laurenisms

Home sick yesterday and today, boo. The dogs like to have someone around, though, and it’s nice to catch up on sleep, lack of which probably contributed to the cold in the first places. Thank dirt for honey and ginger and lemon in hot water. And thank the Basques for my new super-easy favorite sick (or cranky, or really just hungry in general) soup:

Basque Bread & Garlic soup
Thinly slice several cloves of garlic. One or two per person, or several if making it just for yourself and you like it that way.
Sauté said slices in olive oil until golden.
Add a stale (day-old or more, but not too old) baguette, cut into 1-1½ inch slices; toss or turn over to coat with delicious garlicky olive oil on both sides
Add broth to cover; season to taste with red pepper flakes, cayenne, salt, etc.
Bring to a boil
Drop in one egg per person and boil until egg is cooked. Serve immediately. I generally eat it straight out of the pot because I am lazy.
Adapted from The Basque Table by Teresa Barrenechea.

Spicy, garlicky, protein-y, salty, & hot. Perfect. Then, a nap.

Ruby and I ran a block on our walk tonight, in work clothes and trench coat and un-ponytailed flying hair, just for the joy of spring. Tomorrow I will be requesting the day off because my daffodils announce that they will be blooming in the morning and I would like to be with them on their special day.

I have gone back to school! I am learning about research methods and statistics. It is interesting and I am learning a lot, even though it is for four hours on Monday nights, and even though I have like 250 pages of reading this week. Boo, textbooks.
Ultimately, one hopes, after three more terms, this schooling will result in a certificate in User-Centered Design. And then I will get a raise. One hopes.

Busy stuff lately. Classes all over the place — free jewelry class, hot yoga with work folks, regular school class — and shows — Chuckanut, Jesse Sykes — and folks coming and going — G’s mom and stepdad, my mom, Arlie. Soon I am headed to a conference in BC, and then after that I will have no free weekends until June.

(song: “The Rain King,” Counting Crows)

Last night I went for a run with the dogsters and I could have sworn it was spring. Could have sworn it so much that we were both independently worrying about getting seedlings started. (G. and I, that is, worrying, not the dogsters. The dogs said YAY RUNNING ZOMG RUN RUN YAY RUN ZOMG, and not much else.) It is about time to start tomatoes indoors if we wish to have them from seed, and time to start planning the outdoors situation. He really wants potatoes, which I fully support, so that will take some planning, as they need to have extra months in the ground. I am also interested in garlic, onions, and broccoli.

All day I have had in my head this totally ridiculous country song from when I was, like, nine, and listened to the pop country station. It was quite risqué, at that time, including the song “Black Velvet,” which I now know/suspect to be about young Elvis. Additionally, today’s title, which is about women who use men for their own nefarious purposes. I have something snarky and feminist to say there but I can’t find it among all the wine currently in my mouth.

Everything makes me cry lately. There are dogs who have died (not mine, knock on wood, but one of Oscar’s oldest friends) and there are grandmas gone too (not mine again, knock on wood again) and then there are so many new babies come into existence (not mine, knock on wood more than ever, and hi baby Ciaran! hi baby Mina! hi baby Hank!) for whom life is so small, I am worried for it. And if I spend even a minute on that thought, I become distracted and distraught with how small life is for us all, because really it is, and we are so tiny and chronologically insigificant, and then I will cry for nothing; I will cry for imagining all the so many things that could change all the other small lives so much. I will be forever changed when these dogs and these grandmas and these babies are lost. And it is too selfish to wish that I should be lost first, but I do not know if I can bear the loss of them.
What is the solution? Are all adults just veterans of the war of aging, where there are daily casualties (parents, children’s childhoods, pets & loved ones, garden plants, bus routes, hair lines, waistlines, roadkill, favored shoes chewed by new puppies, all the things large and small in which we used to rejoice but that are now gone)? Or is there some way to avoid it? Must we all submit ourselves to that? Can I opt out of one section of growing up and thereby shed all the rest? If I choose to devote my child-caring to another’s child, not my own, do I mourn with the parents when that child changes, grows, is gone, or do I mourn alone? And do I mourn less or more — does the sharing increase or mitigate the pain? Or do I merely mourn the recent demise of my glass of wine?

