None of that changed the fact that I’m feeling bluesy and needy and very much alone tonight.  I think this is the first time it’s hit this hard since I moved here, which is a testament to how well I’ve been coping, overall, with the changes.  Driving home from the therapy session it started settling in.  I thought about looking for something to do that would involve going out and being with people, but decided it was better to sit with my feelings and try to release them rather than dodging them.  So here I’ve sat tonight, knitting and petting cats and watching Caprica.

PMS is probably a factor in my mood, as is February.  This month is the nadir of my affect more or less every year.  The darkness has really gotten to me by this point, and even though the daylight is getting longer and longer, there still isn’t a whole lot of it. I knew February would be hard back in June when I found out these changes were coming, and I’ve been building my life to be ready for it.  I’m feeling pretty good about how it’s going so far.  Sure, it’s only day 5, but I’m in a good place heading into the month.

Generally I’m approaching the bluesy mood by working first on the physical things that are easy to set to rights: eating better, exercising more, and sleeping reasonable and regular hours.  Being physically in a good place is the first, best defense against the down moods.

I’m also returning to my yoga practice.  The myofascial release work is directly related to this; I want to stretch more, and work on my alignment and balance, integrating the work I’ve done on the table with a more dynamic practice.  I discovered this week that my cubicile is private enough, and has enough open space, that I can practice most yoga poses without being seen or disturbed.  I’m getting up and running through Sun salutes between meetings, or another flow that I’ve been liking which is a runner’s stretch into Warrior I into triangle, then rotating to do the sequence in the other orientation.  Warrior I has always been energizing for me, and that is still true.

Seattle is being kinder than I expected to my mood, because it’s clearly already spring.  I’ve spent several of the afternoons this week starting to work on my garden, and this weekend there will be much gardening accomplished.  I am stripping the vegetation off the majority of the back yard, and laying out a vegetable garden.  I haven’t decided for sure the layout for it, but step one: “clear the area” will be the same no matter what. I figure I can look at it tomorrow while I’m digging, and hatch a plan.

Part of me wants simple rectangular beds.  Part of me wants a stepping stone garden, like what I had in Santa Cruz years ago.  Part of me wants a labyrinth. It will be interesting to see what comes together from those parts.  :-)  I’ll measure thoroughly as part of the work tomorrow, and then sketch tomorrow night.  Where by sketch I mean “pop open a graphical editor and move around stuff.”  The paper and pen stuff is sooo last millennia.

I’m expecting to establish herbs near the back door, but mostly plant annuals in the majority of the garden area: veggies, and a few flowers.  I’m going to leave the perennial beds around the edge this year, just trying to prune the decadent growth back into vigor, and see what is there.  I may do a major restructuring in the fall, but I want to watch it through a full turn of the seasons before deciding.

I’m setting off to the side the well rooted perennials that have seeded into the area.  Some of them I can identify, and some I think I recognize.  All of them will be set into a narrow bed along the south edge of the property, against the fence, where they can’t get up to much trouble.  Eventually that bed will be ferns, hostas, and Japanese forest grass, but for now it’s a nursery.

Creatively, I’ve made reasonable targets for myself, and am taking great pleasure in more or less meeting them.  The sock pattern is coming along nicely.  I hope to have the instructions for knitting the foot fleshed out a bit more, the sizing information worked through, and a clean draft created by the end of the weekend. That sounds like a lot, but should only be a couple hours work.

In life generally, I’ve taken a step back, sorted out my priorities, let go of the guilt I pile up on myself when I can’t do everything and be everything for everyone, and I’ve put things more or less in order.  I am making slow progress against my goals, and I’m comfortable with that.  Every day a little more.  Not a lot, but enough.  I am still rooting in, still healing.  This is not a time for big glorious growth yet, this is still a time for recovering and letting go.

Tomorrow there should be pictures.  I want to shoot the two WIP’s I have going, and also lay out a garden design draft.  For now, though, it’s time to sleep.

