Weekend Update

My weekend started (sort-of) 12:15 am Friday morning, when the husband and I went to see The Dark Knight. Woo! Definitely worth the lack of sleep! I napped before and after the movie, and then went into work on Friday, where I mainlined coffee all day. The movie was dark and wonderful and creepy and exciting, and I'm so glad I went.

Saturday we went into the Big City to visit friends and eat sushi (yum!) then we got together back at home with friends to watch UFC. How I went from someone who hated sushi and wresting, to someone who will drive 1.5 hours to eat sushi and will spend 4 hours watching men pummel each other until they bleed/pass out is beyond me.

The very most exciting part of the weekend was yesterday when I spent the afternoon making cheese with my friend semicrunchymom.

We started with milk (and a couple of other things from the cheesemaking kit she bought):



And ended up with mozzarella:



Then we started out with milk again (see previous picture; it looked exactly the same), and ended up with ricotta:



It was very exciting to see the change from milk to curds and whey. It was one of those things that happens in moment, much like the moment when whipping cream turns into butter and butter milk. It was a lovely afternoon, and a fantastic reminder that cooking is really just math and chemistry.

Happy Dance

One of the best things I've seen in a very long time:
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Take a tissue, 'cause you'll cry while you're laughing. You might just get up and dance yourself.

Either way, it's truly joyful.

A woman in harmony with her spirit...

"A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense, and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself, and only herself." ~ Maya Angelou

This week at work our whole team - all 15 of us - have been face-to-face for the first time, ever. We have had people visiting from Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada), Irving (Texas, USA), Egham (England) and Singapore. It's been a pretty neat experience all around.

Yesterday morning we did an ice-breaker, a get-to-know-you kind of exercise in which we had to answer questions anonymously with one or two words and then guess who had filled out which form when the answers were read out loud. I described myself using the words that came to me first, not over-thinking it, and was the first one finished. When it came time to guess, I was consistently guessed for almost every submission, except for the ones using descriptors like "sporty" or "adventurous", and my own.

Finally, on the fourth time my sheet was read, and after 12 of the 15 profiles had been accurately guesses, they put me together with my submission.

I've been trying to figure out since whether I don't project myself the same way I see myself, or if in the 8 1/2 months I've been there, people haven't been paying much attention, or if it's some combination of the two.

This has caused me to really think about how I see myself, and how I think I project "me". I've come back to the quote at the top of this post. That may not be quite how I'm doing things right now, but it's certainly where I'm heading: to being me, and only me.

Father's Day Lunch

For a number of different reasons, I have been spending more time experimenting with food the past few months. Yesterday, I decided to take ideas from Angry Chicken, my Weight Watchers meeting and Noirbettie and throw them together in one meal. I was so excited by it that it wasn't until half way through lunch that I remembered to take a picture for the Today's Homemaker Flickr pool!

I roasted beets and russet potatoes in some olive oil with some garlic (this is the part from Angry Chicken). While that was going, I bbq'd some bacon wrapped steaks, and made a viniagrette out of 1/8 of a cup each of maple syrup (the real stuff), apple cider vinegar and olive oil, about 5 strawberries and a couple of slices of red onion (blended using a hand blender so that it was all frothy and pink). I tossed the viniagrette and roasted potatos and beets with more sliced strawberries, spinach and boston lettuce, then sliced the steaks and put them on top of the salad, and sprinked the whole thing with some sunflower seeds.

The bun on the side of my bowl came from the same local farm the lettuce, spinach and straberries came from, and the butter is the stuff I made using Noirbettie's post about making butter.

Yum!

Short List

Boo:

• Weather is making me cranky and icepick headache stabby
• Allergies are out of control and otc remedies are not cutting it
• Certain websites don't want to load at home now that husband put in funny router thing
• My iPod sounds like it's playing underwater.

Bleh.

Yay:

• We have air-conditioning at home, saving both people and animals from expiring in crazy, all-of-a-sudden-it's-August heat
• Husband has hit his more social time of the year which means that we're now spending time with friends together
• We're going on vacation in about six weeks to a cottage on a lake
• I got cast in Guelph Little Theatre's fall production of "Welcome Back To The 5 & dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean"!

