PiC and I have a new tradition of sorts, a weekly dinner with one singlet friend, and a every couple of months dinner with another singlet* friend. Both are friends from years back, Ye Olden Youth Dayes. I don’t know if it’s weird that we never tried to seek out couple friends specifically now that we’re married but it’s just never been a priority. A friend’s a friend, whether single or doubled up. And I like that, paired or not, our friends feel comfortable with us, paired or not.
*Singlet denoting the fact that they may not actually be single, but they hang out with us sans partner for these regular shindigs.
We’ve gone out to explore weird little joints, relaxed with easy take out, and experimented with new recipes. The responsibility or privilege of deciding what to do next has been alternated like a hot potato, back and forth, but I always feel like since we’re feeding three in total, two of whom are a couple, isn’t it more fair if we paid 2 times out of 3 outings?
Sounds logical to me, but the singlets we dine with usually gives me an odd look when I venture forth with this theory. Granted, we rarely have terribly expensive meals, ranging from $5-20 per person depending on whether we’ve cooked, did take out or dined out, but it does still feel a bit unfair from my perspective.
:: Am I being overly aware or would you feel the same way? What if you were the single one? What if you were part of the couple?
There’s been a lot of hullaballoo over the Marissa Mayer decision to stop telecommuting as a standard rule. I thought I was done with talking about it and hearing about it but there was something that still got under my skin.
My reaction? That sucks from a work-life perspective but what’s the business decision behind it?
We don’t know. We aren’t privy to how productive their workers are, we aren’t privy to the balance sheet, we can’t see what she’s aiming to do.
Mayer’s decision is based on what she thinks is right for the business.
Right or wrong, she is the CEO. Her job is to make those decisions.
Personally, as an uninformed outsider, I would extrapolate that the Yahoo employees are actually not as productive as they could be. Yahoo’s been failing as a business for years, and that’s indicative of a failure on several levels: their business model doesn’t work, the employees aren’t excelling, the managers are not doing their jobs to ensure productivity in the office or from telecommuters.
Evidence?
Look at how far behind Yahoo’s lagged in maintenance on their existing products, on developing innovative products, on not eating their putative competition’s dust. Can anyone compare Yahoo and Google without laughing?
What does Yahoo excel at? As their consumer, I’d say nothing.
I still (shockingly) use them because I can’t be arsed to transition everything but they don’t excel at search, at mail, or at news. What’s left? They needed a big kick in the pants, or five, because they’re mediocre, or subpar. That’s not a business I’d invest in.
Bottom Line: If it were working for them, why the hell would she change the policy? If it isn’t working for them, then it’s her responsibility to change it. She was hired to turn a company around. She’d better be doing what it takes.
I can’t stand the claims that she’s a disappointment to feminists…
….that she was the Great Freaking Women’s Hope and she owes the employees a nursery because she gets a private one, or that she’s setting the company back to the stone ages.
She leads a business that employs people. It can employ people only so long as the business is successful, and of course it needs people in order to be successful. Circle of life.
Within that circle, employers provide jobs that pay a wage. “Life essential” benefits like health care, dental, and time off would be nice, even expected from this type of company. Perks like gyms, free food, free transit, subsidized or conveniently located childcare, flexible schedules, etc., are even nicer. They are, however, the mark of a company that has both the money and the willingness to provide them. A competitive company will. One that is struggling to survive will pick and choose. (BI notes, btw, she is willing to provide some of those other perks.)
At the end of the day, it’s a job, not a belief system. They have the right and responsibility to run their business best they can, all employees have the right and responsibility to make the best decision for their lives.
A, As a feminist, I’m tired of the focus on her decision as a woman and as a businesswoman, I’m tired of the insistence that all telecommuters are productive because they’ve been doing it so long.
It shouldn’t matter if she’s a man, woman, teal, or an elephant. It’s not her responsibility to prop up a policy that doesn’t work so that employees are happy. It’s her responsibility to take the long-view, make the business work, make it productive and profitable otherwise there won’t be a company.
