Flossie at Home

Shamed By Mr. Rogers

2011-10-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

Having purchased the hilarious book-about-books How to Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books, Mr. Flossie was inspired to pull off the shelves his own little collection of odd books. One of them, Mister Rogers Talks with Parents, initially charmed me because it contains in an appendix the sheet music to all the Mr. Rogers songs. Plus, who doesn't love Mr. Rogers?

But then, of course, I had to torture myself by looking up what Mr. Rogers had to say about working mothers. Although he concedes that children are not "bound to suffer emotional damage if they don't have full-time mothers," he also opines that "if a mother has a choice about working during her baby's first years, she does well to think long and carefully about what that choice will mean." Foreboding words. He quotes a working mother:

From my own experience, I would like to suggest that sometimes the decision to work during the first year or two of a child's life is made in too much haste. I had already worked for a number of years; I had an advanced degree. How could I possibly stop midstream, and take a few years off? My brain would atrophy! I would lose my momentum; I was meant for better things. There are few decisions that I now regret more.

Thanks, Mr. Rogers! I now feel terrible. He hastens to add that many mothers have no choice and have to work. It's those who choose to work just for kicks that he wants to gently remonstrate with. Well, guess what: I work for kicks in the sense that we could, if we wanted to, with effort, subsist on Mr. Flossie's salary. And yet I still work. I freely admit I would much rather stay home with Buddy than head in to the office every morning—I'm not one of those women who feels relief at getting away to the relative calm of work. Furthermore, I know it would be better for Buddy if I did not work: even though we have the best nanny in the world, there are certain things that only Mommy can provide, especially if Mommy is breastfeeding.

So for all those reasons, I really should be at home. And yet I'm still working. Why? The money! And secondarily, because I sort of like my job. Although we were far from poverty-stricken when I was growing up, there was always the pervasive feeling of there not being enough money. And my adult life has been dominated by low-paying jobs and graduate school. My Scarlett O'Hara rock-bottom "I'll never go hungry again" moment of grad school was the day both my credit card and debit card were maxed out, and I had to abandon a cart of groceries at the co-op. I got paid the next day, so I hardly starved, but it was just the embarrassment of it all.

With that background, at this point in my life I need to know that I could support myself, Buddy, and my family if I needed to. And then there is sort of liking my job. It's definitely the best job I ever had—the most flexibility, the most independence, the best colleagues, the best bosses, the most creativity—and I am good at parts of it (though on some days I feel like the only parts I'm good at are the paper-pushing parts, like processing payroll vouchers). It's also in a very desirable, liberal-arts-major field. If I gave it up, I'm a hundred percent certain I'd never get as good a job again.

And those are the paltry reasons why I abandon my baby son for thirty hours a week. I hope that in the end, the harmful effects of my absence will be at least partially mitigated by the positive effects on the family of Mommy having a job she likes that brings in some money. I tell myself he doesn't seem horribly unhappy with his lot in life. There are still plenty of these smiles, and as I am well aware—and fully embrace—facilitating these smiles is my most important work.

Shamed by the UPS Man

2011-09-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

If you have a baby, and you are me, you don't get out to stores a lot. Even getting through the door of a store with a stroller can seem like too much trouble. And yet, you need things. For me, ordering online became a habit. Especially lying in bed late at night during marathon nursing sessions, I would multitask by using those oh-so-handy Amazon and Zappos apps on my iPhone.

Well, the other day I got word that the UPS man—the UPS man!—had raised an eyebrow about just how many boxes I was receiving. Oh the shame. So I've declared a moratorium on ordering merchandise by mail. Not only will I try to stop abusing my Amazon Prime privileges (okay, maybe cut down to every month or so), but I have unsubscribed from those daily temptation emails from the likes of Zulily and Baby Steals.

Late at night, I'll just have to read more books on my iPhone instead of pressing the "buy" button. I may still have to spend money on downloading books from iTunes, but at least no one will know but me!

Dinner Party for One

2011-08-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

My dear readers will recall that this is a blog about the desire to have a domestic life, despite impediments (school, job, neuroses, cluelessness). Having a baby presents so many more openings to be domestic, so much less time in which to do it, and so many more ways to feel inadequate. Today, eight months in, I realized that despite working nearly full-time and raising a baby, I've been blaming myself for not doing more—like I should be planning elaborate dinner parties or writing a novel on the side. I decided to give myself permission to shelve the dinner-party-and-novel plans for now.

Dinner parties for one, however: eminently doable. I didn't always think so. Making baby food intimidated me a lot. But then I realized that mashing a banana or avocado is pretty easy. Even the whole steaming-freezing-pureeing routine isn't too hard. I've made pears, plums, and butternut squash so far. How many other people you cook for are going to be satisfied with a one-ingredient meal? Extra bonus: lots of leftovers. I made about twelve baby servings of butternut squash puree and still had half a cooked squash left over, which I devoured on the spot.

The little guy is an interested, if initially skeptical, diner:

Letting It Slide

2011-06-03T18:07:00.000-07:00

I don't know how childrearing and housekeeping started getting assumed to be possibly concurrent occupations, because I'm finding it well-nigh impossible to to both. To wit: a) Babies want to be held, like all the time. Even if they're asleep and you try to set them down, they know. b) Holding the baby precludes doing much else with one's hands (even if the baby's sleeping and one's attention is otherwise free). c) Put the baby in a sling carrier, you say? That gives you a free hand or two, but forget about bending, reaching, or doing much in the kitchen. d) Offload the baby on someone else? Sorry, you are the Mom Café, and besides, you feel guilty about going back to work 30 hours a week, so you're determined to spend every moment you can with him.

Hence, the burnt-out light bulbs, the stacks of laundry yet to be put away, the unopened mail, the weeds starting to dominate the plantings outside, the notice that the water bill has not been paid.

And you know what? I couldn't care less. Being immobilized by a nursing or playing baby is the best thing ever. We've spent so many deliciously "unproductive" hours together.

A friend recently brought this poem to my attention:

Advice to Myself
by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic—decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Dept. of Minor Improvements

2011-03-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

I'm finally retiring this annoying thing:
I got sick of buying the replacement sponge heads. Instead, I'm going to use these dishrags:
They're great dish scrubbers, they're washable and reusable, and best of all, I can make them myself (knitting pattern here)! I have several left over from a knitting phase a few years ago, and more recently, with my knitting on hiatus,* I bought some at a winter farmers' market. The woman at the booth was surprised. "The older ladies are usually the only ones who know what they're for," she said.

Hurray for older ladies' wisdom!

*the reason my knitting (and anything else requiring both hands) is on hiatus? Hint: this is me right now, typing with one hand on the laptop.

Excavating

2011-03-01T16:16:00.000-08:00

These last few weeks of maternity leave, I've embarked on an excavation project. There was a certain Closet of Neglect, where I threw things to forget about them, that gradually grew into a Room of Neglect. What I found in the first layer is a time capsule of just about a year ago, when I entered pregnant-and-dissertating land.

Running shoes I bought in March 2010, right before I found out I was pregnant. Brand new, still in box.
Meditation CDs from a meditation class I was taking and never completed because of morning sickness.
Normal, non-maternity winter clothes.

Further layers go even further back in my life:

A small collection of baby things I had accumulated before I was even pregnant.
An Obama sticker.
My wedding photo album.
Reading packets from graduate school seminars.
A box of golf pencils from the days I was teaching rhetoric.

Is it possible to be organized? Theoretically, yes, with a place to put everything. Some people out there must be. Is is possible for me to get organized? Armed with a plethora of big clear plastic bins and a labelmaker, I'm going to find out. As I empty the Room of Neglect, things are going into bins (and a great number of things are going to Goodwill). As a bin fills, it gets a label. So far the bins have labels like Office Supplies, Photos, Crafts, Memorabilia, Maternity Clothes, Old Clothes/Rags, Holiday Stuff, Wrapping Paper/Gift Bags/Gift Boxes. And of course, there are already baby-centric bins: Toys Not Yet Age-Appropriate, Baby Clothes Still Too Big, Baby Clothes Already Too Small. Let's not forget the labeled drawers in the foyer desk: Batteries, Things That Stick (tape, post-its), Random Cords and Electronic Stuff, Note Pads, Light Bulbs.

With a place for everything, will everything find a place?

Spaceship to the Moon

2011-02-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

At first, having a baby is as if someone kidnapped you and sent you to a country you've never visited before. Or put you in a spaceship bound for the moon. You're ripped from your old life and suddenly need a whole different skill set than you did before. Carseats—how to install them? Clothing—what do babies wear? Breastfeeding—really? Burping, diapers, onesies, baths: they're all mysteries, and those who know the secrets—like the nurses in the mother-baby unit in the hospital—are our new gods. We hang on to their every word.

Soon enough, it's the same world that I lived in before, only with a difference. Home starts out being 99% of our world, since it's the dead of winter. When we emerge, the heavy-as-lead carseat limits our jaunts to about ten feet from the car; the purchase of a foldout stroller that fits the carseat opens up our range exponentially. Yet curbs and stairs still stymie us. Previously unnoticed aspects of the landscape have new interest: handicapped accessibility; secret doors opening to luxuriously private lactation rooms; restaurants so chaotic that a crying baby bothers no one. The big local mall, which I had never fully appreciated before, provides us with our first extended stroll.

And at the center of it all is a wiggly, grunting, squirming, panting, chortling, wheezing, honking little creature. He reminds Mr. F and me of a Chris Ware cartoon: those jowly characters with old-man hair and bags under their eyes, even the children. Needless to say, we find him completely adorable.

In fact, any description of this experience would be incomplete without adding how very smitten we are. Everyone told us how hard, inconvenient, exhausting, and stressful parenthood would be; fewer mentioned the swoon factor. I guess it goes without saying, but it's something I never could have fully anticipated.

Alasdair!

2011-01-15T15:16:00.000-08:00

Four days after that last post, and two weeks ahead of schedule, I went into labor, and all to-do lists went out the window, where they remain. But it all worked out, thanks to friends and co-workers who have stepped in do everything from keeping the office running smoothly to putting together baby furniture to bringing over lasagna. For the moment I live in a world happily deprived of to-do lists. Or at least, the only important one is one I can keep in my head pretty easily: Feed Alasdair. Change Alasdair. Hold Alasdair. Repeat.

De-Hoarding

2010-11-26T10:17:00.001-08:00

Now that the dissertation is done, I feel like I can get back to everything I've been neglecting in my life, but where to start? I've been a grad student of one kind or another for ELEVEN years!