Woohoo!

note from roo

i decided that today i will tell you all about what we do in the morning at our house1

sometimes i have to stand at the bottom of the stairs and cry because it has been forever since fred went to bed and no one has come to see me, but most mornings i am still sleepin when angela comes downstairs i am always happy to see her, and i do a little dance to tell her that she lets me go out the back door and then i get a cookie, but i don't always want to eat it right away because i know there are going to be better things than cookies in the kitchen soon

i always help while angela puts on her coffee and gets out her cereal, and i watch her eat verrrrry carefully to make sure that she doesnt forget to let me lick the bowl when she is done she and fred call this prewash i dont know what that means, but thats ok with me, cause i just like to lick dishes

after breakfast comes the really good part of the morning when angela makes her lunch for the day i help her get stuff out of the fridge then i stand on her feet under the counter just incase anything falls on the floor angela calls me hooverdog then and i dont know what that means either, but she says im good at keeping that part of the floor clean, at least so this is why this time is best, angela makes herself something that she puts lettuce on and she lets me have the crunchy bits thats good, but its not my favourite my very favourite is carrots111 if angela makes her lunch and doesn't give me a carrot i go woowooowooo to let her know that i am very unhappy

today was extra extra special, because there was one piece of cheese left over and angela said i was being soo good so she let me have it111111

after all that angela gets ready to go away sometimes i try to go with her, or not let her go, but she says she has to go , or she wont be able to pay for more carrots


anyway, i hope you are all having a good day
bye111

roo

You may call me "Mistress"

Two of my very dear friends will be marrying each other in about a year and a half. Last night at tea (yay, Tuesday) I was very honoured to be asked to be their Mistress of Ceremonies.

They're actually going to give me a microphone! Wooooohoooo!

(Just kidding, guys, you know I'll behave myself.)

So excited! *grin*

Little Things

Things I do:

• bring my coffee to work in my own cup
• bring my lunch packed in reusable tupperware, or re-used baggies
• pack my dishwasher as full as possible before running it
• use cloth or reusable bags for grocery shopping
• separate cardboard out for recycling
• hold off as long as I can get away with it before turning on air conditioning/furnace
• use biodegradable bags to pick up after the dog
• use some household and personal cleaners that are friendlier than others
• use some energy efficient light bulbs
• use as much recycled household paper products as possible
• eat locally grown or organic food
• I quit smoking last December, reducing the chemicals I'm putting into my body, into the air, and the butts that were being thrown away

Things I plan to start doing:

• keep replacing old lightbulbs with the energy efficent kind as they wear out
• keep replacing household/personal cleaners with friendlier options, and look into natural alternatives where possible (like vinegar as a glass cleaner)
• put up a note saying that I don't want junk mail/newspaper/flyers delivered to my mailbox
• start separating recycling beyong cardboard, and take it to the dump myself (our townhouse complex only has two dumpsters available; one for cardboard, one for everything else)
• find out if I can set up a composter in my back yard
• figure out a way to collect rainwater
• cut down on pre-packaged food, make an even bigger effort to eat local
• request a new fridge/stove/dishwasher from the landlords when we renew our lease so that we can get more energy efficient models
• take an extra bag with me to pick up garbage when I walk the dog

I'm sure there are more things that I could do, and likely a couple of things I'm already doing that I can't think of right now, but this is a pretty good starting point, I think.

I used to have a t-shirt that said "We don't inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our children." That was a good shirt.

Bye bye FB!

I've just gone and deactivated my Facebook account. I had a virus propagate from my account last weekend and it upset me enough that it soured the whole experience for me. I contacted one person that I want to keep in touch with and don't have any other way to contact, then deactivated the thing. I've been neglecting The Watcher's Diary lately anyway.

Tuesdays are my therapy

Usually on Tuesday evenings I get together with girlfriends and we have tea, and chat and sometimes do crafts, and sometimes do other stuff. There is always laughter, and sometimes there's some crying and hugging, and sometimes we have cake.

