In which I can’t fucking cook AT ALL anymore?!
Yesterday, I hurt my back walking across my kitchen. Just walking. (After doing several other things, chores, window cleaning, and dropping something and startling so hard I somehow actually caught it: that was probably when the twinge really began. But we’ll say I was walking. Because I was.)
It was fine by bedtime, but sleeping fucked it up. Getting out of bed hurt, a lot, and would have looked ridiculous had anyone been present to see it. Sitting on my chair through CCP exam prep hurt like hell, so halfway through I texted work and asked if anybody could come pick me up (because I doubted I could get on my bike, and didn’t want to have to walk).
They told me they didn’t need me and to just take the day off, since I have to work Sunday anyway. So I did!
Lying down hurt, I nearly died trying to get up to pee, and sitting hurt too. But standing was okay, comparatively, so I decided to make tamales. Tamales! Yay!
I’ve had the ingredients for literally a year, because I just kept not making tamales. The cotija was nicely aged and really delicious. I put it in the mini-chopper because fuck grating by hand when you’ve got electricity.
I doubt it was the same can of artichoke hearts; pretty sure I made some dip and replaced those once or even twice, but the masa is definitely a year or two old—I had to sift it to get the clumps out.
Soaked the very dry corn husks in hot tap water for two hours, but they probably could have used three. I don’t really know, because I’ve never used corn husks before (this is maybe my third attempt at tamales, and the other times I just used parchment paper).
I made sauce from scratch from dried chiles and garlic! Because I’m cool like that! And I know how!
Except I very nearly reduced it all the way down to ash, but luckily walked back into the kitchen just in time to take it off the heat and add a little water to bring it back. Thank God.
Get you a friend who gives you an entire set of Pyrex bowls that once belonged to her grandmother because she “doesn’t use them, and you will” like I did, and then you too will have an entire set of kick ass retro Pyrex bowls! Look at that shit! Nesting bowls! Pyrex! Retro! Free!
It’s been two and a half hours, but I’m all ready now! Inexpertly assembled my artichoke and cotija tamales with masa that I suspect, from my extensive watching-Mexican-chicks-on-YouTube tamale training, was just slightly too runny. But still viable! Husk, masa, cotija, and diced artichokes. Yum! Gonna be so good! Got them all more-or-less upright on a mat of additional corn husks, on a trivet, inside the Instant Pot, over two cups of water. Yes.
They spent 40 minutes in the pressure cooker, and when I let the pressure off so I could open the Instant Pot, it didn’t smell deliciously corny and savory with cheese and artichokes. It smelled ever-so-slightly of… Playdoh.
So here’s the thing. We all have bad habits, right?
Well, one of mine is occasionally using oil out of the fryer. Do I know this is stupid? Yes I do. Do I do it anyway? Yes I do. Has it ever come back to bite me in the ass? No it has not.
Not until today.
My masa recipe calls for six tablespoons of vegetable oil, and since I keep my vegetable oil in the back of a floor-level cupboard, and my back is fucked, and I didn’t know if I could get down onto and up off of the floor without crying, I opted to just use the oil in the fryer instead.
It’s relatively new because I recently replaced it, the oil, that is, and the color was fine, so I genuinely didn’t think twice about it. I do this shit all the time! All I ever use the fryer for is falafel anyway, so the oil might actually add some subtle flavoring to my boring, lard-free vegetarian masa recipe. Win-win, right?
Wrong.
Turns out the oil is rancid. All my work (and not-entirely-unrelated pain!) was basically wasted. Well, not really, I mean, they’re edible. I ate two. But only just barely.
If that oil were an hour older, these things’d cause cancer from all the free radicals.
So, now I have a dozen tamales, which normally I’d freeze with pride for future fast and super delicious dinners, that took hours to make, and to which I was looking so very forward because it’s taken me over a year to get around to making them, and I got an unexpected day off and needed to stand up anyway, that taste pretty bitter and bad.
Oh, and Monday I made dal makhani, but for some reason added nearly an entire teaspoon of methi powder, so even with a Hail Mary addition of sugar and extra cream it’s still bitter overall and fairly disappointing. Why the fuck did I do that?!
Conclusion: I can’t cook anymore.
