I was pulling the garbage can into the garage, I vaguely heard a pitiful mewl but I didn’t pay too much attention to it until the garage door was closing and I could still hear it. I realized I should make sure that some poor kitty wasn’t hurt or something so I turned on the porchlight and opened the front door and sure enough a cute little grey kitty ran up on the porch and began frantically brushing against me and reached for my front door. It had no collar and it’s chilly and windy outside. What to do?

I knew my husband would flay me alive if he found a cat in the house so I told the kitty to go home (hopefully) and barely kept it out as I closed the door. If you’re thinking me heartless, believe me: I felt HORRIBLE. About 15 minutes later I looked out the window and it was still sitting on the porch and it saw me and started meowing again. aiee. I don’t want a pet and we have no pet supplies here and even if I brought it in the house temporarily … where is it going to do its thing and how bad will my house smell?

Half hour later I check the porch again and the cat is still there! It spots me and meows again. This is terrible. I’m now majorly anxious about my cruelty to poor little friendly cats and imagining finding its poor frozen body in the gutter tomorrow and crying over it.

Finally, Bob came home and I ran out to see if the kitty was there and what do you know? It comes over from across the street. I start telling Bob about it with moist eyes and he reminds me that our new across the street neighbors warned us about this cat and how it would have no problem trying to sneak into a perfect strangers house. I avoided looking at the cat as I went back in the house, but he is right.

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In other news, I have finally (now, at 11pm) gone though my voters pamphlet and made my best decisions, then did online research on the issues I wasn’t sure about then read the endorsements in the Seattle Times, the Columbian and I tried the Olympian but WTF — I couldn’t figure out where it was so I read the endorsements in the Seattle Weekly. I am now ready for tomorrow. Wish them all (meaning the people I want to win) luck.

I never liked the Charlie Brown special about The Great Pumpkin. In fact, I’m not sure I ever really liked any of the Charlie Brown specials. I watched them. There was an endless futility to that world: the humiliation of the ugly Christmas tree, Charlie Brown falling on his ass every time because Lucy snatched the football back, the Great Pumpkin that never showed up. I’m sure that’s not what I was supposed to get out of it, but that’s the taste that remains all these 100 years later.

Meanwhile, the weather is fantastic here. We’ve had crap weather on Halloween every year since I’ve been here. Bob and I only bought a few bags of candy (only our favorites). I think we need to get more stuff.

This started out as a story about how a recipe I used didn’t work. The Oregonian ran a recipe for “Perfect Apple Pie” which I had to try. I’d give you a link but I don’t see it on the archive. You can check here if you want to look yourself.

The recipe calls for 9 cups of apples (about 9 apples) to be sliced and mixed with the sugar and spices up to 12 hours in advance so that they soften and relax and you cram more apple into the pie. The crust part is a vinegar crust that says it makes 3 crusts and you can freeze the rest.

I did the apple part yesterday morning and I didn’t measure the apples, I sliced 9 apples, stirred them up and put them aside. Last night I made the crust and first I didn’t have enough shortening so I made up the rest with butter. I guess given the measurements I should have figured out that 1 crust equals one top or one bottom but not both a top and a bottom. But it didn’t seem logical to me to give a crust recipe for a two crust pie that made three crusts. The problem was apparent when I rolled out a fraction of my dough and had to work it into a paper thin sheet to make it fit in the pie pan.

I learned long ago not to let pie making frighten me so I made it work and then started to pile my vat of sliced apples into the pan. I guess I was supposed to use 9 Hobbit apples. My pie was loaded and I still had tons of apples left. I had figured out that the dough was screwed up and I didn’t want to freeze one pie crust and I didn’t have enough for two complete pies so I got an idea.

Erin told me a story about making a pie in a situation where not many pie making tools were available. (“So I figured a vodka bottle will work as a rolling pin …”.) She didn’t have a pie pan so she used a corningware. I pulled out my smallest dish. Rolled more dough and dumped my remaining apples in there. Made tops for both my pies and voila! Pie and mini-pie.

Now the part that doesn’t work is why my pictures always look so crappy on my website. I tried to use my new Photoshop skills and save for the web for faster downloading and use a trick to try to make my pies look magical: I don’t think I succeeded:

Tuesday we had clients meet at the office at 9am so it was critical that I be on time. I left the house at 8:00 – an hour is certainly enough time to drive 11.5 miles except there was an accident on I-5 SB at the I-84 interchange and there was only one lane open so I didn’t roll through the door until 9:05am. Tuesday is yoga day so I didn’t get home until after 9pm. I ended up skipping breakfast because of the morning snafu and dinner because of class.

Wednesday I got an early start because I took my car in for service and then I skipped dinner again because I did a workshop in the evening. I didn’t intend to skip dinner I just forgot to bring extra food with me and I didn’t want to stop for food. It’s a Pam thing – I don’t like fast food and didn’t want to deal with working out an alternative. Missing a meal didn’t seem like a big tragedy and I found a few carrot sticks leftover from lunch to take the place of an actual meal. I didn’t get home until almost 10pm last night.

Two long days in a row and lots of skipped meals. I can’t believe I’m now the kind of person who can skip meals. There was a day when I couldn’t go two hours without shoving food in my mouth. (Except for the time I was sleeping.)

This used to be an actual issue or could you call it a condition? with me and I used to attend a group with other people with eating issues. Lots of people have problems with eating in the middle of the night. This is one problem I have never had.

It would never occur to me, upon waking in the night, to go and find something to eat. I don’t even like to eat very late. Back in my days as a hipster, late-night club crawler (okay, so I was never “hip”). I occasionally hung out with people who wanted to stop at Denny’s or this other place downtown that I can’t remember the same of: Gorky’s? (I’m talking about Los Angeles). I never wanted to eat then.

In the morning I was fine with staggering over to Café 50’s (Sherman Oaks) and getting the hangover plate of greasy potatoes, runny eggs and buttery toast. But eating right late at night. Not for me.

After skipping all these meals I’ve been waiting for the burst of hunger to make up for what I missed and it didn’t hit until 11:30am. Now I’m starving for a big plate of everything.