B, It’s called WORK from home. It’s being available for conference calls, contributing to solutions, brainstorming creatively, creating new solutions, completing projects.
It’s not: work while with your kids, work and play with the dog, or work when someone’s paying attention and then run errands, or work while helping kids with their homework. Believe me, those conference calls where someone’s helping with homework or soothe a crier can suck.
Having childcare, flexible schedules and telecommuting are all different things. Great or very necessary, depending on your life, but they cannot be conflated.
Being able to set your work aside for two hours in the day to pick up the kids, run errands or take multiple breaks throughout the day w/o affecting your work, productivity or reputation: flexible scheduling.
Being able to take your child to the doctor, play with them, help them with their homework, feed them: childcare.
Being able to work with your laptop on your sofa or in bed or at the dining room table instead of in the office: working from home.
These are all good things. They are, however, NOT the same thing. Mayer’s nursery (childcare) = your ability to work from home? False equivalence. She has childcare while she’s at work but that’s not the same as being home to take care of your kids while you’re working.
Working from home also doesn’t confer ability to do everything you wanted to do at home AND work, nor the ability to split yourself in two. If PiC has the day off when I don’t, I still can’t talk or hang out: I’m working. Yes, it saves you a commute, but the trade off is the ease of face to face conversations that resolve issues in two minutes.
Related: the assumptions people make about working from home drives me (and Andrea) insane.
No, I don’t have time to sit and chat on the phone for an hour.
No, I can’t just come and have a 2 hour lunch.
NO, I can’t make your travel arrangements because I’m good at it so I must enjoy doing that instead of my work during my work day. I have work to do! It’s like I’m in an office.
I worked from someone’s home with his children and guess what happened? I had a kid crawl in my lap every twenty minutes, every single time that child could sneak past her caretaker (surprisingly frequently) insisting on having me “Look! Watch! Come!”, and I couldn’t kick her out. She wouldn’t STAY out anyway. Bet your tuchus I wasn’t answering emails.
This is not uncommon. I’ve worked with many parents trying to work while they were caretaking and they were always distracted; all the colleague-parents who worked from home routinely arranged childcare during the day because they couldn’t do both at the same time.
When Doggle was sick, I spent a week looking after him from home. when I was trying to juggle him and work, my productivity was at 25%. When they were divided, it was 100% him for 6 hours and 100% work for 3 hours.
This isn’t to say laziness isn’t present in the office – of course it is. I’ve had coworkers who didn’t work more than 2 hours a day in the office and 0 outside of it. It took a manager really willing to do her job to put an end to that.
Bottom line: Working from home is great but not when you’re distracted. You are productive when you’re working, not when you’re taking care of your personal life, no matter where you are. A business can’t stay in business if they aren’t effectively managing problems.
C, What corporate CEO isn’t privileged? Heck, non-corporate, non-profit CEOs can be too. She chose to exercise her privilege on a nursery. CEOs also have luxury travel options, massive salaries, they have assistants, secretaries and a dozen other services at their beck and call. The fact that she has a nursery may feel like a slap but why aren’t people bitching about those luxuries that other CEOs have? Is the childcare arrangement of any other CEO discussed and held up as a Call to Action? Working dad CEOs aren’t being called out to provide X because they have Y.
Her responsibility at Yahoo is to run Yahoo as well as she can. Her calls may be good, they may be bad, but the focus on motherhood, working womanhood, to fuel the mommy wars, basically, zeroing in on the fact that she’s a woman is GROSS. To quote Allison.
As a feminist, who believes in equal opportunities, not gender-based special treatment, I’m disgusted with that angle.
There’s been a lot of jaw-setting, teeth-gritting as a coping mechanism of late. November’s become my least favorite month. October catches short shrift for being a close neighbor. So while I’ve been searching for a way back, I’ve been just holding on. Holding still and keeping quiet.
