War on Error

Gone Fishin'

2006-11-22T21:32:00.000-06:00

After a lot of thought, I'm closing down this blog (though I'm not going to delete everything, and, who knows, I might even come back to it some day). I've really enjoyed you all, and, who knows, maybe we'll meet again. It's been a wild ride--WAY wilder than i could possibly have anticipated when I started this thing--and I thank you all for your company along the way.

Be well.

Light, and Some Sweetness

2006-11-20T21:16:00.000-06:00

The good things: getting to the library (the main branch, thanks so much) and finding a bunch of books to read; having a lovely dinner; getting my address changed on my driver's license; getting my voter registration changed at the same time.

The less-good things: realizing that I actually have to design not one but two websites, one for the bakery (which won't be hard) and one for one of my clients (which will be more difficult than I thought, because I thought I was just writing copy and inserting it in places that someone else was figuring out); realizing that I really am going to need new glasses soon, which, thanks to my myopia and astigmatism, is an expensive proposition; and having the woman at the Secretary of State's office inform me that my hair is gray and putting that on my driver's license as my hair color. Yes, there is a substantial amount of gray in it, but it has plenty of its original color--especially in lighting other than basement-of-the-county-building-fluorescent. I suppose I could have dropped trou and proved my point, but that seemed (a) excessive and (b) likely to get me arrested and photographed in lighting that would be even more unflattering.

Exclusions

2006-11-20T14:28:00.000-06:00

Until I thought too much, I was feeling all virtuous today--yesterday I (a) walked (b) to a yoga class, which means I walked about six miles and then practiced in a class for the first time in several months. The teacher was her usual gracious self, and was genuinely glad to see me, which was nice. I didn't get any copyediting done, but I fired off the first chapter this morning. Yesterday I also moved some things around in the apartment. I don't know whether it's because I have more stuff, or I'm older, or what, but it has taken me MUCH longer to arrange things than it ever has before. (The interlude of the enmeasled walls and ceiling didn't help, either.) Flip side, though, is that I'm liking where things are ending up; it almost feels like they're finding their own places. Which is too hippy-dippy even for me.

I had dinner Saturday night with Dave and the Kid, which also was nice. It's great to see the Kid, and it's clear he's glad to see me, and not just because I brought him a baguette. It's good to see Dave, too, though of course it's strange in a whole other way that I didn't know existed. We're both on our best behavior, which tends to eliminate the vitriol and recriminations, and that's fine with me; I've had quite enough of that, thanks so much. Thus, what ends up being on display are the things that were good about our relationship. And, let's face it, we know each other, so it's impossible to not lapse into flashes of familiarity. He keeps reiterating that he does not want to be friends with me, in any way, shape, or form, and he's told me multiple times that he's happier now than he's ever been in his life (meaning, to me, that's he's happier without me than he ever was with me), so I don't misinterpret the Best Behavior as anything other than an effort to enable me and the Kid to see each other--but I appreciate it nevertheless.

After dinner, I came home and turned on the television (which I don't usually do), and found the end of "Elf." Which made me cry (because I'm pathetic, or bathetic, at least). Not at the movie itself (though I really liked it a lot when I saw it), but at the memory that Dave and the Kid and I went to see it together and had a great time. Most of the time I trundle along, making the croissants, editing shit, hanging out, doing whatever; I have years of experience doing that stuff, and those habits have kept me from falling apart completely, not to mention that falling apart completely isn't something I tend to do very well. But then stuff grabs me by the neck (or gut) and twists. I don't know what else to do except cry for awhile and then move on, which probably makes me appear more la-di-da than I feel. I don't know what else to do, though; falling apart isn't going to improve my situation, and the croissants still won't make themselves.

This morning, I started to fall apart for what only appears to be a completely different reason. I need health insurance, and I'm having a bitch of a time getting it, which is ridiculous. Pick ten women my age, and I guarantee I'm in better shape, and take better care of myself, than most of them, despite my so-called preexisting conditions. My favorite part is where they say they'll insure me . . . with an exclusion for the conditions. WTF--that's why I need the fucking insurance! Assholes. I'm in the process of trying to get medical records so I can appeal the decision of the first company, but that is, in fact, a process rather than an event.

Meanwhile, though, I freak out about not having insurance, and that makes me rummage around looking for another job, an office job, one that will pay me enough and will provide said benefits. The jobs out there . . . either I can do them, but would want to slit my wrists (provided I could get them, which is unlikely), or I don't have the qualifications (either really don't have them, or don't have them on paper, even if I could do the job), or the job is in an industry or doing something that I really find problematic, or some happy combo of all those things. I have more skills than you can count, and I can't find a fucking job, which mostly makes me feel useless and scared.

Really, though, the scary part is this foray into baking, and I'm beginning to think it was the biggest mistake I made. Now that I've been doing this for nearly a year, my resume is even more checkered than it was before, making me even more undesirable (except to bakers, who don't pay very much), especially to drones who want people who fit into boxes. I know what I'd say if I'd get an interview--that I was changing careers, and that opening my own business depending on personal circumstances, which have changed--but I don't even get phone calls or acknowledgments of applications, much less interviews. Who the fuck would hire me, at this point, to do anything OTHER than baking? At which, as noted, I don't make enough on which to live. I don't mind the combo of baking and editing, really, but neither of those jobs provides the aforementioned health insurance I need so sorely. So I cave, and start looking for another job, and see how unlikely it is that I'll find one, and then I just get plain scared. I'm 48 years old, I have a wide variety of skills and experience but no "career path," I've got yet another student loan to pay off, I'm going to make less this year--by a lot--than in any year since 1994, and I've spent my savings on a wedding for a marriage that lasted less than a year and on the life we had before we got married. (We divvied up household expenses proportionately, based on income, and I made more, except (a) Dave wasn't honest about either his income or his expenses, so I don't have any idea how we should really have divided things up, and (b) more importantly, I kept paying more even when my actual income dropped, because of the missed paychecks.)

You can see how this vicious mental circle ends badly every time, and you can see why I prefer to not fall apart. This falling apart thing, I don't like it so much, and it doesn't solve any of the problems.

It's also worth pointing out that, when push comes to shove, and when I'm not freaking out, I actually feel pretty grateful and content, even if that's not the part that makes it to this space. Hell, if I could just get health insurance, I'd be happy! Seriously--I know I can't keep doing exactly what I'm doing forever, because it's simply too grueling, and I'd definitely like to be able to take some time off once in awhile, but my biggest worry is the health insurance.

Efficiency

2006-11-16T21:17:00.000-06:00

So I was going to whine for a few sentences (about shlepping TO the grocery store, and then BACK to the train station, then from my train station TO my apartment, blah, blah, blah), but I had some STFU juice and decided to not do that. I'm also not going to lament, a-fucking-gain!, that i was going to do some yoga when I got home but then I didn't. Whatever.

I AM going to complain about the catalogues, however. I tend to buy my clothing online, not least because I hate shopping. Reason number two is that women's clothes often don't fit me very well, so rummaging around in a space I hate (a mall or department store of some kind) trying to find something that I like and that fits me, well, no, thanks. I've managed to find some online retailers whose sizing I know pretty well (most notably L. L. Bean, except for shoes--I've never had good luck with any of their shoes) and I just stick with them. There were a few others from whom I used to buy clothes, but since I don't wear clothes much any more--other than chef clothes and jeans--I might leaf through the catalogue but that's about it.

My point--and, yes, i do have one--is that the only catalogues to which I gave my new address were Bean and Title 9. But every last catalogue I used to get has managed to find me already, which I suppose is a testament to some kind of efficiency, but which is also kind of annoying. It used to be that you'd get this six- to ten-month grace period until the catalogues (and charitable organizations) found you, and some might never find you unless you ordered from them again, but apparently they've become more efficient. Plus, this city does not really have recycling that actually works. Plus, unlike downtown, the building in which I now live does not have recycling, which means I'm throwing away aluminum, plastic, and glass, much to my dismay. If I had a vehicle (and more motivation), I might recycle on my own, but let's face it--I was going to whine about carrying groceries. At least I no longer read a newspaper, which dramatically reduces the amount of paper trash for which I'm responsible. Except for the catalogues.

Edjamacation

2006-11-13T18:27:00.000-06:00

If you're looking for something deep and insightful, well, once again, this blog isn't going to be a good source for that.

This guy Jack who wanders into the bakery on occasion--the one whose accent I identified, a couple of posts ago--has done some deliveries for us lately, presumably filling in around the edges when our regular delivery guy is done for the day, or, even more likely, doing it at a cheaper rate (and for cash) than sending, say, Johnnie to do the delivery, which also means pulling Johnnie away from whatever he's doing to drive a van. Friday he came in, and, after he left, Jefe says, hey, you used to work with these guys (meaning the alcoholics and junkies), Jack says he's going to be outside this weekend (meaning living on the street)--how does that happen? So first I explained about how, often enough, drugs or alcohol were involved somewhere, and then also about how close to the edge a lot of people live. I used the example of my brother--who would have lost his house if my parents hadn't been able to bail him out. (If I haven't mentioned it before, my sister-in-law didn't pay the mortgage for about 18 months, though she made it look as though she were doing so; basically, she had a bunch of credit card debt that she'd never mentioned and that had gotten worse, what with high rates and late fees and the like.) In other words, for people who don't have any kind of safety net, any little mistake, or even any little thing out of their control, and they are just screwed.

Jefe nodded at that, and compared it to the people in the nearby (rich) suburbs, many of whom, he thinks, are going to be losing their homes. It's not the same thing, exactly, because those people probably won't end up living on the streets, and they got to their straits because they bought too much crap, by and large, but hey, whatever helps you understand. A little while later, I also pointed out that the other thing is that it's expensive to be poor. Which kind of took him back a step (and Brad, of course, had some stupid remark, though he then heard me, I think)--I pointed out that, if you don't have a place to store food, then you end up buying a lot of fast food, which is way more expensive than making your own. If you don't have the money for a security deposit, you can't get an apartment, so you end up in an SRO, or a motel, or whatever. I'm not sure how much Jefe understood, and not because he's right-wing, or because he's not smart, but because it's a bakery, and we're all in the middle of doing something, or two or three things, more like; it's not like sitting in a classroom, or sitting in a bar with a beer. But I planted a seed. Now I just have to get my copy of "Nickeled and Dimed" back from my brother and hand it over to Jefe.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why he's a Republican. (He thinks the war in Iraq is a disaster, though.) He's certainly not a big business owner--he owns his own business, sure, but he employs maybe 25 people. He's been able to send his kids to good schools (some of the best public schools in the country) and to college, and get them the help they need with their learning disabilities (dyslexia, mostly, I think), but they live in a small house, apparently, and I think they only have one vehicle. He works nearly every day at the bakery, and believe me, he's not sitting on his ass--he's doing whatever job needs to be done, and he's there more hours than anyone else. (He also doesn't regard it as "work": as he says, he enjoys what he does and doesn't regard it as work; painting the garage is work.) I thought I heard him say once that he's pro-choice. He's not particularly conservative socially--he's not religious at all, and he really doesn't seem to care what people do. He's not racist (or, at least, if he is, he hides it better than anyone I've ever seen). He's compassionate, in his way--hiring Jack to make deliveries, hiring the local alcoholic to hang the holiday lights outside or do some yardwork at his house. He's been basically sponsoring Johnnie to do more stuff with his artistic talents and his baking skills, and he's also helping Johnnie get his CMB (Certified Master Baker--there are maybe 150 or so in the country). But he watches or listens to the right-wing talking heads, and he thinks they're pretty good.

What I suspect has happened is that, first, he was raised conservative--his dad certainly is, too. A nice old guy--in his 80s--and he likes me just fine, but I suspect he has no idea how far left my politics go. So there's that. And the work that Jefe's done, well, up until the past few years, he was a guy who worked in a bakery, played hockey (in a local league), went to pro hockey and baseball games, raised his kids, whatever. He hadn't been very many places, unless his kids' sports took him there. When he started trying to get on the US baking team, I think it started opening his eyes, and the process that eventually led him to the winners' circle opened his eyes even more. He's tasted more, and done more, and traveled more--way more--than someone our age, without a college education, who has always had a basically working-class job, is likely to have done. But his politics haven't caught up with his experience, on some level, I think.

So, hey, I do what I can. I find it completely entertaining that he regards me as a source of knowledge about these things. Hell, he regards me as a source of knowledge about all kinds of things, plus I'm the official writer for the bakery--anything that needs writing, I do it. Now we just have to get him to give me another buck or two an hour, and I'm set.

Babblicious

2006-11-12T22:40:00.000-06:00

My new neighborhood is more residential than my last neighborhood. Even though there were more people living in my last neighborhood, they were living in highrises. This neighborhood has no highrises, but it does have trees. And the trees have leaves, which turn colors and fall to the ground in the fall. And, because there aren't building maintenance men with REALLY LOUD LEAFBLOWERS, which are among the most stupid of all inventions, the leaves are sometimes in piles along the sidewalk and in the gutters, which means I can shuffle through them and smell the season and be reminded of jumping in piles of leaves when I was a kid. Which is all good.

Leaf-shuffling notwithstanding, I just don't get enough exercise these days. I do a lot of weightlifting at work, sure, but that's not the same. I keep whining about how I miss the running around and aerobic stuff, and I do miss it: there's nothing like working up a good sweat, and I haven't done that since about February. I've already decided that, if the side work continues at its present pace, and/or I manage to score a raise from Jefe, I'm going to join a Y and start playing handball again. It's going to require some finagling: the only Y at which I'd really be able to play is the one near the bakery, but the joiner's fee is $100 and the monthly fee is $52.50. The other Ys in the city are around $41 to $44/month, with a joiner's fee the same as the monthly amount. Ten dollars/month difference isn't all that much, I suppose, but still; the point is, even an extra $44/month isn't nothing, which is why I'm continuing to hold off--that same amount applied to my student loan each month would go a long way toward eating at the principal, for example.

Orange's tales from the gym reminded me of my lakefront walk last weekend, or, at least, the part of the walk where I saw several women who were nearly all bones, with some skin covering the bones. Leave aside the patriarchal beauty standards stuff (yeah, I know, you can't really do that), and leave aside my own judgments (yes, I know! I know!), it's just strange to see someone at one or another extreme, because you know they had to work at it to get there. I'm not talking about an extra 40 or 50 pounds, I'm talking about an extra 150 pounds--carrying a whole other person around on you. Similarly, I'm not talking about slender people, I'm talking about people who are suffering bone damage because they're so thin.

One of the strange aspects of my schedule, in combination with my already existing early-morning tendencies, is that I rarely sleep past 5:30 am, even when I don't set an alarm. (I've also noticed that I've been sleeping considerably less than I used to do--five or six hours a night, rather than the six or seven I used to get. When I do get my ass in gear and get more exercise, I'll be interested to see whether it affects that.) That means that on days like tomorrow, when I have to be downtown at 9:00 am, meaning I should leave here by, oh, 7:30 or so, I know that I don't really need to set the alarm. The chances of my sleeping until 7:00 am are pretty slim, even if I do crack open a bottle of wine tonight. (I have to tell you, I say I'm going to do that much more frequently than I actually do it.) Even last night: I stayed up until nearly midnight, puttering around, not doing much, and I woke up at around 5:30 this morning.

I've also stopped washing my hair Saturday morning (yeah, like you care about these personal grooming details . . .), on the off chance I do something social Saturday night, i.e., I'd take a shower first, and I try to avoid washing my hair twice a day, especially in the winter. These days, though, I often end up not going out on Saturday, and, if I spend Sunday working and don't go out, like today, then I end up not showering at all on Sunday, which means I am seriously grubby by Sunday night. That shower tomorrow morning is going to feel REAL good, and I should probably hack off some aloe to rub into my scalp tonight.

