Dec
08
So, as most people who know me know, I have been working on a project to read a biography of each US President. The original goal was to do it within the year when I set the goal. I got off to a respectable start, but then I stalled out. I chose too many of the presidents in which I had burning interest in the beginning and then was left with swaths of president that just didn’t move me. But then I caught a cold and watched a documentary on President Johnson, Lyndon, not Andrew, and my passion was reignited. So when I set birthday goals this year, I decided that I wanted to make a certain amount of progress on Project President and assigned myself to read biographies on Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Mission accomplished. I even threw Franklin Pierce in there just for thrills I am now much, much closer to my goal of reading a biography about each President, which is giving me the inspiration and information I need for Project Presidential Poems.
I love crossing things off of lists! Makes me happy.
Nov
30
One of my birthday goals was to take a picture daily for a month. I have set this goal before and failed to achieve it, so I decided to try again.
This time, however, I gave myself at theme. I assigned myself to take pictures of the sky.
Funny thing is, I can’t find one of the pictures. In the past, I would have been all upset about this because it marked an imperfection in a project on which I worked. There are other things I would have let ruin this project/process as well. For example, in a number of the pictures, I was unable to get a shot that just had the sky in it. In a different one of the pictures, the sky looked really funky because of nearby lights.
However, I have chosen to think differently about this project. This project did exactly what it was supposed to do. It made me stop and take notice of my surroundings once a day for a month. Only on three occasions did I wait until after dark to do this, which at this time of year in Michigan says a lot. I am happy with it, and glad to say so; these goals are meant to contribute to my happiness.
Nov
22
I can’t believe that Alex is 8.
Every day, that guy cracks me up.
For his birthday, Alex wanted a Monster Book of Monsters cake and a variety of office supplies. His very specific requests were for tan duct tape, a stapler (though as a household we already have 2, a standard stapler and a long-armed stapler), and “clickable” black pens. That was not a hard birthday wish to grant at all. He happily opened his birthday gifts and used his new supplies right there in the middle of the floor with great gusto for quite some time.
Though he’s not with me on his birthday, he’s with his dad, he said that he had a good time celebrating his birthday. And he was very, very excited about getting to take cupcakes to school to distribute among his classmates.
I always think of his birthday as the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, as this during labor, the hospital room TV kept talking about the 40th anniversary of that event. Recently, I’ve chosen to think about it as the day Lyndon Johnson became president. It’s a reminder to think about things in a glass-half-full kind of way and a reminder to try to teach that way of thinking to my little guy.
Happy Birthday, Alex.
Oct
17
I did it!
Usually, as some weird function of my personality when I accomplish a goal of some sort, I day or think something to diminish that goal. Today was not that day.
I set the goal of finishing a marathon last year, but did not make that happen. This year, I set the goal again and had more determination to finish it. Part of this determination had to do with a half marathon experience that I wasn’t happy/satisfied with. A bit of distance from that situation has allowed me a gentler assessment of it. However, the vestiges of discontent hung out in my head and I wanted to slay them by running a marathon.
One of my approaches to ensuring that I am getting a reasonable amount of exercise is to squeeze it in on my lunch breaks, especially during the school year. This way I don’t feel like I’m creating a situation where a huge (disproportionate) amount of time that I have to spend with my son isn’t spent at the gym, him in child watch or watching as I complete laps around an indoor track. I don’t think that’s fair to him. On the other hand, I am proud that I am, in the times where he is with me while I’m exercising, setting an example, showing him that this is one of the things that you do to take care of yourself. Well, in preparation for the half-marathon I just mentioned, I did not build in enough training time. That race went predictably under those circumstances.
This time, I did a pretty good job of getting my runs in, particularly in the first half of the training. Later, I wasn’t putting in the miles that the plan recommended, but I was squeezing this in around other things I had going on. I am happy with it.
I have never completed anything that made me burst into sobs of pride. I was not expecting to be overcome with such a flood of emotion. In fact, I’m never really expecting to be overcome with a flood of emotion. But this time, I let it come, accepting it as a part of what may very well be the singular proudest moment of my life.
Sep
18
Since the weather started to have that fall-is-coming edge to it, I have been thinking about applesauce
Making applesauce was one of my birthday goals last year, but sadly (read: for no darned good reason), I didn’t make any. So when I checked the ad for the store where I do a bunch of my shopping and saw that Honeycrisp apples were going for $1.49/lb, I decided to go for it. I checked first, making sure that these were a decent choice for making applesauce. The Internet gave me her blessing and I went on.
I started with this recipe.
Basically, I washed the apples, then used my super cool apple corer on the apples. (12 of them.) I threw them in a pot with some water, brought it to a boil, reduced the heat, then let the apples cook until they made my place smell great and they were soft. I poured some of liquid off of the apples and pulsed them with my stick blender. I tasted the applesauce and found it fine the way that it was. Then I started to jar and process it. The first pint was plain. The second pint, I added pumpkin pie spice. With the last two pints (I didn’t think I was going to get 2 pints here), I added cranberries. It wasn’t the quickest process in the world, but it was easy and I am happy that I have some applesauce that is tasty, yet has no added sugar. That and I have now completed Goal # 23!
