food

Last weekend, I cooked our extra Thanksgiving turkey from last year.  It came out beautiful.  We had turkey dinner, I reserved the dark portions for later, and then I tossed the carcass into the crock pot after picking it clean of its meat, which we ate for a couple of days before most of the rest ended up being stirfried with spices and rice and then tossed into reheatable portions in the freezer.  The next day, I strained out the crock pot goodness and stuck the gelatinous ooze into the fridge.

Today, I heated up the reserved dark portions of meat - the drumsticks and wings and thighs - and while that was going, cooked up some taters and divvied up the ooze to be frozen for later gravies and soups.  I kept some aside and made gravy for the taters.

Multitasker that I am, I then sat down at the counter with the crock pot and a plate of potatoes with gravy.  I took one drumstick and began to pick the meat off it.  Some went in a bowl for later soup, some went to the cats, and some went into me as I ate the potatoes and gravy.  I discarded the bones and gristle and other such things into the crock pot.  I repeated with each darkmeat piece until it was all gone.

When I was done with my breakfast, I took an aging onion, chopped it up, and then chopped up a carrot and threw in the potato peelings, some spices, a bit of salt... and filled it with water.  The cover went on, I set it to high, and then I set to work on the breadmaker.  I set that to start a few hours later so the bread would be as fresh as I could get it compared to when Dale gets back.  I have no idea when he'll be back, actually, so I guessed.

Hungry from the smells of everything, I just stole some broth and a few pieces of very tender onion from the crock.  The broth is a little weak right now, so I added a bit of soy sauce, srichi, fish sauce, and hoisin.  Then I went outside and snagged some green onions and a bit of cilantro (which I was surprised is popping up on its own... it must have seeded itself last year, yay).

It always amazes me how easy it is to make fresh, wonderfully complex soup out of bones, veggies, and a splash of a few premade sauces.  Quite frankly, the soup is the easy part of the turkey... picking the meat off the bones is the most time-consuming part.  Turkeys have a LOT of freakin' meat on them!!  On the other hand, the meat can be frozen and makes excellent stir-fries when you're finally in the mood for turkey again.  So it saves time later... and it's probably a heck of a lot healthier and/or cheaper than stuff prepared for you.

Anywho, back to it I go.  The bread is rising in the maker and I've got the dishwasher going.  Oh yeah and I have some beans soaking, too.  I was thinking of turkey bean soup with fresh bread tonight.  Dale ran a marathon.  I figure he needs some protein and carbs.  I know /I/ want them.  Sure do burn a lot of calories sitting around on one's butt all day long playing games on the computer and eating homemade soup... har har

~nv

Morning thoughts

First off, I'm not overly fond of "Fu Brick" Hunnan Hei cha.  It's not horrid, but for a puerh, it's very, very light, and takes forever to separate itself from its little brick.  I suppose in some ways this makes it last longer but it needs to steep a LONG time, even after rinsing.

Tea is not what my post is about, though.

Over the past few months, I have felt myself sliding slowly backward somehow, even while still moving forward.  New job seems to be going well, and I've learned a lot of new things, and have much more to learn.  So it seems illogical that this would be the cause of anything.  However, I still miss a lot of people from the old place and I spend a lot more time alone.  So much so that I crave solitude despite missing my friends.  Does that make sense?  Probably not.  I tend to gravitate towards logic in a lot of things and I can't make heads or tails out of this myself.

I have trouble speaking to people.  I've been losing words for the past couple of years and it's probably just the aging process.  It starts happening about now, I reckon, a little bit at a time, until you're a nonsensical idiot drooling in your lap.  It's not just that, though.  I have trouble holding onto my thoughts long enough to form them into words.  It's like having less interaction with people is dumbing me back down to who I was before I was thrown into the mess of people.  I kind of miss my people.  Not just my friends, but the interactions.  Even the meetings, to some extent.  At least when I /did/ have to speak, I could sound intelligible.  Ish.

Listening has gotten better and worse.  Better because I feel less need to contribute, but worse because I have trouble hearing again.  It's a bunch of mumbo jumbo that just tumbles around in my head for a while and I get too tired to process all of it so I miss half of what's said.  The rest is prone to being quickly forgotten.

I'm no longer sharp as a tack.  This bothers me.  A lot.  I've tried to convince myself it's OK, that everyone hits this point.  But it's not OK.  I've stopped feeling like a failure, like I'm imperfect, when it happens.  But I feel frustrated.  I feel slow.  I feel stupid.  I guess stupid, for me, is failure, but still.  The frustration hits me hardest.  I can no longer multitask without a pad of paper in front of me.  I'm constantly reorganizing my notes.  People converse with me about conversations we'd had previously and I've lost all context, even if it's a project I've been working on.  Dale tells me where he's going and two seconds later I figure out where he's going based on other clues, then verify.  He gives me an odd look and I realize he probably just told me exactly what I concluded on my own.  I don't remember any of it.

Yet, I haven't totally lost all of my communication skills.  I haven't forgotten everything.  And some things I'm forgetting feel like they're being replaced by older skills.  Skills I'd forgotten about in the hustle and bustle of having to deal with so many people.  The ability to focus on one thing for long periods is returning.  To block out any and all sound.  I keep wanting to read, to immerse myself in two-dimensional verbiage.  I've been wanting to write more.  (Hi!)

In other news, I've made it 21 days without drinking any mountain dew at all.  Sometime after Monday of this week, it stopped badgering me.  I actually don't really want it now.  If I really think about the taste, sure, I want it, but I don't have a craving for it, a need, or the thought of it every three seconds.  I honestly think it has to be a mental addiction because I never stopped drinking tea, so the addiction is likely not the caffeine.  It likely wasn't the sugar, either, because I began craving potatoes within the first two weeks of giving up the Dew.  I didn't really eat a lot more sugar than usual so I figure the starch replaced the sugar.  So it had to be mental.

