stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
These past couple of weeks were difficult in a few ways. Miriam's parents were for a week. Her dad is pretty conservative in a lot of ways and I got kind of upset with him a few times. I got sick about halfway through their visit. My best guess is I caught something while at the dentist without a mask while people were in close vicinity of my open mouth for an hour or more. Today, I finally feel like the symptoms are just ghosts of their former selves.

I reaggravated my neck and shoulder in the same place that I hurt it while I was in Wisconsin. I think it's because of all the coughing I was doing while sick. That started around when her parents left on the 15th, got really bad on the 16th, and is still giving me twinges as I move around today, but it's finally mostly better after a week of pain meds and a heating pad. I need to be careful not to type too much or do other things with that arm though, or it gets worse again.

Five days ago, I wrote:

"I think I've aggravated whatever was giving me pain in my neck and shoulder while I was in Wisconsin. (Maybe related to all the coughing I'm doing?) There, it was some of the worst pain in my life: far worse than when I broke my wrist. It's not as bad now: I am functional and able to write. But it's around a 7 when lying down and is keeping me from sleeping. I can get in a position while sitting up where it's more like a 4-5. That's while on several painkillers.

I'm also still dealing with symptoms from being ill and trying to manage all of that on like four hours of sleep. And when I did sleep last night, I had a dream where my dad told me that if I needed him he's a phone call away, and obviously he is not, so I kind of don't want to sleep anyway, except I'm exhausted. So I'm basically a mess right now. Sorry for not being communicative."

So yeah, there's some grief too that's keeping me down. That was exacerbated today by going to CostCo to pick up prescriptions and seeing Christmas decorations. I've been expecting some kind of holiday grief to come along, and today was the first big wave of it. I managed to not cry in the store at least.

On the way home, between grief, loneliness, and isolation, I ate a bunch of cake bites. I bought some after deciding that I was not likely to binge-eat them all too quickly. I was wrong. I ate half the CostCo sized container on the way home. I was feeling pretty disappointed and upset with myself while I ate them and thoughts of self-harm were in my mind, but then I thought of the inner-child work I've been doing with myself. If I was taking care of Little Meghan, and someone wanted to hurt her, I would fuck them up. And I am Little Meghan, and sometimes she eats too much because she is really sad and hurting, and that does not mean she is bad. It means she is a human being who hurts and deserves love.

---

My birthday was nice, if kind of lonely. At least Miriam and her parents were there. We ordered tasty Regina style pizza and pretty unremarkable cheesecake from a local place, Western Pizza.

---

I've been having some one-person girls' nights on the couch, snuggled up with my dog and my stuffed animals under a warm blanket and watching sapphic media. Those really help get me away from my thoughts sometimes. Miriam helps a lot too: I was feeling particularly bad on the morning of the 11th after my attempts to reach out in a few places online didn't get anywhere. We were at a grocery store to get something her parents needed and while she was inside she bought me a bouquet of flowers. I cried sad, happy, and deep tears against her in the car, feeling loved, and thought of, and cared for, and validated. I would be lost without her.
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
Sometimes Albert Heijn (the grocery store we get deliveries from) includes an opt-out freebie. This last delivery, it was these.

I tried them. I am grateful that, should I return to North America, I will be 4000 miles away from these abominations.

The Dutch are not above putting English on stuff to look cool. English here, though, is much more likely to make sense than the random English you see in Japan or China for instance.
Some of the Dutch I recognize:

Bosvruchten: forest fruits
Groente: vegetables

Sultana Crackers
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
This weekend is not going as hoped for. Danae is feeling sick and not up to having the online belated birthday party we've been planning. She's rescheduling, but is sad about disappointing people. I am glad that she is making self-care a priority. That's important, and can be hard to to.

(I should note that Miriam does not have Covid. It cost €70 via a special taxi ride to the testing center and back to find out, but it seemed responsible and necessary. It's just a regular kind of ick. We've been doing our best (and a lot!) to keep from being exposed to anything, but if something had to get us, I'm glad it's something less dangerous.)

I am having some physical discomfort (I'll spare you the indelicate details unless you're curious and ask) that's keeping me fairly inactive. I want to clean up the place, but I don't want to aggravate the issue so I'll probably wait a day or two.

I'm still anxious about school even though it seems to be going well so far. It's hard for me to believe it's going well, or believe that I'm really caught up on everything, or that I haven't missed some assignment that I should be working on but am unaware of. But I'm going to do some more work on a couple school-related projects today and tomorrow.