Sep
17
I found myself with three overripe bananas who seemed to have sent a special express message to any fruit flies in the zip code. And I had just reorganized my kitchen area. I hate wasting food. These factors combined to form this banana bread. I could use the bananas, test the new setup and not throw away the bananas which were pretty much only going to be used for a purpose like this.
I based this banana bread recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. However, I knew that there was a jar of maraschino cherries in the fridge so I decided to add them. There was part of a bag of chocolate chips in the freezer and some peanuts in there. So I decided to make a bread that was inspired by the banana split. It worked, including the kitchen setup.
Sep
11
Last year one of my birthday goals was to make pretzels. I didn’t make it happen, so I carried the goal over. As I looked this year’s goals, the 33 things I want to accomplish by my 33rd birthday, I couldn’t bear the thought of having another year go by without completing this simple task, so I busted out the mixer and the yeast and went at it. A while ago, I bought a cookbook that is explicitly dedicated to the pretzel. But the base recipe in that book required an overnight proofing, so I decided to look elsewhere. Hello Internet. So, I followed a recipe I found on CHOW.
It was a pretty simple recipe.
Trying to figure out how to twist the pretzels was the biggest challenge. You can see that some are a better shape than others. This experience makes me want to go to the mall and observe the pretzel twisters there.
Next time, I think that I will try to make the pretzels a bit bigger, but I will also try to roll the dough out into thinner strips. I had a hard time with the rolling the strips. I kept trying to make them thinner hoping it would help me get a better pretzel shape, but then my strip would break before I could even twist the dough, much less get it into the pot for boiling. I thought about making ring shaped pretzels, but I thought that they might turn out too much like bagels. I hadn’t known that the alkaline water would make such a difference in how these turned out.
I baked my pretzels in two batches. The first I baked a bit longer than the second (more than the 10 minutes the recipe called for). I think that these turned out better than the other ones.
I’m pretty satisfied with this experience, but I want to go at it again. Besides, making a second batch of pretzels would go perfectly with goal 22, which is to make homemade mustard.
May
06
The other day after picking up the little guy, we went to Value World. I find myself wanting to go here when I’ve been sewing to see if there is anything in there that I want to turn into something else.
But then I am overwhelmed by all of the rows and the occasionally aggressive shoppers who cut you off as if they just know that there aren’t enough values for all of you. I wind up hanging out by the men’s shirts. For some reason I am fascinated by them. I am still sad that I didn’t get the outrageous chili pepper shirt I saw there once.
The other thing is that I have a few shirts that used to belong to my grandpa. The shirts are way too big for me even if I try to belt them and pretend that they’re tunics. I’d like to wear these shirts somehow, but don’t want to ruin them with an unpracticed alterations hand.
A + B = C. I bought some shirts so that I can alter them for practice so that when I do grandpa’s shirt, I have something I can hang onto.
I imagine that the shirt here used to belong to a man named Frank. He was a neat and practical man, except that day he hungrily bit into his lunch without first tucking a napkin into his collar. Unable to forgive himself and unable to face the reminder of his haste when it peeked out at him from the closet, he took his shirt to Value World. Shame is the stain stick or whatever he used to erase the stain did a good enough job that I didn’t even see it until the shirt became a skirt, but not a good enough job that there was no stain at all.
Poor Frank.
Because this shirt is so thin, I will have to wear it with leggings or shorts lest I be mistaken for some sort of hussy, floozy or strumpet.
Wouldn’t want that.
Apr
22
I was minding my own business, scattering my mind through clicks through the internet when I found a cento-writing contest. Based on the context of what I was looking at, I knew it would be a poem. Because I’m trying not to forget that once I wrote every single day, I decided to consider the challenge, thinking that a cento was some form poem like a cinquain or a sestina. Turns out that it is a poem that is composed entirely out of other lines of poetry. So I gave it a shot. Check out my poem here. Maybe you’ll write one too.
Apr
06
I found myself with a bunch of carrots hanging out in the back of the fridge threatening to be forgotten. I am really, really trying to waste less and use more of the things that I buy. Problem is is that I change my mind between grocery shopping and actual cooking. The by product of this, this week, was about two pounds of carrots.
I usually like carrots either raw or cooked as a part of a vegetable soup. I have tried carrot soups over the years and never liked them. I decided to save myself from yet another disappointment.
How? I decided to make carrot butter. I based this preserve on this recipe. I tasted it, and found that I did like it after all. For once, I think I will get to the bottom of the carrots! I imagine this on oatmeal. Throw in some raisins, and it’ll be like carrot cake-flavored breakfast.