De-cluttering is one thing I've been longing to do. I haven't watched that show "Hoarders," even though several people have told me they're obsessed with it, partially because I watch too many bad reality shows as it is ("Teen Mom," "Jersey Shore"), and partially because I would probably wince at seeing my own traits in it. For example, you know how you should keep cardboard boxes "for a little while" to make sure you don't have to return the thing that came in it? In this way, over years, we accumulated a mountain of cardboard boxes and packaging in the basement. As mountains of trash tend to do, it accrued other kinds of junk to it as well:

Just recently, I actually hired movers for an hour to come take the mountain away, as well as move around or take away several pieces of extraneous furniture we had around the house. Now the basement looks a bit less alarming:

I hope this means you won't be seeing us on an episode of "Hoarders" anytime soon.

Phantom To-Do List

2010-11-15T19:19:00.000-08:00

Hello! I'm still here, just have been busy. I'm usually one of those people who likes to make to-do lists, because they help me feel in control. However, for this past month, I've been afraid to make one for fear of how many items it would have. I estimated 200 at one point, if you include all the dissertation things that needed to get done, things that need to get done at work before taking three months of leave, decisions that need to be made about the birth, and decisions to make as to what to acquire and not acquire from the various preparing-for-baby lists. And a hard deadline for all of those 200 things: December 13. Or sooner.

Once I decided my dissertation was as done as it was going to get and got it formatted and turned in to my committee, that removed a good chunk of the phantom list, enough that I could start to contemplate writing it down. Just now I wrote down 27 things off the top of my head. One of those things was to post to my blogs. Down to 26!

Pears

2010-09-12T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, I continue to be amazed by local produce. Here are some delicious pears from Jenna's grandpa's tree. She brought them into the office, and here they are aesthetically posed on top of my laser printer.

When I was growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis, there was no such thing as a "farmer's market." That I knew of, anyway. Everything edible came from Kroger's. It wasn't until I volunteered at an organic farm in Iowa that I realized how good vegetables like spinach and tomatoes can taste. Turns out that fruits, as well, can be pretty darn good. The blueberries from the U-Pick place froze beautifully. Every so often I grab a handful and thaw them out for my cereal.

Here's something else that is pear-shaped right now:

Me. Getting pregnant has introduced a whole new dimension to the work-life balance I've written about in this blog and have so utterly failed to get a handle on. Namely, there is a lot more "life" stuff to address. Maybe in retrospect, I will think it was a good move to combine the misery of FIVE SOLID MONTHS of morning sickness and constant fatigue with the misery of finishing my dissertation (get all the misery over with at once!), but at the time it was pretty overwhelming. Now that I'm over the morning sickness and a draft of my dissertation is turned in, I'm finding it much more enjoyable. Prenatal yoga? Bring it on! Eight-session birth class? Sure, there's time! Trip to IKEA for gear? Let's do it!

Three months from delivery, there's still plenty to do on my dissertation and on getting ready for baby. (The room behind me in this picture? Has to become a nursery.) Not to mention work continues to be a crazy-fest. But the baby tasks are a nice kind of fun work. Thanks, baby! I feel I haven't been thanking you enough so far...so thanks for all you've given me already.

CSA Regrets

2010-08-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

Why oh why did I not sign up for my CSA share this year? Something about feeling overwhelmed and pressured by having to deal with a boxful of veggies week after week. But after picking up Veg's box of goodies for two weeks in a row this summer while she was in the process of moving, I realize I was crazy not to do it. I simply don't have the gumption to go to the farmer's market every week on my own and pick up tons of random vegetables. The paralysis of indecision may have something to do with that: what to get?—What to make?—Oh no, have to get out all my recipes and read through them all. But getting a box of pre-selected veggies each week takes the decision-making out of my hands. Then I just have to figure out what to make, and usually it turns out to be something simple or improvised.

Oh well. Next year. In the meantime, I'm vowing to stop by the farmer's market each week and pick up something veggielicious—no overthinking allowed.

Cake!

2010-07-31T12:18:00.000-07:00

I learned that Deb was doing extensive research on vegan chocolate cake recipes, so when I needed to make a cake for work a week later, I simply took advantage of all her hard work and asked for the recipe she found. Hence, this cake and this frosting. Vegan baked goods are perfect for me because I rarely have milk or eggs on hand. My flirtation with veganism ended ignominiously, but still I so rarely eat milk or eggs (lingering mixed feelings after I found out that I may or may not be allergic) that if I get some for a recipe, I only use a little and the rest just sits in the fridge.

I didn't frost the sides because I realized that the only way to get the cake to work was to put the sides of the springform pan back on and cover it with plastic wrap. Now that I have the perfect recipe, next I'll work on my presentation technique.

Hmmm—there is leftover frosting in the fridge, and I still have all the cake ingredients...I may have to make some cupcakes tonight.

Blueberry Overload

2010-07-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday afternoon some of us ditched work and went blueberry picking at this U-Pick farm south of town. The sun and the mosquitoes were fierce, but the blueberries were abundant. Now I'm experiencing what never happens in regular life: a surplus of blueberries. I've eaten soooo many blueberries in the past few days. It's impossible to get sick of them, though. I also froze some for later use—we'll see how well they hold up in the freezer.

Junk Mail War

2010-07-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

I am the designated bill-payer in the household, hence I am the person who opens the mail, hence I am the person who gets annoyed at all the junk mail that clutters up our entryway and our recycling bin. There was a certain credit card company (cough*Bank of America*cough) that saw no problem with mailing us "convenience checks" every freakin' week. Oh, thank you for the convenience of checks that would cost a hefty fee to use and that any identity thief could steal out of my recycling bin and why would I need checks that draw on my credit card if I already have the credit card itself? I finally called them and canceled the card.

In the realm of unwanted catalogs, I have been really happy with Catalog Choice, a free service that allows you to get off of catalog mailing lists. I've been using it for about a year. A catalog arrives, I enter it into Catalog Choice, and so far the companies have been responsive and taken me off their lists.

Violas

2010-07-04T12:44:00.001-07:00

Our next-door neighbor Jim brought over a couple of trays of black viola seedlings a few weeks ago. Now they're in a pot by our front door, looking perky. Jim is great. He is a professional landscaper, and his yard is a total inspiration.

Mulch

2010-06-19T09:42:00.001-07:00

Our backyard has turned into a giant jungle this summer due to my neglect, but I was able to get out there and spread some new mulch over a weedy zone. This was the first bag; eventually I had used twenty. It won't stop the weeds, but it may slow them down a bit.

Pink Smoothie

2010-04-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

I have been enjoying the hell out of this smoothie recipe. Blend together the following:

frozen strawberries
frozen banana
chopped figs
sliced almonds
handful of spinach leaves (optional—makes it less pink, but healthier. I don't notice a difference in taste)
soymilk

Yum!

Om

2010-03-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

Ready for the latest in what has become quite the series of self-improvement schemes? First it was the labelmaker, then it was the naturopath, and now...meditation! I started taking a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction class on Monday. My stress level has been through the roof lately, because of my job, which, although no one's life depends on my doing my job well, still involves keeping about 10,000 different balls in the air at any given moment, dropping any of which will cause (relative) disaster. And my new boss is always tossing in more balls for me to juggle along with the rest.

All of which causes heart-pounding, stomach-churning, and 2:00 a.m. mind-racing. So when I learned of the MBSR class on a Friday, I was signed up by the following Monday. The class meets once a week for eight weeks, plus one whole Saturday in May, plus daily homework. This week's homework is listening to a 40-minute CD every night that guides you through an exercise called a "body scan." I swear, my instructor's voice on that CD is perfectly calibrated to cause instant sleep, which is not the intent. Today I did it in the morning and that worked out better.

I didn't really know what I was getting into with this class, because it is hard to describe if you're not doing it, and for the same reason I don't really know how to describe it now, but I like it. I normally have a running narrative in my head of the past and future—all the (stupid, of course) things I've done and all the (insurmountable, of course) things I need to do—but it's very hard to keep that narrative going if you're told to focus on your toes.

I'm sure that this class will be about more than that as it continues, but just that in itself is a pretty good payoff.

Food Allergy(?) Update

2010-03-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

Some have asked how the everything-free diet is going.

As a matter of fact, I've been doing some research on my food allergy report. At the bottom of the lab report, in small print, it said that the tests were for the antibodies IgE and IgG4. Google and my university library databases revealed articles with titles like this: "Unreliability of IgE/IgG4 antibody testing as a diagnostic tool in food intolerance." "Unproven diagnostic procedures in IgE-mediated allergic diseases." They all say that the gold standard for diagnosing food allergies involves an elimination diet followed by food challenge tests, NOT one of these blood tests.

Common sense had led me to suspect this already, but all the same, I wish Dr. L-H had explained how controversial these tests are. Not that my conventional-medicine doctor ever explains anything to me. So, yes, I'm holding Dr. L-H to a higher standard. After all, he wants me to give up more!

Now I'm conducting my own little challenge tests. Stay tuned for whether the egg and cheese croissant I ate this morning causes a personal health apocalypse.

Mr. F and I had an interesting talk about the word "quackery," which Mr. F uses liberally, and which I'm fascinated with. I think the word is so derogatory that it creates a wide category of practitioners who must feel perpetually on the defensive. Mr. F has big problems with anything that seems the slightest bit New-Agey, whereas I'm more open to it. I'm willing to go along to a certain extent with the placebo effect and other positive results of treatments that are not necessarily endorsed by the hospital-industrial complex, which has its own motivations. However, take bread away from me, and suddenly I'm the biggest cheerleader for the Enlightenment and the scientific method.

By the by, I love the blog The Quack Doctor. It researches nineteenth-century patent medicines advertised in newspapers.

Flossie's Little Helper

2010-03-04T19:01:00.000-08:00

Why, what a delicious meal of marinated tempeh, lemon-garlic kale, and herbed roasted potatoes and celery root. How did I ever do it? Oh, you know, just whipped it together between working at the office and trying to finish my dissertation.

NOT!

Mr. Flossie and I have been subscribing to the Red Avocado meal plan: four vegan and usually gluten-free dinners for two, $65/week. They are delicious meals, they patronize a worthy local cause, and...I feel so ashamed! I have a domesticity blog, for god's sake! I should not be outsourcing my domesticity!

Just to make the confession complete, I'll also tell you that we've been hiring someone to clean our house twice a month. Taking shortcuts is the name of the game Chez F.

"Why do we feel we need to do it all?" asked Dr. Knitter. "Did people think that men in the fifties needed to work from 9 to 5, then come home and cook and clean afterward?"

Sigh. No. But the house feels wife-less, in all the good ways, and all the bad ways.

