Gluten-free for $10

So I went to a gluten-free event in King of Prussia today, the Celiac Awareness Tour, thinking it would be like the Appetite for Awareness I went to a year or so ago. Lots of samples, coupons, goodies to take home. Eh, not so much. Food samples yet, but instead of brownies or half sandwiches there were micro-bites of things. Big display of cake pops, tiny postage stamp-sized samples. One table for a restaurant that is nowhere near me had two nice looking pizzas laid out, but were not offering a taste. Had some nice ravioli and gnocchi, though, but I'm not paying $12 for 8 ravioli to cook at home. Oh well, I guess that's the difference between a $50 ticket and a $10 ticket. Then came the question of where to eat lunch - it would have been nice for someone to post a list of local places to eat, but I asked around and got a recommendation of Legal Seafood in the mall across the street. Had some nice cornmeal crusted-shrimp, and an actual roll - well, a gluten-free version, which appeared to be a small lump of bread dough baked in a muffin pan. It wasn't great, but it was a small thrill to be sitting in a restaurant buttering and eating something that was almost bread, just like normal people. But today had an "is that all there is?" feeling to it.

 For about a year I've been holding a gluten-free class once a month for newbies, but lately no one's signing up, so I'm going to stop that. The cafeteria at work showed me some gluten-free pizza shells, so they think they can feed me, but I'm going to request they get some training first. Got some gluten-free Naked Pizza last night, but it's mediocre even with extra sauce.

 No sign of the girl except for occasional Facebook postings, so she's still alive. I'm glad that she took the step of cutting herself off from us, which might sound harsh, but I think it has worked out better for both of us. I certainly have more money staying in my hands and no thefts.  I have curiosity about her, but no desire to be around her.  I had enough of that drama.  Sue me for being a bad mother.

Christmas for one

For the first time, I was all by myself for Christmas. No parents or kids, just three rotten cats who had puked all over the house and violated my apple pie. The boy was off with his dad, the girl - well, who knows where the girl was. I feel bad that I don't feel bad about her not being around, but I have to admit life has been more peaceful these last six months, especially when it seemed she was not going to try to break into the house. I even contemplate whether I can remove the chain lock on my bedroom door that would keep her from getting in if she jimmied the knob lock. I know she still frequents the neighborhood, probably still stealing metal from the abandoned naval center. I still keep the doors locked at all times and the windows locked or prevented from opening far enough to crawl in. She has no compunctions about slitting a screen, probably not for breaking a window either, but so far she has refrained.

Unlike most of humanity, I like being alone, although it was a little dull. I'm preparing to yarnbomb the library (with their permission, so it's not any kind of artistic anarchy) so I was cranking out pieces made with random unwanted yarn that will fit around various structures, and wishing I had planned ahead with Netflix to have something good to watch. I considered watching something through the computer, but they want to download a Microsoft program and I'm not sure I want or can use that on my Mac. I finished "The Age of Innocence" (book) on the Kindle and downloaded Storm Front by Jim Butcher at the boy's recommendation. Reminds me of the Laurel K. Hamilton books, both the Anita Blake and faerie series. The boy hasn't read them, so he thinks this is original. I'll bet he'd like to, once he finds out how detailed the Hamilton sex scenes are.

The ex gave the boy a huge HD TV for Christmas. I told him he's responsible for removing the old one, but boy and I both think he's not going to follow through, dick that he is. I e-mailed to ask him specifically to help with lifting the old one and the new one, so we'll see what happens. Boy returns home today, maybe I can get him to undress the tree and pack it away before he heads out with friends. I really need to get him in the car - I told him I wouldn't take him for his driver's test again until he has at least 25 hours under his belt. At 10 minutes at a time before he starts to freak out, that will take a while. Maybe summer. I could really use another driver in the house. If he's not driving that car it doesn't make sense for me to keep it any pay for insurance, especially since I'm still paying to insure the girl, but he doesn't want me to get rid of it.

I started thinking about the dollhouse again, now that it's winter and I don't have any current yarn projects that have deadlines. I'm going through the rooms and making lists of what each one needs to look more complete/realistic. The problem is getting myself to start the projects.

Nearly 2012. Time to make lists.

In a better space

Wow, a lot has happened since that last post in January. Things were even worse with the girl than I knew or expected, and there was a huge amount of drama. The last I saw of her was June 26th, when she tricked me into turning my back, stole my wallet for the second time, and ran out the door into the waiting car her junkie friend was driving. Since then, no contact, and I gradually ceased to care. This may be a bad way for a mother to look at her child, but I think I did everything I could. I bailed her out, I paid fines, I provided a car and insurance, I took her to the doctor when requested, I offered advice (never taken), I offered shelter, I moved her out of her shithole apartment when she was evicted, I provided way too much money, and I trusted far more than I should have. I lost money, jewelry, time, almost lost my auto insurance, and got nothing, absolutely nothing in return. Other than acting as host to her parasite, nothing I did mattered to her. But we're talking about a person who burned the word "HATE" into her arm in 2 inch letters and sold her brother's video games for cash to feed her habit. A person who never knew or cared what time or what day it was and no concept of "on time". A person who had total indifference to the pain she might cause someone else. A perfect sociopath.

She moved on, defriending all family members and making no effort to be in touch. At least she's not using my car to do it, although I still have to carry her on my insurance. She is 21, and I will not be responsible for her any more, her choice and mine. Although I still get reminded of things she did that made me confused or angry and have to deal with that. Specific events or instances of lying or items that I no longer have because she stole and sold them. Many, many stories, but I will not cover them now. I copied most of the e-mails about her to a Word document and it took about 65 pages to cover a few months.

I think I'm in a better head space than I was then. I no longer have two very significant sources of stress: Ex, and girl. I'm gradually redoing all the parts of the house that were not tended for a long time. Bathroom is better (although I'm not happy with the contractors and all of their work). Just finished painting walls in girl's room. I spent weeks packing up and weeding out her things - boxes and boxes of clothes, most I never saw her wear. Huge quantities of jewelry making supplies. Lots and lots of bulky yarn. I can't imagine she could have made enough money, given how few jobs she could hold onto, to pay for this, so I have to assume there was a lot of shoplifting going on. It's mostly gone now, to Goodwill, the library, neighbors and friends.

I have moved outside my comfort zone in social areas. I now teach crocheting at JoAnn's, knitting and crocheting (for free!) at the library (where I have a small circle of regulars), and how to be gluten-free for beginners. I still have the problem of not remembering anybody's name, which is kind of rude for a teacher, but I tell everybody that I have a brain deficiency in that area and they seem to accept it. I take classes at the community college, and other students seek me out to talk to me, even though my first impulse in any social situation is to isolate myself. They ignored any such signals I gave off and talk to me because they want to, which I always find surprising. I find I have a knack for teaching people who want to learn. Who knew?

I'll try to keep this up, not because anybody cares, but because sometimes I want to document things. It's good discipline and practice. More later. Now I have to clean the house before the parents come.

Let's start again

Apparently it has been almost a year since I posted. Sigh. Let's try this again. If nothing else I can vent to nobody in particular.

When can I stop worrying and providing like a mom to someone who should be old enough to do it herself? It's a constant conflict - I know jobs are in short supply, but I don't think she tries hard enough. She can't wake up to an alarm clock or get herself out of bed in the morning. She doesn't have the training for anything for which a second or third shift would be an option, or even the smarts to apply for afternoon/evening jobs only. She seems headed for a life content to be on welfare and food stamps. I don't see signs of a return to drug use, but I can't rule it out for the future. She had her wallet and phone stolen last night because she can't seem to master the need to keep her valuables safe at all times, especially in the skeevy places she goes to. I was hoping for less drama this year, but I can't see that as an option. It's inconvenient and expensive to have her in my house, but she has nowhere else to go. I can't figure out how much I should contribute, help, or even care. I can't stop giving advice that isn't appreciated or wanted. This sucks and I'm frustrated. I don't want to give her ownership of the car she drives, but she has beat the crap out of it such that I could probably never sell it, and when she commits a traffic violation and they don't have an officer talk to her and get her license, the bill and violation goes to me because it's in my name, so is it time to sign it over to her and make it solely her problem?

