I don’t know how your Halloween went, but mine was spectacular. Spiderman himself dropped by for a little candy, and he and one of his superhero buddies told me how much they liked my pumpkin.
Admit it. You’re just a little jealous, aren’t you? Don't feel bad. Between my amazing pumking carving skills and my hobnobbing with Spiderman, it's only natural that you feel a little envy. :)
One of the books I read on my vacation was Dies the Fire by SM Stirling. It wasn’t a perfect book – I felt there were a bunch of interesting characters who were introduced and then not properly developed, and there was way too much emphasis on the religious rites of one group of characters. I’m all for general references to religion, but I’m no more interested in multiple detailed descriptions of Wicca ceremonies than I am in pages and pages describing a Mass. See, my anti-religious bias extends to all organized religions, not just my father’s. However, the premise of the book was interesting enough to keep me going, and I even went so far as to pick up the sequel. In the story, something happens along the lines of an Electromagnetic Pulse, and all electronics are wiped out. So are explosives and whatever it is that makes guns work, although people can still get fires going. Needless to say, chaos breaks out all over, the government vanishes and the story is about how various groups of people deal with the change and how they start building new lives after it.
Anyway, between the book and a string of zombie movies that have been on TV lately, I got to thinking about the end of the world. John loves a good zombie movie. I find them terrifying, although I did make it all the way through Shaun of the Dead. Mainly because that is more about being funny than it is about being scary. The remake of Dawn of the Dead? I had to go hide out upstairs. I couldn’t take it. And I’ve only seen bits and pieces of 28 Days Later. I just get so tense when I watch those movies. However, the parts I have seen have made one thing blindingly clear: If the end of the world comes, I’ll be in trouble.
I don’t have any good skills. I can’t shoot a gun or a bow. I don’t know how to build things, or make useful stuff. I’m a great cook with all the modern tools and conveniences, but I’ve got no idea how to take wheat, turn it into flour and then turn that into bread. I wouldn’t have anything that anyone would want to trade. I can sew a button back on an item of clothing, but I don’t know how to make clothes. I could knit blankets, but I am also the world’s slowest knitter, so everyone would probably freeze to death while I labored away on my creations. I don’t know much about growing food, and as a vegetarian, I’d have a hard time making myself catch food to eat, even if I were starving. I’m blind as a bat without my glasses or contacts. I guess I am getting more fit, I’m a quick thinker in a crisis and I do know how to ride a horse. That’s all I’ve got to offer, though, since I don’t think they’d need all that much in the way of marketing or art historianism in an apocalyptic-type situation. So let’s just keep hoping the end of the world stays fictional, shall we?
Here it is, Sunday night again. How did my week of vacation go by so quickly?
All in all, especially given that this vacation did not get off to the most auspicious of beginnings, I had a great week. When you have days that are as tightly packed as mine frequently are (between the commute, my job, having to work out, blogging, actually seeing the people who are important to me, and oh yes, sleeping) having a few days in a row with nothing on the schedule turns to be just the ticket.
I was thinking about what I liked best from my at-home vacation, and while I had plenty of fun, it was the time I got to spend with John and Seamus that I enjoyed the most. I think the best night was when I made a fancy all-appetizer dinner, and then we curled up in front of the fireplace downstairs and watched a movie. John built a lovely crackling fire, and then we all snuggled into blankets -- John in his recliner and Seamus and I on our ratty basement couch next to him.
While I suppose we could have had a more officially romantic fire at the beach somewhere, it was just about a perfect night, right here in our very on home. So who needs fancy vacations?
I’m not going to spend my whole vacation sitting around the house. That’s pretty much all I did today, and while sometimes that is nice, I don’t want to waste the whole week doing nothing. Here are a few of the ways I am going to have some fun:
1. carve a pumpkin for Halloween.
2. get a pedicure. And maybe some other spa treatment.
3. read the new books I bought to take on vacation.
4. work on any of the many knitting projects I have in progress.
5. try the cake batter ice cream with Twix bits and hot fudge sauce from Maggie Moos. I know I’m not normally an ice cream eater, but that just sounds good.
