netless

Bjorn and I no longer have an Internet connection for our home. FAQ: Why on Earth do such a thing? A: values|living alignment.

    I want to spend my attention in the most deserving places.

    I enjoyed using and having the Internet in our home. I now enjoy not having at home! It's turning out very well so far, 5 weeks in.

witch gifts

I've been invited to a Hallowe'en party. I shall bring fire cider! I've arranged little treats for the other guests. Each treat's Halloween themed.

For adults,

• garlic (a time to eat, a time to plant, and a time to keep away vampires — all one and the same time, and that time is Hallowe'en! — Eccl. 3:101)

or

• something orange and/or black (so, The New Black and/or the old black);

for children,

• a certificate to be redeemed for making a sweets with me. Sugar: totally creepy.

Sight

A man wants to die at 75. Someone asked him more about it: "Doctors Wanted to Extend Life. Instead they Extended Death."

Knowing what I know now, I would refuse the radiation treatments (and other medical interventions) Roscivs received in June-July 2010.

   I'm sorry. But not for everything. At least on the day he died I gave him slightly more morphine slightly more often than "allowed"; by that time I knew that to do otherwise would be extending death — and denying him his dying-wish.

I believe he may have suffered more because it took me as long as it did to see his death. I believe he suffered willingly. I will live with that until I die. This is how: Truthfully, if Bjorn or I got cancer I most probably wouldn't choose chemo. You live, you learn.

Shiny Happy Pooper

In a book I'm reading right now there is a comment nearly suggesting how life without toilet paper would be a life of privation.
   I think not.
   Since I've gotten healthy, when I poop I more often than not don't need toilet paper. That's right: When I wipe it's already clean.

I enjoy toilet paper. But I could do without it. If I cloth diaper a baby I will stop using toilet paper.

"Put it in the ground where the flowers grow / Gold and silver shine"

the bad ol' days

My first and third years of college, I had housing arrangements that required that everyone in the house took turns cooking dinner.

   The first year, I cooked weekly for 6 young women. The third year, I cooked every other week for 6 women and 6 young men. Men eat more.

The third year involved a dinner allowance. I had to keep and submit a receipt. It was the same amount allowed the other 5 women and 6 men when they cooked. I remember it being $24; $2/person. We were not to go above budget.

   The most filling, cheapest meals I knew how to prepare involved pork, and pork is haram [1 man and 1 woman were Muslim]. 

   Every time it was my turn to cook, I struggled.

Q: Why didn't I just go to Grocery Outlet, buy a whole bunch of bulk food on sale, and cook rice-and-beans at every meal? 

   A1: I didn't know Grocery Outlet existed; even if I had, I didn't conceive of cheap food as something that is worthy. I identified as a person who didn't shop at trash groceries.

   A2: I didn't have a car, and there was no grocery store within walking distance. I had to beg a favor to get to anywhere I wanted to go beyond campus. 

   I hated (and still hate) feeling obligated to buy something at a store just because I visited. When someone on a college student's gas allowance has made a special trip to take you to that store, the pressure's on. And I hated, then as now, begging rides. Imagine, with those high emotional costs, how it would've felt to beg a ride to go to three different stores on three different days to find the best deals. 

   My idea of a nightmare.

   A3: Bulk food was not in my playbook at the time. Also: who has room to store bulk food in a college apartment?

   A4: Rice-and-beans was already overplayed. One of the 6 guys had cornered the rice-and-beany market. He claimed a Mexican mom. He made r&b each time and people did complain that he always made the same thing. Repeating meals wasn't so socially acceptable unless you ordered :PIZZA.

What on earth would I do if I had to feed myself and Bjorn on $2/meal? That's just $12/day! Now I know how to cook, and what foods to prioritize, but I wouldn't be able to do it and be healthy.

   I'm grateful I don't have to worry about that.

out loud to each other

Bjorn and I have finished The First National Bank of Dad.
   We are currently reading together Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and Parentology.

no zealot like a convert

I have refurbished a cast iron pan. I am enamored!

My mother-in-law gave it to me. It's a Griswold [brand] 8 [size], made probably in the 1930s or -40s.
   It looked terrible. Crusty, really rusty. I didn't know half of the markings on the bottom were there; they were crusted over.

I was whelmed with trepidity at the prospect of restoring it. Yet I wanted to cook my steaks — from my cow, you know? my lovely cow? — this way, in cast iron.
   And this pan was my chance.
   To get over the daunt, I tried to prepare myself to restore and maintain the pan. To that end I bought a piece of chain maille. (It's beautiful, I'm in love. I want to be draped in chain maille.)
   Using the Ringer, half a German Butterball, and some Himalayan salt, I worked the rust off.

I finished it Sunday. I used it for the first time yesterday — bacon. This morning I used it first for potato crisps in yesterday's bacon fat and then for steak.

T-bone for two!

I am really so proud of myself. I have set this pan to rights.
   I've sometimes see acquaintances' blog posts about their refinished dressers or tables. They're glowing with pride. I understand that now.
   Dull rust --> shiny black!

I'm satisfied and improved. I love to work to make it easier to do the other work I do to make the things I want. I swear it's easier to make great crisps in cast iron!

due, undue, undone

Matthew: You are going to be such a wonderful mother.

   Mary: How do you know?

Matthew: Because … because you’re such a wonderful woman.

   Mary:  I hope I’m allowed to be your Mary Crawley for all eternity, and not Edith’s version or anyone else’s for that matter.

Matthew: You’ll be my Mary, always, because mine is the true Mary. Do you ever wonder how happy you’ve made me?

screenless childcare | lucky me

If one of two parents works full time it seems to me that the other parent is more or less engaging in single parenting.

There are some things without which it would be much harder to take care of my niece and nephew. One thing is that their mother is pretty chill about how we do things. Even if I am not doing it the way she would, or though it may seem to her that I'm making a mistake, she doesn't fuss.
   That helps.

Occasionally I have a day of extreme fatigue. On these days I am a drugged slug. It's not at all like the fatigue I had when my CFIDS was at its worst. It's acute. I cannot function or do anything; I just become unconscious. The sleep isn't even restful.
   Yesterday was one of those days.
   My mother-in-law made dinner and brought it over. We let the kids have some screen time (the first screen time they have had — apart from videochatting).

Fabulous mother-in-law. That helps. Screen time ... well, it's a resort, one that is so tempting I see how a single parent would daily succumb.

But absolutely, positively the thing that makes it best is Bjorn. Every day he does something to help me. Today he did the dishes (my job) twice, read to me while I did the dishes once, played games with the kids, helped them learn to maximize their utility functions (a continuing effort), took them downtown to eat dinner.
   That's a sampling that doesn't even represent several categories of his help. I've got it good.

I'm totally going to have all of his babies.

x$ / yr ?

I recently came across a Financial Independence blog introducing its extreme 21 day financial makeover. It features good advice — and a goal I shan't match.
   [Quote] "The goal here is to cut your expense level to <$10,000/year/adult. I live on $6000/year/adult. It can be done."

This is a pretty common ceiling (floor?) in the frugal community. The personal-finance blogger I regularly follow has claimed that a family of 4, in the US, can live well on $24k/yr (IF that family is living mortgage-free). His family of 3 lives large on ~$25k/yr.