The boy gained 30 pounds since his last doctor's visit in 2009. All overeating and inaction on his part. I'm going to try packing him lunches. He's going to try to go to kung fu as often as I can get him there, and has a P90X DVD to try (thanks, Joey). He has also agreed to try Gluten-Free January, but we'll see how far that gets. The girl is the one who appears to have a gluten reaction similar to mine, but good luck getting her to pay attention to her diet.

At least the job seems to be secure for this year, assuming I don't piss my boss off too much. I didn't realize that she can't take opposition in any way without taking it personally, so now I walk on eggshells. Still working on completing the prerequisites for the Medical Lab Tech degree at the community college just in case.

Linkin Park concert Jan. 31! Something just for me. Now if the weather can just cooperate...

Increments

I don't know when it happened, but I have become at peace with incremental progress. Maybe somewhere I leveled up in Patience and acquired the Consciousness of Progress skill. All I know is that I can now be content with the progress of a project involving many, many tiny steps and can see the end approaching ever closer without the feeling of impatience and endless futility that I used to feel.

It's a good thing, because a lot of what I do involves many tiny, repetitious steps. At work I fill endless numbers of 96-well plates, one well at a time, with as much precision as experience and good instruments can bring. At least there, I have measurable progress and an endpoint within hours, certainly by the end of the day. But what I do for fun is much worse. I knit. I needlepoint. I cross-stitch. Yes, the womanly arts of the needle offer many chances to drive yourself crazy doing something thousands of times to cover very tiny amounts of real estate. Knitting is good for slowly building something one stitch at a time. There's no equivalent of a multi-channel pipettor for knitting (okay, there are machines, but they don't count as far as I'm concerned). A mitten is good for fairly rapid progress, allowing me to actually complete something in one evening, but other projects call for serious amounts of time. Yet the finish line doesn't seem as endlessly far away now as it used to - I can appreciate two rows of the Pirate Queen's Booty Bag completed in a night's work as a substantial contribution instead of feeling it to be a hopelessly small addition to the whole. What brought about this change in perspective?

I have a huge needlepoint canvas - La Licorne Captive it says at the top, the Unicorn in Captivity from the tapestries at the Cloisters. It is 25" wide by probably at least 36" long (I don't want to unroll it to measure), with 10 stitches per inch = 100 stitches/square inch, so approximately 90,000 stitches to finish it. A two foot length of wool seems to cover maybe two square inches at the most, and I can usually manage about 3 or 4 of those in a sitting. After months of off-and-on work I have maybe 3/4 of the top half completed, but I can feel all those tiny bits adding up with great satisfaction. I could just as easily see my slow progress with despair over the infinity of stitches ahead of me, but somewhere along the line I learned to appreciate the slow accumulation of tiny elements into a whole. I find it easier to see days becoming years, too. Maybe it's just age - each year is now 1/50th of my experience instead of a larger part. Whatever the cause, I hope this perspective gives me some kind of advantage or insight or patience outside the realm of the needle. But now, back to the Booty Bag!

Could be worse

It's cold out, and inside I have it set for 68F, which seems cold to me but saves money. But I minimize my complaining by reflecting on every century before the last, and how cold everyone must have been.

Read Dickens, or Little House on the Prarie (or anywhere else the Little House set up) and you'll realize that the rooms inside houses were often very little warmer than the outside. For most of human history people had little more warmth in winter than the deer and the birds. Sure, there was fire, but if you didn't stay right next to it, the effects weren't far-reaching. Imagine a tipi or yurt. Laura Ingalls would wake to see frost on the inside of the windows and on the nails sticking through the unceilinged roof. People in books speak of having to break the ice on their bowl of water before washing their faces in the morning. I stand around and wait for the tap water to get warm before I wash my dainty hands. How much stronger these people would be than we are in the same situations. Kids would go barefoot until frost, and probably did so indoors to save on shoe wear. No down parkas, just whatever skins you could wrestle from their furbearing owners or whatever you could weave or knit from your woolbeasts. It helps keep my woes in perspective to think that people survived a world warmed only by open fires (or at best, tile ovens) for centuries.

Did they feel as cold as I would? Were they so used to it that they were comfortable at a 50 degree room? Did mothers' hands feel the iciness of metal needles as they knit the next pair of socks like mine do?

And walking - in Dickens, people walk to a town 10 miles away because they can't afford any other transit. Characters take 2 hour walks just for fun every morning. If I walk 2 miles to my grocery store, I'm pooped and can't picture myself carrying bags of groceries back, so I use the car for that short trip, feeling secretly ashamed. But it's not just the walking, it's the time. Two hours of leisure walking time every morning? An hour each way to walk to the store? They didn't seem to mind cold, dark, rain - if it rains on your 10 mile walk you hang your wool coat and shawl before the fire at your destination and don them again for the walk back. And you'd be cheerfully conversing with your companion the whole way.

Shall we go into water? Would Americans be taking daily baths if they had to pump the water and chop the wood to fuel the stove to heat it? Would we do as much of any washing as we do now?

Do I have to weave my own fabrics? Do I have to grow or slay or can my own food? Do I have to use a chamber pot or outhouse? I keep all this in the back of my mind to remind me to appreciate this way life and not abuse it. And I always have this nagging feeling that we should never forget these things because we may some day need this knowledge again. Our current way of life (for Americans, at least) is probably unsustainable in the long run, and there's that "live simply that others may simply live" that ticks in the back of my mind. For now I will continue to appreciate 68 degrees and electricity and indoor plumbing. I'm not ready to go off the grid yet.

How to enjoy toast

It has been too long, hasn't it? Too bad you don't have access to the many postings I've written in my head.

How to Enjoy Toast.
Don't eat toast for a long, long time. When you do, eat disappointing bread. That way when you do get some really good toast you will have a keener appreciation for the whole experience. When you finally have baked a loaf of bread that is honestly, actually good in flavor and texture, your hands will tremble with the anticipation as you carefully slice it to an even thickness. Gently introduce in into the toaster and wait to see how it comes out. Put it back in if necessary to get the proper level of brown. Upon that perfectly browned toast spread a generous layer of real butter at room temperature, covering the entire surface of the slice from crust to crust, including the crust (which is not too thick in this nearly perfect loaf). Let the butter melt and sink in, so that the surface crunches under your teeth, while the still-soft layer beneath is now infused with the melted butter. The crunch, the softness within, the butter, the flavor of the bread - those of you who eat toast casually and easily have no idea what a sensual experience it can be. It was worth the hunt for millet flour to add to the other 6 flours in the recipe.

In addition to that racy bit of oral stimulation, I have been working on my dollhouse. I got 4 kits for furniture from eBay (thus losing my eBay virginity) and ordered different size doors to see which fit which openings. So far I have built 3 of the kits and am working on the 4th, which is much more complex, requiring more input from me than just gluing and staining. I realized the other night that the part I like most of all is that I have a place where I can set up this stuff and LEAVE IT THERE. For so many years I couldn't get out the sewing machine or do a jigsaw puzzle or set up any kind of craft without having it on a shared surface like the kitchen table, thus having to put it away every time the table was needed for something else. Now I have an entire room set up just the way I want it: table to work on with a stereo and TV to entertain me, lights I can focus on my work, and nobody else needing the space for any other reason. This is so satisfying, after years of compromise - I can't tell you how delightful it is. Just having that space exclusively for myself is something I so needed. True, I'm sanding and dropping pieces of wood on the rug and making a mess, but it's my mess and I am solely responsible for it. Love it.

I bought a piano, which sounds like an extravagance, but my tax refund and bonus and a fire sale all came together to make a great opportunity. Nothing is wrong with my old one except the tone, which sounds like the piano is wrapped in layers of blankets, and I had the chance to buy something brighter so I went for it. So far no luck finding a charity to take the old one, but I have interest from an ad in the paper. I can throw in a pile of old lesson books - my kids never play, after all those lessons. I had reconciled myself to just living with this dull piano because the money for a new one could be better spent on other things, but this was a good deal. I hope it's as good a piano as it sounded in the store. It's a Pearl River - I didn't spring for a Yamaha or anything nicer, but for a lower-end piano it sounded good. But I gotta get the old one out before I can move it in. Now I'll get back to saving for college.