On the plus side, we ordered ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. I made them for her birthday and they were tasty! We had to order chocolate bars and break them up into bits for the cookies because chocolate chips don't seem to really be a thing here.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
I took the "Big Americans" brand supreme pizza out of the freezer and set it on the counter. I unwrapped it.

"Uhh...there's corn on this pizza." I said to Danae.

"Corn is a new world vegetable," she rightly observed. She also noted that this isn't the first pizza she's seen that suggests that folks here have odd ideas about what makes American style pizzas.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
I saw an ad on Facebook for one of several pizza restaurant chains that are nigh-omnipresent in the US and it looked *so good* my mouth started watering.

It's hard for me to find pizza I like here. Pizza at grocery stores can be pretty funny though. There are varieties of "American Style" pizza by one company that mostly have things I would never expect to see on a US toppings list. The picture I saw, of a simple pepperoni pizza, just looked *so* good.

I was going to put pepperoni on a pizza I made here at home last time I did that, but the local LIDL doesn't sell any pepperoni. I used ham cubes...
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
Though the widespread knee-jerk reactions of a the type commonly seen on social media often does not directly affect me, the kerfluflle about Fair Oaks Farm has meant that the milk Danae and I buy is no longer available at the stores we shop at. The nutritional profile of their milk is far better than typical milk for people with with the blood-sugar issues that she has.

I just wish everyone would wait for complete stories before feeding the rage machine with out-of-context bits and pieces.

Beyond that, animal abuse will never stop happening within the context of industrial agriculture. In some ways, industrial agriculture *is* animal abuse. If you're angry about people physically abusing a few cows in particular but not angry about the way livestock in general is treated, please stop making my life more difficult with your hypocrisy.
stormdog: (sleep)
Another nightmare last night left me slightly disoriented and confused this morning. Miriam kindly gave me a few snuggles before getting back to sleep and I talked myself through my morning routine to make sure I didn't forget things. I ate a bunch of chocolate as I went, so I'll have a smaller breakfast once I get to work.

Rufus took his medicine very well and without even needing peanut butter! He got several treats after that.

With the mental confusion plus my still-sore leg (which kept me home from the dog shelter last night) I decided to drive to work rather than try to get there by bike. If there wasn't a 'company engagement' event I'm supposed to be at today as well as a couple other folks being out, I might have called in sick. I still felt a little mental fog on the way in, but am doing ok now. I'll use the opportunity to take one more book truck home with me.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
People at work saved me some food from the Fall welcome back party yesterday evening. I ate the two Italian beef sandwiches, thinking I'd save the hot dog for later. Then I ate the hot dog. Then I went downstairs and bought a brownie. I ate the brownie with some chocolate syrup on top of it from a bottle left over from a party that happened before I started here. A co-worker commented that that would be *way* too sweet for her to eat, and that it would be almost as bad as just drinking the syrup out of the bottle.

After she left, I drank the rest of the syrup out of the bottle.

I don't seem to be coping well today. I want a puppy to snuggle.
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
I sometimes forget that most people put milk on their cereal. It seems gross to me. Why would you want to eat things that are supposed to be crunchy but then make them soggy and cold?

I'm a weirdo.
stormdog: (Kira)
And I just ate half a chocolate cake this morning, so there's that... *sighs*
stormdog: (Kira)
Not that this applies to anyone hwere, but as I wrote on Facebook:

I have no personal stake in who is cast as The Doctor. I haven't watched the series, and don't really care (though I love K-9 and Tom Baker's scarf).

But loud negativity about The Doctor now being female for no other reason than zie is now female is a good way to make me angry. I don't have the brain to deal with things that make me angry right now, so I'm just going to unfriend you.

----

I'm digitizing a Folkways recording of Woody Guthrie singing with Leadbelly, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Bess Hawes. It's the first time I've heard "Hard Traveling"; I really dig it. I'm adding it to my list of train songs, and driving music in general.

Sadly, the notes that the jacket says are included in the pocket are missing.

---

Danae and I had a fun trip to Mitsuwa and Ikea today. Multicultural foods and furniture! I had some fresh Bul-go-ki, a lovely daifuku, and a soft-serve green tea ice cream cone. (Then for dinner, we got take out from Table-to-Stix here in Evanston. Soooo good!)