Amazing Beautiful

2010-02-07T14:27:00.000-08:00

If you're sick of whiny, trivial blogs (ahem), I recommend you hie yourself immediately over to Me and Cancer: One of Us Must Go. Alex and I went to high school together, and we were the only two of our graduating class to choose the college we chose, so I feel like that made us educational twins in a sense. He went on to law school and became a partner in a law firm, so alas for me, the educational twinship didn't last.

Prepare to be amazed at how courageous a person can be.

Curses!

2010-01-31T13:34:00.000-08:00

That horribly restrictive diet...may be working. I'm feeling less fatigue, and some minor ailments that have annoyed me this winter (e.g., upset stomach, skin rash) seem to be improving. Damn, damn, damn.

However, it's possible that my improvement may not be due to avoiding eggs, dairy, and gluten (I drew the lines at legumes) but to the gazillion vitamins that Dr. L-H also has me taking. I still have hope that bread and I may be reunited one day.

Not Much New Here...

2010-01-28T16:24:00.000-08:00

...PSYCH! Ha ha ha. This is me visiting a pair of stunningly beautiful month-old twins of my acquaintance: Hazel and Eliza. And their wonderfully multitasking parents.

This photo, upon being taken, was promptly phone-mailed to Mr. Flossie to give him hives. Heh.

Dr. Love/Hate

2010-01-10T11:35:00.000-08:00

On the recommendation of a colleague who said he completely turned around her energy levels, I started seeing this naturopathic doctor, and in my mind he quickly became Dr. Love/Hate. I like him because he's friendly, chipper, and under other circumstances I would totally want to hang out with him. But then he tells me to do things that sound as plausible as if he wanted me to build a spaceship to the moon.

For example, a few weeks ago he presented me with a blood test report stating that I am "very" allergic to dairy, eggs, pinto beans, and navy beans, and "moderately" allergic to beef, lamb, gliadin, gluten, malt, rye, wheat, halibut, salmon, sardines, sole, crab, shrimp, almond, pineapple, green beans, kidney beans, squash, brewer's yeast, mushrooms, psyllium seed, safflower seed, spelt, triticale, chili powder, cumin, mustard, poppy seeds, turmeric, cashews, pistachio, honeydew, alfalfa, garbanzo beans, kale, mung beans, red peppers, and watercress. These are not food allergies in the sense that they cause a reaction, because they never have, but in the sense that I produce antibodies to these foods or something.

"Just cut out all of those foods, plus all remaining legumes, from your diet for six weeks," he said. "Then after that you can have the 'moderate' foods once a week, but never again have dairy or eggs, and I wouldn't recommend ever eating gluten again either."

Sure—no big deal. I have hours and hours to research and plan all my meals as well as read every label and keep stopping to consult a list while grocery shopping or at a salad bar. Plus never eating out again, and presenting people who invite me over to eat with a 40-item list.

"That's crazy," said my therapist Dr. Knitter.

I had wondered why more people didn't partake in natural medicine. All natural, no drugs! But now I realize that natural medicine requires a high level of personal willingness to change. I consider myself willing to try such things. I don't eat meat except for fish, I've flirted with veganism, and, when I heard bad things about gluten, I started reading a blog called "gluten-free vegan." So getting to that point seemed almost plausible. But to give up legumes as well—what kind of vegan can you be without legumes? That was what put it all over the edge and made me leave his office almost in tears.

If I had a lot of time on my hands, I might even try this diet to see where it got me. But as it is, I'm just trying to avoid the foods I'm not supposed to eat when I can remember what they are. It's been three weeks. I guess I feel OK, but Dr. L-H would probably tell me I'm not getting optimal results because I'm not being super strict about it.

An interesting discovery is what I miss the most. Not dairy. Not eggs. Not psyllium seed (whatever that is). I miss bread. Bread, bread, bread. Delicious bread. I think about bread. I dream about bread. When I eat a piece of bread, it's the most delicious thing ever, and I'm euphoric for hours.

If nothing else comes out of this diet, I will have a new appreciation for bread.

Recent Co-op Finds

2010-01-03T13:41:00.000-08:00

I get in a rut sometimes and pick up the same ten things at our local co-op grocery. Recently Stud M. improved my life by recommending these Food Should Taste Good chips.
And meanwhile I had helped myself to one of these cucumber waters from the fridge while on a mini–writing retreat/catsitting day at Veg's house. Soooo good.And finally, I picked up an intriguing tip from a box of steel-cut oats. I love steel-cut oats—they have so much more going on than regular, gluey oatmeal. But they take too long to cook in the morning before work...or so I thought until I tried this: The night before, boil two cups of water in a saucepan. Turn off heat, stir in a half-cup of steel-cut oats, cover, and remove from heat to soak overnight. The next morning, heat up or microwave as much of the oats as you want, and save the rest for the following morning. Or be like me and have it all. Mmm, steel-cut oats with brown sugar, soy milk, banana slices, and walnuts!

Ladies Rule

2009-12-04T16:20:00.001-08:00

Why are women so damn awesome? I just got done taking a four-week Ladies' Bike Maintenance Class from the Bike Library. Some guys I know got jealous hearing about it and asked if a "Gentlemen's" Bike Maintenance Class was in the works. An additional co-ed class would be great, but long live the ladies. Under the tutelage of the ever-patient Cody, we learned to change tires, take apart our brakes, change brake pads, and adjust derailleurs. Everyone was friendly and helped each other, and I got no sense that anyone felt silenced or that they couldn't ask a question because it was too dumb. In fact, after a lecture on gears, we collectively ambushed Cody and asked, "Umm...so which are the high gears and which are the low gears again?"

It reminded me of the time I helped plan a conference with a committee of women (and one extraordinary man), and it was such a pleasant mix of cooperative work and fun. Such a difference from the too many hours of my life I've spent in rooms in which the dudes have been talking to each other and the ladies have been staring into space and/or having murderous thoughts. What's up with that? Does our culture brainwash boys into buying into some toxic mix of competition and personal agendas? Ick. I wish I could go back in time and attend all-girl schools.

On top of everything else great about the class, I feel much more bonded to my bike, many of whose parts I'd never even taken a close look at before.

(This photo stolen from Cody and Steve's blog, my face happily obscured by a fender, but Stud McMuffin's way cuter face visible. We were examining the derailleur, which I like to pronounce with a cheesy French accent.)

Since I have just entered Dissertation-Finishing Hell, the bike class might be my last extracurricular activity for a while. It was a good one.

On a Cuter Note

2009-12-01T19:18:00.001-08:00

Some souvenirs found on the famous lower level of the Kyobo Book Centre:

Flossie Away from Home

2009-11-28T20:42:00.000-08:00

We just returned from a week away from College Town, visiting a place that couldn't be any more different: Seoul, South Korea. My mom has been living there for the past couple of years since she retired, so my brother and Mr. Flossie and I made the 13-hour flight to pay her a visit.

It was great to spend quality time with the fam, but I have to say that Seoul is getting to be a bit too dystopian and Blade Runner-y for my taste (keeping in mind that I've now lived the provincial life in College Town for ten years, and also that I'm a person, constitutionally, for whom a trip to Best Buy is borderline too stimulating).

Seoul is so big, so crowded, and so polluted. My mom actually lives in Incheon, which used to be a separate port city, but now seems to be continuous with the Seoul megatropolis. Our hotel was in a neighborhood called New Songdo City, which is still under construction on land reclaimed from the sea. Here is the under-construction park outside our window at the Sheraton. You would be able to see the ocean in the distance but for a persistent fog/haze every day.
Ornamental cabbages (?) planted in the streetlamps (??) didn't disguise the fact that nature was not exactly being prioritized in the rush to develop. The only birds I saw all week were two magpies squawking high in the facade of the Sheraton.
But there were redeeming prospects. A human-friendly space was tucked into the shadow of my mom's apartment complex: a little market where people bought fish and produce. Bulk radishes, anyone?
And there's my mom, who takes the subway everywhere and doesn't own a car. So who has the better carbon footprint, my distaste for the decidedly industrial aesthetics of Incheon aside? Finally, there was the uneasy reflection, as Mr. F and I drove home from the airport after our trip was over, that Iowa is no less constructed a an environment than Seoul, only not as visibly so. Our agricultural system is just as unnatural and no more sustainable than the most rampant urban development.

Alas. Nostalgia for home is all well and good, but are Iowa's bucolic rolling hills and the birds at my backyard feeder just our version of the cabbage in the lamppost?

Winter Sets In

2009-11-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

Just a few weeks ago, College Town looked like this:

Today, here are the strata of gray outside my library study carrel window:

All Hail the Labelmaker

2009-11-15T15:04:00.001-08:00

I bought this labelmaker recently, and I daresay it has started a revolution in the Flossie household. Now we have plastic bins in the basement and the attic with the following labels: holidays [lights, ornaments...], party [paper plates, tablecloths...], games, toys, presents [wrapping paper, ribbon...], garden, etc.

We also have an old desk with many drawers that has become an expanded junk drawer, with labeled drawers for candles, adhesives [tape, post-its], batteries, and light bulbs. It is so nice finding a bit of ribbon or a pack of batteries or nightlight bulbs somewhere else in the house and knowing exactly where it should go.
So far, I have labeled one Tupperware of leftover spaghetti with the date, but I see much more potential: perhaps labeling freshly opened chip bags and cracker boxes (things that don't get eaten quickly around here) with the date they were opened.

Labeling is so much fun, I keep trying to think of more things to label. Perhaps Mr. Flossie needs to be labeled?

It's OK to Be Vintage

2009-10-24T12:37:00.001-07:00

I picked up this frog-green Schwinn Speedster for $45 at my friendly neighborhood bike library this morning.
From what I can tell from the Interwebs, this model is circa the early 1970s. What a coincidence—so am I. A three-speed, it finds hills rough going—as do I.

I turned 37 last Monday, and though I did my share of bitching about being old, in my heart of hearts it was not really all that traumatic. It helps to be at a moment in my life when I feel like generally speaking, I have it somewhat together, though (of course) at any given moment I do not feel like I have it together at all. By which I mean to say that I have a job. I don't take having a job for granted, since I only got my first real, post-grad-student job a year ago. Fingers crossed for no layoffs at the U.

Thirty-seven was always a mythical age for me anyway, as it was the age of my favorite high school teacher. When I was seventeen, I thought, "I can't wait until I'm 37!" It seemed like a great life, to have the option to live in a house with a front porch in the city, and to sit on the steps of said front porch on a nice evening, with a guy you like, sipping wine. I hope to be doing a lot of that this year. When my Schwinn and I aren't taking on those hills.