Speaking of college, they say there are a lot of scholarships available for kids in FIRST Robotics - I hope so. They didn't do well at the regional competition they went to last weekend - 50th out of 61 robots, but they are also going to a regional in Annapolis where they have a chance to do better. The robot was designed poorly - they went with one of the possible design choices and it was the wrong choice, but they may be able to modify by then. They did get an award for their community service projects, though. I can put a few pictures of the team up on Flickr if I remember how. The boy now has glasses and a haircut and went from hippie to nerd overnight, in looks anyway.

The girl is still looking (so she tells me) for a job and hanging with dead-end boyfriend. She thinks she might want to go to art school spring semester, but I don't think she's motivated enough to do the work to get to that point. She thinks she wants to go spend a few weeks with her grandparents in Florida to get away from it all here. I can't see that working well on either side, but maybe try 5-7 days. I still have a ticket for her that she didn't use earlier. I think she will be bored out of her mind and they will be stressed, maybe shocked by her. I have to think about it more. Lots of alarm bells go off in my head.

Bread and more

These are a pair of nice-looking loaves, aren't they? Too bad they're not really that nice to eat. One is regular bread for crumbs, and the darker one is mock pumpernickel. I had some of that toasted for breakfast, some with tuna for lunch, and the rest is in the oven becoming croutons to have with the split pea soup I'm also making. It was pretty dry and dense aroung the edges. I can now make pretty loaves that don't rise to ridiculous heights with holes all throughout, but I still can't make them edible. What you can't see on those pretty loaves is the evidence I found this morning. I put them in plastic bags on the counter overnight, and this morning I discovered that someone had flang a fang into one, right through the bag. Many little holes, nibbled crust. Stupid cat. It might be the same one who licks plastic bags for no particular reason, or the one who believes that everything edible in the house is rightfully hers. I also have a piece of beef in the crockpot with some onions, so it smells like Grandmommy's house. There will be no limas, however. This is my weekend cooking orgy so I have decent food during the week. If the boy doesn't like it he can eat Spaghettios.

I took the boy out to get Christmas presents today, and actually bought myself something I didn't need. It probably helped that I wasn't spending my own money - I had a gift card from my last co-op. I got CDs of Leonard Bernstein's Candide and his Beethoven's 9th. Barbara Cook's soprano makes the hair stand up on my neck, it's so good. And you can even understand the words, unlike opera singers.

Parking lot story. I pulled in, 3 spaces from a cart return. Lady next to me, 2 spaces from the cart return, sails in with her full cart and bangs it into my car. While I'm sitting in it. Never pauses or looks. Unloads her stuff, bangs into my car again (leaving a dent), then drives the cart around my car to park it 4 spaces from the cart return. Go figure. That one had me shaking my head all the way home.

Not much to report, but I'm trying to stay in the habit of writing. Just brain droppings, really. Oh, and the vanilla macaroni and cheese tasted fine - smelled like vanilla but didn't taste like it. Maybe make pudding with the rest of the rice milk. Weird stuff.

Ingredient FAIL

As I'm waiting for the gluten-free mac and cheese to finish in the oven, it smells like cake in here because the gluten-free Whole Foods unsweetened rice milk contains - vanilla. I thought I'd try rice milk because making mac and cheese with regular milk and forgetting to take a lactase pill makes me feel crappy. I tried LactAid milk, but apparently the active lactase enzyme can also break down cornstarch, so it doesn't thicken. Gluten-free, the rice milk said. Unsweetened, it said. Didn't look close enough at the ingredients, did I? Should be interesting. Either way I'm gonna eat it - not wasting all that cheese and all that good rice pasta.

As you can see, the boy is getting rather hairy. He wanted to grow it long and see what that's like, so I said fine as long as you take care of it. He looks like he came out of my high school yearbook. He has begun the heartbreaking struggle of high school social life - he likes a girl who does not like him that way. But she has a crush on a cartoon anime character that he resembles, so there's hope. How many times did we get our hearts stomped on during those years?

My former in-laws are ignorant cretins. But you knew that. Whenever we went there, it was excruciatingly boring for the kids and I, since there was no hospitality to speak of. No one cleared dolls off a chair for us. No one engaged us in conversations or seemed to be genuinely interested in us. No one checked to see if we were comfortable or in need of attention. The best the kids could do was wander off to the spare bedroom to watch a TV that wasn't tuned in to golf. Not much of a relationship to begin with, harder to maintain as the kids got older & had more interests of their own. Last week Ex bugged me to contact the girl (he can't seem to maintain contact with her himself, which is a whole story for another time) and have her call his parents. He had mentioned to us before that they believe she never thanked them for birthday gift. Okay, it's possible, also possible that she called and they just forgot. She agreed that she would be sure to apologize just in case she didn't. So she calls them, and they lambasted her for 10 minutes about what a bad grandchild she is, she didn't thank them, she never goes to see them, etc. Hello? Do they call her? Do they show any interest in her? Have they given her a reason to want to stay in touch? Do they understand that she has a full-time job, boyfriend, etc? She thinks her dad has been talking trash about her to them. Yes, she probably hasn't seen them since graduation, but she has been working the few times her dad went over there. I was so pissed at this. These people have done nothing to engender feelings of love or even obligation in these kids, other than overloading them with gifts. That family has never understood that material goods do not equal love. I'd be happy to never see them again. I'd love to tell her that she's 18, she can decided for herself how much contact to maintain, but I'll be the diplomatic parent and suggest she continue to make the effort, although what she will get out of it I can't imagine would be worth it. I have tried to be patient and civil with them, but it's just not worth it.

Rant over. In other news, I have finally bought a digital camera after the first one went missing, so I can show you the knitting projects I've done once I figure out how to put them here. Or just e-mail them. But for now, I'm going to go see what vanilla macaroni and cheese tastes like.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Like it says, happy Thanksgiving to all. I will make a pumpkin pie tonight, and lasagna tomorrow, gluten-free of course. I thought I might have to go in to work Friday (we have off), but my cells cooperated and the stars aligned, so I have 4 days off. I left early today (well, late compared to everyone else since we closed at noon) and thought I would stop at the grocery store, but the Shop Rite parking lot was full in places I didn't even know they had spaces, so I decided it could wait. The cats, however, are all thrown off by my coming home early and will spend the next two hours fighting because they think it's dinner time.

My 401(k) is now officially tiny, since I lost $100,000 in stock losses and split what was left with the ex. At least that's one more official thing that's done. They are still pondering the request to split the pension. It's all imaginary money anyway until I retire, which apparently I won't be able to do for a long time.

Not much else going on except for occasional robotics events. I suppose I should put up the tree one of these days, although I expect to be regularly extracting cats from it. I will do what I did last year and wire it to the wall so at least they can't knock the whole thing over.

Fun things I can do with a 4 day weekend:
- vacuum the dust from under the fridge
- shred assorted documents
- order new checks
- change sheets
- scoop the litterbox
- arrange old photos by approximate date
- eat lasagna
- make bread crumbs from GF bread

Are you excited yet? Woohoo!

Have fun, don't eat too much.

Back in the saddle

Ooh, has it been that long since I sat down to do this? Maybe I haven't been cranky enough to need to vent.

Things are pretty routine here. Last weekend's visit to Florida messed me all up, though, because of all the weekend stuff I usually do that I didn't get to do, like cooking for the week ahead. I still have yet to rake one leaf because it's either dark or raining or I'm not here. Today is windy and cold and maybe they'll blow away anyway, so screw it for this weekend.