I've got the Food Network on in the background, and it's reminding me why I loathe it. Too many commercials, for one thing. Too much--WAY too much--faux competition, for another. Entirely too much babble; the babble:actual information ratio is extremely high.

Speaking of a high babble ratio, that is precisely to what I am subjecting you guys, so I'm going to bed. Say goodnight, Dick.

Neither all that

2006-11-10T05:47:00.000-06:00

nor a bag of chips. My local library branch, that is. I'd been meaning to get my ass over there, it being walking distance from my apartment, and today I finally got around to it, and it was unsatisfying. It was great to see so many kids there, yeah, but the adult fiction "section" was nearly non-existent. I managed to find an Elmore Leonard, a John LeCarre, and an Ed McBain that I hadn't read, so it wasn't a total waste, but I can see that I'm going to have to make trips to the main library for my reading material. Feh.

Today's ruminations were about Thanksgiving. I've spent many a holiday by myself, and I learned to enjoy it--sitting around moping and wallowing struck me as an unpleasant way to spend a day off. Some years I'd get an invite from someone; some years I went out by myself; some years I'd clean my apartment thoroughly and then go out--whatever. For Christmas, I'd often go to a bunch of movies--four in two days was my record one year. For the last bunch of years, though, I've obviously been with Dave and his family, and it's going to be strange not doing that this year. We even had everyone--his son, mom, sister, brother-in-law, and BIL's sister and her partner--at our house at least once, which was fun, though challenging, not least because four of those people need gluten-free, three of the four need dairy-free as well, and one also needs soy-, corn-, cinnamon-, and sage-free. I always enjoyed coming up with desserts they could eat. I like Dave's family a lot, and it pains and saddens me to think that they probably think I'm a horrible person right about now. And I know I have to disengage from that--one of the rules of this, apparently, is that we all get to tell our own side of the story to our own families, and our families support us. Though my family doesn't really know very much: my brother knows some stuff, but my parents seem completely uninterested in hearing anything at all, and I don't really feel like telling them. (Yeah, given that i can't talk about work, either, conversations aren't all that deep, or, at least, they don't really touch on anything that's actually happening in my life.)

Meanwhile, I have my apartment back! and they did a fine job--actually scraping off the bubbled paint, plastering, priming, and then painting. When they put the furniture back (after they cleaned the floors! though they need another cleaning), they put one or two things in alternate locations, and it turns out i prefer the alternate locations, so they've also done some interior decorating for me. Now I can hang the rest of my crap on the walls and call it a day.

Miss Allaney

2006-11-04T20:49:00.000-06:00

I was chock full of good intentions to do the laundry, and I even got so far as to gather it up and take it downstairs, but, of course, one of the four machines is out of order, and the other three are in use. I'll do it tomorrow--I have other sheets and towels, and I don't have to wear chef clothes tomorrow, so it's fine.

I'd been coughing a lot in my living room, and I was thinking it was paint fumes, or paint dust, or whatever, but I've decided it's more likely because it's dry in here, so I dragged out the vaporizer last night. I can tell I'm going to spend the winter with (a) the vaporizer cranking away and (b) the windows open; I might even get a second vaporizer. I have radiators for heat, and, I suppose because it's such an old building, they don't really turn all the way off. Again, not a problem, just an adjustment. The radiators in the last place had similar issues, so it's not even an adjustment so much as a calibration.

The deities of scheduling apparently decided I should work at the bakery on Monday and take off on Tuesday, rather than my usual other way around. The FedEx package with my latest copyediting job didn't show up at the bakery today; some screwup means it'll show up on Monday, when I don't normally work at the bakery. (I had it rerouted . . . because I'm not usually at home when it's delivered. The building manager has been putting the packages in my apartment--for which I am extremely grateful--but it's not her job.) Of course, I can't actually work on the copyediting until after I receive it, which, as noted, won't happen until Monday. In addition, they're apparently going to be working on--perhaps even finishing the work on--my living room on Monday. All things considered, it seems to make more sense to work Monday, get the package, let the workmen do their job without me around, and have my day off on Tuesday instead, when I can get my apartment back into order and do my copyediting. The RFP I need to review for the other client arrived today, so I have something on which to work tomorrow.

I wish I had the energy (and courage) to commit to writing a novel in November. You commit to writing something like a thousand words a day, I think. If I were a Better, More Courageous Person, I'd try it--as they say, it doesn't have to be a good novel. Actually, if I thought I had more time I might even try it. I give my evening hours over to vegetation (or work, if need be), and I don't much want to give them up for what would eventually feel like a fruitless effort (yes, I know, I've talked myself out of it already; two of my friends keep nagging me about that). What I am saying (or writing) out loud for the first time is that I am committing to spending time writing the (non-fiction) manuscript I have in my head--not every day in November, but for parts of November, anyway. I keep saying I'll do it when I finish this or that free-lance job, and then another job shows up, and I am sure as hell not going to say no to work. When I have six months of expenses in the bank (Hah! I say, and Hah! again . . .), sure, I'll say no to the occasional job, but I don't even have next week's expenses in the bank. (I'm waiting for a copyediting check, I get paid at the bakery next week, and I haven't invoiced for some writing work because some of it is still in process, just so you don't think I'm in dire straits.) But work or no, I really want to spend some time writing what I want to write.

Of course, today I committed to getting Jefe's website in order, so there you go. Right now it's a shambles. The guy he originally hired owes him hours of work, but Jefe doesn't know what to tell him to do and doesn't have time (or the ability) to do the writing himself. He probably hired the wrong guy--this guy claims to have algorithms or whatever that increase the likelihood the website will show up in searches. But Jefe's customers already know where to find him, and, really, a bakery is a local business. Jefe doesn't need to come up on a search engine in Arkansas, you know? Anyway, the copy is lousy, the navigation sucks, the pictures aren't actually of Jefe's stuff, and a lot of the information is out of date. Jefe's newer computer guy claims he's going to fix this or that, but doesn't actually do a damned thing. This guy provides internet service for local businesses, I think, and he installed a bunch of security cameras for Jefe, at least a quarter of which aren't working at any given time. He's not going to fix the website any time soon. Jefe said the old guy will do anything you tell him to do, so it's really just a matter of writing copy, getting some photos, doing the navigation, etc. Jefe will pay me for my time, and I think he really needs a functioning website, so WTF, why not.

Today I was contemplating the varied rates of pay at which I work. I realize we're not supposed to talk about what we earn in this society, but I don't give a shit. I personally think that's part of the conspiracy to keep workers divided against each other. At the bakery, I make $9/hour, and $13.50/hour for anything over 40 hours a week. The copyediting varies--it's usually by the page, which means it can be as much as $25 or so an hour if I'm efficient and the text is well-written; it's usually around $15 to $20 an hour, I'd say. The writing for my old boss pays $75/hour. That's more than he was able to pay me before, when he was at other organizations, when the rate was usually about $50/hour. (He knows that I'm fast and that I won't pad my hours, so, in the end, I'm probably cheaper than someone whose rates might be lower.) In other words, in one hour, I can make anywhere from $9 to $75, depending on where I am and what I'm doing. When I'm wiggling my fingers in one way, shaping croissants, say, it's the lowest amount, and when I'm wiggling my fingers in another way, typing, say, it's the highest amount. I don't have any grand conclusions from all of this, mind you, I just thought it was kind of interesting. If I could figure out how to get even 20 hours/week of the higher rate, I could make a bunch of money--$78k a year, for those of you without a calculator handy. Even 10 hours/week--i.e., I'd still get a day off each week--would be substantial, and more than I'll make at the bakery for four times the number of hours.

So, speaking of croissants, today I came in and . . . my plain croissants have disappeared. Not the baked ones--the first thing I do after I punch in is check out the baked croissants on the rack to see how they look and to make sure there are enough of them. (Friday I came in and found a pan of unbaked ham and cheese croissants in the walk-in--I asked Phil to bake them, and he said they'd baked two pans--two dozen--for the store, but I said, well, we're selling a lot of these, so let's bake these 13, too. Damn if we didn't sell them before 1:00 pm.) Anyway, I knew I had put several pans of 36 in the freezer yesterday, but they were nowhere to be found. Turns out, one of the night bakers burned 16 dozen of them. Jefe dug one out of the garbage to show me, and it was a charcoal briquette. Apparently the guy forgot to set a timer (he's a good baker, so this was a complete aberration) and just killed them. Luckily I had enough in the freezer so they could bake enough for the store and for the markets, but I had to rearrange my shaping plans for the day. I also found a piece of dough in the walk-in that I apparently overlooked yesterday (easy enough to do, given the racks of crap in the walk-in by Friday evening), and I suspect tomorrow's croissants will not be pretty.

And, yes, I made pizza today, albeit with Phil's focaccia tapanade rather than sauce (the delivery guy never got me sauce) and with half whole wheat flour in the crust. I liked it better, but it was late coming out of the oven, so there was a lot left at the end of the day--less now, because some is in my refrigerator. I've been using a few Spanish words with the dishwasher--days of the week, temperature (hot or cold), one more--and trying to pick up more from what I hear, but it's not enough. We have a new intern who is truly fluent in both Spanish and English (she's Puerto Rican), and I'm hoping to get her to teach me the verb forms and such. In any case, the dishwasher likes me, despite the language barrier. Apparently, back in the day, he was eating a slice of pound cake every day with his coffee. Brad, in his inimitable way, bitched about the cost of that, so now Leon gets a doughnut out of the freezer to dunk in his coffee (as Jefe said, it's hard to say whether he's warming the doughnut or cooling the coffee). I think he knows that's safe to eat, so he sticks to that. But I give him stuff, too, when I can--the pizza, certainly, and, last week, a croissant that I'd cut to check the lamination, and a day-old pecan roll. So yesterday I grabbed the bowl for the 20-quart mixer so I can mix the pizza dough, and Leon makes it clear that he'll wash it for me in the pan washer, which he then proceeds to do, thus saving me the time of washing the thing. The great thing for me is that he'll teach me the occasional word in Spanish, and, even more interesting, is how much we manage to communicate despite the barrier. I guess he makes me think of the lessons I learned from my father--that there's no shame in any job, that everyone is worthy of respect (at least at first; people like those "serving" in the current administration are a special case)--Golden Rule things, basically.

And that, really, is where I think notions of social justice have to originate. It's why I think we should all have access to the same health insurance to which our Congresspeople have access. Today I asked Brad if he always used the ricotta in five-pound batches--I'd thought to make a three-cheese pizza, with ricotta, parmesan, and mozzarella, since I didn't have sauce. Brad said that he did always use five-pound batches, so I said, oh, okay, I won't dip into it then. He said what he has said before--it's too good for these guys. And before I could stop myself I said, "I really hate it when you say that." I didn't elaborate, and I didn't make a scene, but jeez, you think he'd've learned something from getting picked on as a kid. Apparently not the right thing--but I'll work on him over a beer sometime; it's just fear on his part, and that's never a good basis for deciding which action to take.

This made me laugh out loud:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Midland
The Northeast
The South
The Inland North
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Because, you know, it's completely accurate. Dave used to say that he could tell when I was talking to family on the phone because my accent used to become much stronger. Of course, I don't think I HAVE an accent . . . but who does? I completely freaked out one of the not-quite-down-and-out guys who occasionally does deliveries and paints our paper signs for us by asking him whether he was from Philadelphia or Baltimore. Thanks to Orange for this one.

Lemon Tea

2006-11-03T16:36:00.000-06:00

About two weeks ago, the radio was tuned to one of the local rock stations (and thank the deities for that--lately Brad has been putting the country station on, and it makes me want to stab him) and "Let It Be" came on. Phil started singing along, except he was singing "Lemon tea, lemon tea . . ." I'm pretty sure he was just goofing around.

Then, yesterday, Leon the dishwasher was up in the crawl space getting down Christmas decorations, which are stored in big plastic tubs. He must have asked a question about whether to bring down this thing or that, because Jefe called out, "Bring down everything that's not a bunny." Which still cracks me up. He brought down an animatronic Santa, who sings and dances (it's about four feet tall); he has a bakery box in his hand, and all I have to say is, if there were a cake in that box, it would be destroyed. I think it's demented--I also think it's demented that they're putting out the Christmas stuff already--but nobody asked me.

What you have asked me about, however, is croissant shapes. Imagine a long triangle of dough. You start at the wide end and roll it up, which gets you the layers of layers. You can put it on the pan just like that, or you can bring the ends around to meet, or somewhere in between. In our bakery, we don't curve the good ones at all. Rumor has it that in France it's either law or tradition that the ones made with butter aren't curved but the ones made with margerine are. We curve the margerine ones and glue the points together with egg wash because the customer wants to make sandwiches out of them. As noted, I hate handling that shit--it makes me feel nasty, and not in a good way.

Meanwhile, they have done some kind of work on my apartment today--the primer can is turned around, so someone was in here--but (a) it is by no means done, and (b) it smells bad in here; it makes me cough, actually. I suspect it's dust, fumes, or both. And my furniture is still piled in a corner. I think I'm going to drag it out of the corner for the weekend--I doubt they'll be up here tomorrow or Sunday. I know I shouldn't complain about it--it could be worse, etc.--but it's a pain. I basically don't have the use of half of my apartment until they're done. Eh; they'll be done sooner or later, I suppose.

Baby Got (Sore) Back

2006-11-02T05:49:00.000-06:00

Yesterday's adventure featured a wrenched muscle in my lower back, which made even the simplest activities painful. I loaded up on ibuprofen and i gently stretched what I could when I could, but I really did a number on myself. I eventually headed home, thinking I'd maybe do a little gentle yoga, take a hot bath and then make some dinner and then vegetate in front of the television, but noooooooo. They started working on my living room yesterday, which means all of my furniture except the desk is piled in one corner of the living room or shoved into the kitchen, and everything's covered in plastic; and it smells like wet plaster in here as well. While I suppose I could have cleared enough crap away from the kitchen table to make dinner, I'm let someone else cook for me instead (though my original choice, a crunchy-granola place a few blocks away, wasn't accepting credit cards, so I had to go elsewhere), and then I took that hot bath, and then I went to bed. I am definitely glad they're cleaning this place up, too; I was getting tired of looking at the stains and having loose paint fall on the floor.

My back/hip feels much better this morning--still tweaked, and serving as a reminder that I really must figure out a way to integrate yoga into my life again, but not as bad as yesterday. The bath/ibuprofen/sleep combo definitely helped. With any luck, they'll be done with my apartment when I get home today, and, with better luck, they will have moved the heavy stuff back to approximately where it belongs.

Plaster Dust

2006-10-30T14:50:00.000-06:00

Success! I now have a shelf on the bathroom wall (albeit with three screws instead of four, because the guy at the hardware store recommended screws that were WAY too big, but I had three of the right size sitting around) AND I have my pots hanging on the kitchen wall (screws, anchors, and cup hooks; I'd originally thought a pegboard, but once I got to the hardware store, that seemed like way more trouble than it was worth, and more money, too), which means the mixer and the food processor are under the cabinet rather than on the counter and next to the freezer, respectively. I suppose it's possible that there could be too much counter space, but I doubt I'll ever personally be faced with such a situation. It's also probably the case that it would have been smarter to do all of this stuff and then clean, rather than the other way around, thereby necessitating doing some of it twice.