6. watch more Felicity.
7. work on some story ideas that John and I have been tossing around. Pick one. Start doing something with it.
8. try to get caught up on the episodes of Heroes, which I want to watch, but haven’t seen yet.
9. clean up my front garden. I like working in the garden, and it is past time for the fall cleanup.
10. actually get around to decoupaging this little wooden chest I’ve had sitting around for months now.
11. vacuum house. this one isn’t fun, but it needs to be done.
12. make a fancy dinner.
13. update my blogroll. This has been on my list for months, but I never seem to get to it.
14. buy a “souvenir” of some sort so we can remember our at-home vacation.
15. go hiking with John and Seamus, if it gets warmer at some point this week.
Got any ideas to add to the list?
This is the week of my vacation. The first real vacation John and I have taken in forever. I mean, I’ve had the odd long weekend or two, and I generally take the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, but this time, we were going out of town. On a real vacation. Except it didn’t quite work out that way.
Our original plan was to go to the Outer Banks for a week, but then I wanted to do the Race for the Cure on Saturday, and John needed to be back here on Thursday, and so it didn’t seem quite worth it to drive all the way there and pay for a place for a whole week when we would only be there four days. So we decided to go to Rehoboth and stay in a hotel. It’s so much closer than North Carolina. And a hotel gave us more flexibility than a house. It seemed like such a good plan.
Our little vacation got off to a great start. We made such good time getting to the beach that we arrived two hours before our room was supposed to be ready. So we hit the main drag of Rehoboth, ordered ourselves a delicious Grotto pizza, and took a quick spin on the beach. Then we went to check into the hotel. And that’s where everything went wrong. I wanted to start crying as soon as we walked into the room, but I was determined to make this a fun vacation. I lectured myself very sternly about being a good sport and how all that really mattered was that John and Seamus and I were together and we could have fun no matter what. But the room was tiny. It was so small it didn’t even have a closet, and the bathroom was so claustrophobic that I felt trapped when I went in it. Maybe people on other floors had a lovely view, but we were on the ground floor, so our view was of the street. A view we got to enjoy from a patio with two rusty chairs and an equally rusty railing that had the bonus of being dented as well. It was nothing like the photos they had on their website. I don’t want to shock you, but it turns out that sometimes things that look good on the Internet turn out to not be so hot in reality.
We dropped off our stuff and decided to go out for another walk so we could check out our surroundings and look for fun things to do. So we walked around, and Seamus excitedly tracked scents all over town. And then we had to go back to that dismal room. I think we’d been in there for about 15 minutes before John said “Hey, how would you feel if we left a day or two early. Do you think they’d give us any money back?” He hated it as much as I did. Possibly more. So I asked. They said they’d refund the money, and we said we’d only be staying one night. And what a crappy night it was. That room had the power to make everything suck including the food we ate and the TV shows we watched. We even tried going to sleep early, but the beds were uncomfortable. We kept hearing people in the parking lot on one side and the traffic going by on the street on the other side (seriously, I think every truck and construction vehicle in the state of Delaware – or as John has taken to calling it, Hellaware – drove past that room starting at 5 am). Seamus was thoroughly freaked out and thought he had to fulfill his watch dog duties and bark a lot, and he is not a barker. This morning we packed up and hit the road, yelling “so long, stinktown!” as the car squealed out of the parking lot. And now we're home. Home sweet home.
