Terrible/Perfect

Ahhhguhguhguhguhguhguhguh

Oh man. That was such a horrible day. It hurt. All there is to say is that Baby and I had a long, full day, running, such as it was, on a scant five hours of sleep. Then there was no possibility of a nap. The tiredness was literally a physical pain. She screamed so much.

Thankfully I have no photographs from today, so look at this instead:

Nick Cave. Wonderful.

Mr. Terrible is trying to work some plumbing magic in the tub drain, and if he succeeds I'ma take a screaming hot shower and go the f**k to sleep.

On a much happier note, I'm on Pinterest now, which seems like it would be a total time-waster, but is actually causing me to spend less time on the internets. I think it has something to do with being able to plonk all the ideas and information I get down in one place (whether it's curtains I'd like to copy, a knitting pattern, fabric, a recipe, whatever), very much like keeping a pad of paper next to your bed to write down all of the stuff rattling around in your head so you can forget about it and sleep. Weird. In any case I really love looking at all of my pins together, they're so satisfyingly cohesive.

Mmm hmm.

Yep.

I'm so tired.

Black and white and read all over

I had been holding out on these books; I still think they're more appropriate for older kids, but the big kid developed a huge interest to the point that she was asking other kids about the story. I figured that we probably ought to read it ourselves before there were no more secrets left for her to discover in the pages.

I haven't read this one since probably 2000. I was past the target audience at that point, 19 going on 20, and while I'm not an acloyte of the Church of Potter (what can I say, I was a Roald Dahl kid) it was a stay-up-all-nighter, for sure. I'm pleasantly surprised that after everything that has come since-films, merchandise, tribute bands, merchandise, an amusement park, merchandise-the story is still right here, just patiently waiting to be magical all over again. 

The kid is in love*. 

*She did add, after asking again what exactly the purpose is of a school house in which every member is bad, that the book is "rather black and white, isn't it?" Ha! Such a little UU. I tried to explain that the story takes on a bit of shading as the series goes on.

Buzz buzz buzz

I love her drawings so much. I need to post more of them. They're funny and wonderful, like all children's art, and such a delightful peek into her funky little brain. She is incredibly sweet, you know. Whiney and fussy and hysterical, yes, but truly deep down inside she is a huge warm welcoming peony blossom of a soul.

Her bee has three main parts and six legs. I like that she knows to do that.

I've been struggling lately, mostly with being tired and irritable, and it's mostly due to not getting enough sleep. But I'm overtired because I'm overtaxed...just stretched kind of thin at the moment. I feel like w'ere never home. A bunch of stuff I really, really wanted to do fell by the wayside (hello, making pickles?) and that bums me out. We've just been too busy outside of the house. We're moving soon, with a birthday coming up and home learning to get back to, so that's not going to stop. I just need to adjust, to control what I can and take better care of what I can take care of.

Tonight I had this moment of a sort of positive nihilism. I felt like we'd been rushing around all summer long, locked into commitments of all kinds and driving, driving, driving all the time, that we'd had no stretch of downtime at all in weeks and weeks, and that I'd been thinking about a bunch of crap, just things I have no control over, like people being judgemental or combative or unkind, and I was so, so tired that suddenly it felt totally pointless to worry about it. Suddenly the only thing that seemed important was getting to bed early. I like that. I like that I'm in a place, in my brain, where the "breaking point" of being overtired and not getting enough rest is realizing that I can stop worrying about what other people think and say and what's going to happen in the coming weeks and just get some sleep.

Sleep is the best. plan. ever.

Oh man, that bee. She's been reading Clan Apis. It's a wonderful book. We're thinking about keeping honeybees. That would be so nice.

Free love

I love the cycle of free stuff in this town. I have no idea if other towns do this quite so much; I certainly don't remember people leaving little piles of stuff in front of their houses with cardboard signs exclaiming "FREE" on them where I grew up. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Whether it's a thing that other people in other towns do or not, people here do that all the time (when the weather's good for it anyway). One of our neighbors, who lives in the most intensely wooded city lot I have ever seen, in a falling apart house with broken windows, is clearing out some very strange and wonderful things. Including this old, old children's school desk. It was filthy when I carried it home. There was a spider living inside. One leg is about an inch and a half shorter than the others-even though the little metal baseplate is still on the bottom of the leg? Like it's always been this short?-so it is resting on a roll of Scotch tape. Klassy. I like my bedside reading, too: Frog and Toad, Angelina Ballerina, Beatrix Potter, John le Carre. The baby really likes espionage novels. I think at some point I will attach a little peg to the leg, but instead of trying to blend the finishes I will paint it flourescent pink or something. Anyway, love. Free love. 