Saturday was an 11-hour day at the bakery. In addition to the usual 120 pounds of croissant dough (out of which I made approximately 500 croissants), I had an extra 30 pounds of dough, out of which i made 130 curved croissants. (Jefe and I referred to them as "shitty" croissants for awhile, because the roll-in fat is this nasty-ass margarine; we had to change our terminology so we didn't inadvertently call them that in front of the customer. We don't sell them in the store, because they're for a wholesale account, and everything about them offends me.) I also put together 16 dozen mini-pastries. These are basically our various sheet cakes iced with their proper icings and cut into 1.5-inch by 1.5-inch squares; we can also do mini-eclairs and mini-cream puffs and mini-cannoli, but I avoid all of them like the plague because they have a bunch of extra steps. At the end of all of that, I had to do the final assembly for two leaf tortes, or mousse tortes, or whatever we call them: basically, chocolate layers with chocolate mousse between, covered in this very thin Tootsie-Roll type substance and with a fucking endless frilly spiral of the same substance on top. Jefe showed me how to do the TR-substance months ago, so I end up having to do it whenever that cake shows up. As a result, I put in nearly my 40 hours last week--37, I think--which is good. Even with some overtime this week, the next check will be a little light, but not as light as I'd feared.

I got lots of sleep (for me) this weekend, though that didn't mean sleeping late. Sunday I slept until 5:45 . . . except, with the clock change, it was 4:45. Today I slept until 5, I think, though I crashed early last night. I managed a short walk yesterday and today, and I may even manage another one today.

I've been thinking a lot the past few days about being a freak, but I haven't gotten around to writing it down yet, and I have a phone call in 15 minutes (about doing some web copy for one of my clients), so it's going to have to wait.

Daylight

2006-10-29T12:05:00.000-06:00

I sit here shuffling the deck of stuff in my head--all the shoulds (go to a yoga class; get some writing done so I don't have to do it all tomorrow; take a shower; rebraid my hair; run the dishwasher; pay some bills; get the writing done), and some of them are even want-tos. But the motivation level is pretty low. I have managed to get most of the clean laundry moved from the couch, and I even cleaned the bathroom this morning, and did about 15 minutes of yoga, plus my mom and a friend called already, as did the friend/ex-boss for whom I'm doing the writing. (Yes, mom is talking to me again, though I assiduously avoid all but the most general discussion of my work as much as possible.) My friend called early--7:00 maybe?--but of course I was up. I slept "late" today--it was nearly 5:45 when I woke up!--but then I realized, once I set the clocks back, that it wasn't so late after all.

I'd really like to hang some things, but, in the case of the living room stuff, there's no point, since they haven't painted yet, and in the case of the bathroom shelf, I need to get screws and anchors and a drill bit (my drill bits disappeared in the move). One of the side effects of living in a crappy/"changing" neighborhood is that a lot of the things I took for granted downtown are simply not here. The hardware store was across the street; the grocery stores were numerous and close. Here, the nearest hardware store (or the nearest Ace, anyway) is nearly two miles away, and closed on Sunday. (On the other hand, if I go tomorrow, I can also go to the public library, which I've been meaning to do.) There's a hardware store right next door to the bakery (and I'm in there about once a week for something for the bakery), but the times when I remember what I need and the times when I have the time to go the hardware store for myself don't always coincide. There's a half-decent grocery store near the el stop, but it's really only half-decent, even if it's a thousand times better and closer than the corner stores in really shitty neighborhoods. So, even though I've fallen back into a lot of the habits of living alone, I haven't changed my routine--the routine in my head--to accommodate the new neighborhood.

Here's a good thing about this apartment that wasn't apparent until recently: I'd thought that it would get a lot of sun because it faced south, even though it faces a courtyard, because I'm on the 7th of 9 floors. It didn't seem to get much direct light, through the summer and even into the fall, but I've discovered that it gets a LOT of light right now, probably because the sun's lower in the sky or something. That's a very good thing; I love sunlight in my living space, especially in the winter. Now I just have to get the materials to start a new needlepoint and I'll be set.

I've decided I need to go outside today, if only for the opportunity to wear something other than (a) chef clothes or (b) at-home lounging clothes, which usually consist of a t-shirt or fleece shirt (depending on the temperature) and loose cotton pants. I was out for a couple of hours Tuesday night, but otherwise those two sets of clothing are all I've worn for close to two weeks. It's sort of interesting to me how much I miss wearing "civilian" clothing. First, though, a shower is in order. And some writing--did I mention that part?

Fermentation Boogie

2006-10-26T19:43:00.000-05:00

Bread class is officially over--I've been dispensing fermented things all over the damned place, and I still will end up with a freezer full of same (as soon as I buy some foil). The guest chef was a great guy, and, since he's a friend of Jefe's we'd heard about each other. The class didn't make much--in the sense that the students didn't really do much mixing, although we did a fair amount of shaping--but a ton of stuff got made. Baguettes all three days; miche (though he used white rather than wheat flour); roasted garlic bread with some rye flour in it; some decorative breads done with baguette dough, as well as pizza and focaccia done with same; croissants (yeah, I know; a buswoman's holiday for me); brioche, in several different forms; and a bread with a lot of potatoes in it. We also talked a lot about sourdoughs and starters and poolish and fermentation and bulk fermentation and proofers and retarders and so on, which was the valuable part. I can learn a lot of this stuff from Jefe, of course, but when do he and I have 21 hours to sit down and talk?

One student in the class was this guy who used to build aircraft or something, and apparently did a lot of home baking. By the middle of the first day, he was Pouty McFrown--he felt like he was in over his head, and, as he said today, all he saw was all the things he'd been doing wrong. I tried to talk with him a couple of times, encourage him in various ways, but he was determined to be stuck in a Not Happy Place. It was kind of strange. I know that I've been around a lot of this stuff for awhile, but he'd apparently been baking before, and, dude, if you are an aircraft engineer, you're probably not an idiot. But he was basically saying that he wasn't going to bake any more. Which, I don't know, seems kind of extreme and wrong to me.

Meanwhile, I was looking forward to being able to write off some of my educational expenses--the tuition I paid for this course, for example, and the interest on my student loan--but, apparently, one cannot claim either of those things if one files one's income tax forms in the "married, filing separately" category. Which blows; I was counting on those deductions. And why? What's the logic behind that restriction, i want to know?

I should be doing some other writing right now. I finished one proposal, but I have to get the other one done--preferably by tomorrow, but I'm not sure that'll happen. We'll see. I have no motivation tonight; what I really want is to sit in front of the TV with a glass of wine and call it a day, and, hey, I may yet decide to do that, despite the folded and clean laundry that's been on the couch since Monday afternoon. They had a little buffet for us at the end of class (pate, cheese, and some of the wads of bread we'd shaped), which means I don't really need dinner. After the buffet, I got to talk to the chef who'd hooked me up with Jefe (I forget what I called him; let's call him Bill). He's a great guy, and definitely one of my supporters; he suggested I ask Jefe for more money. Which I'll figure out how to get up the nerve to do, eventually. I won't get enough to allow me to live on that alone, but even another couple dollars an hour would help some. It would also allow me to stay there longer--as it is, as I've been writing here, I really have to start looking for something else, probably something not in baking, unless I can make a little more money and get a little more time off. Chef Bill noted that you don't make any money in this business unless you work for yourself, but i've detailed the challenges in that scenario--here and in my head--ad nauseam.

Still, a little more money would mean I can keep doing this for a little longer and see what happens. Right now, I'm running close to full speed just to stay even; it would be nice to be in a position where I can (a) continue running close to full speed, but end up ahead, alternated with (b) occasionally stop running quite so much.

Wait; what's that? Is that the wine calling to me? Why, yes, I believe it is. So I'm going to get my writing ready for tomorrow and answer that call.

. . . Singin' Doo-Wah-Diddy-Diddy-Dum-Diddy-Doo

2006-10-23T17:58:00.000-05:00

I had written this long-ass post, but I reread it yesterday morning before putting it up, and I decided it was more of that whining shit, and that I needed to drink a nice big cup of shutthefuckup and be done with it. In short, you're not going to have to wade through another pity party over here at Chez Goldman. I'll say that it was a rough weekend, at times, and be done with it.

I had dinner Saturday with Dave and the Kid, and I had a good time with them. I don't have any idea how to go about this, so I'm just feeling my way around. The Kid and I have been in each other's lives since he was 17 months old--he turned 9 in August--so I'd like to find a way for us to be able to continue doing that. Dave is for it, too, so long as the Kid is for it, and the Kid sure seems to be. It's difficult for Dave, and me, too, and i truly appreciate Dave's efforts, despite those difficulties. And Dave loves his new job, which is also great.

I finally got all of the damned croissants made yesterday and today, which means I get to spend three days making bread. (It also means the freezer is crammed full of croissants.) I kind of like working on Sundays, because i get to pick the radio station, and I turn that fucker up LOUD, and I even sing along (under my breath, though, because I can't carry a tune for shit). Brad was there yesterday, and, though he tends to prefer more head-banging stuff, his head was bobbing, too--Emma and Brad, starring in "Rock 'n Roll Bakery"!

I still have not finished my writing, largely because I still don't have the info I need to do so. I should have a chunk by tomorrow, so I'll get up at 4:30 to get downtown, race home after bread class, work away, go to a concert (yes, I know--remember, sleep is for the weak), and then do most of the same thing on Wednesday (no concert Wednesday). Thursday there's an alumni thing downtown for my college, and I might go, if I get enough done. Friday it's back to the croissant production, and I told Brad that if and only if I get the writing done, I'd help him Friday night for a few hours (because Jefe won't be around and one of the other night guys won't be around). I would kind of prefer not to, but I could use the hours, and what the fuck.

Sooner or later I'm going to need to sleep, or, more to the point, go to sleep with no alarm clock set. Of course, I'll still wake up well before dawn, but it's the principle of the thing. And the being able to stay up late without a sense of dread, and the ability to lay in bed and even have some tea and watch the sun rise over the lake.

I've also decided I need to (a) set up a website so I can (b) advertise my copyediting, proofreading, and editing services--there are multiple universities in this city, and I suspect a couple of flyers and a website to which people could go would get me some bidness. We'll see.

You Oughta Be in Pictures

2006-10-20T22:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was something of a clusterfuck at the bakery, though in an instructive way. First off, Jefe is giving a "demonstration" on Sunday (yes, day after tomorrow), and the place he's presenting doesn't have any equipment, so he wanted to take a DVD with him. Except he doesn't have a camera, so he borrowed one. Except it isn't digital, it actually uses 8mm tape. Except he had no way to edit it. So I said, "Hey, I have iMovie, maybe that'll work." Except I have an old version of it, and the guy who transferred the file put it into a format that neither iMovie nor Quicktime can read, though the DVD does, in fact, play. I added bookmarks to it (though I suspect they're a function of my Mac, not on the disc itself), and, more important, wrote down what's where. I won't be able to move things around into the desirable order, and I won't be able to edit out the numerous shots of people's butts, but it'll be a nice backdrop, of approximately the correct length, for his demonstration.

While we were taking turns with the camera (Jefe and I did most of the filming and "performing," though a few other people made guest appearances), or, rather, in between times, Jefe was up in the ceiling, installing a hoist so he could hang his new machine (it makes little sourdough rolls that the Brazen Tart's restaurant is using; we're supplying their dinner rolls these days). We now have two machines hanging from the ceiling, as the muffin dropper is up there, too. But really, did we have to hang the machine the same day as we were doing all the filming? Apparently we did.

And, really, if he'd mentioned this a week ago, we could have gotten the video, in the correct format, and I could have purchased Tiger and iLife, which I've been intending to do anyway, and he could have had a first-class production, minus shots of people's butts. We give new meaning to the phrase "just in time."

He made an interesting comment today, though, after he returned from dropping off the tape, to the effect that the video guy wasn't exactly a baker. What he meant by that is that the guy was kind of yammering away, and dicking around, for 45 minutes, without actually doing anything with the tape, i.e., he could have begun a process while Jefe was there, instead of putting it off awhile. As I've said before, if I weren't female I wouldn't get to sit down all day some days--there isn't any time or space to put up your feet, or take a leisurely lunch, or surf Teh Internets. One of the problems into which I run occasionally--and Wednesday was a perfect example of this--is that I often have about an hour to kill while the dough gets cold, before I laminate it. So I volunteer for something, if I don't have almond filling to make, or pans to fill, or raisins to soak, or whatever. Wednesday I was making chocolate curls (with a big bar of chocolate and a potato peeler) to top this dessert thing we had to send to a local hotel. A hundred of them, as a matter of fact. Well, this took more than an hour, and it had to go out the door, and I wasn't going to stop in the middle, so I got behind with my own work. As a result, I've already worked 39 hours this week, and tomorrow's likely to be another long day, plus there was the three hours tonight in front of the computer. As I've said before, overtime, baby.

But I'm tired, and I'm fighting off a cold (with only some success; I've been hacking all day), and I still have to do a bunch of writing, and I'm working Sunday and Monday so I can do the bread class Tuesday through Thursday, for which I'll have to get up a half-hour earlier. I'm not really complaining, mind you, though I'm sure it reads that way (as I said to a friend earlier tonight, sleep is for the weak)--but it is bringing home to me the fact that I cannot do what I'm doing for the long haul, and probably not even for the medium haul, which means I have to figure out what I'm going to do instead. I still prefer the "win the lottery" option, but that's not been very successful.

So, in a display of weakness, I guess, I'm heading off to bed.

Adornment

2006-10-16T13:26:00.000-05:00

There's been a big whoop-de-do lately, about makeup, shaving, heels, femme adornment in general, etc. Twisty is always good for stirring up some shit, and, over the weekend, Jonquil and Ron Sullivan (who's my new blog crush) weighed in with their own commentary. The comments to both of those latter posts are interesting, too. What eventually struck me about the whole thing is how gendered the whole discussion is--when is the last time you heard/read men defending their choice of clothing, whether they shave their body hair (or rip it out by the roots with wax), their personal adornments, etc.?

That is, what's important about this whole thing, to me, is that women feel compelled to make and defend their choices, and their feminist (or femnine) cred becomes attached to those choices and defenses. Which, in itself, is a commentary on the totalizing effects of patriarchy. I find it fascinating how often a woman defends not/adopting a particular practice because of how it "looks" on her (certain styles, for example), or never having learned how to do it properly (usually makeup), or some bad physical reaction that ensues if she does try to adopt that practice.

And it's not trivial, either. Random strangers (and family members, often enough) feel like they have the right to deliver their opinion on a woman's appearance, particularly if some aspect of it isn't sufficiently feminine, in their judgment. Other women claim they've never been subject to such sexism, not once, nope, never--which, I'm sorry, you haven't been paying attention. Still others claim that True Feminists wouldn't do x, where x = wear makeup, shave, wax, wear heels, etc. The point is, a lot of people are spending a lot of time enforcing one or another dress code--for women. This, in turn, necessitates women defending the choices they make (with or without some consciousness of patriarchy's influence on the choices available and the selections they've made among those choices). The fact that we can and do defend the practices we adopt means that we are at least aware of some aspects of the expectations, i.e., the patriarchy has wormed its way into our heads.

I get kind of tired of enforcers in either direction, to tell you the truth, but I think it's more interesting to see someone make an argument that a particular commonly accepted (or expected) aspect of feminine grooming or apparel is, indeed, anti-feminist in some way. I'm not a fan of the "shaving is bad, and any woman who shaves is caving in to the patriarchy and isn't a True Feminist" approach, but I think a more reasoned argument, detailing (a) why or how a particular practice is patriarchal and (b) how that practice does actual harm, either to the woman who does it or to other people, is a legitimate argument, even when I don't agree with the particular case.

