In which it’s Sunday afternoon.
I just deleted my Facebook account! It’s a garbage platform with garbage rules, and anybody who actually knows or gives a shit about me can find me here.
I used to keep it for publicity reasons when I was in a band, but I just realized I haven’t been in a band for half a decade. Downloaded my pictures and deleted my account! Every time I go there I just get sad about how dumb people are anyway: “I’m not anti-vaxx, I just believe all vaccines are toxic.” “COVID-19 is no worse than the flu.” “We should listen to both sides, the one with the experts, and the other with insane conspiracy theorists with online stores.”
The infuriating part is they leave your shit up for thirty days after you delete your account. Asshats.
Here’s a sandwich I made and ate:
Leftover JJ’s roll from last week’s bake, mozz from work, pesto from a jar, tomato, red onion from Hayshaker Farm, black pepper, mayo. Needed only arugula and balsamic reduction to be my favorite sammich from the Lake Wine cheese shop!
Couldn’t get himself to go get take-out brunch earlier (he SUCKS at BRUNCH), but he has just fired up the grill. I’m having a veggie burger, he’s having a steak, plus corn on the cob and new potatoes. Should be fuckin’ delicious!
Here’s one of my tomato plants:
It’s an absolutely stunningly gorgeous day.
In which I’m currently quarantined.
This entire post is tl;dr but I’m going to write it anyway because I’ve got nothing but time for the next 3 to 7 days.
Wednesday I woke up, felt fine, got dressed, packed up my stuff, and was making a sandwich to take to work when I had that sensation that means I’ll be needing a bit of time on the toilet, if you know what I mean, but I was also supposed to be leaving for work in minutes, so I texted everybody to let them know I’d be a bit late.
And it went downhill from there. Fast. Cramps, nausea, aches, chills, diarrhea. Two hours later I gave up hope and texted to say I wouldn’t be in. By mid-evening I felt fine, and the next day I went to work.
Thursday was a little low-energy, but otherwise perfectly normal. Didn’t think anything of it. Too many Del Taco burritos, too much wine, just normal weird gut behavior, who knows.
Friday I woke up at dawn feeling normal but annoyed, because waking up these days often means staying up and not getting back to sleep before having to go to work. Then I got a headache, but did manage to drift off, so thought it’d be gone by the time I had to get up for work.
It wasn’t gone. It was splitting, and I had aches and nausea too. But not that bad, really, so I got up and got dressed and packed my stuff and left for work.
And turned around two blocks later and came home and called out sick again because my fucking head was killing me and I honestly felt really gross.
When he got home he told me it sounded like Covid-19 and that he’d sleep in the living room. I checked the CDC site and lo: diarrhea and chills are now symptoms. I emailed work that I’d be out yet again, and that I’d call the doctor the next day (because that sounds like the responsible thing to do when you work in a food manufactory during a global pandemic). I slept even more.
Well, I have a dental appointment on Tuesday, and I REALLY WANT TO KEEP IT. I was going to make it back in March — even filled out all the paperwork — but there was the pandemic, see, so I didn’t actually make one until three weeks ago. But they’d fucked up somehow, so I didn’t get seen and they never called me to reschedule like they said they would so when I called them three days later the next open slot was Tuesday. So it’s an appointment three weeks in the making, and my mouth is a disaster and I WANT TO KEEP IT.
But I also know they’ll ask me if I’ve had any symptoms, and I have, so I decided to call the clinic and ask them if they thought I needed testing. Because I only have 5 symptoms on a list of 11, and none of them are fever or cough, I thought they’d say no, sounds like the crud, drink fluids, rest, etc etc.
But what she actually said was, “With those symptoms, I’d say you need to be tested for Covid-19.” And then she told me where to go to get tested, which is at the Fast-Track drive-through at Providence.
So I went.
And it took over half an hour but was otherwise relatively easy, and they gave me paperwork and told me I’m quarantined until I get my results… in three to seven days. I’m not cleared to work before then.
And I’m also NOT CLEARED TO TAKE MY DENTAL APPOINTMENT, and have to call and reschedule.
Today I’m not that sick, just fatigued (which honestly I think is related more to my gum disease than anything else) and intermittently nauseous and headachey. The diarrhea only lasted a day (though that’s certainly long enough), with maybe a reprise Friday morning but it’s hard to tell because I was much more concerned with the blinding headache.