Pot o' gold

I don't know about you, but I was getting tired of looking at that busted up yellow tabletop. It needed refreshing all along, and today was its lucky day. Benjamin Moore 2022-20 "sun kissed yellow", which is brilliant and delightful. Exactly what a bright yellow ought to be.

It looks like we're moving house pretty soon, within town. I'm pretty excited. We're good friends with the homeowners, and we've (I've) been given the go-ahead to paint the walls. I have never owned my own home, so at 31 years old I've never painted the walls where I live. I have no idea why but it's been hugely motivating for me. I've been spending FAR too much time at the Benjamin Moore site searching for the color that best approximates these beautiful tiles, and the right grey, and the best color for a little powder room with no window. 

I watched my friends' children this week while their mum is out of town, and it was such an odd feeling: puttering around, washing dishes, doing laundry, scooping dog poop, in a house I'm going to be living in in just about a month.

There's going to be a sewing room. I kind of can't believe it. The only way to justify that kind of space for that kind of activity is to turn my thoughts towards building a business, which I have always wanted to do anyway. Having a dedicated space, where I can fence out little wandering hands and fuzzy dogs and stack packing boxes or whatever in the closet may finally make that possible.

But first: yellow table.

I had no idea refinishing furniture was so immensely satisfying. I'm kind of scaring my husband, for real. I was going on and on about this amazing paint scheme I have in mind for the painted wood panels in the dining/great room area and what I'm going to do to a couple of chairs that I bought at Goodwill and all of a sudden I realized that I could see the whites of his eyes and foam at his lips and he was straining at the bridle, ready to bolt. It's not the expense or time involved, but I guess altering things is a concept deeply alien to him. He doesn't care about design at all. I take that back: he is drawn to certain aesthetic qualities, but he doesn't think about objects and color in the same way that I do. Or maybe he doesn't think about old, crappy objects and pale, apothecarian green in the same way that I do.

Oh well. If I ever get to the point of reupholstering something he might pass out.

Snooze

Wonky sleep patterns around here. Again. I think I need to get "This too shall pass" tattooed on my arm. I've been buying vintage pink pillowcases and they make me so happy, like a feel-good Sofia Coppola film if such a thing existed. It would be really nice to get a solid night's sleep on them.

The big kid has a birthday coming up. I asked her to write out a list of gift ideas for her dad and me, and she gave me this:

A Kaya doll (which her Grandma just got her as a huge, sweet "just 'cause" surprise...lucky girl!), a Lego Lava Monster (that little orange dude), and a bow and a sword. Not sure where that fighting vibe came from, but okay. I think we're done with theme parties until she's old enough to really commit to a theme, but she keeps telling me all of the costumes she's going to wear for her party: Link, a giant foam Rock Monster suit, Tintin. I love that she really sees all of that happening. She wants a Lego cake with all of her favorite things on top, including pictures of Kaya, Link, the Tintin crew, Moomins, Legos. That I think I can do.

I can't believe her birthday is only a month away. The summer gets away so fast.

Hot Waldo

This is Hot Waldo. I love Hot Waldo.

I'm not going to front like I made this up. I did no such thing. This combination isn't exactly exotic in any case, but Johnson Berry Farm sells just such a jam, as well as a variety of other jams and jellies and in-season berries. They have, rather prosaically as far as I'm concerned, named theirs Blackberry Habanero. Because it is blackberry jam. With habaneros. 

For Hot Waldo you're going to need some blackberries, and some peppers. If you really want it to be Hot Waldo, though, you have to use Waldo blackberries, which Johnsons sells at their farm, farmstand and at the farmer's market, but to be totally honest I think you should go and pick half a flat of blackberries out of your neighbor's front yard or the unused city lot down the street, because they're free, and for real? I don't think I've ever purchased a blackberry that tasted as good as the ubiquitous weedy ones that are out there busily destroying native ecosystems.

Anyway: half a flat, or about 8 cups, and somewhere between 2 and 4 hot peppers, like Jalepeno. I used three Serranos.