I used to be able to, but now I can’t. I will now be forced to survive on salad and freeze-dried Indian food from Cumin Club.
—
UPDATE: It’s the next day and it wasn’t the oil. It was the masa itself. I tried to eat another tamale, it was gross, and the bag of masa flour was sitting right there, so I opened it and stuck my hand in and smelled it AND IT’S THE FLOUR, THE FLOUR IS RANCID. So I tossed it. And all my tamales. So sad.
In which I realized yesterday that I’ll be 60 in five years.
On Wednesday mornings, I attend a 2-hour class, via Zoom, for ACS CCP exam prep. Right now we’re covering milk, specifically acidulants used in cheesemaking, and even more specifically the difference between acids like lemon juice and acidity caused by the addition of cultures. I have my camera on but with a piece of tape over it, and I’ve just sat here in front of my computer and put on my makeup.
Not only is my entire face continuing to melt right the fuck off my skull; not only is my face’s already pronounced asymmetry getting much, much worse due to this process; not only do I now have two tiny, fine eyelashes growing out of the inner corner of my left eye for no goddamned reason; but it’s hard—so hard it verges on literally impossible—for me to use my own fingers to open compacts. My nails are now so thin and fine they break rather than grow, my fingers are weak compared to a decade ago, and a lot of my makeup products are samples, so they’re particularly small.
So, in order to open a tiny eyeshadow compact, for example, I have to use a tool. Specifically, a pair of tweezers. I can’t open tiny compacts without an auxilliary tool now. That’s how fucking old I am.
I keep expecting my body to still be 35. Whenever I witness some new process I’ve developed to accomplish something, like using a pair of tweezers to open a compact my fingers aren’t strong enough to open, I feel like I’m somehow failing. I should be stronger, I should be in better shape, this is all my fault.
But then I remember I’m literally pushing 60. That’s a really important data point. I’m much closer to 60 than I am to 43, let alone 35. Of course I have a weird method of getting out of bed; I’m old, and our mattress is still on the floor! Of course I need one of those sticky round things to open jars; I’m old and my hands were already tiny and comparatively weak to begin with! Of course I’m stiff for several minutes after getting up from sitting on the floor during an entire episode of ‘Picard’; I’m old and Westerners my age typically don’t sit cross-legged on floors for an hour and half at a time. (I’ve been a floor sitter my whole adult life, but it’s no longer easy as it once was now that I have no ass. Hormonal changes rearrange fat deposits, and collagen loss means one’s sit bones are virtually unprotected, so now I really need a folded-up blanket to sit comfortably.)
Although I no longer have Facebook or Twitter accounts, I do still use Instagram, and it keeps feeding me the Tiktok videos of some woman doing Gen X content. And every time I see her (which is more than once per session, alcorithms being the way they are), I think, “Gen X? I’m Gen X. That lady’s old.” And a split second later, I realize she’s probably a year or two younger than I am myself.
I’m old. I’ve finally aged into the dumb way I dress, with all the long skirts and flowy tunics and shit. My general shape and amount of remaining post-menopausal collagen are the result of genetics, not a personality flaw! It’s fine! I am worth more than the way I look!
Well, to myself, at least, if not to a society driven by an obsession with youth and sex. But that’s another rant.
And there have been compensations: I have a man who loves me anyway, an interesting job that’s also part-time, and we have a house I think is really cool-looking and wonderful and comfortable. I can buy groceries without checking my balance first. I have a vase full of red tulips from the yard sitting on the kitchen table. We just had the HVAC serviced, and the new capacitors have made an obvious difference. Birds are singing in my yard right this very moment, and I can hear them because it’s fine enough out to have some windows open! Life is good, even if I’m slower and weaker than I once was. I just have to remember that I’m not 43, I’m pushing 60, and that’s okay!
But Christ I’m old. Honestly. It’s so weird.
In which my life is super awesome and I’m not worthy.
It’s Sunday, so we slept in. I got up around one o’clock, or maybe noon, and had something to eat, and then, because it was a gorgeous, warm, green, rainy spring day, I went outside to meditate.
“Lusk Creek,” or rather, the irrigation ditch alongside our property, is full and high and running fast. It sounds absolutely wonderful, full of gurgles and swishes.
