How I Learned to Love My Juicer

1. Line the pulp bucket with a (grocery) bag
         Problems: Every part of this machine gets coated in vegetable and fruit pulp, which will dry into vegetable and fruit cement if you don't thoroughly clean it immediately. Also, the pulp bucket is a pain in the butt to get clean. Also, I like composting... but I don't really like traipsing outside in the dead of winter after every single time I juice.

         Solution: I line the pulp bucket with a grocery bag. After juicing, the not-yet-full-of-pulp bag-and-bucket go in the fridge. For me, the bucket fills up after making maybe 5 or 6 drinks (so a few days' worth). So that works out to 1 trip to the composter instead of 6.

2. Clean the entire juicer before drinking the juice
          As I noted before, every single part of the machine gets covered in goo. Coming back to clean it later will just feel like punishment to your future self, and you'll stop using the juicer altogether.

         It doesn't take that much longer to go on and wash up--from start to finish, I can take out everything, make my juice, and have it all cleaned up in 20 minutes. And I swear my juice tastes better when there aren't dirty juicer parts in my sink.

3. Start with apples, trust the apples
        If you get super excited your very first time and jump straight into making a quart of celery-carrot-spinach juice, you will hate yourself. The idea of liquid vegetables is great; the reality is less glamorous.

        Let's be real: Americans are used to very sweet drinks. So ease yourself into it. Start with just making apple juice. Love how wholesome it tastes. Pat yourself on the back for your healthful choices. For subsequent drinks, think in terms of using apples as your base and adding in some vegetables. Your palate will get used to the different flavor profile, and soon you'll find yourself enjoying a sweet-potato-spinach-cranberry-carrot nightcap like the crunchiest hippie out there.

Don't say things on facebook you wouldn't actually shout in the public square

One of my elderly, distant relatives (a Texan) just shared this gem on facebook:

ANYthing is better than a Kenyan Muslim and a jerk..."In God We Trust"! 

I can't even.

I mean, I was amused at the handful of Willfully Ignorant on my friends list who shared the "That Joe Biden is just rude." rallying cry. That was cute.

But really? Really?

When's the best season to prune a family tree?



Also, while I don't think the other presidential candidates appreciate being referred to as "things," can I request that the State of Texas offer this particular person a ballot where the only option is "Lamp"?
Please and thank you.

I'm a very rational person; All my mental processes are mathematical.

Men in military uniform + babies and/or small animals = I die.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Of course this one always wins out as my favorite, with or without a kitten:

Some kind of perfect storm

So I may have been inspired to discover a great new thing. Here are the contributing factors:

1. When Charles' job doesn't have him in a coal mine, it has him in a man-run (ie, never thoroughly cleaned) metalworking shop. He comes home in varying degrees of filthy 5 -7 days a week.

2. Removing said filth requires lots of soap and lots of scrubbing

3. Ergo, in our house, we go through soap/bodywash like it's going out of style. Seriously.

Edit: 3a. Coal dust is so infectious that even the process of removing it turns bars of soap downright gross after just one use.

This leads to the first piece of inspiration:
4. It's a whole lot more cost efficient to turn bar soap into body wash than buying pre-liquified shower soap.

(I used the above-linked recipe for general proportions).

So I nab a bottle of glycerin & a bar of Yardley Oatmeal & Almond and get to making my giant pot of soap-snot. Using a food processor to grind up your soap makes the whole process take just a few minutes. Yay!

5. I could have quit at this point, but now the oatey-almondey smell has been diluted away (something to do with that 10 cups of water), and my finished product smells... not-that-great.

6. I found in my cabinets part of a container of rolled oats that was Best Before August 2011 and an open bag of almonds Best Before August 2010.

Clearly we're not doing much oatmeal or almond consumption round here.

Cut to the chase:

Ground up almonds, ground up rolled oats, some steel-cut oats for texture (they don't really grind), and a splash of homemade vanilla extract turned kind-of-gross feeling Soap-Snot into Aesthetically Appealing, Almond-Oatmeal Exfoliating Body Wash.

I figure this gallon-ish of soap will last us a few minutes.

In the meantime, I need to figure out how I'll spice up the next round I make with a bar of Yardley English Lavender....

On The Name Issue

This page of articles is amazing.
I don't think I've ever identified more with someone else's personal account, let alone a group of people.

If you know my family, you know I come by it honestly.

So I'm engaged to be married. (Which is awesome)

At first, I thought that maybe I'm just a very private person, because I didn't feel the urge to run around telling everyone I saw.

Then I realized that I just can't abide dumbass questions. After hearing something truly moronic uttered, my ensuing inability to produce speech while my brain tries to process said extreme departure from rationality is a total buzzkill to my betrothed high.

The conversations (this has happened multiple times. seriously. I'm not kidding.) go exactly like this:

Me: (showing engagement ring on finger)
Dumbass: So does this mean you said yes??

What I'm tempted to say: Well, actually, I said no. I'm just wearing the ring because I'm part ferret and like stealing shiny things.