Okay. I live on <$20,000/yr. I wondered, what's keeping me from $6,000/yr? I looked through my finances and made a comparison to MMM's 2013 spending.
   After my medical costs and my food costs (which I consider a medical cost*) I spend $300/month. That $300 breaks down into fixed/steady costs like this:

public utilities
- $50/mo water and waste
- $65/mo gas and electric (in the cold half of the year I pay ~$100/mo, in the warm half I pay ~$35/mo)

stuff wif plugs
- $50/mo 'Net + phone 

warm fuzzies
- $30/mo dog! 
- $35/mo gifts

homesteadying
- $50/mo into a medium-term savings envelope (with an eye toward house maintenance and repair)

...

leaving $20/mo to be split to cover clothes, lightbulbs, other household supplies, garden supplies, bus fare, library fines (I'm a fine kind of patron), play tickets.

In sum, all my non-medical, non-food expenses are $3,600/yr. (These numbers are from my finance spreadsheet, where I track every cent in and every cent out.)
   I could save money by not having a dog and not giving away $35/mo. But those things contribute massively to my happiness and my feeling of wealth. Even if I gave them up I couldn't get to $6,000/year, because I have major health costs.

* To round, my grocery+medicine bill is $1,250/mo. In 2014 60% of that is food, 40% is drugs, druglords, and then the little anodynes. In 2011 it was a similar total, but I was sick all the time and it was more like 30% went toward food and 70% went toward drug(lord)s. My total co$ts are the same; my health is better.

In another year I'll have more solid numbers, because I will have been living this way for longer so I'll have longer-term averages.
   Maybe in another year I'll be healthier, too.

thank you Earth

I have harvested my garlic. When the bottommost pair of leaves gets dry and yellow, it's time.
   On Monday morning I sat outside with the eastern sun toasting my back. I was wearing R's old "Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem" t-shirt. I peeled the dirty, spotty top layers off of the garlic. I set each shucked, bulbous pearl down on the deck. It was so beautiful: the tall withered stalks, pale gold; the shiny bottoms.

I haven't been this deeply proud over any other garden harvest. I'm highly happy with the whole process. It was "in-system", start to finish. Propagation? Check. No buying starts or seed. Watering? Check: It took no city water!
   I put it in the ground at the right time, got out of its way, minded the soil, and nature did the rest.

(Oh, I also cut the scapes. That puts more energy into the bulbs. And it doubles the yield. :)

i need to Help! somebody

Not just anybody.

One of the nice things that I don't think I would have had the energy to take on if I was working teaching is taking care of my niece and nephew for a week or more, as we will do starting next week.
   My sister Mona is moving here (to our very hood proper!) and has suffered from logistical impediments. Bjorn and I want very much for this move to happen and this arrangement was proffered and accepted.

See: This is so cool! I get to help my family (and realize a painfully dear dream of mine: more proximal relations) instead of managing a schedule!

I feel like I've leveled up!

The other week Bjorn and I were talking about our standard of living, and how it's sky high, in its austere way.
   Having the Macbeth family (sis&co) live nearby is, I identified, the only thing I could think of (besides quitting teaching, which I had not yet quite done) to boost my standard of living to the next tier.

no ado about much

Actually there is a big to-do brewing.
   In February Bjorn asked me to read this book. I read it, OFCOURSE. I love having books recommended 'specially to me!

It changed my life. My life changes a lot. Here's a book for that.
   I don't think that someone else reading the same book would have the same life change. This book introduced me to a new concept, which I followed, researched, and further followed and researched for 100 more hours —

my research took the time of a part-time job, some weeks.

I'm planning on turning our yard into an Edible Forest Garden. I am not sure why I haven't blogged about it a lot. I do feel like I've talked to some people a lot about it and they still exhibit cluelessness about what it is. That kind of takes the hot air out of my sails.
   What's with the deaf ears?
   Maybe my message is wrapped in an impenetrable tortilla of zealotry. Perhaps my elevator pitch is snore boring. Maybe these concepts are so counter-cultural that people can't grok it. Perchance people lack only visual aids.

I am very interested in talking about it — I'm more interested in doing it.

keeping the stars apart

Most people upon hearing I no longer teach ask me some variation on "so what are you going to do with your extra time?" Do. It's always do.
   All people that ask me anything ask me that: "What will you do now?" Dodo.
   No one yet has asked me "so how are you going to feel with the extra time?", "how will you live now?", or "what will you be?"

Pretend, for a moment, that I do all the things I used to do, but I feel different while I do them.
   (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud / and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;

one man's gewgaw is another man's gewgaw

I've managed one garage sale before. I was — 13, 14?; I was not in public school. I did it for a Personal Progress merit (it's a thing for Mormon girls 12-18); the proceeds went to the Ward Mission Fund. The proceeds totalled between $50 and $60.
   I don't remember how long it took me to prepare. I know I went through a whole bunch o' junk and put it on display in the garage.
   Note: I didn't actually think that any of it was junk. I had tchotchkes disease.

Here are the bits I remember.

• I made my own flier for it.

• It took place in the garage.

• I sold a teddy bear (in a beautiful-red tutu) that I apparently didn't really want to sell: afterwards I lamented her sale.

• I wanted a lot of money for a ring display case and no one wanted to pay that for it. Its exterior was chipped, not just a bit. Its interior pillow was dingy.
   I was sure it was precious.
   I'd bought it at a neighbor's garage sale a few years before. It was the first and one of the only things I've ever acquired via yard sale.

• I sold a Nintendo game for $5; when an interested kid saw it and he asked how much it was and I said something like a dollar. His derisive whoop must have embarrassed his mother because she said "it must be worth more than that" and insisted he give me $5 for it.

~

Tomorrow I'm going to have my second garage sale ever.
   This one I won't have to make fliers for: the street we live on has a well-known annual sale. Supposedly someone puts it in the paper — the newspaper. (I don't think I'd ever have one if I had to do my own marketing.)

I've tried to price things so that they'll sell. I don't frequent yard sales, so I have little market exposure to help me set prices. I've probably set some things too high (again), and perhaps a few things too low. (It would be convenient if there were no such thing as "priced too low to sell"; the psychology of pricing isn't so easy.)
   I don't have a goal, but I suspect I'll be disappointed if I make less than $100. I plan to put the proceeds toward the purchase of a food processor.

Melee

The day Roscivs got diagnosed with cancer I asked him who should I tell or not tell? (Note: I had already told my sister Rita, in shock and need.)
   He didn't have any wishlist of persons to tell. I could tell anyone I wanted, he said, as long as it was clear they were not to contact him — ask him how he is, solicit information — call him for details — insist on "processing" it with him — &c.

I wanted very much to talk about it for a little while.

I chose to tell his mother. She was not the second person to know, or the fifth, but she was one of the soonest. I later wished sometimes that I had not told her for as long as that was feasible.
   I don't know how long that could have been.
   It was perhaps more his father that was the problem even up front (certainly later). It's hard to tell. They are, after all, a unit. His father began pestering Roscivs to "call your mother", telling him "she needs to hear from you" and "she's worried" and other such things.

I was — absolutely — clear that it was R's request that he not be contacted. That he be contacted and pressured to contact someone else seemed ... foul.

His dad didn't respond to the initial boundary.
   When I reminded him, he kept at it.
   When he kept at it, I sent him a diamond-clear restatement: this is Roscivs' wish. I expect you to respect it. He basically said I don't care what he wants. This is what I want. (To be fair, and to complicate matters, another reasonable interpretation of what said is what you say doesn't matter, we were his family first.)

Things between us went downhill from there.

Maybe he thought I was making shit up. (If he did, he had chances to clear this up in person: we invited them for a visit and he could have asked Civs "is your crazy wife making things up?")
   Maybe he was trying to figure out how to comfort himself.
   Maybe R's mother was so wildly distressed his dad was willing to try anything to make her feel better — even at the expense of his son.

I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it why the hell he was doing what he was doing. I had this belief that perfect understanding yielded perfect love.