It was raining, but the patio is covered, and a breeze was blowing so my wind chimes were ringing.
Water and wind chimes are two things I’ve always liked, and now here they are! In my life, where I can just enjoy them whenever I want! I can see running water from my living room window, and the house came with half a dozen old wind chimes the sellers didn’t bother to pull down! And there’s not just a carport, but a separate covered patio too?! Absolutely amazing how lucky I am. It’s as if the universe manifested this house just for me to love to live in.
I love the light in every single room. I love the odd layout. I love the location. I love the jewel-toned rooms. Other than the neighbor’s endlessly-barking dog, and the occasional summer party bumping Tejano music on the next block, it’s incredibly quiet out here. The weather is mild three seasons of the year, but even the scorching summers aren’t that bad because it always cools off at night.
I get the impression the Yeti merely likes the house, but I fucking dote on it. Furnishing and decorating my own house has been just as fun as I’d always suspected it would be, after renting nearly all of the past 35 years of my life. I doubt I have any decorating taste or talent, but I enjoy the shit out of looking around at my house. I love the little gold mirror flower decals over my altar (representing Amma’s White Flowers meditation technique), and the Vishnu in the hallway (a piece of art I bought, what, over fifteen years ago, and have never hung before?!).
I love two of the three rugs we’ve bought in the past year, and the third matches well enough (I just don’t care for the pre-distressed look currently trending in rugs). I’m super happy with the kitchen now that it’s white rather than yellow (although I’m considering switching out the hardware from copper to silver).
And though the yard is likely to be brown by July, right now it’s lush and green and lovely!
Whether we live here for three years or twenty, I will have enjoyed myself a great deal.
In other news, I planted more herbs in pots yesterday, and participated in an online/virtual retreat over the weekend that was restorative and nurturing. Yay!
In which I knock out an entire to-do list.
I’m not sure what I intended to do Tuesday, no doubt I’d had a mental list, but what I ended up doing was a list of things literally more than a decade in the making.
I bought my Amma doll in the late 90’s. I’ve had the face repaired by the dollmakers, and I’ve had to repair the body myself after a dog carried her around, but suddenly it’s 2023 and the doll’s dingy and dusty and her clothes are yellowing and she’s half falling apart.
So Tuesday I put on some satsang videos on YouTube and got out my Amma doll!
I soaked her white clothes in Oxyclean, then hung them out on the line to air dry in the sun. I put her mala, bracelets and anklets into jewelry cleaner, then rinsed and air dried them. I brushed her hair and cleaned dust off her body. I mended two holes, dressed her again, reapplied her gopi chandan tilak, and refreshed her perfumes. I even sewed the lid back on the basket I keep her clothes in, and that thing’s been broken since before I left Iowa!
Now she looks and smells and feels brand new!
It was a lovely, quiet, contemplative day. Something very much needed. Haven’t seen Amma in three years now because of the pandemic; used to see Her every single year.
Maybe She’ll come to the U.S. this year!
om shree gurubhyo namaha hari om
In which politics is broken.
Periodically, I write to my representatives about something or other.
After some time, usually several weeks, I get an email, usually titled “Responding to your message,” which is always a form letter outlining the rep’s stance on whatever the issue is.
Their previous stance. They never indicate that my opinion as a constituent will affect how they legislate or vote at all.
I recently wrote about student loan relief. One of my reps responded with something soft about student burdens and then some vague shit about trade schools. (Specifically: “Trade schools, which generally cost less than do those offering a four-year degree, should be supported along with other types of post-secondary education. Such schools provide access to well-paying jobs usually with a lower burden of long-term educational debt. I am working to encourage and improve such offerings.”)
I… don’t care about which sort of college people went to? Doesn’t matter if it’s a state, trade, or ivy. I don’t give a fuck. I want student loan forgiveness. You’ve just said your response to student loan forgiveness is UTTERLY UNRELATED NONSENSE ABOUT TRADE SCHOOLS and A LOWER BURDEN OF DEBT, which means you’re not going to vote the way I fucking want you to.
People who want to go to trade schools should absolutely go to trade schools, literally nobody disagrees with this. Jesus fucking Christ, you moron. What we want is for it not to be obscenely expensive!