We did it! My friend Becky and I ran the Baltimore Race for the Cure today with the local branch of my college alumnae club, which raised a total of $500 for breast cancer research. And it was fun! Who’d have thought I’d ever say that about running? But really the worst part was trying to find everyone at the beginning of the race. Well, that and getting up at 5:40 am. Except for Seamus, who was thrilled that I got up that early. “We’re going for our walk now? Awesome!” Of course, that’s pretty much always his reaction to going outside. John and I managed to get out of the house on time, which is quite a feat for two people who hate mornings as much as we do. We made great time getting to Baltimore, even with having to follow a state trooper for a large chunk of the trip, because who the hell is on the road at 6:30 on a Saturday morning? Everything was going great until we got to the Inner Harbor, where they had all these roads closed off – not the roads that the race ran on, no, no, these were the roads you take to get to the starting line. Because people wouldn’t be trying to get there or anything. But John valiantly fought his way through the traffic and dropped me off at the stadium, where I had instructions to meet the team captain and Becky at the Johnny Unitas statue. Unfortunately, everyone else had the idea to meet there too. All I knew about the team captain was that she had red hair and would be wearing a navy sweatshirt. I wandered around and around asking people if they were Meg. I was really starting to panic, thinking I wouldn’t find her, or Becky, in the crowd, and I wouldn’t have my registration packet, and they wouldn’t let me run and I would have done my training and gotten up early for nothing. So I resolved that one way or another, I was running the race. And then all of a sudden I found Meg (who was wearing a NAVY sweatshirt, not a navy blue sweatshirt) and Becky almost at the exact same time. Becky had been making the same resolution about running no matter what, which just goes to show you why we’re friends.
We didn’t realize how far the meeting point statue was from the starting line, so we actually got there a little bit late and were among the last runners to start. That had me worried, because I am not a fast runner. But we did really well! We passed all sorts of people, and I only had to walk twice. Once was on this really long hill. I tried to make it all the way to the top without slowing down, but I couldn’t quite pull it off. And then again at the very end there was a little rise, and we slowed down for about one minute so I could catch my breath. We don’t know for sure, but we think we were in the 36-40 minute range, which is just fine. And running outside is way more interesting than running on a treadmill. Becky was really the key though. Having her there to help me keep pace and have someone fun to talk to so I didn’t just obsess about running being hard, or getting tired made all the difference in the world. I couldn’t have done it without you, Becky! And everyone was so nice. Even the cops along the route were yelling stuff like “you’re doing great!” and “Looking good!”
And I was just thrilled to finish and do well. Yes, I know there are people out there who can run a 5 k in about a third of the time it took me. Becky said she did one where some guy finished in 16 minutes. Showoff. But a year ago it would have been unthinkable for me to run 3.1 miles. I spent some time thinking about that this morning, because I was almost pathetically proud of myself. Here’s the thing: Before the whole diabetes wakeup call happened, I knew I had let myself get out of shape. Even though I pretended not to care that I had gained weight and was not fit, it bothered me. Somewhere along the way I started listening to that little voice that said “you can’t do stuff like this. It’s too hard. It’s for fit people, not losers like you.” And today I claimed some of my self esteem back…and got to tell that voice to shut the hell up.
I don’t weigh myself on any set schedule. I hop on and off the scale as I feel like it, although I try not to get obsessive about weigh-ins. Well this morning was a hop on morning, and I’m pleased to say that I’ve now lost 30 pounds. I’m halfway to my goal, and it feels really, really good. Good enough to get me downstairs and working out tonight even though I didn’t get home until after 8 pm.
I sill wish the weight loss was happening faster. I certainly won’t break any land speed records for dropping pounds quickly, but I tell myself slow and steady wins the race. Fitness-wise, I’m light years beyond where I was when I started this project back in March. I’ve dropped 4 sizes. Ok, sometimes only three sizes – it depends on the item of clothing. Still, that is excellent progress. I'll just take a moment now to congratulate myself.
I do think I need something to motivate me to keep going strong as we close out the year. Not only do we have the holidays coming up, but I’m also starting a major new project at work, because it just wouldn’t be the fourth quarter if I didn’t have something big happening. This time, though, I will manage to keep exercise and healthy eating in the mix. I just don’t have a choice anymore, no matter what is going on at work. And I will do my usual holiday baking, but I’ll have to cut back on the “quality control” aka eating way too many of the cookies myself. I hereby declare that I want to lose 15 more pounds by the end of the year. That would put me at three-quarters of the way toward my goal, and mean that I had lost enough weight that I would feel ready to go back to the fertility doctor.
I have made my pronouncement. So let it be written. So let it be done!