After Roscivs died, I came across The Ring Theory of Kvetching. The basic rule is comfort in, dump out. A lot if not all of my problems with his parents came from violations of the Ring Theory of Kvetching. As I saw it, they were dumping in. Of course it was (and is) awful for them. I get that. But they dumped in.
   Not okay.
   There was another problem. Though I wouldn't have used Kvetching Ring language at the time — I didn't have it yet — they behaved in ways that communicated to me that they thought they're closer in to the center of the circle (Roscivs) than I. That made me a whole other dimension of upset.


When something horrible happens, when things go terribly awry, I like to think that at I least learn how to make them better next time.
   Unfortunately, I don't feel I have gained constructive insight here. At least now I have a kvetchy hyperlink.

a most awesome and beautiful thing

This morning. I went out to buy bacon. I took Euclid. I bought bacon. We didn't go right home; we went on an extended walk.

   We were heading E on Dickinson (like the poet), a few streets N of home. At the dead east end of Dickinson is woods — a greenbelt running north south. There is a heron rookery.

---d--------  ^^^^^   ~~~~~~
            ^^^^†^^   ~~~~

---L--------   ^^^^^   ~~~~

             ^^^^^^   ~~~~
---b--------  ^^^^     ~~~

            ^^^^^      ~~~~~
---b----------------  ~~~~~

              ^^^^^^   ~~~~
---g---<3---   ^^^   ~~~~~~

Much of the greenbelt is a hillside.

Legend:

• d = Dickinson St
• ~~ = sea water
• --- = street [see that the southerly "b" street is a steep through-street down the hill to the water]
• ^^ = trees
• † = an approximate location of the rookery [known to me previously]
• <3 = home

An eagle! and a heron! swooped in front of us, so close — I saw individual feathers of the eagle's wing. The eagle was chasing the heron. I exclaimed — surprised. I exclaimed more — awed. They paid no heed to me, yawping monkey with a little dog.
   The eagle seemed calm, if lethal focus can be said to be calm. The heron beat it; the eagle pursued; the heron seemed to lead the eagle to the rookery!? Euclid and I ran after them! They flew out of sight, into the woods.
   Then we heard the heron(?) start shrieking. It started and didn't stop. We halted at the ivy-laced skirts of the woods. Then exploded a cacophony of what must have been all the herons — louder, louder! Other birds in the woods started too. I couldn't see but trees and little flitting birds fleeing, but beyond us it sounded like a great battle.
   The whole woods' air was rent with avian screams.

We ran home to Bjorn. I could hear the herons nearly the whole way.

Count Your Blessings Now

My miscarriage headache is gone.

This morning I brought in (in containers, not in belly) a pint of raspberries and a pint of blueberries, and — and! — counted 30+ Honeycrisp fruitlets.

Berries, Eggs, gadZukes

Since ~solstice we've had ≥ half a pint of berries / day from our yarden.

This week we got zucchini in our CSA box ... one zucchini = funny! I didn't know what to do with just one.
   Bjorn said three times how much he liked the dish I made with it, so it's getting recorded.

♣ bacon renderings, 1 zucchini, 4.5 eggs (6 yolks 3 whites), basil leaves, ground black peppercorns to serve

I had a 14-inch saute pan thick with day-old bacon fat (my precious). I sliced the striped zucchini (very evenly, moderately thinly ... I'm sure I had the patience only because it's the first zucchini of the season) while I heated the pan til the fat was clear. I put the slices in the pan in a single layer, covering the bottom of the pan.
   I let it fry while I cracked 6 eggs, removed 3 whites, mixed the yolky mess and poured it over the fried slices after setting the heat to low. I washed and dried basil (Sacred or Thai (I'm not sure which)), separated leaves from stems, and set the leaves to wilt over the setting-but-still-wet eggs.

The key here is to add each ingredient just barely before the previous one's done cooking. Secondarily, make sure your basil is dry.
   It's kind of like a temporal lasagna, the way I cooked it in layers. It served up kind of like a pizza — in slices!

--

We've been getting eggs from my in-laws, who are in a joint chicken venture with their neighbor. Neighbor keeps the chickens, buys and prepares their feed (she ferments grains for them!); Da provided coop and capital. (He designed and built the coop in fact. Very cool.)
   Bjorn and I provide, um, empty bellies. We help eat the eggs.
   Neighbor-in-law is first on my list of where to send overflow blueberries! (We've none, yet; we're kind of having a Sal situation.)

(That reminds me. I wanted to name the baby Ursula. Bjorn said we can't unless she's born hairy with claws.)

Stuffing the Lily

Nudiustertian supper: daylilies stuffed with sardine salad (fennel bulb, pearl onions, garlic scapes, a mustard sauce, olive oil).

Going to the Doctor with Dog

EuEu was getting recurring ear infections. His ear(s) would get red, waxy, stinky — and with the last case, seemingly painful; he'd scratch his ear and whimper. Le sad!!
   The allopathic veterinary treatment we were given is a liquid "for canine otic use only", squeezed into the external auditory meatus, made of antibiotics (my enemy) and steroids (not my friend).
   Dutifully I squirted it into his ear. He didn't like it, and the only nice thing for me about the procedure was that I was supposed to massage the base of the ear immediately after administration, to squelch the liquid around, and I liked the sound.
   When Euclid got his latest ear infection, even after my not bathing him for a month and a half because I had been told it was because water got in his ears in the bath (he has flop-down ears), I was fed up.
   I believe that the recurrence indicated some internal disorder; if his system was healthy he wouldn't have chronically inflamed ears.
   Bjorn wanted to take him back to the vet, but I ... was upset at the idea of paying money to be told to do the same old thing that WOULD NOT FIX THE SAME OLD PROBLEM.
   I said I'm not willing to pay a vet unless we see one who will help us address his health, not just his ear, and try to prevent this from happening in the future. Bjorn Googled up some alternative dog docs for me to call. I selected a favorite, called to chat about her practice and — satisfied — secured an appointment, then filled out and sent in a detailed 9 page intake form.

Our appointment was at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning. We arranged with Em and En to borrow a car; En made sure to bike to work that morning so we could have one available to us.
   This vet runs a right smart set-up.
   Guess what initial treatment she gave us? A liquid "for canine otic use only", squeezed into the external auditory meatus ...
   ... the same stuff.
   BUT FIRST she actually took a swab of his ear and sent it to the in-house lab to see if we were dealing with something fungal, or bacterial, or what. She tests before treatment. She thinks that the type of infection is significant. It could, for example, suggest an etiology, or put us on the alert to certain co-morbidities.
   Is this not medicine 101?!?
   She also gave us formulae for drying his ears after a bath (involving hydrogen peroxide, or vinegar, or rubbing alcohol; all non-toxic household agents). She gave us a dropper to apply them. These liquid agents will reach where water will reach but they're dehydrators. She addresses my concerns. She freely shares information.
   She also suggested measures we can take (mostly by way of supplements Euclid can take) to boost his immune health. And her practice is right next to the local high-end pet food/care store, and she doesn't carry or sell (and thus doesn't have monetary incentive to push) certain supps or drugs. She had recommendations, but they were based on health considerations. She's not a drug lord.

Basically, she's awesome.

And it's been a month and a half since Euclid had any trouble with his little ears. This is a record.