I understand staffers count the number of contacts that are either pro or con on any particular issue, but the canned responses never indicate that knowing what their constituents want actually impacts how our reps do their jobs at all. Except maybe briefly, in election years.
In which I’ve gotten up from a nap hungry.
Apropos of nothing, I have a sudden and intense desire for a fish sandwich from McD’s?!
What the hell! They’re terrible! Every time I eat one (this happens once or twice a decade, on average) I regret it.
—
Update: For the record, I settled for an open-faced tuna salad and tomato on toasted Ezekiel bread. It was delicious.
In which the internet is stupid. But it’s also awesome!
Made the mistake today of looking the house up on Zillow, and that bastard of a site had the nerve to estimate the value under what we paid for it only eleven months ago!
Well, I looked at recent sales of similar houses in the area, and they’re going for, like, $313k, so prices are still high and people are still paying them, which means their estimate is garbage. So screw you, Zillow!
—
Everybody at work thinks I’m some sort of diva for being afraid I can’t pass a test with no official text books, practice tests, or sanctioned goddamned course of study, and which features a pass rate of under 50%, but I know I can’t know what I don’t know I don’t know.
So I went online and asked r/cheese about study groups, and through the kindness of a stranger and a circuitous route of emails, I got admitted to an official STUDY GROUP for the Certified Cheese Professional test!!!
It starts a week from tomorrow, is conducted over Zoom, and is free. And now I think I have an actual chance to pass the test.
It turns out I’ve already read, or own and have begun to read, all the books the teacher recommends in the welcome email. So that’s a relief!
I did no studying at all this weekend. A mini-break before class starts!
—
I just can’t keep my nails done now that I’m menopausal.
I don’t know if it’s lack of collagen or what, but whenever I try to wear press-on, or even gel, nails, any moisture whatsoever that sits anywhere near the nail plate (which always happens at work, primarily because I have to wear gloves all the time) makes my nails lift. They just separate from the nail beds! It’s gross! And it takes months to grow them out and it sucks. I love the occasional manicure! And now I just… can’t have them anymore?
It’s bullshit.
And they’re far too thin for old school acrylics. If anybody took a Dremel to my nail plates it would go right through and hurt like hell.
Plus I’m terrified of what would happen if I smacked an acrylic nail against a cheese rack or something real hard. What if the entire nail came off instead of just the acrylic overlay?! How gross would that be?!
—
The Pendleton blanket — well, throw, really; it’s not a whole blanket — has arrived, and it’s glorious and beautiful and I love it. Here it is at the foot of the guest room bed.
I also got a Pendleton wool scarf, and it too is fantastic.
—
The diet is tedious and a pain in the ass, and I ate 2,607 calories on my cheat day because I was fucking starving and just wanted to be able to eat freely.
I managed to give up cocaine overnight but not eating food is a whole ‘nother level.
—
I suck at anniversaries, but I do have a basic understanding of the passage of time and it occurs that the Yeti and I have known one another for a decade now.
And we’ll have been living together for nine years on April 16th. Really doesn’t seem that long at all, but time contracts more and more the older I get. Still, I begin to suspect that he’s a keeper!
—
I’m having the kitchen painted semi-gloss white on Friday.
Life is too short to hate your kitchen walls just because you chose a stupid matte color last April.
In which I decided to blog. So here’s a blog post! Enjoy! It will not be interesting.
My contact lenses showed up a few days ago, so I’ve just sat down to fill out the rebate. (The only reason I ordered this new brand of contacts was that the optometrist’s office told me they’d be cheaper — $280 for a full year of lenses versus $312 — but I’d have to complete a rebate. But it’s easy now, because it’s online!)
The rebate form is, in essence, a data scraper: you have to upload your purchase receipt, the barcode off the product itself, and your doctor’s invoice showing the date of your last exam. I mean, I realize Google knows far more about me than Alcon now does, but honestly the receipt itself should be ample proof that you both got an exam and bought lenses?!
ANYWAY, the point of all this is that my exam, which I swear I just had, was actually on 22 November?!? Three months ago already?
WTF, time?
—
I’ve decided that I made a mistake painting the kitchen flat pale yellow, and now I think I’m going to re-paint it gloss white.
And maybe do a subway tile backsplash. Because I like subway tile, for some reason?