I'm a bad daughter for saying it, but I don't enjoy those visits much. The travel is a pain even without small children, and a good chunk of money to boot. I get to have conversations with dad, but I found myself just enduring mom much of the time. She has very few interests that can get her out of the house, in contrast to dad who is out and about, but is bored in the house. He wants stuff to do, but he doesn't seem to want to do anything with other people, so no joining the Kiwanis or volunteering. Mom narrates everything we see, which really tries my patience, but I do my best to not say anything as she talks over whatever we're watching on TV or at Sea World, which is where we spent Friday. Anything that she finds offensive is "stupid" or "disgusting", her only two adjectives, usually related to sex. I guess maybe this is typical of older people to have fixed and narrowing opinions and interest as they age, but shoot me if I ever get like that. I'm not sure she enjoys our visits either, because she seems to be eager to get back to her routine (but then I guess I was too). And of course she is still more concerned with her possessions not getting messed up than with her grandkids feeling at home. That used to make me feel horribly anxious when I would take my kids to their house and have to spend the whole time making sure they didn't touch any of the attractive nuisances or dare spill anything or leave a crumb - I would get so stressed out I couldn't wait to leave. I love her, but sadly I can't find much connection any more. If I ever have grandkids I want to focus on them having a good time with me and not whether we are making a mess.

Sea World is different from what I remember from about 14 years ago - the shows are now big epic dramas rather than just putting the animals through their paces. No more trainer holding out a fish and explaining how they train the animals and putting them through their paces. Now it's Cirque Du Soleil that just happens to have sea mammals as part of the big costume/video on big moving screen/thundering soundtrack/touching backstory spectacle. They also are apparently very paranoid about ticket sales on line - you have to create an account, and you have everyone's name on their ticket and might have to show ID. For $70 a person (child price stops at 9 and is only $10 less) you get a few sea animals and a lot of very nice landscaping. And yet they want to charge $3 more for a ride up and down an observation tower. Man, I really sound like a cranky old person here. I just wonder, is this what the 2008 audience requires to have a good time at Sea World? Are children (and adults) so jaded that they can't just be awed by the fact that something as intelligent and carnivorous as an orca will willingly cooperate with humans in return for a mouthful of stinky fish?

Okay, end of rant or I could go on until I digust everyone. Yesterday I put a whole chicken in the crockpot. While I was cleaning it I found huge solid globs of yellow fat, and I wondered about how to render it and use it like in Jewish cooking, so I looked that up and saved them. I also skimmed off almost a cup of fat from the Crockpot, leaving behind 2 cups of other juices that cooked out of the bird, which will be broth for making tetrazzini tonight. I kept the skimmed fat also, which is now solid in the fridge. Then I picked off the meat after eating a leg, to use for the tetrazzini, salads, and whatever else. THEN (I wasn't done) I put all the leavings in the soup pot with water, salt, and an onion, and cooked it for 2-3 hours to make 6 cups of broth now in the freezer for future soup, risotto, whatever. I left the cooked solids sitting overnight (it was late), meaning to throw it out today and take it out to the trash. Apparently, though, some feline managed to knock the crockpot lid askew and steal the one leg bone that remained in there, so I'm hoping her digestive system can handle bird bones, being a normal part of a wild feline diet, because I don't see any sign of it on the floor.

Here's what the world wide web told me to do with that chicken fat: take those globs of fat (possibly saved in the freezer to make a large quantity) and the skimmed fat, melt it down, add salt and a sliced onion, and cook it until the onion and fat are dark brown but not burned. Pour through a sieve, save the fat in the fridge, and eat the crackly onion pieces and whatever chicken cracklings remain. Use the fat for cooking whatever would be good cooked in oniony salty fat. I may do this with the onion, it sounds awesome.

I have to thaw a bun for a sandwich for tomorrow, when I am helping disassemble 70 mice for their assorted parts and won't have a fridge or microwave for my lunch. We will be taking skin, kidneys, liver, diaphragm, blood, heart, tongue, brain, all four legs (one of the co-ops is still amused by my image of said mouse up on cinder blocks after removing all four tires) to have multiple muscles dissected out later, and spine with tail attached. In a hot noisy room next to the cage washer, with the sound of that and the smell of autoclaved mouse bedding all day, on my feet. And a new person who is pissing off everyone else by not listening to anyone, but we have to take her. Friday I spent my afternoon sorting through about 30 boxes of frozen mouse parts for another study, pulling out tubes containing 182 hearts, kidney pairs, and pieces of skin and then putting them in numerical order in other boxes. It was a swell time! One tube popped open while thawing and shot a kidney across the room, which I managed to recover. Mamas, don't let yer babies grow up to do in vivo studies.

The boy shaved - came out of the shower one night and showed me his clean baby face. He's so cute. His dad was disappointed he missed this father-son bonding opportunity, so I suppose he'll lay some guilt on him for a while because that's what he does. I got him some shaving cream and razors today so he doesn't have to use his sister's expensive razor heads again. He probably won't need it for a few weeks anyway.

In general, I find I am happy and content (notwithstanding the complaining above). I splurged on a whole pound of spring mix and I am eating awesome salads with chicken, clementine sections, and sugared sliced almonds. I put chocolate syrup on my plain yogurt with cashews for breakfast because I was out of fruit, and it was like a sundae. I got out yesterday (72 and sunny!!!) and got the two big Christmas items (Xbox for boy and PSP for girl) before the carols in the store could drive me nuts. The juvenile delinquent cat has discovered the joy of lap, and has been coming to curl up with us unbidden - he even tried to share this typing experience with me. My knitting is going well, bills are paid, kids are not in trouble. House could be cleaner, but eh. Hope all is well with you and your trips to Florida are peaceful and easy.

new adult - in theory

Wednesday night the nuclear family went out to PF Chang's (so I could get a real GF menu) to celebrate the girlchild's 18th birthday. Everybody was delighted with the food, even the picky child who declared he didn't like anything new. Girl got a TomTom for her car from dad and a bracelet from me.

Here's how the 18 thing is working so far: I don't tell her when to be home, but she has to tell me when and whether she will be sleeping at home so I don't worry more than I have to. If she chooses to sleep at scuzzy boyfriend's house my telling her not to will be ignored, so she tells me she will "sleep out", but at least she doesn't lie to me about whose house anymore. She is still covered by my medical insurance until 19, but she makes her own appointments and takes herself there (although I still pay the copay). For now I still pay the cell phone and car insurance because she doesn't have a job, and I give her $100/week out of the child support. She didn't want to accept it (like she had a choice) until she found out it was coming from her dad - I think that made it okay because she doesn't get anything else from him. In some ways this is liberating for me as well as for her. She is trying hard to get to the point where she can be independent, although I think she has no idea how hard that can be. You know how weird it felt that first September when you no longer had a school to go back to? She feels nothing but freedom and relief about that. She is looking for work and just learning hard lessons like, an employer who interviewed you but isn't going to hire you won't call to tell you. She complains about not having money, but rents movies with boyfriend and eats fast food. Class, what do we do when we have very little money? That's right, we cut back all unnecessary expenses and eat macaroni and cheese or free meals at mom's. We also put in applications at every store in every mall to find someone willing to give us part-time crap work just to earn some money while looking for the ideal job. She has not yet accepted that she's going to have to do this, but I think that point is coming soon.

I actually forgot my birthday in the preparations for hers. I got a card from the ex-inlaws and couldn't figure out why they were sending me a card - did they think I was sick? A thank you for something I forgot I did? It wasn't till I opened it that I realized it was a birthday card (no money enclosed, darn it). Ex- father in law called yesterday, told boy he wanted to talk to the birthday girl, so he handed it to me. I could hear the surprise on the other end - expected the girl. Had a kind of weird conversation, and I realized later that he had our birthdays mixed up.

The boy had two days of school, and wham - sick again overnight. Couldn't believe it. He said it was probably the milk at lunch, not the same thing as before, but I don't know. We will see how this first month goes and then check in with the doctor. It is nice not to have more than one school to keep track of. He has to walk home, and on the first day the brand new Land's End backpack strap broke. It appears that one loop of tape was not properly sewn in, but now I need to make a call and exchange it, after I threw away the receipt and all the packing materials. So much for their reputation for quality. Made in China, it says.