I firmly believe that it is my Tuesday nights that have gotten me through some of the crappiest parts of the last few years, and I'm just not the same when I miss out on them. That said, I won't be going tomorrow night.

Tomorrow I will be leaving work at lunchtime to drive into Toronto. I will be visiting with friends from my old job, then I will be attending the Yarn Harlot's latest book launch at night. There will be space for 500 knitters. I'm betting the space will be full to overflowing.

Next Tuesday I will get to tell my friends all about it, and although not one of them is a knitter, they will listen to my story and be happy for me that I am happy.

I love Tuesday.

Comedy Update

I heard from the ex-husband today.

His stand-up gig went wonderfully last night. The audience loved him, the host gave him extra time, the performer after him said that he was a hard act to follow, and a professional comedian that we once saw perform together was there, and complimented him on his set.

I'm so proud of him, and totally not surprised.

Since I got the update from him, I think that if he gets a chance to do this again, I may just go and see. :-)

Sometimes...

...you think you're done with something; that you've healed, that you've moved on. Then you hear a song, and you hear it, really, really hear it for the first time, even though you've sung it a bajillion times, and it sends you into a tailspin (apologies to Sarah McLachlan for only quoting some of the lyrics here; these are the ones that hit me hardest).

Through the years I've grown to love you
Though your commitment to most would offend
But I stuck by you holding on with my foolish pride
Waiting for you to give in...
You never really tried or so it seems
I've had more than myself to blame
I've had enough of trying everything
And this time it is the end...

In the terms of endearment
In the terms of the life that you love
In the terms of the years that pass you by
In the terms of the reasons why

There's no more coming back this way
The path is overgrown and strewn with thorns
They've torn the life-blood from your naked eyes
Cast aside to be forlorn...

Funny, how it seems that all I've tried to do
Seemed to make no difference to you at all...

Apologies have been made, as well as a tentative peace, and I was puzzled by the whole thing coming when it did, and wondered about the reasons, but I took it (as I always have) at face value, despite all past evidence that I am a naive fool, and then got on with things because while it was unexpected, it was no longer a huge thing in my daily life.

Now, this hit me out of nowhere, and made me marvel at the layers of the psyche. I've had a good cry, and a cup of tea, and I'm feeling level again, which is good. It's just a scar that I didn't expect to be laid open at 9 pm on a random Thursday.

Why my mother is awesome

I sent her this email:

"hello angela's mum, this is roo.

angela says that when people do things for you that make you happy, you should say thank you, so I wanted to say thank you to you and frank for sending the long red rope home with angela.

on monday when she came home from work, instead of letting me out in the back yard to bark at the kids like normal, she got out the long red rope. at first i thought we were going to play a pulling game and i tried to take the end and run around the kitchen with it, but angela got me calmed down and we went out the front door. we walked through the parking lot and down to the street and i was sooooo good even though i was very excited and i pulled a little, but since the long red rope is so strong angela was able to help me understand that pulling isn't a good choice, especially when there are small people around who get scared easily. we got to a light and had to wait, and i even sat down for angela, which is something neither of us could figure out how to do with that other silly little string thing. finally, we got to a field!

i got angela to take some pictures of me in the field after she was done falling over in the snow (i helped her get up, i am a good dog!) so you can see how happy i am now that i can go to the field.we walked back home, and i barked at another dog but didn't try to chase it even though it was trying to chase me and angela said that i was a good dog.when we got inside, i stood still for angela while she cleaned me off. playing in fields can be dirty! then i got a cookie, and defended my cookie from the cats, and ran around the kitchen and living room a lot and barked and jumped up and down. angela said that after a 45 minute walk like that i should have been tired but i was not, nope nope nope, so we played tug the rope with the proper rope toy and then i got a carrot while angela made her dinner. later on i did get a little sleepy, so i had nap on the couch. it was a good day, and angela says she is going to take me to the park tonight, where the snow might not be so deep and she might not fall over in it plus there is a garbage can there so she doesn't have to carry the poop bag in her pocket. yay!"