Well now you know why I don’t talk about my dad much. I get all angsty and I know it’s not pretty. It works for me, as demonstrated by this excerpt from an actual conversation I had during the second semester of my first year of college.
Me: “…something something my dad, blah blah blah…”
Jules: “So you do have a dad.”
Me: “Of course I have a dad.”
Jules “So he’s not dead.”
Me: “…No.”
Jules: “But your parents are divorced, right?” [sidenote: the divorce came later]
Me: “…No. He lives with us.”
Jules: “Oh. Well, we all wondered, because you never mention him. Ever.”
Me: “Oh.”
So now we can put that behind us and move on. Or, back, as the case may be, to Friday.
As requested by pomjob, here is the recipe for Decadent Fudge Cake (recipe originally from Southern Living):
1 cup butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
4 eggs
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate mini-morsels, divided
1 (4 ounce) bars sweet baking chocolate, melted and cooled
1/3 cup chocolate syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 ounces white chocolate, chopped
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons shortening
Cream butter in a large mixing bowl; gradually add sugar, beating well at medium speed of an electric mixer (note: I actually prefer to cream butter and sugar by hand). Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.
Dissolve soda in buttermilk, stirring well. Add to creamed mixture alternately with flour, beginning and ending with the flour. Add 1 cup mini-morsels, melted chocolate, chocolate syrup, and vanilla, stirring until just blended. (Do not overbeat.)
Spoon batter into a heavily greased and floured 10 inch Bundt pan. Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour and 25 minutes to 35 minutes or until cake springs back when touched. Invert cake immediately onto a serving plate, and let cool completely.
Combine 4 ounces chopped white chocolate and 2 tablespoons shortening in top of a double boiler; bring water to a boil. Reduce heat to low; cook until mixture is melted smooth. Remove from heat. Drizzle melted white chocolate over cooled cake. Melt remaining mini-morsels and 2 teaspoons shortening, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat, and let cool; drizzle over white chocolate. Let chocolate set, and serve.
This cake is pretty labor intensive, but it is rich and delicious and chocolatey and very impressive looking. Enjoy!
I have a classic approach-avoidance relationship with my father. He ignores me for months and I am grateful; then I feel guilty for feeling grateful. He ignores me for months and I wonder why he seems to value my brother more than he values me; then I am glad not to be on the receiving end of his attention for a while. He ignores me for months and I am hurt that my dad has so little interest in me. And then I see him and I am reminded of all of the reasons I have such a tangled relationship with him.
In another century, my father would be a holy man, a mystic, perhaps even a prophet. In this time and place, he is simply a crazy man struggling to make his way in a world in which he does not fit. His mania, his obsession, is religion. He’s primarily focused on Christianity, although he is interested in all religions to one degree or another. His world is filled with symbols and portents, and he genuinely and truly believes that God speaks to him. That he has discovered a truth that other people can’t see. And he tries – he tries so hard to explain it all to me – this legacy of truth that he wants to pass on to me, but he can’t. Because it only makes sense to him. It is like he is speaking a language that only he can understand. The words are English (most of the time) but they aren’t strung together in the proper order. I’ve heard the same things time after time, but they never get any more comprehensible. The math problem that he got wrong in college that has something to do with sine and cosine and that can be tied to Hebrew and the character Shin. The fact that 4’s can be turned into Apollo sun signs and 7’s into Nazi swastikas. Fucking photos of a stained glass window from the chapel in Sibley Hospital over and over and over and over again. Seriously, if you ever hear of some bizarre act of vandalism where someone breaks into a hospital chapel and spray paints or steals the stained glass windows, well, that will probably mean I’ve finally snapped and gone on a rampage.
The irony in all of this is that my father’s life-long efforts to proselytize me have left me completely unable to believe in the God he so desperately wants me to worship. I resent my father’s craziness, his inability to relate to me in any way other than as the vessel to receive his wisdom, his general disinterest in me on many levels until I got to be an adult and it’s all tied in to the particular Christian view he espouses. So instead, I believe in karma and rebirth, in the possibility of other life in the universe, in the potential for all sorts of happenings under the sun that can’t be explained by science, but I can’t accept that God reached out to touch my father. He speaks of “carrying the light of Jesus Christ inside” himself, and I wonder if he went crossed over from bipolar to schizophrenia.