I’ve always had trouble with the word “deserve.” I’ve thought of it as being about what the universe does. People see something shitty happen and say, “You deserve better;” I never believed that. Shit happens to everyone. I’ve always said that “deserve” isn’t a useful concept, because who deserves bad stuff? If you “deserve” the good, you must also “deserve” the bad, and if I “deserve” what’s happened to me, then I must be pretty awful. Ergo deserve is bogus. Poof.

But!

I just reframed it as being about the choices I make.

I deserve to be happy. I deserve good supportive friends. I deserve love. A body I’m proud to inhabit, time to help my son grow up, a job that pleases me, a home that delights me, good food, fun hobbies, all of it. These are some of the things I deserve. Not because the universe owes them to me, but because I owe them to myself.

I will be mindful of this as I make choices. I think I will make better ones.

Me on my 40th

The universe sure feels like it has it in for you, eh? I admire your ability to keep forcing your spirits back up. I know how hard that can be. Truly, it is admirable that you haven’t just quit and let yourself wallow in misery. I am certain you are feeling the temptation, and also having those moments when you want to scream at something that it’s unfair unfair unfair!! But you’re getting yourself through those times, and on to the next thing. That makes you a pretty hoopy frood in my book. :-)

And it makes me want to help! I want to laugh with you, because really that’s when you remember why it’s all worth putting up with, that there’s a reason to bother with tomorrow, and the day after that. Because there is, you know? There’s Mmmmmalabrigo and cake waffles and the way that the low sun glints in the morning while those little birds are singing in the bushes outside your window. There’s coffee and knitting and going outside without a coat for the first time at the end of winter. Life hurts so much!! But it’s also full of beauty and pleasure that will take your breath away, if you remember to notice. I want to help you remember the other stuff, the good stuff. It’s all still here for you.

It’s been a busy weekend, but mostly productive and relaxing.  Laundry’s all done, and the household laundry is folded.  Still need to fold mine & z’s clothes, but that’s quick.  First floor is picked up, although the dining room table has a pile of things that need to be put away.

Zach is pleasantly cleaning the bathrooms and cat boxes for an allowance, with the understanding that he sets his pace and does what he wants, but if he’s not done by bedtime, no allowance.  He’s on pace to be done before dinner- good on him!

I’m feeling good about the state of the house now.  Still a bit more to do, but it should be a relaxing evening with a tidy, comfortable house and that feeling of accomplishment.  I have the master bed to change, and the second & first floors to sweep, but I’ll make short work of that after my apple.  :-)

Fix Z’s mac: The issue was, as expected, the SIMM.  There were cat hairs shorting across the conductors.  Cleaned it out, and it’s working fine.  I updated the software, connected his ipod, changed the batteries for the bluetooth mouse and keyboard, paired the phone with it so that he can move music to his phone, tweaked permission settings here and there to get things functioning as I want them, and called it good.

Bonus: While the Mac was going through its endless cycles of installing updates and rebooting, I ran three loads of laundry and folded most of the laundry backlog.  Yay me!  Zach also had the play date he’s been wanting to have with one of the neighbor kids.  I also got my phone paired with my laptop, although I still need to move contacts around.

But!  There is a birthday tonight, which will wrench a lot of plans.  Z & I went out for lunch and to get garden stuff, and decided over lunch to give the girl a gift card.  So we hit a grocery store for a card and a couple other things, and it took for eh ver, and then some.

Something that became apparent while we were going to lunch and such was that there is not going to be a significant gardening effort this weekend.  It was supposed to be in the 50’s.  Instead the car, which is always optimistic about these things, reads the temperature at 40°, which seems about accurate when you factor in the biting wind.  I did dutifully go to Home Depot for supplies, however.