I have to admit that I also get tired of the many women who want to say, "I just do what I do, and it has no relationship at all to the gendered culture in which we live. And I LIKE wearing thongs and having my pubic hair pulled out by the roots with hot wax." That kinda can't be true. You may not want to think about it much, and you may not have experienced a whole lot of obvious (or subtle) sexism in your life (though I think it's more likely that the patriarchy has trained you particularly well), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

So, really, I'm joining the chorus that's asking women to think about the choices they make, because we are the sexbot class, whether we believe it or no. And that, of course, is why it's women who have to think so much about their personal grooming, adornment, and hygiene practices.
-----
On a completely unrelated note, Susie's dad died, and her remembrance of him is beautiful.

In Which I Channel My Mother

2006-10-15T20:56:00.000-05:00

who is speaking to me again, by the way. After the congestive heart failure brouhaha--during which I called several times to check in on her well-being--she just up and called me last Sunday, and we both pretended nothing had happened. We also carefully avoided (mostly) the subject of my work and my well-being. Hey, whatever; I've realized that my relationship with my mother is the most unhealthy relationship in my life, in that I wouldn't put up with the kind of crap I get from her from anyone else, but I've also become largely (though not completely) immune to it. I can't change her behavior, I can only change my reaction to it.

But that's not my point here.

I managed to score a ride to Whole Paycheck yesterday, so I could shop for groceries without worrying about how to get them all home. I do this about once a month, which seems to be sufficient. It makes for a whopping bill, not least because there's almost always a couple of higher-ticket items, but I've budgeted for it, so it's not a big surprise, either. So yesterday, Newman Os were on sale, including the ginger ones, which make me swoon. I stocked up: one of the original ones, one with chocolate instead of cream filling, and four (yes, four) of the ginger ones. I figure I'd've bought them anyway, and 70 cents off per pack was sufficient impetus to stock up in a marginally serious way (which is the mother-channeling portion of the program). I bought a bottle of olive oil, without which I probably could have done, despite tonight's pesto-making operation; pine nuts, of which I bought about twice what I needed for the pesto-making; laundry detergent; two bottles of body lotion, because my skin sucks that stuff in all winter; and a lot of frozen veggies (broccoli and spinach, if you want to know). I managed to bypass most of the fresh produce, except for some bagged salad that was on sale: I know, but still have to keep reminding myself, that I can go ahead and BUY that fresh bit of something, but the likelihood that I'll use it before it turns into a science project is pretty low. I might as well take some cash and set it on fire.

Yesterday I got my basil: I deputized (and gave $30 to) one of the guys who works in the bakery and who was working the farmers' market yesterday. He bought the basil--and I'm here to tell you that $30 doesn't buy nearly as much basil as it used to do--and gave it to our delivery guy, who picked it up when he picked up the rest of the stuff left over from our stand at the market and brought it back to the bakery with him. And, yes, I made pizza yesterday.

We have a new crop of help in the bakery, and one of the kids is tall, cute, and Mexican--and if I didn't know better, I'd think he was flirting with me a little. Not in any big-time way, mind you, but the vibe is kinda there. It's amusing, not least because I am old enough to be his mother--or even his grandmother, depending on how old he actually is. I suspect he doesn't know how old I am, either. And, hey, maybe I can get him to teach me Spanish. Between him and the friend who took me shopping last night (who is bilingual and who may be able to get me some teaching tapes), who knows, maybe I'll be able to pick out more than every fifth (or twenty-fifth) word. If I (a) learned the verb forms and (b) picked up some vocabulary, I'd probably be on my way, and I suspect the guys at the bakery would be entertained by my efforts and would be helpful.

Today, despite the nice weather, I chained myself to my computer and hacked away at one of the proposals I'm writing. It's a challenge, not least because I don't know this new agency very well, plus one of my contacts will be on vacation this coming week, which is when I have to do the bulk of the work. I'm a little worried, actually: I have to work next weekend, so I can do that bread class (which could have been more inconveniently timed, but not by much) the following week, and these things all have to be written by the 25th or so. I think some sleep will be lost along the way.

Things about my apartment that kinda suck, now that I've lived here awhile: There's no radiator in the bathroom, which is the only room in which I typically want a radiator. Plus, the window in the shower is going to need shrink-wrapping, because cold air kind of comes through there into the shower, which really won't do. The apartment shares a wall with the stairwell, which can be loud. The walls and ceiling look like they have measles, thanks to water damage--but I expect they'll fix that.

As long as I'm complaining, I have to bitch about my uterus, which, with its fibroid-laden self, is making me extremely peevish; the near-constant spotting is just annoying beyond belief. It seems that there's some kind of estrogen surge right before menopause, and, since estrogen makes fibroids grow (and the lack of estrogen makes them shrink), I think that I'm in the middle of that surge. And, of course, the fibroids are, indeed, one of the conditions that seems to be making me difficult to insure, even though (a) I've been treated for them, and (b) once I hit menopause, they'll shrink pretty dramatically. Insurance companies suck, and not in a good way. I have to solve this insurance problem, but it's going to have to wait a couple of weeks, given the current schedule. Feh. Single-payer system, I want you now!

Dead Dreams

2006-10-07T05:59:00.000-05:00

Now those memories come back to haunt me
they haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse
that sends me down to the river
though I know the river is dry
That sends me down to the river tonight

--Bruce Springsteen, "The River"

I went back and looked at last October's entries yesterday, in part because I've been playing "last year at this time" in my head. Last October, Dave found out he'd be losing his job, and my company had crumbled; I was in pastry school, making chocolate and sugar sculptures, and still thinking I could open my own business. Still thinking I'd be with Dave, for that matter.

I've been telling myself that (a) I can get by on the combination of the side work (proofreading/copyediting/freelance writing) and the bakery, at least for now, so (b) I don't need to make any decisions about what I'm going to do until January. But the panic wells up inside, fighting for emotional space with the sadness. I know I can't do this particular combination forever; the bakery work is physically demanding and low-paying, which means it's also time-consuming. There are no benefits and no paid vacations. I'm 48 years old, and, hey, I'd like a day off once in awhile.

I also wonder if I can or want to start my own business by myself. The failure rate for new businesses is extremely high, especially for food businesses--more than 90% of restaurants fail in the first two years. The whole thing was predicated, in part, on Dave supporting me for awhile (as I supported him before we were married), giving us a cushion while I got the thing going; clearly, that's no longer an option. In addition, I see how many hours a week Jefe works (80, maybe?), and, even allowing for (a) efficiencies I might be able to build in and (b) ambitions for a smaller business than he has, there's not much likelihood of anything but long hours and low pay for the foreseeable future. It also ties me to whatever location I'd choose; you can't move food businesses.

In short, I've started thinking about alternatives. Can I find an office job I don't hate? There's another big question, seeing as how my inability to find a job was part of what prompted this change to begin with. But what kind of job? Can I find one that pays enough and that I don't hate? And does that mean the baking dreams are dead, even though I'm good at this shit?

And so on.

I try to tell myself that I DON'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THIS UNTIL JANUARY, DAMNIT, SO STOP ALREADY, but I don't listen for long. None of that is the least bit productive--it (what a surprise) tends to distract me from the writing/editing I should be doing instead, though I can make croissants and obsess about these things well enough. (Hey! I'm a multi-tasker!)

And then there's all the stuff from the dying marriage to contemplate as well; that's a fun subject for my brain, too. Another dream in shambles. Feh; I'm whining again, and that annoys me even more.

I had a long talk last night with one of my best friends, in California, and that helped some, not least because he thinks I'm pretty fabulous and he tells me so. He can commiserate, too, because he has the hardest time finding a job (he's unemployed again); he keeps finding a job, digging himself out of a financial hole . . . and then something happens and he loses the job, either because the company goes out of business or his boss is a nutcase who wants to hire a friend, or something. He's one of the two or three smartest people I've ever met, and he knows how to do all kinds of things, which makes it difficult to get hired, it turns out; most places, especially places run by half-bright HR people, are suspicious of people who don't have lots of obvious straight lines in their lives and work histories.

Anyway, it's time to make the doughnuts, or, rather, the croissants, because they still won't make themselves. Pizza today, too. I have to say that my croissants have completely rocked the house the past two days; we must have a good batch of flour or something (seriously; that makes a difference), and my lamination has been really beautiful.

Added: On my way to work this morning, my iPod served up this song first, in some kind of karmic harmony, I guess.

Ooooh, that smell . . .

2006-10-05T18:57:00.000-05:00

that smell of wet plaster.

So after that last update, I realized that the walls and ceiling of the kitchen AND living room were oozing wetness, as was the hallway into the apartment (?!). I quickly moved the electronica, especially my computer, which I need to be able to earn enough to pay the rent, into the bedroom. I called the emergency number again, again got noone, so I went upstairs to the building manager's apartment (luckily I knew which one it was) and woke her up. She woke up the engineer, they started dealing with the problem, and I went off to work (sans shower, however, which makes me a little grumpy). Indeed, things had stopped dripping by the time I left, even if everything was still wet.

The building manager left a voice message for me around 9 am and said the problem was fixed, etc., and when I got home, it more or less was. There's still wet plaster, of course, and lumps and bubbles from said wetness, but--as the Polyanna in me noted--it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I need renter's insurance immediately, of course, but not owning a car makes that a little more difficult, evidently. I just kept thinking how lucky I was that it happened (a) at 4 am and not, say, 9 am, and (b) in the fall, meaning I can open my windows tomorrow to air things out. It's humid in this city in the summer, which would probably leave me moldy, but I'm hoping this will work out.

I'm beginning to think I was a really horrible person in a previous lifetime . . .

Crash! Bang! (drip, drip, drip)

2006-10-05T04:33:00.000-05:00

This is getting ridiculous.

This morning, I was awakened at 4 am by a loud crash from the kitchen. Figuring I had put something in a precarious position, I got up to investigate. Nope; not that. My kitchen light fixture had filled up with water and exploded, a second one of the glass globes was filling as I watched (it's nearly full now), and the whole fixture--or, at least, two of the three globes--are leaking a steady stream of water. I called the emergency number, but, of course, it's some guy's pager, and he, unlike me, is asleep. I expect the second globe to come crashing down at any moment, so, needless to say, I'm not hanging out in the kitchen. And given the combo of water and electricity, I'm not trying to fix it myself.

I'm also not getting any more sleep this morning; that adrenaline rush from a loud crash pretty much obviates that option. And I think I'll skip the cereal this morning, seeing as how significant portions of the cereal-getting operation would require standing near the about-to-blow second globe, the broken glass I couldn't quite reach, and the steady stream of water from the first fixture.

Update at 4:36: And there went the second globe. Meanwhile, the third globe has started to fill--for symmetry, I suppose.

And then . . .

2006-10-04T17:56:00.000-05:00

And then I was turned down for health insurance today. I'll try another provider--but get this: they might accept me, but exclude coverage on a particular condition, which, of course, would be the goddamned reason I need the insurance. Fuckers.

Water, Water, Everywhere

2006-10-04T05:22:00.000-05:00

What I did not mention below is that my mother is still not talking to me. So yesterday my sister-in-law calls me and informs me that my mother has been suffering from congestive heart failure the past couple of weeks. Her kidneys have been failing slowly but steadily for the past five or ten years, and she's on a transplant list, but not quite yet on dialysis; looks like that's about to change. Presumably, that's why she had ten pounds or so of extra fluid. Of course, the diuretic they gave her had some kind of sulphur in it, to which she's allergic, so, after a couple of days, she started throwing up. She stopped taking that medication, but hasn't gotten through to the doctor (Monday was Yom Kippur and the doc hadn't called her back yesterday) since that. I called her on my way elsewhere (and, of course, she was still snotty to me; sickness doesn't deter my mother), but someone apparently came in so I'll have to call her back this morning on my way to work. My brother and SIL remain in the dark about the subject of my mother's pissation with me, though apparently my father mentioned to them that she had hung up on me without giving any details. I've restrained, rather than put my brother in the middle of it. And, really, the real reasons my mother's pissed off at me haven't changed in 48 years.

Blather

2006-10-02T15:19:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting you all, and I'm sorry about that. After last week's mini-vacation, my nose is back to the grindstone: in addition to that croissant-making thing, I've got several side things going on now. Believe me, I'm NOT complaining--that's how I'm going to pay the bills, after all--but it does mean a seven days/week schedule, pretty much. The advantage to the side work is that I can do it in bits and pieces, and I can do it in my underwear rather than in an office. I can also take breaks from it, which I do. Yesterday, for example, featured a lovely walk in the woods, complete with the sighting of a 9-point buck; we crept along and eventually got quite close to him--maybe 30 feet away? These woods are large and full of deer, but the deer don't have any predators other than cars, so they're not much spooked by people.

Also, if you didn't see it in the comments: Dave got a job!! He started it on Friday, and it sounds like a great job for him. It doesn't pay enough for him to feel completely comfortable, and the health insurance doesn't kick in for 90 days, but it's a small business, and the owner will, I'm sure, reward Dave appropriately once he sees how valuable Dave will be.

Meanwhile, I've been dealing with a bout of sadness this week. Not depression, just . . . sadness. I don't care how you describe what's gone on this past year--it's just sad. Dave tells me that we're incompatible across a number of spectra (and we probably are), but that's not new. Hell, none of the issues that came up were completely new, for that matter; even his diagnosis had its appearances before, albeit not in quite so dramatic a form. Still, somehow, we thought we could make it all work; I wouldn't have married him otherwise, and I don't think he would have married me, either. And I really don't want to go down the "if only" path--if only he hadn't done/said this; if only I hadn't done/said that. What's the point? We took the paths we took, and we took them in good conscience, in that we never meant to hurt each other and we tried to, I don't know, do right by each other? I failed miserably, of course; it's not just the road to hell that's paved with good intentions. As you can see, I have trouble blaming, though I don't think that's a flaw, exactly; I just don't see the point of pointing fingers. It's just sad. Was it inevitable? Hell, I have no clue. As I said, that seems to be the path of "if only," and I'd rather deal with the path of "is." Here's where we are. Would all roads have led to here, or some other approximation of here? No idea. It'd be easier if I could say that definitively (though I'd still be sad). And if I thought that different paths would have prevented us from getting to Here? We didn't take those paths, and you can't go back. Ahhh, fuck, I'm just babbling.

On a related note, one of the things I'm editing includes a questionnaire that assigns points to stressful events, with the notion that the occurrence of some number of them means you're at greater risk for illness. More than 500 in a year is supposed to be a bad thing; I racked up over 800. What I would really like to do is get more exercise and practice yoga regularly. I could walk home from work a couple days a week, and I could practice yoga at home for free; instead, I do neither of those things and then feel bad about it, which isn't particularly productive. Handball is unlikely for the foreseeable future, if only because adding a $50/month expense for a YMCA membership seems like a bad idea, but walking is free. I'm on my feet all day, so I haven't turned into a total tub of goo, but I miss the endorphins of the exercise (and the game, of course) and the aerobic aspects of it, too. And I miss yoga. I try to do a teensy bit of yoga when I get up, but . . . I don't. Once I get out of work, I just want to get home and vegetate (or do the side work, then vegetate). I know I'd feel better even if I EITHER walked or practiced yoga, but, hey, why not just chastise myself some more? I guess I should move the "no blame" mantra to that area of my life, too.

On a completely unrelated note, what the hell is it with these so-called family values Republicans? They natter on and on, they legitimize and legalize torture, they spout their faith in a deity and castigate others' faiths or lack thereof, they want to control my vagina, they clutch their pearls over consensual sex the last president was having . . . and they turn and look the other way when one of their own solicits sex from teenagers. I've long suspected that the reason they're so insistent on trying to control my sex life is that their own heads are so out of control, they figure (a) everyone else's head must be similarly messy, and (b) since we don't believe in the same deities or believe in the same way, well, golly, nothing is holding us back! Apparently the deity isn't doing much to hold them back, either; guess it's that personal responsibility thing the kids are going on about, eh?