You don't have to separate the seeds out, but I did so I would have more control over the heat. I ended up bunging the whole lot in anyway, and it was perfect. One brief note here: watch it with the peppers. I didn't wear gloves while working with these, and I ended up with a really uncomfortable burn on two of my fingers from the capsaicin. I also knew these were roughly jalepeno-hot, and I know how much jalepeno I can use without going overboard. If you're going to go straight for the habaneros, or the Guatemalan Insanity Peppers, take it easy and use common sense: you want to be able to eat the jam, not use it to assassinate heads of state. And maybe consider wearing gloves while chopping.

I should also add that if you're going to process your jam jars for storage rather than putting them in your fridge and using them within a few weeks, you want your clean jars in the hot water bath and your lids warming and all that before you really get going with the jam recipe. Everything I say here is going to assume canning experience, or access to a friend who has experience, or a library card.

So. Mince your peppers, throw 'em in the pot with the 8 or so cups of fresh berries, and cook them down until it's a bubbling slurry.

At this point, you have two options:

1)Proceed to jam-making

2)Get the seeds out

I chose Option 2, and used a food mill to squoosh out the good stuff and leave the bajeeeeeellion seeds and pulpy bits for something else. When I did so, I ended up with 5 cups to use for jam, and about 1 cup of remainders. 

From this point, you're going to make jam just like you'd normally do. I used 5 TBS of Ball low sugar pectin and about 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 a cup of honey. 

When your jam is gelling, get yer jars and lids out and ready. Take a blurry photo in your unbelievably dark kitchen while you ladle the hot jam into the jars.

I got 5 half pint jars out of the recipe. Process them in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. Let them rest for a couple minutes, then place them out of the way to cool.

Back to the blackberry seeds and pulp:

Throw it all in a quart jar, and fill the jar with vinegar. I used white vinegar because I have about three gallons of it in my kitchen right now. I didn't do anything fancy, I'm just leaving the jar at room temperature until I think to strain it. You could probably get more than one run of vinegar out the the pulp, too.

Hot blackberry vinegar makes rockin' salad dressing.

Homemade chicken salad, with roasted chicken, chopped chard stems, chopped cucumber, mayo and whatnot, and strips of fresh basil, over Romaine and drizzled with a mix of the blackberry vinegar, olive oil, and a splash of pure maple syrup. You could also use the berry vinegar mixed with olive oil for dipping warm crusty bread at the table. Nom nom.

Hot Waldo is CRAZY good spread on savory sandwiches, like the chicken salad above, or just turkey? Heck yeah. It would also make a nice glaze for cooked meats, tofu, tempeh or vegetables.

Alright. My kids are driving me crazy. Coffee time.

mauvais appetit

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to stop being surprised by this, but I am becoming someone who cares a great deal about food. Clearly we all care about food, at least enough to cram it in our pieholes whenever "can" and "need to" coexist in the same universal plane, but lately I've been doing a ton of work in the kitchen making stuff for us as a family from scratch, and I suppose it's kind of growing on me: the idea of really paying attention to food, appreciating it. I hesitate to attach myself to movements of any kind but yes, bringing my attention to food has most certainly been accompanied by a feeling of slowness. Not a bad thing at all.

I've taken home a few food magazines that friends were done with, and found a lot of what was in them helpful, or at least interesting. Maybe not enough to subscribe to any of them, but enough to read them all the way through.

I'm not in the least bit interested in food celebrities, though. I'm trying to pay less attention to celebrities in general anyway, but I have no idea who the various food show hosts are or the big restauranteurs or what have you. Reading the magazines I kind of plugged my eyes and shouted "LA LA LA LA LA LA!" whenever a celebrity chef's name came up, but then there was her.

Again, as I said, I'm actively resisting forming any kind of emotional response to famous people, but she looks like she is planning to eat me. Terrifying.

Baby lay there flipping pages and saying "Isssss IIIIIIIIICE KUH-reeeem. Bread, bread, bread."

Which is precisely what I thought: once you got past the cover there was a crazy-wonderful-looking recipe from St. John for chocolate ice cream in there.

Link, he come to town!

