Coming Up: Gorillas grapple with barracudas in the foggy twilight. Best laid pilates plans tremor in the winds of change, as YMCA billing processes inactivate accounts and annoy a hormonally-cocktailed member. Will logs and trees be hugged again? Will our warrior poses pullulate or peter out? Fatuous fiction traps our heroine in its anserine agony. Will she plummet through the looking glass into a funhouse of meta-mawkish-mumbo-jumbo seeking to subvert the Highsmithian highs into chick-lit lunacy? Will windows break when kindles fly across rooms? Kitchen plans laid waste and wastrel as the nutty norns intervene with fragile forks and harbor happenings. Will the hummus ere be saved? And runs raise rampant self-doubts and far-flung symbolic ponderances. Will Mr. (W)right ever ask "a simple question" again?
Charge up your e-readers, froth up your bile and pack some uncookies along to discover the final tally!
Friday Forms in Formidable Fog A final feat of a day to earn the weekend
There may well be gorillas afoot, what with all this mist dripping from every street lamp and traffic light (the only things that remain visible on a smazy morning)! I can't say that my ride to work stayed strictly on the roads, though I hope this is the case. I may well have barrelled through a few parks and office buildings along the way. I'm not sure when exactly I tip-toed into an Edgar Allan Poe novel, but it does seem appropriate an appropriate ambience for our torrid tumble into full fall! We will eventually get to the point of putting fans away, closing the windows, and possibly even turning the heat back on. Not yet, judging by the tendency thus far of these fogs to burn off into crisply crystalline days. But eventually.
I've been riding the orange barracuda bareback(upping the hormonal mojito ante by an additional "pill") for three days now. It may be that the dosage is starting to accumulate sufficient to warrant side effects. Or I could be nauseous due to some philosophical crisis of existentialism and every one could just be exceptionally irritating to the point of tiring me out! Always an option.
After finally renewing my commitment to that pilates class at the YMCA, I got a phone call yesterday informing me that they stopped taking checks this summer, my account has been "inactive" since that time, and they don't know what to do with the checks my bank has been sending them. This perplexed me a bit, since I was allowed to enter several times in October. Apparently month-to-month memberships must be auto-charged by a credit card on file now. I guess I don't really mind this. But the whole idea seemed obscene to me yesterday. And when I did sufficient math to discover that the "seasonal membership" (three months paid in a chunk without the autobilling requirement) was actually four dollars pricier than the month to month... well I'm currently not a member of the YMCA anymore. I'm sure I'll come around, but the timing (just starting to use my membership after two months of desuetude and occasionally commenting that if it weren't for this one class, I'd drop my membership...)
Fortunately, I was mostly a touch too sleepy to care much after the YMCA phone call (phone calls intrinsically annoy me, so that might have had as much to do with it as anything). And the ambivalence floated me through the rest of the day quite nicely. I even had another excellent spell of quiet contemplation while perfecting the previously crafted excel spreadsheet. Oh even further, I reached - brace yourself - data entry!! Which was just my speed!
And when I got home, I forewent any grand ambitions at making "cauliflower steaks," proclaiming I was low energy and would make do with leftovers. Of course, when I do leftovers they typically become culinary endeavors unto themselves. Thaw and reheat some pumpkin chili? Sure, but wouldn't the bit left be good with some lentils? And a sweet potato? Oh and there's plenty of napa cabbage and kale that would really pop. And hmmm more onion? You know, I'm not feeling the chili, let's revamp the spice profile with more of a garam masala and ginger sheen... etc. until it's 6:00 p.m. and I hear the garage door growling (at which point I realize I never plugged the rice cooker in, so ... time to make couscous!!!) But considering how much time and effort leftovers took, I'm glad I didn't attempt something that would have required innovative thinking and a lot of produce prepping (read "mess-making with sharp knives").
The futzing was restful, and the sofa surfing with my hubba-hubby was decidedly un-irritating (and I have Bhutanese rice for lunch today!) So I come into this day feeling pretty a-ok. A little nauseous from time to time. But a-ok.
Once we debouch from our haze into the glare of autumn's sunniest (should such a thing continue to occur), I see a beautiful WEEKEND unfolding. Well, after my mother is surgically extracted from the mediation miff that looms over our collective morning. There are several reasons this won't be a tea party. For one, nobody remembered to order the scones. For another, all those other reasons I'd just as soon ignore for another few happy moments of ignorant bliss.
For now, I'll stare into the haze outside my window and the little pinprick stars of glowing orbs (streetlights? aliens? spirits? who can say) and wish you all a fantastic FRIDAY!!!!!
Caturday Capers and Escape from the Peaks of Lit-Pique
I have escaped the bonds of a bad book! And there was much rejoicing. As I was explaining to a friend recently, I'm the kind of reader who lets a book... um... get to her. While I'm relatively even-keeled in most of my relationships, my relationship with literature may have some strains of borderline personality disorder. I love it. I hate it. It's nothing in between and if it lets me down, oh god will I destroy it ... with my brain. And nothing more.
