Yawn Girl and the Ragged Runner's Biggest Rocks

Previously on A&A's Adventures in Cohabitation: Hormones hurled from the heavens upon the weary brow of our heroine left her weakened for the vicious calcium attack from below. The lessons were hard and well learned: never trust a supposed ally in the supplement battles (and always drink your water). The plague ravaged the (W)right weekend plans, taking our hacking hero from bike seat to convalescence in two hacks and a sniffle's time. Only the other-mother and her button sewn eyes could rouse him from his dwindling consciousness. And a plunge into the inner realms brought new ruminations (and yet more "pills"). 

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!

JJ Poppinjay in the Rye Berry Paisley Patriarchy

Previously on A&A's Adventures in Cohabitation: Phantom wheels whirred and ghost peletons whooed, as the season of THE TOUR trickled up from memories past, erumpent through triathlonning todos. Families frenzied to make Ms. (W)right seem sluggish for a tamarin, but muddy loris legs told the truer tale. Mediation made a comeback with a side kicker of everything changing at once. With a bridged stretch to seniorville, our heroine recovered her ebbing equipoise to sic the stealth bastard Karl after the evil Comcast Empire. Prince Florimund demanded Russian sports networks and he was sated. 

Coming Up: Pinpricks and puddles begin a weekend of wanders. Will yet another item be sacrified to the Co-operative Demon Toilet of Downtown Patriarchy?? Merchants hawk their hippest hats to harried Handel-lovin' oldies. Will Samson tear down the salmon gauze of H&M or shall J.J. Poppinjay run rampant through the fashion fun with dizzying elan? And kitchens explode with rye berries and a prayer. Will Andrew survive the culinary innovation? Can one shaker of salt protect him from this much flurry and dillseed? 

Shimmy into those skinny salmon jeans, shake your fist at the poisonous patriarchy and delve into the murk to find out. 

Adios to the Pelf Psalm Mug and Onwards with the Weekend

About a year and a half ago, I acquired a leftover mug from a party that was mostly happening on my old South Hills Apartment stoop. I allowed it to dither by my sliding glass window while the totally unconscious college students lolled near it (cigarettes ashed out and cell-phones blaring unheeded alarms), but when it was thoroughly abandoned, I figured I'd more than earned the rest/tribute. 

It's been a good little mug. Kind of small. A little odd. Perplexing in its inclusion of a bible verse mixed with various pictures of coffee cups. But functional. Until yesterday morning. Turns out there's a pin-prick hole in the bottom of the mug. You'd think this would be readily obvious by the gush of liquid seeping through, but there's not corresponding pin-prick in the interior of the mug. 

Somehow liquid was getting through just enough to leave wet marks and slight drips, but not nearly enough to herald any problem beyond "probably put the mug down in a puddle of water/coffee at some point." After several wipe-downs and the thorough memory-sweep to verify that I had not repeatedly doused the bottom of my mug in a puddle of liquid, I discovered the pinprick on its rump. Even when I flushed water through it, the seep was sleepy, but increasing in urgency. I'm afraid that the outer chamber has given its swan song and the inner chamber is soon to follow. Probably in the trash can, because there's not much else to do but give the fond burial of cutlery and ceramics that have passed on to greener cupboards. 

And so, I say adios to the ill-gained loot of lifestyles past. And with a clunk of the can, I'm down a mug. C'est la vie. 

The rest of my Saturday proceeded with fewer lachrymosities. Bumbling sun blazing through rain clouds insisted on a pleasant day. We were surrounded by triathlon, as the bike portion swept and dragged past our home. The main transition area was at our usual running haunt, Lake Padden, so our usual (as if anything we do is the slightest bit usual) run was postponed for a day, and the Mr. (W)right's ride o' pain was extended to 3.5 hours of disgruntled "the shop f'ed my bike up" wrangling (or so I hear) atop some muddy mountain somewhere.  This death-defying bike slurg was probably a necessary venture, as his morning's coffee consumption reached records and had turned him into a rather chatty vibrating boyfrianceband by our little jaunt down to the triathlon transition area and back. Somebody had some energy to incinerate and it wasn't Ms. (W)right. 