The rest of the house is really colorful anyway, perhaps too much so if I’m honest, so I think a white and wood kitchen would be just fine. And most of my stuff is blue and white anyway, and the appliances are white, and the countertops are white. So why not.
Also I’m starting to hate all the mismatched ceiling lights in my kitchen. They were amusing for a year, but now? Maybe living in the lighting section of a Lowe’s isn’t as funny as I’d originally thought? Over the sink is a ‘modern’ brushed nickel triple halogen light, the 90’s behemoth in the middle of the ceiling is gold and white with ash fan blades, and the dining table one is floral and brushed bronze from the 80’s! None of the fucking things have anything in common beyond all being ceiling lights!
I am probably too cheap to replace two perfectly functional ceiling lights just because I don’t like the way they look. But it’s my house, and I can bitch about it all I like! They look fucking terrible!
—
I’m on a diet.
Logging everything you eat is a fucking pain in the ass (unless all you’re eating is pre-prepared stuff with barcodes you can scan). I just ate a meal the way I normally do, and it took nearly as long to log it as it took to eat it: homemade man’ouche, labneh, a few red grapes, a few smokehouse almonds, a radish. A cup of tea with cream.
A fuckton of data entry for 359 calories.
Dieting is bullshit and I hate it, but I’m old now and the weight won’t stop piling on so I’m going to starve myself for a few months, WHAT FUCKING FUN, even though dieting doesn’t work and the results are never permanent.
Mostly what’s happening is that I sleep a lot, because you’re not thinking about food (or going out for empty calories in the form of cocktails) when you’re asleep. And I watched so much video during the Covid years that zoning out in front of the TV doesn’t really work the way it used to, sadly.
—
We still have leftover Christmas money (my aunt is insanely generous with cash gifts), so I splurged on something decadent that I’ve always wanted: a genuine Pendleton blanket!
Should be here next week. I love wool! It was on sale at about 60% off, somehow, so I also got a set of plaid mugs (what. we only have four mugs, or maybe six? MUGS ARE USEFUL, OK) and a scarf that were also in the online version of the discount bin. Very excited to own a Pendleton.
—
Are modern glasses more prone to dirt, or did I just always walk around with filthy lenses in the past?
My last couple pairs of glasses are forever greasy and smudged and impossible to see through; I’m cleaning them at least once per day, usually more.
Is it the coating? Or that they’re plastic now? Or both?
Thanks, I hate it!
—
I need to prune the rose bushes.
I have the right kind of shears, and I know to sanitize them. I’ve read several articles and watched a few YouTube videos. I feel that I could prune them with relative competence. Should have done the one out front today, but I was enjoying puttering around inside in the warm and wasn’t feeling motivated enough to put on more clothes and go outside.
Still utterly overwhelmed by the enormous size of the backyard and all the time, labor, and money it will take to turn it into something pleasant. I’m not a yard work person. I just want it to be 50% anything-other-than-lawn and be pretty without having to spend four thousand hours and twice as many dollars out there.
What feels weird is being a 50-something woman who says things like “I need to prune the rose bushes,” let alone “I’m starting to hate all the mismatched ceiling lights in my kitchen.” How the fuck did I turn into this person?
I’m old enough to be somebody’s g’ma. What a riot.
In which it’s the Super Bowl.
Let it be known that three o’clock this Sunday was the first time I’ve seen rainbows in my living room in 2023. Window prisms are the best!
I made my TV re-scan for channels, but we don’t get Fox in this house so I guess I’m not watching the Superb Owl ads this year. I could probably find some way to watch online, but I don’t care that much*. We did get Fox in the house across the street, so a slightly bigger antenna would probably work, but I don’t think I ever watched anything but football on Fox anyway.
Slept until two, had beans on toast** and a latte. Considered going out, if not to watch the game per se but more to just be around people, to participate in the holiday: the neighborhood bar with the cheese tots? A tasting room, maybe? Los Rocosos or Watermill? La Ramada?
. .. … …. ….. …. … .. .