I hate being the youngest. Everywhere I go I am the youngest, and I feel inexperienced and foolish. I want to know what will happen to me, and to know if my current situation of conflicting heartache and jubilation will be henceforth a constant. (Big words!) I suspect it will, but more than anything I fear I will be surprised by something that experience (that I don’t have) should have prepared me for. What do I do? What can I do? I can, I guess, love my dogs and my husband and my surrounding friends and family and babies, and I can know that all of that is contingent on their continuing existence. And that love requires acceptance of the fact that they may not continue to exist. And I will deal with that when it comes, I guess.

PS. any post that starts with “I went for a run” and ends with drama and tears and wine and discussion of the meaning of love is PURE WANKERY.

(Song: “Fast Movin’ Train,” Restless Heart. Woo, 1990!)

“The aggressively kinked noodles form an aesthetically pleasing nest in cup or bowl, but when slurped, their sharp bends spray droplets of broth that settle uncomfortably about the lips and leave dots on your computer screen.” Thanks, Mr. Noodle.

Lately I have been reading way too much Mimi Smartypants again, starting from the beginning and working my way up to the present. I am not as good as she is so apologies for my disjointed rambly linkification, surely not as witty and intriguing as hers.
It was interesting, though, to read her posts from September 4 and then September 7 and then the 10th and she’s so funny and lighthearted and I know, but she doesn’t, that she is on the verge of this big awful thing.
That made me cry but now I am past that, into summer of 2002, and I am very curious about when she will mention that she adopts a kid, because it’s got to be coming up sometime soon here.

Mimi Smartypants always has lots of links. Unfortunately, as I am reading posts from 2002, most of her links are dead. But here is an interesting thing she showed me: hobo signs dictionary.

Marika came to visit not last weekend but the one before it, the one that contained New Year’s Eve. We ate good food (sushi down the street; delicious roast beef at home; Le Pichet for lunch; McMenamin’s cajun tater tots; fondue at Skip’s house on New Year’s) and we went to lots of museums. We went to the Bodies exhibit and also the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose site seems to be gone now, since the exhibit ended.
I found them both very interesting. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make it through the Bodies exhibit, right at the beginning. I wish I could find a trustworthy source discussing the provenance of the bodies, though I might not like to know now that I have given them the money. I learned that the cause of cirrhosis, apparently, and PLEASE do not say “cirrhosis of the liver” because you cannot have cirrhosis of any other part of your body!!, is “the bad diet and lifestyle often associated with alcohol or drug abuse,” not the alcohol or drug abuse itself. Who knew?
The Dead Sea Scrolls was very full of people, including rude children. *shakes fish* I found myself surprisingly little moved by the documents themselves, especially considering their, well, documentality. I liked the rest of the exhibit, the archaeological parts and the language parts especially. Maybe it was because the scrolls are so small and the lights kept turning on and off — which I understand, of course, but they did seem to turn off on me more often than one might expect.

Last weekend I did laundry and read the internets. I have all kinds of half-formed grand plans about making everything in my life work — my house, my computer, my projects, my dog, my skin, my hips and arms and thighs, my hair, my sleep — but none of them have coalesced yet. But I am reading Open Secrets by Alice Munro and I find it to be extremely enjoyable. So I’ve got that.

—
ETA: I just panicked that I have used the word “coalesce” far too many times in the recent past, but searching for it on this page returns nothing. Patient readers who might still be out there, sorry if I have abused you recently with too much coalescing. Coalescence.
—

(Song: “Painting Her Fingernails,” Bobby Bare Jr.)

Home! Home has dogs in it, and also Firefox (a pox on you, internet cafes!) and my lovely comfy bed. Spain, on the other hand, has removeable adjustable showerheads and bidets (everywhere we stayed, both apartments and hotels!). Home has shiny new silverware that came in the mail, and a new vacuum, and I feel that my excitement about those things means that I’m old now, much more than being married does. AND, home has rain! Yay!

