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.

Comestible

Sometimes I eat food that I don't make. One example is South River's "Dandelion Leek Miso" made of deep well water, organic soybeans, organic brown rice, sun-dried sea salt, dandelion greens, wild leeks, nettle greens, organic sea vegetables, and koji culture.
   Another example is an artisanal chocolate made of [all organic] stone ground cacao, cacao butter, honey, hemp, and maitake mushroom.

But I'd say 90% of what I eat is food that does not have a label. Maybe I should track that to be sure. Who wants to know what I eat every day? Do I?

Salad

I made up a salad yesterday that I love.
   I used 2 pomegranates, 2 avocados, a bunch of cilantro, and 5 green onions. I dressed it with the juice of 1 lime, olive oil (probably halfish a cup), and Himalayan salt.

Bidness Woes

For my business, I independently contract with a company I'll call LatKes. LatKes recently rolled out a new website. On this new site, more of my stats are available to me.
   Earlier this year I noted a significant and repeating discrepancy between ostensible income (calculated simply by multiplying [number of students] by [number of scheduled lessons] by [price per lesson]) and my real income. I make a lot less than it looks like I will. It didn't take long to figure out why: cancellations.
   I've been, therefore, aware that cancellations are eating up potential earnings (I even took it up directly with one cancel-happy student), but I didn't track them precisely.
   Enter the new LatKes site with the new stats.
   A whopping third of my scheduled lessons for this year were cancelled. That includes any students who stopped taking lessons and cancelled anything remaining, and the lessons I cancelled when my computer died in September. So it reflects more than just current students and includes my own cancellations. Even discounting those things, easily one fifth of my planned lessons fell through!

I want next year to be different. My problem is that 85% of my clients are through LatKes and I can't change my cancellation policy for them. They have the option to cancel up to 24 hours in advance.
   What's an independent contractor to do?!

Things and Stuff

I can have a hard time letting go of tangibles.
   Once upon a time, what I would do with an item that I struggled with discarding was (1) take a picture of it and (2) tell Roscivs a story about it (3) discard it straightway.

The picture was his idea.
   When it came time to process the data card (once it was full) I would keep the picture if I still wanted a picture. This may have happened once or twice, but I can't specifically remember it. Usually by that time I had already let go, realized I was happy without it, and chose to delete the picture.

Now I skip the picture step.

Some things I have held onto until now:
   • 20+ lb. of Japanese language learning papers (many of which don't even have R's handwriting on them ... all of which are materials I can't read)
   • a sea shell that my childhood penpal Ricki painted and sent to me
   • scrapbook papers — e.g., a spate of trite poems that I wrote (by assignment, in response to trite prompts) in 5th grade

What do those things mean to me? I choose to use this blog post, rather than those papers, to commemorate
   • how Roscivs was so unusually devoted to and delighted by learning;
   • how thoughtful a penpal Ricki was (that shell was her postcard to me from a vacation in Mexico);
   • how in 5th grade I was oversaturated with vacuous assignments

I feel better now.

shall i compare thee to a ...

My brother once told me I looked like "The Scream". My first college roommate once told me that my longness reminded her of "something by El Greco", like "Madonna of the Long Neck".
   Yesterday Bjorn told me I look like "that painting", the Botticelli Venus.
   Does this mean I'm aging well? Does it mean I was standing on an improbably large shell? It can't be that my hair is a different color, because it was wrapped up in a yellow towel turban at the time.

carefree

I sold my car! I am car-free!!
   This is the good life. Living without driving!
   I met Bjorn in a parking garage; my vehicle was assigned the space next to his. Now we are a carless family. A good story.

For celebration, I give you "Sampo", the song in the opening credits of Tonari No Totoro.

あるこう あるこう わたしはげんき
あるくの だいすき どんどんいこう

Here's my translation: 'Walk, walk. I am healthy. I love walking! "don-don" goes the sound.'

Let the Thanks Begin

~ Three Thanks ~

I'm grateful for my future-oriented, generous in-laws cutting me a plump check for my Roth IRA. It turns out that they every year fill the retirement funds of their children and their children's spouses. This is "putting your money where your mouth is" if there ever was such a thing.

I am grateful that, through Amazon, I have been connected with someone who wants to own Roscivs' complete set of the Hikaru No Go manga in Japanese. I've felt it was being wasted. I love Hikaru but can't read Japanese. I want it to go to someone who wants it.
   I suppose that this person could be collecting manga to line the floors of cages of sad birds whose wings he's clipped, but I am happy to have this opportunity to tell myself the story that these are going to a home that wants them.

I am grateful for the red blanket on my bed.