I got most of the painting done, although there are a few things that could use a second coat and aren't going to get it. Nothing left except the window frames in the living room. However, this shiny trim paint has the propensity to peel off at the slightest damage - it sticks together like a skin, but not very well to the paint below it. I might have to get something else for these windows or every little nick and cat claw scrape will drive me nuts. But first I had to deal with the damage from the previous owners who cut big chunks out of the molding to install their louvered blinds. Last weekend I puttied up the holes with several layers of wood putty (after seeing that one thick layer would shrink and crack as it dried). Then I kind of ignored them all week. Now I need to sand them smooth - my original plan was to try to sand them to match the contours of the original molding, but I don't think I have the skill or patience for that. Once it's painted it will be covered with curtains anyway. And there is some scraping - I don't mind that, it's cleaning up the paint chips that's a pain.

Cats. I came out to the kitchen today and stepped on something slightly crunchy and looked down to see the ragged remnants of an ear of corn. I had left 3 ears of corn floating in their cooking water on the stove last night (yes, I'm a slut of a housekeeper), 2 white and one yellow. During the night someone fished out the yellow one (preference? chance?) and gnawed every kernel off. Many of those gnawed kernels were still on the floor around the denuded cob, and I'm sure I'll see the rest in a pile somewhere or the litterbox. Those little yellow bits of germ from the center of the kernel tend to stick pretty tightly to linoleum as they dry. I gotta admit I was pretty impressed how thorough a job they had done on that cob.

Boy got a new shirt from his dad (who has already been giving him "early Christmas presents") for back to school, but it's kind of clever - picture of a trebuchet (a kind of catapult) with some equations and the words "physics makes me want to hurl". Okay, we nerds are laughing.

Fare update

As I suspected, airlines charge more for Valentine's Day weekend trips to Orlando. The weekend before and the weekend after are cheaper, or at least the cheap fares are still available.

Paint and petulance

It has been a long time since I updated, so you probably gave up checking it, but here it is. Summer is almost over and it's time to wring out the bits of commentary that have been sloshing around my brain.

That isn't my cat, but the message is the same. I have been painting, and the first day I had the roller pan out Not strolled through it. Fortunately I found the footprints on the rug and kitchen floor in time to avoid them becoming permanent, but since then I have to lock him up when I get out the brush and paint. He would rather investigate what I'm doing than eat, and I don't want to replace a rug.

School starts Wednesday for the one that's still in school. The other is busy looking for full-time work with benefits. I have been walking a fine line between too much help and letting her figure it out for herself. Having just gone through a job search in recent years I do have some expertise to offer, but I risk looking controlling, at least from her point of view. I have been called a hypocrite (I'm not even sure what the exact context was, it was just part of a bitchy rant), accused of wanting to pry into every detail of her life (because I ask her, when I finally see her at 11pm, what she did that day), snarled at for circling possible jobs in the paper. Then she will come and apologize. What I do doesn't vary as much as how she reacts to it. I am leaving as much of it in her hands as possible so that she can learn. I even offered to help with trash boyfriend's resume, which I'm sure has hugely exaggerated his abilities, since he needs a job too. With him with a GED and her with just a high school degree it will be interesting to see what they end up with. Her latest interview was for a receptionist for a car dealer, which might need a better wardrobe, so I suggested consignment shops. She and Trash want to get a place together some day, which I can't really prevent once she's 18, but it will take them a long time to afford it. It will be interesting to see if he can pass drug tests if he does get hired somewhere.

I looked into airfare to Orlando for Feb., and it's not as cheap as I had hoped. What, do people go to Disneyland to get married on Valentine's day?

I spent my vacation painting my living room/hallway/stairway a beautiful sky blue with white trim. Apparently the kids never knew that the walls were light blue - they thought they were white. Both of them approve the color, rare agreement with me. Boy helped with the furniture moving and roller work. I only used one coat, so we had to do some hole patrol - looking for the pale holes in the blue that indicated incomplete coverage. The hardest part was the trim - it needs two coats to cover the previous medium blue, and baseboard is hard since one knee doesn't bend enough to sit cross-legged for long. There are 4 doorways in the hallway, 3 at the top of the stairs, baseboard everywhere, windows which I am saving for last, and heat vents - too much woodwork for my sanity. But most of it is done. The windows have not been done in about 20 years - I skipped them last time, which was about 12 years ago (yeah, I'm a lazy slut). I might need to strip away what's there, which still bears wear from dog feet and has old adhesive from attempts to seal out cold air. Not only that, but there are big holes cut in the molding from the people who lived here before - they had louvered blinds on the bottom half, and didn't understand how to use the hinges, so they cut the molding to attach them instead of turning them around to attach properly. So now cold air blows in through the holes in the molding. I'm thinking of some serious quantities of wood putty and some careful sculpting. This whole thing has been the kind of upheaval in the house that I just didn't want to contemplate before divorce because of the fuss that it would cause. Things were out of place in the living room for at least 4-5 days and I'm still not done after a week, and there would have been whining like crazy.

I took a day off in the middle of that to take the Boy to Dorney. It was the best weather possible, and we had a blast because he learned to love looping roller coasters. The only downside was that some things were closed or short staffed because so many kids had gone back to college, but we had a good time anyway.

I made blueberry muffins with Grandmommy's sour cream blueberry cake recipe. Even converted to gluten-free this recipe rocks. Especially yummy to eat raw. I crockpotted a big batch of eggplant parmesan - not quite the same without breading and frying first, but I threw some gf breadcrumbs in between layers and it was good. The mozzarella I sliced didn't melt and spread, so I get it in chewy chunks, which is actually quite good. The boy just left with his dad for a few days, so I'll be living on the eggplant parm and huge salads for a few days - I got a head of red leaf lettuce the size of a laundry basket at the farmer's market today. I made peach crumble last week - hard unripe peaches treated like apple crumb pie. I just put a loaf of "gluten-free multigrain miracle bread" in the oven. I have to stop baking because then I eat it. Bad carbs, bad!

Nerd camp and party time

This was the first week of nerd camp for the boy - electronics in the morning, web design in the afternoon. I got enthusiastic text messages like, "I blew up a light bulb!" and "I did my first flash animation!". And the food was acceptable. He stayed with his dad during the week, coming home for the weekend, and will do it again next week. We tried to download Adobe Flash Player to our mac so I could see his animation but for some reason although it seems to install we can't find the actual program on the hard drive. Too much I don't know about the computer. Probably something to do with the OS being outdated. I don't think I could upgrade this thing if I wanted to - not enough memory. One of these days when I'm not spending money for anything else I need a new computer.

I found a website that has a new crockpot recipe every day - http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/. I have a 25 year old crockpot that I do use from time to time, but sometimes I think I need a smaller one. I was surprised to see that they don't seem to make round ones like mine anymore - they are mostly oval. I guess if one wants to cook a whole chicken that would work better. I used it yesterday to cook meatballs in sauce all day. Now that the back room is fixed up and it's much nicer looking in the back of the house, I invited friends from my last few jobs over after work for a "my life is better now" party. I worked evenings all week and last weekend getting prepared - Saturday I bought 3 pounds of ground sirloin and made it all into meatballs (baked, not fried), then froze them, and bought 4 pints of different ice cream flavors from the local dairy. Yesterday I dumped the frozen lumps into the crock with tomato puree and sliced garlic and frozen crumbled basil from last summer and just simmered all day. Mmmmm. Monday night I boiled eggs and fried bacon. Tuesday night I cleaned up and bought a folding table and ordered rolls from the Italian People's Bakery. Wednesday I made onion soup dip, cut carrots and celery, peeled and boiled potatoes, bought lunchmeat and cheese, made potato salad, peeled the eggs and deviled them. Thursday I left work early, picked up the rolls, bought ice, got everything out (or so I thought), put meats and cheeses on plates (cats can eat turkey right through Saran wrap, did you know that?), set up the gluten table and the non-gluten table, lit citronella candles (futile), iced down the sodas, sliced tomatoes and onions, etc. We made a little fire in my tiny charcoal grill and had s'mores, some with dark chocolate for those who like that icky stuff. The two Chinese co-ops had never had them, nor the PhD from Kenya, so there were some lessons in marshmallow roasting. We pigged out on meatballs, lunchmeats, devilled eggs, chips, soda, s'mores, ice cream, onion dip.... only after they were all gone and I was cleaning up did I realize I never put out the potato salad or the bacon. Guess I know what I'll be eating for a while. The bread shoes from the last post were also featured as a supporting player in the meatballs. Now that it's all over I can get back to watching DVDs of The Wire. Man, that's a good show.