My mouth, though: I have gum disease. I used to get prophy three or four times a year but I haven’t had a cleaning in over six years now, for various reasons, most of them laziness. (I did try to see dentists in Minneapolis, but it was always hard finding one I could get to easily, without busses or Ubers, and then the one I could bike to didn’t take my insurance and wanted me to pay cash, plus weather and work schedules and blah blah blah… I just haven’t been seen in too long.) Which is to say that there’s bacteria in my jaw bones now. They burrow town into your sockets and down the roots of your teeth and into your upper and lower jaw bones, and I know I’m there because I can feel it. I get intermittent gland swelling, too. I need goddamned planing & scaling and they’ll probably put me on antibiotics, too.
This is all gross, I know, but that’s the joy of being embodied, right?
Long story short, we need my test not to be positive, because if it is, it basically shuts the entire creamery down for ten days while everybody gets tested, and that would be awful, plus it’ll push my dental appointment back even further.
All I wanted was my fucking dental appointment! I don’t know why I’m sick and I don’t feel bad enough to really worry, it’s just the crap you get from time to time. I’ve been sick about every two months since we moved out here, and that’s always normal for me: move across the country, catch absolutely everything for the next 10-12 months. Happens every single time. But I gotta say, during a pandemic it’s complete bullshit!
In which there’s bread!
Today’s his birthday, and he’s been asking me to make the knock-off Jimmy John’s bread recipe for awhile, so I did! Here’s the recipe:
No wonder it’s so nice, it’s got a teaspoon of sugar and even more oil per roll!
Here’s the dough after the first rise:
Now, do behold my utter lack of shaping skills!
(I didn’t shape. I just turned the dough out and cut it. There was no instruction to punch down, so I didn’t.)
They smell good, though, and are nice and soft, and hopefully will make good sandwiches!
Yes, obviously next time, if ever there is one, I’ll punch down, and shape with a bit more aggression. I’m just so used to the no-knead method.
Now I want to get some guacamole and sliced provolone, so I can make myself a homemade copycat #6 The Veggie. Hah!
This is what I made for dinner:
Buttered eggs (with garlic scapes, mushrooms, and goat cheese), roasted asparagus, and smashed potatoes. Pretty delicious. Should have defrosted something dead and fired up the grill—after all, it is his birthday—but I didn’t. Too busy baking bread, plus it’s hot as hell out today for outdoor cooking.
In which there’s an item of furniture.
Bought a coffee table. (Also bought a couch, to replace the air bed we’ve been using as a couch, but it’s not here yet.)
Coffee table! It weighs a ton and reeks of finish, but I love it! Was expecting something much flimsier, but this guy’s solid as hell. Nice, simple, non-plastic little piece of furniture.
I’ve never bought a coffee table before in my life, I don’t think. Furniture is generally either already there when I arrive, or gifted or found, right? People give you old coffee tables, right? I mean, I bought a desk, but a coffee table? Who buys coffee tables?
Me! I bought a coffee table! Box says it’s walnut, and I like it a lot.
Target pays low wages, withholds benefits, treats their employees and the communities they operate in like shit, and they store their (well, really our) wealth offshore to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Ditto Walmart and Home Depot and all those other massive chains. FUCK THOSE BUSINESSES. THEY ARE NOT GOOD CITIZENS, AND THEY DO NOT DESERVE ANYTHING: Not our respect, not our protection, not our grief, and absolutely not our bailouts.
Fuck them. Fuck every one of those society-looting, conscienceless motherfuckers. They do not operate in good faith.
They’re the enemies of healthy society: they stand in clear opposition to prosperity, dignity, and beauty. Their business model is to suck wealth out of communities, destroying Main Street in the process, and have the government (read: us) subsidize them in two ways: welfare for their under-compensated employees, and tax cuts and bailouts for themselves.
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In which it’s an intense time to be alive, no doubt about that.
The images that get traction are of broken-hearted wailing and absolutely JUSTIFIED rage; fire; despair. Cops acting as if the population they’re sworn to serve and protect are enemy combatants, and so hatefully indoctrinated they don’t know why that’s a problem.
The images of comfortable, wholesome protests, of community and support and love, get little to no coverage. If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead.
Far too much coverage of looting. Listen, when you never earn enough, have no healthcare, and live at the edge of homelessness in a grossly rich country that spends BILLIONS ON WAR AND COPS, why not take shit from a Target when shit’s on fire? If you don’t, it’s just gonna burn up anyway, why not get something to use or gift or sell?