Winterization Quiz

2009-10-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

Which of the following home winterization techniques did Flossie learn the hard way?

a) Lay a path of nonskid welcome mats on the front porch between the front door and the porch steps.

b) Turn off the water supply to the garden hose and unhook the hose.

c) Replace the furnace filter.

d) Run the lawn mower until it is out of gas.

e) Plug in the cord to that insulation-sock thing that covers the water pipes in our garage.

The answer, dear readers, is B. One winter the water in the hose froze and backed up into our basement, bursting the pipes. The next spring, when I turned on the hose to water my flowers, the basement got a watering instead.

(Very) Late Summer Acquisitions

2009-10-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

There's some gear I'd been meaning to get all summer, and finally did. Here's the cast-iron grill pan I bought at Paul's Discount a couple of weeks ago...just in time for the last CSA veggie share of the season.
Mmm, grill marks. Next summer, I'll be ready for all that zucchini.

And here are the bike fenders I had installed by awesome bike duo Cody and Steve at their shop, 30th Century Bicycle, last week...just in time for—today's first snow? What the hell?!
Goodbye, summer.

The Underappreciated Hosta

2009-09-16T19:24:00.000-07:00

Underappreciated by me anyway—not the bumblebees. With all the plants I try, and fail, to grow, the hostas that our friend Cecile gave us are flourishing. Hostas are so reliable. And now they're in bloom.

Dinner Monday night—on the back patio, overlooking the hostas—was once again Roasted Everything in the CSA Share. And you know what I love? This frozen organic brown rice. Three minutes in the microwave, topped with roasted veggies and a squeeze of lemon, mmm mmm.

Harvesty CSA Haul

2009-09-12T16:13:00.001-07:00

Backyard Developments

2009-08-28T05:26:00.001-07:00

In news of the World's Tiniest (and Most Half-Assed) Garden, I would first like to announce that the green pepper plant is doing splendidly.
The tomato plants—not so much. They outgrew their tomato cages and kept collapsing whenever there was a gust of wind. Now they're leaning against the back fence and producing feeble little green tomatoes. You don't want to see the carnage. Oh, you do? OK, fine.
Next year I'll train them up the fence to start with. I still don't know if I can make tomatoes work with so little sun, but we'll see.

In other yard news, I stopped by Nagel Lumber and noticed this cute little garden shed on sale. It was just what I had envisioned for this spot by the house.
Now I can store my garden tools and they won't get rusty in the rain.

Desperation Roasting

2009-08-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

What do you do when all you have in the kitchen is olive oil, salt, and fourteen pounds of CSA produce? Kick that oven up to 400 and roast away! We dispatched three leeks, an eggplant, a zucchini, three potatoes, and five beets last night. I found it helped to divide everything into smaller pans (pizza pans in my case), and put the "harder" stuff like the potatoes in earlier to give it more time to cook. Also, the beets got their own pan so they would not dye everything else red. Extra bonus side dish: roasted kale "chips"—said in the blogosphere to rival potato chips. I would not go that far, but I appreciated another kale option in what is turning into the Summer of Kale.

Girly Bulletin Board

2009-08-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

In my ongoing aspiration to be more like Laura, I made some of the embroidery-circle cork boards she blogged about. She was right—cheap and easy (and fun) to make! I assembled them while sitting on the floor in front of the TV watching Magnificent Obsession last night.

I divided my time between sawing through foam core with an x-acto knife and wondering just what was going on with Jane Wyman's hair. Is it short? Is it an updo? She's only 37 in this movie—why does she look so much older to me? Is it the hair, or is it that she's forever imprinted in my mind as the Falcon Crest matriarch? Or is it that her leading man Rock Hudson looked like he was about 18 in this movie?
Anyhoo, I want to Netflix another melodrama and make a couple more circles, to fill out this space above my desk. Also, I suspect the process is slightly addictive. Tennis elbow has kept me from knitting and sheer laziness has kept me from sewing—embroidery-circle cork boards could become my métier.

Carpet Fetish

2009-08-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

I've always liked the idea of area rugs, but Mr. Flossie is categorically against it at home, saying "why cover up such beautiful hardwood floors" etc etc etc. So I've found an outlet for my proclivity at work, which does not have beautiful floors, and where my associates and I have used the proceeds from a bake sale to buy this lovely modular carpet from flor. We had a great time ordering carpet samples and imagining them in our color-deficient office suite. (Though it's just an accident that the blue in the carpet matches the blue of the recycling bin!) It turned out so well that I'm considering reopening the debate at home. It's not just about covering up the floors, it's about defining a space, yes?

A-Growin'

2009-07-07T17:19:00.000-07:00

The world's tiniest garden is growing despite the odds. Being about an inch over a bed of rocks doesn't seem to be harming it any. In fact, it's doing much better than last year's garden, maybe because it's in a slightly sunnier location.

The other thing the poor garden has going against it is that about a week after I planted it, I came down with a poison-ivy-like rash after an afternoon of vigorous yard work. Since then I've been afraid to step into the yard. Luckily the garden doesn't seem to mind having an absentee gardener. That it's been raining like crazy can't hurt.

Bok Choy, Mmmmm

2009-06-28T12:06:00.001-07:00

The talk of College Town this summer is the CSAs everyone has joined. It's hit some critical mass and suddenly everyone I know is trading tips for what to do with garlic scapes and anise hyssop.

I have to admit that advanced produce like the above—and my all-time favorite intimidating CSA food, stinging nettles—are still beyond me, but at least now I have bok choy down to a science. There's an easy recipe in Veganomicon that involves sauteeing it with shallots, ginger, soy sauce, and peanut oil, and then sprinkling with roasted sesame seeds. I'd never purposely sought out bok choy before this summer, and now I'm developing a serious dependence. I hope it's not about to go out of season.

Tiniest Garden

2009-06-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

I vowed not to bother with a garden this year—my yard gets about three seconds of sun a day—and plus, who needs it with all the CSA bounty? But when the weather got nice, I couldn't resist planting this little postage stamp of two tomatoes, one green pepper, an Italian parsley, six marigolds (from Veg), and assorted leek and onion sproutlings (from Stud McMuffin). Growth is questionable because the hillock I chose for the site was apparently constructed with rocks. I tried to till, but ended up just heaping on compost.

Now I've decided I need a planter, because Neighbor Jim just gave me heaps more beautiful compost—filtered and everything! Maybe I'll transfer the herbs currently scattered around the yard to a planter.

CSA Madness

2009-05-29T15:27:00.001-07:00

This summer Veg and I are splitting a half-share subscription to Echollective CSA. For about $10 each per week, we get a boatload of produce for 20 weeks. Here's my haul from Week 1 (this is half of a half-share! which leads me to ask, who gets a full share and how do they eat it all?). Luckily, for identification purposes I have The Field Guide to Produce thanks to Brother-of-Flossie and Buttercup.

This week, I have made mint lemonade, roasted asparagus, arugula pizza, and lots and lots of salad. That leaves only the leeks, bok choi, swiss chard, etc etc etc. And Week 2 veggies come tomorrow!

Mom II

2009-05-24T11:51:00.001-07:00

Here's the other dish Mom made when she was in town: those noodles on the right side of this arrangement, chop chae. Again, I lack exact amounts, so some experimentation may be required.

Cellophane noodles, boiled and left to sit until they turn soft, then cut up
Spinach, boiled and drained
Carrots, chopped
Onions, chopped
Meat or scrambled egg (optional)
Pepper
Salt
Sesame oil
Sugar

Mix and fry in oil. Add soy sauce afterwards to taste.

That's it!

What Is It, Lassie? Timmy's in the Cistern?

2009-05-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

Recently I noticed that an area of our yard about ten feet from the house appeared to be caving in. Some poking around revealed an entrance to a concrete-lined cavern that goes down several feet and extends at least several feet back. Our neighbor Jim, homeowner extraordinaire, took a look and said he thought it was an old cistern, used to collect rainwater for use in the house in the days before running water. Then he noticed some garlic mustard in our yard and advised pulling it.

Sure enough, I looked in our basement nearest the cistern and there was a (now sealed) drainpipe sticking out of the basement wall. So a hundred years ago, the people who lived in our house went downstairs and got their water out of that tap in the wall.

Jim recommended filling the cistern with "debris." I'm not sure we're advanced enough homeowners to generate much debris, so in the meantime we have this gaping hole. All I knew about cisterns previously was that they were a convenient place to stash a dead body if you were a rural murderer, and children fell into them. Probably what makes me more worried is the more realistic possibility that it would make a nice home for our giant groundhog or other slightly menacing beast. For now I've covered it with a board from someone's roof that landed in our yard after the tornado of '06.

Covering an old cistern with a tornado-generated door? This is all so pastoral!

Thoroughly modern Mr. Flossie asked: "If they didn't have running water, why didn't they just order their water from Culligan?" Har, har.

Mom-of-Flossie

2009-04-24T05:41:00.000-07:00

Mom-of-Flossie came for a visit last week while Mr. Flossie was out of town, and I got to witness some REAL domestic-goddess skillz. It was a taste of what it must have been like for Ward Cleaver: I came home from work to a house full of delicious smells, enjoyed a hot dinner, and looked out the window to contemplate my weeded and manicured backyard. I need a wife, pronto!

Don't get me wrong, Mr. Flossie does cook dinner too, as do I, but we're usually both rushing around trying to get work done until about 7 pm, at which point we throw something together hurriedly. Coming home to a hot meal...now I understand why the patriarchy was/is so popular.

Mom and I delivered some mandu (Korean dumplings) to M and H, who promptly demanded the recipe. I tried to get her to dictate it to me, but she always cooks by memory and according to what's in the fridge. Hence, this less-than-totally-precise recipe for mandu:

1 block firm tofu
a lot of shredded cabbage
some minced garlic
2 eggs
won ton wrappers
diced carrots or other veggies (optional)
ground beef or fake ground beef (optional)
dried mushrooms, soaked in water and cut up (optional)
a little salt, pepper, and sugar

Fry up your garlic and cabbage, adding salt and pepper. Smoosh water out of the tofu, drain, crumble, and mix together with fried cabbage. Mix in eggs and sugar and whatever else you are including. Place a little dollop of mix in the center of a won ton wrapper. Beat another egg and brush it around the perimeter of the wrapper to use as paste when you bring the wrappers' corners together and seal the edges. Dip each mandu in flour. Then either pan-fry in oil so hot that a drop of water jumps out, or cook them in boiling water. If you go the boiling route, some will fall apart, but that's OK because then you have a tasty soup.