I took 15 minutes in the cold to dump out the poor daffodil bulbs.  They faired better in their winter of neglect than I had feared.  I got about a third of them planted into a large pot (and this is 150 bulbs total, so when I say large, I mean about 2′ around!) and the rest are in mesh flats airing out.  I’ll pick out the ones that have rotted, but the vast majority are fat and happy and some are starting to sprout.

I also found a surprise I left myself!  There was a darling little maple seedling at Keet’s last Thanksgiving that I pulled up, and tucked into a baggie.  I stuck it in with the bulbs, and it suffered the same neglect.  It is, however, happy as a clam, with a big red terminal bud, ready to break out this spring.  I remember it had fantastic color and a deeply cut leaf shape.  I can’t wait to see it again!

I popped it into a cute little lavendar pot, and stood the pot in a bowl of warm water to wake it up.  Soon it will be a tree!

Keet's Maple

Anyway.  I have Things to Do this weekend.  On my mind at the moment:

Creating the last chart for Squid’s shrug.  Ahhh, communing with Visiknit, and then a graphics editor.  How I wish David & I had gotten further in our programming efforts.  I would like to be able to just work in Visiknit, but, alas.  Not this week.  Maybe next weekend we  can both dedicate some working time.  I think we came up with a good high level plan for how to improve the application last weekend, but he’s rusty at Python.  I, on the otherhand, am just learning it, and am rusty at everything. So going will be slow.

Bonding with my new phone!  skwi.  I have a new Samsung propel I bought it last night!  It has a full keyboard, but was cheeeep!  I got new phones for Z & me plus a 4G memory stick for the low low price of $50.  It was a BOGO deal, and we both had hardware credits on our lines.  Does he really need a text capable phone?  probably not.  Will he in the next two years?  probably.  And I’ve been impressed with the durability of the Samsungs.  It looks like this:

although that picture suggests there is a GPS and turn-by-turn directions, which is not the case.  I should see if I can get it hooked up to the Tom Tom stuff I bought for the Palm a few years ago.  First though, contacts and bluetooth connections to my ear bud and computers and blah blah blah.  Plus teaching Z how to send and read text messages, and (hopefully) he’s old enough to grock voicemail, too.  We’ll see.

I need to debug Z’s mac.  This thing is old enough and has been enough trouble that I am seriously considering going down to Springboard and trading it in for a newer one.  It’s 4 years old now.  It’s had a light duty cycle, but I can’t keep it going, and I’m sick of fighting with it.  A bunch of the games Z wants to play won’t run on it.  And the SIMM keeps popping loose and causing it to die, forcing me to open it’s chinese puzzle box case. Meh.  So there may be shopping.

If there is shopping, I want to go to Fabric Row, too, and get interfacing.  And perhaps some larger toggle buttons for the Ficchu.  The concept of just pushing the little toggle buttons through the knitting is a FAIL.

Floors and bathrooms must be cleaned this weekend.  That is all.

I need to make bread, and I want to make cookies.

I have a growing backlog for knitting bags.  Must dedicate some quality time to sewing.

The kitchen fishtank needs a cleaning.  That’s a 15 minute job, but still needs to happen.  And I should clean the filter on the big tanks; that didn’t get done last weekend when I cleaned them.

And gardening!  Must plant stuff in the ground today.  I should also put up flats of laminastrum for Keet’s yard, which necessitates a trip to Home Depot for garden mix.  Can get seed starting stuff as well.

That seems like about a week’s worth of work to accomplish this weekend.  Ok!  paring down and prioritizing.  Gardening must be done today, and in daylight, so that should happen after lunch, when it’s a bit warmer.  I can make the HD trip this morning for supplies. I should also check on Z’s mac, so that I know if I can get it to limp along a bit further, or need to go trade it in.  So after I finish tea, it’s mac, then HD, then lunch, then gardening.  The phone and Squid’s chart can be tonight’s evening computer puttering tasks.

