Nom de Plume

If you can believe it, I actually got up this morning when Steve did–at 4:30. He does it because he has to (though apparently he “slept in” a little); I did it because I fell asleep last night at 8. Which is completely weird. Also weird were the dreams I had, in which all the soap in my drawer of soaply delights melted into a gooey, unsalvageable mess while I went from door to door trying to peddle the stuff. Considering all the oddness, it felt completely natural to wake up to an unseasonal snowfall.

Oh caffeine! My Caffeine! Our love affair is done, the stress you cause does me rack,
Though greeted with the sun. The drip is near, espresso I hear, the adrenaline once exulting
While follow eyes the steady reel, the liquid black and daring; But O heart! Heart! Heart!
O the bitter brew of brown, Where in my cup my decaf lies, a drink flat and dead.
O Caffeine! My Caffeine! I wish I could drink you. I wish—but you cause panic—but
you make me jangle.

(with abject apologies to Walt Whitman)

• @swansacres Which one was this? in reply to swansacres #
• Thinking about doing laundry. Thinking about making soap. Whatever I do, the kitchen needs to be cleaned first. #
• @ma_may Feel better … in reply to ma_may #
• @naturallyamy COFFFEEEEEE. I am so jealous I can’t even tell you. Will you drink another cup for me? in reply to naturallyamy #
• totally living vicariously through Gina. #
• @pattiflynn Rajasthan is wonderful. It’s easy to imagine you there. Have a blast! in reply to pattiflynn #
• @EssentialHerbal YAY CHICKENS!!! in reply to EssentialHerbal #
• Bellydancing was good tonight. Lots of shimmying. Now taking the dog for a walk. #
• YAY–bellydancing class tonight. #
• Knee deep in messaging #
• @AlkaliSoaps Stinks doesn’t it? Especially when your to-do pile keeps getting bigger … in reply to AlkaliSoaps #
• Having a very, very hard time concentrating on work today. #
• @EssentialHerbal That would be so cool. You know they lay 3 oz eggs?? They’re HUGE. in reply to EssentialHerbal #
• @EssentialHerbal I am so jealous. There’s nothing like a fresh-laid egg. One of my neighbors has chickens, and sometime she gives me some .. in reply to EssentialHerbal #
• @EssentialHerbal What kind of chickens are they? in reply to EssentialHerbal #
• @leifpettersen Sounds like you’re pregnant in reply to leifpettersen #
• @faeriemade @EssentialHerbal I want chickens too. I even have them picked out–barnevelders. Now, just to build the coop … in reply to faeriemade #
• @martincron Oh yes, I love that one–cause you can sort by PUG. in reply to martincron #
• I love my dog. #
• @swansacres I looooove caffeine. I looooooove coffee. I haaaaaaaate decaf. But I drink it anyway. in reply to swansacres #
• @TimeToBlossom We need to go for a tromple! in reply to TimeToBlossom #
• I am in mourning for coffee. I gave up the caffeine, and decaf just stinks. #
• @martincron The only thing I love more than lolcats are lolpugs! in reply to martincron #
• Just testing this wordpress to twitter to facebook intergration. Yes, I succumbed to fb again. Sigh. #
• What? Sun in Seattle? SAY IT’S NOT SO. #
• @AuntieCelene Too late. It’s pretty darn good stuff though! in reply to AuntieCelene #

I just listened to an On Point podcast with Sylvia Earl, talking about how you can now go into the oceans with Google Earth. Great show–as always–but I was dismayed to learn that while fish oil is great for YOU, it’s not great for fish populations. Actually, it’s terrible for fish populations. Luckily, there’s an alternative: Oil derived from algae. Supposedly, all the fish omega threes come from algae anyway. So I guess I’ll finish out my current bottle and then switch.

At first glance, this seemed like yet another novel about upper middle class Northeasterners who have Issues. And yes, it’s about upper middle class Northeasterners and yes, they have issues, but all the characters are so finely drawn and their stories so compelling that this was a read somewhat out of the ordinary. Basically, the story starts out like this: The McKotch family goes to the Cape for their usual summer vacation with siblings and nieces and nephews and cousins … a houseful of family. Pauline, the somewhat controlling mother, heads up the McKotch contingent during the week, and is joined by her needy (and she was say sex addict) husband Frank over the weekends. They have problems, but they muddle through. And then in one lightning moment, Frank looks at their daughter Gwen and realized something is wrong, that she is not nearly as developed as her cousin. And it turns out that she has Turner’s Syndrome. The discovery breaks apart the family–not because of the discovery itself but because of how everyone deals with it, including the fact that Paulette and Frank divorce. The rest of the novel follows their lives and the lives of all the children as they, in turn, muddle through. And that they do more than muddle through is the point. It is reductive to say that there are Happy Endings and there are Sad Endings (and of course, whether an ending is happy or sad depends on where in the story you stop). But all told, this was the best kind of happy ending because through it all, the best of Haigh’s characters come shining through in a very real, very human way. I liked this.