Oh yes, the most important part (in my opinion), the dipping sauce: Whisk together a bit of soy sauce, water, and vinegar. Add garlic, sesame oil, salt and pepper, sugar, and/or chopped green onions as you like.

Next up: Mom's chap chae.

Hi Amber!

2009-03-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

This one's for Amber, whose Google Reader is lonely because her friends aren't updating their blogs.

We got the kind of towels Amber recommended—Thomas O'Brien at Target. Our previous set of towels was five years old and looking most sickly:

Picking a towel color is challenging because we have a bathroom with ketchup-red walls and black-and-white floor tiles. Finally we went with the matching-by-not-matching-at-all tactic (a tactic I just made up): sea green.

I know it sounds super-consumeristic when I report on such things as towels, but I'm actually an oblivious academic who would probably never buy new towels for 20 years and this blog helps motivate me to do things that help me feel like my life is at least somewhat balanced! Really!

Mulch Better

2009-03-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

We went out to the landfill to get mulch on Saturday. I was wrong—it wasn't $1/ton; it was free. Maybe because we got less than a ton. We really needed mulch, as you can see from these before pictures.

M. and H.'s truck to the rescue. This was just one load of two.Et voila! Ready for our baby perennials to return (and keeping fingers crossed they survived the winter permafrost).

Must Stop...Making Lists...

2009-03-03T18:52:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Laura's post, I suddenly was able to think of enough goals to round out my 101 Things list. Of many house projects there is no end. Of course, we would need to win the lottery to actually complete all of these in the next year and a half. It's more of a fantasy list.

Affix our house numbers somewhere that guests and pizza delivery people can see at night.
Get an automatic light installed over the garage door.
Get crumbling front steps replaced.
Replace rotting wood in porch.
Replace leaky window in living room.
Get furnace serviced.
Touch up exterior paint where it is peeling.
Fix areas of interior plaster that have been damaged by misguided attempts to hang pictures.
Learn how to correctly hang pictures on plaster walls.
Repaint bathroom where paint has peeled from humidity.
Install better bathroom fan.
Stain study windows that were put in last year.
Plant evergreen bushes around the foundation.
Borrow M.'s truck and drive to the landfill for a load of mulch, which they sell there for something like $1/ton.

101 Things Update

2009-02-22T11:50:00.000-08:00

It's been a year since I wrote my 101 Things/1001 days post. I only have a year and a half left!

Here's what I've accomplished from the list so far:

get my research assistantship reclassified as a job
take Mr. Flossie to the House on the Rock (That was fun.)
visit Madison, Wisconsin (Same trip.)
ride in a convertible (Same trip, last spring. A little cold but fun.)
get a world map and stick map pins where Mr. F and I have traveled
visit a botanical garden (In St. Louis.)
take a cooking class (Vegan cupcakes!)
go a month without soda (I never drink soda anymore, if sparkling water doesn't count.)
get new car tires
donate to public radio
plug someone else's expired meter
make a mix CD
get a massage
complete a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle (Usually the last few words stump me. But finally, I did one 100%.)
purge all the circa 1989 mom-jeans from my wardrobe (Or, at least, the most egregiously high-waisted.)
landscape front yard (We'll see if the new plants made it through the winter.)
buy a new oven mitt
plant vegetables (Yield: handfuls of basil, two strangely-shaped eggplants.)
go to the public library and read magazines
make up a box of things to donate to the Mennonite thrift store (Several times.)
drink an extra glass of water a day (My Sigg bottle and I are joined at the hip.)
make a point to play with the cats or brush them daily
convert old T-shirts to rags
start a list of wines I like (So far there is one: Charles Shaw Cabernet. I'm just not a big wine drinker, I've discovered.)
get Amber's print framed
quit Annoying Yuppie Health Club
start swimming at the community pool

One of the remaining things on the list is super-high-priority:

finish my dissertation, get PhD

There are others that will probably have to wait until that one is done:

learn to bake bread
learn to knit socks
learn to crochet
learn to sew a skirt
make something crafty with all the wine corks we’ve saved
adhere to a daily (creative) writing schedule for one month
read 5 new novels (so far, I've read Goldengrove.)
read 5 new memoirs (so far, The Three of Us.)
re-read Writing Down the Bones
read Natalie Goldberg’s new book on memoir writing
learn CPR
learn first aid
take a stargazing class
take a car-maintenance class
take a home repair class
have 5 dinner parties (So far, I've had...one? I think?)
host 5 houseguests (So far, two?)
study Korean
visit Old Friend Who Lives in Houston
start an emergency fund in savings (Well, we do have a savings account now. There's just nothing in it.)
organize photos
learn to drive stick
write a will
put together an emergency kit for the car
go hiking
go whitewater rafting
go cross-country skiing
organize my home office
clean the basement
clean the attic
take piano
visit the Seed Savers Farm

And others I can perhaps fit into the corners of the days and weeks:

learn to identify ten native trees
…ten native birds
…ten flowering plants
go to a pilates or yoga class once a week for three months
visit Old Friend Who Lives in St. Louis
visit Brother
visit Mom
visit Mr. Flossie's grandparents in Wichita
visit Mr. F's mom in Miami
lobby for more recycling bins on campus
try out veganism for two weeks
learn to meditate
go on a picnic
go on a walk around the neighborhood for no reason
go to a U-pick farm or orchard
buy new towels
go to the farmer’s market once a week for two months
find one thing to de-clutter in each room
find a squirrel-proof birdfeeder
make a meal plan and grocery list for an upcoming week
do not eat dinner out for two weeks straight
pick out all my outfits for an upcoming week
bring my lunch to work for a week
do not go online for 3 consecutive days

A strict comparison to the list I made a year ago will reveal that I edited some of the items on the list, ditched some, and added others. It still doesn't add up to 101. How is it possible to think of that many goals?

Gorgeousity

2009-02-22T11:19:00.000-08:00

I finally took in my über-talented friend Amber's letterpress broadside to be framed, after years (years!) of planning to do so someday. I had two copies, so the title page/back page is on the left, and the inside of the booklet is on the right. The poem is one of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, next to an English translation by William Gass.

I love the poem:

Anticipate all farewells, as if they were behind you
like the winter that's just past, for among winters
there will be one so relentlessly winter
that in overwintering it your heart will be readied to last.

Remain with Eurydice in the realm of death—rise there
singing, praising, to realize the harmony in your strings.
Here—among pale shades in a fading world—
be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.

Be—but nonetheless know why nothingness
is the unending source of your most fervent vibration,
so that this once you may give it your full affirmation.

To the store of copious Nature's used-up, cast-off,
speechless creatures—an unsayable amount—
jubilantly join yourself and cancel the count.

Mmm, Dust Mites

2009-02-01T10:58:00.001-08:00

I finally went to an allergist to find out why I've had a runny nose pretty much 24/7 all my adult life. Yep, I'm like a granny, constantly with a folded Kleenex in the pocket of my cardigan. It's very sexy.

They stuck me with a million needles and here is the report of what I'm allergic to, from most to least:

1) Grass pollen ("the worst reaction I've ever seen!" said the needle-sticker excitedly)
2) Ragweed pollen
3) Dust mites
4) Cats

There's not much I can do about 1) and 2), besides staying inside during the summer and taking drugs. I was offered allergy shots, but I'll have to think about that. And there's not much I can do about 4) that won't involve offending the cats. If I ban them from the bedroom, which is what you are supposed to do, I imagine them scratching down the door. "Wash your cat weekly," another suggestion, also puts horrid images in my head.

Dust mites, however...I could start there. Dust mites, as the doctor's informational brochure will tell you, are microscopic organisms that feed on human skin cells. They reside in bed linens, mattresses, carpets, and upholstered furniture. Since you spend a lot of time in bed, the bed is a good place to start. So here is the action plan:

Encase mattress, box springs, and pillows in dust mite covers. I'm looking for these online. Damn, they are expensive.
Wash bed linens every 7 days in hot water, including mattress pads, sheets, blankets, and bedspreads. The down comforter can't be washed—I guess it will need a cover too.
Remove carpets from the bedroom. Check—I'm glad we have wood floors. I also de-cluttered around the bed to get rid of dust-collecting areas, moving a bookcase to my office, etc. I no longer store anything under the bed.
Keep the humidity at less than 50%. We used to have a humidifier in the bedroom in winter, but it's been banished.
Vacuum weekly, avoiding the area for 30 minutes afterward. Dust mites remain suspended in the air after being disturbed.

I will report on how this goes. Not having to get allergy shots would be great.

Before-and-After Pics Are So Satisfying, Non?

2008-12-30T15:26:00.001-08:00

So, here's what I did with the Problem of the 1,394,287 Beauty Products. I bought these plastic boxes from Office Max—you know, the kind you might see in your supply cabinet at work, housing different kinds of pens and post-its—and used them to sort the millionish beauty products on my bathroom shelf. Now each cream and unguent is visible and accessible. Behold the before-and-after:

What's funny is that I think most people who know me would guess that I spend all of five seconds a day on a beauty regimen that consists of scrubbing my face with Ivory soap and a loofah...alas, we are all victims of the beauty myth.*

*And not-so-mythy sunscreen hysteria—which I wish I had caught onto years ago, as I would have fewer freckles ("age spots" according to my mom) now.

The Humble Crouton

2008-12-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

I recently had the brilliant idea of making a big pot of soup and thus providing myself with a multitude of lunches and quick dinners. So I made a double batch of this cilantro-chipotle-potato chowder that I had never made before. Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed with the soup from the first bowl. And I had about 20 bowls to go!

I needed to add some flavor and interest to this soup, especially after about a week of having it for lunch every day. Domestic goddess M. gave me the idea of making croutons, and so I roasted a head of garlic in the toaster oven, mashed up the garlic with some olive oil and lemon juice, and drizzled it over stale bread cubes and toasted them. Dropping in a few garlic croutons really picked up that lackluster soup.

Like I said, it's not about big projects right now, but little things that I can do in a few minutes.

A Small Step

2008-11-23T20:32:00.000-08:00

I still need to tackle the bathroom shelf clutter, but hey, I've been busy! I made a very small start on it, though. I took a tie rack that I found at a thrift store and designated it an earring rack.
It hangs out along the side of the offending bathroom shelf and keeps my earrings organized.
Just have to hope the cats don't discover it.

Raising the Bar

2008-11-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

Now that Domestic Goddess M. is my co-worker, lunch has been taken to the next level. I can't exactly eat out of the vending machine when she brings delicious homemade lunches every day. Not only that, but M. upped the ante when, after I coveted her glass jars and bowls, she bought me some for my very own for my birthday.

