Seizure Salad

I still love you, pork

I'm sick of the swine flu, and I don't even have it.

I'm not on Twitter, but apparently Tweets about swine flu have reached something like 10,000 per hour. Crazy. Remember how SARS-hysteria shut Toronto down completely, and just about single-handedly ruined our tourist industry? The film production sector has still not recovered.

Joke: Will there be an outbreak of mutated swine/avian flu?  When pigs fly.

Ah ha hah...but seriously folks, who the fuck knows.  It's either the major worldwide pandemic we've been waiting for, or more premature hysteria, tomato tomahto. I'm feeling sorry for the pig farmers who are apparently the victims of the worst assumption of all, that you can get swine flu from eating pork.

blow at high dough

I have been eating very well and with an eye towards sensible portion sizes for a few months now. And I have felt like patting myself on the back for it, oh yes.

And then, pee em ess struck yesterday. I must say - I have resisted the major temptations, but I have spent the WHOLE day today looking at fattening bread recipes online. The. Whole. Day.

Just look at this. Jesus wept. All I want is white bread and cheese, and crispy pork fat.

I did console myself by baking some fairly healthy bread though. Clicky McBiggen:

I have baked many, many loaves of ordinary yeast breads, but I still have not gotten the hang of the artisanal loaves, generally made using a pre-ferment called a poolish or biga. Much less yeast is used, and a portion of the flour and all of the liquid are mixed ahead of time, and allowed to stand and rest anywhere from a few hours, to days in the fridge. I've tried a few times and ended up with very dense loaves indeed. These look promising, still too hot to cut into at the moment. I adapted these from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible, Italian Olive Oil bread recipe. I used "white whole wheat flour" because I wanted to try it out, we'll see. The only thing wrong with this recipe (today anyway) is that it doesn't have gruyere, creme fraiche and lardons of bacon in the middle. I got a hardon for lardons.

Speaking of hardons...how was your valentine's day? Really, it's valentine's week now - isn't it? The stores kind of promote this whole valentine's season thing, more cash to rake in I suppose. As a single person, you might think that I disdain valentine's day, but I don't. I do think it's a kind of a silly, Hallmark holiday but I don't feel particularly negative about it. I like cinnamon hearts as much as the next guy. This year did give me occasion to pause and think though, because it was an extra special kind of anniversary for me. I happened to, ahem, join the carnal knowledge club for the first time on valentine's day exactly 20 years ago. Such an auspicious holiday coinciding with the once-in-a-lifetime event pretty much guarantees that you'll always remember when it happened.

So once I realized that it was such an interesting anniversary I got to thinking about my romantic "tragectory". That long ago relationship wasn't my first one but it was very formative. Although I was exiting my teen years, I was emotionally very young and I really sold myself out for someone that kind of blithely took advantage of me - he was also substantially older than me. I really, really put this person on a pedestal in a way that made everything he did not only OK, but kind of superhuman. My mother had just died a few years previous, and I was still in shock and in a bad family situation. I think I really transferred a lot of feelings of helplessness, loss and lack of control onto this person and he was a bad choice for it. I wrapped up all of my power with a nice little bow and handed it right over to him.

Anyway, I wonder sometimes how much of my relationship patterns have been informed by this early relationship? Was it extraordinarily influential because of the intensity, and the confluence of other things going on in my life at the time? Do most people get set on a certain kind of sexual/romantic track that they stay on forever because of their early sexual experiences? I guess it depends what those experiences were like.

Anyway, 20 years on I feel as though I have moved so far from the person I was then as to be unrecognizable to myself, and yet remain maddeningly plagued by many of the same issues that were born out of that relationship. Go figure. I remain hopelessly stumped.

random things #42

The ol' band is getting ready to release our little e.p. Gosh, what a lot of work. Holy fuck. But really fun all of the way through, and very satisfying. We just started that blog, so not much there yet but when we have something to play for y'all it will be up there. Some early mixes up on the myspace.

I'm itching to play live. We've had a few one-off kind of shows lately - playing for kids at a kid-friendly event, and playing some Clash covers at a tribute night. I kinda want to rock pretty hard on our own stuff again.

Will people like it? Is it lame? Will the production and mastering sound really good in the end? Will more than 30 people ever hear it? These are my questions. Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, I'm just having the most un-cool non indie rock girl music hard-on for Paul Simon lately. Slip Sliding Away is on right now, I just don't think anybody should bother writing any other songs. He done did it. Kodachrome too, holy jeez.