Spent, oh, much of an hour looking at stuff to make boba tea. Tapioca pearls. Recipes. Fat straws. People, I very nearly bought a bunch of stuff to make 30 glasses of a drink I’d only want one or two of? This happens a lot. I frequently take deep dives into stupid things like bubble tea, learn all about them, fill a cart someplace, and then very nearly drop the hammer on the purchase… and then I don’t. It’s basically a hobby? Almost spending money on things? I guess it’s the internet form of window shopping, without the leaving the house or all the healthy walking and fresh air.
Decided I can’t be bothered to go out. He won’t go because he’s an introvert who won’t go anywhere (well, anywhere that isn’t a quick errand) without being strong-armed into it, and going alone sounds meh. Sometimes I really enjoy going somewhere alone, with my traveler’s notebook and maybe the Kindle or some cheese test stuff to study, to sit and eat and drink, but I guess I’m not feeling it this afternoon.
. .. … …. ….. …. … .. .
We lost our manager at work; her husband got laid off and they’ve moved to the Southwest to chase jobs. Another manager had been hired to replace her, but decided to take her previous job’s apparently generous counter offer, so now we’re short a fully-trained full time worker. I fully expect the place to descend back into the kind of chaos that results in regularly running out of mission critical items (because nobody’s in charge of ordering them and everybody else is part-time and under-trained). I offered to work F/T until someone can be hired, but so far my schedule’s the same. Guess the cheesemaker’s gonna wing it for the time being.
I do have to go in tomorrow morning to make and give out a pre-ordered cheese platter, but it’s always me when there’s a pickup outside regular shop hours, so that’s not unusual.
. .. … …. ….. …. … .. .
On the subject of the en suite bathroom, which we totally weren’t discussing: it’s less drab now! Yay! Entirely by accident, I found wall decals on Temu [basically an Amazon-killer superstore site and app, it sells everything cheaper because it ships directly from China eliminating the Amazon markup] that, amazingly, match the colorway of the en suite’s floor, baseboard, and trim, not to mention the bedroom itself’s lavender walls!
They’re abstract shapes in various shades, the exact same semi-gloss as the extant paint somehow, and installation took only minutes.
I bought two sets of decals at $1.68 each, plus a couple of small fuzzy rugs, and a matching set of wash cloths small enough to fit in the weird hanger next to the sink, and now the room no longer strikes me as cold and ugly.
Been struggling since last March trying to figure out what to do with that odd bathroom without having to invest much time and money, and it turns out to be a cheap-ass sticker set that I bought on a whim, thinking it was a different colorway entirely because the images on the site aren’t terribly accurate?!
I doubt it’s cool, using cheap and tacky stickers to make an accent wall, but hey! Because of them all the disparate features match now, and I like it! (I’ll never know why there’s gray and black tile in an otherwise entirely cream and sand brown room, but whatever.) Much better than ripping out the tile around the sink, which is what I was considering before. The same flooring and baseboard run throughout most of the house, so they weren’t gonna go anywhere. But because one of the shades of the decals is marble grey, and two more match the floor and baseboard exactly, IT ALL MATCHES. Sticker-covered accent wall! (“Wow. It looks like wallpaper,” he said.) Fucking amazing! Who knew?
*Turns out that Fox lifted the paywall this year, so it was easier than expected to find the game.
**Not English-style beans on toast; I don’t like baked beans. (Nor white sandwich bread, really, for that matter.) I eat this weird dish of generic canned (meatless) chili beans over toasted, buttered Ezekiel bread with grated cheese. It’s cheap, quick, and filled with fiber and protein! Yum!
In which there’s a soup tureen.
I keep my garlic in an old-ass soup tureen my aunt shipped us, along with a teapot, teacups, and some antique lace, when we lived in Minneapolis. It’s a great garlic keeper because it’s dark inside, but it doesn’t match my kitchen (it’s green) and takes up a bunch of counter space (it’s heavy stoneware).
So I moved the garlic into a stainless container (a tiffin, actually) and then thought, I don’t think I have ever, in my entire life, eaten soup that was served out of a tureen?
Why do I even know the word tureen? When have I ever needed to know the word tureen?
I make and eat a lot of soup, but even when I take it to the table, it’s still in the pot it was made in. I mean, a heavy stoneware tureen would probably keep soup warm a few minutes longer than a cooking pot, but, like, tureens are even sillier than gravy boats.
Tureen!