Keeping It Real

I sometimes tell people that I make EVERYTHING my family eats.
   This isn't strictly true; I do not make, for example, the tahini we eat. The other day I was at the co-op filling up a jar with bulk tahini. A little kid in a grocery cart (who was shopping with a father figure) asked his dad "what's that?" His dad said, "it's tahini. It's ground up sesame seeds. You know the little white seeds we put in stir fries and stuff? That what they look like when you blend them all up." And the little kid said, "oh. But that's not homemade. That's co-op made." He repeated it, a note of disdain in his voice, "co-op made. Not homemade."
    [Note: it's not even made at the co-op; they just stock it there! So it's even worse than he thinks ;)]
   I thought it was so cute that this little kid's a homemade food snob .... though my dreams of this 100% homemade food family were dashed when I saw the man buy PASTA (gasp!) 30 seconds later.

I don't roast and pulverize my own sesame seeds. I don't make our own vinegar, either.

eScape

My garlic scaped! Woohoo!

On 10 June while I was out watering ... at 5:50 am ... I noticed the scapes. They were not a bit there on 3 June when I took my visiting niece and nephew out to the garden.
   I planted hardneck garlic because I wanted scapes. I like hardneck garlic better for its bulbs, too. I wondered, with hardneck's scapes and better bulbs, why would anyone plant softneck garlic?!

My most recent library-gotten Cook's Illustrated gave me an answer.

"Of the two main garlic varieties, your best bet at the supermarket is softneck, since it stores well and is heat tolerant."
     ...     
"Distinguished by a stiff center staff surrounded by large, uniform cloves, hardneck garlic yhas a more intense, complex flavor. But since it's easily damanged and doesn't store as well, wait to buy it at the farmers' market."

(It also occurred to me that some people might like garlic braids so much that they'll pick an otherwise lesser garlic just to be able to braid it.)

Germ Therapy with Dog

One-third at least of the reason I wanted a dog.
   As a bonus, this made me way less upset about the dog messing in the house as he got pottytrained.

ri¢h #3 : on my own terms

My old definition of being rich was I am able to go running outside in the light of day any day in the dead of winter.
   So how did this fail me when Roscivs died? Technically, I could still do that (at least for the first winter).

When I was a newly-married college student, I was dirt poor. If you look just at $ in the bank vs my expenses, I was perhaps the poorest I've ever been.
   But I was student poor. That's not poor poor. I didn't even feel poor. I didn't even know what it was like to feel poor. I felt like I didn't have a lot of money, but that's not the same. I wasn't expecting it to get worse; I wasn't expecting it to stay the same; I was expecting it to get better. When you're poor poor, that expectation is absent.

Last year my SIL Thea said that "Leon's poor". Bjorn said no, "he's not poor. His earning potential is heavily weighted toward the future."
   A reasonable expectation of future earnings is an important sort of rich. This has to do with how I felt poor when Roscivs died. I had a lot of expenses, with no reasonable expectation of future earnings. It got worse every day.

Now it's getting better all the time.


My old definition belonged to a universe that ceased to exist when Roscivs died. Furthermore, it had a lot of non-monetary contours mixed in with its monetary ones. There's the rub when it comes to me and riches. To me, for me, rich is about outcomes way more than it is about income.
   {What about to me, for others?}
   My current definition (I have the funds I need to pursue and support my health) has a lot of the same elements as my old one: outside time, free time, health [running], security in times of scarcity [sun in winter]. It's intertwined with (if not predicated on) Bjorn's love and support.

(I tried to make it one that wouldn't fall apart like the last one did, but that just can't be helped. When everything falls apart everything falls apart.)

So. Ok. Health funds are enough for me to be rich. I went out of my way to make my new definition money-focused. I thought it to be an important part of the exercise. But when it comes down to it I just can't seem to conceive of me feeling rich without a bright future filled with health and family. My semantic wobbling is unveiled: "rich" can involve a nebulous "happiness" as much as "money".
   I've been trying since the outset of this li'l blog series to clarify my terms. Clear terms are, after all, linguistic manifestations of clear thoughts. I don't know how successful I've been (uh oh?), but the exploration has gotten me closer to clear. If it's all still murky, at least it's an examined murkiness! 
   It would be less sloppy if I consistently used one term (say, "rich") to mean being rich (having money) and another term (say, "wealth") to mean feeling rich. And not having money ("poverty"?) and feeling poor ("destitute"?) could use their own terms too. Maybe I'll try using those clarified terms now.

I'm about to get less rich and more wealthy. I'm closing my studio; I'm going to stop teaching. It's fair call it retirement. What I say, though, is that I'm trading some income for some outcomes.

ri¢h #2

Before Roscivs died I thought that owning your privilege was an important ethic. (Still do.) I was writing a piece anent in the days before he was diagnosed. I was proud of my claims to privilege. I owned up!
   I sometimes have trouble when privileged folks want to have their cake and deny it, too.

When I moved house from BeHi after Roscivs died, a doctor friend—a medical doctor, a general care practitioner—helped heft and haul some of my larger items. After the heavy lifting was done, a little group went out to get pastries.
   I remember sitting in a tiny pastry shop hearing Mr. Dr. declare he's not rich. He spoke with deep, bitter frustration about how people think doctors are rich, but he's not: it's surgeons and specialists that make the big money.
   You can't brain someone with a croissant. I didn't even try. I just sat there.

Employment fact: (in these parts) even the lowliest GP makes 6 figures. How is six figures not rich? Seriously?! Mr. Dr. may not be the 1%, but he's the 5%.
   I would feel less chagrined hearing Jeff Bezos say I'm not one of those rich tech people: it's Bill Gates that makes the big money. Pretty much everyone (like, 99% of people) would see that that's just plain ridiculous. But move it closer to home and people put "rich" back on the horizon; people somehow don't see that Mr. Dr. is playing the same game.
   Poor schmuck.

Dirty Richie (warning: privilege ahead!)

Being poor and feeling poor don't necessarily co-occur. Being rich and feeling rich don't either.

Roscivs thought that most folks should work out a personal definition of being rich. For him, it was I can buy any food I want. He declared himself rich.
   A good "personal definition" is one that could actually apply to the person who makes it. Being rich is a location, not a horizon. Even if one's not there now, one (theoretically) could get there.
   (If you've already attained it when you define it, all the better for you!)
   I believe this outlook is key in a healthy concept of "rich". Beware of changing the goalposts: If every time your cup is about to o'erflow you make your cup bigger (SuperSize Me!) you're in for a life of ingratitude and greed. Maybe that doesn't sound so bad to you, but it sounds bad to me.

Gratitude improves quality of life more powerfully than pretty much anything else.
   I submit that greed detracts from one's capacity to enjoy and the capacity to be satisfied. And obviously(?) I value those.

While I've struggled a lot with feeling poor since Roscivs died, I've refused to be the Red Queen when it comes to being rich. I've fought to maintain the mindset that rich is a location and not a horizon.
   It was somewhere I had been.
   Maybe I could go there again.

I just wanted to say, I'm back. I'm here. I'm dirt rich!

Some Bat Time, Some Bat Channel

I love bats. If I could pick my reincarnation animal, I'd pick bat (or otter). I've held a bat (a fruit bat, wounded and in captive recovery), been licked by that bat; I've seen the bats swarm in Austin, TX. I've seen two bats mate (in captivity: zoo bats).
   Many bats nest under the bark of dead trees. One more reason to let the dead decompose naturally. One more reason to leave nature less disturbed. Many bats are being harmed by insecticides (their food having been poisoned). One more reason not to use poisons.

I've been told that my new house is under a "bat highway". During the summer there is a week where the bats zoom overhead. I wish I knew what kind of bat! I'm very excited to see it.

Angels Instead

Society doesn't take care of widows any more. That corner harvest those ancient Jews did? Or the New Testament: True religion undefiled?
   I wanted someone to get religion after Roscivs died.