I would, I absolutely WOULD loot a fucking Target if I didn’t have the support that I have — all of which is due to my luck, not my intrinsic worth. I don’t offer society anything of real value, and neither do most of you. The only reason I’m not looting a Target is that I don’t have to, and the reasons I don’t have to are luck and skin color.
Let them have their Martha Stewart lamps and bicycles and flat screens. What those businesses have stolen from us is much, much worse than that. Those businesses pay shitty wages, withhold benefits, treat their employees and communities like shit, and store their money offshore to avoid taxes. FUCK THOSE BUSINESSES, THEY ARE NOT GOOD CITIZENS, they’re not citizens at all, really, AND THEY DO NOT DESERVE ANYTHING. Not our respect, not our protection, not our grief, and not our bailouts. Fuck them. Fuck Walmart, fuck Target, fuck every one of those society-looting conscienceless motherfuckers. They’re enemies of society: enemies of prosperity, dignity, and beauty.
Five Black human beings have been found hung from trees in the past week. (Obviously, in light of history, this is not how any Black person suicides, ever.) This is absolutely fucking unacceptable and shows how deep racism is in this country. Fucking lynchings?!? I am heartbroken by how safe, comfortable whites are willing to just ignore the suffering of people JUST LIKE THEM who have more melanin. That’s fucking racism; it’s really not that hard to understand how running highways through affluent Black communities for decades might have had an effect on a population we’ve been so happy to ignore and push away unless they adopt our bullshit White saviour pseudo-Christian culture.
The population is acting recklessly in face of a killing global pandemic. This is entirely the fault of the current administration failing to bother to message properly.
Wear your mask. Stay in as much as possible. Wash your hands. Ignore the re-openings, IT’S NOT SAFE.
Trump is incapable of compassion, old, weak, dumb, venal, and ugly of heart. He is the reflection of the nation’s cumulative personality.
We’re risking millions of lives in the forms of millions of service workers because our society is broken, and I hate it. It breaks my heart that people too poor to not work have to work for CEO bonuses are forced to work. It’s slavery, but we pretend it’s a free market.
Walmart costs you, the taxpayers, billions of dollars annually because their MEDIAN PAY is under twelve bucks an hour. They literally maintain hotlines that assist their underpaid workers with their assistance applications.
The Supreme Court actually surprised me today, however; there is still hope that people, many people, do their duty for its own sake.
In which I got packages that weren’t stuff I ordered myself from Amazon!
Okay, I got presents, for basically no reason beyond the greatness of other humans, but first I gotta bitch about humans being stupid about THE TRANSMISSION OF A KILLING FUCKING DISEASE:
The governor let my county move to Phase 2 re-opening last week so restaurants are open at 50% capacity, you can get your hair cut, bars and tasting rooms are open, small gatherings are permissible, blah blah blah.
I’m back to working my full schedule (part time, under 30 hours a week) and the cheese shop is open its regular hours for customers again. We’re filling a lot of orders, making cheese three times a week rather than just once, and everything’s pretty much humming along as it was before the pandemic. Last two days have been busy as hell and I’ve personally handled hundreds of pounds of cheese!
But. I observe that fewer than half of the customers who come into my cheese shop wear masks (and I’m convinced that non-mask wearers are probably also non-hand washers, and have been having fucking parties the entire time). I saw one person sanitize their hands since this began, and it was a child whose mother made her do so before eating. Two separate customers told me today that they were entertaining this weekend. None of my customers are distancing in the store or observing maximum occupancy.
All my co-workers save one won’t wear masks, don’t appear to be doing (or, for that matter, to have done) any distancing, and I saw one today hug some friends she clearly hadn’t seen in awhile. Only two of us ever sanitize per official CDC recs (although our regular standards are already high because we’re a food manufactory), and basically it’s a free-for-all. Everybody’s acting like it’s over.
Well, it’s not over. It hadn’t even gotten here yet. The Umatilla county COVID map shows cases growing steadily.
Anyway, so, based on the humans I see at work and while shopping (I’ve been to Safeway and the hardware store since March), I’m finally about to be exposed. Might be asymptomatic, might not be. My lungs aren’t great to begin with, so I wish people would wear masks and wash their hands, but apparently, they don’t. Not until people they know start dying. Maybe that person will be me!
Ugh. Anyway. Out of my control, no point in worrying too much about it.
In better news, I had the most awesome mail week EVER!
