Coming up: She certainly can't can-can in this nasty humidity! The Pacific Northwest goes rogue and steals Midwestern summer. The world seethes, while the town sears. Will our (W)rights endure the blaze and boil? Will Andrews superlative sweating capacity set him up for record-breaking heat-wave's record breaking biking finishes?? The slaughter of the beets haunts calescent kitchens, as bubbles toils and troubles brim up in the cooker down the counter... Will borscht beet back the blurg? Hearing the plaintiff sobs of simmering souls, air conditining races to the home. But can it arrive in time?? Will date night survive intact with all those power tools needed??
Break out your mini-fans, and load up on ice, to plumb the sun's surface for answers...
Vive La Weekend! A Tres Awesome Bastille Day Weekend Tally
Tour de France Stages consumed: 2
Real bike races endured: 1. A mountain bike "pedal" for Andrew. Witnessed by Adella. Suffered by Andrew.
Total medals received: 1. Third place for Andrew! Although Adella awarded herself a pit-stained jaune for walking out and watching!
Total souvenir hats won in a game of chance: 1.
Total hats now sitting on the dining corner table: Only 3 so far... but there are a few more upstairs and on the kitchen counter just waiting to come join.
Beets chopped: 5-6. They were on sale. Naturally I had to try my first hand at borscht. Slow cooker, vegan borscht because... because.
Number of beets bounding over the sink and straight out of the kitchen, before splattering and sliming a veritable crime scene behind it upon attempts to peel: 1.5. The others only leapt headfirst against the sink and suffered concussions that otherwise quieted them down.
Sources of additional splatter: Murdered blueberries and chia seed under the whir of the immersion blender. Blueberries were on sale, so clearly they also had to be purchased and used. Chia freezer jam seemed necessary. As did doubling the recipes and standing near the mixing bowl in a (no longer) white shirt. Borscht in mid-cook during the inevitable immersion blender extravaganza. Mixing tomato, beet and the orange pop of carrots and yams does wonders for your culinary blood splatter.
Carrots Consumed: Roughly a pound in between cutting up stick for lunches, chopping for the borscht, and other prep cookery. Similar numbers for peppers, kale, and garlic.
Actual Borscht Consumed: Several spoonfuls, but no measurable quantity. After a check of the surrounding ambient temperatures, borscht was declared "a soup to serve chilled" and postponed for service at a later date. There is now about one third of the fridge dedicated to magenta mush.
New glass storage jars created: 2. From a jar of thoroughly antediluvian clotted tahini. And a jar of bean dip.
Number of glass storage jars freed up: 4. Two jars of broth that went into the borscht. One jar of lentils that was plopped into some makeshift aged tahini lentil unhummus spread. A miscalculation about the amount of lentils has lent this a thoroughly runny consistency, but it still has a lemony tahini cumminy goodness going for it.
Number of glass storage jars immediately repurposed and used up: 8. Two for extra borscht, three for blueberry chia jam, one to ice water for subsequent cooling consumption (inevitably forgotten), one for the lentil hummus, one for more onions, and another one for chopped veggies.
Inches of freezer space still available for use: 0.024. Give or take.
Number of kitchen devices plugged in and out of various kitchen outlets: 4. A coffee maker, a spice grinder, and a highly zealous foreign toaster, of course. Plus a food processor for ancient lentil hummus juice; a slow cooker for Adella's Bloody CSI Beet Borscht; and an immersion blender for several pounds of blueberry chia jam.
Slices of toast burnt beyond recognition: 3. Since we were watching the Tour at my mom's, I had been carting along breakfast fixin's and doing the short order schtick mid-Tour. Apparently my mom's toaster takes a little more finessing after becoming accustomed to mine. Or maybe I was just having a very British day.
Number of Eggs lost to mysterious sticky adhesion to carton: 3. In two cartons. Requiring me to extract all eggs that would be extracted, and take the stuck eggs out to the food recycling, during which time one half-cracked one went full on Humpty Dumpty and began oozing viscosity out the side of the carton.
Number of boxer shorts desperately removed while technically still on the front porch, despite decency laws (and thank god the door hadn't locked behind me after I realized my indecency): One pair. The runny egg thing took me by surprise.