The tougher things have been, the more we’ve been eating out. The spending sort of bothered me but I always knew it was really symptomatic of larger problems. Not the fact of eating out itself, but the listlessness with which I went along with it. I’ve always had a line in the sand when it came to the cooking:eating out ratio, both because I don’t like restaurant food that much, and it’s costly. It was fitting that it felt like there was a small turning point with trying a new recipe for the sake of experimenting, for the sake of pulling together the pantry. Baby steps.
Personal Edits: With a search-and-advice assist from @zenvar on Twitter, I soured up some 2% milk with a tsp of vinegar to replace the Greek yogurt that wasn’t on hand, and measured out a Cajun spices mix instead of the dried thyme and chili powder our spice cupboard never has. Surprisingly, we did have breadcrumbs so we didn’t go without a crust, though it wasn’t the fancy sesame seeds.
Ingredients:
Fresh baby spinach (~ 1 lb), blanched
1 cup quinoa to cook, makes 2 cups
1 cup milk/vinegar replacing yogurt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. ground pepper, used black but white was called for
1/2 tsp. Cajun spices, replacing thyme and chili powder
1 shallot, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease a baking pan and line with breadcrumbs.
3. Cook quinoa.
4. Prep an ice bath and boil a pot of water for blanching the spinach. Blanch the spinach to a bright green (no more than 8-10 seconds) and transfer to ice bath, then set aside on a paper towel.
5. Saute garlic, shallots and spices in olive oil until translucent; transfer to a medium sized mixing bowl to be combined with remaining ingredients: spinach, quinoa, milk, eggs, sea salt and pepper.
6. Pour into baking pan and bake until golden brown, up to an hour.
I served this with roasted Lime Chicken thighs and roasted onions. Optional: burning your hair stovetop. But that did add some spice to the night.
PiC loved the pie, calls it a quiche, but I’m on the fence. It’s good, but with a sort of critical taster’s opinion, maybe it could have used double the spices and it’s possible the yogurt was more important than just as a dairy component. Next time!
In my earlier years, my triggers were as easily flipped (though eventually some money followed) to overwork, to overcommit, and to make trade-offs that went against the grain dictated by the myopic “Accountants.” Though in my case, it was more frequently a would-be Creative preoccupied with playing god instead of Accountant, instead of seeing a bigger picture and so utterly failing to make the right decisions to steer the company in a positive and productive direction so that our work would be meaningful, reducing our efforts to nothing more than one sad punchline after another.
Luckily, my clarity came after just a few years and my trajectory wasn’t . Of course, I was bearing the burden of more than just my own ego so I had to snap to, pretty quick.
eemusings is watching herIndian friends live life under a marriageability microscope. My parents didn’t force the matchmaking issue but they definitely asked me to “play along” when their friends did. There was more than one old village acquaintance who’d sidle up and propose a marriage alliance, and more than one awkward meeting with a proposed groom. I tried to be a good sport about it for the most part so endured no end of cackling from my parents over the traps their friends would lay to lure me in as I was notoriously busy and shy to boot. Since they never took it seriously, though, I didn’t worry about being pushed into anything I didn’t feel right about. Maybe it would have been less awkward if it were still a completely accepted practice or totally out of date but in the even more awkward phase of generational and cultural gaps, we just shook our heads and all sort of humored each other.
Speaking of gaps, Vanessa’s Money, Bridget and a few other bloggers had some things to say about the recent post by Shawanda grossly generalizing whether women should work in male-dominated workplaces.
One of the major issues I took with the article was the spurious logic and sweeping generalizations, as evidenced by the lumping in of STEM with blue collar jobs as “dirty,” “physically-demanding” and “masculine” as the reasons given for women choosing not to be in male-dominated professions. As if women don’t already face enough sexism in the workplace generally, women in the sciences, leaving out E on purpose here because I’ve seen many friends succeed in E, face a huge uphill battle with basic sexism, so much so that a recent study shows that there is an inherent bias against hiring and promotion of women by both men and women, all else being equal. Some areas of science are equally represented by men and women, but most areas are still male dominated and patriarchal.