Initially planning to accomplish a quick trip to the grocery store, I was put off by the triathlon-traffic blocking ingress and egress about my home. I instead decided to linger and maunder downtown. I parked my car at Freddy's, my perpetual base location, and mosied towards THE FOOD CO-OP. I don't frequent the co-op... uh... frequently. For one, their toilets ate my sunglasses! For another, they tend to just be a little pricier and more of a hassle than the other stores in town. These inconveniences notes, I've been carting around a half-used gift card for several months now, and today was the day to tap it out.

After prior attempts to spend off my gift card had ended in over-stimulated decision-fatigue, I pre-formed a strategy to go straight to the bulk section and find some grains that (1) I didn't already have and (2) weren't easily accessible at Freddy's or Winco. In the final tally, I succumbed to some sales with more frequent staples. Wild rice was heavily discounted and that stuff is expensive most of the time, so that made it into the shopping bag. I'm out of amaranth, which is another convenience food in this household, being one of those cooks in under 20 minutes options. But I did find: canahua, which is a peruvian grain along the lines of quinoa or amaranth. But it's a bit darker, apparently sweeter, and actually higher in protein and several minerals than the other two. Possibly because it was new or less en vogue than the several hues of quinoa available, it was also chaper. Figured I couldn't pass new and cheap up, so I got a little baggie. I think I ended up with some rye berries as well before officially spending gift card. Twenty cents of those rye berries were purchased out of my own pocket! 

The co-op entertains me. It's always swarming (that's not entertaining as much as yet another reason I don't shop there often), but with a very different kind of folk than the BC Bargain-hounds of Winco or the dazed locals of Freddy's. Favorite snippets from today's excursion:

1. Trying to get out of one person's way, I stepped right in front of somebody else's stuff. I reflexively said "I'm sorry" as I moved yet again (likely into yet another person's way). She informed me I had no need to apologize, but - ha ha- we women apologize for everything. It's social conditioning, of course. I started to explain that my version of "sorry" was more of a recognition of mutual inconvenience and expression of empathy rather than taking on the blame, but she assured me her comments were all in good fun... before launching further into jolly extrapolation that men never apologize like women and really shouldn't they be the ones to do so, given the patriarchy. I thought perhaps she was staying blithely tongue in cheek, but repetition of the word patriarchy and continuation of the brief interchange beyond the point of awkwardness suggests that the mostly-men surrounding us in the bulk section may have been starting to feel a little uncomfortable. Although I suspect exchanges involving the word patriarchy are not uncommon in the bulk section of the Community Food Co-op.  

2. In the produce section, a woman asked the produce clerk if they had any red peppers. Apologetically, he answered "just the conventional ones up there," to which she responded mordantly "oh geee, have a side of poison with my lunch... THANKS SO MUCH!" as if this were very witty, requiring the clerk to respond as if it had - in fact - been quite witty. 

Also, the check out clerk was sort of surprisingly abrasive. Not sure if that's some kind of statement (about the patriarchy and the expectation that women should smile!!!) or just her having a bad day. 

Regardless, I emerged with my bag of oddities and wandered back to Freddy's, Haggen's and eventually home with plenty o'produce to chop ... eventually. But not too far in the future. If I leave produce unprepared and un-meted, I will eat all of it. Especially when I bring home carrots, celery or parsnips. Oooooh heavenly parsnips. Since eating several tons of vegetables in a single setting would both lead to stomach distress and require a second shopping trip for any subsequent lunch pack or food prep, I try to handle this stuff expeditiously. And, hey, I get to munch along the way! In sum, produce was chopped. 

Andrew returned a bit later, feeling aggravated about the bike not quite being set up right. But he rallied in the face of food (folks and fun!), with a follow up of food and a terrifying jaunt down memory lane, which has been renamed Elm Street apparently. A new H&M opened up in town. Andrew used to shop there a lot when he lived in New York. We were curious. 