Hey - I've lost 15 pounds! This feels good. Really just walking the dog and saying no to high fat dairy products. I am a whore for cheese, this is known.  Also, even though I am not having sex I am thinking about having sex, which burns calories. S'rsly, I have way more energy throughout the day and I'm on a roll. I found a sweet deal near my workplace - an insurance company with a gym for their employees also offers cheap memberships to other workers in the immediate vicinity, so I joined. It's a rather low-key and non-snotty gym so I think it will be OK to hang out there. Insurance people tend not to be staggeringly egotistical gym rats. I think.

I want to be in the best shape of my life at 40. That's in 9 or so months. I figure if some people can grow a whole entire human being inside themselves in that amount of time, surely I can grow some cojones (figuratively - as in "some discipline") and a little more muscle.

On a funny note (what, you say - has the preceding part of the post not been charmingly funny? Oh, go on!) when I was coming home from work tonight this exchange happened between myself and some neighbours (on the condo board of directors):

Condo Board Neighbours (CBN): Hey, did you write an email a few weeks ago to the management company about the icicles? (large, terrible dripping icicles of doom on roof dripping water constantly in front of unit door = skating rink in front of unit door)

Me (ME): Yep.

CBN: Yeah, blankey blank guy at the management company said your note was really funny!

ME: Hunh?

CBN: Yeah, he said your note was really hilarious and they liked it.

ME: (Trying to think of what the fuck I wrote in my icicle email besides "hey, management company, please do something about these icicles that are dripping water in front of my door and will surely cause someone to fall) Uh, that's weird, I wasn't trying to be funny or anything.

CBN: He said you must be a good writer.

ME: Yep, I guess my real talent has to be humourous letters of complaint.

OK, that's the last time I link back to that cheeseburger song post...I promise.

Random thoughts about death...and other hijinx!

I've wanted to volunteer at Casey House , a hospice for people with AIDS, for a while now. I live in the neighbourhood, and Pixie and I pass by every day on our walks. Sometimes a few residents will be outside on the sidewalk having a smoke, and we'll stop and chat. Pixie is gentle and very friendly, and the perfect height for someone who is in a wheelchair and not very mobile. She can bring a smile to a person that really doesn't have much to smile about.

I have had this strong, strong feeling of wanting to work with the people that live there, in some capacity. I'm not quite sure where it's coming from, but I really feel called to it. Today I filled out a volunteer application and inquired about an upcoming volunteer orientation.

My father died 2 years ago, and my mother when I was 16. In neither case was I able to fully communicate with them about dying, for very different reasons. Although, in both cases (far far apart in years) I felt a strong spiritual desire to talk, and listen to them very deeply about their experience with death. I wanted to be with my father when he died, and I was. It was of course terribly hard and sad, but it was also incredibly joyful and overwhelmingly uplifting. And I'm not afraid now to be with people who are very, very sick.

Imagine knowing you're gravely ill and also being totally stigmatized. This is very real - I see people cross the street all the time rather than walk on the same side of the street as the people standing around in front of Casey House. I see it in the way that people often gravitate to the physical touch and comfort of petting Pixie.

I hope I get a chance to get involved there, I know there is a chance for me to grow somehow. Maybe they'll let Pixie be a therapy dog?

Despite (in fact, because of) these thoughts about death, I am happy! Sounds freaky maybe, but as I get more mid-lifey ** I think more about the eventual decay and decline, and I feel a desire to look at it straight on, and kind of make a friend of ol' Death. It's hard to put into words right now, but my thoughts and feelings on the matter are changing, and my fear is melting away into something else. The more I embrace it, the more capacity for joy I seem to have.

** I have a major pet peeve going on right now with the gross misuse of the term "mid-life", especially in the burgeoning "Zoomer" media. You know, Zoomers - those Boomers with Zip! So many lifestyle articles and news items seem to be applying the term "mid-life" to people in their 50s and older. Unless you think you're going to live to be over a hundred, 57 ain't mid-life you stupid Zoomers.

More fun with recent keyword searches

People have finally stopped arriving here by googling "gigantic nipples", I'm a little melancholy about that. Pixie hasn't had gigantic nipples for a while, she had recently had a litter when I got her, and as a breeding dog, many before that. Now they're just huge, not gigantic.

Gigantic nipples aside, some recent thought provoking keyword searches:

This one is actually kind of heart wrenching: "why do I have thoughts of breaking up". I assume that person means ending a relationship, but theoretically they could mean breaking up as in "she's breaking up Cap'n, the ship can't take the strain! We need more dilithium crystals!" If that's the case, godspeed yon stranger.