For the record, this isn’t my field but I do see the results of that behavior frequently, I follow bloggers who do work in the sciences and have to deal with it, and it’s horrifying that we continue to have to fight for what I’d consider the right to make basic decisions for ourselves. Why are these questions even being debated on a political stage? /digression. My point is: The well worn mental image that women are delicate, women are weak, women would much prefer not to be taxed, let’s protect the poor little women is still out there.
For people, much less women, to be perpetuating any part of this utter gender-based bullshit on behalf of all women is not just insulting, it’s frustrating considering the kind of opposition we already have to fight. Like Alison said, we have people whispering defeatist messages in our ears at a young age, telling young women to worry about looking too smart, worry more about their appearance and not their accomplishments.
Do we need to keep feeding fuel to these same old fights too? It’s exhausting.
We were stranded between consultations for Doggle miles away from home and I hadn’t eaten a meal in several hours except for some fruit so PiC found a nearby food hut to tantalize my stressiness off the ledge. He’d been feeding me bits and bites and figured something tasty would be easier to get me to actually want to eat.
It was a bit costlier than our usual fare, but heck. A tenner more wasn’t going to break the bank and it kept me functional for the rest of a very tough day.
And look, pretty pictures for the blog too! Win-win-win!
A tin bucket of oyster crackers. Two of my favorite things.
It’s possible this makes me a huge doofus but I’m sure other things already put me in that category. I love oyster crackers, and I love tin buckets. *shrug* That’d be the 5 year old country girl in me.
A cup of clam chowder
Seems like we can’t not try the clam chowder wherever we go. And this time, highly touted by the highly excitable lady at the counter. As it turns out, she was hugely excited because she actually thought we were the same customers from the night before. Had to break it to her that we were new customers who were trying out the place for the first time, so she was really happy to see, well, strangers. But nice to meetcha!
The Maine Crab Roll
Confession: Some days my memory span = life span of a gnat. We vacillated long enough between two lobster rolls and a crab roll + a lobster roll that I just forgot what we ordered entirely. So by the time this came, I just thought it was an anemic looking lobster roll. I failed to appreciate the lobstery goodness. Then PiC reminded me it was crab. Ohhh…. uh. Yeah. Good job, me. It was fine for crab but it reminded me why I’m so particular about my crab. Go Maryland Blue Crab!
The Naked Lobster Roll
The Lobster roll was pretty delicious – I’m not usually one for lobster but I skipped the butter and mayo and with just a squeeze of lemon: perfection.
~~ ~~~ ~~
It’s just pricey enough that I wouldn’t go out of my way to find the Shack but it was really good. Their “rolls” – the bread slices that were cut into the middle of and made to be sandwich-like things were incredibly good. They had to be buttered and fried, they were amazingly soft inside and just a bit crisped and crunchy on the outside but not greasy.
Definitely a treat I’d bring visitors over to try.
It’s actually not the money part that terrifies me. Rather, when you hear that, you know that what comes next is going to be a serious treatment or procedure that is going to cause your baby additional pain and no little anxiety and fear.
Doggle had a mini-vacation with friends he absolutely adores and they utterly adore him, therefore spoil the stuffing out of him. And we appreciate that to no end.
Unfortunately, he came home with a hurt back, a reprisal of last year’s limping pain, only worse because this time he’s actually vocalizing pain when he sits down too hard, he’s hunched up most of the time and can’t really bear weight on his rear legs. This from the stoic dog that doesn’t emit a peep when he runs into things, gets stepped on, has had children swinging on him, accidentally smacked his head into cabinets, whacks his head on the kitchen table with a THUD every other day. He’s in real pain. Seeing him shuffle or scuttle, afraid to walk normally, slipping and falling when he least expects it, hearing him trip and fall when he turns too hard is just killing me.