The music roared with only a touch less cacophony than the patterns and colors of "what's hip to the kids these days." I was fascinated, bemused, and thoroughly giddy with the options! Gingham body suits! Breezy half shirts that flow out and cut off for underboob! Skin tight salmon hipster jeans for men with no quads! Hats! They did have socks for a decent price and their basics were definitely cheap (quality and price, admittedly). Andrew tried on some black jeans, nearly killed himself attempting to get out of them and we declared ourselves "old", thus forgiving ourselves any future dalliances with the store. 

This morning, it appears we're going to try that running thing. Last week I felt horrible on our run so this week I'm going to try to lay off a bit and see if that helps. The weather's a lot cooler, which may help, although the humidity is still enough that we're virtually underwater. For fun!

But it's bonding, trying to breath and hobble! Really!

We can Handel That: The Ariose Afternoon Weekend-Windown, and Return of Leslicita

Leslie's back! Or so we expect. Her facebook photos show all signs of sentimental post-trip photo posting. Boy will she be baffled with everything that's happened in the last two weeks (me inventing all new kinds of clients and forms and payment arrangements... mom-boss just sort of grabbing onto clients left and right... both of us doing all sorts of unmentionables in the quest of "getting enough of Leslie's pile down that she won't take a solemn pledge to never vacation again!) It's going to be an interesting couple of days. 

But it's always "interesting" here in (W)rightlandia's  corner of Englettlaw. Why would the coming or going of another zany cast member alter the base level oddity of Adella's oneiric haze? Especially with other things still a touch in the air. Like will the WDRC take me up on my offer to increase hours/do some part time work during the summer transition? Do I want them to? How will this impact my carefully balanced schedule of outside engagements with Fitness Instructor Wife Adelia? Only time will tell and time is staying coy. 

But before we got to this point, we waded through a full DINKY-doo Sunday, us (W)rights. With special guest star Papa T and full choral appearance by Bellingham's Opera Popolare. I'm grandiose like that. 

Our Saturday run was postponed to Sunday, due to the paralyzing breadth of the Saturday triathlon.After a pretty grating lung-wring last weekend, I was not feeling optimistic about yesterday's run. As I've admitted to Andrew, I like that he's proud that I run fast. And so when I've had these balancing issues of trying to run at a faster cadence, I've maybe been letting myself embrace the more aerobic celerity that is so hard to avoid with that kind of turn-over. I still don't quite know how to get the optimally high cadence with a slightly slower run, but yesterday I decided to just run and work on cadence some other time. I am already avoiding the previous prancing through tulips over-extension that was probably stressing my arch, so I'm hoping that's a good enough start. And I finally decided I was ready to go all the way around Padden. This entailed delving into the hilly part, which I was previously avoiding due to the erosity of landscape and potential stressors that adds to an arch on the mend. Turned out that running up and down hills made the run far more pleasant, and holding back a bit more before reaching them left me with more than enough wind to breeze straight from my run to my usual Sunday routines. More veggies were chopped. Slow cookers simmered. And laundry roiled. 

To the strains of Handel. Bellingham has had a local opera company for about the last 6 years. Unlike the larger companies, which give preference to varying degrees of national and international stars, it's an explicitly local affair, with strong preference for B'hamsters. I've been aware of it peripherally, but had never attended one of their productions. Not out of any highly-formed snobbery per se, as much as the lack of concinnity with their selections (lower budgets seem to lend themselves more to Baroque and other Oratorio performances) and my more romantic preferences. Plus timing. There's always timing.

But I'd heard they had some talent, so when I saw they were doing a cheap afternoon concert of Handel pieces as a teaser for an upcoming production, I was intrigued enough to inquire of Papa T whether he'd accompany me. Given my narcoleptic husband's ability to fall flat out of his chair at the height of Wagnerian sturm und drang, I wasn't about to drag him along to a small intimate performance of more restrained music. At first I got the "I might be busy, so let's rain check" brush off reply, but a last minute clincher ensured that we both sped merrily (or harriedly, really, since I was almost two minutes late meeting him at his house - unheard of) along our ways. 