Response I actually produce:

The Tale of Little Buddy

A stranger came into our house.

We found this out,
and groused and groused.

I wouldn't be involved
with a "sticky" or a "snappy"
So we acted quite evolved
and got a humane trappy.
~~~

So at 4:30 this morning, love of my life Charles comes barrelling into our room & turning on all the lights to show me that after two nights of nibbles, our Hav-a-hart trap had successfully secured our unwanted visitor:

...And then he heads out for work, leaving me to go back to sleep with a very unhappy rodent trying to make its noisy escape in the next room.


Unfortunately, we've been having snow for a few days and it's currently below freezing outside. So neither Little Buddy nor I would be getting any immediate relief from each other.

But I'm not about to leave him in a metal box indefinitely. "Do unto others" and all that.
So, I empty out my craft bin:
and cover 1/3 of the bottom with potting soil (LB or one of his friends had been digging in my potted herbs, so this makes perfect sense, right?),
1/3 with shredded newspaper (yes, I tore up newspaper into little bits with my hands),
and the last 1/3 with flat newspaper.

I figure this at least ups the comfort factor from "Cold Bare Metal".

Now since I don't know how long it will be before I find a suitable, not frozen/flooded place to release him far enough away from here that he won't come back AND I have no intention of putting my hands even close to inside his halfway house once he's in there, I need to make sure he won't starve or dehydrate.

So lined up in little piles around the edge of the flat newspaper, Little Buddy got:

Plus, his own water dish:

Now, I would have said that the walls of his halfway house were high enough that he couldn't get out. But I was not aware that mice can Jump. And I don't mean cute little hippity-hops. I mean Olympic-level atmospheric body hurdling.

So I closed the lid in the non-locking way so that air would still flow, but considering his determination at flinging himself heavenward, I also opted for adding a metal drying rack and my financial records binder on top for absolute security. And then I draped the whole situation in towels with the fantasy of creating calming darkness.

I've only heard him chuck his body against his roof a few more times, and there have been some occasional munchy-crunchy noises, so I'm assuming he's found his temporary prison acceptable.

**********************

Edit: LB was successfully released later that afternoon in the forest by the lake at the public park about 2 miles away.

He of course spent the entire drive over chucking himself against the top of his box so that I had to drive with on hand resting on the lid.
Thankfully, he did not ironically break his neck before I could let him go free into the wild.

Happy Birthday, Dad

March 12, 1949 - October 9, 2010

On Aunty-Mama Lee

I'm not really sure how or when the "aunty-mama" thing got started with my Aunt Lee; the basic idea was that I was somehow really her genetic descendant.

Over the past few nights, both my Dad and his sister Lee have taken up permanent residence in my dreams.

Because everyone else in the world has a grasp of clarity and eloquence that I don't have right now, let's end with links to the words of my Aunts Meredith and Leslie, and a piece of choral music I shared on Tumblr.

For the Love of Lee

Lee

In Remembrance, by Jeffery Ames (W&L University Chorus 06-07)

Because driving to Raleigh this weekend is now kind of moot.

Listening to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band album "Songs of New Orleans" feels perfect right now.

Maybe it's the the trumpets and trombones that can sound so slow and mournful, but still keep moving, don't get so downtrodden that they stop.
Or the old man singing "Georgia on my mind" with a lifetime of sorrow and longing in his voice.
Or maybe my personal sense of wonder that I was sitting in Preservation Hall and walking around New Orleans not all that long before Katrina, and the knowledge of that devastation is still surreal, since I wasn't physically there to see it.
Or maybe that's just how I'm hearing it at the moment.

Body Barometer

You know that stereotype of older folks being able to tell when the weather's changing because of the state of their joints? Okay.

So last week, I got to deal with stones in my right kidney.
What it boils down to is: pain, emergency room, pain, dehydration, pain blood tests, pain, ct scan, pain, really good painkiller, let's never repeat that again please ever.
Even though one stone was 1mm in size (roughly as big as the head of a pin) and the other was too small for the radiologist to bother with measuring, they basically shredded the interior of my kidney & pee-tubing. At discharge, my super-awesome nurse Nichole warned me that even after the ordeal was over, I would still feel the soreness and ache from the damage.

Really, what I ended up with is a kind of 6th sense. Like Eliza Thornberry being able to talk with animals, I now have a direction line of communication with my insides. Namely, when I opted for a burger, coke, and fries for lunch today, the very clear message I got was "What in the holy crap have you put in me?!? Jeeeeezuusssssssss! ::anger anger rageragerage::".

Needless to say, I've been repentantly drinking plain water all afternoon.

Green Fever

So I'm glacially metamorphosing into something resembling an adult. The two latest indicators are:
1. My first ever contribution to the NPR/WVTF Spring Fund Drive.
2. I'm actually acting on my urge to garden and grow things.


Keep in mind, I've spent the past nine years living in dormitories and re-locating every few months, staying in any one location for about nine months max. I've literally and metaphorically not had enough time to put down any kind of roots.
But at least for this coming growing season, I'm staying completely put, and I have free ground access.