We took him to the vet for an exam. The results were alarming. He had a physical and the interpretation of the x-rays from last year was much more strongly worded. As usual, Doggle didn’t react to the physical exam, but the vet felt the physical confirmed what he felt he saw in the x-rays: a serious disc/vertebral issue. This was definitely not what we were told last year and put this way, I would have proceeded to the suggested more aggressive follow-up route last year, the one the other vet said wouldn’t be necessary if he responded to pain meds, because “a serious back problem” says he is a high risk for recurrence, instead of just a one-time oddity that is life as usual with a relatively senior dog.
While we opted to take a more conservative approach last year and that resolved well enough, the last thing I wanted was for this to recur, and to run the risk of causing serious neurological or neuropathic problems!
I didn’t bring home this dog to start losing him less than two years later!
This is my puppy. He’s my heart now. I can’t bear the thought of … well.
So we’re drugging him for two weeks to alleviate the pain and discomfort. He’s loving that. (No, he’s not. He’s already accidentally chomped my finger while trying to spit them out while I tried to shove the pills back in his maw. We were a bit of a mess. Normally I’m great at pilling him so that he doesn’t taste the nasty ones but I let myself get all distracted and wrung out over the what-ifs & screwed it up spectacularly. So I have a sore ring finger/nail to show for it.)
Meanwhile, I’m asking for a second opinion, and another recommendation for a good place to go in case this is the right thing to do. And checking the treat stash to see which other ones I can feed him while he dissociates his favorite ones with disgusting meds. We (I) may need to mix up some special Mom’s baby food and rice dinners for a few days too while he gets used to being on medication. He’s having enough trouble standing physically speaking, I don’t know if he’s going to be able to mentally muster the motivation to eat.
I really really don’t want him to hurt anymore, I really don’t want this to happen again and I hate that it did this time. This is breaking my heart.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In the end, the money part scares me a bit too. I live in the Bay Area now and not only do I not have any kind of friend, professional or any other kind of animal health care discount that might have slightly defrayed costs in the slightest, pricing is between 25-50% higher than it is down south. – heart attack –
An office visit alone goes from $30 to $50. I go into the vet office and come out $160 poorer, 90 minutes later. Going to a specialist? I’m not joking when I anticipate the office visit alone starting at $100 and treatments starting in the thousands.
Back in my youth, teens and early twenties, I could only afford as much vet care as we needed for my dog pack by working really hard and being creative. (Not that I didn’t just repurpose my own pain meds for Doggle today. This is totally legitimate. He was getting prescribed the same meds I can no longer use and they are exactly the same thing.)
But now, if we’re going the specialist route, we’re paying for it straight up, and this will sting. *deep breath* Wish us luck?
** 11:30 pm: That was fast. The second opinion consultation has already come back. Get us to a specialist now before the damage is irretrievable. Ok.
Of late, there have been a few poignant posts and conversations that touch on a very important issue: safety with an underlying theme – sometimes not at all hidden – of misogyny. Safety’s important for everyone, a message I communicate to all, but the degree to which men don’t experience the same issues of objectification and targeting as women do is obvious by the reactions and ::horrorface:: that we get from our husbands and those men friends who haven’t ever run a protection detail for us on a night out when we Facts-Only describe the experience of a simple solo walk or a run.
*****
This woman’s experience on public transit when she just wants to be left alone to read her book may sound like an exaggeration to anyone who has had hundreds of safe and easy rides, day or night, sober or drunk, but I have had thousands of those and I still have my guard up every minute against this occurrence because it happens.
The vast majority of my rides are peaceful, most people talking to me just want directions, need a bit of information or are a bit curious and then drift back to their own world after a 30 second exchange. I’m approached or interrupted by people – usually tourists or new commuters – all the time on my commute and once I’m past my initial startlement it’s not a big deal.
Still, there are a few jerks who think they’re welcome to bother me rudely, persistently and without regard for boundaries. They aren’t too frequently imbalanced so I’ve been able to put them off politely or immediately change cars and seats at a station stop if the polite wave-off doesn’t work.
Sometimes it doesn’t work. Then it gets uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. There’s often cursing, raised volume, nastiness.