Monday night daughter came home late and crying. Had been told that skanky ex boyfriend had OD'ed on heroin and she couldn't get hold of him (apparently still cares). Tuesday night she didn't answer my text messages or answer her phone, and didn't get home on time. I tried to get hold of her with no luck. Friends hadn't heard from her. Then I pulled up the last cell phone bill online and started calling people she calls a lot, trying to locate her. Was she mad at me? Was she overreacting to the OD story? Had something bad happened? It was hugely upsetting. No one had been able to get her on the phone since the afternoon. After an hour of this, I called the police (it was midnight). I could understand her ignoring me if she was really in a foul mood or rebelling, but not ignoring everyone else. Officer came, took a report, said he would post it so anything related to accidents, hospitals, etc would be in the chain. Finally at 2:30 she called me. Had fallen asleep in her car with the phone on vibrate. Had gone to the cemetary to be alone (was she sitting? was she drinking? doing something else? says no, but...) and fell asleep. Interestingly, one of the numbers I called from her phone bill turned out to be skanky ex-boyfriend, who sounded perfectly fine. Huh? Finally got her home, called off the police search, went to bed about 4 am. This little paragraph does not even begin to convey the way I felt. She was very apologetic, didn't intend it to happen, totally unplanned, etc. Found out next day the the OD was a hoax perpetrated by somebody with a grudge who had no idea it would not hurt the person it was intended to, but hurt someone else who was a friend. She read him the riot act the next day. Man, talk about stressful. I don't ever want to spend another night (or any other time) like that.

After all that, I need an unplanned weekend. No obligations, no to-do list. Other than going out to see Hellboy II, that's what I'm aiming for. I need some destress down time and I plan to get it. There are enough leftover meatballs, potato salad, ham and turkey, and deviled eggs to last a while, and maybe I'll even indulge in a can of Coke. Oh, and the gluten-free brownies one of my friends brought. Other people go out and get drunk or stoned - me, I drink Coke, but not after 4pm so the caffeine doesn't keep me up. What a wild woman I am.

Graduations and bread shoes

I'm back. I was pretty busy for a while. For the last few weeks of school there was always a concert or rehearsal or appointment of some sort and my head was busy keeping track of it all, but it's finally all done.

Got one successfully graduated from high school, one from 8th grade to 9th, but it was squeakers with both of them. Between cutting classes and illnesses, both of them needed myriad doctor's notes, then there were the faxed notes at the last minute that didn't go through, went through too dark to read, etc, etc, one thing after another. We would just get caught up when someone would get sick again and it would start over. Not to mention missed homework from all those days out that didn't get made up - fortunately for the boy, some teachers cut him some breaks so he didn't fail classes (how ironic). It was touch and go down to the very last days of school, and even at graduation I was waiting for her to have flipped a teacher off and gotten pulled out of it at the last minute. Graduations from both vo-tech and the high school were hot, noisy affairs. Her father was there, but couldn't make himself stay and watch the whole thing of either one because it was too hot for someone of his blubber content. I was there for everything, arranged all the excuse notes, spoke with teachers and guidance counselors and nurses and any teachers who had a problem with either child. I bought flowers for the graduate and made food and invited ignorant hick in-laws to celebrate and even cleaned my house. And do you know, I wanted to cry each time because she was a crappy student who didn't care about school and hated it and I felt like an awful parent. I felt like I had failed for not somehow passing on the desire to learn, the need to complete assignments, the urge to participate in school activities. She wanted none of that. She wanted to do as little as possible to get by, she hated the kids at school, she hated all the rules and schedules. I still feel like a failure because I couldn't get her to do better, yet from the time she was tiny she had an utter disregard for any and all rules and I could never maker her see things my way. I have so many regrets, yet I don't think she would have done any different no matter what I would have done. But it still makes me want to cry.

I have been working on fixing up what needs fixing around the house. Got the back room redone - not upgraded, just repaired to decency. New siding and paneling, doors and windows, etc. The old shed is gone with all its rust, and I put together a new Rubbermaid shed almost entirely by myself. Got the kids to help get the roof top in place, then managed all the other two-person jobs myself. Started hacking through the jungle that I couldn't get to behind the old shed, took out scraps of fence that had been put there years ago to contain the dog and were now held together mainly by vines. Found that nothing can kill forsythia, so all the stuff we cut out is back and will be a nuisance forever. If I had known, I would never have put it there. Got a really dead tree and a mostly dead tree (which probably started dying when butt-head cut off a big branch years ago without consulting me) which could probably drop limbs on heads, so getting estimates to cut those down. I found a roll of our kitchen wallpaper so I can cover over the evidence of the cracks in the walls. They appeared a few years back but have been stable since. Problem is, they really show up under wallpaper. If I ever sell this house (not likely in this market) I'd rather not have cracked wallpaper. I'm thinking now of giving ex his share of the house as cash and not selling it. It's not bad with him out and repairs done.

The picture above is another monster loaf of gluten-free bread. It's the same recipe I usually make for crumbs (sucks for slicing), but I added one additional half-teaspoon of xanthan gum. And I only used 1t of yeast, not the 2-1/4 called for. After 10 minutes in the oven it had risen like a Macy's float to double the normal size. This is how it looked out of the pan and on its side. When I pulled the top half off, both halves were hollow like cream puffs - like bread shoes. Could have worn them like sabots. Now it is a bag of dry chips, having been torn apart and dried. I never know what to expect with these breads, but this one is usually pretty reliable. Weird.

The boy has not thrown up for over a week now. We're still trying to figure out what causes it, but I hope it's not something like school-related stress. I don't believe he's lying about barfing to get out of school - I'm not usually there to see him vomit, but I don't think he could fake the nausea I do see. I don't know what to think anymore. He has an endoscopy scheduled at CHOP, so we'll see what that turns up. I'll be thrilled if he doesn't throw up this summer, but if it starts again in fall I'm going to be really annoyed, legitimate illness or not.

Thank goodness things have slowed down. I still have appointments to leave work for (endoscopy, orthodontist, gyno for girl), but not as many other things. I'm working on the legal documents to have my 401k and pension split with butt-head. Turns out I have to have them signed by a judge and officially stamped by the court clerk. What? How come nobody told me this in time to have it done at the same time as the divorce??? At least J&J supplies the forms so I don't have to pay for that, but I still gotta figure out how to schedule a judge. One option, after specifying the date to use for the 401k value, was to have that value adjusted by all the gains and losses that occurred since, which is good, because it has lost a lot and if I gave him half as of last year, that would leave me with less than half of what it has now. And he doesn't deserve that. And I liked the pension options. If I die before I retire, should he get his half? Heck no! And if I die before him, should he keep getting it? No ma'am! And if he retires before me, should he get his half then or wait until I retire? Wait, you dog. You don't get it unless I'm getting my share. Insert maniacal laughter and hand-rubbing here.

Nerdfest

Boy and I went to a comic/manga convention in Philly today - many nerds, including us. He was in the one place he can wear his Naruto ninja headband without fear of mockery. It probably would have worked better for him if he hadn't whacked himself in the head with a wooden sword and made a zit on his forehead bleed before we left. He had fun, and it was a nice day, and I convinced him he owed me some vacuuming and dishwasher emptying without complaining.