We were looking specifically for a matching bookcase for the one I snagged in the alley recently and looks really good in our bedroom! So, of course, they were out of stock. But we got glasses (Nathan owned most of the ones that had been here so we needed more), a set of shelves for my audio componentry, some boxes for our closet, and other things. 'Course, I'll have to go back again for that bookcase.

Danae and I haven't really taken any kind of trip that was just she and I for a while. Though I messed up scheduling with other people today and feel bad about that, spending the day with my partner was really good for my brain. I love her muchly, and time with her is more precious that I sometimes remember.

Cooking

Feb. 7th, 2017 08:57 pm
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
I've never been able to manage eating most vegetables and fruits. It's a texture issue, though when I was little I didn't know that and my parents spent many frustrating hours trying to get me to eat things like green beans. If forced to ingest them, I'd cut them up into tiny pieces and swallow them with water like a pill.

I've been branching out a lot more, food-wise, in the last couple years. I don't know whether there was some particular catalyst for that, or if I'm just starting to become more tolerant of things for no apparent reason. During our last trip to Canada, Danae's mother made bacon and maple roasted brussels sprouts. I tried them, and to my surprise, liked them a lot. I think part of it is that they have a fairly uniform texture and are a manageable size. Like giant, green, vegetably M&Ms that don't taste like chocolate. Of course, part of it is the bacon too.

I've been making a point of doing more cooking and trying new recipes, so I asked Danae's mom for the sprouts one and have made it several times now, most recently tonight. We like it so much that I've been doubling the recipe and cooking two pounds of sprouts. We have leftovers, but if I ate as many as I wanted, we might not.

I've made the sprouts, pulled pork, sweet curry (the latter two both in the crock pot), taco/burrito fixings, and hamburgers several times. I'm feeling the most comfortable in the kitchen that I ever have, and am excited to keep trying new things. I love making food for myself and for my partner. I'm happy to be getting more vegetables in me too.
stormdog: (Kira)
I am not allowed to buy any more discount Easter candy this year. I cannot handle it responsibly right now.

...those Lindor truffle eggs are soooo good.

Slavery

Apr. 2nd, 2016 10:59 am
stormdog: (Kira)
I have this really visceral, negative reaction to slavery that I didn't have before going back to undergrad. Not to say I was pro-slavery before; c'mon. But having read both 3rd person and 1st person accounts more in depth, I have a more emotional response to it than I did.

Playing Fable II (a completely ridiculous game that I will write more about later), there was a scene where you can make a choice between freeing captive slaves or selling them to a slaver. I guess there was some kind of plot information or something in what the slaver says. I don't know, because as soon as he suggested I sell him the key to the slave cages, I shot him in the face mid-sentence.

---

I seem to be well on my way to, just like yesterday, eating like a three-year old for most of the day. I bought a giant Twix egg on post-Easter discount yesterday and just consumed the whole thing. It was ok; about as good as the unimpresive Cadbury Egg cookies I ate a box of yesterday.
stormdog: (Kira)
I was feeling down yesterday. Lots of stuff is swirling in my brain, and the bad things were outnumbering the good for a while. An encouraging message from Miriam helped, but I almost decided that I didn't want to deal with the cold outside to go on my usual walk with Lily. I'm glad I did anyway. As is often the case when I'm looking for reasons to not to do something fun, once I was actually in the moment, I had a wonderful time. Lily's boundless enthusiasm and excitement are infectious, if occasionally mildly irritating.

The two of us walked to Lincoln Park, climbing the old set of stairs I've posted photographs of before. We walked around the summit, then down a different set of stairs, then along a decaying brick sidewalk on one edge, back up a third set of stairs, and finally returned home via the first set. I like that route; I think we might do it again today.

Afterward, I roped [livejournal.com profile] restoman into a paczki hunt, it being Fat Tuesday. The internet suggested a couple places that might have them here in Syracuse. The first one was a Polish restaurant and bakery called Eva's European Sweets. Glenn said their food is wonderful, and the woman behind the counter spoke with a heavy Polish accent. Score; these were going to be the real deal! Except she said they hadn't had time to make any that day. Sadness. The local bakery we tried next was a winner though!