I totally sympathize with "social interaction exhausts me" and "mixed feelings about moving to the USA". I am really intrigued when people just type a question or statement into a search engine. Sometimes I feel like doing that - today, for instance, it might have been "why the fuck is someone on my street constantly putting their dog's shit into a bag, but then throwing the bag on the ground".

Always, always the ceezer/seezur/siezer/seizure salad recipe inquiries. I'm linking to this one by Bob Blumer (actually called Seizure Salad) just because it looks really, really good. As I was thinking about this, I remembered that I was seduced once by a man who brought all of the ingredients and prep for an authentic caesar salad over to my house, including the well used, garlic-scented wooden salad bowl and a loaf of french bread for croutons. Wonder what happened to that guy.

"Dog behaviour/ humping and seizure". Wow, that's a drag. This one is just ever so vaguely creepy: "supermodels lying down".

Pixie says she doesn't care how people get here, she just wants them to look at a picture of her in her handsome winter coat and hood.

Reflective Meme - 2008

I've tagged myself via the Handbasket (wonderful blog).

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?

Spin yarn, own a dog.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions?

Basically...I had a vague resolution to connect more deeply with people (those I already knew, and new people) and I did accomplish that.

3. Did someone close to you give birth?

Yes - hooray! Lily Dustbin and two other friends. Lovely, happy healthy babies all.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

A qualified yes, because I hadn't been close to him for more than a decade. A musician that I played with for years but hadn't seen in a long time died just recently, Dale Marcel. It was shocking and sad to hear of his sudden death. The percussion band, The Fletcher Valve Drummers was a really formative and important experience for me, life-wise and musically. I wrote this post in 2007 where I talked a little bit about what it was like to be in that band. Sadly he is the second person from that musical group to die too young.

5. What countries did you visit?

The U.S. (NYC).

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

A job that I enjoy and where my skills are well used.

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Hm...getting more and more competent at spinning.

8. What was your biggest failure?

Feeling like I am still, after many many years, stuck in a job that I dislike intensely at times, with dysfunctional work relationships. The failure feeling comes from the knowledge that I have something to learn here in order to move on, and I'm obviously not getting it.

9. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Although my achilles tendon rupture was in 2007, 2008 was a year of continued struggle with the aftermath of this injury. My physiotherapist thinks I may have suffered nerve damage - my affected calf muscle has not re-developed at all. Back to the surgeon I go as soon as I can get an appointment.

10. What was the best thing you bought?

My beautiful Lendrum spinning wheel!

11. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My ex-boyfriend's, for the mature, classy and kind manner in which he engaged in breaking up with me, and his ongoing friendship. Every single one of my close friends at some point in 2008 either started a relationship, ended a relationship, expanded their family or endured hardship ... all of these events in their lives in some way showed the good stuff they're made of. I love them all and am immensely proud.

12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

A family member. I don't want to post details for fear of them ever stumbling on this blog. I will describe their behaviour as immature, passive aggressive, selfish and sad.

13. Where did most of your money go?

Housing.

14. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Spinning, and my continued journey of being a better musician.

15. What song will always remind you of 2008?

Hm, it's not a song from 2008, but Spiders/Kidsmoke from Wilco's A Ghost is Born was listened to pretty consistently this year.

16. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder?  Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? Gosh, I think maybe just a little thinner...? More thinnerness to come in 2009 I hope.

17. What do you wish you’d done more of?

No regrets, really.

18. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Same.

19. How did you spend Christmas?

With my small weird family.

20. Any one-night stands?

Nope.

21. What was your favorite TV program?

Dexter.

22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I’m not a hater. I do have a burning dislike for a few people...but no one new in 2008.

23. What was the best book you read?

Born Standing Up - Steve Martin’s memoirs.

24. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Myself! A close 2nd - getting deeply into the Clash.

25. What did you want and get?

A spinning wheel.

26. What did you want and not get?

A trip overseas.

27. Favorite film of this year?

I think I have only seen a few films released in 2008 (sad but true), Slumdog Millionaire would have to be the best of the lot. Notable films of any time period that I’ve seen this year - Coming Home, The Machinist, Kung Fu Hustle.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 39 in November, and I went bowling and drinking with friends.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?   

A robust sex life.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

Same as always - utilitarian.

31. What kept you sane?

I keep myself sane.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Have to say a split between Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

The ongoing hijacking of Canada by Stephen Harper.

34. Who do you miss?       

As always, my mother.

35. Who was the best new person you met?

Can’t pick a favorite - 2008 was especially rich in new friendships. I am very grateful.