This is what my mom sent back:

"Hello Roo: Frank and I enjoyed your email and were so happy to see the pictures of you in the snow. We are glad to know that you are a good dog and look after Angela when she can't stand up. Sometimes it is harder for people because they only have 2 legs.

Love Angela's Mom"

It makes me so happy that get gets me. :-)

Oh, and here are the pictures from our Monday walk.

Yarn Barf

Last night I attempted to wind some yarn into cakes from skeins in order to start knitting Fred some socks. I don't own a swift, and I didn't have an extra pair of arms around, so I thought I'd rig something up using a chair and a vacuum cleaner.




It didn't work quite the way I'd hoped.

Plus, I had "help".

I got frustrated, and gave myself a headache, so I went to bed.

Tonight is my fourth last shift at Giant Bookstore, so it's going to have to wait until Friday for me to tackle it. Unless Zoe can fix it while I'm at work...

Lunch love

Today for lunch I have:
- tomato soup
- carrots
- yoghurt (raspberry-cranberry)
- a piece of Babybel light cheese
- a royal gala apple
- a red pepper and chipotle wrap that has light mayo, light marble cheese, Branston Pickle, romaine lettuce and low fat smoked ham in it

Yum! I am so happy it's lunch time.

To be a fly on the wall...

Facebook is a wonderful tool. I have been able to connect with people I thought gone from my life forever. I have been able to keep in touch with friends who are far away.

Today, I found out that my ex-husband is going to do stand-up comedy! He's got a night booked at Yuk Yuk's in Hamilton at the end of March. This is one of those things where I wish very, very badly that I could go and see, but it just wouldn't be the right thing to do in the end.

I left him, I gave him up, and rightly so. We were never really good friends, and should never have married in the first place. All of that means that I don't get to go swanning back in and get involved whenever I like - it's just not fair.

The thing is though, my favourite part of him, indeed what attracted me to him in the first place, was his sense of humour. A bunch of us would go out for drinks, and he would hold court telling his funny stories. In the 6 years we were together, I heard his standards so often that I could have told them myself...but I didn't, because no one could tell the stories better than he did.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall, because I'd love to be able to laugh at his stories again. I am so very proud of him (which may seem strange, given that we haven't spoken since 2004 and the last email he sent me was over a year ago now), and I hope that this goes well for him.

Now who wants to go be a spy for me? ;-)

Messy.

That's me: messy.

The past few months have been weird for me emotionally. I go from crying at my desk, at home, on the phone, heartbreaking unhappiness to being very happy and having a lot of fun, making jokes and being in a genuinely good mood, and back to being an emotional black hole again. The change can take place over a number of days or in a matter of hours.

I think a lot of it is winter, and snow. I'm just sooooo tired of the white. I'm craving green, and flowers and some blue sky. Some of it is working two jobs and my inability to say no to volunteer things (I don't mean the Heart and Stroke stuff, I mean the local production I wasn't going to be in and am now singing two songs and sewing three costumes for), and my general burning of my candle not just at both ends but straight up the middle as well. Some of it is my frustration with having even less time with my husband than I used to (working and rehearing on weekends is eating into the only time we have to spend together). There's money stress, still.

There are other things going on too. I am achy all the time; joints, muscles, back/head. I'm experiencing insomnia again like I was a while back, but I'm out of the sleep aids my former doctor prescribed. I'm comfort eating like crazy.

I stood in my friend's kitchen last night and cried because she's got a little shelf up with a few life-affirming kind of things on it; exactly the kind of thing I'd like to make for myself, but I just can't get motivated to put away my laundry, never mind pull together something like that.

I know I need to see a doctor, that there's something here beyond me just being tired, but there aren't any available in my city right now, and no-one at a walk-in clinic is going to help me.

I don't like myself when I'm like this, but when I don't like myself I don't think I deserve to be good to myself and do things that are good for me, and would in turn help me be the me I like. It's like a reverse catch-22. And it's messy.

Edited to add: Can you tell today isn't one of the good ones?

