Book List 2009.

BOOK LIST 2009
(Originally Posted January 6th, 2009)

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In Progress

-Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
-No Reservations by Anthony Bourdain
-Julie and Julia by Julia Powell
-The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
-The Best American Poetry 2009 edited by Wagoner and Lehman

Finished

-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
-The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
-Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
-The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
-Screw the Roses, Send me the Thorns by Phillip Miller and Molly Devon
-The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman
-Person to Person by Hanna, Suggett, and Radtke
-The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert
-Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies
-The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
-The Baby Owner’s Manual by Borgenicht and Borgenicht
-The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein
-Story of the Eye by George Bataille
-The Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut
-Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
-The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
-Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut
-White Oleander by Janet Fitch
-The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget by Josh Dorfman
-The New Bottoming Book by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
-The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
-In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
-The Time-Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
-How to Zest a Lemon by Kim Upton

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Biscuits and Gravy.

Well…I just attempted to make biscuits and gravy for breakfast, from scratch.  It was, to say the least, a disaster.  The biscuits didn’t rise properly, which meant they were dense and not at all tasty.   The gravy was too salty.  The base was also made with mostly olive oil left over from my Spanish-style fried egg, since the sausages I made gave off an unusually miniscule amount of fat, for some strange reason.

Now, I think that it’s possible that I measured wrong.  I am not one to measure.  I’m an eyeball-er.  Which I think tends to be my downfall when it comes to baking.  I need to be more patient and meticulous, which is the last thing I am when it comes to cooking.  I like to fly by the seat of my pants.  Take one glance at a recipe, get the basic gist, and wing the rest.  There’s a possibility that the baking powder I used was old.  Granted, it was an un-opened box, but, in my mother’s kitchen, there’s just no knowing with these things.  There is also a distinct possibility that my oven was not hot enough.  I set it to 450F just like Mr. Alton Brown suggested.  What I did not do was check the oven thermometer to make sure it was really at 450 when the pre-heat timer dinged.  Based on my post-disaster research, the lack of rise in my biscuits could have been on account of an oven that was not hot enough.  Baking powder is activated by heat.  If the temperature wasn’t hot enough, it didn’t get the powder working properly by the time my biscuits had had their 15 minutes of oven time.

So, anyway, before I hit the computer to do some research, I was sitting there moping and thinking to myself for the thousandth time that I’m just not a baker.  That I will be relegated to canned biscuit dough and store-bought cookies for the rest of time.  That I will never be able to bake light, tender biscuits for my future husband and our offspring.  And then it occurred to me that maybe biscuit-making (and all other forms of fixing baked goods) is not a natural born gift, but something that is learned through trial and error.  Which is why old Southern ladies are so damn good at it.  They’ve had a lot of time to practice.  And so I said to myself, “Self, it’s not that you’re destined to be a baking failure for the rest of your life.  You just need practice!  It’s OKAY that your first biscuits turned out like lumpy, tan hockey pucks.  You’ve got plenty of time to gain experience.”

It’s not like I stepped into the kitchen one morning and whipped up a perfect batch of creamy scrambled eggs and flawlessly crisp bacon the first time.  I had to practice.  Maybe I just don’t understand baking the way I understand cooking – in a manner that gives me something close to an instinct as to when things are done and what flavors go well with what ingredients.  It’s something that comes with trial and error, hands on experience, hours and hours in the kitchen.  I’ve got time to learn.  Just gotta keep pluggin’ away…But, for the time being, I’ve got one positive thought to cling to…

At least the dogs liked them.

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Biscuits and Gravy

Well…I just attempted to make biscuits and gravy for breakfast, from scratch. It was, to say the least, a disaster. The biscuits didn’t rise properly, which meant they were dense and not at all tasty. The gravy was too salty. The base was also made with mostly olive oil left over from my Spanish-style fried egg, since the sausages I made gave off an unusually miniscule amount of fat, for some strange reason.