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008

I developed somewhat of a motto in ‘08: “I like to deal with reality”. For me, it means that I am practicing living in the moment and engaging with people in as real a way as possible, while trying not to let my own projections, memories of the past or imaginings of the future get in the way. I’m not sure how well I’ve succeeded, but I keep trying.

Happy Sextilis

Sextilis was the name of the month we currently inhabit in the Julian calendar, before Caesar Augustus had to go and get all territorial about it.

Please take a moment to go and watch "Skywhales". Make sure to stick it through until the end, it's really haunting. I wish my 13 yr old self had seen that in 1983, maybe it was never televised in Canada - anyone out there remember seeing it on TV?

I was just starting to really read SF back then in the early 80s, discovering Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, OMNI magazine etc. I've been thinking about science fiction a lot lately - what attracted me to it as a teen, why I kind of walked away at a certain point (I blame my English Lit degree for killing my reading enthusiasm for about five years) and what I love about it now. I think there is a longer post in the works about this; I was quite saddened a few weeks ago to hear of Thomas Disch's suicide and it got me back into thinking about SF. I was also disappointed by an Ursula LeGuin short story collection called Searoad that I just read - it's a foray into fairly traditional, non SF territory for her and it really fell short for me. So, rumblings about that in my head these last few weeks, more to come soon.

I just can't believe it's August. If time goes by this fast at 38 I don't want to know what 78 feels like, that'll be totally redonkulous. I finally got a little time in at the beach in lovely Kincardine, ON, at a B&B right on the beach where you can rent a little 2-room cabin, just perfect for one person. I spent four days last week knitting, spinning, drinking beer, going for beach walks and just generally being alone and quiet. It was totally lovely. I have this very visceral reaction to being separated from the lake though, upon return...it's really depressing for a few days. I feel sort of genetically programmed to be near water, and yeah I know my current city of occupancy is in fact on a lake...but in Toronto, it's easy to forget that. Our lakeshore is not particularly accessible unless you live in one of the $2 million condos on the waterfront.

Is it crazy to fantasize of a house on a lake after retirement? Am I too young to think like this? I could keep a few sheep, have a couple of acres...just call me Ma Kettle.

Tomorrow it's baking bread, taking Pixie to the park and getting ready to enter the work fray again. May all of my Canadian friends have a pleasant and safe Simcoe Day - named so only in Toronto, after the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, John Simcoe. Simcoe apparently abolished slavery in Canada and named Yonge St. The rest of the country just calls this mysterious day the "August Civic Holiday".

Endlessly fascinating search terms

Perhaps it's still the new-car-smell thrill of having StatCounter, but I just get so tickled every time I see what kind of search terms people are plugging in to the ol' Googleplex to get here.

Coming up tops, STILL - "Gigantic Nipples". I really am sorry to disappoint you folks, they just belong to my dog. It's true though, they are gigantic - wayward puppies follow her around just trying to get some action.

The sheer number of people searching for "Seizure Salad" or "Ceasure Salad" or "Ceazur Salad" is I'm sure a testament to our broken education system, not proof of my popularity. Also good - "Making Faces with Salad".

Recently, others have apparently also been haunted by Manhattan Transfer - "Kool Kool Kitty Lyrics" is coming up a lot. Maybe it's an aural virus of some kind...I was almost over it, and then the boyfriend had to sing it to me one morning on the way to work. Cruel.

My favorite this week though has to be "REO Shitwagon" - I really thought I had the market cornered on that particular term.

Ten Inexplicable Things I Have Noticed Lately

1.    Just when you feel secure in knowing that "You're The One That I Want" from Grease is a throwaway pop song, you discover it has the best bassline.

2.    If you leave your skin alone, it really does look better.

3.    When you're making bread, this rule applies: when you think the bread is kneaded enough, knead it some more. Then knead it twice as long as that. Then knead the everloving shit of of it. Then sit down for a few minutes, have a stiff drink, come back and knead the sweet christ out of it. And then it's not kneaded enough.

4.   Despite thinking to the contrary for decades, the end of terrestrial radio is seeming like a good thing right now.

5.   I have somehow become a Sylvester Stallone fan.

6.   I used to like most people and only dislike a few. Now... it's the other way around.

7.    The longest two weeks in the world (so far) are the ones where you are waiting for your new dog to arrive, and although the calendar says spring it's still winter outside.

8.    Despite my witty repartee, I only have four blog readers. However, I can vouch for their kindness and intelligence so I believe they might count for hundreds of plebes each. Girls, I love you!