First: I asked someone I follow on Instagram to send me a little doodle of Ganesh; he shipped me seven pieces of art and some sour gummi worms. All the way from Great Britian! How awesome is that?!?!
I bought a couple little frames. Gonna hang that toilets one in the bathroom. Because it’s toilets!
Second: Not too long ago, an ex-coworker said she was doing a book stash reduction and I signed up. She shipped me some Octavia Butler!!!
Fuck yeah!
Third: There hasn’t been any yeast at my local grocery store since March, and even Amazon was out until just recently. So one of my online friends took pity on me and sent me some from her grocery store!
Art! Books! Yeast! YAY!
Oh, ALSO: my dad showed up and is living in his RV in our driveway. Not only did he pay us rent (for water, power, and internet) so my utility bill’s half covered, but he made us dinner last night! All I had to do was load the dishwasher!
And also-also: I finally made a dental appointment. Next Tuesday I’ll go in, get x-rays and a consult, and they’ll give me a treatment plan that will allow me to spend hours in a chair under local WHILE getting rid of that two grand burning a hole in my savings account! Certain my gum disease is all the way into my jaw and I’m going to get Very Serious Lectures About Dental Hygiene. Sigh.
is on fire, and it’s a nuanced and complex situation ranging the gamut from genuine societal rage and a systemic cultural reaction to entrenched oppression, to boredom from lock-down, spring weather sprung, opportunistic bullshit by outside actors, and a pinch of actual anti-social behavior. (after all, young men aren’t known for their self-restraint in emotionally-charged mob situations, that’s why all nations use them as soldiers.)
now, [white and other privileged] people are blowing off all that complexity because they’re focused on how… holy shit commercial property is being destroyed!!!
really.
you think it’s fine for the state to REPEATEDLY use lethal force against non-violent black and brown and poor people, but god forbid anybody torch a fucking walmart? THAT’S what’s utterly beyond the pale for you? not the literal state-sanctioned brutal loss of human life without any repercussions, but destruction of… commercial property bothers you?
REALLY?!
people don’t destroy their communities; there’s no community there to destroy. there’s pan-national corporations sucking wealth up from the bottom to the top, shitty jobs, dangerous intersections, racism, stagnant wages, lack of health care, late busses, racism, shitty landlords, food deserts, class divides, racism… you can’t possibly believe that healthy communities fucking BURN THEMSELVES DOWN for absolutely no reason, can you?
no. you think they’re burning shit down because they’re, you know, just intrinsically LIKE that. them. not us, them. basically animals, which is why it’s fine to kill them
review your comfortable beliefs and learn about complexity, bitches: turns out you’re classists and racists.
In which holy shit THIS REALLY IS A RECIPE BLOG NOW.
Okay, not really! This isn’t a proper recipe as much as a reminder to myself for the next time. The smoked paprika and yellow mustard really made this dish.
Heat:
butter & olive oil
Add chopped:
onions
carrots
celery
Saute until soft. Add:
dried split peas
water + vegetable bouillon
smoked paprika
prepared yellow mustard
Herbs de Provence
salt
Simmer or pressure cook until the split peas are soft.
Season with salt & freshly ground black pepper.
Serve with a drizzle of olive oil and a garnish of fresh thyme.
In which it was deeply relaxing and refreshing.
With the world on varying levels of lock down, Amma’s stuck in Amritapuri for the time being, and Her tours, including the summer North American Tour, are postponed (if not cancelled). So She’s directed senior disciple talks and local satsang (“a spiritual discourse or sacred gathering”) meetings to move online.
The North American e-newsletter has sent out a massive calendar of online offerings. It’s so great!
The closest Oregon satsang is in Bend, and tonight I joined their live stream for chants, bhajans, and meditation. (Meant to join last week, but stayed at work doing cheese affinage stuff.) There is, of course, no local satsang here.
Tonight’s online virtual satsang was lovely!
I rarely ever live near an active satsang (there was one in Fairfield, but I lived in Batavia so never went; and there was one in greater Minneapolis but it moved every month and was never near me, so I only attended once in five years), so this online stuff is really wonderful for me. So many options I wouldn’t have otherwise! Silver linings and all that.
Anyway, if you want some spiritual nourishment, Amma’s talks are here and the senior disciples’ YouTube channel is here. It’s really good viewing.
ॐ AMRITESHWARYAI NAMAHA
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4 random books from my Library!