At any rate, not going back down that road for a while.  I don't trust myself with Dew.  My mother used to tell me that her smoking habit was not a physical addiction but a mental one.  She LIKES smoking.  I think I sort of understand that now.

Back to the subject at hand, though... Dale and I went to dinner last night and I hashed out a few of my thoughts about my state of mind.  He didn't seem to think it was overly concerning and thought I was still growing just fine.  Oh, I left that out here.  I mentioned that I may have realized that it's not just my mind slowing down, but my growth and passion for growth.  He's like, "You were just learning two languages."  Well, yeah, but that's different.  Somehow.  Um.  Right.  But I am not currently still learning them...

Seriously, though.  The growth thing.  I was unhappy for much of my life and pushed myself until I became happy.  I grew professionally, spiritually, mentally, and as a human being.  FAST.  And then I reached a point where I was content.  Very content.  But being content, in and of itself, is causing me discontent.

I'm unhappy being happy?  Seriously?  Yes, because now I worry it will all go away.  Wow.

That made me feel better.  Now my new goal is to enjoy what I have so long as I have it.

~nv 

Duggars' 19 kids

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/02/carefully-scripted-lives-my-concerns-about-the-duggars.html

I read through the above article and found many points to be similar to /many/ parents I've known.  The tendency to overpower a kid, make them believe what the parent does, make them act the way a parent does, this is universal and has nothing to do with a large or single-kid family and is regardless of social status and religious or other beliefs.

My mother did not have lots of kids but I still raised myself, and her too in many ways, didn't have much of a childhood or teenage years, and in different ways.  While these kids might have their whims literally beaten out of them, mine were put down and called evil and whatever else might make me more like the nut that doesn't fall far from the tree.  I know I'm not alone... lots of kids can recount such things in either direction, my own mother included.  Patterns repeat themselves for a reason.  Even if you're not pushed into it, you still want to be accepted and loved by your parent.  It is of note that not all kids become like their parents.  Some become "black sheep" of the family and are ousted, much to their own joy.  So an upbringing is not going to MAKE you into anything, it'll shape you, but you still end up deciding in the end whether you're going to be a mini-them or a major-them.

Further, we are only recently as a human race (in this country) able to have small families where kids do NOT raise each other.  Farms needed boys and girls to help keep things going.  It wasn't thought of as a horrible thing at the time.  However, now that we have smaller families, the children still mentor each other on playgrounds, in schools, in daycare.  Kids naturally gravitate to their older peers, siblings or not.

They think females need to dress modestly.  We are now putting down this culture of theirs because it's no longer mainstream, but it used to be, and in many places still is.  We are afraid of them spreading their crap through our culture, but it is us who spread our crap through their culture.  Their culture was in this country before ours!!  So who is the real danger?  Why is their way so far-fetched and dangerous?  Why is it more dangerous than ours?  Ours is full of drugs, murder, rape, and sex plastered all over the TV.  Do we seriously fear people acting nicely towards each other?  Letting our teens be teens certainly doesn't seem to be helping, either.  Maybe we're just human?

And yes, kids are naturally curious, but so are dogs and cats and we send dogs, our loving companions, to obedience school because we want them to act a certain way.

The point I'm trying to make is that nothing above is necessarily wrong, it's simply how various people hold their own beliefs, and one particular culture is not any better than another - it's because we were raised differently that we think ours is.  We need to be stroked and be agreed with, it's our human nature.

That being said, of course they wish to isolate their kids.  There aren't as many like them now.

Not that I'm condoning them.  That lifestyle would drive me nuts.  But again, I was raised very differently.

~nv

traffic fun today

In the complicated little jog today I saw dumptruck, me, bicycle on my bumper, big 18 wheeler on his bumper.  Light turned green.  I was glad for hill assist so I didn't bump the bike behind me.  Dumpy and I went, I lost the bike somewheres, and the 18 wheeler took a while to make it up the little hill 'round the bend.  Behind me I see a white truck cross lanes and appear to my left as we rounded the corner.

I thought, "Wow, it's amazing that nothing bad happened with all the danger right there."

Then as the road became simple again, a pickup with a smashed back end cut in front of the dump truck.  He made it.  As I marvelled at how he didn't die, a minivan tried to cut in front of me from a complete stop.  I slammed on my brakes and looked up, prepared for a sudden manoeuvre should the 18 wheeler be hanging out there again, but he had disappeared somehow and the coast was clear.  She looked at me like "WTF", stopped in the middle of the left lane, blocking traffic, and I proceeded.  She came in behind me, I think.

I never did find the 18 wheeler again.  Not sure where he went.  Maybe he and the bicycle eloped.

shower vs tea

This morning I aimed to take the shortest shower possible.  I attempted to do this by putting a fresh, hot cup of tea on the sink.  The faster I showered, the sooner I got my tea.

Irish Breakfast, to be exact.

The problem is that I could smell the tea in the shower.  That made me want to skip the whole performance and just dive into the tea cup.

Then I realized I could also smell the Herbal Essences shampoo/conditioner that I'd bought yesterday.  It was the kind in the familiar yellow and golden bottles... I haven't seen this in a few years.  It was my favourite.  Is my favourite.  I was forced to switch to Aussie something when (I thought) the Herbal Essences was discontinued.  Apparently it is still carried in stores I don't always shop in.

Anywho, the shampoo kept me in the shower long enough to actually wash myself, and the tea pulled me out.

I'd say it was a wash.  ;)

~nv