Now, I think that it’s possible that I measured wrong. I am not one to measure. I’m an eyeball-er. Which I think tends to be my downfall when it comes to baking. I need to be more patient and meticulous, which is the last thing I am when it comes to cooking. I like to fly by the seat of my pants. Take one glance at a recipe, get the basic gist, and wing the rest. There’s a possibility that the baking powder I used was old. Granted, it was an un-opened box, but, in my mother’s kitchen, there’s just no knowing with these things. There is also a distinct possibility that my oven was not hot enough. I set it to 450F just like Mr. Alton Brown suggested. What I did not do was check the oven thermometer to make sure it was really at 450 when the pre-heat timer dinged. Based on my post-disaster research, the lack of rise in my biscuits could have been on account of an oven that was not hot enough. Baking powder is activated by heat. If the temperature wasn’t hot enough, it didn’t get the powder working properly by the time my biscuits had had their 15 minutes of oven time.

So, anyway, before I hit the computer to do some research, I was sitting there moping and thinking to myself for the thousandth time that I’m just not a baker. That I will be relegated to canned biscuit dough and store-bought cookies for the rest of time. That I will never be able to bake light, tender biscuits for my future husband and our offspring. And then it occurred to me that maybe biscuit-making (and all other forms of fixing baked goods) is not a natural born gift, but something that is learned through trial and error. Which is why old Southern ladies are so damn good at it. They’ve had a lot of time to practice. And so I said to myself, “Self, it’s not that you’re destined to be a baking failure for the rest of your life. You just need practice! It’s OKAY that your first biscuits turned out like lumpy, tan hockey pucks. You’ve got plenty of time to gain experience.”

It’s not like I stepped into the kitchen one morning and whipped up a perfect batch of creamy scrambled eggs and flawlessly crisp bacon the first time. I had to practice. Maybe I just don’t understand baking the way I understand cooking – in a manner that gives me something close to an instinct as to when things are done and what flavors go well with what ingredients. It’s something that comes with trial and error, hands on experience, hours and hours in the kitchen. I’ve got time to learn. Just gotta keep pluggin’ away…But, for the time being, I’ve got one positive thought to cling to…

At least the dogs liked them.

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The Past.

So I ran into Angelique today at the library.  That was…weird and surreal and awkward.  She didn’t even really stop to talk to me.  Just breezed by and was like “Hey, how are you?” and kept walking.  We haven’t spoken in like three years, after being best friends for ages in high school.  That’s all I get?  I’m trying to forgive and forget a lot of things in light of Danielle dying.  Which, by the way, has been fucking horrible to deal with lately…I had a dream about her the other night.  About her coming back.  We just hugged and cried and I told her how much I missed her.  Being back in Streamwood is dredging up so many memories.  Seeing Joyce the little librarian in the Young Adult section who Danielle and I always spent time with and talked to when we volunteered there.  Driving down Streamwood Boulevard, forcing myself not to turn down her street and stop at her house, reminding myself that she’s not there anymore.  The Jewel-Osco parking lot where she made too wide a turn, with a freshly-printed learner’s permit, and smacked right into the front of another car.  The Starbucks where we got coffee together one of the last times I saw her.  I went there today after the exchange with Lique, trying to cheer myself up.  Hot caramel apple cider and a nasty biscotti thing they pushed at me.  I used to work at Starbucks, so I know they’re supposed to pimp things that pair well with the drinks people order.

Afterwards, I went to Victoria’s Secret to use a $10 off coupon I got in the mail, but the sales lady was super pushy so I left empty-handed.  And then “Back 2 Good” by Matchbox 20 came on my iPod as I was driving home and finishing off my luke-warm apple cider.  “I couldn’t tell if anyone here was feelin’ the way I do, but I’m lonely now and I don’t know how to get it back to good.”