I already have my SFG planned out; I started sprouting seeds a week or two ago (severely premature, I know, but I figure spending $2 on seeds is better than adopting a puppy to fill my need to nurture. At least the seeds won't get me evicted); I'll probably be going to the hardware store to get lumber to build my garden bed this weekend.

All that aside, I'm really excited today. Why? Well, last week, I got one of these on awesome sale:

But then I discovered that it takes multiple years for a strawberry plant started from seed to start bearing fruit. Bummer.

It seemed like I would have to patiently wait (ew) until spring/possibly summer when the Wal-Mart and/or Lowe's garden centers would have pre-aged strawberry plants in stock.

But then I was driving by the Farm Bureau on my lunch break and saw a rack of little green things by their front door. I'll cut to the chase and say that I adopted 4 new babies today:


They'll have to hang out in the greenhouse (and by "greenhouse," I mean "my living room") until May, because we have had snowstorms as late as April and very early May. No, seriously. But today, I'm just super excited.

This sums up my feelings about every current issue I can think of- politically, socially, personally...

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

—	Harlan Ellison

Ennui

Living in the glorious settlement of Lexington, where everything but the movie theater closes at 5pm every day and there is not a damn thing happening on the weekends, life has descended into thorough and complete "eh".

After another week in the hospital, my dad is finally back at home.

In the past month, I have spent more time sitting in hospitals than is necessary for any one lifetime. Even as a perfectly healthy person, after a day or two in the hospital, I end up feeling exhausted, drained, and frustrated. And as Dad and I have learned from both UVA and CVMC, "Freedom is Always Two Hours Away".
Take today for example:

• Today has been the planned release day since last Friday.
• This morning, Dad was told he would be out around noon.
• He texted us this information, and there was much rejoicing--Leslie, her son Nick, and his girlfriend Amanda blitzed the house and yard--mowing the grass, cleaning Dad's bathroom, washing the dog, and generally straightening up the clutter-- while I zipped over to the hospital to help pack up and move out my father plus all his well-wishers' gifts and offerings. (How he can walk into the hospital with only the clothes on this back but walk out with three full tote bags, an overstuffed care package box, and a laptop is some kind of loaves-and-fishes type miracle to me)

I'm going to Tarantino this story and tell you now that we didn't pull out of the hospital parking lot until 6:58pm.

"What happened in the nearly 7 hours in between?" you ask.
"Not a damn thing" is the answer.

Just like at UVA a few weeks ago, we sat. And waited. And heard nothing.
Luckily, unlike the hospital in Charlottesville, the commute home from CVMC is only about 5 minutes, as opposed to 5 hours.
And just like at UVA, every time we talked to someone, they all basically said the same thing: Discharge is Imminent.

But I think I'm figuring out that the Stalled Circus has its own sort of science: Take whatever time period has been given to you, then triple it. This results in a far more accurate estimation of the minimum wait period ahead of you than anything that comes out of the mouth of someone being paid by the hospital.
Proof?
Today, we were given a final estimate of 20 minutes for everything to get wrapped up... and an hour later, Dad was actually getting wheeled to the elevator. At UVA, we were told 2 more hours, and it was 6 hours later that Dr. Pubescent finally stopped by to say that we were good to go.

Don't get me wrong--at either of these facilities I have not encountered a "bad" nurse in any sense whatsoever. Both staffs are fantastically good humoured and friendly and kind and skilled at their work and I absolutely appreciate what they have done for my dad.
But at the same time, there's something maladjusted about the institutions themselves.

I didn't mean to rant about hospitals.
However, if I end up one day with a kid who breaks every bone at one point or another and/or catches pneumonia repeatedly, I'll know that it has something to do with karma from this period in my life.
I would do well to learn from my father's seemingly endless patience in these situations.

So I've been inspired by my family. I realized tonight that over half of my father's sibling group keeps a blog in one form or another. And that got me to thinking.

Now, being myself an enlightened member of the modern generation, I of course have faithfully facebooked since 2005 (back in those elite-university days), livejournaled since 2001 (when acquiring an account was by invitation-only), and tweeted, tumblred, and foursquared since more-or-less this past fall. Each of these venues has their own merit and value as a form of entertainment and communication... but I'm finding myself in need of something else.

For me,
Facebook is for general life updates, photos, and long-lost connections.
Livejournal is for bitching, complaining, and finding answers to questions about food and green living in community forums.
Twitter is combination general update, information/news source, and re-tweeting wit.
Tumblr is art, politics, internet commentary, and enlightening resource.
... and there's a part of me that feels too incredibly guilty about injecting too much of my daily-life type information or thought-rambling or long-windedness into any of these accounts.

And I suppose it makes sense that in my new, post-college world that a new, post-college method of expression is appropriate, right? Maybe.


There's a lot for me to think about now. For the most part, I don't know what the hell I'm doing now that I've achieved that singular, all-important, middle-class American goal of the College Degree.
So my intention is to think. And write. And maybe figure out everything else as I go.