Somebody did: a fellow that Roscivs and I met when we lived in Provo. I think we had graduated when we met Boaz, but he was just starting business school. We three had a bond; we were all ex-Mormons at BYU. As bonus bonds, we were all the same age (most fo-Mos defect at >30 years old) and he, like R, loved Orson Scott Card's fiction.
   I want to say—
   Roscivs could forge a bond with anybody. Maybe that's partly because he had the capability to give generous significance to small connections. He didn't require a profound sameness that most people seem to need in order to seek, enjoy, or value someone else's company.

Anyway. A few months later R and I moved to Seattle (though not before meeting Boaz' future wife: we by chance ran into him with her leaving the cinema on one of their first dates). He and she got married. He finished grad school and took an internship near Seattle. We all got together a couple of times while they were up in the PNW. He took an internship in Texas, too, liked that job better, and moved there.

There's some sort of death bonus that the Feds give you if your spouse dies. I got ~$200. It's almost more insulting than getting nothing, though maybe only because they would have given me more than that per kid per month if we'd made babies. That would have made me worth giving money to. It all kinda creeps me out.
   If I'd have had all of Roscivs' babies (and actually, I did), who else would have thought I was worth helping?
   My life would be so different. So many people would think I was worth more.

When Roscivs died, Boaz and I could be described as friendly former acquaintances connected only through FaceBook and past sharing—precocious apostacy, camraderie, pizza and beer. After Roscivs died I made a number of posts on FaceBook about how frustrating it was to deal with medical bills and medical companies. (For about three months I often spent three or more hours a day on the phone trying to sort out payments. It was a part-time job. I'm not sure why it all got so nasty after he died. The bills had been pretty straightforward before that.) I didn't bother to hide my financial and emotional distress.
   Bo expressed his sympathies on FB, like several people did. Unlike others, he privately asked for my mailing address—he and his wife wanted to send me a little something—and I sent it to him.
   This was a time when people were ranting all the time about health care. Obamacare had recently passed. FaceBook was abuzz with cries of "single payer!!" and "socialists!!" Boaz expressed the "socialist" preference; he supported government takeover of healthcare.
   I had this problem with the position of government healthcare responsibility: There's a powerful human bias with regard to making things Somebody Else's Problem [nod to Douglas Adams]. When it's someone else's job to take care of a problem, it's, um, not your job. Well, I think that it's detrimental to human development to have institutions monopolize that position. That's a job everyone should have: take care of your sick people.
   I thought that these liberals talked a fine game—feed the poor! But then they didn't do anything. And mostly, that is true. Mostly it is true of the conservatives, too. They both seem to be saying the same thing. Healthcare is Somebody Else's Problem.

Boaz sent me a check for $1,000.

To help with medical expenses.

I cried and cried.
   What made me worth it to them? Was it the the science fiction? Was it that we'd supported him when he felt trapped at BYU? Was it that his wife has Chronic Fatigue, too, and he felt bad for me left disabled to care for myself? Any number of other people had that much in common with us and more.

He lived in Texas, not Seattle. But he seemed to have decided I was his neighbor.

Watery Grave

First I took the infant incipient out into the garden. By and by I picked a sprig of wild baby's breath, some forget-me-not, and mint.
   I plucked a large leaf and wrapped. I secured the bundle with something woody and quick.

Bjorn and I held hands down the nature trail to the Sound. On the way, I added a buttercup.

We came to waters' edge. I set it out to sea.

Family unPlanning

I had hoped to be great with child today. It didn't turn out that way; to be great today I have to be great without child.
   Having a baby was going to be my 2014 event. I planned it and everything. Well. We don't need a dead Scotsman to tell us that things fall apart and centers will not hold; plans, schmlans — mice bestly laying them; blah blah, poo-poo.

But now something new, out of the blue! Out of the deep cerulean! Something I didn't (indeed, couldn't have) planned for. Mona, my older sister, and my brother-in-law, niece, and nephew are moving to my town. Pending closure, they'll live within a nice little walk from my house. (I won't even get my 5 miles in going there and back again. (I will get 5k. (Go metric: it's cheaper!)))

OO-DE-LALLY.

They'll have an acre of land. They might start keeping ducks. Ducks means duck poop. Maybe they'll let me have some o' their duck poop.
   This is the best thing that could have happened to me this year. I don't mean the duck poo. :P Stream-of-consciousness can really jostle antecedents. I am so pleased.

CSA Box with Dog

There is now a vegetable the dog has scarfed down that is not in the brassica family: chartreuse mustard greens! (He won't eat the leaves. Just the crunchy "bottom".)

Going to the Bathroom with Dog

When Euclid knows I'm going to use the loo he rushes to join me. He's a social fellow. Doesn't want to miss out on a family pee.
   Now I have an extra incentive to change the TP roll when it's empty. I used to, um, have aggravating TP replacement habits. Roscivs would hide rolls around the house because when the TP from my bathroom was gone I would take TP from his bathroom....
   I never do that any more! My TP habits are great!
   Anyway. The dog. I toss the empty cardboard tube on the ground, and Euclid vanquishes it. In the master bathroom it's especially fun because there's so much room for it to roll around.

Jewish Trivium & Happy Income Redistribution Day

• Did you know that the back half of the cow isn't kosher? Kosher beef has lots of rules. It's more complicated than "don't eat cheeseburgers". Brisket is a classic Jewish cut; it's cheap (historically) and from the front of the cow.

• Did you know it's possible to make so much money that you're not allowed to put any of it in a Roth IRA?

True stories.

Lazeez -- No, Alazz

I was asked to bring a vegetable to Sunday dinner. A cooked one. (A raw one, beet-and-carrot salad, was already being provided.) (Of course, there weren't just two vegetables. There were cooked carrots, too; there are always cooked carrots. Ok maybe not always but 90% of the time.)
   (There were homemade pickles, too, and the pickles are always; 100% of Sunday dinners.)
   I didn't know when dinner was going to be, so I wanted to prepare something that would be decently yummy hot, warm, or cool. I also wanted to use nettles. Nettles (a) have such a short season and (2) are uberduber healthful and (+) they're local and (iv) I already had some.

Here's what I did, and it was the best nettle preparation I have ever eaten. (The first time I prepared them was last year and I boiled them. I was afraid of the stingers. :P AND I was serving them to guests. I didn't want to sting my guests.)

Put nettles (I used .5 lb total in two separate batches) in a skillet-ish pan on low-medium heat. Add raisins. (1/4 c?) Add a little bit (a few Tbsp?) of coconut oil in one crescent of the pan, shoving the warming nettles to the gibbous remains. (I was using my 14 inch pan.) When the coconut oil is about half melted add spices to it. I added ground mace, ground clove, and ground ceylon cinnamon. Then add salt. Then let the coconut oil finish melting, mix the spices as needed, then mix in the nettles and raisins bit by bit. Stop cooking when it looks and smells done.
   Nettles are often compared to spinach. They are more delicious than spinach. They are much less watery, so these were almost crispy! Wow. Yum. And the type of fat, and the seasoning (bakery-ish) increased the temperature range at which it would be yummy.

I don't know if I'll get a chance to do this again before nettle season is over. I cook nettles infrequently enough that I might not be able to remember this if I don't record it.

So. For the record.

mind blown like hot glass

During a recent morning conversation Bjorn gesticulated a graph of the matter in the universe, showing me where most of the matter is {hand wave} and that it's hydrogen {hand particle}, then helium, then &c. &c., and the rest is here {wild graph gesticulation} in the tail {wag}.
   'What about dark matter?' I said. 'Is it in the tail?' Not in the tail. From there, somehow, by some parallel move, or some tangential veer, or some unobserved cat, the conversation came to this ... Maybe, he said, maybe dark matter has its own periodic table.

