September 24, 2021
1. I didn’t feel good Saturday morning, having been up until about 3 reading with painsomnia, but I was in a surprisingly ok mood anyway. I reminded PiC that I would take the kids so he could go for a run, and then he came back in time for me to have a brain therapy session. While he was gone, JB and I did some Lakota Family giving work together so we could talk about ideas like understanding how fortunate we are compared to others and how that means we have a responsibility to do our share to support our community. Also the idea that we can only do the best we can with what we have, and we can’t help every single person all at once right now as much as we want to.
2. I was thinking last week it’d be great if my stuff on Poshmark would sell so I’d have more cash to put towards giving, so many people need some help right now. Then on Monday, I got a half decent offer! Woo!
3. A copy of my Milestones book sold. Eep! I hope they love it.
Challenges this week: My pain was sky-high this week and there’s a lot of direct aid needs right now.
- My dear friend has had an incredibly tough year and a mutual friend set up this GoFundMe for her. Her situation has spiraled terribly since her major heart attack, despite her best efforts. She was so close to getting out of her abusive situation, then was sandbagged by a devastating financial secret her abuser had been keeping for years. I very much remember that feeling of being financially devastated by the lies of an abusive parent. If you’re able to help or share, it would be so much appreciated.
- Chad Methner and his partner Nancy are having a tough year.
- This Native family is trying to get together funds to buy the house they’ve rented for generations on ancestral lands.
- Anne is organizing this year’s support of the kids in Nunavut.
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September 17, 2021
1. Feeling super grateful for our food exchange friends. They dropped off a bounty of fruit and a super special treat of ribs fresh from a beef share they had picked up. We’ve never had such fresh beef! I had a meal from a recent big batch of cooking saved specially for sharing with them but it pales in comparison to their trades. I’m looking forward to making a giant batch of lemongrass chicken to share with them. I just need the chicken. And energy.
2. My body was so thrashed after a hard week that all Saturday was spent in some stage of rest and recovery. The good part was that PiC and JB had gone out so, with only Smol Acrobat to look after, I managed to execute a long-awaited big tidying up in the office. So satisfying!!
3. Oh thank goodness the recall failed. I’ve been faintly nauseous during this entire campaign imagining the worst.
Challenges this week: we are struggling a lot with our interactions with JB right now. I hate this.
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September 10, 2021
1. I’m pleased that on a Saturday I: cleaned a counter, did a load of laundry, paid two bills, finally finished off doc review that I’d been avoiding all week, had therapy, planned some cooking and made some headway on searching for hard to find ingredients, donated to a friend’s GoFundMe, and donated to the CRR. This was all very satisfying.
2. I also managed not to completely blow my stack at JB several times for behaving like your average 6 year old with their foibles. It was hard and I’m trying to remind myself that I did my best and parenting has rough waters. Not feeling great about it all the time is part of the gig.
3. It’s really nice to WANT to cook again. The desire in and of itself doesn’t create the time or energy for it but it’s the first step I always need to making it happen. I’ve been hatching a plan to make a huge batch of my special chicken and rice, some for the week, some for the freezer, and some to share with our food-tradesies friends. Sunday morning, I cancelled our other plans because I simply didn’t have the energy for socializing and spent it putting the cooking plan in motion. There’s something so soothing about cooking, when it’s something I want to do.
4. My PIKAOLE package arrived and I’m thrilled to bits at the small pack of cuteness. I refused to even tell JB what came in the envelope because I’m not sharing my quite expensive special stickers and postcards.
Challenges this week: Everything in the outside world is overwhelming. Most things in our personal life is, too. We’ll get through eventually but it’s going to take some doing.
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September 3, 2021
1. The fragrance of ginger, garlic, and green onions = heaven.
2. I’m so grateful for clean running water. We’re so lucky to have it though as we move towards either perpetual drought or aridification, we may not have it for long.
3. I took Rae and Bethany’s baking advice to make my second batch of biscuits!
Last time the dough was too dry, I had to add extra milk while mixing, and I felt the end result was too dense and tasted strongly of flour.
This time I overcompensated by probably an eighth of a cup of milk. I used 1.25 cups instead of 1 because I had so much flour that couldn’t be incorporated last round. Next time I will start with the 1 cup and add a splash if it’s needed as I mix. This time I grated the frozen butter, which was a lot more work than I expected, and only folded the dough about 5 times instead of the prescribed 10. Oh also I soured up the milk with a tablespoon of vinegar to make it buttermilk.