House cleaning can be the traditional Sunday family task.  If there’s a shopping trip, that can be the incentive for getting the cleaning done expeditiously.  Maybe I’ll get some sewing wedged into corners of time here and there somewhere.  The baking can happen easily enough when some other meal is getting made.  If I can’t get the sewing to happen this weekend, I’ll dedicate weeknight time this week to it.  I think I’m feeling better enough that it’s a realistic goal.

Ok!  Tea is finished, and it’s a plan!  Let’s see how it survives first contact with the enemy.  ;-)

and it was nice.  It felt good.

Suddenly I’m knitting away merrily on the socks again, making fantastic progress.  I know they’re not my socks.  I don’t know yet whose socks they will be.  But I know whomever gets them, they will want a pair, so I will make #2 as much like #1 as I can make it, bind it off in the same place, and wait until I know what sorts of feet will be at the end of these lovely legs.  Someday, hopefully soon, I’ll rip back the cast-off and put feet on them.  For now, I’m knitting, and it’s flying.

There’s also a sort of overflow into other areas.  I removed *this* block, and suddenly it’s a little easier to write that stupid report at work, a little easier to file that piece of paper rather than adding it to the stack, and hey!  While I’m filing, why don’t I take care of the whole stack?  It’s a little easier to do a lot of things.  Somehow I’ve oiled my emotional gears, and things are moving more freely.  It’s a nice feeling.  I’ve cleared a bunch of niggling nagging tasks off my to-do list today.  Yay me!

This weekend there are a plethora of things on the plate.  Baby boy & I each have a hardware credit on our cellular accounts, so we’re going shopping.  And he has a Target gift certificate burning a hole in his pocket, so we’ll get Bakugan or somesuch as well.  We have cleaning left over from last week, and gardening and laundry to do, and perhaps some ice skating.

Zach most wants to spend some quality time with the boys on the block, since he’s been gone the past two weekends, so we’ll make sure that happens.  I have the knitting bags to get off my plate.  I’m looking forward to a homebody weekend, with very minimal time spent out doing stuff, and as much unstructured time at home as possible.  I think we all need that.

I decided what I needed to get the morning started right was a reprise of the oatmeal creme brulee from yesterday, except in an apple cinnamon flavor.  It was delish!

oatmeal creme brulee

Here’s what I did:

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Creme Brulee

equipment I used:

• sauce pan with lid, small skillet and a small glass lid that will fit inside the skillet, rubber spatula, paring knife, kitchen torch

ingredients per serving:

• 1/3 C steel cut oats
• 1/3 C cream
• 1 C water
• 1/2 apple, peeled, cored, and chopped into small cubes
• 1 t apple pie spice, or season to taste
• 1T butter
• 1T brown sugar

Directions

• Set water and cream to boil in the sauce pan.
• Prep the apple.
• Brown butter in skillet by heating it on medium high until it’s brown and stops spitting, which means the water has cooked out, and you’re down to the fat.  Add the spices, which will also hiss a little, and toss them in the butter, then immediately add the apples.  If you burn the butter you should start again.  Toss the apples in the butter until thoroughly coated, then push them into the center of the skillet and cover with the lid.  Turn the heat down to simmer/low.
• By now the liquid in the sauce pan should be boiling.  Add the oats, replace the lid, and reduce the heat to medium/low, or whatever keeps it simmering happily without boiling over.

You now have about 10 minutes to wait until the next step.  I did some kitchen puttering, emptied the dishwasher and refilled it, cleaned the counters, made tea, etc.  :-)  It’s a good idea to use the spatula to swirl both the apples and the oats to make sure they’re not burning a couple times during this.  Use your nose- if it starts to smell something burning, stop with the puttering immediately and address the problem.  :-)

• Remove the lids from the oats and the apples.  The apples should be tender now, and have a light sauce.  If there is a lot of moisture, cook them down slightly.  If not, just turn off the heat and set aside.
• Stirring frequently, turn the heat up on the oatmeal.  Cook it until it has a custardy consistency, so the when you scrape the bottom of the pan it oozes back together rather than flowing.
• Once it’s cooked, turn off heat.  Add the apples, reserving a bit for a garnish if you like.  Stir them together.
• Pour into serving bowl(s).
• Sprinkle brown sugar evenly across the surface, and use the torch to melt it.  Be patient, so that you don’t catch the sugar on fire.
• Garnish, if you’d like.