So yeah, it wasn't the Met. It was, in fact, the Rotunda room. But it's more than baffling how many talented and skilled performers live in this area. Handel's not super easy on his singers. There's some serious showmanship required. And the music needs a deft range of timbre and emotional versatility to transcend prosaicism. They nailed that pretty well. And, as the best concerts always are: it was short (about an hour and twenty minutes) and air-conditioned (ahem, ahem PNB and McCaw Hall).

All in all, I'm pleased I went. To follow a theme of "Adella might as well be seventy", I really dragged the median age of attendees down by a healthy decade. Kind of strange. I don't know if that was influenced by its being in the afternoon, or if interest in the arts is really that skewed towards seniors. Either way, it made a perfect complement to my senior stretch Friday morning, and possibly my overarching preferences to hit bedtime at nine with an open-mind about dinner before 5:00 p.m. (pre-wedding Boomer's workarounds, notwithstanding, I'm not there yet, but I'm ... open to experimentation).

I'm glad my Dad can be my partner in musical-afternoon crime, but I do sometimes wish that more of my friends were interested in this sort of production. I think I'd go out a lot more with somebody to encourage me out of my weekend shell. Ah well. Until then, Papa-T and I will just have to drag each other kicking and screaming from our mutual weekend-hermitages. 

I received a triumphant homecoming salutation worthy of The Messiah, before Mr. (W)right and I settled back into our lingering Sunday domestic bliss. Amazon Prime has finally gotten The Wire onto streaming services. It's silly that we're watching it this way, since I own several dvds, but not in a continuous serial fashion yet. Andrew has yet to see it. I've been meaning to show it to him for several years. He suspects that our marriage may end once this longstanding goal has been accomplished (because, really, what will be left). Now, without a second spree of discounted dvd buying, I can indulge... And mess up the order anyway by showing him the second episode before the pilot. Which works, but not nearly as brilliantly as - say -after the pilot. I knew The Wire kind of threw you straight into the show, but there's a certain handy momentum spinning up from the first one. For instance, they make enough allusions to introduce the relevant characters and themes. 

And in between episodes, I threw some kasha together for dinner with a fair shower of sesame oil, soy sauce and ginger. I love kasha, but it is the most pointedly bland and hearty of grains. It EATS spice! I can consume it as plain kibble, but to feed it to anyone else I feel like I need to upend several tons of milled, powdered, and shaken (not stirred) zingers atop the pile. Regardless, I got there. And any excuse to have the house smell of onion in sesame oil. 

This morning, I've started a whole new culinary adventure: RYE BERRIES IN A SLOW COOKER. Expect updates tomorrow. 

If we survive the homecoming... Wish Leslie luck. It's going to be a crazy day for her!

The Cooker in the Rye And Other Maundering Marvels

As promised (thus raising crushing hype and expectations in the hearts of all, no doubt), a report on my first experiment with rye berries. 

To begin with, the slow cooker is a once or twice a week endeavor. It's super handy when I'm going to be busy in the evening. It's also a really convenient way to stock up leftovers. Since I'm a total hoarder in all regards (I always store an extra thermos of coffee just in case something goes wrong with the coffee maker, I have a freezer full of meals just in case I feel lazy, etc., there's even an extra lunch pack for Andrew in there "just in case"), I very much enjoy this aspect. Not even Andrew can eat an entire slow-cooker full of stew. 

My alternative for "I have no time in the evening" is "pre-prepared soup and couscous". That meal is faster than most microwave meals, I think! Couscous is truly magical. 