I am pretty fed up with being ambushed by my past.  Being here is digging into me and it doesn’t feel so good. I want to go visit Danielle’s grave while I’m home.  How do you find something like that?  I guess I’ll have to ask my mom, since she went to the funeral, but then she’s going to want to go with me and I don’t want her to…Maybe I’ll bring her a painting.  She wouldn’t want flowers.  But I really wish I could show her the things I made in my art class this semester.

I’m really trying to reconnect with people while I’m here over break.  Lyndsay, Carla, Kelly, Sam, Mary…I really don’t have many friends left.  I’m not taking any of them for granted anymore. I’m tired of sitting at home and being sad.  But I don’t know where to go anymore.

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Finals Week.

Took my last final a couple hours ago.  I was planning to leave today, but I went to Annie’s house and to a party this weekend and so I’m super, super behind on my final art project and that’s not due til Friday, so I’m gonna take advantage of the extra time I have to turn it in.  Hopefully I can get it done in time…It’s gonna suck…Bleh.  I had a good time at Annie’s, though.  We got to go out and ride a bit.  That was nice, just to be back in the saddle, although I’m definitely not as confident as I once was…Then I went to the party on Saturday night and then Sunday morning we went to this Make-A-Wish Foundation event and volunteered in the cafeteria.  Cleaned up tables and stuff for hours on end, lol.  It was fun, though!  I wish I’d done more of that this semester, with all my free time…I love volunteering and I miss it now.  :(  I regret that I didn’t do that.

I just want to say…Thank whatever god there may be that this semester is almost over.  It’s been absolutely horrible.  My classes were a joke.  Boring, pointless, completely non-challenging.  Unemployed.  One good thing is that I’ve probably boosted my GPA a bit with this semester because I’m preeetty sure I’m getting straight A’s…

I better have straight A’s…These classes were so damn easy…

It’s snowing.

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Career Ponderings.

“It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.” –Havelock Ellis

Havelock Ellis was a sexologist, a student of human sexuality, in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  He married Edith Lees, a lesbian supporter of women’s rights, wrote the first English-language medical textbook on homosexuality, and remained a virgin until well into his sixties.  For someone who was considered to be an expert on human sexuality and psychology, it seems a little unusual that he failed, until his sixties, to discovered that the cure to his own impotence came in the form of urolagnia, or sexual arousal in response to urine.  He particularly appreciated the sight of a female urinating.  He’s a seriously fascinating guy.

Kudos to you, you kinky, dirty sexagenarian.  Which refers to someone between the ages of 60 and 69, and not to something dirty.  And 69 is referring to an age, not a sexual position.  Just clarifying.

Also, for the record, I’m now seriously considering pursuing a career in either Marriage and Family Therapy…Relationship Therapy…or Sex Therapy, which is a more specialized branch of MFT.  Only time will tell.

Last week, I was looking into becoming an Animal Control Officer.  So, who the fuck knows?

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Thanksgiving at the Cabin.

Highlights and lowlights of Thanksgiving 2009.

Highlights: I positively adore taking the train cross-country.  I like to hoard two seats to myself, rest my backpack against the armrest and sprawl out sideways so I can stare out the window like it’s a television screen.  All those lives intersecting, flashing by.  I love the film strip imagery.  I spent some seriously good quality time with my father and my brother.  Speeding through the woods on the ATV was an excellent pick-me-up.  I finished reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote for the second time and started on The Time-Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which I absolutely cannot put down.  It’s only been about 24 hours and I’m 350 pages in.  Reading is so much easier when you’re cozied up by a fireplace.  We deep fried our turkey and it turned out absolutely amazing.  I worked on some basic obedience with Bo and she did really well.  All she needs is some exercise and a little bit of practice and she’ll be a great dog.  I did a pretty damn good job of remaining cheery, calm, and peaceful for the first day or two. But I can only deal with so much.