Hence tomorrow's lunch: white bean and roasted garlic soup (from Vegan with a Vengeance) and green salad. I'm also smuggling in a toaster to make some toast.* Yum.

*We don't have a kitchen at work, just a fridge in a locked room for which you have to get the key (and which is sometimes inaccessible during lunch), and a microwave that's in very high demand during certain hours. Toasters are verboten. I feel so transgressive!

Return of the Wine Cooler

2008-11-03T15:39:00.001-08:00

Veg turned me on to this fabulous wine cooler combo: sparkling grapefruit juice plus a splash of boxed white wine (well, she didn't suggest the wine be boxed, but I think it makes it extra good).

Am I a lush? Probably. You can tell me. Or maybe it means I came of age in the 1980s. Remember Bruce Willis singing the Seagram's Golden Wine Cooler song? "It's wet and it's dry. My my my my." What does that even mean? And yet, it's hardwired into my brain.

P.S. I did accomplish some stuff this weekend after all: raked about 1/100 of the yard, and took some dust mite abatement measures. I'll talk more about dust mites and all the fascinating things I'm learning about them soon.

No Solutions, Just More Problems

2008-10-31T16:36:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say that I've totally reorganized my recipe binder, but alas. I have not. Instead I have another clutter challenge to present: my shelf in the bathroom. For a girl who wears little to no makeup on a daily basis, I have a plethora of beauty products cluttering my bathroom. Where does it all come from? How embarrassing. I feel so vain.

So, that needs to be taken care of, and I need to take some anti-dust-mite action in the bedroom because I just learned I'm allergic, and I need to rake the fallen leaves in the backyard.

P.S. There is no time to do any of this and work on my dissertation.

Clutter Challenge #3: Recipes

2008-10-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for a more elegant way to store recipes. Currently, this beat-up green binder is where they live. They are disorganized and falling out and the binder is getting too full.

I'm not sure where to go from here. I'd love to beautifully copy out each favorite recipe by hand onto a recipe card and keep them in card file, but who has the time? Maybe I just need to weed out recipes I never use and put the rest in some sort of order. That would help a lot, but it wouldn't make the green binder any more aesthetically pleasing.

If you have a great recipe-storage method, please let me know.

A Tisket, A Tasket

2008-10-06T17:36:00.000-07:00

M. and H. turned me on to this great basket from Nashbar, and, when I ordered it, the versatile M. and H. even installed it for me. It's quick-release, so perfect for trips to the co-op. You gather up your groceries in there, check out, then click the basket onto your bike, and you're off.

In related news, I was offered an employee parking space--at the ripoff price of $46/month--and I declined! My basket and I can take on the (~1 mile) commute!

Mutant Eggplants

2008-09-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

I have no interesting home projects in store for this weekend, just long dreary stretches of time working at the library on my dissertation. (Meeting with the advisor on Wednesday.) But I did go out to look at the eggplants. They're all long and skinny. I wonder if they're ripe now, or if they'll get fatter like the eggplants in the supermarket?

Clutter Challenge #2: Foyer Closet

2008-09-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

My Sunday-morning task was to do something with the coat closet in the foyer, which I had grown afraid to open. When we moved in four years ago, we threw stuff in here and just kept doing so...So it was quite an archaeological project. ("Oh, there's my sleeping bag!") In the middle of the cleaning-out, the foyer looked tornado-stricken:

Two hours later:
Much better.

I Leave the Room for a Moment

2008-09-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

And come back to this. "You thought you'd sit here and READ this paper? Think again, bitch!" [Newspaper scattered all across floor moments later]

In other news, we had a second cocktails and cupcakes party on Friday. I have to work on my hostessing skills for large parties. I don't think I mingled enough. I somehow ended up in the kitchen, where a small number of people were, and most people were out in the living room/dining room area. There were several guests who came and left without our even exchanging a word. Then again, there have been parties I've gone to where I never talked to the host and it had no real effect on my enjoyment of the party.

Unrelated news: the eggplants in the garden now look like long purple bananas.

Itty Bitty Eggplants!

2008-09-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

The tomato plants all shriveled, as I said before ("Bad year for tomatoes"--that's what I keep telling myself, even though neighbors seem to have done OK with tomatoes. Hmmm.). But the eggplants are hanging in there.

Birdie Bag

2008-09-02T08:05:00.000-07:00

Laura alerted me to a great sewing class at Home Ec., and she and Veg and I took it this weekend. Here is the pattern:

And here was my end result:
This supposedly quick and easy pattern took forever for a clueless beginner. But it was so worth it! I'm inordinately proud of my bag, which I'm carrying around for the first time today. No pens better leak in this bag!

Take THAT, Clutter!

2008-08-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

Cocktail Party

2008-08-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

To celebrate our newest large piece of furniture, a 1970s home bar made from barrels, we threw a cocktail party and even hired a bartender—a former student of Mr. Flossie's. Nate made these wonderful neon-green drinks called Jamaican ten-speeds. Here's a blurry picture of the festivities:
Veg catered these amazing vegan cupcakes:

I made Martha Stewart's limeade—put a cup of water and a cup of sugar in a saucepan, bring to boil and stir to combine, let cool, squeeze a cup of lime juice, combine sugar-water and lime juice in a pitcher with a quart of seltzer, serve over ice. I hear that you can make margaritas by substituting two cups of tequila for the seltzer, but I'm sure I wouldn't know anything about that. Ahem.

Clutter Challenge

2008-08-11T08:27:00.001-07:00

The filing cabinet in my study has become somewhat of a clutter black hole. My usual coping strategy when faced with a clutter zone is to avert my eyes, but one can only do that for so long. OK, three years. My point is, I hereby vow that this clutter will soon be no more.

Blogging? What Blogging?

2008-08-07T19:25:00.000-07:00

I'll tell you where I've been. I've been on Facebook. Yes, cheating on Blogger with Facebook. Writing 10-word status updates is so much easier than writing a whole blog entry! Let me know if you want to "friend" me.

I've also been in Santa Cruz, California. Ridiculously beautiful. We saw lots of nature: a sea lion family at the wharf, deer wandering around the UCSC campus. Redwoods. Now I understand why everyone wants to move to northern California.

Yep, another place-crush.

Garden Report: Muck

2008-07-22T19:52:00.001-07:00

It's been so torrentially rainy this summer that I've barely had to water the garden at all. Sadly, I've also barely weeded. The mosquito population out there is insane.

The tomatoes are really tall—except for the roma—but they now all seem to be afflicted with some kind of rot that is creeping up their stems from the ground. I don't know if there will be tomatoes this year.

However, the basil plants are loving this climate. Pesto, anyone?

Flossie at Work

2008-07-11T17:20:00.001-07:00

I've been at my "new" job for a week, and (surprise) I like it! That's one benefit of getting to test out a job for five years before taking it on.

It's nice to go from being "a grad student who is working as an editor for her stipend" to "an editor who is completing a PhD on the side."

As an added bonus, I get to spend the summer away from Toxic Mold Building. They are still cleaning up its basement after the flooding, so I am in a luxurious former mansion converted into a university building. I call it the House of Dudes because it contains the offices of six male professors (and two female staff members). My desk is out in an open area on the second floor surrounded by four dude offices. I feel like Carol, the receptionist in the Bob Newhart Show. Except I don't have to take messages for anyone.

At first I worried that the new job was a big extortive scam I've perpetuated on the university, but after a week I can't believe it was ever a 15-hour-a-week job, which it was for my first five years. I no longer have to go home after three hours a day and know how much is still hanging over my head--or worse, work late and feel resentful. Now I can catch up on our perpetually missed deadlines, and maybe even do a little more than merely keep things afloat.

How Disgusting Is Your House?

2008-07-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

Martin, erstwhile Best Intern Ever, alerted me to this TV show: How Clean Is Your House? I Tivo-ed it because I thought it might provide some tips I could use, like a Real Simple magazine in TV show form, but it's oh so much better than that. It's a gross-out fest.

The pattern is: two British S/M mavens scrape up goo from the floor and berate the homeowners, and then clean their house. The first show Mr. Flossie and I saw, at first I was saying, "Yeah, I grew up in a house like that," and he was saying, "Yeah, me too," and then as we watched further we were both like, "EWWWWW!" We didn't know how good we had it. The featured couple had seven children and did not appear to have cleaned AT ALL since the first was born. And then after the house had been cleaned from top to bottom, they were all casual, like "sure, there's more space to move around now, I guess," and you know they're totally going back to their slovenly ways.

Speaking of guilty pleasure TV, the reason it has taken me two hours to write this post is that Mr. F is over on the other couch watching VH1's nostalgia show "I Love the New Millennium." Geez, why does 2006 seem so dated already?

Jobs, Oven Mitts, Etc.

2008-07-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't forgotten about the 100 Things/1001 Days list I made back in February. I'm happy to say that I've checked off #2: Get a job.

It didn't come as a complete surprise: I've been trying to get a job for several years. Specifically, I've been trying to get the job I was doing. I wanted to be upgraded from Grad Student Research Assistant Peon to Full-Time Staff with Benefits. After some arm-twisting, and to my great surprise, I got it.

So I started my "new" job yesterday. Same office, same computer, same chair. But much more emotional investment thanks to the 403(b) and vacation days.

P.S. It's hard to find an illustration for my job (pencils? Chicago Manual of Style?), so the picture is because I also checked off #83: Get a new oven mitt. I know, I'm going crazy with my salary increase.

Sunday Garden Report

2008-06-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

All the tomato plants in the garden are doing well except for the red-and-yellow striped roma plant, which has failed to thrive. The brownberry is winning the growth race and even has little tomatoes forming, which is very exciting because I don't even know what brownberry tomatoes look like or taste like.
Those several-year-old Queen Anne's Pocket melon seeds sprouted! Well, three of them did.
There are raspberries on the back fence. I had nothing to do with this.

Fill 'Er Up

2008-06-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

Alas. During the flood, I drove around a lot rescuing items from my and Mr. F's offices. In addition, I heard that every so often you should drive on the highway or things on your car will rust and fall off, so I volunteered to give Mr. F a ride to the airport and subsequently pick him up.

Long story short, the goal is now a TWO-tank-of-gas summer.

Apron!

2008-06-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

For my second bout with the sewing machine, I took an apron-making class. Here is the result. Yes, those are '50s ladies hanging laundry in red lipstick and high heels.

Perhaps even more exciting, I went home with my newfound skills and hemmed all our curtains in a late-night frenzy. It was shameful—we had been living with curtains that dragged on the floor. In Mr. F's office, anyway. Here's the before-and-after.