Degrees over the "norm" that the temperature has been this last week: 500 bajillion (Fahrenheit). We get heatwaves at least once a summer, so this isn't new. But it's still not great in either my office, outside, or in our oven of a home. Actually, the way our house is facing, it manages the heat spectacularly well in the morning, but more than makes up for that once the sun starts to set. My office just pretty much starts as a bog and stays that way. At least this year, there's a/c nearby. I've proposed moving my stuff into my mom's office and shutting the door to foster the cold for the rest of the summer.
Number of definitely air conditioned restaurants located: 4. Never a guarantee in the Pacific Northwest. I really think climate control matters should be addressed on yelp.
Number of air conditioned restaurants successfully frequented: Between 2 and 3. We tried Round Table first on Friday night, but were driven away by pullulating parties of the soft ball and little league hordes variety. We tried Cascade Pizza on Sunday, which allowed us to be seated but which seemed to have lost all pretense at effective air conditioning.
Number (in glasses) of ice cubes slowly melted over Adella's exposed skin as an a/c substitute: 2-3.
Number of orders cocked up by the cook at our second choice, On Rice, on Friday: 2. Well, technically 1, but maybe 3. My meal was just kind of overcooked and sad looking (and had some items that don't actually come on "steamed veggies" mixed in. My mom's got double points though for being an Emperor's Cashew with Fresh Tofu and No Fish Sauce that (1) came with deep fried tofu after the waitress specifically asked about preferences, given the cross contamination issues of frying, (2) came without cashews. We did not inquire about the fish sauce or the relative approval of the Emperor. Sometimes one just doesn't want to know.
Collective number of hours spent driving a box truck: 3.5 community hours racked up by Andrew in fearsome Friday traffic. "Work joy ride"... we shall say no more.
Total Number of cold showers taken to mediate the heat: More than a tween boy watching a youtube Miley Cyrus Uncensored marathon.
Total number of grocery store freezer aisles frequented: 4. Sometimes they're just excellent places to hang out. I may go on about how I used to live in Massachusetts without a/c and the weather we have now is still shy of that, so I/the-rest-of-my-kind should stop whining. But, I admit that I spent most of my working hours in either a produce cooler, a freezer, or other environments far beyond chill. Which brings flashbacks of the eternal fogging of my lenses as I stepped between the outside trash areas and the various coolers. Very nostalgic, my maunders through the frozen foods.
Number of creepy legal ads found in the NW Bar News: 2-3. Most of them are photos of people who rigorously defend child abuse and molestation charges featuring photos of lawyers who look like perps, themselves, but every once in a while there's just a baby doll with a blown out head advertising product liability matters. Gotta say it's striking.
Number of air conditioning units purchased: 1. After a pretty roiling Friday and even hotter Saturday conditions, the (W)rights gave in. As environmentally/fiscally conservative (e.g. miserly) as "we" are, there just wasn't any more room for choice about it. Evaporative coolers had a good run for our money, but the relative humidity of our recent heat, as well as cautions about ill impacts on asthmatics (potential for fostering Legionnaire's disease, which sounds bad based on my experience of it on House, M.D.) convinced us we needed to go a bit more nuclear in our options menu.
Number of days before said A/C Unit is received: 2-3. The plus of online shopping is that wary folks like me and Mr. (W)right actually buy things instead of continuing to cunctate past relevancy. The downside... it's friggin' hot and we're still struggling with a few fans and a lot of self-made "evaporative cooling" exudations. Andrew is fortunately an efficient sweater. I've been making do with the aforementioned showers and in between visits to the kitchen sink to rewet my sopping hair.
Number of times I have proposed skipping work today and finding the nearest walk-in freezer: Too many to count. I wonder if Fred Meyer's is hiring stockers these days...
Degree to which I wish you all a merry Monday: At least the nth degree.
Stay cool, darlings. Unless you're one of them people in the Midwest with your summer "Polar Vortex: Solstice Redux", in which case I want my weather back!!!!
Viva La Borscht Gelato! The Collaborative Empire Strikes Back Your Monthly Snippets of WCP Meeting Minutes
Le Quatorze Juillet (7/14/14), in the Juvenile Court Administration Conference Room (Behind the locked doors of Suite 501, in the room with all the peppy positive “I will not punch my friends in the face” posters), Whatcom County Courthouse 311 Grand Avenue.