!

sprang spreng sprong moo moo moo

On the first day of SPRING! I walked 5 miles, liquid fasted until supper, did some research at the library, enjoyed my day off work.
   I turned off the heat. I let the dog sleep with us because I didn't want him to get too cold in his crate (I am a pup pamperer). Bjorn turned the heat back on this morning. 'Twas too cold for him.

Today I got my taxes done. Da did them. Joint filing FT$!

And we picked up our cow. Wow. Wow. Wow cow. Cow wow. 706 lb hanging weight. ~21 cubic feet of freezer filled.
   We got 17 boxes of cut-and-wrapped cow parts and 3 bonus boxes of dog bones (that is, cow bones for the dog). When we got home, we took the meat out of the boxes. Most of the boxes were packed by cut. 4 boxes of mostly hamburger (whoa, so much hamburger), 2 boxes of soup bones, 1 box of cube steaks and fajita meat, 1 box of T-bone and sirloin steaks (one cow makes a lot of steaks!), 2 boxes full of roasts ... yada yada fish paste.

(When Roscivs lived in South Africa one of his favorite friends there said "fish paste" after "yada yada" and he picked it up from her.)

Bjorn and I did a great job with a novel situation. Go team! Huzpaz! Together, we wanted to get everything into the freezer as fast as possible on this end (the now), and to get things out of it as efficiently as possible on the other end (the future). To that end (that is, the future), we divvied up the cuts and put them back in the boxes (dead cow Tetris) with the basics in each: hamburger, steaks, a roast, soup bones. So it'll go like this: take a box out of the freezer. Bring it in to the little freezer in the house. Dine on a nice variety of cuts instead of 3 weeks in a row of chuck roast all the time, 4 weeks in a row of nothing but T-bone steaks, and no more of either for the rest of the year. And no digging around in the freezer for this or that cut.
   I think it'll work well. If we get stew meat in a box I take out in the winter I'll make stew; if in the summer, I'll make kebabs (on rosemary skewers from our garden!).

These are the daffodil days. Anything you want to, do it.

Tortoise

I am making progress toward my goal to walk 5 miles a day. In February, my walking looked like this:

 wk 1: 10.7 mi
 wk 2: 17.3 mi
 wk 3: 12.6 mi
 wk 4: 15.8 mi

I had a cold (the first cold I had had in 13 months), which kept me back a bit. Weak 3 was snottiest, weakest. I was resting more.
   You can see that I do not average 3 miles a day yet. I walk a few miles one day, and then some days not even one (lesson days are particularly prone to this). A better goal (in attainment and enjoyment) might be a 25 mi/wk average. I'd basically give myself a pass for my working days.

Today I walked more than 5 miles, the first such length on record. Walking with nieces to school, walking to buy fish, stopping by the co-op, and going out for fresh air. And the day's not over. (And my feet are not tired!) Glory: Today near the heron rookery we spied 5 herons in 1 tree.
    As to the fish. I marinated it: mandarin juice, garlic, green onion, ginger root, thyme. The marinade was tops, and I didn't mess up the prep or cooking, but I didn't love it. Whitefish fillet sautee is not an instant favorite. I do love how fast it cooked.
   I have a food goal this ~year: Multitudes of Experiments With Sea Meat. I imagine this will include a lot of walking to the monger's, and, my finger on the pulse of seafood advisories, tuning myself to seasonal rhythms (which creatures are caught when—where—how).

Remembrancers

The initial title for this post was "My Hat Wallet It Has Three Corners Folds".

I abandoned purses wholly last year. Before total abandon, I chose to secure a wallet. I tried several (it's odd shopping!) but couldn't find one that suited until I rediscovered Roscivs'. It's a leather tri-fold. When I came upon it I had a sudden memory of him talking about how he found tri-folds superior to bi-folds, yet they're very hard to find.
   I love this wallet. It doesn't encumber me (like a purse does), it isn't expected to match my clothes, my event, or a venue (as a purse is), it doesn't suffer junk (o über-culpable purse!). It is a soft cowhide token of Roscivs. Simple, sensible, and sentimental. Win, win, win.

I have also taken up handkerchiefs. (After reading Zero Waste Home, tissues seem a gross waste.) Another memento. Sniff sniff.

Austin is Plan B

We were driving in a car with the dog. We borrow a car to drive to training.
   Bjorn said, in his not-kidding voice, "Would you consider moving to New Jersey..." He stalled; he was task-switching, backing into a parking space. Back-in parking is familial, like the religious use of napkins and honing steels. His not-kidding voice is unmistakable. He was born and raised in NJ, so NJ has charge. It's a suggestion more and less plausible than "let's relocate to Latvia shall we?" So where I might have laughed or said "piffle!" I balked. "?!?!?!"
   He continued "... or maybe Texas ..." and finished parking the car. Um. Texas? I said, or maybe sputtered, "What. What what. WHY."
   He put on the parking break. "So that we can educate our kid(s) the way we want." [Yeah, he speaks with finial parens.] I figured out where this was coming from. At dinner a month ago I made some remark regarding laws, rules, hoops to jump through to homeschool in WA. He didn't know. He began research. He found 10 states that are minimally invasive. "Or Idaho." "No." He doesn't like Washington's hoops. (You have to (i) submit a curriculum meeting XYZ reqs, (ii) have it approved, (iii) get your child tested (&c).)
   In the last month he has read books, set up appointments, contacted alternative schoolers, and made phone calls to explore what he can do to protect his education choices for his child(ren).

Now all I have to do is get pregnant again and get a baby this time, eh?

If you're wondering, I said well if pressed I suppose I might be open to Texas because we have some family there and family is the main thing I'm attached to providing and experiencing when we have kids. Good Lord — the words I thought I'd never say.

About the napkins. They to me (more than back-in parking, or the honing steel) are the hallmark of the Onzwit family. Napkins abide at breakfast, lunch, supper, tea, snack (even be it a single banana). Will you partake? Touch the cloth. The gesture is Grace.
   All my favorite prayers are prayers of the hands.

I am growing

My garlic and my tulips have come up! They live! I planted them roundabout Thanksgivukkah. (Thank goodness for En, or I would not have known that garlic is supposed to get in before first frost.) The tulips were a housewarming gift; the garlic — I selected from our CSA box one varietal (we get several) that I hope is hardneck, so as to produce scapes. (Softneck varietals don't scape. Scapes are the whole point of our growing garlic. We don't need more bulbs than our CSA provides. We need more scapes!) I separated the cloves and stuck them into the ground.
   Minutes after I planted my garlic I found little mystery sprouts elsewhere in the garden. I dug one up ... they'd planted garlic already! Ha ha! If their planting was hardneck, we'll have scapes aplenty. I doubt it is.

I was newly pregnant then. I didn't work in the garden again until after the miscarriage.

On the first good day in February, I ventured to survey the garden. Not too daunted, I cleared the raised beds, preparing them to be turned. Most of the beds were already emptied when we moved in (in October, remember), but I didn't plant cover crops, and I didn't cover the beds (with burlap, e.g.). I didn't know to. Blessedly very few weeds took purchase and clearing the beds was a work without dread.
   On George Washington's birthday, a traditional pea-planting day, I planted peas (securing a trellis!) after I turned over two of the beds. I learned from a book last year that one is to turn one's beds. It was a mystery to me until I did it. Here's how. I took our garden shovel (a Hannukah gift) and upheaved the dirt — upturned clods happy with worms. Then with another gifted tool I raked until the clods were clods no more. You might say I rotated and fluffed the dirt. In analogy, the dirt in the garden bed is like the pillow or the mattress in the sleeping bed. Now it is a known mystery; I have been through that door of the universe. Or it has been through me.
   Last Friday, I planted lettuce from seed in the greenhouse. My lettuce is a little late, but the way I figure it, if I fuss over dates overmuch I won't have fun and I won't garden. I'll learn what's worth a fuss as I go.