It can even devolve into something extreme like what she describes – the person froths and foams, screams, raves, rants, flails and threatens. (Sometimes they board transit like that, actually.) And you need someone to reach in and physically haul you, the target, out because you need someone watching your back. You don’t know if your movements will trigger an actual physical attack. I’ll point out, too, that the would -be attacker is not always male, sometimes the person demanding something from you is female. I’ve seen that too.
You don’t need to be pretty, I certainly deliberately dumb down my average-enough appearance for transit travel, you just have to be unlucky enough to have attracted some persistent fool’s attention.
*****
The incessant stream of Twitter threats against a variety of comics professionals, many of whom, like the public who came into contact with the repulsive slug probably blocked him, recently came to the attention of Mark Millar who took a vocal stand and insisted that we all do something about this, but the fact remains, people can do this with impunity.
And the reaction of a number of people? Blame the targeted persons. “Big girls know Twitter has a block function.” (comments thread) Really. That stops the bullying and the threats and the invitations to bodily harm?
You can’t stop a bully by ignoring them. And I’m hugely thankful that people like Ron Marz recognize that:
….
Ignoring a miscreant does nothing to prevent the same disgusting behavior from being inflicted upon someone else. It probably encourages it, frankly. You’re just passing the buck. I’d rather spend time dealing with it, and finding a way to get the abusive behavior stopped, than turning a blind eye. The goal should be to prevent the asshole in question from moving on to the next victim.
Comics is a medium that tells a great many stories about heroes, about people who do what they can to protect others. About doing the right thing, especially when it’s hard. I like that. I believe in doing what’s right, and helping others when they need it. I believe people who cross the line of acceptable behavior so outrageously should be punished. That’s why I did what I did. That’s why Mark did what he did.
While there’s been plenty of support for what happened (which is much appreciated), I’ve also seen a fair amount of dismissive reaction: everything from claiming this poor troll is having his free-speech rights violated, to the lazy shrug of “Well, it’s the internet…” Maybe I’m pissing into the wind here just as much as I am when get on my soapbox about digital piracy. But in just the same way, I believe it’s a discussion is worth having, a fight worth fighting.
…
Social media offers access for people like him to abuse innocents. But it also offers ways for us to come together and do what’s right. If you see something that shouldn’t be happening, don’t just ignore it. Do something about it. If you’re suffering abuse from someone, ask others to help you. We can all be somebody’s hero.
A quick sum-up: Letter Writers have dude friends in their groups who are tolerated despite their creepy-ass and inappropriate and unacceptable behaviors as Situation #1:
“concentrating on the other women: telling them to expose themselves, telling them their skirts weren’t flying high enough while they were dancing, hitting on them when he knows they have boyfriends….. Whenever there are parties, it seems like he goes with the mindset that he will meet someone there that he might be able to have sex with, rather than to have fun with his friends. A couple months ago at one of these parties, some of us went to the park after dark to hang out; Creeper approached one of my friends, asked where her boyfriend was, and when he was told that the BF was out of town he put his hands on her shoulders and told her that BF had “forfeited” her for the evening.”
Or outright sexual assault in Situation #2. Evidently in Situation #2, Letter Writer was dismissed by her BF who didn’t want to confront the assaulter because they were longtime friends.
Captain Awkward’s extensive responses to both were pretty spot-on. I’m only writing here as an adjunct because, of course, I was outraged that the situations were ongoing and the men involved were that blatantly laissez-faire about their own friends, male and female both, involved.
I can’t conceive of the notion of living with, or staying friends with, people who were so utterly dismissive of basic human decency.
I have been in situations like that, and like this, and my friends have been verbally assaulted time and again, and I react very very negatively.
PiC had a creeper friend, you see, and before we ever started dating, I met all of his friends. Including that creeper friend. He thought it was totally appropriate to spend the conversation standing way too close to me, staring exclusively at my – let’s face it, folks, remarkably unendowed chest – so I concluded the conversation quickly and walked away, disgusted.