It makes me sad, and beyond sad, to reject everything he holds so dear and beliefs he has spent decades weaving together. He’s my dad, and I love him. But I can’t believe what he wants me to believe. I don’t even understand what he wants me to believe.
Tomorrow is Chocolate Day at my office. Chocolate Day is an annual feast where everyone in my company bakes or buys something chocolate and brings it in to a gigantic chocolate buffet they set up in the kitchen. I have been looking forward to this day for months, promising myself that if I worked hard and didn’t eat lots of crap, I would reward myself by making a Decadent Fudge Cake. This cake is amazing, and absolutely perfect for Chocolate Day. It has melted chocolate and chocolate chips and chocolate syrup in it, and then you drizzle it with melted white chocolate and melted chocolate chips. I just finished making the cake and I can tell you this -- I am going to have cake and it is going to be gooood.
Hooray for chocolate day!
John used to drive a motorcycle, which he loved, and I know he still misses quite a bit. His motorcycle career came to an end after a particularly nasty accident which could have killed him, but instead left him with a fractured elbow and abdominal surgery. After that he bought a car. And every time he brings up riding a motorcycle I give him a steely eyed glare and remind him of the four days he spent in the hospital, the pain, and the truly spectacular bruises which lingered for months. I then conclude with some sort of promise to march around the house banging a drum and chanting “no more motorcycles!” until he gives up the notion. I love him, and I don’t want him risking his life like that ever again. It’s not that he’s a bad driver, although he does like to go fast. It’s all the other people out there who don’t think to look for motorcycles and pull out right in front of them or change lanes into them. At least in a car you’ve got a metal box around you that provides some protection.
Still, I have to admit, when I see someone on a motorcycle going slow, like I did on the drive home tonight, I compare them to my husband, and call them “punk ass” in my head.
My mom told me a story today about this…thing this woman she’s working with right now is planning to do. Both of us find her plan peculiar and freaky and kind of repulsive, but we are related and we do sometimes think alike. So I thought I’d turn to you, people of the Internet, to see what your opinion is.
This woman is going to have herself cremated after she dies. No, that’s not the weird part. The weird part is that she’s paying some company $5,000 to take her ashes and turn them into a diamond pendant. And she’s really excited about the fact that she’s going to have herself made into pseudo-heirloom jewelry for her daughter to wear.
I don’t get this, and I’m the most sentimental person in the world. I attach meaning to and save plenty of stuff other people would throw away. And if my mom chooses to be cremated when she dies – many, many, many years from now, please – I’ll keep her ashes or scatter them as she wishes, and I’ll treasure any number of keepsakes from her, but I absolutely, positively will NOT want to wear her around as jewelry. Just thinking about it creeps me out big time. What’s your reaction? Do you see cremation diamonds as the sweet beginning of a family tradition, or just plain ghoulish and bizarre?
I decided I should really go make sure that I can run 5 kilometers, just to be on the safe side. I mean, it would be terrible to show up the day of the race and not be able to finish or something. And it’s not that I haven’t been working hard to get in to shape, because I have. I just have never been much of a runner.
So I went off to the gym yesterday morning, hopped on the treadmill, programmed it for 3.5 miles, set it for random, and picked level 4. Then I plugged in my headphones and looked for something to watch on the little treadmill TV (I went with the A-Team Marathon on TVLand) and pushed start. It went ok at first, but by 25 minutes in, I had only gone about 1.7 miles and I was about ready to die. At this particular gym the treadmills are right up against a mirrored wall, so whenever I looked up from the TV, all I could see was my bright red flushed and sweaty face. My heart rate was way up and my legs were tired. I had to slow down to a walk a couple of times, and I eventually ended up down at level 1. I ended up doing 3.25 miles, which took me 45 minutes! Yeah, I guess I’m not quite as fit as I thought I was. And today my leg muscles hurt. A lot. I’ve been gimping my way around the house all day like I’m 90 years old.