So far, everything I've planted has been from seed or bulb. It's unusual; I am used to the starts mentality, not the seed mentality. It is pleasant for me to work from seed. Maybe as I get used to having a greenhouse it will become the new usual. The holy grail is using seeds I've saved myself. Imagine gardening without needing to be at someone else's mercy or mercantile for seeds!

When we moved, I was concerned about how much it would co$t me to garden. So far, it's about $3. The only co$t to me has been buying the peas and lettuce seeds. Tools = borrowed or gifted. Da (Bjorn's dad) bought us a Costco set of his favorite gardening gloves. Bjorn found overalls and a flannel work shirt for me at the Free Store.
   I need a hat. I discovered this happily on Friday. I was two+ hours working in the sun and my eyes felt it a little. A hat — and more plants. Co$ts will rise, but I am not concerned about them any more. What shall I plant next!?

Beef Eaters

Bjorn's parents are very even in their parenting. Even, perhaps most obviously, in what they give to their children. I have never known such even parents. My parents were (are?) not that even. Roscivs' parents were definitely not even even.
   What is it that makes his parents so even? I conjecture. It's that they are Ts, not Fs. It's that they have two children and not five. It's that they have one of each sex. It's that one of them suffered unfairness with a sibling.
   It's my perception. Moreover, it is the perception of both children that their parents are fair!!

In all this this fairness, we have gotten ourselves a mighty chest freezer. His parents bought a stand-alone freezer for Em and En when they got a house, and so when we bought our house they offered to buy one for us. They didn't shop for it: "Pick the freezer you want", they said. So we did. We picked the grandaddy of all freezers. (The geezer freezer?) This is a freezer that will hold approximately 25 cubic feet of chopped up bodies.

This was on our long list (as opposed to our short list) of reasons to get a house: we could have a freezer. (We didn't know, before we moved, that his parents would buy us a freezer. That they'd bought one for Em and En was information retrieved only from the fairness.xls file in his parents' minds.) In this our dream scenario, we would buy "locker meat", which is to say, buy an animal by the quarter, half, or whole directly from a local, sustainable-scale rancher/farmer/grower/herder.

Being busy with other things, we did not get a freezer right away. November and December passed freezerless. Then Bjorn spent much of January organizing the garage to be ready for it. It was partly because I was pregnant, and it had been suggested that I really should have a freezer in order for it to be stocked by my mother and sister-in-law for meals to eat in the first month after birth.
   And so the space was made, the husband fabulous, the freezer acquired and (not long after the miscarriage) delivered.

The majority of small-scale slaughters happen in the fall, I thought, so we didn't know when we would be able to get any meat to fill our behemoth freezer. I started making inquiries early — now — to get on wait lists.
   In a piece of luck, we got an opportunity to buy cow from our second-choice cow folk. (Our first choice is doing "herd maintenance" this year and won't have any available animals for at least another season.) w00t!
   This is very exciting for us.
   We bought a cow, a whole cow! The term that our cow-seller uses is "a whole beef". I thought that "a whole beef" sounded weird. It sounded more like the other kind of beef. It sounded inappropriately countable. Now I'm used to it.
   We had a deadline if we were to make the midwinter slaughter (today). I agonized over the butcher/cutting order. I called the butcher. How was I to make sure I got my oxtail?! There was nothing on the order form about it. What about the skirt steak? Should I get the top of the top round cubed and the bottom of the top round in fajita meat? Yes I want the brisket cut but no I don't know how! I was overly whelmed. I made the order. Bjorn posted it, with our deposit.
   The price/pound is $3.80 (that includes the wrapping fee). That's a little more than half what we pay for ground beef at the co-op. Estimating we eat 300 lb of beef a year, this will be at least $1,000/year in savings. This is a happy animal. Born on the same farm where it died, never stressed by travel and filled up with stress hormones; weaned in contact with its mother; loved; named; fed on pasture.
   In a couple of weeks (like any respectable outfit the dry aging lasts a fortnight), the cow will come home.

Bodies Are Cool

I have learned a lot about human milk in the last 6 months. For example: there is a bacteria in human milk that is not found anywhere else in the world. Milk composition changes as the baby ages; what the body makes for a 2 month old is not what the body makes for a 4 month old. If you think that's specialized, well, get this: Foremilk (the milk that comes out first in one instance of nursing) is different than hindmilk. Amazing, eh?
   All of that was new, but new only to me. Last week I found something new to all. It looks like milk may be sex specific. This report in Scientific American online summarizes a study showing that milk composition is different for boys than girls!

Moosic Tooter

So, running my own business is one of the things that my widow-life has handed me. It is a lot of work and an accomplishment.
   Here is the latest stats. I have 13 students. 10 are "mine", 3 are "contracted". 3 are harp, 6 are piano, 4 are violin. 8 are sibling pairs. 3 are adults. 2 are online students, 11 are in-studio. 6 are every other week, 7 are weekly. 4 are hour lessons, 9 are half-hour. 8 I have taught for over a year.
   Broadly speaking, I have the most fun with the sibling pairs, harp students, and adults. One of my sibling pairs has begun doing duets (one piano, four hands). I love that.
   It is a job that won't sit still. I am always switching something, or something is always being switched on me. I have decided not to shut down my online teaching. Instead I have raised my online rates. (I couldn't do this with my contracted students until recently.) I am considering dropping violin: I'd continue with current students but not take any new. I am fitting my students into 2 days (T/W) instead of 3 (T/W/Th). I am not seeking new students nor am I turning them away. Speaking of turning, I might be turning a profit soon. Fingers crossed!

Our Sweet Doggy

We started a six-day, weekly training course on Monday. It went well! We all three of us did a great job. There were stressful moments, but nothing so stressful as living forever with a half-trained dog. The trainer gravitated toward Euclid and used him to model almost all of the commands. This despite that he was cowed by pronouncing Euclid's name. It's not just him. Most humans are made cows by Euclid's name. I am astonished at how everyone thinks it so odd a name!
   I am astonished too by how many people exclaim, repeatedly, how cute he is. I mean, I think he's sure cute. But he's mine.
   My students adore him. Two of my students ask their mom every week "when can we get a dog like him?" And she says "BOYS. We have two dogs already." Our dog is better. He's their favorite dog. "He's so soft", the younger one says. Euclid does have a coat lovely in softness.

His food is now all raw. He likes vegetables. Only some vegetables — cruciferous. And only certain — the crunchiest — parts of them. No leafy bits! He won't eat them. Brussels sprouts bottoms, broccoli stems cauliflower leaves, the thickest bits of the cabbage leaves. One (or two) person's(') compost is one dog's veggie. Often he will take one of the vegetable bits out of the bowl and play with it: he will nudge it with his snout or bat at it with his paw until it moves in a way that seems almost as if it had a life of its own, then he will pounce on it and repeat. Eventually he defeats it, takes it to a rug, and gnaws on it.
   He likes meat more than vegetables. He doesn't play with his meat.

Made from scratch?

I am making kasha out of sprouted buckwheat! I have never before prepared buckwheat in my life. Two days ago I set buckwheat to sprout. I had never sprouted anything besides lentils (and really, lentils just sprout themselves). I succeeded. Now that I know how to do it, I'd say "it's easy".
   (Note if you are astonished that I am eating grains: when I was pregnant, my doctor suggested I eat sweet potatoes and some [sprouted] grains. Even though I'm not pregnant any more I continue to eat them twice-ish a week.)