Random Bullets of Inundation

2008-06-16T05:52:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday, Toxic Mold Building went from the "in danger of flooding" list to the "flooded" list. This is a picture a professor from the department took on Saturday of the river approaching the building from the right.

Mr. F was supposed to fly home from Atlanta on Saturday, but there is no open route for me to drive to the airport to pick him up. So he's stranded in Chicago at a friend's house.

A bright spot amid all the breached levees: a mobile home park south of town that our friend Steve, who works for the city, was frantically sandbagging was evacuated—he had to personally go door to door to evict people who for the most part really can't afford to lose their homes and their possessions—but the latest news is that the sandbag levee seems to be holding!

An 1898 wooden bridge, no longer used for traffic but preserved as a landmark, was carried away by the Cedar River. It was out in the middle of nowhere, with only a bar and a few houses nearby. You could drive out there, buy a PBR at the bar, walk carefully around the picturesque but alarming gaps in the planks, and sit at a picnic table on the bridge and watch the river flow by. Mr. F and I had our second date there.

Uh Oh

2008-06-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

Toxic Mold Building lies on the banks of the bucolic Iowa River, which is so bucolic you can often forget there's a river there at all.

Well. I'm sure you know where this is going. Here's the parking lot as of this morning. The river is behind those trees.

On Wednesday morning I was in the office and about to take off to go sandbag in one of the neighborhoods when I ran across one of the English department office staff taking art off the walls. We had been warned to be prepared to evacuate but nothing had been ordered. But surely the water can't come up to the third floor? "Mold," she said. "The building may be shut up in the heat for two months." Boy, was I sorry to be right about my mold prediction, but I still thought she must be overreacting.

Meanwhile our office manager, the lovely and heroic G., was back from an emergency meeting with university administrators and called us into the conference room. There was a 50-50 chance of having to evacuate. E-mails started going out over the next two days, increasingly stern:

Wednesday: Come get anything from your office you'll need, as we may have to evacuate, and the order could come as soon as Friday or Monday.

Thursday morning: You will NEED to be out of your office by Friday at 5:00. The doors will be chain-locked at that time!

Friday morning: The parking lot is now closed due to water. You can only take as many of your possessions as you can remove by hand and carry through the water to wherever you are able to park.

Friday, an hour later, from someone in facilities management who must have gotten wind of the previous e-mail: PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WALK/DRIVE/ENTER ANY STANDING WATER! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RETRIEVE ANYTHING IF YOU HAVE TO ENTER STANDING WATER! YOUR SAFETY IS MORE IMPORTANT!

After the flurry of e-mails, the oddest thing, this afternoon, has been the silence afterwards. All the computers have been taken out; no one is in the building to send any more updates.

On Thursday my boss and I packed up the Lit Mag office and put what we needed to run Lit Mag in our cars. This morning (Friday) I went over to Mr. F's building, which is about a block from the river. Their evacuation order was for 5:00 Saturday, when he'd be back in town, and he had said he would take care of it then. But the way things were going, I offered to move things in his office to higher shelves just in case.

When I got to his building the lights were off and people were removing items, not just moving them up. "They're sandbagging buildings up the hill from us," said Mr. F's colleague. "This is gonna be a fish tank." I went to get my car and move it to the loading dock, but by the time I got there the National Guard was no longer letting people down the road to the building. Luckily Mr. F's colleague, a formidable woman, was able to convince the soldiers to let me through.

So I hauled everything I could into the car, and then walked across the way to the main library. "Closing at 5 pm indefinitely," a sign said. I had gotten stuff out of my study carrel Thursday, but I got some more. The computer system was just about to go offline when I renewed the last of my books. One of my professors walked by and made fun of me for renewing books at a time like this.

As I drove home an hour ago with my loaded car, I noticed buildings a half a mile from the river being sandbagged. I don't want to think about that too much.

The thing about a flood, at least in our case, is the anticipation. It all kind of happens in slow motion, except not. The water only rises a few inches an hour, so it's not like you'll be standing next to it and then suddenly be under it. But it sure is inexorable. Rumors have been flying: the water treatment plant is going to fail; we're going to lose power; the bridge upstream is going to collapse and cause a tsunami downstream; etc.

I haven't even mentioned the people in the floodplain who have already lost their homes.

Now I'm at home—high and dry, a mile from the river—and about to jump on my bike and head over to Lit Mag's temporary digs in another department's conference room and deal with the stuff we threw into boxes.

Today is sunny and breezy. The birds are chirping. Looking out my window here at home, I could mistake it for a perfect summer's day.

Poor College Town (a.k.a. Iowa City)!

Rain, Rain

2008-06-10T14:33:00.001-07:00

Areas of College Town are flooding, but since I live on high ground this fact hadn't really penetrated my tiny brain. Then I got this mass e-mail regarding the building where I work, let's call it Toxic Mold Building,* which is located by the river:

"Please consider what you would need to remove from Toxic Mold Building if given a 24 hour notice that you would have to move out and not be able to return to Toxic Mold Building for at least 1 month."

Ominous. The last thing Toxic Mold Building needs is to be inundated. That would only encourage more toxic mold.

And how would I figure out what I would need from the office to do my work for the next month? Rain, rain, go away.

* I have no evidence of there being toxic mold in my building, but it is commonly believed that there is something "off" about the atmosphere in the building. Although that could have emotional as well as material causes.

2/3

2008-06-05T19:14:00.000-07:00

A month after declaring a one-tank-of-gas summer, the gas needle is pointing between one-half and three-fourths, so I'm going to say that I have...two-thirds of a tank left? That's pretty good considering that Mr. F. borrowed the car and drove out to the satellite campus one day. I had to stifle a protest: "But my one-tank-of-gas summer!"

If the higher gas prices only affected slackers like me who can walk or ride their bikes most places, I'd be all for them. But I feel bad for people who have to drive. Which would be most people, I guess.

My address has a Walk Score of 67, which means it is rated "Some Walkable Locations," almost "Very Walkable." The food co-op is .42 mile away, my office is .92 mile away, the nearest bar is .55 mile away...what more do you need? Well, there is the gym, and the supermarket, and the hardware store, but I've been trying to combine errands whenever possible.

The only thing that has backfired was that I was trying to be very clever and not drive to the mall (4.6 miles away!), so I ordered a glass pitcher from target.com. It arrived in a giant box inside of another giant box, thus probably giving it a way larger carbon footprint than if I had driven. It reminded Mr. F. of this absurd story in boingboing.

Al Fresco

2008-06-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

I made the Niçoise salad from The Urban Vegan, using greens from the Amish guy at the farmers' market, and we ate it on the front porch. Delicious.

After months of propagandizing myself with podcasts of Vegan Freak Radio, I've been trying to eat as vegan as possible given my laziness and lack of willpower.

The Only People in the Room

2008-06-02T07:42:00.001-07:00

Mr. Flossie and I got off the plane in Sweden and were queuing to get to arrivals and customs when I suddenly shut up. I had been talking in a normal voice and realized that no one around me was talking at all, or they were talking in very low voices. We found ourselves whispering—in the airport! It is hard to describe how surprising that is to an American. The eerie calm continued in restaurants, stores, even on crowded streets.

I read about half of Middlemarch during the trip, while Mr. F was at his conference, and on the cover of my copy of the book there is a quote from Virginia Woolf: "The only English novel written for grown-up people." I started thinking of Sweden as a country for grown-up people. No one once spontaneously yelled "WOOOOO!" on the street, like they do in College Town. In contrast, back home the other day, Mr. F and I were at a table outside a coffee shop when four women sitting thirty feet away outside a bar were screaming and laughing so loud we had to flee.

I am obsessed with the Scandinavian welfare state and asked everyone about it. "I'm happy with it," said Saila, who is actually a Finn. "The government takes care of the old, young, and sick, so that women--who used to do all that labor [ed. note: for free]—can work." She did complain about the high taxes, though: "Thirty percent of my salary." Mr. F and I looked at each other with narrowed eyes. Thirty percent is what we pay! But of course we have that lovely war we are financing, so we don't get all those frilly extras like health care.

Saila also said that Helsinki women have a reputation for not really caring about their appearance and eschewing makeup and high heels and being "unfeminine," which I thought was cool. Maybe they're too busy doing things like, oh, being president (Finland has a female president).

At dinner one night in Stockholm I asked Eva, Mr. F's colleague, and her husband Per about the Swedish plan to introduce a female silhouette to go along with the male lighted crosswalk signs (which recently circled the Interweb as a quirky news story). They laughed but kind of shrugged and Per said, "Swedes can't help it—in every public policy discussion the issue of gender comes up."

Swoon.

And then we were back in O'Hare where the airport news channels were blaring some my-penis-is-bigger-than-your-penis rhetoric about how certain candidates will Never Surrender in Iraq, Never. In my country—which in many ways is a lovely place to be from—we tend to talk and act as if we're the only people in the room (who matter). USA: fuck yeah!! Wooooo!

Sunday Garden Report #1

2008-06-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

As of this weekend, the Not Sunny Enough Garden is officially open for business for the season, with five tomato plants in the back row and two eggplants and two basils in the foreground. I asked the tomato-plant guy at the farmers' market for an assortment of easy-to-grow tomatoes, and he gave me the following: Black Prince, Brown Berry, Early Girl, red and yellow striped Roma, and Yellow Pear.

Also, in the left foreground, I planted some seeds from two years ago I came across among the gardening things—I don't know if they'll even germinate after all this time. They're Queen Anne's Pocket melons, which Stud McMuffin gave me because the miniature melons were carried around by Victorian ladies for their sweet scent and she thought that sounded wacky, and so did I. Can I work pocket melons into my dissertation somehow? Hmm....

Sweden!

2008-05-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

Guess what? I just got back from a week in Sweden, with a side trip to Finland! I will have more to say on this soon, but meanwhile here are some pictures.

Shoulda Read the Manual, Part 3967

2008-05-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

Did you know? You are supposed to get your dryer serviced—and the lint vacuumed out of its innards—every six months. Otherwise the built-up lint can IGNITE OMG FIRE!!

It wasn't actually that dramatic; I was drying a load when we started to smell this awful burning-rubber, electrical smell. So I turned it off and the smell went away.

A few days later, the nice repair man enlightened me as to the usefulness of his lint-vacuuming service.

The dryer works much faster now, too.

Tasty But Not Photogenic Fried Rice

2008-05-19T18:32:00.000-07:00

(So instead of the fried rice, here's another shot of the landscaping.)