• Listening to a Here on Earth podcast. I love podcasting. #
• @AlkaliSoaps Coming from the queen of gorgeous soaps! Thanks! in reply to AlkaliSoaps #
• @ma_may I read the book a few years ago. It was creepy. In a good sort of way. in reply to ma_may #
• @faeriemade Gingergrass does have a nice smell. It’s like fresh ginger EO, only without the edges. in reply to faeriemade #
• Should I walk the dog? Yes. Will I walk the dog? Maybe. #
• All this tweeting about gingergrass makes me wonder if I can grow it to throw in the still. #
• God, gingergrass is hard to find. #
• @ma_may Nah, there are a TON of better kids’ books. I think anyway. in reply to ma_may #
• It’s raining. Again. Hoping it lets up long enough to take the dog for a tromple. #
• YAY! All time wordtwist.org high– 629. My fingers hurt. Good night. #
• Cleaning before the cleaner gets here. #
• @faeriemade Have you read Alison Croggon’s Pellinor series? FAB! in reply to faeriemade #
• @waderockett Surprising about Forrester! Though Intel is calling for private sector stimulus. in reply to waderockett #
• Off to bellydancing–two classes tonight back to back. #
• @swansacres Oh that is so sweet of you to say! I’m going on about 9 months at this point … in reply to swansacres #
• @AlkaliSoaps That woodsy one is gorgeous! in reply to AlkaliSoaps #
• Doing a little work this morning while rendering more tallow. Fun stuff. Well the rendering anyway. #
• @leifpettersen AHHHHH Facebook. Prepare to be a vampire. Or maybe that’s passe lo these many moons after I deleted my account. in reply to leifpettersen #
• @ma_may I’m sorry …. in reply to ma_may #
• @ma_may But really, was it ever?? If so, you lead a much more romantic existence than I do. in reply to ma_may #
• Cooking Indian food tonight: Moghlai spinach, lamb cooked in the Kohlhapuri style, chapatis, and if I have the strength, carrot halva. #
• @AuntieCelene I’ve never had it. Pretty time-intensive to make though! in reply to AuntieCelene #

Well, here we have it, the soap I made from the tallow I rendered. Scented with may chang and palmarosa, colored with red oxide.

Easy-peasy.

The first adventure in tallow-making was successful–but not as successful as it could have been. Out of two pounds of beef fat, I only got 10 oz or so of tallow. There was a lot of unrendered fat, even after 4 hours of simmering on the stove. So of course, I’ve got another batch going right now. Only this time, I’m doing it in the crockpot, and I’m probably going to re-render after the first pour. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, it’s a combo of pig and beef fat. I went to a different Safeway this time, and the butcher threw all the scraps into a single bag. The SAP values are not the same, but they’re close enough that I’m not going to worry about it. Plus, I use a high enough lye discount that the recipes should be fairly forgiving.

I was expecting rendering to be smelly and gross, but it smells like you’re cooking beef stew.

There are two truths staring me in the face as I look at the slowly loading admin interface of WordPress 2.7. The first is that the last year has been hard for me in a lot of different ways. The second is that I miss WordPress 1.5. Blogging felt so easy back then. I popped in, wrote a post, and voila, the blog lived. These two truths converged; I lacked blog luster and the varying iterations of WordPress got harder and harder to deal with. Images stopped uploading. The amazon plug in stopped working. The site took longer to load. So I stopped blogging. I had hoped that upgrading my database and getting the latest version would get me back into it. And it has–more blog posts in the past month than in the previous year. Nonetheless, I am growing increasingly disenchanted with WordPress. The catch is that previous versions lack the functionality that I want, but that functionality comes with a price. Oh, and of course, there’s really no good alternative for what I want.

All of which makes me feel ungrateful. WordPress is free. And for free, it’s a pretty sweet deal. I do appreciate all the volunteer time and effort that goes into getting the latest version out
and coming up with plug-ins that I can use simply by downloading (right from the admin interface, no less). But you know, it’s SLOOOOOW. Slow to load on the back-end. Slow to load on the front-end. Just freaking slow.

The other slow thing has been stuff just getting better. As I say, the past year was hard. The past six months have been just awful. Among other things: I had the miscarriage; Millie got cancer; I got penumonia and had a bad allergic reaction to the antibiotics; my ex-boyfriend shot himself; work has been slowing down and I’ve been worried; my hypo-google-chondria has spiralled out of control. After we were snowed in for two weeks in December, I’m afraid I just kind of gave up and slid into a depression. The panic attacks haven’t helped. I finally went in last week and now am the somewhat happier owner of a refillable prescription for Xanax, and I’m trying 5HTP to even out the moods as an alternative to the Lexapro prescription I also have. I’ve been taking it for about a week, and it seems to be working. So all this is to say that I think I’m coming out of it.