The way I see it, literature forms a symbiotic relationship with the readers' imagination, borrowing great portions of any reader's cognitive facilities each time the story is recreated. Overwriting portions of brainspace generally dedicated to the maintenance of that trusty illusion of identity, even. It's a full-bodied cerebral experience that leaves little room for passivity. As such, it has a stronger effect on me than many other forms of entertainment. With movies and so on, I feel I have a greater ability to choose my level of engagement. I may sit back and let the story present itself to me (while doing a crossword and maybe fixing dinner even). Or I may become fully complicit. But I have that option.
With literature, I become the conduit and vessel of the art itself. It burrows into my brain. And inevitably, my inner monologue (having been co-opted by a narrator's timbre) picks up the prose-style and tendencies of the piece I'm reading. Which can make me fully rapt. Alternately, I may fall prey to the throes of vituperative viscerating venom against the thing which has so abused my delicate id-self.
I'm more likely to abandon a book halfway through if it's a book I think is "ok" or "meh" or even "well written, but just doesn't grab me" than one I actually dislike. Maybe it's a sunken cost fallacy. A desperate hope that one brilliant ending will justify the time lost on something that has so insulted my supposed intelligence. Maybe I just kind of enjoy a little self-righteous raging.
I'm loathe even to admit which book was currently irritating me, because inevitably (1) I cannot talk about my fully frothed annoyance without some sheer hyperbole that may well imply a scathing review not only of the source material but also of anyone who likes the material; (2) at least one person I know and respect and have no intention of insulting inevitably loves any book that I hate. Tastes are funny like that.
Suffice to say I will eventually froth over and just declare that Gone Girl is - to me in all my righteous roil - not my cup of tea. Really, it strikes me as an awkward attempt to squish Patricia Highsmith into chick-lit. Which is just wrong. It is also obsequiously hip and meta, something it is so hip and meta about that it frequently references the fact that it is being quite hip and meta within the book. Every five seconds, some character or other is mentioning how much they feel like they're a character in a crime novel or tv procedural. Then thinking about how they're thinking about it and how that's really cliche and then becoming cliche and going with it in this endless loop of pointless reflection.
Given that the story is decidedly derivative (though as unlikable protagonist #1 points out more than once, "derivative as a critique is like soooo derivative") of said crime novels and stories, that's appropriate. Which could well be exploited for an interesting tension between the happenings of a crime-novel formula and characters of a more realistic bent. I think there are hints we might try to exploit that. But instead, they just kind of conform increasingly to cardboard cut-outs of more interesting-and-less-overwroughtly-explained predecessors.
None of them are particularly engaging or begrudgingly appealing in that way that horrible people in good thrillers tend to be. The villainous victim (yeah, I don't think anyone who's ever read a cliff notes of a mystery or noir could call it a spoiler to say that "Diary Amy" is a fake and our heroine is apparently a "brilliant" sociopath... except when she's a naive moron) is always a chance for a seductive anti-hero, but instead she's just so annoying that she made the annoying Diary Amy persona slightly less so by comparison. There's no ambivalence or ambiguity exploited or utilized. It's all so obvious for a book promising miles and miles of twists and turns. Painfully, insultingly obvious. And unremarkable. But in this sort of blecky way that still makes my inner dialog go a little crusty and bleak and suspicious of the institution of marriage.
Maybe less psycho chic-lit than revenge chic-lit passed off as noir for bitter divorcees of average intelligence who want to feel clever. Ok, see where I said I go all judgmental and hyperbolic? I don't really mean that, but I get all wound up.
I started this "literary" endeavor because David Fincher went and made a movie out of it. And that had all these fairly intelligent reviewers coming out and comparing it to the book. Some of them had high praise for the book, making me rethink my previously "no thank you" to the whole affair. I still have hope for the movie because (1) since it is so derivative of prior crime stories, the story itself - with a more interesting ending - actually has been and could again be quite functional in the proper hands, (2) David Fincher made Fight Club, which made a generation of smart kids benightedly believe that Chuck Palahniuk was the voice of our disaffected generation (he's not, but when your concept of Fight Club starts with the movie... you give the book and its subsequent carbon copies a lot more leeway for several years before realizing you've been had).
Regardless, it's a bloody f-ing relief to wash a painfully prosaic pablum from my inner voice with a refreshing chaser of something else! Anything else! In this case, a series of short stories called Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell. Thank you, Ms. Russell for not sucking horribly (har har, vampire joke!)