I threw together this fried rice tonight after glancing at some recipes on the web:

sesame seeds
block of firm tofu
onion
spinach leaves
rice
egg (optional; I'm vegan-friendly but not there yet)

Throw rice in rice cooker and dice tofu and steam it for 10 minutes. Brown sesame seeds in vegetable oil and then add and cook ingredients in this order: tofu, diced onions, spinach leaves, rice, and beaten egg. Stir in soy sauce.

This recipe has the Mr. Flossie Stamp of Approval.

The Tree, One Year On

2008-05-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

The prairiefire crabapple seems to be filling in nicely, despite having been encased in ice for most of the winter. Here is a comparison of the tree just after it was planted a year ago to the tree yesterday at sunset.

(Yes, we've had some landscaping done—goodbye steep, hard-to-mow front lawn, hello mulch! And yes, I think someone moved the rock.)

No-Drive Summer?

2008-05-06T14:04:00.000-07:00

After spending $30 on gas (and my tank was only half empty) yesterday, I biked to my therapy appointment this morning, biked to the bike shop*, biked to a doctor's appointment,** biked to work, biked to the library, and will bike home shortly. I want to make my tank of gas last the whole summer. I don't have to go anywhere, really—except for Sweden, heh. On which more later.

* Because I had a flat and Veg fixed it; she wanted me to take it in to make sure the tire was back on OK. It was! This picture is Veg making adjustments.

** Where I got a sour male resident at first, who clearly had no idea, and asked me surprising and unsettling questions about my psychiatric and gynecological history (I was there for a rash on my chin, people!!), and said he was going to consult with "his staff," and then reappeared with an older female doctor, clearly his supervisor, who was awesome and who knew exactly what to prescribe. His staff. Sheesh. Sorry, I HATE bad doctors.

Meanwhile, in the World

2008-05-05T05:35:00.000-07:00

I sometimes have the uncanny feeling that some unfortunate grad student is going to be researching blogs like mine in the future, not for the literary quality, but as a symptom of the appalling nature of the times: "The neo-domesticity movement reflects a turning inward toward the private sphere as a distraction from the bourgeois liberal writers' own silent complicity in world events..." Mr. Flossie and I just watched a documentary called No End in Sight, the clearest, most concise summary of the first five years of the Iraq War I've seen. Like a great many people, I didn't support the invasion; the justifications seemed absurd even at the time. But I never fully realized how the quagmire we are now in is the result of some spectacularly incompetent decisions made by a group of three or four people at the top of the Bush administration after the occupation began. And sadly, there were plenty of people in the military and the Pentagon who were experienced and knowledgeable and could have helped, but their expertise was arrogantly waved off.

What emerges is much like Hannah Arendt's banality of evil thesis from her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Except the banality here is not in following orders, but in the people giving the orders, the war's orchestrators.

I felt a stab of guilt to be writing blog posts about my cozy home life when a country has turned to rubble. Clearly it's not enough to vote, it's not enough to write one's senator, it's not enough to donate to Move On...but what does one do? What to say to the future grad student trying to understand why we seemed so compliant?

Blue Flower

2008-04-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

We had a dinner party on Saturday and I found these little guys in the yard for the centerpiece. They seem to be Scilla sibericas that "escaped" (as the web site terms it) through the fence from a neighbor's patch. They're toxic, so back outside they went at the end of the evening.

I'm glad it's spring!

#26 Visit a botanical garden

2008-04-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

I spent last weekend in St. Louis with my mother, and we went to one of my favorite places in town, the Missouri Botanical Garden. It was a beautiful sunny day, in the 60s, and the magnolias were in bloom.

# 25 Get a world map and stick map pins where Mr. Flossie and I have traveled

2008-04-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

I love maps. I have been known to get so immersed in a map while supposedly navigating that I have allowed the driver to miss an exit.

I've wanted to do a map of our travels since I saw the same thing at a friend's house, but framed maps on bulletin boards are expensive. So I found a National Geographic world map at a used bookstore for $3 and had it mounted on foam core at Dick Blick for $20. Now it's in the hallway between the kitchen and the back stairs. I decided to go minimalist and stick pins only in places where Mr. Flossie and I have gone together, outside the continental US.

Now when I walk down the hallway, I think, "Ah! Juneau!"

#59 Get New Car Tires

2008-03-17T20:49:00.000-07:00

Boring, but necessary. I got new tires today. Here's a fun fact: You should replace your tires every 40,000 miles or so. I was at 57,000. Their complete baldness was probably why I kept getting stuck in the snow this winter.

I feel very grown-up and responsible now. And broke.

#40 Take a cooking class

2008-03-12T20:09:00.000-07:00

I've crossed out my first thing from my 101 Things list. I took Veg's vegan cupcake class at the Co-op. Entertaining and informative! Veg is a pro. She had a supply of amusing anecdotes on hand for pauses in her masterful baking of three different kinds of cupcakes.

I frosted these three rather hastily, because I wanted to EAT DEM! They are (were) coconut lime, agave-sweetened orange, and chocolate cherry crème tower. Nom nom nom.

Here is Veg and her stand mixer, her rapt audience, and her assistants/minions.

Awww Yeah...

2008-03-06T18:02:00.000-08:00

The Flossie household has reached the epitome of domestic chic (circa 1977), not to mention achieved the American dream (think The Graduate, think Dallas): a home bar! We spotted this one, complete with vinyl bumper and barstools, at a local antique store, and knew we were destined to have it because, well, we already have some matching barrel furniture—armchairs and a sofa. I have heard that one's interior design should have a motif that ties together different rooms. Our motif is barrels.

The vintage store owner—who also sold Mr. Flossie the other barrel furniture years ago—said he was selling them on consignment for a woman who removed them from her husband's, quote, "man cave."

The bar not only looks hot, it's functional, too. Inside the barrel are shelves for the storing of booze. Quoth Mr. Flossie, "We have now made alcohol consumption the focal point of our home decor." As well it should be.

101 things / 1001 days

2008-02-24T09:05:00.000-08:00

I saw that 101 things meme a few months ago, and I slowly started to write my own list. I think it's ready for unveiling now, though it's not quite complete, as you'll see at the bottom.

Drum roll, please... By Sunday, November 21, 2010, these are the goals I want to have accomplished:

career
1. get my PhD
2. get a job done 7/2/08

writing, reading
3. adhere to a daily writing schedule for one month
4. submit an essay to The Sun
5. read 5 new novels
6. read 5 new memoirs
7. read a poem at the Poetry Daily web site at least once a week
8. go to the public library and read magazines
9. re-read Writing Down the Bones
10. read Natalie Goldberg’s new book on memoir writing
11. read a book about spirituality

friends, family
12. have 5 dinner parties
13. host 5 houseguests
14. see Old Friend Who Lives in St. Louis
15. see Old Friend Who Lives in Houston
16. spend time with Mom in Korea
17. spend time with Brother in D.C.
18. visit Mom before she moves away from next state
19. babysit a friend’s kid
20. play with the cats once a day
21. brush the cats once a week

travel
22. take Mr. Flossie to the House on the Rock
23. make him take me to the Seed Savers Heritage Farm
24. visit Madison, Wisconsin
25. get a world map and stick map pins where Mr. F and I have traveled done 4/5/08
26. visit a botanical garden done 4/7/08

political, environmental
27. participate in a march or protest
28. campaign for a local candidate
29. lobby for more recycling bins on campus
30. find out my carbon footprint
31. buy a TerraPass

educational
32. learn to identify ten native trees
33. …ten native birds
34. …ten flowering plants
35. learn CPR
36. learn first aid
37. take a stargazing class
38. take a car-maintenance class
39. take a home repair class
40. take a cooking class done 2/12/08
41. learn what kind of wines I like
42. learn a Spanish word a day (through iGoogle page)
43. learn a Korean word a day (again, iGoogle)
44. re-learn the Korean alphabet
45. try to grasp some Korean grammar rules
46. learn to drive stick

crafty
47. learn to bake bread
48. learn to knit socks
49. learn to crochet
50. learn to sew a skirt
51. make something crafty with all the wine corks we’ve saved

health, wellness
52. go a month without soda
53. try out veganism for two weeks
54. go to a pilates or yoga class at the gym once a week for three months
55. drink an extra glass of water a day
56. do not go online for 3 consecutive days
57. learn to meditate

odious grownup tasks
58. write a will
59. get new car tires done 3/18/08
60. put together an emergency kit for the car
61. start an emergency fund in savings

things for society
62. donate to public radio
63. plug someone else’s expired meter
64. walk dogs or pet cats at the no-kill animal shelter

fun things
65. make a mix CD
66. get a massage
67. get a pedicure
68. get a facial
69. ride in a convertible
70. try a new cuisine
71. learn how to wear makeup
72. complete a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle
73. go hiking
74. go on a daylong bike outing
75. go whitewater rafting or canoeing
76. go cross-country skiing
77. go on a picnic
78. go on a walk around the neighborhood for no reason
79. go to a U-pick farm or orchard

home ec
80. plant vegetables
81. organize photos
82. buy new towels
83. buy a new oven mitt done 7/2/08
84. organize my home office
85. clean the basement
86. clean the attic
87. make up a box of things to donate to the Mennonite thrift store
88. join a CSA for a season
89. go to the farmer’s market once a week for two months
90. find one thing to de-clutter in each room
91. landscape front yard
92. hang a birdfeeder
93. make a meal plan and grocery list for an upcoming week
94. do not eat dinner out for two weeks
95. pick out all my outfits for an upcoming week
96. purge all the mom-jeans from my wardrobe
97. convert old T-shirts to rags
98. bring my lunch to work for a week

and:
99. ask blog readers to suggest goals 99-101

Tiny Cupcakes

2008-02-11T05:59:00.000-08:00

Veg brought over these bite-sized cupcakes yesterday. Adorable, right? She should go into business, right? (I know, I tell all my baking-genius friends this. They never listen to me.)

I could have eaten all of them, but out of fairness to everyone else, I limited myself to three.

Somewhere in Here is My Car

2008-02-07T18:43:00.000-08:00

Nineteen inches of snow in four days? WTF?

I liked this quote from the local paper: "[County Engineer] Parker said about half a dozen county snow plows got stuck throughout the day Wednesday, with two trucks getting stuck at one point when they tried to get another truck out."

Not-Cereal

2008-01-25T15:30:00.000-08:00

Before Mr. Flossie goes out of town, he always says (because he knows my tendencies), "Eat real dinners—not cold cereal over the sink." Last night he was out of town, and the cereal box was beckoning, but I decided to make something Real. So I made the roasted butternut squash spring rolls from this article.

Delicious and so easy! I ate a million. Not quite over the sink, but standing up in the kitchen. And there were even leftovers, which I socked away in Tupperware and had for lunch today.

Experiment in real food a success!