As much progress as I’ve made, I’ve still got a long way to go. I didn’t feel up to running again so soon today, but I did do one of my exercise DVDs. I’m committed. I will get fit, dammit. Too bad it involves so much work and so few donuts.
My friend Becky and I have signed up to run in the Baltimore Race for the Cure on October 21st. In addition to being my pal, Becky was also instrumental in helping me conquer my fear of the gym, and continues to make my trips to the gym easier and more interesting by joining me on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She also runs on a regular basis, and assures me that I can handle running a 5k. For those not metrically inclined, that works out to 3.1 miles. I regularly do more than that on the elliptical machine, but I think this weekend I’ll hop on the treadmill, just to be sure I really can run that far.
We don’t have to raise money to participate, but I thought I’d mention that we were doing it, and include a link where people can donate, just in case. It is an excellent cause after all, and who am I to stop you from supporting it?
Because I’m not quite brave enough to use “Bullshit, Fuck, Joint” as a title.
Anyway, as I was driving home from work this evening, I found myself yelling “bullshit! Bullshit!” at the radio. Not because I disagreed with anything that was being said, but because the radio station I was listening to took it upon themselves to blank the word “bullshit” out of the Pink Floyd song Money. I hate it when they do that. They used to leave it in, but now they take it out, along with a “fuck” from The Who’s Who Are You and the word joint from that Tom Petty song that has the line “let’s roll another joint.” Joint isn’t even a swear word for fuck’s sake. Like we’re supposed to care if a musician smokes pot. As John said about the guy who recently searched Willie Nelson’s bus and found pot and shrooms – “You figured out that Willie Nelson was likely to have pot on his tour bus? Way to go Sherlock.”
As far as I’m concerned, this bleeping out of lyrics that used to get played is just one more symptom of all that is wrong with this country.
Every time I sat down to write for the last few days, I have absolutely hated every word I’ve written. My ideas were decent, but nothing I wrote turned out right. It was incredibly frustrating. But then on the way home a whole bunch of new ideas percolated up, so hopefully tonight’s writing adventure will go more smoothly.
Cecily has an interesting post up about five things feminism has meant to her. She came up with five excellent answers. I’ve got a few of my own to add to the list.
Feminism has given me choices. And before you go rolling your eyes about yet one more person linking being pro-choice with feminism, I’d like to point out that is a very one dimensional way to look at choice. Yes, I am pro-choice when it comes to abortion. I think women should have control over their bodies. But choice means so much more. When my mom was in high school, they told her she could be a teacher, a secretary or a nurse. When I was in high school, they told me I could be anything I wanted to be.
The women of my generation can have a career and kids. They can choose to stay home with their kids, but they don’t have to if they don’t want to do it. When the day finally comes that John and I get to have a child, he’ll be the one who stays home. He’s better suited to it than I am, and I’m much farther along in my career, since he’ll be starting over once he finishes grad school. That was pretty much inconceivable a generation ago. Debates may still rage about which options are best, but at least we have them.
Feminism has taught me about equality. I believe quite firmly that men and women deserve to be treated equally, a belief that is rooted in feminism. The natural extension of that is that people of different races, religions and sexual orientations deserve to be treated equally. Feminism is about embracing differences, not fearing them.
Feminism has shown me the value of sisterhood. I went to an all-women’s college, which was the absolute best place I could have gone. Not only did I get an amazing education, but I also learned to believe in myself, to be self-reliant and discovered the power of women working together. America the Beautiful was written by a Wellesley professor (I actually lived in Bates Hall my first year) and we always change the lyrics to say “…and crown thy good with sisterhood, from sea to shining sea” because while you’re there, you really do learn to appreciate what women can accomplish.
And most of all, I believe feminism has made the world a better place. I know there are people who find feminism threatening, and who think that all the gains we have made over the past 40 years are dangerous to society and families. To them I would say, the only thing feminism threatens is narrow-mindedness. What have you got against a philosophy that says that your mothers, your sisters, your wives and your daughters are people of value, who deserve to be treated with respect?
What does feminism mean to you?
