last day

tomorrow, a brand-new year.

today, i slept in, and woke up with our stray foster kitty curled up beside me. i had cheesecake for breakfast, and am getting ready to watch a little of the Detroit Red Wings/Toronto Maple Leafs Alumni Game before work.

as a kid, ringing in the New Year gave me mixed feelings. i always felt like there was so much unfinished business, so many more things i ought to have done, so many things i could've done better. every January brought the same "clean slate" speech from my teachers, and by February, no matter how hard i resolved to do my homework, all the old behaviors had reasserted themselves. same story, year after year after year.

today, i am full of gratitude for the year we just had - it was wild, intense, and full of so much joy. i firmly established my massage practice, had a wonderful Fest, hugged Amma, enjoyed my city and family, and reveled in all the love and laughter E and i share. and i am full of excitement for what 2014 has in store!!!!!

not having the best track record with resolutions, i'm more interested in figuring out what i'd like to do more/less of, what i'd like to accomplish, and then taking small steps toward those things. in 2014, those include the following:

- Build two or more raised garden beds

- Grow more food that we'll eat

- Preserve more of our surplus produce

- Drink mostly water

-  Build my practice to at least 20 clients a week

- Toss or donate one bag of unnecessary stuff a week

- Move in with E

- Learn to use my sewing machine/actually use my sewing machine

- Travel with E - Boston? Portland? New Orleans?

- Get licensed in MI

- Learn five new massage techniques

- Pay off my credit card

- Make consistent student loan payments

- Get health insurance (or at least dental insurance)

- Read ten books on my Must-Read List

- Actually run the Warrior Dash, and run one additional 5k

- Create More.

what are you looking forward to in 2014?

Happy New Year!

my faithful little phone died quite unexpectedly last night.

i lost all my pictures, and almost all of my texts, most of which were of high sentimental value...and that, i think, is why Mom came home to me racing around the house in considerable distress. (i *can* go two weeks without phone contact, and do so every August, lol.)

one quick trip to AT&T later, i had a new phone.

Pros:

it's red.
it's not a smartphone.
i like the mp3 i picked for my alarm clock.
the camera appears to be better than my old phone.
it cost me $1.06 to upgrade.
it's not ginormously oversized.

Cons:

it's red.
i don't know how to answer it.
i don't know how to end calls.
it's probably much less durable than my old phone because it has a touchscreen.
it has a real slide-out keyboard that seriously slows me down, but the touchscreen texting is even slower.
if i'm taking a picture of myself, i can't see what i'm doing (my old phone had a tiny little mirror so you could frame things).
using the camera takes two hands and is awkward. in fact, doing anything with it takes two hands and is awkward.
it's not intuitive at all.
it's too big.
IT'S NOT MY PHONE AND I WANT MY PHONE BACK.

obviously, it has yet to win me over.

having a favorite picture as my wallpaper would probably help, but unless i take a picture of the Christmas tree or something, it could be months before that happens. it's just an impersonal gadget right now. its personality traits appear to be limited to being contrary and obstructive with occasional concessions (it let me switch text formats so i'm not stuck with those awful conversation bubbles) that still manage to be unsatisfactory (when i type, it's black-on-white like it should be; when i get a text, it's white on black, which makes me want to throw the phone).

we hates it.

it burns us.

i'm not very good at adapting to new tech devices. Newer! Better! Faster! holds no power over me. i like what i like, which is generally why i purchased it in the first place, and i don't understand why The Powers That Be insist that we all move in lockstep with whatever new thing/design comes along, whether it's whatever colors they think women ought to be wearing this year (a HUGE reason behind my preference for men's clothing) or phasing out perfectly good lower-tech phones for those of us that don't require the whole interwebs in our pocket but do like to text and take pictures.

they don't really care what we think, you see. they just want to make as much money as possible, which is why they try to make us believe that last seasons' clothes (phones, cars, etc) aren't trendy and should be tossed out. it's also why they don't really build things to last anymore, because there's no profit in quality merchandise that lasts for years and years.

stupid plastic society.

it's rough being a counter-culture dragon sometimes.

in between

 here's what's been going on between work and sleep:

last night, i took my older niece out for dinner. she's a sophomore at the University of Michigan, but had never been to The Fleetwood Diner - a one-room little restaurant plastered in stickers and home of Hippie Hash (hash browns with veggies and feta cheese). well, she's been now. :o) (and i got horribly, horribly lost in downtown Ann Arbor. so lost that i drove in circles for 30 minutes trying to find Washtenaw Ave, which i chronicled by making up my own lyrics to Greensleeves.)