I related the story to PiC later, half smiling, and told him that should that creeper ever pull that stunt again with any move to touch me? I’d feed him his own eyeballs. I made it quite clear to him and a close mutual friend that their fuzzy friend of yore, going back double digit years of history, now with all the drunken-excuse embellished, prostitute-centric and other “amusing” gamy stories whenever he came back up on their radar was a creepshow and he was unwelcome.
They could do whatever they wanted together on boys’ nights, but he was certainly never welcome to join us, ever. There was never a moment’s hesitation or disagreement with my statement, and I noticed that his presence at mutual parties and gatherings was incredibly rare thereafter. I also noticed that he wasn’t voluntarily added to the guest list of boys’ gatherings either.
I don’t take responsibility for the changes in that set of relationships across the board – there were many mutual friends who chose to step back from their own personal friendship. But I do note that there were at least two important narratives that had to exist: I had to be willing to speak up very clearly with my observations and expectations, and PiC had to respect me and those expectations more than he cared about that friendship. And in addition, at least a few of his key friends happened to agree with my observations and acted accordingly to disengage from the creeper on a regular basis.
There was no doubt in my mind that it was possible the guy’s creepiness could be curbed but not if he was “encouraged” or rather, enabled, as guys can and will do in their casual friend group environment simply by not saying anything about the Creeper’s actions or behaviors. I’ve seen that happen because there’s no comfortable way to police a friend in a friends-only environment. And yet, I’ve watched others do it casually with a “Dude, that’s creepy, don’t do that.” Those are powerful words: Don’t do that. It’s not right.
But many don’t do that because they don’t feel like it’s their place to criticize a friend, they don’t feel like the behavior is really out of line when they’re among friends, a multitude of reasons. Still, it has to start somewhere lest a minor creeper grow out of hand to become a Full Scale Creeper and worse.
People like him are those who think it’s ok to catcall and harass women trying to walk down a street – he definitely didn’t think that was an issue.
And I certainly can’t tell the difference between someone who’s just catcalling because it’s amusing to one who has intent to assault, harm and/or rape. From my perspective, the 3 guys in that car who decided to stalk me for more than a block and cut across several lanes of traffic to pull up next to me at the corner several weeks ago certainly made themselves a credible threat so calling the police and pulling anything to defend myself was an appropriate response. From theirs? Who knows? It could just be a game that they always win, big or small.
And that’s not counting the 11 other instances of catcalling in the previous mile of walking up til they arrived.
I’m not of the mindset that we have to spoonfeed a new narrative for men to understand how to react in shitty situations – I know plenty of men who are perfectly decent human beings and know pretty much the right things to do in principle. They are the ones I am friends with. This is why I am married, PiC’s not a rotting jerk in any degree and neither are his friends.
I do think, however, that there is plenty of evidence there are idiots out there who do need to be identified and not enabled. The reinforcing that the creepy and unacceptable behaviors are in fact, creepy and unacceptable, has to happen before it’s too late and harm is done.
At the very least, the fact that we all should be able to recognize and say that creepy and aggressive behaviors are wrong, toward men and women, without coming under ridiculous fire, should be a given. And it’s incredibly disturbing that we often don’t even have that basis of humanity to rely on.
I’ve used Steamy Kitchen’s Hainanese Chicken Recipe in the past, but returning to it this week, I realized that the way the recipe was organized had me running back and forth so much that I was wasting a lot of time in the kitchen. I’ve reorganized it with some of my own tweaks. (I actually never make the chili sauce. Sriracha and I are not friends.)
While I was cooking tonight, as is usual at the end of a few recipes, we ended up with a scoop and a half of leftover rice and I borrowed the broth from the recipe below to reconstitute it. Figured I had enough green onions to jazz it up a little bit as well. As I was mincing, it occurred to me that the paltry scoop of rice wasn’t going to do much for either of us, so I tripled the broth and brought it all up to a boil. My mind drifted back to a story my parents told me, of days more than thirty years gone.