From 12:00 p.m. Collaborative Time to Whenever it was finally determined that sitting in a poorly ventilated room in the middle of what we bog-creature-Northwesterners determine as an intolerable heat wave was just not the ideal July activity when there was ice cream in which to bury one’s face/head/feet/whatever just down the street… and/or work to do in an air conditioned office.
...
Eternally damned to stagger through the labyrinth of nesting courthouse rooms in her own personal reenactment of Kafka’s The Meeting : S. A. who has now undergone the first hazing rituals of new membership: finding our room! Unaware, as she may be, that (1) Collaborative Time is discounted by at least 5-10 minutes, so even if she'd found the right room, nobody would have been there and it probably would have looked like the wrong room anyways (2) the entry to the conference room automatically locks at non-Collaborative Noon, thus often necessitating some additional 12:06 (or 11:55 a.m. Collaborative Time) shuffling about to get into the actual room, (3) Sargeant Pepper and his Lonely Heart’s Club Band of Hendersons were lurking in the wings humming ragas and dreaming of Cambodia, (4) The Whatcom County Courthouse was built over an ancient racoon burial ground, and strange things happen in these room...
Special guest-star: Raspberry the giant stuffed tiger. While taciturn, he brought an air of wisdom from his perch in the far corner chair.
Additional special guest toy: Adella’s handheld “air conditioner”, a thrifty pink fan/sponge device attached to her computer and capable of creating untold depths of additional humidity if properly used. Not sufficient to banish her heat sensitivity altogether, but certainly a soothing bit of white noise for the duration of her stay at the meeting.
...
In the beginning of the Kira and Adella’s Collaborative Empire… It was 12:10 Non-Collaborative time and thus just a little early to start in Collaborative Time, but we forged ahead anyways. President Patrick unfurled the mighty agenda… or board meeting minutes... or recipe for vegan borscht (which - according to somebody’s husband - is too weird to finish because it’s “sweet like ice cream, and cold like ice cream, but is NOT! ICE! CREAM!”, not that Mallards wouldn't try a beet, tomato, and kale ice cream sorbet just for kicks). Whatever Patrick had, it was more paper than anyone else had, at least. A few attorneys had the actual agenda up on their cell phones, but there wasn’t too much to address and Adella (or was it Kira? These women board members all look alike to me!) had the couple of issues emblazoned in her cerebral cortex anyhow.
And thus the meeting commenced with only a few more minutes of fanfare and dancing elephants.
1. Adella - Kira - Kira - Adella … Which Empress is which??
Adella is not nine month’s pregnant. She’s pretty sure of this. If if she is, there’s gonna be a pretty scathing review on amazon of certain testing products, and a lawsuit to cover the costs of Prince Florimund’s (her imaginary child-surrogate sphynx cat’s) intensive family therapy. She’s fairly certain that she is also not married to Roy, seeing as she just celebrated a wedding anniversary with some other dude in bike shorts who doesn't like beet ice cream. She doesn't think she’s a polygamist, but has been wrong before. (For instance: once upon a time, she thought she didn't like cilantro, and now she noshes it straight with bovine grazing mode set to devour). Her mental health experience is also fairly limited to obsessive omphaloskepsis, and armchair diagnoses of friends with various Jungian metaphors having something to do with the crucifixion, the shadow self, and the zodiac as represented in medieval alchemy.
Kira is nine months pregnant with the collaborative progeny of WCP glory. Being the president elect and once having served a turn at the ol’ notebook, she has little to no designs on the secretarial position. Her soul is far too pure and intact to ever pass the final testing stages of the Washington State Bar admittance application process. And given her statements about "Targeting Lawyers" made in the July 2014 meeting, she may, in fact, be the dreaded Attorney Slayer of legend. I believe she is married to Roy. If not, then Roy’s wife is gonna be super jealous, because I've seen them canoodling and it is scandalous!
The other members of the board include M, R, and P, who are also not (to my knowledge) pregnant at all.
This all sorted out, onto the agenda for the day…
Marketing
After the photo quagmire of 2012, our group has been committing $75 dollars a month to run said totally outdated member photo in the “Whatcom Bar Newsletter”. The newsletter is an online rag for local attorneys that is emailed out on a monthly basis.