Round Two of Christmas cookies are done, and will be mailed out before i go to work today (which means i should package them). 

i wrapped ALL THE THINGS:

and everyone is getting a specially wrapped present from Santa Claus, too:

it turns out that K, J, and Little V are coming a day early - TOMORROW - so tonight will be spent cleaning and toddler-proofing.

E's working tonight and Friday night, and we have to bottle the beer sometime this weekend. i'm doubling down on the antiviral lozenges. i still have to pick up a present for E's mom, and maybe a stocking stuffer or two.

and i'm being verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry patient, waiting for my little Christmas cactus to bloom! will it be white, red, or pink? the suspense is killing me!

off to shower, pack cookies, and run to the post office! hope you're having a wonderful day!

Decemberish II

it's STILL snowing.

 this is a main road, lol. having been all over God's white green earth today, i decided to make one more trip to the store so that tomorrow, i wouldn't have to go out at all.

i was a little distracted, because E was on her way to work (!!!!!!!!!!!!), and i was waiting for her to text me that she made it there safely, so my shopping was a bit...um...unfocused. when i got home, i decided to play Chopped!

Ingredients I Had to Use:

beef stew meat
cubed butternut squash
canned French onion soup
one tube of crescent roll dough (that one was already in the fridge)

hmmmm.

i browned the beef with some chopped onion and garlic powder, threw in the squash, added a can of soup and a can of beef broth, and let the squash sweat for a few minutes. then i added two soup cans of water, a whole lot of garam masala (i will work that sh*t into everything i can), some extra cinnamon, cumin, and ginger, a couple dashes of cayenne and, after tasting, a few spoonfuls of brown sugar. it simmered for a while, and then i broke the crescent roll dough into itty-bitty pieces and threw them in.

Result: the best freaking Spiced Beef and Squash Stew with Dumplings you've ever had EVER. and i'm not even eating it tonight! oh, no. it's going to mellow in the fridge overnight - tomorrow afternoon, all we have to do is heat it and eat it. cool, huh? i think i'll make biscuits, too...

bonus pic: i found this coffee mug at Starbucks today, and loved it so much that i bought two - one for my brother in law, J, and one (using tip money) for myself:

i didn't know we were so well known for our beer (it IS good), but it captured the city perfectly! tomorrow morning's coffee is going to be extra-enjoyable. :o)

Decemberish

we are getting snowed on!

it made driving to work and running errands  hellish exciting, and i still have to drive back to E's. so far, everyone has been using their common sense on the roads (in town, anyway) - i haven't seen any accidents, just fishtailing, and we're all allowing plenty of room for braking. (see, Oregon? that's all you have to do!)

snow sure is pretty if you don't have to be out and about, isn't it? i'm very much looking forward to a quiet, yarn-filled day tomorrow, with Christmas carols on the radio and something (what, i don't yet know) yummy for dinner.

this week, i made a test batch of molasses cut-out cookies:

 

i freaking love royal icing. i also freaking love that my mother baby-talks to the cookie deer ("Hello! Hello, little guy! Look how cute you are!"), and then bites off their heads.

E and i had a great date night on Thursday! we got burgers and fries at a local place called Moo Cluck Moo - they serve all-natural, humanely raised meats, Calder dairy products, and they pay their employees a living wage. E had the Moo with everything, and i got the Bigger Moo with cheese, mayo, and ketchup. she got the sea salt fries and i got the garlic fries, which were excellent  - pleasantly garlicky, but not strong. thus fed and watered, we proceeded to here:

every year, they close off a 4-mile stretch of Hines Drive for this light show. it's $5 per car, and so much fun!

we want to go back, dressed warm, so that E can bring her camera and tripod. there were SO MANY cool displays! i particularly want a good photo of the parachuting reindeer at Santa's Flight School.

it's T minus One Week until K, J and Little V get here, and there is so much to do! today i'm going to take advantage Mom being at work, and wrap me some presents before slooooooooowly heading back to E's. this coming week will be full of cleaning, Cookies - The Sequel, mailing said cookies, finishing crafts, more cleaning, and continuing to turn this:

into this:

yes, that's a giant fishbowl of yarn. decorative, but also extremely useful - i'll be able to actually see what i've got instead of blindly rooting around in a basket, and i will get to use my market basket for shopping again! also, winding the yarn into balls has been very interesting - it's forcing me to really look at each color, and i'm getting so many ideas for stash-busting projects!

gotta run! have a great weekend!