Enjoy!

So now I’m set up to work at hte dining room table today.  I have a perfectly good office, but on a chilly morning I sometimes prefer to spread out on the table with my laptops.  Here’s the obligate dorking picture:

working from home

Why two laptops?  I prefer generally to keep my distractions on one screen and my work on a different one.  The work laptop has my mail and office chat client and whatever project I’m working on open.  Today, it’s a lot of excel fun!  The home laptop is my web client and twitter client and personal chat client.  I just focus better this way.

• Macho Ficchu complete
• Knitting bags complete? Nope!  didn’t even start.
• Fish tank cleaned
• Daffodils, pansies, etc planted?  Nope!  ground was frozen.
• House cleaning?  Nope!  The nice thing about chores is they’re very patient.  I’ll at least get the second floor swept before bed, and our bed changed, but the rest will have to wait for weeknights this week.

Off-list accomplishments:

• Intro to Python from David and misc other programming stuff.
• Photographed and categorized entire stash, and updated teh Rav.
• Had a nice catch-up chat with Joe from Australia while knitting last night.

All in all, I’m pleased with what I accomplished.  Finished things, made some dents in maintenance stuff, and started a big new learning project in the programming thing.  I would like to move my career more to the engineering side again, and this is a great step in that direction.  I am proud of me.  :-)

Creme Brulee Oatmeal

Here’s the recipe ganked from Eating Out Loud:

The recipe below makes four ramekins and which quite honestly could pass for dessert. It’s creamy and sweet with bursts of flavor from the berries.

Creme Brulee Oatmeal
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
3 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt
berries of choice
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Normally, I cook my oatmeal in a pan on the stove and always use old-fashioned oatmeal (not the instant kind). I’ve heard you can use a rice cooker for oatmeal and decided try this method for cooking. To my rice cooker, I added the oatmeal, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt. I set it to cook and walked away. Within 15-20 minutes, the cooker turned off and it was done.

It worked! The oatmeal was fully cooked and creamy. There was a slight crust on the bottom of the rice cooker bowl but it wasn’t too bad (hey, I didn’t have to stir anything so it was totally worth it). Depending on how thin or thick you like your oatmeal, you can adjust the amount of liquid. This version makes a semi-thick oatmeal which I prefer.

I filled each ramekin about half full, then added a few raspberries and blueberries to each one. I then covered with the remaining oatmeal and leveled off each one to create a flat surface on the top.

I allowed the ramekins to cool for 15 minutes then refrigerated until ready to use. Preheat your oven broiler (and make sure it’s ready to go before moving on to next step). Mix together the two sugars until combined, then divide evenly over the four ramekins. Put the ramekins on a cookie sheet and place under the broiler for about 1 minute or until sugar is melted and golden brown. Remove and allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving. Top with a few extra berries and enjoy.

My oven failed me and my broiler didn’t turn on. I had already sprinkled my sugar and when I returned to them about 10 minutes later, the sugar had soaked into the oatmeal and it didn’t develop a nice crust. Fortunately, I still had another ramekin in the refrigerator so I attempted it one more time with success.

This oatmeal is so delicious. I like it better than the version I had at Catal. You’ll notice that I didn’t add any sugar to the oatmeal as it cooked. The sugar topping adds plenty of sweetness and the berries inside become soft and supple from the heat of the oatmeal. The milk, vanilla and cinnamon elevate the flavor and give it the taste of creme brulee without all of the calories and fat.