And I'm off and on to my Caturday capering! I have already been out shopping, nearly requiring an ark to make it to the store with the passing tsunamis. And Andrew is hearty and hale enough to make it back to his four hour bike ride plans. I'm sure he'll survive. Hopefully. But if he doesn't, I swear he like is totally a brilliant sociopath who set me up with some massively over complicated (but BRILLIANT) plans. You'll see. When you find the second diary that he inscrutably is keeping after the first one and intersperse it with my self-conscious half-truths of a snivel fest... oh you'll see those Marionettes weren't just whistlin' Don Giovanni!!
Of Big Rocks and Little unCookies Saturday gone (not hugely) wild
Yesterday was not the kitchen bacchanalia that I had anticipated. Those hempy norms quite craftily wove a polyphonic counterpoint to all my little mousy plots. Immediately after getting all my produce and prep stuff sprawled and smooshed across the kitchen, my presence was demanded elsewhere. Requiring a hasty repackaging, half-hearted "clean" and a rush back out the door yet again to barrel down streets and avenues towards far flung destinations. I can't complain about this too vociferously. My throat is hoarse from all the moaning yesterday, after all.
Also, well, the interruptions were generally pleasant affairs. After the first attempt to make my version of pico (not really at all, but the chopped onions, parsley, and peppers I add to my morning meal), I was off for a walk in the highly atmospheric Zuanich Park (Bellingham's bigger harbor). We hit a window between deluges and even saw glints of sunlight glinting from the roiled tides beyond us.
Upon my return, I had just enough time to mop the hurricane I'd left behind, and extract most of the produce for a mostly finished pepper and onioning. Well, turns out that I left a bunch of cabbage and parsley and onions and peppers stashed in the salad spinner and promptly forgot about them for the rest of the day. Oh the joyfully pungent discoveries of later days. But just enough time to mostly give the food processor its second what-for that day.
No more time. Not before Andrew - who'd been out in the Chuckanuts plummeting down even steeper hills than usual - requested a pick up in Fairhaven because "something was up" with his fork. Turns out it was less of an emergency than I'd interpreted in my dervish back through the stashing-everything-in-containers-in-the-fridge-and-fleeing-the-house routine (going on Tour in Spring of 2015 - reserve your tickets now!). I arrived in a glutted and thoroughly clogged Fairhaven about twenty minutes before Andrew puttered in on his bike. That time was well spent dredging the clotted neighborhood for something remotely resembling a parking spot. Eventually, I just picked him up on the curbside after he'd left his little treasure in the capable hands of the Bike and Ski people.
Needless to say, I'd not really anticipated all this kitchen nonsense taking longer than "the morning" so I also hadn't had lunch by the time we got back (just around 2:30). Finally did eat and finally made it to the hummus I'd expected to finish at roughly 11:30 a.m. that morning. All the several grander culinary conceits have been waylaid and ziplocked. They are on their way to the freezer at this rate.
After the grand kitchen finale, we did have a pleasant evening excursion to Big Rock Garden, one of the little hidden gems of Bellingham's extensive park system. Beautiful Japanese gardens strewn with commissioned sculptures and related arts. Slowly zenned me back out of "AAAAA" kitchen-panic mode.
This morning, I tried to make up some of the kitchen-crafting difference by making some protein bars and a new recipe experiment of uncookies. My last had mashed banana, oats, applesauce, and spices. Bananas are anathema to Papa T. He made it through one without realizing the "secret ingredient" but awareness exponentially increased from there. So I thought I'd try to replicate without the banana. Applesauce, peanut butter, oats, some jam and spices. Could definitely have used a little honey, though I like them in their nearly savory form.
We are just about off for our run, so I'm jotting this out a bit more rapidly and less elaborately than generally, but I assure you, I'll be having far more strange fantastical thoughts just about all of you while I plod around the lake. And/or about the painful callous on my right outer arch that is making running a little uneven. One of those.
Moonday Mystifications and Morning Pother - Socktober to the Rescue
It has come to this: I'm on the brink of booting up my SAD light. Like turning on the heat, firing up the ol' mini-nova represents a point of no return on the season, rife with portent symbol and onerous omens of darker days ahead. Not something to be taken lightly (har har PUN!).
Sure it's a little chilly, but it's not cold enough yet! Sure, it's pitch black when I rise and for several hours afterwards, but it's going to get so much worse that's it's virtually mid-summer in Alaska hereabouts by comparison. The days have several more hours to lose before the hiemal quietus to our sanity manifests in perpetual ash of our sparsely day-almost-lit hours.
Sparking up the incalescence and luminescence feels a bit like (1) admitting defeat, because obviously the seasons and I are in an epic battle, (2) wasting fire-power and risking early hedonic adjustment. Or something. Maybe I'm just lazy. But soon. Very soon, I'll stop stumbling through the mornings in somnambular stupor and instead grope blinkingly through the blinding happy rays. Eventually, it may even grow cool enough to turn off the office fans. Ok, probably not. I hear they're revving up the boiler now, which means it's probably just going to even more infernal in our twelfth floor boiler room. Just watch, we'll have to run the a/c all year round!