  As a post-prelude prattling prelude continuation, my approach to the slow cooker is fairly well akin to my approach to the rice cooker: from the side and with a lasso... er, no, wait really in short = 

(grain) + (vegetables) + (legume/protein) + (maybe oil) + (broth/water) + (spices) + (last minute harried adaptations during which the entire contents of the kitchen - including soap and snickers bars - are considered last minute complementary culinary companions, and which comprise roughly 30-40% of a meal's final calorie count) = leftovers and a deeeelicious nutrient mound for the man.

But to expand on that process:

 (1) I generally start with a grain. The choice of grain can either be inspired by something new I picked up on whim, or something that simply started singing to me from the pantry.

 Despite basically following the same template for every meal (switching up mediums and plugging in certain variables, as above), I like to grant myself and my bike-and-chain the illusion of versatility. Mostly, I'm just kind of neurotic and feel more satisfied to be giving equal love too my full pantry of little storage bins, except that the couscous and forbidden rice are in five ton bulk bags and deserve more heavy usage. 

Which means, I mix it up by "type": 

So there's small and round, which includes my staples of quinoa, amaranth, teff, couscous, millet, (recently) canihua, and maybe kinda cornmeal or other ground cereals. These cook pretty quickly and make a nice fluffy soup kinda texture, so I would probably opt for stove cooking or the rice cooker. But I may also add "small and round" to thicken up a slow cooker stew.  From there I differentiate by "which color" of small and round grain I've consumed most recently. Andrew refers to almost all of this group as "couscous". The teff maybe as "couscous that got a tan". 

Then there's longer and brownish. That includes brown rice, spelt, kamut, barley, wheat berries, (now) rye berries, farro, etc. These take longer to cook in the first place, making the slow cooker more appealing. Several of the longer and brownish grains want to be soaked overnight for conventional cooking, but slow cooking them liquidates such soaking requirements in its soupy deluge.These grains hit the slow cooker rotation heavily, since I don't often use them for quicker meals. Andrew calls these "rice"

Then there's larger and kibbleish, which includes things like Israeli couscous, sorghum, and kasha. These work on a conventional oven or in the rice cooker. A slow cooker might make them a little soggy, but that can work wonders for some soup mushes. I'm not sure what Andrew calls these. But if he sees a plate of kasha, you can bet he's preemptively reaching for the table-salt. 

And finally (at least as far as my early morning brain can recall off yesterday's cuff), there's chromatic variations on rice. That's forbidden rice (so tasty and so purple), the not-actually-rice wild rice, and so on. For the slow cooker, this is more of an add in when I get into my manic scooping-everything-I-can-think-of phase. 

I left out pasta which makes it into the textural rotation of dinners, but which - as yet - hasn't made it into a slow cooker. 

So, yeah, grain is chosen by whim, color, and texture. If it's a new grain, I might look for a recipe featuring that grain so as to thoroughly muck it up two steps in. Most of the time I just ad lib from the start. 

 (2) I then peruse the contents of my fridge for usable vegetables. If it's near the weekend, I've likely gone through some kind of mad chopping binge and there are plenty from which to choose. Invariably, that will include onions, garlic, and peppers. Frequent players include cabbage, greens (collard/kale/spinach/mustard), root vegetables, mushrooms, and whatever was both on sale and randomly intriguing to me when I was at the store on Saturday. If it's later in the week, maybe the frozen veggies get a whir.

(3) Oh yeah, protein. So, most of the small roundish grains are also pretty high in protein. I may be happy with that. But I do like to mix up textures. My go-to "whoops this needs more protein" is tvp. Maybe the demon seitan (vital wheat gluten stopping the hearts of celiacs and wheat bellies everywhere!) But while I'm at it, I usually take advantage of that no-soak-needed slow-cooker magic to add beans. While lentils and split peas don't really need longer cooking (and frequently make it into rice cooker and stove top creations), they may come along for the slow-cooker ride as well. 