Facing grinding poverty once the war was over, all the economic opportunities diverted to the hands of the Communists leaders and those who fought on the “wrong” side jailed, my family fled the country to build a better life for their children. The journey was terrible, every step of it. A forced stop in Malaysia, beached in the open air while the pirates and what passed for government at the time traded fire over their heads, sometimes as a game with the captive humans as their target practice. They were provided food in the form of a tiny sack of rice, perhaps a few pounds’ worth, per family once in a while, and a family unit was considered any size from three to ten people at the whims of the distributors.
To make the rice stretch, they cooked rice porridge. Not like I cooked tonight, not like my parents cooked when they sometimes told this story, a nice thick fat grained rice porridge. It started the same way, with cooked rice, thinned it out with water, and cooked down further so that the rice would puff up and “grow” as the colloquialism goes.
But then they would thin it out even further than that, and the added water would take on the taste of the rice. The porridge would become a gruel after enough cooking, a small bowl of rice would stretch to a pot, and feed a family with the rice portion going to those who had to truly eat something and the watery portions going to those who didn’t truly need as much.
It’s been a while since I cooked a porridge but I always remember that story.
It was just a memory for them, but I can’t take food for granted and my parents never chided about starving children anywhere. I just think about all those months they waited and did without to survive until they regained right of safe passage.
Hainanese Chicken Recipe
Ingredients
Whole chicken
kosher salt to clean the chicken
1 teaspoon kosher salt for the rice
4” section of fresh ginger, in 1/4” slices
1” section of ginger, finely minced
2 stalks green onions, cut into 1″ sections (both the green and white parts)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoon chicken fat or 2 tbsp vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 cups long-grain uncooked rice
2 cups chicken broth, reserved from cooking chicken
1/4 cup dark soy sauce
Few sprigs cilantro
1 cucumber, thinly sliced or cut into bite-sized chunks
Chili sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoon reserved chicken poaching broth
2 teaspoon sugar
4 tablespoon sriracha chili sauce
4 cloves garlic
1” ginger
a generous pinch of salt, to taste
Directions
Prep the ginger and garlic: peel 5 inches of ginger. Take 4 inches and slice in 1/4″ slices. Mince remaining inch of ginger. Mince ginger. Slice green onions in 1″ pieces.
Rinse rice and set aside to soak.
Prep the chicken: Clean the chicken with a small handful of kosher salt. Rub the chicken all over, getting rid of any loose skin and dirt. Rinse chicken well, inside and outside. Season generously with salt inside and outside. Stuff the chicken with the ginger slices and the green onion.
Cooking the Chicken
Place the chicken in a large stockpot and cover chicken w/1 inch of water. If the chicken is smaller than the width of the pot, fill with less water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then turn down to simmer.
Cook for about 30 minutes or less if you’re using a smaller chicken.
To check chicken: See if the juices run clear or check temperature (170 F) when the time is up.
Prep ice bath for the chicken.
When the chicken is cooked, turn off the heat. Transfer the chicken into a bath of ice water to stop the chicken’s cooking and throw out ginger and green onion.
Reserve the broth for your rice, your sauce, and the accompanying soup. There should be at least six or seven cups of broth reserved for soup.
Cooking the Rice
Drain the rice. Heat 2 tablespoons of cooking oil over medium-high heat. Add the ginger and the garlic and add in your drained rice and stir to coat, cook for 2 minutes. Add the sesame oil, mix well.
Stovetop: Add 2 cups of the reserved chicken broth, add salt and bring to a boil. Immediately turn the heat down to low, cover the pot and cook for ~ 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 5-10 minutes.
Rice cooker: Combine fried rice, ginger and garlic with 2.5 cups of chicken broth and salt in rice cooker. Follow rice cooker instructions.
Chili Sauce
Blend all chili sauce ingredients in a blender until smooth and bright red.
Serving
Remove from the ice bath and rub the outside of the chicken with the sesame oil. Carve the chicken and slice tomatoes and cucumbers for serving. Heat up the broth and season with salt to taste.
Serve the chicken rice with chili sauce, soy sauce, tomato and cucumber slices, and a bowl of hot broth garnished with scallions.