*we interrupt this blog for an important bulletin*

one of the most concrete memories i have is playing with/sorting through/hanging the boxful of Christmas ornaments that my parents began for me when i was born. with only one or two exceptions (the green salt dough/red glitter tree we made in kindergarten, that i still think of every time i fold a piece of paper in half to pour glitter back into the bottle, and the little gray ceramic rocking horse  - both of which slowly crumbled), they are all still in my possession, and taking them out every year is like reuniting with dearly loved old friends.

naturally, though i loved them all, i did have favorites. one of my favoritest-of-favorites was a Makit&Bakit suncatcher of Pluto the dog with a huge wreath around his neck. i remember him so clearly, and i always had to find just the right spot on the tree  - in front of a light, so it would shine through. my sister, K, had a Disney suncatcher, too - hers was Mickey in a Santa suit, holding the word "NOEL".

(in case the foreshadowing hasn't sunk in yet, let me just say that my sistership with K was a sibling rivalry minefield from ages 9 to 16, and that she had a habit of appropriating and losing my belongings. ahem.)

i don't remember whether it was 7th or 8th grade, but one Christmas, my Pluto was gone. i searched through all of the family ornaments - no Pluto. he wasn't in my ornament box, either...but Mickey was.

"Here", i said to K. "Mickey was in my box by mistake. Have you seen my Pluto?"

K looked at me like i was nuts. "Mickey's not mine, he's yours. And what Pluto? There isn't a Pluto."

She absolutely refused to admit to any knowledge of Pluto's whereabouts, and did her level best to try to convince me that Pluto had never existed. My parents shrugged off my dismay with "Oh, it's probably in a different box. It'll turn up somewhere."

but he never did.

i'm not accusing my sister of outright malicious behavior. i don't even know for certain that she was behind the vanishing. intuition says YES, but i suspect that whatever happened to Pluto was accidental and she was afraid of being punished. whatever the truth may be, though...it's been 20 years.

Twenty long years of hanging Santa Mickey on the tree with sadness in my heart. twenty years of his cheery little face mocking my pain.

until late last week, when it occurred to me to check ebay, haven of all lost things.

and today, a little package arrived in the mail.


***ripping noises***

 

Welcome home, Pluto. Welcome home.

i'm a little humbug today. short on sleep, long on uncooperative projects (i'm looking at you, shark), and grumpy that my day is broken into odd chunks of time that aren't long enough to make serious progress (or nap). be that as it may, i am determined to fight off the humbug, so let's talk about trees and casseroles and all things good:

 my new Muppet-skin coat and hat! a Christmas gift from boss #1. who knew that Muppets were so warm?! it's REALLY not a color i would ever have picked out for myself, but i'm pretty in love with it.

 i pin a ton of things on Pinterest, and love to actually attempt as many of them as possible. this garland was trickier than i thought, but i love how it turned out. :o)

 did i mention that E and i are brewing beer with the water we brought home from Fest? we're making Scottish ale, and saturday, we siphoned it from the brew pail into a glass carboy for a secondary ferment.

 i'm told that some people harvest and save that magnificent yeasty goodness and use it for their next batch of beer. i'll bet it would make a kick-ass sourdough bread starter, too! we need to learn how to do this.

on sunday, we decorated our little tree, and left it lit until we went to bed. again, i'm quite happy with how it turned out, and so is E. it's plenty of tree for us, and we've already enjoyed a tree-lit cup of tea.

 ahhhhh, i can feel the humbug receding already. time to get ready for work, and maybe do some yarning or the last bit of Christmas shopping if i have a break between clients. i'm hoping, too, to pick up some chicken shwarma and tabbouleh for dinner later, and maybe wrap some presents....

oh! the bean casserole! it was more of a bean gratin, i guess, but warm and homey and creamy and oniony and with a delightful cheese-and-bread-crumb topping. it came together in under 20 minutes, too, and was just the thing for a cold winter weekend. i will give you the recipe, but it will have to be later in the week because it's in an actual book and i left it at E's. sorry!

off day

today, dear reader(s), was an unprecedented day off. on a MONDAY, no less. it is also a new moon, so remember to write down what you need/want to happen and place your order with the Universe.

did you have a nice Thanksgiving? yes?

T-day here was lovely. E came over around 10am, just after the tart crust came out of the oven. the parade was going on, so we had coffee and snuggled for a bit before i got down to (more) business in the kitchen. once all food was completed, we had a nice lunch with my Mom, cleaned up, and spent the rest of the day hanging out and doing whatever.

on Friday, we went to E's parents' for their Thanksgiving dinner. E's baby niece was there (squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee the cuteness!!!), and before leaving, we drew names for Christmas. i got E's mom, which is causing no small amount of panic! i have NO idea what to get her, and E is no help at all, lolololol. guess that means a nice browse through the mall, hoping that something jumps out at me...