Lowlights: It rained almost the whole time.  We watched home movies.  Rather, they watched, I ignored.  Everything but the turkey and the mashed potatoes came from a box or a can – sweet potato casserole, cornbread stuffing, turkey gravy, overcooked rock-hard rolls, and watery green bean casserole.  I told her to only add a half cup of milk, but she didn’t listen.  We have mice and I found a giant stockpile of sunflower seeds under my pillows when I went to go to sleep.  My mother’s drama and psychoses were a constant annoyance and an extremely thorough buzz-kill.  She kept crying and picking fights over nothing.  Brian and his fucking moronic friends carved their names into the railing on the Tower and it is now padlocked as our neighbor, George, would prefer not to have his property damaged any further.  Once again, Brian ruins everything and gets away with it, sans consequences, and without so much as an apology or an inkling of remorse.  What a surprise.

This trip made me realize a full and complete hatred for home videos.  They make me angry and sad.  Partially because they dredge up my barely suppressed inferiority complex in regards to my brother. Partially because they are so bitterly sweet and blissfully ignorant and pathetically hopeful.  Little did we all know how things would be now.

Overall…My goal of being nice and staying calm was a major fail after day two, but it was definitely an improvement.  I was proud or myself.  And it was a pretty typical weekend for my family.  Stressful, tense, irritating, and depressing, with some good bits scattered about.  Thankfully, as my high school English teacher, Mrs. Gudeman, once taught us…the bad bits fade into the background and it’s usually the good bits that you remember most.

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In Memory of Jewel Sabados.

Annie’s grandmother, my adoptive grandma, Jewel Sabados, passed away yesterday evening, after fighting through an arterial aneurysm and the subsequent stoke.

This woman was the definition of gumption, I swear.  She was a tough ol’ bird.  This was a woman that beat cancer.  Ukrainian, like me.  Weathered and dark-skinned, with thin salt-and-pepper waves, a dramatic nose, a thin-lipped, gap-toothed smile, and a delightfully tumbly, raspy voice.  It took a while for your ears to wrap around it and hold onto it, the way she spoke.  In the time that I knew her, she needed a breathing machine and regular dialysis.  Rode around the county fair on a motorized wheelchair, modified with a big basket on the back to carry her stuff.  If you weren’t careful, she’d spin that thing around and whack you in the shins with it.  For Christmas last year she gave me a fleece blanket with snowmen on it and a pink blouse that I’ll never wear.  But it doesn’t matter.  She was always incredibly happy to see me when I came to visit and always gave me good, tight, back-slapping hugs.  Last time I saw her, she showed me pictures that they salvaged from the fire that claimed her house a few months ago.  Her as a young girl with her whole family, her and her brother driving a cart with two enormous draft horses hitched to it.  Black and whites, crumpled, singed.  When I left, she said “Don’t stay away so long next time!”  And that’s how I want to remember her.  Laughing and sharing her couch-bed with me, making sure Zorro wasn’t attacking my yarn and watching me knit, playing “Clue” with Annie, Zoe and I, eating a slice of my quiche, telling us the same stories over and over again.  I wish I could remember them better now.

I miss you a ton, Grandma.  Thank you so, so much for being a part of my extended family and for always helping to welcome me into my home-away-from-home.  You’re irreplaceable and you’ve got a very special place in my heart, along with the entire Lord family.  I love you all sooo very much.

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Still.

Earlier today, I had to make a trip to the Village to do my laundry ’cause our washing machine here broke.  And I ran into Meaghan H on the second floor.  Went into her room and talked and hung out.  I made her miss Dr. Phil.  I poured my guts out and I didn’t even mean to.  Told her about all the housemate issues and how bored I am with my life right now and about my mom cheating on my dad and how I feel about my friend dying.

I miss Danielle.  Now I understand why people go to psychics to try to get in touch with the dead.  I’d give anything to be able to contact her.  I took for granted the fact that we would have all the time in the world.  That we’d grow old and laugh at these memories, rather than die young and cry over them.

My heart is just positively aching.  I wonder when this is supposed to get easier.

 

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