The group discussed and affirmed that being known in the legal community is an important element of building Collaborative Law. Some get direct referrals, while others opine that just being seen in a cursory way allows this weird little thing we do to be normalized. Others of us just really like seeing our pictures in print and Facebook alone cannot sate our boundless narcissism.
The scads of members who also advertise in the bar news admit that they also have been thinking about dropping their ad, but are stymied by entropy. Perhaps this will start a revolution!
R. wanted to make certain that we would choose an alternative marketing focus, given that this is our sole remaining form of outreach. Given the dormancy (it’s not dead yet!... really… kinda… maybe) of the marketing committee, we will address alternative marketing ideas at the September meeting.
Initial Proposals for Alternative Forms of Advertising:
1. Cute pictures of kittens cuddling with a sloth instead of the old group photo. Possibly involving an upworthy video and/or a buzzfeed quiz.
2. A $200 for $500 worth of Collaborative Divorce Dealsavers and/or Special Divorce Punchcards for Repeat Clients
3. Collaborative Divorce Promotional Contest. Entrants will be tasked with making a youtube video about why they want to enter the collaborative process. One lucky winner will be given a free Financial Professional Upgrade in their collaborative dissolution.
4. Sky-writing and/or Sky-diving.
5. Collaborative Night at the Upfront. Group members will perform improvisational vignettes on Collaborative Dissolution scenarios with the help of a live studio audience.
6. Refer-a-friend points and family discounts.
7. A Collaborative Flash-Dance Mob and/or Marching Band.
8. Sandwich board dancers on every corner! Many of us have children. Let’s put them to work!
....
IV. Professional Development - Show and Tell, Book Reports, and Other Homework:
Back in the olden days of early collaboration (Pre-The-Wholly-Kiran-and-Adellan-Empire), members each volunteered to facilitate a Professional Development session (the last 45 minutes of the meeting). Previously a sign-up sheet had been circulated and members each signed up for a month.
Members with a given month can come with a specific problem or topic they've been struggling with. They can bring in role plays. Really, they can perform an interpretive dance about their experiences breaking through impasse (dressed, of course, as a butterfly to demonstrate the effective usage of the Imago method)
For Adella’s month, she’s thinking a field trip to Legoland, because there’s a lot one can learn about building up a team and creative problem solving from legos.
Naturally in September itself, we’ll just be asking each member to present a short video (with Go-Pro footage, preferably) and powerpoint summarizing What I Did On My Summer Vacation. Elaborations and 3-D glasses are acceptable add-ons. Please no in-room pyrotechnics, as there is currently a fire-watch and the room is - as before - not very well ventilated.
The Bride Wore Black Capris Can-can hotheads and return of the track widow.
Boy does my sacrum smart. Yesterday, I had quite the tour of my anatomy, between a massage session at two and pilates shortly thereafter. There were other lower-back-kicking-in-a-more-figurative-manner events to the day, but they aimed a bit beyond the tramp-stamp toosh area and left less of a tangible mark (more various stains on my psyche and spirit.
And then there was the all-thrashing heat. Dun dun duuuuun. Which turned out to be not that bad. It's all relative, after Sunday's record breaking (I guess Andrew wasn't the only one breaking records and going for medals on the Day of Our Dear Lord It's HOT), high-average respites of summer weather feel ... high-average. Not super pleasant necessarily when the internal thermostats mount 85 and the humidity condenses, but so much not that bad, that it's hard to complain while wafting on that little hint of a breeze beckoning through open windows. Last night, I even pulled up the blanket over my arms for a spell! This morning felt fresh enough that I was able to cover my arms while standing in front of the fan without broiling.
My massage was quite pleasant. The massage assassin informs me that he became bored with his rote style and was experimenting a bit more. It seemed to mean less pain and more pressure points. Hence the sacred sacrum reshuffling, I believe. He was also uncharacteristically chatty. In less of a hairstylist "so how's your day going" kind of way than sometimes.
We started talking about a snafu with one of my dad's appointments and somehow this evolved into side-by-side comparisons of male dance teachers and male masseurs, his aspirations, and the frustrations of working in a semi-corporate franchise that worries about liability. Given how high profile Massage Envy is, they take no chances with any sort of allegation, and have pretty stringent policies to protect themselves from the potential notoriety that comes from a client calling out inappropriate touching.