(4) Oil? So in theory a lot of the recipes I rip off for the slow cooker start (as almost every meal I theoretically make) with sauteeing some onions. If I'm using the slow cooker, it's probably because I don't have time in the afternoon and am throwing a bunch of ingredients into the mix before breakfast/work/etc. Plus one of the advantages of a slow cooker is not having the extra mess of stove-top cooking. So I may or may not throw the oil in first with the onions. I may add oil. I may not. If I do, it's mostly olive. Because I like the taste. But sometimes if I'm feeling sassy, I might mix it up with any variety of other options. 

(5). Spices! Ok, here's where any recipe I might have found takes sway for about five minutes and then totally bails on me. My heaviest spices are cayenne, black pepper, dashes of salt, and nutritional yeast. These go in nearly everything I make at home. Popular (W)right spices also include ground cumin, ground coriander, ground cardamom, cinnamon, ground caraway, garam masala, paprika, ginger, kelp powder, turmeric, chili peppers, oregano, thyme, and maybe basil. 

Usually not all at once...

So I let the recipe suggest a certain direction. Again to maintain the illusion of variety, I try to mix up the blend in vague "this is a North African combo" or "this is an Indian combo" (thai, Italian, hungarian... whatever) and rotate geographical flavor profiles. Regardless, I usually start pretty closely to the recipe before realizing I'll need to make substitutions and then lapsing into my personal preferences.

(6) Liquid. If it's early in the week, I've probably made broth with all the ort from all that chopping. The broth flavor inevitably varies a bit depending on what veggies I chose, but usually has some herbs, oil, onion, garlic, and peppers. Usually by the mid-week mark, it's water and a heavier hand of spice.  

Yet again, the awesome thing about slow cookers is that they are pretty accepting of varying quantities of liquid. I fill up with what I have (so long as it's past the halfway mark) and call it good until the post-low-cook-all-day-panic. 

At this point, things have been thrown in, I'm late to continue with the rest of my morning tasks and I'm ready to turn on the slow cooker and turn away...

For several hours. If I'm working, I am probably leaving it on low all day. 

**Intermission**

When I get home - knock on wood - the slow cooker has actually been plugged in and functioning all day, and the house smells delicious. Thus begins the first taste test and our segue into... 

(7) the last minute total rehaul of prior recipe and mad ingredients dash. 

No matter what has been carefully plotted that morning, the first taste will inevitably seem ... bland. I'll rethink. I'll rue and regret. I'll start to wonder if there's enough fat or protein or vitamin K-90X-Zebrinazine in the mix. And maybe I'll start to hear tremolo strains of new inspiration. 

Certain recipes do have ingredients that are meant to be added later. Diced tomatoes, for instance are often added late in the game. But beyond that, this is the time when the spices get flying. A simple flavor profile goes dadaist. Pumpkin puree is erupts. Hemp seeds fly! And the spice mill whirrrrrrs. Remaining veggies are heaped in. The immersion blender comes out. And the kitchen explodes in the sort of anomie a slow cooker theoretically forestalls. After several can't-walk-away moments bringing the dish to the brink of inedible (birthday cakes oreos AND marshmallow fluff? hmmmm, I'm not sure), I step away warily until meal time. 

Magically by meal-time, the horribly bland morass of munch has evolved into a complex and interesting meal, only to pale in comparison to its future incarnation as leftovers a day or two down the road.

I scoop out Andrew's enormous pho bowl and my minor portion, and then start filling glass jars for storage. Er, not filling. Hopefully I've learned my lesson on fillingglass jars before putting them in the freezer. Hopefully. 

^^*** TA DA***

My template 

So yesterday (or really Sunday evening with a mad-Monday-morning coda), I applied that formula thusly: 
I'd found rye berries at the Co-op. I wanted to use them so I googled "rye berries slow cooker" and found a recipe that matched mostly the kinds of other ingredients I had laying around the house. 
 
I had broth because it was early in the week. The backbone ingredients were rye berries and lentils. So those dove in. I added oil and a tupperware of onions. Aaaand a tupperware of mixed parsnips, peppers, celery, and turnips. Aaaaand collard greens. Aaaaand, why not, various piles of spices. Aaaaaand - sure ok - some wild rice. Aaaaaand hey I've got extra black beans. Aaaand "oh crap, the alarm's going off upstairs and I haven't even started breakfast... meh, probably fine... whoops, hmmm that's the plug to the superfluous kitchen lamp we never use... oh ok, here we go... on... ok go!"