Did you know that I have two daughters, and zero sons? It's true: it's a big ol' ladyfest around my house. Even one of our dogs is a ladydog. The bros, man and dog, are seriously outnumbered. It's kind of a running joke in my family, too, because I am not, shall we say, the most delicate of flowers. That's also a frequent joke of Mr. Terrible's, come to think of it. "My wife," he will say, "is a delicate flower." I am a consummate Plain Jane tomboy, or, tom...man?, and yet: I had two daughters. One of which has both feet firmly planted on Planet Girl.

It's been a bit of a head-scratcher for me. I remember going through a dress phase when I was six years old or thereabouts, but prior to that, and after that, I had no time at all for girly things. In an ill-conceived bid to be attractive I did wear make-up for a year or so in junior high school, but after that I gave up, started dying my hair different colors, wearing worn out mens' jeans. I mean...I'm not going to lie: I tried to be cute. I always secretly wanted to be feminine, to be pretty, but genetics wasn't fighting in my corner on that one. I guess I settled for being beautiful on the inside, and keeping my butt covered in Levi's. And when my daughter needed her face made-up for a ballet recital, I had to go out and purchase everything she needed on her face, because I owned none of it. Do you know that part in The Lord of the Rings when Sam has the elven rope around Gollum's neck, and Gollum is screaming bloody murder because "it buuuuuurns us, it freeeeeeezes us!"? It's a lot like that when I put on make-up.

Burt's Bees chapstick! Can I get a "hallelujah"?

I sometimes feel a little bad, not having cute shoes for her to try on, or polishing her nails or what have you. I also sometimes lament not having LEGOs around. And swords. And, heaven help me, Nerf guns. Don't get me wrong in the least; I love my daughters exactly as they are, but I would have enjoyed having a little Jedi Knight running around the place, too. Just...more projectiles. Those are fun.

I'd given up on trying to woo my little Princess Powder Puff with the siren song of building blocks, cars and trucks and the timeless allure of pirates, ninjas and space cowboys (and truly, in all seriousness, I don't really care what they like as long as it's age appropriate and doesn't undermine our family's values), but there developed an in: my little obsessive obsessor hadn't been obsessed with anything for a long, long time.

There was a vaccuum.

One day, for reasons I will never understand, that vaccuum filled simultaneously with The Legend of Zelda and LEGOs.

You know this song? I first heard it when I was in college, and I guess when you're 19 it's super funny. It's still super funny to me, but I lack maturity. I went looking for it the other day on YouTube, and I have no idea why, but the big kid got CRAZY hooked on it. She wants to listen to it every day, and we had to have this reeeeeally long conversation about who Link is, and the Legend of Zelda, and the original NES system, and all preceding and subsequent video game systems, and what, exactly, Link does in the game, and on and on. She doesn't play video games at all, so it was a bit like explaining a California sunset to a cave fish. Over and over again.

How do you explain Pong? Tetris? Grand Theft Auto: Vice City? No, scratch that last one. Don't even mention that one.

Also, I suspect because 1)she has boy friends, and these boy friends do NOT HALF like themselves some LEGOsohmygoodgracious, and 2)I said I was going to bring her little box of basic bricks to the free box because she never touched them, she decided to pull what LEGOs she has out and play with them the other day.

She was instantly hooked, just like that.

Now apparently I have a LEGO birthday party to plan for next month, and a Link costume to make for her to wear at it. Because that works? I don't know what kind of deep dorkiness I wished myself into here. I say this like I don't have an original artist's concept for Bag End as my desktop wallpaper, but still.

She was disappointed to learn that there are no Legend of Zelda LEGOs, but I did indulge her today with a moon buggy.

Look at that cocksure son of a gun. He's all "You know where I'm drivin'? I'm drivin' to space."

She wants more LEGO Space for her birthday. If we get them I'm swapping out some of the astronauts' dude heads (assuming they're all dude heads) for a few wearing lipstick. You know...'cause lipstick = lady.

It's the berries

It's Thrifty Tuesday! I just made that day up, there is no such day. But there have been some seriously good finds lately:

Fabric. It's the berries, which is funny because all along I thought it was the water.

An orange. Old. Japanese. Pure delight, especially with a bit of hot Earl Grey innit.

And...you might want to perpare* yourself.

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Okay. You ready?

Maybe no one will ever really be ready for this. If you're not, I'm sorry:

This is, without a doubt, the best and most wonderful thing I have ever bought in a thrift shop.

*I was going to fix this typo, but "perpare"? Yes. Perpare yourself. I'm letting it stand.