I'd write more about the torture, but others are doing it much better and more thoroughly, and I doubt my six readers really need to be told that (a) it's wrong, and (b) I'm sick to my stomach about the whole thing, because you probably agree with me.

Weekend Roundup

2006-09-25T21:40:00.000-05:00

In case you missed it, here's a transcript of the Big Dog smacking down Chris Wallace on Faux News yesterday.
---
A commenter on another blog was driving me crazy a few weeks ago, and it took me awhile to figure out why: It's because she makes ad hominem arguments. Not AGAINST other commenters, mind you, but using himself (yes, I'm being vague about the person's genitalia and I'm not naming the blog); if I knew latin, I'd be able to figure out how to revise the phrase. That is, she says that she has this perspective/holds this position/is making this comment because she is a contrarian, because he is a [insert fierce animal here], because it's her nature to say these things. Okay, that's still not an argument. ("Yes it is." "No it's not." "Yes it is." "That's not an argument, that's merely contradiction.") Every last comment and "argument" is really about the commenter's experience in the world, and it really started to wear thin on one particular thread.
---
The fast cars were extremely fun, and from the position we took for the actual race, we could see turn 5 and turn 14. There was a big-ass crash (which we couldn't see until we got home and watched the tape), but despite the fact that the car pretty much exploded into pieces, the driver was okay. (The cars apparently are designed to break apart, which dissipates the force of the crash.) Crashing is not something this group plays up, and big crashes are an exception rather than the norm. We wandered around a good bit of the four-mile course on Saturday and again on Sunday morning, watching practice sessions and other races, so I had a sense of the course in my head to match up with the map; I also began to be able to tell where the cars were from the sound of them.
---
On the local guide, there was a full-page ad for a nearby inn. It had little pictures inset, along with descriptions of the things they had to offer. My favorite thing was a "glorified continental breakfast." I have a feeling the person who wrote their ad copy thought that "glorified" was the same as, say, "exquisite," or "glorious," or something like that. Sorry, no.
---
I'm feeling virtuous tonight, and not just because I did four loads of laundry today--semi-sequentially, because some bozos broke into the washers last Thursday night, disabling three of the four of them and preventing me from doing the laundry on Friday--and started to actually hang some shit on the walls. (About time, really.) I wanted to go out to dinner tonight, it being the Last Official Day of Vacation, but I restrained myself. It was partly inertia on my part; it felt like too much effort to find clothes, take a shower, etc., but I also decided that this month's expenditures were already too high. I went health insurance shopping today, and applied for some that'll cost $200/month if they approve me, which is less than I had budgeted, but I'm going to need to pay more than the minimum payment for my student loan, or I'll never pay it off. I wish we had a single-payer system that worked; this is just a pain. All in all, I want health insurance that's as good as, say, the health insurance that U.S. Congresspeople get.
---
I'll be entertained to see what's left of the three gazillion croissants I left strewn about in freezers last week. There should be hundreds left (literally--but there's a farmers' market Wednesday), but there's no telling what the overnight bakers did while I was gone. There might be several hundreds more than I planned; there might be very few. (I think the former's more likely).
--
Keep those fingers crossed for Dave . . .

Arrrr! A Day Late and a Dollar Short

2006-09-20T05:35:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Ron, here's my pirate name:

My pirate name is:

Captain Mary Bonney

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

I managed to get Jefe to make pirate cookies for the occasion (yesterday was Talk Like a Pirate Day, for those of you who didn't have that marked on your calendar): we replaced one of the eyes on the smile cookies with an eyepatch. (The cookies are big sugar cookies covered in yellow-colored white chocolate (enough right there to keep me away from it) with a smile face or a frown face on them.)

Irritants

2006-09-18T21:20:00.000-05:00

First off, what the fuck are my fighting-for-a-wild-card-berth Phillies doing losing to the Cubs, who suck so terribly? The Phillies' pitching was for shit tonight (witness the number of runs the Cubs scored--9? 10?), and, despite a grand salami that put the Phillies back in the game briefly, they just could not pull it out. Against what Steve Goodman used to call the doormat of the National League. Guys, that is NOT the way to do this.

Second, I've got two minor irritations: first, something at the bakery--flour in the air, perhaps?--occasionally gives me eye boogers. Not just the regular stuff, but yellow-green stuff. One day last week it was pretty bad, but it cleared up as soon as I got home and took out my contacts, so I decided it wasn't a genuine infection. The other irritation is some kind of weird rash on my left forearm. I've been halfheartedly following the basic rule of skin crap (if it's wet, dry it; if it's dry, wet it), with tea tree oil, some jojoba and beeswax cream, and/or some vitamin E oil, but it's impossible to keep it covered in such stuff while doing production. This ten-days-in-a-row thing probably isn't helping. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't itch, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Here's an irritation of a different sort: the sign at the public transit station--one of those scrolling neon signs--blathers on about homeland security and keeping track of your shit and so on. It also requests that you "remain alert of" your surroundings. Who the fuck wrote that? You can be AWARE of, or alert TO, but who says "remain alert of"? Every time I see it, it irritates me. (I also made the mistake of complaining to a friend that one should never modify "unique." It means "one of a kind." If it's already singular, if there's already nothing else like it, then it can't be "very" unique." Sportscasters--who are responsible for so very many locutions that drive me crazy--are the biggest sinners in this regard. Of course, my friend takes every opportunity to modify "unique" somehow.)

Just sayin.

Saturday Night Live

2006-09-16T21:15:00.000-05:00

Anybody else remember the first season of SNL? I actually watched most of it. I also wrote a grad school paper about SNL's early years.

I wanted to say a few more words about Ann Richards, whom I never met but for whom a friend of mine worked. He didn't work for her directly, but he worked to establish a program in Texas that she started, which was essentially corrections-based substance abuse treatment. She recognized that a lot of people who commit a lot of crimes are drunk, high, or both when they do their deeds, and that their addictions (and lack of skills, etc., which is often a result, in part, of their addictions) mean they're going to keep committing crimes until/unless they can find a recovery program. The programs in Texas were nine to twelve months long, in facilities that were dedicated to treatment: there was no general population to distract from recovery, and there were a lot of people, including guards with guns and other treatment program inmates with more recovery time, to help convince people that recovery was really the way to go. They were good, solid programs (no idea if they still exist or still are), and, as data from California and Oregon (I think) and other places has started to show, treatment is cheaper, over the medium and long term, than no treatment, even taking into account that some people will not stay sober. Helping people fight their addictions means those people won't be committing more crimes and means they're likely to become tax-paying citizens. Everybody wins. And Ann Richards, perhaps because of her own background (she was in recovery), recognized that and implemented it.

So one of the specialty cakes we make is called, euphemistically, a "torso" cake (I think I've told you this before; if so, apologies. I'm too lazy to look). It's just that: a torso, from the neck to the pubes. You can get a female or a male; the male version features an erect penis (and, if you ask for it, ejaculate, in the form of white buttercream icing, dripping from it). Jefe said the females are more difficult to construct, because it's difficult to get the breasts the same size; I told him not to worry, that they often differ in size in real life. The underpinnings of the breasts are two doughnuts topped by cupcakes; the shaping is done with icing. In the nearly nine months I've been there, I've only seen one female, but we probably do two to five males a month. The underpinning of the penis is a churro; we keep a stash in the freezer, and then thaw them in the oven as needed. As Johnnie went to put one in the oven yesterday, the conversation went something like this:

Johnnie: For a white guy, you only need a half of a churro.
Brad: For a Mexican guy, you only need a quarter.
Jefe: You could use a mini cannoli shell [they're about three inches long].

Johnnie did one yesterday and one today, and they were both white guys (you can request white, black, hispanic, whatever); Johnnie went a little heavy on the red, such that both of them looked seriously sunburnt. It was kind of painful to see.

Otherwise, I'm tired. I finished a side project, and I've got another one on the table (literally; the RFP is spread out on the kitchen table), and I'm working Sunday and Monday at the bakery this week so I can take off next Friday and Saturday. Four whole days off in a row! I haven't had more than three days off since last December, and the only time I had three days it was to fly to my parents' anniversary party and back, so this is really the closest thing I'm getting to a vacation this year. But it's a good one: I'm going to see the last race of the Champ Car World Series, at Road America. I've seen two open-wheel races in person this season, one Champ Car race (the Milwaukee Mile) and one IRL race (last week in Joliet), but they were both ovals; this is a road race, and it sounds really interesting. As my friend put it, I'll get to see not just high speeds but braking--and going from one to the other. (Many road race courses are set in cities, which is a whole other thing.)

We're not going up there until early Saturday morning, so I'll have Friday to do errands--including, I hope, getting my hair trimmed. It hasn't been trimmed since February (!), which means it looks like weasels chew on the ends at night while I sleep. I haven't gone this long without a trim in many years; normally I got it done every three months or so. Partly it's timing: the woman who cuts my hair is off on Sundays and Mondays, and, hey, so am I! Partly it's money: the salon at which she works now isn't particularly cheap, and I overtip her wildly (which might explain why she did my hair for free for the wedding). Partly it's that my hair spends most of its time up (I use these, and I love them), and it's not like I have to look all that presentable most of my waking hours, so spending the money has seemed not that urgent. But since I'll actually have an opportunity, I'm going to take it, if she has an opening. If not, I'll do it in October, when I'll have off on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday so I can attend a bread class with one of the best bakers in the country, Jeff Hamelman. (Did I mention that Jefe offered to split the $825 cost of the class with me? Which I thought was nice of him.)

Meanwhile, Dave had a job interview Friday--cross your fingers for him, light a candle, say a prayer, leave an offering for Ganesh, whatever works for you--or, more to the point, for him.

Backwards and in High Heels

2006-09-14T05:41:00.000-05:00

Ann Richards, rest in peace. (She also said, according to the WaPo, "I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.' "

Sam, Frodo, Compassion, and Subservience

2006-09-11T22:14:00.000-05:00

I have a short list of posts I want to write (and have started writing in my head, while I laminate), but we'll settle for one tonight, even though I should be copyediting. I just finished this year's reading of LOTR; I have no idea why my brain decided I needed to read it now. Perhaps because I just finished Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and I wanted another epic? Who knows.

Anyway, this time through, I was thinking a lot about the relationship between Frodo and Sam. In the books, there's a lot of kissing and handholding, but there's no sexual undertone at all (at least not to me). Sam is subservient--he refers to, and calls, Frodo "Mister Frodo" on many occasions--and he basically acts as Frodo's manservant. (Also see the wikipedia discussion of Sam, especially the part about Sam being Frodo's batman.) The wikipedia site notes that Sam is one of the two bearers of the One Ring who gives up the Ring voluntarily (the other being Bilbo); Sam concludes that he doesn't really have the wherewithal to wield the Ring, he being a lowly and none-too-bright gardener and all. That is, it's almost as though Sam's class status helps him resist the Ring's power, even though he is in Mordor when he puts it on. So the class interpretation helps, and that part is pretty clear in the books.

In the movies, though, well, first off, the audience included a whole bunch of people who know nothing about the British class system of the early part of the last century, which means a lot of what occurred in the book would have been read as gay if it had been dropped verbatim into the movies. As it is, many people already read it that way. (There's apparently a bunch of fanfic about Frodo and Sam getting it on, but I REALLY don't want to go there.) And, really, it's pretty anachronistic. I have to admit that it grates on me, too, because of the subservience inherent in the system ("help help I'm being repressed!"), but I can't even imagine how it reads for someone who hasn't read the books and doesn't know anything about British history.

The other thing that occurred to me this time through--and it has occurred to me in most previous readings as well, though not in quite this way--is the notion of compassion. When Gandalf first tells Frodo about the Ring and about Gollum, Frodo says that Bilbo should have killed Gollum when he had the chance. Gandalf says that many who deserve to live are dead, and until Frodo can confer life on those who deserve to live, he shouldn't be so quick to deal out death, even when some being appears to deserve death. This theme resonates through the whole saga, in ways I hadn't considered until this reading, even though Gandalf's words have remained with me since the first time I read them, which would have been in about 1974 (thank you Jeff Innes). In brief, Frodo chooses not to kill Gollum when he has the chance, in part because of Gandalf's words, but also because, upon seeing Gollum, Frodo experiences pity and compassion for the creature. Sam is less convinced, and he maintains his skepticism through nearly a thousand pages; he stays his hand in large part because Frodo insists on it.

But late in the game, Sam, too, experiences the compassion that keeps him from killing Gollum outright. The wikipedia site suggests--correctly, I think--that, in part because Sam has borne the Ring, however briefly, he can see better what Gollum's long, miserable life has been like. That is, however briefly, and under whatever different circumstances, Sam has walked in Gollum's shoes and recognizes the ways that he and Gollum are similar. As soon as you recognize your own humanity, and the humanity (or worth) of another being, I don't believe you can kill that other being easily. I have no direct experience of war, and the closest I have come to being besieged is being female in this society (and that is not trivial), so I don't know firsthand what that experience is like. I suspect it's one of the results of Tolkien's own experiences of war, but that's just a guess on my part.

The notion of compassion continues to resonate, even when the hobbits get back to the Shire. When it becomes clear that they're going to have to fight, Frodo very much wants there to be no killing, especially not of hobbits, it's true, but he'd really prefer that there be no killing at all. An interesting response, I'd say, from a being who was in part responsible for ending the Evil of his time, especially given Tolkien's own experience, and quite a contrast to the screeching of the vengeance-obsessed (but, in general, military-experience-"deprived") right wing in this country.

The Theater Comes to Town

2006-09-02T16:20:00.000-05:00

All KINDS of drama at the bakery . . . Jefe was gone this week, getting daughter off to college; he got back yesterday. Brad was an even bigger pain in the ass than usual, especially Thursday and Friday. He's constantly breaking somebody's balls, or trying to do so, and, since he can't actually fire the Hispanic guys, they just ignore him, though they bug him in smaller ways, or, more to the point, they just . . . aren't nice to him. And I bug him, because I try to be nice to the other guys, and they like me well enough (especially since they've figured out that Brad gets on my nerves, too, but back to that in a minute). I do whatever he tells me to do, willingly; I even get along with him, because he's not a bad guy--mostly, he's young, insecure, and without the backup of Jefe.

So he's gone today, off on vacation, and I say to Phil, "Hey, where's the professor?" And he and I get into a long conversation about Brad, despite Phil's relatively minimal English and my nonexistent Spanish. Here's a sample for you: I make the cinnamon raisin croissants by laying the rolled-out piece on the table, smearing it with cinnamon pastry cream and rum-soaked raisins, rolling it up (like a big jelly roll), and cutting slices. The very ends are ragged and unusable--too small to sell, and, because of the cinnamon, they can't be thrown back into the next batch of dough like I do with the ends from the other types of croissants. Artie likes these end pieces, so I throw them in the freezer and, when I have room on a pan, throw some on a pan and label it "lunch." It's no money out of Jefe's pocket, it's no skin off anyone's nose, and Artie likes them, so why the fuck not. Yesterday, Artie tells me that someone threw out the lunch pieces I'd put out Thursday night, he didn't know who, but they were right on top so he retrieved them. Today, Phil tells me that Brad's the one who threw them out, which, I'm sorry, is just petty and childish. Plus, Brad is constantly bitching about Artie, how he has it so easy and how he doesn't work very hard, and so on. Now, Jefe told me months ago that Artie "knows what he knows," i.e., he's limited, but so what? It doesn't bother Jefe, so why should it bother Brad? I pissed off Brad this week in another way regarding Artie--he told Artie to help me, Artie asked if I needed help, and I said no, because I didn't. My feeling is, unless it's late or I have a lot to do, I'll do my work, they'll do theirs, we'll lend each other a hand when needed, but otherwise, you get done at 2:00 today, 4:00 tomorrow, whatever. Brad has this notion that everyone should leave together or something, mostly because it gives him yet another opportunity to break Artie's balls. I dislike being put in the middle of it.