There seems to be a little local language difference. In Chicago and Detroit, paczkis can be filled with all sorts of stuff. At the bakery, the employee pointed out the prune paczkis, and when I asked about lemon-filled paczkis, she said they have lemon-filled donuts, but those aren't paczkis. I didn't see an outward difference, and I was mildly concerned about the prune filling; I've never eaten prunes and was worried about flavor and texture. But I adventurously bought one because I wanted the 'authentic' experience. I got a lemon one too, partly to have a fall-back if I couldn't eat the prune version. As it turns out, the prune-filled paczki was entirely edible, and though it's not one of my favorite flavors, really not too bad. Glenn, who'd never heard of paczkis before I mentioned them, enjoyed his too. I've introduced him to both Japanese sushi and Polish donuts now! I still have to get some Turkish delight for him to try before I leave though....

---

Woah; wait. This is weird. I'm the adventurous eater who's getting zir friend to try strange new things. I may have slipped into an alternate universe somewhere along the line.
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
Chocolate-peanut butter ice cream with some lingonberry sauce drizzled on top? Sure!

Thanks to Danae's roommate for giving me that sauce when I was last visiting; it's been getting a lot of use!

Yesterday, I decided I wanted to try the other Indian Buffet in Syracuse. Not the one where an employee was spitting loudly into a sink in the back of the dining area the first (and last) time I ate there. I walked the 1.5 miles up the hill to the Westcott neighborhood and stuffed myself with tasty food. The chicken tiki masala was pleasantly spicy, and I ladled tamarind sauce onto everything because I adore tamarind sauce. With that plus my outing with Lily, I walked about five miles yesterday. It's been so good to be active; it's good for me in several ways.

I'm fighting with myself a little bit over feeling committed to it. Since so much of my stress has been feeling like I have no time to myself, part of me feels a little bit avoidant about going out every afternoon for dog walking. The process is so enjoyable and good for me though, that this is an excellent sort of therapy to get myself feeling okay about a regular commitment I suppose. As I've walked, I've thought about what I've been doing over the past few days and what I want to do. Sometimes I think about the fact that this is my time, and I can do with it what I want. I say so to myself out loud, and it's a euphoric realization; it makes me want to dance. I'm also reminding myself, as I sometimes look for excuses to cut the experience short and go home, that I don't have to be at home. I don't have anything I need to do right now and it's ok to be away from the apartment.

That said, I'm also doing things in the apartment that I haven't done in a long time. When I brought my stereo equipment with me, I planned to spend some time sitting and listening to music. I never did; I was too anxious about time. Over the last week, I've spent some time sitting on my couch and listening to entire albums. Sometimes I look at the glowing radio dial on the amp and imagine the electrons flowing through its circuits. Sometimes I close my eyes and just listen. Sometimes I fall asleep and take a little nap. This is another thing I should have been doing this whole time, but wasn't.

I don't seem to know how, or be able to, create boundaries between time for work and time for me. It's something I need to get a handle on before I try school again. I need this kind of time, and it's hard for me to let myself have it. Even now, when there are not other commitments on my time, I sometimes look for excuses to not be so indulgent.
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
I kept seeing this stuff at the Asian grocery stores I went to with Lisa​ in Chicago, but never got around to trying any. I stopped in at the one near my place today for a bean bun (they were out, but I got a taro bun which is about as good), and got some of this too since I'm out of sriracha sauce.

It has a consistency like jelly or jam. I just ate a piece of pizza while spreading the paste thickly onto it, and I'm disappointed. It's as sweet as it is spicy, and in fact is a little calorie dense at 40 calories per teaspoon. I could (and did) put tablespoons of this stuff on something and not really get the heat I want.

That said, I think this will make for a pretty good spread to replace jelly in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! I'll have to try something else for heat though.

---Edited to add:

It's not bad on a turkey sandwich in place of mustard either. And after weighing a serving, it looks like the label is incorrect; it's 40 calories per tablespoon, which is more reasonable.


Hot Pepper Paste
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
A friend's post on Facebook reminded me that this is national cookie day! Of course, I have to celebrate. This evening I'm baking more of this cookie dough I bought at the discount grocery store. The brand name is, amusingly enough, Litefluff, but the nutritional information is exactly the same as the more expensive Price Chopper store brand, so I suspect it's the same product in a different wrapper.

Yes, I just ate some Ben and Jerry's "Chocolate Therapy" ice cream. But it's cookie day! One does not just walk away from cookie day without cookies, right? (The relative healthiness of my diet has not been, objectively speaking, so great lately. But I'm still eating lots of spinach!)
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
I'm trying to decide where to go for my birthday meal. (Oh wow; that's this weekend!) All-you-can-eat buffets are a rare treat for me, so I want to do one of those. I'd have conveyor belt sushi in downtown Syracuse, but I'm taking Danae out for that while she's in town and it's pricy to do twice.