Yesterday was, however, one of those days that doesn't quite merit the heat/light combo. Yes, it was a touch cinereal and moderately damp, but with bursts of sun and a certain warmth. Perfect running weather. Just cool enough to make my and head lungs happy, but only so cool that my hands got tepidly numb and blue. Once we hit the forties, my fingers will go gelid no matter the insulating layers I pile on top. Really, by the forties, my toes may start losing sensation. But fifties are fine by me.
As Mr. (W)right discovered (or desperately tried not to discover) upon asking what appeared to be the very simple question "would you like to start increasing our run times together": I have this lingering ambivalence about running. I love running. It got me through my first year of law school. Yes, I dread it before every run, but by the second mile I am soaring. Yes, I keep injuring myself, but hell I do that in the kitchen. Once I'm out there, there is nothing more meditative or transcendent. Just me, the pavement, my breath and my steps. It's magical.
But in my current hormonal predicament, I can't help noticing that it was when I started running that everything went wonky. Granted, I started running specifically to deal with nuclear levels of stress-fall-out and this coincided with a drastic loss of weight which I've dubbed "the law school thirty" (everyone either gains or loses it, but that first year will transform ya one way or another!)
And honestly, I think it's the combination of underfeeding myself for my activity level, and continuing to mix running with dancing with aerobics with yadda yadda yadda that really did me in. And that then, despite an ongoing sense of unease, I masked the symptoms with birth control and decided not to deal with it until we were at least arguably "ready" to head towards possible fecundity for fear of either terrifying a not-so-ready boyfriend or stumbling into some kind of "oh it would just figure" sort of discovery along the way. In that natural way of human beings who will blame themselves for things far out of their hands because at least that blame gives them a faint illusion of control, I feel like I didn't listen to myself and kept on running. Yeah, running's become symbolic of all the stuff above.
So when I read in my endo's flier that maybe I wasn't even supposed to get beyond "four hours of moderate activity" (maximum HR 140 bpm, which is about twenty BPM below my average running HR) a week... well, like all of us as patients, I have a way of undermining myself on the one hand, and flying into hypochondriac manias on the other. I have gained weight, but not as much as I proclaimed I would/should (still hovering at just 130, which is technically healthy but not really). And, well, for a while I was running, working out, etc. etc. on top of the usual several miles of treadmill walking a day. I like it. It's my lifestyle. If I don't have to change it, I'd rather not. But what if I ought to?
The arch injury was kind of a relief. It made any ambivalence between my athletic drive to over-push and my miserly drive to over-conserve (plus the cerebral compulsion to overthink) a moot point. But now that my foot has recovered... well, I was at least able to say "it's just 30 minutes a week. That can't really do all that much. " As if magically each minute added to that "only" has an exponential impact.
I love running. And I'm horribly jealous that Andrew gets to do it with little impact on his health. And that if I bag out, what was once my thing when we first started dating will become his thing instead of at least our thing. And maybe I'm more competitive than I think or maybe I just hate being left out, but the fact that he already does more of it than I do (especially after this last year) does make my inner child do a pouty face. Which is the same pouty face (tumid lip and all) it makes when he attempts to retract his offer that "we" do more running and suggests he can just do it midweek.
At any rate, the real moral is: This is why you don't ask Adella even the simplest sounding of questions right before bed, or at any time where you aren't ready for at least twenty minutes of omphaloskeptic dialog as she rounds the corners of every single facet inherent. And don't think there won't be a pop quiz at some point in the future about how this simple question relates to that time when she was three and realized her parents were not god and mortality was the bittersweet spice of life.
This is why, instead, you wait until just after a run - when her brain is too amped up on endorphins and already bitter than she has had to stop, to ask this question. Because then she'll most likely just say "ok, but let's work up gradually. Now excuse me, I NEED TO EAT. And SHOWER. Possibly at the same time!!"
Fortunately, between giddy and ponderous, most of the day fell into a loosely efficient half-focus. We watched The Corpse Bride. We took a nap (oh the indulgence).
And I made my hackneyed variation on aloo gobhi. With red rice instead of basmati. With a garnet "yam" instead of potato. And with maybe not enough sauce. Really, the recipe let me down on the one area to which I remained devout (well mostly). It was delicious but about half as much as I would have liked in ratio to my small head of cauliflower, half yam, onions, peppers, and chickpeas. I could have eaten the sauce like a kitty lapping from a saucer, but instead I had to allow that it had absorbed into the veggies. Ah well.
And today is Monday. I see pallid promises of sunlight peeking twixt strata and hilltop, while I eye my light box suspiciously. It is whispering sweet nothings in my direction, which I fortunately cannot hear over the Wind Machine that still chugs along beside it!
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