Friday afternoon, we drove downtown to the Renaissance Center (aka GM building) to see Amma! if you're not familiar with her, i highly recommend clicking on the link. she is known by many as the "Hugging Saint" from India, and her mission is spreading the unconditional love of God/the Divine Mother. she hugs you. seriously. she's hugged more than 32 million people, and it's an experience you will never forget!  Amma also has many charities, and is one of the most important peace activists of our time. she comes to Detroit pretty much every year, usually in November, but this was the first time i got to attend. it was...wow. just, wow. there really aren't any words to describe it, but i'll try, lol!

 the peace ceremony was supposed to start at 7, so we arrived at 5:30 to make sure we got tokens for Amma's darshan (embrace). the volunteers seated us at 6, and we had a good hour to read through the program booklets, chat with our neighbors, and puzzle over the tiny plastic lids we'd been issued. at 7, Amma arrived, and the place pretty much exploded with love. She blessed a vat of water, and it was passed out to the attendees in small plastic cups (aha!). i took a sip, and found it slightly sandalwood-y and very...intense. i don't know how else to put it. E's lid didn't work, so we poured her water into my cup, and i had to take another sip so the lid would fit. right about then, Amma's translator told us not to drink all the water right away, but "if you have already consumed it, don't worry." *laughter from crowd* he told us that it was holy water with healing properties, and to take it home where we could share it with friends and family or add it to other water to make more of it. then Amma gave a spiritual talk (in her native tongue - she would speak at length, then her translator would read from a pre-printed transcript), mostly in parables, of which i don't remember very much because i was so enraptured. after the speech, we meditated and chanted for world peace, and then we waited our turn for darshan. there was plenty to see and to do - E and i had a very detailed astrology reading done, but didn't learn anything too profound (we think because we're both pretty happy, and so didn't have any burning questions), bought some snack food (the Indian version of falafel and a peanut butter cookie bar), browsed the different vendors (i got an Amma calendar, and E bought us each a single rudraksha prayer bead, previously worn/blessed by Amma, on a black cord), and of course there was music and singing and watching Amma live on the several large screens in the ballroom. finally, finally (after 1am), it was our turn to join the line for hugging!!!

we agreed afterward that the darshan process was very much like Ralphie's POV in the Santa Claus scene of A Christmas Story - bright lights, loud music, people physically placing you where you needed to be, plus being struck speechless. volunteers moved you through the line and up to chairs on the stage. there was a line on either side, and they alternated so that you were kneeling and ready when your turn came. my turn went like this: "Ok, now you kneel...no, don't sit on your heels, you have to stay up. Ok, take off your glasses. NO, don't sit, stay up!! (i was juggling flowers for Amma, my two little roos for her to bless, and trying to save my glasses) Ok, move forward!" i was gently guided to Amma, who took the flowers and the roos and pulled me into her embrace. Amma smells like roses. there was some confusion about where my head was supposed to be, but eventually someone got me straightened out, lol. then she held me for a few seconds, crooned a blessing into my ear, annointed my forehead with a rose-scented balm, and i was released - shaky and staggering a little - to take my turn sitting near her for a little while. I was shaking and grinning like an idiot, and i got to see E get embraced (she did better than me, i think). after i rotated through the chairs on stage, i went back to our belongings and waited for E, and then we drove home. three days later, i am still riding the wave of love and peace, and i think E feels it, too. she wants to go back next year, and we want to be hugged as a couple (yes, Amma does that), and also receive a mantra from her. Thank you, God, for putting Amma in this world to give us a tangible experience of your love!!!!!

the rest of the weekend was quiet - lots of crafting and resting. i slept in a little today, ate breakfast with E, and then ran errands before coming home to Mom's. i hit my target craft quota, brewed new tea for my scoby, ate some leftover maple tart, solved a serious cross-stitch dilemma, and am headed for leftover turkey and green beans very soon.

i also applied today for a job admitting patients at a local hospital. it's full-time with benefits, and day shift, which means i would probably be out in plenty of time to keep three massage appointments (per day) in the evenings. not ideal - i'm not one for corporate-ish jobs - but it's work i've done before, and as much as massage feeds my soul, i also need something that doesn't leave me wondering if i'll make enough that week to cover my bills. it wouldn't be permanent, but it would help me get out of debt and get things taken care of...so...yeah. if it's meant to happen, it will happen.

keep my high-school friend L in your prayers/thoughts - she had to take her mother off of life support this afternoon, less than two weeks after finding out she had extremely advanced brain/lung/breast cancer. her mom was able to get out of bed two days ago...what a rapid, shocking decline. losing a parent before the holidays is beyond horrible.