There's an independent pizza, pasta, and salad buffet that looks pretty good, but it's 20 miles from here and I don't know if I want to devote most of a day to a ride out there. I thought I might go for Ponderosa. I haven't been to a Ponderosa for something like twenty years and it would be a lot fun to see one again! But I just found out that the one I thought was nearby closed in June.

The Chinese buffet that Glen and I went to last week was pretty good; I might go back there. Or I might try the *other* Indian buffet in town. You know, the one where I didn't walk in to find an employee repeatedly spitting into a sink in full view of the tables. Ew; that one is out of consideration permanently. (And their gulab jamun were cold.)

Anyway, that'll be my birthday present to myself. I'd thought about getting a cake, or even an ice cream cake from Carvel (there's a Groupon), but I have *so* much chocolate here right now. Maybe [livejournal.com profile] restoman will come too. I think I'll see if there's anybody he wants to bring. Meeting new people would be another good birthday thing!

I just found this place, too; I'll have to check them out some time. The lunch buffet includes some tasty looking rolls and is fairly affordable. http://firudous.com/

Globalization is weird. No "American-style" buffets are anywhere near my 150,000 person city in central New York State, but there are at least four places (counting Chinese buffets) to get all you can eat sushi.
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
My mother read recently that chronic ear infections in children may be connected to altered sense of taste. Being aware of my weird sense of taste, she thought this was really interesting. Apparently, I had recurring ear infections as a little boy. I also did not react to any pain they might be causing me. The first she knew about one of them, she told me today, was when my eardrum burst; before that, I hadn't expressed any discomfort.

I went Googling around and found this article: http://mealtimehostage.com/2013/04/16/taste-its-in-your-ear/

Some of this sounds quite a lot like me. The writer uses experiences of a friend with a bad cold and altered sense of taste to explore the ways food is experienced differently when certain parts of the sense of taste are not working, and wonders how this would affect children who grow up that way. I think I might be such a child. A quotation from her sick friend about her eating with a cold:

"What am I eating? Carbs. Sweets. Things I CAN taste. Cheese is a rubber blob and everything else might as well be styrofoam. I can taste chocolate and cookies and things. I’m not looking forward to the pancakes that my husband is making for dinner. All I can taste from a Coke is sweet. It’s not that exciting, being just sweet water that stings the tongue.”


This is me. I'd never thought very deeply about this until some conversations with Lisa​, but there are so very many things that just don't taste like much of anything to me. Other quotations are striking to me too, as someone whose choices of foods are strongly shaped by texture. The article writer's friend says "Apples are crunchy at the front of the mouth and are sweet right away. They also soften quickly. I can taste an apple. Carrots you have to chew at the back of the mouth and you have to work to get the sweet. I can’t taste them." While I don't like apple texture myself, this is the same language in which I describe foods to other people. (And I don't think carrots taste like anything either. They never have.) When I'm eating all this salad lately, the things I put on it are entirely so that it has taste and texture. I can't taste spinach, and the texture is not very pleasant. I *can* taste, and more importantly, feel, the chow mein noodles or croutons. And bacon crumbles are wonderfully salty; salt I can taste.

The foods that I like most in my life are ones that I can taste most strongly. Cheeses like mild cheddar or muenster are, to borrow another article quote, "rubber blobs." Eggs, the friend says, smell like sulfur and are unpleasant. For me, eggs have no taste at all, and, in fact, occasionally smell like sulfur. Ew. I only like them with lots of cheese, ketchup, and/or hot sauce. Really sharp cheddar or very strong blues, though, are wonderful. The article posits that children who are affected this way will prefer "Fatty, creamy, energy-dense foods....pasta, pizza, mac n' cheese..." that is *so* me.

Anyway, this is just fascinating to me. It also offers an alternative theory to my life-long weird eating habits other than an autism spectrum disorder-related sensory integration problem. Back when an autism spectrum disorder seemed to be one of the better fits for explaining my life to date, that made sense. Now, I feel like failure to develop any social skills due to unrecognized prosopagnosia through my early twenties is a better fit, but the food issues were still there. I'd come to believe that I simply have a very atypical sense of taste, and it's nice to have an idea of why that may be.

And with that, I'm going to go eat the sweet, creamy, fatty, fabulous Reese's Peanut Butter Cup I budgeted for today!

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stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
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