9.    You get attached to certain familiar routines as you get older, and they can surprise you. Example: Daniel left for a conference today and I thought he packed the electric nose hair trimmer. I WAS BESIDE MYSELF.

10.    I think seagulls like the crap weather best, and I secretly admire them.      

And now, a rant against the beauty industry

I used to produce and co-host a talk show at a community radio station where I worked in the 90s. It was a roundtable discussion format, where groups of women were brought together to discuss/debate an issue at length (this was way before The View, by the way). It was a lot of fun to do but not very sustainable on volunteer effort, so it didn’t last long. One episode in particular stands out in my mind, where we talked about the beauty industry and the politics of beauty product commerce. We asked the women on the panel to add up the dollar value of the cosmetics and beauty products in their home, and the dollar value of all of the food.

Guess which category came out on top? Right. Every one of us had hundreds of dollars worth of makeup, lotions, potions, shampoo, fragrances…even the broke students. Most of us were somewhat under-nourished in the pantry department. It didn’t help that the cosmetics were so expensive compared to the food.

In recent years I have really taken issue with the cosmetics and beauty industry, and I’ll tell you how it started. I have been told all of my life (since teenage-hood anyway) that OIL IS THE ENEMY of my skin. Being acne prone and as oily as a duck, I avoided any product with oil in it like the plague for about 25 years. Non-comedeogenic was my middle name. I bought products to clarify, mattify, purify and tonify my skin. I bought everything from low end drugstore to super high end boutique brands. I must have spent literally thousands over the years, as most women have. My acne only got worse as I got older, and at about age 35 it was as bad as it had ever been.

I started researching the science behind homemade skin care products, mostly for fun (just call me the Alton Brown of kitchen skincare) and kept bumping into assertions by hobbyists, chemists working in the cosmetics industy and others that oil was in fact NOT the enemy, but the best damned thing you could put on your face, period. I was intrigued. Could it be this simple?

About 3 years ago I ordered a basic water-soluble oil cleanser and a bottle of pure jojoba oil online. As I slathered my face that first time with THE ENEMY I literally shuddered – I was sure that I was going to wake up in the morning with the combination of a bad breakout and the Exxon Valdez spill on my face. It was not so. I kept at it.

I stopped using any other facial cleanser, moisturizer or any other products. I really wanted to see if the pro-oil people were onto something or not. Those two products cost $30 and lasted me about a year and a half.

And holy crap, was I in for a surprise. For the first time since I was 12, my skin started looking really good. My psoriasis cleared up. My skin was actually glowy. My face also stayed rather matte looking, which seemed crazy since the only thing I put on it was oil. I still occasionally got a blemish but they were short lived and I never again got massive, painful scary zits on my jawline and chin like I used to….

Until I caved in about six months ago and bought some products again. Cuz I’m a girl, you know? I got lured in at the Clinique counter, and then I bought a moisturizer at the health food store, how bad could that be? It only had 5 ingredients! And Vitamin A is supposed to be really good for wrinkes, and acne, and I wanted a different cleanser for in the shower, because the oil cleanser has to be put on dry skin and sometimes I would forget and have to get out of the shower, and…

I broke out again. My flaky psoriasis came back. Etc. etc. etc. I thought maybe it was just the harshness of indoor winter heating.

So for 3 weeks now I’m back on the oil-only routine, and I have to say I’m right back to having awesome skin again. By my calculations my routine costs 6 cents a day, has no negative environmental impact, contains exactly zero harmful/carcinogenic ingredients, doesn’t support a beauty industry that harms girls and women with its impossible sterotypes and gives me the best skin I have ever had.

No wonder the beauty industry lies, if they told us the truth they wouldn’t sell a thing. Bastards.

For those of you who are interested, there is tons of info on the web, just google “oil cleansing method”. Different kinds of oils have different properties – I find that jojoba oil is the best for my skin, but coconut, olive, grapeseed, castor and others have properties good for different kinds of skin. My skin (and hair) worships and adores jojoba oil.

The oil cleanser I use is from a company called Laventine (and no, they haven’t paid me or given me any product for endorsing them, I’m just passing along a good thing). It's water-soluble, which means that it rinses right off your skin. I use a warm washcloth to rinse it off, which is all the exfoliation I seem to need. I have also just used regular oil to clean my face, using the same method. Your mother or grandmother's Pond's Cold Cream is much the same idea, as is (wait for it!!) Noxema. I'm old enough to remember it being used for acne prone skin - it's essentially whipped oil!

Anyway, that's my little personal FUCK YOU to the beauty industry. Although, I do admit I still give them way too much of my money for lipgloss...