(Song: “Dimes,” AJ Roach)

Dogs are snoring, and so is G. I am up late (but not that late) because Ten Things I Hate About You is on, and because I had a cup of coffee at about 3:30, and because my Friday night bourbon is accompanying me. (Julia Stiles has amazing hair in this movie.) I have an early morning tomorrow of meeting with a photographer, and I want to go running beforehand. Lots of relationship newness around me right now, both televisory and IRL, and I am a bit weirded out by my soon-to-be-legally-declared absolute future lack of newness, ever.

Also, I love the part where Bianca kicks the stupid kid’s ass at the prom. Especially the “that’s for my sister!” There has also lately been sistering. I love my sister. We keep trying to define it but it doesn’t work. She’s the best. I’m so happy that she’s in my wedding. I think I am at least as happy to have such an excellent sister as I am to have a wedding at all. Because, really, I could take or leave the wedding itself, and he knows that. But the sister, she is essential to the functioning.

Did I mention the bourbon? Hello, rambly time.

Lots of things accomplished lately and lots of things to do upcoming soon. Work + side projects + planning + damn hell ass house needs cleaned + sleeping? what is that?

Garden has been suffering for lack of sun, but it is supposed to be clear and bright and like 70 degrees this weekend, so maybe I will get some more ripe tomatoes for the saucing, and some more corn for grillin’.

PS. Colin Firth, call me up any time! OK? OK!
PS2. I am 26! Yarrr!
PS3. Johnny, I didn’t mean it about Colin. You know I think you’re actually the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, including Scarlett and that girl who used to work at Le Panier.
PS4. I love the name Bianca. If I ever get an all-black dog, I will name her Bianca. Just for fun.

(Song: “Aïcha,” Khaled)

Two weeks ago, I made G. drive me out to Molbak’s, of which I had only heard legends and rumors, and I found them all to be true: it is a Wonderful Place. Fortunately, I had spent all my evenings over the last week or so pulling up weeds in the raised bed in our backyard. (This turns out to be a remarkably comforting & calming procedure, actually, and I recommend it. Work all day, drive home through crappy traffic, get out of car and immediately put dogs in backyard, put gloves on, and start digging in the dirt.) So it was OK that I spent about $200 at Molbak’s. Sort of.

In any case, I pulled weeds all morning and then I put steer manure on the ground and stirred it in, and then we went to the store. An hour and a half later, we came home with four tomato plants (two yellow pear, one brandywine, one persimmon), four basil plants (two regular & two Greek columnar), eight cucumber plants (Orient Express, Telegraph, & Lemon, my favorite), two little jalapeño plants, and several lettuces, both green & red leaf. I spent the rest of the afternoon putting them in and then watering them.

All the plants were sad and straggly, especially the lettuces, because it’s so late in the season. I worried that I had just wasted a ton of money & time, but I felt bizarrely parental about all of the little plants. It was like adopting Ruby: she needed a bath and a nap and lots of petting; the plants, especially the poor wilty lettuces, needed some dirt and some water and some love. I gave them a forever home! AND THEN I WILL EAT THEM.

By that Tuesday, the next day I had time to visit, they appeared to have all taken to their new home. There were new leaves on all of the plants and a couple new flowers on the tomatoes. I loosened soil in some of the empty spots and put in seeds for corn, carrots, & a lettuce mix, the kind where you just seed every three weeks or so and harvest the baby leaves as they come up. I put up my four-month white-board calendar and drew lines to represent when the seeds were scheduled to sprout, according to the back of the seed packet. Then I sat down and was very impatient!

Happily, though, exactly seven days later, the corn started to sprout! That was last Tuesday. I love the baby corn plants. Then a few days later I started to notice little fragile carrot sprouts, and now I think I have a few lettuces coming up, too. They did it all by themselves! Also there are two tiny baby green tomatoes, and three cucumber blossoms. I will have fruit soon!

I have wanted this garden for years and years. I am so happy that it seems to be working. Now I am prepared for the collapse of civilization.