Or also with the cinnamon raisin croissants. Jefe came back from Boston with this thing they do with them. We have these bigger-than-muffin tins, with straight (rather than angled) sides. I spray some baking spray, glob some honey mixed with glucose, sprinkle with brown sugar, throw in some pecans, and, finally, put in a cinnamon raisin croissant, upside down. When they come out, oh, baby, they're gorgeous and sticky and really good. We've been selling them for less than two months, and people are already coming in and asking for them--we sold 18 today before noon (and had someone ask for another half-dozen after they were gone). So on Wednesday Brad says, don't use the cinnamon raisin croissants, that's too expensive, use the cinnamon rolls instead (which Artie makes, and, thus, I think, is another way to make Artie work more). I tried it, they were okay, but it's a different product, and the customers like the one we're making. I brought it up to Jefe yesterday, and he said Brad had mentioned it, and I said, you could easily get more for these--people are requesting them, fer chrissakes, don't change a successful product! So he says okay, we'll raise the price and see what happens, and he seemed to think that was a fine approach. It annoyed me, though: if Jefe doesn't think it's too expensive, then who the fuck is Brad to go on about it?

Meanwhile, yesterday was supposed to be pay day, but the checks were late; no biggie. Today, they're supposed to be there by 10 but aren't. Turns out, on Thursday Brad told Johnnie to make some German chocolate icing, Johnnie told Brad it wasn't his job; Brad was bitching about it the other day. So, apparently, Brad doesn't do the payroll, because "it's not his job." Or some such shit. Jefe told me that part of it, and then I heard a long conversation with Jefe, Artie, and Johnnie (and maybe Phil?), but it was mostly in Spanish and no one tried to include me, so I just stayed out of it. When Jefe brought it up to me before that, I said, well, nothing for nothing, and just between you and me, but Brad is constantly breaking these guys' balls, and he keeps trying to be the boss, and they're having none of it. Jefe completely agreed with me--it even seemed that he was kind of pleased with my recognition of the situation. Really, everything just goes more smoothly when Brad's not around. I realize that he does a lot of the administrative shit, and they don't necessarily see or appreciate that, but he's just . . . tiring. I made pizza today--after asking Jefe if it was okay with him--and Phil brought in a watermelon to share--looks like the spirit is spreading. And Phil offered to help with the croissants, too, though I didn't need it today. It's not just that I'm "nice" to them, or that I make pizza, or whatever; Brad just hasn't figured out how to get along. He thinks the bakery is a fine-dining kitchen, where a chef can be a prima donna. Sorry, dude, that ain't here.

One last thing: I have to tell you, today's croissants were things of beauty, Lamination, baby! Seriously; I can usually find something to nitpick about my work, but these were fucking gorgeous.

Okay, enough procrastination. Time to edit.

Buying the Girliness

2006-08-28T06:12:00.000-05:00

Twisty is recovering from various surgeries (having all her woman-parts removed as a cancer-recurrence-prevention mechanism and having her ankle repaired), and she's in fine form with this post. That eyebrow thing about which I was bitching? Nothing compared to a--wait for it--sports corset. The comments are entertaining, too, especially the ones that point out that girliness and femininity are things that you buy at the mall and the one that coins the term "tanorexic," which word immediately made me think of my sister-in-law. She's such a bundle of contradictions: she's almost exactly ten years younger than I am, but, thanks to her tanning addiction, her skin makes her look at least ten years older. She got some sports scholarships for college (thanks to Title IX), and she now teaches Pilates and spinning classes at the local gym; she's in spectacular shape; and she got into mountain bike racing with my brother before my nephews came along. She doesn't wear a lot of girly crap; you're more likely to find her in a t-shirt, shorts, and a baseball cap, plus a knee brace, because she has destroyed one knee and is working on the other. On the other hand, when I say "tanning addiction," I am so not kidding, as anyone who's met her can testify. It's also not clear what color her hair really is, as it always has big blond stripes; I think it's actually dark brown, but I've never seen her without the streaking thing.

Ah, femininity; so much work, so much expense, just to prove you're really female. I've always thought it would just be cheaper to drop trou if someone really has doubts, but, of course, it's not femaleness that's in question, but femininity, which is a whole other thing.

23

2006-08-27T07:01:00.000-05:00

My sister died 23 years ago today, at the age of 23, which means that she's been dead for about as long as she was alive. I find that so hard to believe, in some ways. One of the hardest things is that she has become less real, in a way. How she actually was, not to mention the pain of losing her, neither of those things has really faded much at all. But if she hadn't died, she'd be 46 years old, and I can't imagine what she would have done with those 23 years. I can make up stories, based on what I know of her first 23 years, but that's all they are: stories. Would she have married? Had children? Run a company? Worked for the World Bank? There's no way to know. If you had told me 23 years ago that I would, in the next two-plus decades, get a doctorate, go to pastry school, be a stepmother (however briefly) but not a mother, be working in a bakery making croissants for $9/hour as I approached my 50th birthday, earn part of my living as a writer and editor . . . some of those things might have surprised me, others not so much. But I couldn't even predict what I was going to do, so predicting what someone else would have done is an even more difficult task.

What that means is that she steadily fades into the mists, frozen in the pictures I have of her--as a blond, smiling kid, in our old house (from which we moved when I was 11), eating cinnamon toast cut into scribbles; standing in the snow at that house, with me; standing with my mother, brother, and me, at the back of one of our station wagons, while on vacation; as a high school gymnast; as a sorority girl; as she was in the country she was in in the months before she died. Sometimes I can hear the sound of her laughter--making her laugh was one of my talents, and I still miss the stupid private jokes we had. I miss the fact that, if she were alive, I could call her today and mention one or another of them and get a laugh out of her, especially if I invented some wacko story around it. I wonder what it would have been like to have been able to discuss my life with her these past 23 years, to hear what she had to say.

Obviously, a death like this changes the whole dynamics of the family in which it occurs. In my family, it ultimately helped heal the breach between my brother and me over my nephews' non-attendance at my wedding. I was hurt and upset, but you know what? My brother and I have been there for each other through a whole lot of bullshit, and he continues to be there for me. It also made my mother and me somewhat more tolerant of each other; I forgave her a lot more, and worked very hard to build and maintain a relationship with her, especially as it seems that everything I do is incomprehensible to her and mostly warrants her disapproval and annoyance, unless it's something about which she can brag. (Yes, I know, at heart she's worried about me and wants me to be happy, but she wants me to be happy in ways that she approves, rather in the ways that actually make me happy.) It saddens me that she's still got a bug up her ass about our recent interactions--when I called last weekend, she talked to me for a minute or so, asked if I wanted to talk to my dad, he was nearly asleep, so that didn't last long, and the whole conversation, from the time I dialed the phone until we hung up, lasted four minutes and fourteen seconds. I suspect a breach like this one would have occurred much sooner if my sister hadn't died, because I run out of patience, eventually, with this kind of behavior.

For a number of years, I had dreams about my sister, and, while I liked them in the beginning--it was like she was visiting me--I've come to dread them, because they're all the same. That is, I dream that she's not really dead, that she's been alive all these years. Over the years, my brain has begun to realize, even in the dream, that it IS a dream, which pretty much turns it into a nightmare; in the early years, the waking up was the nightmare. I haven't had one in a very long time, and that's fine with me; I recognize that I likely have them because I never saw her dead, so there's always been a certain unreality about it for me. It would be nice if I could figure out a way to dream about her that was less painful, because that would be more like the visits--but the fact that I can't imagine what her life would have been like these past 23 years makes that even more fanciful on my part.

So here's to my sister, and whatever life she would have lived.

The Professor

2006-08-23T22:57:00.000-05:00

Brad was off yesterday and today, and Artie is in Mexico for a relative's funeral. Everyone was a little busier, filling in for Artie (and, yesterday, I had no help w/ the croissants), but it wasn't that big a deal. Today, though, I'm across the work table from Phil, and I say, "No Professor [which is what the Hispanic guys call Brad, if I haven't mentioned that before] today?" And he smiles and says, "Yes, everything's easy today." Last week Phil intimated, on Brad's day off, that it was "quieter," and he preferred it that way, and wondered if I did, too, but I wasn't sure whether he was referring to Brad or to the fact that Miami wasn't around any more. And Saturday, Phil asked me if I needed help before he left--without Brad prompting him to do so. (I said no, because I was nearly done.) Also on Saturday, I ended up giving Artie a hand before I left, even though I really wanted to get out of there; he was there alone, finishing up something, and he's always there at the end of the line for the croissants, so I was happy to lend a hand.

I can't tell whether I've really managed to create a different atmosphere or not. Brad constantly bitches about the Hispanic guys--in front of them, no less, under the assumption they don't understand him--and he'll even give them shit in front of everyone else. What he doesn't realize is that, even though he'll also lend a hand, at least to Phil, his general approach isn't winning him any friends. He hasn't figured out that, to them, they've been there longer than he has, and they'll be there after he leaves, and Jefe is fine with what they do, so . . . What I've been trying to do is just lend a hand whenever--today I helped Phil shape some dough right before I left, instead of just leaving. Little by little, I seem to be getting some of that back to me. Frankly, I'd probably do it anyway, at least for awhile, but it's interesting to see whether it ripples. I suspect the pizza helps, too--though Jefe wants a ham this week instead of more pizza. Frankly, I don't care--I just want to prod enough to get lunch every Saturday, and, really, not even because I have to have lunch or something. I just think it's a nice thing to do, it boosts morale, and everyone realizes he's the one who's paying for it, even if it's me or Brad who's doing the work.

And that's another thing: Brad complained bitterly how no one thanked him for making the pizza the week he made it. He hasn't figured out that you just . . . give those things. Though, when I thanked him as he left, Phil, who was standing next to me, chimed in. Brad hasn't figured out just how much he irritates these guys, even as they realize he's unavoidable, a condition of work, if you will--and he doesn't care, or, more to the point, he SAYS he doesn't care, even though it's clear he does. Mostly? He's young.

Can I help you?

2006-08-18T19:59:00.000-05:00

In her comment to the last post, Lisa Marie brings up an interesting aspect that I neglected to mention: people in service positions do not have much choice about being Nice to people who speak with them. I hadn't thought much about that in this context, but I realize it's relevant, and I realize that, when I talk to someone working behind a counter, for example, I leave it up to him or her about how chatty he or she wants to be. I try to be pleasant, and I'll offer an opening gambit, perhaps, but my sense (in part from having worked such jobs) is that chattiness can (a) intrude on his or her space, i.e., not be particularly welcome right this minute, and (b) slow the person down in terms of taking care of all of the people behind me, i.e., doing the job for which the person is being paid. On the other hand, I do remember my pleases and thank yous, which goes much farther than you'd think, except that you might remember that so many people don't, in fact, remember please and thank you, especially when dealing with The Help.

When I've had service positions, I found that the day went faster, in general, if I tried to engage the customers in some way--not necessarily become BFF or something, but just . . . connect. Some people are in a hurry; some don't really need more than that one thing; some don't talk to The Help. A surprising number of people respond, though, which I found interesting. The best version of that: 20 years ago, I was trying to earn extra money the summer before I left for grad school, so, in addition to my full time job, I worked part time at a gourmet food store. Because of the hours I worked, I often dealt with people who were grabbing what was basically gourmet take-out from the prepared-foods section of our store (we made a lot of stuff in the upstairs kitchen, though I had no hand in the making). If someone didn't know quite what s/he wanted, I'd tried to tell them about what we had, offer samples, etc.; I'd also ask people what they had for lunch, especially if it was clear that someone was grabbing something for dinner. I was doing my usual thing one night with some guy, while one of the owners/bosses was there; I helped the guy figure out what to get, and moved on to the next customer. A few minutes later, the guy is back at my counter: he'd grabbed a bouquet of flowers while checking out at the register, and he came back to give them to me--in front of the boss, no less. He wasn't even hitting on me, and I never saw him again.

What to Wear

2006-08-17T18:59:00.000-05:00

One thing I think I've noticed as I traipse to and fro wearing my chef clothes (i.e., black-and-white-checked baggy pants and a white jacket with the bakery's logo and name, and my name, embroidered over the pocket on the left front side) is that men who are dressed in working class attire (e.g., construction workers and delivery guys) are much more likely to say hello then they used to be when I wore Office Clothes. Believe me when I tell you that I am not all that and a bag of chips, and also believe me when I tell you that the chef outfit does nothing for me (everything really is quite baggy), so it's not like I'm suddenly mondo attractive--plus, I pretty much always have some version of Bakery Hair.

Now, I tended, and tend, to greet a person pleasantly if I happen to catch his eye--nothing big or flirty, and I get seriously irritated if someone instructs me to smile, but a "howrya doon" or a nod? Hey, no problem. And I always said hello to workmen who came into my office or the general office space, maybe some polite chitchat. I came to realize that this isn't necessarily usual, though: I remember an electrician at the university with whom I used to chat told me that he'd be in someone's office to fix something, the person might even chat a bit, and then he'd run into the person a few minutes later and they'd just not even see him. He had bright red hair, so literally not seeing him seemed unlikely--it was more likely that professors and office people just ignored someone in maintenance-guy clothing, classified him, by his clothing, as someone they didn't know. I think what I'm experiencing is kind of the inverse of that, i.e., construction workers, letter carriers, and the like are more likely to say hello to someone who is dressed in working-person clothing. In any case, it's fascinating to me how people interact on the street, and this is just another nugget in that collection.

In other how-do-you-look news, apparently women are growing eyebrows. Of course, some of us never stopped growing them, and I couldn't tell you the last time I plucked my eyebrows. I don't think I ever plucked them with any regularity, even in high school (which is also the last time I shaved my legs). Twisty's influence notwithstanding, I often hesitate to make the full-on argument that many of the fashion instructions are merely the patriarchy's way of forcing women to spend inordinate amounts of time on their appearance--and if you're spending hours each day on your appearance (or risking the disapproval of the people around you), well, those are hours you don't spend on challenging the patriarchy. Quite the contrary: you're actually spending hours reinforcing the patriarchy. I also generally avoid making the argument that Germaine Greer made a zillion years ago, that hairlessness in women (except for the hair on their heads) makes them look pre-pubertal, and, therefore, Safe and less threatening. They're childlike--because body hair, pubic hair, and underarm hair are all signifiers of adulthood.

It's not that I don't believe those two things; I DO believe them. It's more that my audience rarely wants any part of either argument, and I end up hearing about how Makeup Is Fun (hey, I own, and, occasionally, use it, the same way I use other bits of costume) and shaving this or that body part doesn't take THAT much time, plus it's nice and smooth and they like it and so on. (Do not even get me started on the women who are willing to have their pubic hair ripped out by the roots. That is insane, and I want no part of it whatsoever.)

But the article about eyebrows, well, it makes my argument for me. First off, read the instructions for how you (if you're a woman) are supposed to "do" your eyebrows. Imagine how much time that takes, every fucking day. And, given who's going to be obeying these instructions, this is on top of all of the other daily grooming--hair, makeup, shaving, etc.--all of which, I'm guessing, could easily take an hour. (Of course, the men who date these women then get to make demeaning remarks about "how much time it takes her to get ready"--even as they'd spurn her if she, say, stopped shaving her legs and wearing makeup.) The other thing, though--all this attention to the EYEBROWS?? If that isn't an enforced distraction, I don't know what would qualify.