I have kept him to a strict diet of migraine trigger avoidance, so he is cheese and chocolate deprived, among other things like fresh pizza, bagels, and soft pretzels. But he is willingly complying, and I think it is working, keeping him from the vomiting episodes that were becoming more and more frequent. We are down to one a week, and we can trace each one to something he ate. I'm pretty sure this is a migraine variant, but we are still testing to rule out anything more dire. Last week he had an EEG and some blood drawn, this week an MRI, tomorrow an upper GI with small intestine followup. He took most of a 14-day course of Prilosec, but missed a few here and there. No results from any of this yet. I somehow seem to have crammed most of our doctor/testing needs into a few weeks - gyn for me last week (thyroid fine, CA-125 negative), mammogram this week, gyn for daughter this week, and she broke her previously broken and rebuilt tooth Saturday so I need to get her in to get that repaired asap. Maybe she's old enough to get a permanent cap on it. My insurance company is going to wonder. And boy tells me that one eye has poor distance vision while the other is just fine, so I suppose we need to check that out. He won't want to wear glasses and will probably forget/lose/break them. All this has brought me some stress eczema on my fingers that I haven't seen in a while, along with some heartburn and intestinal willies, but I think everything will be settled before long.

All of my savings bonds got safely to where they were going, so they're safe on line. I just arranged to have the crappy back room of my house stripped down and rebuilt - new outside siding, new windows and doors (including cat door), new paneling inside, something to prevent water coming in under the walls like it does now, new roofing and gutters. And tear down the old metal shed rusting away back there that is held together with about a thousand nuts and bolts. I was looking at a replacement shed at Lowe's - original price $549, now on sale for $549. Who could resist? At least now I know what to do with that CD that just matured. I will need to take down some trees - one is already dead and threatening to fall or at least drop heavy branches, one has been dying a branch at a time for years. Wonder what that will cost.

But it doesn't look like I'll be paying for college this year. Girlchild has now decided she doesn't want to go to college, just get a job and start trying to get out on her own. OK by me - she can always go back later. I just want her to get that HS diploma. I think things will be harder for her than she thinks once she's out there, but she needs to try it. She is only convinced of things by first hand experience, and even some of that she denies. While she's working it out she can take the summer to think about it, and I already have websites bookmarked for GED online and various summer schools.

That all sounds kind of gruesome, but there are bright spots. There are awesome Jersey strawberries and lettuce in the farmer's market, I made some killer potato salad, and school is nearly over, along with all the need for doctor's notes for every absence and calls from the school about some violation or failure or absence or other. I've had enough of dealing with those people to last me the summer. June 20th is their last day, and if she gets enough absences excused and passing grades to graduate, fine, and if not, well, I'll let her deal with it. I'm not fighting any more, with her or the school. What happens, happens and we'll deal with it then.

Four small blue reasons to stop the project

I started cutting down a forsythia hedge that was just too wild to manage. Boy helped, but soon decided that wielding the saw on the big main branches was more fun than cutting up the small stuff with a clipper. He enthusiastically sawed springy undead branches, stomping them down when they wouldn't cooperate, hauling them to the compost pile. It's always good to get him out of the house and away from the TV. We got pretty far and I was about to go further when I spotted a nest. I peeked inside to see if it was current or old, and it held four blue eggs, so we called a halt and will wait to let the next generation of robins arrive. I saw the mother burst from the bushes the next time I came around the corner of the house, so I hope she decided to keep at it and wasn't scared away by us. I'll dig up the remains of the bushes and plant coleus (it's the shady side of the house). I know I'll be finding forsythia volunteers for years to come, but they should be easy to handle compared to the tangle that was there.

Twice this week the boy had to stay home with nausea again. It has become a diagnostic problem now - about every two weeks he gets nauseated, usually during the night, spends part of the night on his knees over the toilet, might throw up once or twice, then feels nauseous and sleepy for the rest of the day, sometimes two days. No stomach pain, no headache. Doctor is as puzzled as I am. In between he is fine. This week he was home Wednesday, back to school Thursday (where he nearly threw up after running in gym class), then out again Friday. By Friday dinner he felt fine after sleeping much of the day and feeling lousy. We had changed his form of Ritalin, thinking that might be the culprit since it started about the time we changed the formulation, but obviously that didn't help. It started after his bout with mono, so maybe the virus triggered something else. But why this two- to three-week cycle? Some weird hormonal thing? Abdominal migraine (but no pain)? Intestinal torsion or other abnormality? Stomach emptying abnormality? It doesn't seem to be a food allergy unless it's something subtle like too much fiber. No diarrhea or problems at the other end. For now we are going to try a proton pump inhibitor like Prevacid and see what happens. We will probably get a referral to a pediatric gastroenterologist if we can't figure it out with the pediatrician. Any thoughts?

The girl child got a speeding ticket and tried to hide it from me, but when mail started arriving from law firms I finally got it out of her. So just as I am getting the auto insurance lowered by consolidating all our insurance with one carrier, this will probably undo it and raise it back up again. She has a court date - hopefully she can bargain down to no points. There are now online defensive driving courses that are acceptable for lowering points and insurance costs, so she will have to do that too. She won a vo-tech competition and was supposed to go to the state competition, which involved spending the night in a hotel with her teacher and her team, but she was disqualified because she was deemed "unpredictable" and they didn't trust her not to do something stupid like leave the hotel without permission. She brought that on herself with some of the stunts she pulls in class - I'm not sure she understands that. I felt bad for her, but they had a point. I hope she ends up all right, but until she learns to take advice and accept responsibility, she will keep getting into trouble. I think she did her experimenting with drinking and drugs and seems to have gotten that out of her system, and she has held this job for quite a while (they are forgiving of lateness), so there's some hope. I'm still not taking it for granted that she'll graduate on time or go to the community college in the fall. She still says both are on. She knows that by being a college student she still stays on my benefits as a dependent, which is good for her because she's not ready to support herself.

We are going to get our geek on next weekend. Nearly-ex (that's another whole story - apparently the quality of competence at the courthouse is pretty low, because again they lost a piece of paperwork and scheduled us for an appearance we weren't supposed to have to make and lord knows when this will be over with) will be busy doing some barbershop singing thing, so the boy is mine and we will go to the local Renaissance Faire, him with a sword and me possibly geeked out in my medieval dress, and maybe the science fair at the local state museum. Mother's day both kids will go with their dad to visit Grammy, so I might take the day and go to the Mercer Museum fair. This is at a museum of American tools, which sounds dreadfully dull, but I always like the history of how people used to do things before all the conveniences we take for granted. It's a bit of a drive and I hate to spend the gas, but it's the kind of thing I really like, and I never get to put my full attention on anything when the whole family goes, because it's a constant litany of "Mom, look at this!" and over I go to look at that. If I want to spend 10 minutes watching flax being spun or bobbin lace being made or just staring at old tools, then I have to go by myself. Funny, ex never had that problem, because he never once worried about what anybody else wanted, we had to go where he went. Never turned his head to see if anybody was following, never worried about the rest of us waiting patiently until he finished wandering off without any notice, never checked that kids were comfortable or fed or bored or in need of potty break. That was all my job. I got us a set of family band radios so if the parents went separate ways we could keep in touch (this was before we all had cell phones) but he never learned to use them, and would hand his to the kid who ended up with me so we couldn't reach him anyway. But I digress. It will be sweet to wander one of these events at my own pace for once and not have to worry about anyone else's comfort or level of boredom.

Saturday's jobs await. Bread to bake to turn into crumbs, coleus to plant, tree helicopters to vacuum off the rug, dirty farmer's market lettuce to wash. And I'm hungry. Time to forage.