(Song: “What Do You Love More Than Love,” Dar Williams)

Spring seems to have arrived in Seattle while we were in Reno last weekend, and it’s made me realize it’s almost a year since we moved into this house. It’s been sunny and warmish and gorgeous, with blooming tulips and lilacs and green growing things, and the light has been coming into the house at a particular angle and of a particular color, like it did when we first moved in about 11 months ago. It’s making me strangely nostalgic, yet motivated.
So I’m especially glad that it was slow at work this week and I got to leave early yesterday and take all of today off, staying home and doing yardwork. Dogs laid around in the sun and watched me crawl around in bushes and get stabbed by holly leaves. I weeded and trimmed and I installed fence and my new compost maker, and then I decided I didn’t like its location and now I have to move it.
It’s also especially good that it’s nice right now because G’s brother and sister-in-law as well as his dad and stepmom are here, so we have lovely weather for walking around beautiful Seattle and looking at colorful vegetables and sparkly water and also cute shoes and fancy clothes. We also have weather and, now, room in the backyard, since I pruned, for the inaugural barbecue of the year: halibut cheek tacos. Turns out halibut cheeks don’t grill so well, but I’ll still post it on Kitchenisms soon.

(Song: “Spring Street,” Dar Williams)

I didn’t have a chance to get new shoes this time because everything happened so quickly. I applied last Wednesday for a job that was posted the day before; I had a phone interview last Thursday and in-person interviews on Tuesday, and yesterday I was offered the job despite the lack of new Target shoes. I’m going to be a taxonomist! I’m starting out part-time next week and then I’ll go up to full time when I finish school in December.
And now I can buy shoes at places that are not Target! Whenever I want!

(song: “Iowa,” Dar Williams)

Oh good, it’s still here!
Several smallish stories piled up over the last … month.
***
Mentally composed on Monday, September 19: I am cranky because last night I organized my life: figured out hours at my new job (which is the same as my old job), blocked out homework time during every day so I can try to keep it out of my free weekend time, made sure to schedule gym time three days a week. I was excited and energetic about my goals and I was going to DO IT, dammit, and today I woke up sick. Now no gym until I can breathe again; no work until I can move without feeling like my head is going to fall off. I get sick so rarely; did it have to interfere with my beginning-of-the-term optimism about getting things done? Now I may never recover.
***
Mentally composed at some point within the last couple of weeks: Yes, it’s definitely fall now and this means it’s time to reread Jane Eyre* and Ahab’s Wife. For some reason — perhaps the fact that they are full of wind and water and darkness — they remind me of fall and fall reminds me of them.
***
Mentally composed at some point within the last several weeks: Seven thousand fifty-eight flying and driving miles, four states, and ten-ish months later, the fourth and final stage of the extensive project that is meeting all the various combinations of divorced and remarried parents is over. We learned that the interaction between my mother and me at Thanksgiving is not a good first introduction to my mother; that Hawai’i is too hot, even in December, that I have become a (or discovered my hidden inner) dog person, and that three days in different states is bizarrely traumatic; that Wisconsin weather is hard on poor Northwesterners, but that Madison would be lovely if it weren’t so sillily flat and if it would just cool down at night (although then there would be no thunderstorms); and that my Reno family is almost too large to be tolerated, but that drinks in Reno are very cheap. It was a fun and adventurous project, the meeting of the parents, but I am happy never have to do it again.
***
Composed today: I did recover from the cold, physically and in terms of optimism as well. I started going to the gym again last week, finally, and though I couldn’t make it last Friday, I went today, and it’s already getting easier. School is well underway and I am actually getting stuff done. I am almost done with my portfolio; pending a few changes, my advisor will pass it and it will be on the randomly-chosen secondary reader. I got to see my sister last weekend, and we drove to Astoria to take her to her orthodontist appointment. That meant we also got to go to the beach and Shannon’s favorite restaurant and a wonderful fishmonger. I saw Serenity again and everyone else should go see it, too, even though J.W. ruined all my hopes and dreams. Today I applied for a really exciting job that I’m actually qualified for, even though I’d have to be in school full-time and working full-time through December. It might be the perfect job, though, so I am willing to sacrifice those six weeks to misery. In about a year an honest woman will be made out of me. I plan to wear a red dress. So maybe not that honest.

(song: “Question,” Old 97s)
* I love Project Gutenberg. Everyone should use it all the time.