It Just Doesn't Matter*

2006-08-14T08:27:00.000-05:00

Meatball Pizza

Unusual and uncompromising.
You're usually the first to discover a new trend.
You appreciate a good meal and good company.
You're an interesting blend of traditional and modern.

What's Your Pizza Personality?

Yes, I made pizza again Saturday--Phil even asked me on Friday if I was going to do it, presumably because he wouldn't bring lunch if I said yes. Saturday night I shlepped (and I do mean shlepped--it took me nearly two hours to get there) to a handball party, at which I stayed maybe an hour and at which I was repeatedly asked about Dave. I didn't lie to those guys, because I love them and I've known them forever and I know they love me, too, but I was only telling about four of them the story, and an abbreviated version at that. The amused part of me (which was only a very small part, I must admit) watched as the wives of the four came into the kitchen; they came over to give me a hug and say hi, and most commented on how well marriage was treating me, how great I looked, how marriage must be agreeing with me, etc. I could see their husbands wishing they could telepathically send a hand-slash-across-the-throat signal.

I scored a ride home, so I didn't have as much of a shlep (and it turns out that one of my escorts has made a living for 20 years as a freelance editor and writer, mostly of medical texts, so that was interesting). Once I got here, I realized how much I'd been dreading that set of conversations; next will be the extended family, I suppose. It's just sad--and I'm sure Dave is going through a version of it, and, odd though it may sound, I feel sad on his behalf, too, even when he manages to throw digs at me into his various communiques.

Sunday morning I woke up at my usual time (4:30 or thereabouts) and realized I wasn't going back to sleep, so I made a cup of tea and one of my famous lists and started doing chores. I hate cleaning, but I do like having cleaned (luckily, I recognize that the former is necessary for the latter). Nevertheless, by working assiduously, I managed to get nearly everything done from Sunday's list, and the things that got moved to today will be accomplishable (viz., laundry, which I never do on Sunday, because on Monday there's never a line; making lemon meringue pies/tarts with the various leftover bits I have in the fridge, except I need to get eggs before I do that; finishing some copyediting, which I've already done; and calling my dentist, because I think I have a cavity, while hoping the problem can be solved for less than a zillion bucks). Getting all that crap done definitely made the subsequent hanging out with a friend better, in that I didn't have undone chores sitting on my shoulder bugging me.

I'm supposed to go to a demonstration of laminated doughs this evening, being given by the chef who found me my job and who has been most supportive of me. We're trying to figure out what I should (and can) do next. I'm pretty much insisting on something that has a regular schedule--regular in the sense of the same days off each week, as well as regular in the sense of daytime hours--because side work requires that kind of predictability, and the side work is a necessity right now. Plus, I want to be able to have some kind of life and see my friends, and middle-of-the-night schedules really don't permit that. Yeah, I know I'm being picky, but that's always been my problem. That is, I want to do work that I like, and I want to have a life outside of work that I like, as well. I realize there are always compromises, and I also realize (although my mother does not seem to) that you can't always find the perfect situation, i.e., a fabulous, high-paying job that's enjoyable and fulfilling and provides frequent holidays and abundant vacation days.

What that means, of course, is that I end up trying to balance an equation with way too many variables in it. Do I want to be a baker? Yes--as long as I can have a reasonable life outside of work. Am I willing to do other work on the side? Sure--for now, anyway. Would I be willing to give up the baking? Maybe--as long as I like the work a lot and make a bunch of money at it ("bunch" being relative here). Do I want to own my own business? Maybe--as long as I can have that reasonable life, or something close to it, or if I love the work a whole big bunch. What do I not want to do? Work late (rather than early) hours; get paid by the shift rather than by the hour (in the food industry, that path means you get paid even worse--you get paid for an eight-hour shift and work ten or twelve hours); plate desserts. What do I want to do that I'm not doing now? Experiment more, make some more/different stuff, maybe be in charge of more, maybe even make a little more money--but I either have to make enough more money and get health insurance such that I don't need the work on the side, or I have to have the regular hours and days that allow me to continue the side work.

The thing that makes it difficult, of course, is that so many of the bits are unknowns. What kind of baking job can I find? What kind of non-baking job can I find? Those are the two big ones, and without knowing the answers, it's like being on "Let's Make a Deal" and having to pick a door. Fab vacation in the southwest? Or a donkey? So when I ask myself (or someone asks me) what I'm going to do next, or what I want to do next, well, what are my choices? Figuring out what they are, realistically, is the current project, I guess, and it's tiring.

Plus, my brain has decided that I need to write another book (I say "another," even though my dissertation was never published, because said disssertation was, in fact, a book-length manuscript). I don't know what's going to happen with that, whether I can really commit to it, but I've definitely started some of the initial bits. It would be easier if I could write fiction, because then I wouldn't have to do quite so much of that time-consuming research and it would be easier to get it published if I finish it, but fiction has never really been my strong suit. So, really, another part of this equation, if I'm serious about trying to write this thing, I know from previous experience that I write better and more when my day job does not involve quite so much writing.

*Am I the only person who's seen "Meatballs" and liked it and remembered that line fondly?

Quickie

2006-08-10T05:25:00.000-05:00

Just to say that my mother called on on Monday to say she was sending me a check--and I asked her not to do that, and quietly told her I didn't like the strings she attached to money and that I'd work something out. Rather than, for example, apologizing for the things she'd said on Sunday, she hung up on me, so I'm not sure what's going to happen next.

In the comments to the last post, someone asked about my dad. Frankly, he'd be somewhat appalled; he's pretty unconditional in his support of me and always has been. My mom, not so much; much as she loves me, I really don't do much of anything the way she thinks I should. But I'm not putting my father in the middle of it, either. As for the he-earned-it part, interestingly enough, my dad has never looked at it as "his" money; he's much more of a feminist than my mother. That, however, is a subject for a longer post, one I don't have time to write right now.

I worked more than 10 hours yesterday--Jefe needed help at the end of the day putting green icing squiggles on wedding cake cookies. Overtime, baby!

Well, THAT didn't work out so well.

2006-08-06T19:19:00.000-05:00

I'd talked to my mother a few weeks ago about health insurance, but nothing really specific. Today I suggested that my parents do what they did with my brother, when he was replacing the newspaper-and-toothpicks addition on his house with, you know, actual walls and insulation and the like. That is, rather than loan him the money, they gave it to him and basically deducted it from his eventual inheritance.

My mother's response? "No, I don't think we want to do that," i.e., give me money to pay for my health insurance, because that's "just blowing money away." They don't want to give me money for that. Well, I asked, what WOULD you give me money to do? Move from this city, is her answer. To go where? To do what? I asked. In other words, I asked, you want me to leave all my friends, my life? "If someone offered you money to move to San Francisco, would you want to do that?" I asked. No, she wouldn't. Then why expect me to do that? What job is it I'm supposed to be finding that I'm not finding? "How's the weather in your city?"

Not really the supportive response for which I was hoping, to put it mildly, but there's not much I can do about it. I'm surely not moving to their town--what the fuck would I do there? When I ask her what jobs she seems to think I can find that I'm not finding, she says she doesn't want to argue about it and changes the subject. I pointed out that she's never actually searched for a job, but she's incapable of thinking outside her own box. I know that about her, and I've been dealing with that for my whole life--mostly by trying to make my life more accessible and understandable to her--but my tactics don't always work.

My mother has tried this tactic before, too, i.e., tried to control my life with money, and it didn't work out so well then, either, at least not for her. I have no patience for this.

Of course, I don't really know what I'm going to do--it's not like I can make some immediate change that's going to resolve everything. Even if I looked for and found a job outside of baking, it's not like that's going to happen instantaneously.

Meanwhile, I spent all my grocery money for the month yesterday--on groceries. J took me to the store so I could stock up on things that are too heavy to shlep on the el, and I can supplement as needed with bits from the local grocery.

Speaking of food, I have to eat some. Except for yoga this morning, I've been sitting here in front of the computer all day, hacking away, and it's time for some nourishment.

Later: I should add that it's not that I think my parents "should" give me money--it's theirs, and they can do as they please with it. What annoys the everloving shit out of me is my mother's attempt to manipulate me with it. It's also depressing how little she understands of my life, even after all these years, but that's a different complaint, and a different feeling, for that matter.

A Fungus Among Us

2006-08-04T21:53:00.000-05:00

On my arm, anyway; either that, or some kind of dermatitis. Last time I got something like this (nearly ten years ago) I cleared it up with nightly applications of olive oil plus tea tree oil. Given the amount of crap I have my hands in daily, it's not that surprising. Also, I can tell that the past six months or so have worn on me, in subtle ways; I'm out of balance. My fibroids are growing/have grown again (apparently my uterus is the size it would be if I were 14 weeks pregnant), I rarely sleep through the night (though I often, though not always, go back to sleep quickly when I wake up), lots of little things. I've been doing some work on the side, too, and I'll have to spend the weekend holed up in front of the computer, but I'm grateful for the work; I don't make enough at the bakery to make ends meet.

Speaking of the bakery, we have a guest again, some guy from Miami who wanted to work with Jefe for a month. He was with us for about a week, then had a family emergency, and he's back this week. The first day, he was standing across the table from me, next to Brad, when I said something to Brad about what's been going on in my life this past year, basically listing everything; kind of a lot of information in front of a complete stranger, but I was talking to Brad. Nevertheless, Ken piped up by saying, "I'm from Miami." It was the most bizarre non sequitur I'd heard in awhile, so I thought maybe I'd imagined it. Later, Brad ran into me downstairs as I put croissants onto sheet pans, and he said, "Did he say 'I'm from Miami'?" And we both just cracked up. Every once in awhile, one of us will say to the other, as an aside, "I'm from Miami."

Today, though, I thought I'd smack Ken upside the head. He NEVER STOPS TALKING. The bakery is loud enough, what with mixers, dough sheeters, timers, the proof box, the pan washer, etc., so to have someone chattering, non-stop, on top of it, well, it was a test of my patience, such as it is. I'm serious--he never shuts up. Everyone has commented on it, too, so I know it's not just me. It was especially annoying today, because I was just feeling sad. I suspected there might be hormonal involvement as well (and I think I'm right about that), but my experience is that hormonal swings tend to amplify what's already there rather than create something that's not.

Plus, Friday is a pain: Phil gets his stuff out of the downstairs freezer mid-morning (i.e., by 8:30 or so), which permits me to put in all of the croissants except the plain ones (approximately 23 dozen chocolate, 12 dozen cinnamon raisin, 4 dozen ham and cheese [we don't sell those at the market, so it's just for the store and wholesale orders], and 13 dozen almond) into cabinets and shove the cabinets into the freezer. Later, after the Festival of Plain Croissants, I have to find room for 42 dozen plain croissants and another 18 cinnamon raisin that have been turned into "morning buns" (which means we put them in big muffin tins, upside down, on top of a splotch of honey plus glucose, a generous handful of brown sugar, and, for some of them, pecans, and after they're baked they're turned upside right and they're all brown and lovely and gooey)--this requires two and a half additional racks, except by now the walk-in refrigerator upstairs is stuffed to the gills. There's no room to move, and everyone is annoyed every time he or she walks into the walk-in to find something. Eh; whatever. My systematic approaches to these things have made it as pain-free as it can get, and you just gotta get through the rest of it.

I realized lately that I have made no comments whatsoever on the various political situations abounding, which depresses me (that I'm not writing about important shit, but instead am meandering on about meaningless crap). Partly, I think, I don't have the energy to head to the rant zone, and these issues would send me there rather quickly. Second, there are plenty of other people doing a fine job--a much finer job than I would do. Not that this should make me feel any better, but I can't even bring myself to read the newspaper these days.

Dirty Laundry

2006-08-02T21:26:00.000-05:00

Because in this heat, in a bakery, all you do is sweat. That's not entirely true, in that you can find well-timed reasons to visit the walk-in refrigerator, the walk-in freezer, the (air-conditioned) cake decorating room, and Jefe's office, but for the part where you're working with dough, butter, etc., yeah: Sweat. I did manage to spend some time in Jefe's office, setting up his worksheets for his new fiscal year, however, and I managed to get out of there by 3:00 today, but that just meant coming home to a hot apartment--at least I can take off my clothes here.

Meanwhile, the local phone company lost some of my business today. I still have a land line, and I've had the same basic plan for years; my monthly bill was somewhere around $18. When I moved, I said I want the same plan. Little did I know that (a) I would be more than 15 miles away from J, and (b) I had a "local toll" portion of the program--about which I knew nothing, because I never made calls more than 15 miles from where I was living, unless they were long-distance calls, in which case Working Assets was my provider--which cost 16 cents PER MINUTE. Yes, you read that correctly. I got my phone bill yesterday and, instead of $20, they want $92. And five cents. Which they'll get, because it was, in fact, my plan, but I immediately called Working Assets and said, hey, whaddya charge for local toll calls? Turns out it's (a) way less than 16 cents per minute and (b) less than the local phone company's packages, too. I'm there!

I actually feel sorry for the people who work for the company (which I'm refusing to name). When I set up my local service, the first repair guy said he couldn't do it, there was a problem in the building, blah, blah, blah. When I tried to call about it (after the building's repair person couldn't do it), I got stuck in Automated System Hell. What a worthless piece of shit! By the time I hung up, I was ready to bash someone, despite the no-hitting rule. I called back and just pressed 0 until I got a person, and I made sure to tell her how shitty the automated system was. She (not surprisingly) already knew this, and said that she got that complaint all the damned time, but the company wasn't interested. When Repair Guy 2 came out, he fixed the problem promptly, said the first guy should have done it, and said the same thing when I complained about the automated repair thing. The company's employees (a) (since I'm on an enumerative roll here) know the system is a piece of shit, and (b) communicate it regularly to their managers, etc., but, of course, the automated system (c) makes it more difficult to actually get help (I'm sure some people just give up) and (d) allows them to cut people, which makes some MBA dweeb look good because he cut the bottom line. Never mind that they just lost a chunk of my business--that's on somebody else's budget sheet!

Working Assets, on the other hand, actually does a great job, and their prices are reasonable--and I enjoyed being able to tell the person at Stupid Phone Company that the package they had to offer was more expensive than the one to which I had just switched. I also sympathized with her--I can't imagine it's her ideal job--and told her so, because beating up on her wasn't particularly satisfying. She's not the one with the MBA.

Evaluation

2006-08-01T05:34:00.000-05:00

Suddenly all that Daniel had observed of Mr. Threader rearranged, in his mind, into a novel, strange, but perfectly coherent picture; it was like watching a pile of rubble spontaneously assemble itself into a marble statue.
--Neal Stephenson, "The System of the World"

It was 100 outside, yesterday, at least according to my inside/outside thermometer; right now (at 5:30 am) it's 87, and the sun's not up yet. Inside it's a balmy 84. Various friends are taunting me with my recent declaration that I like hot weather. Generally speaking, I don't mind it as much as some people do, perhaps because I haven't had air conditioning in my home since about 1978 when I last lived with my parents. You just get used to it, more or less. I have to admit that working in a bakery isn't the way to go in this weather, though; it's just brutal. I also have to admit that I need the occasional foray into air-conditioned (or, at least, cooler) space.