Of stupidity and future money

Or, my $12,000 adventure. Over the years I had accumulated lots of EE and I savings bonds through payroll deduction. When I went through them recently they added up to about $25,000 current value. Nothing to sneeze at. But if I ever want to use them for something like college, I can only cash in $1000/day at a bank. So to be able to use them I have to convert them to virtual bonds, thus putting them at the mercy of some computer. So I go to Treasury Direct and figure it out, and after lots of registering and requesting and reregistering and having verification questions and receiving login information in several separate envelopes and after the most unusual login security procedure I have ever seen, I can start converting my bonds to virtual bonds, which can be cashed and sent to my bank account in any amount. You have to type in the serial numbers of the bonds, generate a Manifest, then mail them in. Regular mail. According to the FAQ, no certified mail, etc. Just regular mail. Because they never lose anything and they're entirely reliable. So I carefully made manifests with no more than 25 $100 bonds or 10 $200 bonds, and started mailing them one at a time so if any did get lost, it wouldn't be all of them. But still, the face values were large. Eventually I got the sets of 10 mailed out, with trepidation, and then it was time for the sets of 25. But these envelopes were heavy, so I put the last set of 10 in my mailbox and took 4 packs of 25 to the post office to see about extra postage. Bought the stamps, then realized as I drove home that I had $10,000 sitting in the car with me. Good lord, there has to be a better way. Then (not sooner) I realized that you can insure things you mail. So back to the post office, grabbing the one in the mailbox as well. I explained it to the lady at the counter, who was sympathetic and also thought just mailing them was risky, so for $140 I sent them Priority mail, insured, and delivery confirmed. Maybe not necessary, but a little peace of mind. I only wish I had thought of it sooner. Now I feel stupid. I can go online and check each manifest to see if the bonds are now identified as "converted", but that will take a while. At least one set got there. I hate to turn them over that way - at least with the papers in my hand they were real, but now they're just numbers in a computer. Ever since I read "The Handmaid's Tale" I have been suspicious of having anything important entrusted to a computer.

Spring is here, and the cat only bit the heads off of half of my seedlings, so maybe I'll have some climbing flowers to hide the old fenceposts. Made bread today, some of which went into the boy's birthday meatballs and the rest of which is now croutons. Next weekend I'll have to make another just for crumbs, which are now all used up. The meatballs were great with some homemade sauce - why did the price of tomato puree go from $1.59 to $1.89? I don't remember hearing anything about a tomato shortage. I mowed, lay in the hammock and read, continued to cut apart unruly forsythia whose end is near, went back to the hammock to search for my phone (darn pockets on these pants), got daughter's cell phone number changed due to harrassment from ex (note: if you claim harrassment, they don't charge you the $15 fee to change numbers), wrapped birthday presents, changed the litterbox, put together a tiny charcoal grill, picked up a prescription, cooked sauce, did laundry - the usual exciting weekend. Then I can tackle rat brain parts tomorrow. A rat hippocampus is very small, in case you were wondering.

I turned down an invitation to a friend's baby shower. It's in Paramus at an Italian restaurant, and I think there would be maybe one other person there I know. Hmmm, 2 hour drive each way, food I probably can't eat, 4 hours with strangers oohing over baby clothes. Sorry, my inner autistic child gets crazy just thinking about it. I like her, worked with her a year or two, had dinner with her last week, but I just can't face this many anxiety-provoking situations in one day. Driving, gluten, cutesy baby stuff, strangers to schmooze with. Like I said, my inner child is largely autistic and guides me more and more.

Now if I can just find that Borders gift card I bought for a birthday gift and then hid too well.....

Junior nerd

This is my junior nerd at Take Your Kids To Work Day, pretending to use DNA analysis to identify a criminal. Later I sneaked him into my lab and showed him how to use all the pipettors, starting with the manual single channel and working up to the electronic multichannel, which increases speed and throughput by a huge amount. He was very impressed by that, and even told me the next day how cool that was. He skipped the face painting but did make a T shirt, and chowed down on vast quantities of pizza, the sundae bar, and later stuff from the vending machine. He always has a huge appetite when not on his pill. Wait until you hear how low his voice is when we see you in July.

Speaking of his pill, I think that is what has been making him sick to the point where he has to stay home from school. He had been taking a 12-hour multi-dose formulation, but we switched him to a 4 hour generic, and that's right about the same time he started with the nausea and vomiting. The doctor swears it's the same dose, but having spent some time in the drug industry I know that small things can make a big difference. Maybe the other pill was buffered better, or released more evenly, or slightly different in some subtle way. He did sometimes feel nauseous with no vomiting on his old pill. So he's off of it entirely for a few weeks. He seems to be better, but will have a harder time concentrating. He tends to bounce off the walls at times and at other times is too sleepy to function. I hope this takes care of it.

I really liked the warm weather last week, but when it gets really hot I'll miss baking. Yesterday I tried a new gluten-free bread recipe - brown rice flour, sorghum flour, bean flour, tapioca, cornstarch, many eggs, ground flaxseed, three times as much xanthan gum as usual, but highly praised on the websites. And it actually did come out good, springy and stretchy, unlike most of the recipes I try. But I'm so used to not having bread that I couldn't think of much to do with it - I don't keep much around that qualifies as sandwich fillings, and it was so soft and non-crumbly it seemed a shame to toast it or make it into croutons or crumbs. So I'm just eating it with butter and enjoying it. I also baked some chicken leg quarters with barbecue sauce - mmmmm. A lot of the things I like take an hour in the oven so I save them for weekends. Maybe I can use the crockpot instead when it gets hot. I bought a tiny charcoal grill - we have lots of dead wood in our yard (and a rotted away box of it in the shed that someone decided he needed to save years ago) and I like cooking over fire occasionally - brings out the Girl Scout in me. However, since I'm usually only cooking for the boy and I, and he doesn't like meat crusty on the outside, it will take some finesse to get everything cooked but not crisp. He can hold a hot dog on a stick and wave it near the fire while mine gets nice and crunchy right on the grill. I have a perfectly good Foreman grill I stopped using because he cuts away the brown grill marks. I also have to make sure I get gluten-free charcoal - it sounds stupid, but apparently some of them use wheat starch as a binder.

I am thinking about getting the girl a computer for a graduation gift. I am torn about this, because sometimes I just want to strangle her where school is concerned, and it's still possible for her to screw up and not graduate. But the free one I upgraded for her is about at the end of its usefulness (can't add more memory), and it's definitely something she can use. Sometimes I kick myself for having given her too much too easily, and this might be just another of those things. I suppose other people rue past decisions, but often I just act on what I know now and think back later to how I could have handled it better. At the moment she seems to be taking small steps toward responsibility, but they are small steps and she has a long way to go. But the skeevy boyfriend is long out of the picture and she is happy to be unattached for now. She works consistently at the hardware store (although she still doesn't handle money well, and not one kid she hangs out with has any concept of saving money or gas by not giving in to impulse), although they put up with lateness that most businesses wouldn't. She gets mad when I imply that there's any chance she will not graduate and has a habit of denial when things go badly, insisting it's under control. She takes every chance she can to legally skip school (she could go to the vo-tech when her regular school is closed, but doesn't have to so she doesn't - since the kids that rely on the buses can't get there, all kids from a school that is closed can have an excused absence). But I hope this is building into a decent adult. I think so, but she has a long way to go.

It's weird to think that I am now on the downslope of the child-raising years. One is almost 18, one almost 14, and they hardly need me and I can actually do things I couldn't for a long time. I can decide on the spur of the moment to take a detour after work and come home late, and no one will starve or need a diaper change or wander out of the yard. I have weekends free most of the time - girl at work, boy with his father - and I still marvel at the freedom. All those years of weekends alone with the kids because their dad was at work, so I never had a day when I could just jump in the car and go, are past. It seemed like that time would never come when I could live my life just for me again, but it's almost here. Don't get me wrong, I love my kids, but I'm not cut out to be a good mother. I hate not having directions to follow and not knowing if my decisions are going to lead to horrible mistakes. I hated dealing with the irrationality of toddlers and their constant needs. I don't like people and could never be on school committees or PTO, and wasn't much use in Girl Scouts except as a back-up adult. But somehow I got them safely to this point with no amputations or brain damage and they seem to like me, so I must have done something right. I know I could have done things differently, but I'm stuck with what I did do, and I could have done worse. I hope when I'm a grandmother (and I hope that's many years away) that I can be one like Grandmommy and make the kids feel loved and like they are the center of my attention. And I hope my own kids come to see me because they want to, not just for babysitting.