It's funny how contextualized intimate touch is. I had always wondered at how fastidiously "modest" Nick's process was, given that he really does give off the same workmanlike vibe that I'd expect of anyone who palps flesh all day. As somebody who has a lifetime of physical instruction with that twist of feigned sexuality that suffuses a certain level of dance performance ("no," said while grabbing the hips and shifting the entire angle of the pelvis, "you want to be sitting on my leg with your other thigh wrapped around my neck. Now stare directly into my eyes and stroke my chest... to the beat!")
I'm fairly immodest. Or at least unconcerned about modesty when context negates the relevancy. If my sheet were to fly off mid-massage, I really don't think I'd care, and if - gasp - the sheet barrier were breached to get at an ornery knot, bring it on. But in other contexts, even being stroked on the shoulder would feel concupiscent. I suppose it comes down to a duality of consent and intent. In a lot of ways, I felt like having a conversation with my masseur was a far more intimate act than all the physical contact. I guess because the former was an intentional act of connection, while the other was a service that required certain connections by contract.
But enough about my mid-afternoon (asexual) grope. Andrew, feeling the heady victory of bodacious bike bronze, was back out to the track yesterday evening. The dissolute sot! No, naturally, he was thoroughly intoxicated by chain-lube and exudations alone: Monday night is track night at Marymoore Velodrome and he's back in the ovoid for more punishment. Usually, I take advantage of my single-lady-evenings by staying at home and going wild with chopping and crosswords. Yesterday, though, it was still a bit stuffy indoors. So I went back out to La Table Rond, where the a/c was minimal but sufficient with a large glass of ice.
Andrew, I'm pleased to report, survived his one-man breakaway kamikaze stunt and was thoroughly rousable for the morning's breakfast. As always, he gets up earlier and more easily on less sleep, so he was down before the final sizzle of the eggs died down.
Today is another warm day, forecast to exceed yesterday's almost-niceness. I'll be sitting atop the a/c unit in mom-boss' office when I can, and only swapping out the workout togs before my volunteer shift at the WCP. Amazing how much more motivated I am to be "at work" on these high weather days... that might change once our a/c arrives. Maybe. Now, can it motivate my to actually perform work? Quite the puzzler...
Gator on a Hot Tin Bed And other tales of untapped climate control
We have an air conditioning unit! In theory. At the moment, what we really have are several beautiful modern art installations in our bedroom. There's "CLIMES," the sleek sculptural comment on the artificiality of modern life. It's sitting by our window in a state of latent climate control. There's "INSIDE THE BOX" which is, of course, a subversive comment on modern business practices and which otherwise resembles a huge box with plenty of packaging. This little masterpiece is perched just in front of the room's egress (part of the very deep comment on modern business, the blocking of easy entrance and exit... we're thoughtful artists that way). There are a few other complementary installations strewn about the bedroom, but they haven't been fully developed.
Because... gosh darnit, heat or high water, nobody (and no a/c unit) puts date night in a corner. And yesterday was date night. After trying to balance certain basic needs against the investment required to turn art into function, we opted for the "deal with it later and Adella will take half an ibuprofen pm to clear up that heat related headache/insomnia issue" approach. Which I support. When we got it into the bedroom, Andrew got that glint in his eye. Oh you know the one... no, not that one... the project glint. As soon as he went downstairs for the scissors, I thought (miring in incalescent torpor all day can lilt one towards the half-empty glass of milk having spilt all over the kitchen table) he was lost to the evening. Fortunately, my pessimistic prognostications were incorrect, and he postponed further inquiry upon realizing that the install would still require some minor sawing and power tooling.
Perhaps we'll get to it this evening. Or maybe by the weekend, which is around the time that we've been promised a full scale return of pacific northwest weather (rain! glorious rain!!) Isn't that always the way? But we will certainly have occasion to use it regardless. No fears about that. At our next gallery opening if nowhere else.
For this morning, I'm back in workout togs and contemplating pilates. Maybe this time I'll actually be ready to leave and everything by the time the hour arrives. But then again, I'm watching the little Tour de France live-feed, and time sometimes slips away a bit between hitting refresh. Oh how I long for the weekend and a chance to see liveish cyclists! Almost there.
Just at the tip of the ol' toes.
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