I returned early from a mad day of sobbing-not-ever-going-to-be-I-refuse-to-take-this-person-prospective-clients and mid-day massage tortures to a slight aroma. Ordinarily on Monday, I'd arrive just minutes before Andrew. I have pilates. He leaves earlier. Usually. But I was home earlier because pilates was cancelled. He stayed out later because he needed gas. So I had plenty of time to tamper!!

Obviously the soup was... bland. Watery even. So... immersion blender on a light touch. While sparing much of the grain, this dulled the textural appeal, so ... well, it's stew like now, how about some thickener. Flax seed hopped into the spice mill ,while chia seeds plunged in whole. And... you know the flavor just didn't pick up all that strongly... Dill! I've had dill seed forever and haven't found a good place to use it. Oh my god, this is screaming for dill! Hmmm hope that entire spice mill full wasn't too much... maybe also add some more nutritional yeast? Hmmm ok, and... a dash of vinegar. Sure! 

At which point I got distracted by the fact that it was hot out and the fans weren't entirely up. I allowed the simmer to resume, with several interim scoops and samples. By the time Andrew made it home, the dish had magically turned into a hearty stew that half-filled several glass containers, and Andrew's pho bowl. 

--- Andrew immediately reached for the salt. 

I call it a win!

Dex Mex and the Sunshine Kid Don't Let Him Hear Me Say Dex

It was, once again, time for our annual parley with the Action Pages representative, J.J. Popinjay. For those who missed the prior round, JJ is roughly my age or a bit younger. He takes his "sales" position seriously and his wardrobe... well, I'm not really sure. It isn't the intentional post-modern mess of consciously ironic fashion, but it strives ardently to approximate that "only a ludicrously wealthy gay man in Manhattan could combine those items and make it work" finesse that you see in some of the pricier men's catalogues out there.

From last year's encounter: 

"Jason wears a blue and pink pinstriped shirt. His tie stage-whispers "paisley" in a contemporary color scheme that echoes the lushest of persian rugs. Needless to say, his handkerchief is the same gleefully garrulous print. His suit, a sumptuously fuscous matte, hugs his body in decided slim-cut. His chest is just shy of cartoonishly broad against his slim physique. His hair cemented atop his head in a shellacked bouffant of ocean tide. I can't help but notice that, despite this parade of pomade and pomp, he is not wearing any socks!" 

This year, his hair was still a spiky blown-back fortress, but he was embracing the breezy feel of summer with a cropped tan suit, rolled under dingy shirtsleeves at the elbow. As afore, his tanned leather loafers met only barefeet. And his suit recoiled back up along his calves to emphasize the bareness. I can't recall if he sported a tie or any accessories. He was fidgety, so excited with news of the efficacy of Phone Book advertising ("people self-report that they found referrals by word of mouth, but when we wire-tap into their phone calls it turns out they touched a Phone Book at some point in the process, possibly because they use it to prop up their telephone table leg!") Oh and the imminent destruction of several competitors. He was excited about this. Well, one merged with Action Pages, and the other is no longer offering print. This apparently strikes him as an opportunity instead of any omen of impending doom for the physical phone book industry. 

Anyways, after barging into the meeting with a scream "SHE'S NOT ALLOWED TO RETIRE!" (poor boy's lightly powdered brow gleamed a touch at the intrusion), I participated in setting up yet another contract in which my name will be strewn about the yellow pages with haphazard abandon. I love notoriety. Pretty soon I'm going to rent out a billboard with just a photo of me doing a Fonzie thumbs up and giant red letters reading,ADELLA: BECAUSE, ADELLA!!! Think it will get my point across fairly well. 

Yes, this career development is really taking off, as I'm sure you can tell.