Giving back

One of the myriad reasons I wanted to get a job closer to home was so that I could make some time to do volunteer work, and become more involved in my community. Back in November when I was labouring under the delusion that I would be finished with job #2 in mid-January, I signed up to canvass for the Heart and Stroke Foundation in February, which is Heart Month here.

February arrived, and I still had the extra job, and then I got a sinus infection, and there was a lot of snow, and I am a master procrastinator.

Finally, last night, I went out to ask my neighbours for donations. I expected to be turned away, or told off. I didn't expect to gather $50 in donations from 15 houses, in less than an hour. Today I'll be adding my own donation, as well as one from a co-worker.

Next February, no matter what else is going on, I plan to make this a priority. The H&S Foundation is an excellent cause and it's important to me to help them out, but it also helps me out, because I feel good about giving back.

I'm not a big fan of reality television for a number of reasons. For one thing, I don't feel there is a whole lot of reality there. Even voting shows like the Idol franchises (which I admit to being a guilty pleasure) are stacked by websites that attempt to convince people to vote for the worst contestants in order to skew the results. Mostly, I don't like reality shows because I don't like watching people be mean to each other. I even had to give up on the Amazing Race because of the negativity of one family a couple of seasons back.

Starting on Sunday, Oprah Winfrey ('cause she doesn't already have enough going, my goodness!) will be hosting her own reality show: Oprah's Big Give. The premise of this show is that she will give the contestants some money and they have to turn it into more money, and then give it all away. The person who gives away the most money over the course of the show is the winner. I'm pretty sure that they're all winners, really, 'cause giving back does that to you. I'll be watching the show, and hoping that competitiveness doesn't overshadow the goodness.

And the wisdom to know the difference

I was privileged this weekend to support one of my friends on his first birthday. Saturday night we attended his AA meeting where he celebrated one year of sobriety. It's been a rough year for him, but he has succeeded, and we are so very, very proud of him!

It was much like meetings are portraying in the movies: a church basement, with plenty of coffee on hand and folks introducing themselves by saying "Hi, I'm _____ and I'm an alcoholic". Most people know the part of the Serenity Prayer that figures larely in the AA recovery program, but there was another part of the meeting that really spoke to me. It goes along with the "one day at a time" philosophy, but takes it a little further. The basic message is that you can't do anything about yesterday because it's already past, and tomorrow isn't here yet, so there's no point in worrying about that either. Today is the day that is important; today is where you can make a difference to yourself, to people around you, to the world at large. It's a good way of looking at things, and I'm going to try to add it to the stuff I'm working on.

In other news, I got a prescription for antibiotics on Friday, and my face is feeling better. Things are draining, which brings on a whole new level of ick, but I don't feel full of lava anymore, and I can think again which is nice.

My face hurts!

I think I may have a sinus something going on. The front of my head hurts on the inside and I feel all puffy. And my ears keep popping. Wah!

I got myself a neti pot a while ago, but have been too lazy to use it regularly. When I get home from second job after 11 at night and still have to herd animals before I can fall into bed to get up at 6:15 (although at least it's not 5:15 anymore!), pouring salt water through my head isn't high on my list of things to do.

I have a hard time doing things that I know are good for me. I don't eat as well as I should because I don't want to make the time to make the food. I don't get as much excercise as I should because the few evenings I have to myself, I'd really rather just knit and drink tea. I can't figure out if it's laziness, or if it's that I don't think I'm important enough, or if I'm just too bleeding tired.

There have been inroads. Quietly, with no fanfare or quit meters, I quit smoking on Nov. 25. I can tell that this time it's for good. There is a different quality to it this time, and also the smell of cigarette smoke is making me gag these days.

A friend introduced me to Yoga Booty Ballet, and I love it! A minumum of once a week I am getting a half hour of cardio excercise. I go over to her house right after work (after stopping to let out the dog and feed the cats at home) and she feeds me dinner then we jump around in her living room. I also bought the dvds for myself and jump around in my own living room on days when I don't have to go to second job after first job. I've also been keeping an eye on portion sizes when I eat and have lost a few pounds in the past couple of weeks.

But I'd still rather sit on my couch and knit, and drink tea.