In other cooking ventures, I present my last three meals. (One reader stated high interest in hearing regularly what I eat. One reader counts for a lot around these parts. I am potentially pleasing a large percent of my readership when I post about what I eat.)

Meal 1

• 3 oz salmon (including skin and bones, mmmmm the round "spine" bones are my favorite! I could eat a bowlful.)
• 1/2 sweet potato, fried up in plentiful bacon drippings (the sweet potato itself had, the night before, been cut into large dice and roasted in the oven)
• 1/4 c green cabbage smothered in EVOO

Meal 2

• roast beast (rubbed with salt and pepper and then cooked for 25 min. at 425F then 6 hrs at 225F)
• frizzled leeks (frying oil: coconut oil)
• Brainless House Salad (one head of lettuce, red leaf; two handfuls of sunflower seeds; a handful of raisins, EVOO, salt, and pinot grigio vinegar)

Meal 3

• hash: 3 large, frozen tomatoes put first into the saute pan and left to sauce up; Penzey's Fines Herbes, let to stew in the tomatoes, then ground lamb; 
• nearly-naked slaw: lots and lots of green cabbage smothered in EVOO

It is a fluke (but not a salmon fluke) that in the first meal I knew what the sizing portions were. Normally I pay no heed to such things. Grams and calories? Not sticky information. What I do notice is relative portions, like 'more-of-this or less-of-that next time'. For example, in meal 2 I noticed that we both could have eaten two times the scrumydiddly frizzled leeks!
   The Brainless House salad is the simplest salad, the default that I lately make. No time to think? Must put food on table? That's what the salad looks like.
   I notice I am not consistent in noting when I put salt in things. Of course I put salt in the fried sweet potatoes. It just seems to go without saying. It is also always Himalayan salt, what En calls "the pink stuff".

Am I cooking from scratch? Regard meal 3. When I went to college, I discovered the abomination of "pre-made" "spaghetti sauces" in jars. Such stuff hardly ranked as food, much less food from scratch. I considered a sauce made from scratch to be one where you add seasoning to plain tomato sauce (even if that seasoning was "Italian seasoning", yet pre-mixed seasoning has something in common with pre-made sauce, no?). I really saw a world of difference between these things. Today I wouldn't count sauce+seasoning as sauce from scratch. I might not even count meal 3 as made from scratch. I used whole tomatoes. But I didn't dry, chop, or mix my own spices. Moreover, I didn't grind my own meat.
   Does it count? What is scratch?
   (Note: I am satisfied with the scratch level of my cooking, unestablished though it may be; my inquiry is driven by curiosity, not a concern over failing to align with some shifting baseline of orthodoxy.)

Crystalline

It snowed! I woke up to a winter wonderland. I did some yoga. I walked to the co-op with Bjorn. He looked over the produce for breakfast. I talked to one of the managers (all the staff are managers) about the provenance of some new bacon.
   After breakfast, I walked Bjorn to church and then back. (All in all, 4 miles of walking today. I still want to work up to average 5 miles a day.) I knocked snow off of laden bamboo branches.
   We bathed Euclid.
   We watched this — the most enjoyable TED talk I've seen in a while!
   And then FamDin. At Em and En's house this week. This is my favorite ritual of the week. All of us. Together. Eating. The food is delicious: Is this hand-shucked? We talk, we hug. We go home to bed.

Wahhh ha ha

I spent much of yesterday crying. Part of the crying was crying about how much I was crying.
   I said (for some broad, blubbery definition of said) "I'm just cr-cr-cr-cr-cry-hing all d-d-aaaay todaaay!"
   Bjorn said "It's a day for crying. It's Saturday. 'Saturday' means 'crying day'. It's from middle Swedish. Sat-around-and-cried–day got shortened to Saturday."

I laughed. For some blubbery definition of laughed.

Nayb

When we were filling out our adoption application for a dog, one question was how busy our house is, with choices from "like Grand Central Station" to "like a graveyard".
   We have a dozen children and several adults in and out of the house throughout the week, and we have dinner guests weekly. We also (until the parvovirus) hosted twice monthly a small-group–ministry gathering. I picked the option just one less busy than "Grand Central Station".

When our group meets, there are 10 people driving 10 cars to our house (exurban America!), and there are only so many places to park them. One convenient place, kitty corner from us, so across the street from our next-door neighbor, looks like a parking strip and often gets cars parked on it.
   We learned that our neighbor Gauche does not like this: She told us 'tell your guests NOT to park there.' It's not her property, but in wet weather the cars leave tracks in the dirt and she finds it unsightly. We made this request of our guests, some of whom have sometimes forgotten. Not all of the parkers are our guests, but neighbor G has come to assume that they are.
   Around this same time another neighbor, Droit, came into a ton of wood chips and of her own accord put wood chips on the parking strip, and I thought it improved the looks, and covered the mud, thus ameliorating the tire-track problem. (As far as I know neighbor D was unaware of any discussions between us and G.) But that too made neighbor G mad.

When we first met her she was very welcoming and friendly, but sometime in between our first meeting and now she has become unfriendly. A couple of weeks ago Bjorn said that when he was walking by and greeted her she gave him the evil eye and wouldn't speak to him.
   A bad day? Sourness over the [no] parking area?

Today, a few noisy and rude-sounding surveyors parked in G's driveway and were skirting around our property. Bjorn went out to talk to them, and neighbor G called. the. police.
   She said, "I'm going to call the police." Bjorn said, "please do; may I listen in on the call?" The police arrived swiftly. Neighbor G told the policeman to tell Bjorn to stop talking to the surveyors and go back into the house. The policeman said he couldn't do that.

I was on the phone with my sister, which is just as well, because I would have FREAKED OUT.

I do not trust the police, and now I do not trust this neighbor. If she had called the police on me I would have seen it as an extreme attack. As it is, I feel vicariously attacked. The fact that we did nothing wrong is no consolation to me; I have no faith that the police care about the legality of our actions.
   Bjorn pointed out that calling the police is something one does when one feels threatened, but I was not into perspective taking and [neighborly] compassion. I felt fearful. We have an irrationally angry neighbor, who is taking horrible (to me), aggressive action.
   What. on. Earth.

It turns out that neighbor G wants to build a new fence between our house and hers. A high, wood fence (as on the other side of her house), to replace the short, chain link fence. This could make me feel better, actually; I don't want to feel threatened in my own yard. Let's just all hope this is a better fence and pray god Frost is right.

___
*edited for clarity, spelling, and because I accidentally a word (or two)

S^itting

So, sitting is really bad for you. Even dedicated exercisers (people who work out an hour a day) aren't better off if they sit the rest of the day. See The First 20 Minutes and The Last Best Cure and ... anywhere, really; I've read this more and so often now that it seems to be becoming common knowledge not in need of a citation.
   In April I tracked a week of sitting. Any time I sat down I started a timer. My day of least sitting was 5 hr 11 min, my day of most was 8 hr 50 min. Hmm.
   At the time, I was feeling pretty great about that. I wanted to do another set round'bouts now, to see how things are now (being sure to include several working days, since I usually sit while I work). But before I got a chance, my foot started KILLING me. I wrote first "But then I injured my foot", only there wasn't an instance of trauma to the foot. It just flared up. The x-ray shows no fracture. For a few days I was a day-time Jennyanydots.
   Now I am back to baby steps. My doctor said no running but walking every day, starting with a short distance and working up. Today I went out for a mile walk.

I wanted my sweet new dog to keep me company while I convalesced. But he's sick now. So I'll just walk, getting stronger so that we can both recover together if he comes home.