They were very wet when I was working the dough and I despaired that they wouldn’t work out as I transferred them to the baking pan. But! They were actually quite good! Much less floury tasting, lighter and fluffier. Not yet the layers I wanted but much closer.
4. I loved Xena the Warrior Princess when it was on TV and this thread reminded me I wanted to watch it again. Also Lucy Lawless still seems great as a human. Much better than that limp tool, Kevin Sorbo.
Challenges this week: I’ve only been sleeping in short blocks of an hour or two at a time. Something in my mind or body or both is preventing me from actually getting the rest I desperately need and this will only end in delirium.
The wildfires are raging on and that means our air quality is garbage. We are staying inside as much as possible but we still have to walk the dog and take JB outdoors for their mental and ocular health. The optometrist wants them to have 2 hours of outdoor time a day and that’s not happening but we are trying our best to do as much as we can.
It’s hard balancing the minutiae of everyday life, including a complement of its own horrific stressors like racism, COVID, being affected by the actions of horrible people, being subject to terrible decisions by political leaders, with the concerns almost too vast to comprehend with climate change and what feels like a sweeping wave of right wing Christian extremism taking over our laws, destroying our rights and suppressing votes.
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August 27, 2021
1. We happened past a produce shop we used to frequent a couple years ago, and stopped in. It was such a delight to pick up loads and loads of fresh produce for $22 again. I feel like we just don’t get those prices and that quality, even if the prices aren’t spectacularly low, at the bigger stores. I think we also feel more motivated to eat better and cook more when we get their produce. Though my seasoning for the veggie soup I made was the opposite of inspired. I won’t be making that flavor profile again. PiC wouldn’t admit to disliking it but that’s as close as he’s ever come to showing he didn’t like something I made.
2. I pivoted in the middle of making this lemongrass chicken with bone in thighs, not liking how it was turning out. The rescue recipe used the boneless diced chicken breasts that were intended for another recipe and turned out a lot better than I had expected. Too bad I didn’t have enough lemongrass to make enough to freeze but now I know that I do like it with the diced preparation. I was concerned that it’d be dry, which is why I went with bone in thighs but they required too much cook time for the aromatics. I may play with the recipe some more to make it work with bone-in chicken. Update: actually both recipes were good in the end. I’m glad I tried them both.
3. I made up a big batch of coconut lime chicken for the weekend and will freeze one portion for some later meal. Future me will thank today me for that. I managed to cook enough to cover this whole week of dinners without takeout, supplementing with some frozen foods. I’m proud of myself for making it a whole week and it was really nice to be able to cook even when under extreme pressure at work.
4. I made an experimental batch of biscuits. Everyone else liked them but I want them to be flakier and lighter. I can’t remember what makes biscuits light and fluffy, with those great pull apart layers. Working the dough less? More butter?
Challenges this week: Parenting a six year old feels exponentially harder than parenting a baby.
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August 20, 2021
1. I finally learned the name of one kind of flower I really like but never bothered to look up: gladiolus! They’re striking!
2. Sometimes it feels like the robot vacuum taking a million passes on our high traffic floors is a judgment but then I’m just glad it’s there to pick up all that dirt.
Challenges this week: The world?
The ongoing situation in Afghanistan.
The nasty attitude this country has about refugees and our moral responsibility to be the country they pretend we already are.
The ongoing uncertainty with the Delta variant.
The ongoing uncertainty of having a child in school, in person.
The various nonsense and absurdities of my clientele at work.
Finding a healthy way to manage and minimize how much the incoming stressors affect my personal well being.
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August 13, 2021
1. Almost without fail, going to fetch Smol Acrobat from the crib always lifts my spirits. They look up, flash a gummy grin, and start chuckling. I can’t help but chuckle back.
Challenges this week: Remember when I pondered whether I’d keep up my COVID weekly life posts? Because it seemed like perhaps an end was near? Hahaha … sigh. I remember that.
The computer chip shortage is really doing a number on the used and new car markets. We had intended to avoid them until more of this pandemic and disrupted supply chain thing was over but that’s not practical.
We have to deal with the nonsense of this recall election in CA thanks to some pack of political hyenas. And if it works, we could be stuck with a horrible Republican governor. Yes I needed more stress, thank you.
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