I stopped by the YMCA today to make sure theyhad cancelled our membership--which affected me more than I would have predicted. I flashed back to when we joined, so Dave would have some place to take the Kid swimming and a place to work out himself. I didn't use it much, but didn't really expect to--I played handball elsewhere, and did yoga elsewhere, but I wanted Dave and the Kid to have a place to play, too. Since I couldn't tell you the last time Dave and the Kid went swimming, and since they haven't gone regularly (e.g., twice in a month) in well over a year, and since Dave is unemployed, it seemed foolish to continue paying for a membership. I may rejoin at the Y near the bakery (if I ever get around to actually playing handball there), but the point is that it felt like a tie was being cut.

Most of the time I just go along, doing what's in front of me, figuring out some medium-range and short-range things, blah, blah, blah, but every once in awhile I look up and wonder what the fuck happened. The quote above resonated with me when I read it last week, because anything like this requires some (re)evaluation, and I have plenty of time and space to do that. I still don't know exactly what happened or why, but at least I've been getting some insight on my end of it.

Middle of Nowhere Calling

2006-07-28T22:24:00.000-05:00

So mom sends me a job posting today, for a pharmaceutical company. The job is about 40 miles from where my parents and brother live--meaning it's way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, meaning I could live in the middle of nowhere or have a hellish commute by car every day from a very small city. I'd have to buy a car either way, because there ain't no public transportation in that part of the world. And I'd have to move, which would be a few grand, too.

I'm trying to see how this would be a good idea, especially since it's a job I'd hate (it would be similar to my previous position, and I've told my mother I'd rather slit my wrists than do that job any more). It would be moving away from all my friends and support networks (which my mother cannot seem to recognize, because they're not in the form of Husband and Children), moving from a large, active city to a small town, and incurring a bunch more debt (car payments) for an item I don't really want to own anyway. And I doubt it pays very much, though, because it's in marketing, it might.

The whole thing just depresses me, if you want to know. I realize that the situation is pretty much outside my mother's ability to comprehend, which makes it both more and less difficult. I'll just hope she doesn't mention it and fake my way through it if she does.

In other news, no pizza this week--because Brad has decided to roast a couple of chickens tomorrow, with lemon and garlic and rosemary. I don't know why, exactly, except that I think he was kind of inspired by my pizza escapades. It's interesting to see how the kitchen operates and to try to figure out how I'm influencing the dynamic (though I don't know that we can really figure that out).

A Science Fiction Tap Dance Opera

2006-07-27T17:29:00.000-05:00

Yes, you read that correctly. It's from a poster across the street from the bakery, and, apparently this . . . theatrical production actually exists. It is supposedly based on the music of David Bowie (which, hey, I loved me some Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane in my day), but I am trying to figure out, without breaking my brain too much, just why someone would think that combining science fiction, David Bowie, tap dancing, and opera would be a good thing. And aren't there maybe laws against it? If it were a food, it would be, oh, mango bran beef jerky with tomato sauce, over mesclun greens. Or something.

Fargo, Revisited

2006-07-23T21:01:00.000-05:00

There's more to life than a little money. Don't you know that?

"Fargo" was on AMC last night, and I had it on, not least because I really like that movie. In general, I don't usually like the Coen brothers' productions--I HATED "Barton Fink"--but "Fargo" is nearly perfect. The above quote sums up the whole movie.

Flip side, though--and, because it's me, you knew there was one; what else could I do with that undergraduate degree in philosophy?--there is some minimum. I read an interchange today where someone was bitching about not having enough money . . . and she was paying $7,000/month in rent, $2,000/month for eating out, etc. I can't imagine that; I have no idea what position one must be in, or the conditions under which one must have lived one's whole life, to say that with a straight face, not least because she spends in two months what I'll earn this year.

But the ensuing discussion did make me remember what I hate about the situation I'm in now: I constantly think about money. Not fantasies about having more, not resentment of people who have more, but a constant accounting: I have this much coming in; I have to pay that bill; don't forget to leave some wiggle room for the other thing; how extravagant can I be at the grocery store this week. For about two or three years in there, I didn't have to account for every fucking penny, or even every dollar, really. I didn't change all that much about my life, except I went out to dinner a little more and paid less attention to the prices when I did so, and I paid much less attention to how much was in the grocery cart when I went shopping at Whole Paycheck. But now I'm back to my previous life, when I do a running total in my head of the grocery cart's contents, where I account for what I'm spending, where I leave some wiggle room, where I wonder if this or that will tide me over.

And I hate it. I don't care, right this minute, if it makes me sound hopelessly bourgeois and middle-class. Yes, I know there are millions of people living in unspeakable poverty, or in the midst of unthinkable war zones, or both. I don't think my circumstances are somehow worse than those circumstances--quite the contrary. But we all have to play the hands we're dealt. I thank my stars/deities/luck all the damned time that I'm not living in Lebanon, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Congo, or the west side of this city, or Zimbabwe, or any of a number of other places. Given that I'm here, now, though, I just want to say that I hate this penny-counting, I hate how it occupies my mind, I hate how it constrains me (including constraining what I feel like I can give away), and I hate how bad it makes me feel for hating it. It's like an addiction, in the way that an addict spends a tremendous amount of time thinking about getting and using his/her drug, whether that drug is alcohol, cigarettes, heroin or something else. The other approach, I suppose, would be to be all la-la-la about it, but, in part thanks to my upbringing, I'm congenitally incapable of that. At least I know how to do it, and at least I know how to live (relatively) frugally, and I even know how to make it bearable most of the time. Just not right this minute.

More Nothing Much

2006-07-22T20:24:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting you all, haven't I? Not in my heart, but you can't read my heart. Today I got home from work, turned on the Tour de France (which is what I've been doing when I get home), and pretty much fell asleep on the couch. I'm exhausted, perhaps because I've been treating Friday like Friday, even though it's really my Thursday. Friday at the bakery is a grind, even though I've managed to organize and streamline the production as much as possible; I end up putting out about four and a half racks of croissants (which is about 80 dozen). Saturday is much less of a grind, so it doesn't seem so bad, even when I'm tired, and I don't generally have anything more exciting to do on Saturday night than sleep.

Tomorrow will be equally thrilling: yoga in the morning, followed by a festival of sporting events (two car races plus the final stage of the Tour). I'm hoping to see a medical student friend, so I can trade a ride to Whole Paycheck for some editing for her. I have to sit down and hack through the piles of paper and bills, too. Monday I'm seeing my doctor at 7:30 am, and then it's time to do some editing (provided the doctor visit isn't too eventful/painful).

It's becoming clear that I have to figure out what I'm going to do--how I'm going to reinvent myself this time. There are myriad things I would like to do: bakery owner, programmer, writer, editor--any or all of those would entertain me. I'm not qualified for at least one of those, and the others don't exactly pay much. (Entertainingly enough, one of the jobs for which I couldn't get an interview, which led me to become a pastry chef, is apparently open again; I should probably reapply, just for the hell of it.) I really don't want to abandon the whole pastry chef/baker thing, especially as I haven't repaid the loan yet, but I have to figure out a way to do it that results in a life I want to live. Hell, I have to figure out ANY job that results in a life I want to live.

I'm Melllllttttingggg

2006-07-17T14:37:00.000-05:00

but I don't covet ruby slippers, so there's that.

Yes, I know, it's hot everywhere, but I have no air conditioning, and I work someplace that is even hotter than where I am right now, so I won't get any relief by going to work tomorrow. (Jefe said when they had ovens on opposite walls it was screaming hot in the bakery, and I believe it.) I'm going to have to go to a Harbucks this afternoon for some iced tea and iced air (and I have to go to Harbucks, because I have a $5 gift card and can therefore do it for nearly free).

I saw two old friends this morning, which was short but wonderful. One of them saw me through the last bout of Emma Reinvention, and he was very encouraging in his doesn't-say-much way; the big hugs he gave me said it all. Everyone is sympathetic--not just to me, but also toward Dave, even though he's not usually present, so that's helpful. I cleared up the unenjoyment crap--they kept thinking I actually cashed my last check, when really I returned it--but I still have to pay them $70 in taxes for money I never got. But, hey, I'll get it back next year from the IRS! I got to talk to my doctor, who made room in his schedule to see me next Monday morning early (I explained that any other day meant losing pay, and he had the other doc's list of Life Stressors in front of him--aren't computers wonderful?--so he could see that that would be a problem for me); let's hope it's just menopause. I also sucked it up and asked my parents if they could help cover health insurance, I put my Netflix account on hold, and I'm canceling the YMCA membership that we don't use (which means no chance of handball for awhile longer, but neither of us can see spending that money right now). Dave said he's making calls and networking at a furious pace, so I'm hopeful, but even if he gets really lucky, these things take time.

Luckily, I have experience with living on a budget--it's not fun, and I hate it more than I can say, but I know how to do it. I can cut back my expenses--except for health insurance--so I can almost (but not quite) get by on what I make. I can't help Dave out, but at least I can limit my own stuff, and, since he didn't give me any money for June or July, he should have at least a little surplus. It won't last long, but there's just nothing I can do. If his old company would pay him the money they owe him (me, really) for travel, he'd have a little more cushion, but they've owed that money for 18 months, so I'm not hopeful. (Or they paid him and he never told me, but I don't think he'd have lied about that.)

All in all, I'm just wading through the crap. What else can I do? I've realized that I have about three real options: (1) continue at the bakery and get enough writing/editing gigs on the side to get by reasonably well, with health insurance from Dave's new new job or my parents or some cheapo plan that either my earnings or my parents can pay for, (2) find a bakery job that pays more and has benefits, and/or has reasonable enough hours that I can do some writing/editing on the side, or (3) find a job outside the food industry. That last one means giving up my dream (fantasy?) of owning my own bakery--and before I even paid off the loan, fer chrissakes!--but it would also mean enough money to live on and maybe save some, because I'm not going to do that for a job that doesn't pay much more than I can make as a baker. Those are the three real options, though, and the next few weeks will determine which of them I choose; the deciding factors are work on the side for me, a new job for Dave, and health insurance (it completely sucks that that has to be such a huge factor in this--what the hell kind of country are we running, anyway?). A friend from grad school might have some grantwriting for me, and that would be great; I've figured that I need about 15 hours a month of some kind of side work, which isn't all THAT much.

It's true that I'm battling my own demons, as well--I've been through this reinvention thing before, several times, and, as I've whined below, I really don't have a lot of energy to do it again. The thing that's so discouraging is that I feel like I reinvent myself, manage to build something, and then . . . it falls apart. You could argue that I shouldn't have loaned Dave all that money, for example, or that I should have left the company before they owed me quite so much money (I tried to do that, but couldn't find a job), or shouldn't have borrowed another $15k for pastry school, or or or. None of the decisions seemed terrible at the time, but they're pretty much all biting me in the ass at the same time right now. Eh; what's done is done. All I can do is figure out what the next thing is and do that.

Pizza Pizza

2006-07-15T20:23:00.000-05:00

On a whim, I made pizza dough and pizza for my coworkers today. Jefe sprung for the cheese and sauce, Charlie picked them up (along with some spinach, mushrooms, and pepperoni; plus I grabbed some roasted onions from the walk-in) on one of his deliveries, and Brad gave me some advice, and there you have it: pizza. The spinach/mushroom/onion was more popular than the pepperoni/mushroom/onion, and one coworker requested some black olives on the spinach next time. So, hey, no problem--pizza every Saturday, as far as I'm concerned. If Jefe springs for the cheese and sauce and other stuff, I'll whip up the dough when I come in on Saturday.

Meanwhile, either I (a) have cancer, (b) have a hormone imbalance caused by stress (unlikely, if you ask me, given that stress hasn't caused that before), or (c) am galloping into menopause. I'm betting heavily on (c), but it's a pain, people, let me tell you. Who really wants to have a period every other week? And the fibroids I had embolized two years ago are still around--smaller, yes, but still around--and they probably don't help matters, either. Apparently I am not bleeding from quite enough places, so I managed to cut myself yesterday, too.

And, yes, Dave did, in fact, lose his job. He has a lot of contacts in his field, several of the businesses in his field are in or around this city, he has a lot of experience and talent (a tremendous amount of both, actually--he's done a LOT of stuff), and there are lot of people who know him and think highly of him (and rightly so), so here's hoping someone is smart enough to hire him.

Fear

2006-07-14T04:52:00.000-05:00

My fear, this time.

It's overwhelming me. On top of wondering what the hell is happening with Dave (much to my surprise, he didn't even email or leave a voice mail wishing me a happy birthday--that isn't really like him), on top of wondering how I'm going to get by financially, my body has decided now is a FINE time for extra bleeding. I keep trying to reassure myself that it's just random, that it's nothing serious (and I went to the doc on Wednesday), but that only goes so far. And do I have health insurance? Dunno.

The other thing that scares me is the Black Hole: I've been there before, I lived there for a couple of years at the end of and after grad school, and I just don't want to go back. I don't want to summon the energy to crawl out of there again.

As I said to J yesterday (and may I also say that she forced me to go out to dinner with her last night and we had a lovely time), the thing that's so discouraging is that I make a decision that doesn't seem completely crazy and it turns out so much worse than I could have imagined that I'm beginning to doubt my ability to make any decisions at all.

And it depresses me that this blog has become, instead of a place where I can actually try to work out an idea once in awhile, a kind of Whining Central. (And thank you all for your kind wishes yesterday.) I barely pay attention to the news any more--in part because that just depresses me, too, and I really don't need any more sources of depression. I realize that's completely self-centered, and I'm disgusted with myself on that score, but there it is.

Feh.

Happy Fucking Birthday

2006-07-13T16:58:00.001-05:00

Yeah, that's right--today's my 48th birthday. In the last year and three weeks,

I got married
the company for which I worked went out of business
the company for which Dave worked closed their offices in this city
I went in debt (again!) to change careers
I started a new job that does not offer benefits and does not pay me enough to live on
Dave started a new job
Dave confessed to major lies, particularly about money
Dave moved out
I moved to a new apartment

And that's just the stuff I'm telling you about--there's more, but it's Dave's to share or not as he sees fit.

I've also decided that Dave's lost his job. He went out of contact for a couple of days (not answering phone calls or email), and he's changed the message on the "office" answering machine so it has no mention of his job. I could be wrong, I suppose, but who knows when I'll find out. I'd sure like to be wrong about this one, but I don't have a good feeling about it.

J and I separately developed a rating scale for when bad shit goes down, and it turns out we developed the same scale. It's really not a scale, given that it's binary--that is, when things seem like they're really, really bad, we say (when it's true), well, at least no one died. In my case, I used my sister's death as a kind of marker of badness.

It turns out, however, that the binary scale really isn't adequate to the task, as I discovered during the year-plus I was unemployed after grad school, being forced to change careers, blah, blah, defucking blah. Even though someone had, in fact, died, that had happened a couple of years earlier and wasn't the immediate cause of the shitstorm (a contributing factor, yes, but only one of many). That time was, in some ways, worse than when my sister died, primarily because I had no clue how I was going to get out of it, and everything I tried didn't seem to work. (I will always have a soft spot for recovering junkies and alcoholics, because they're the only ones who were willing to take a chance on me.) That is, when someone dies, there's a certain grieving process. It isn't fun, and it's not as though you get some kind of gold star when you "complete" the process--really, you never complete it, you just incorporate it into your life. But you can either do that, i.e., go on somehow, or you can effectively stop living your own life, turn it into a shrine of some kind.

In any case, the binary code I (almost unconsciously) started using when my sister died has turned out to be inadequate again. No, noone has died. But look at that list above and find the fun part, because I sure as hell can't. I've also realized recently that there isn't any way out of the mess I'm in that is going to be easy or pleasant, and there's even the potential for serious ugliness, though I hope that can be avoided and I will work assiduously to avoid it.

The other thing I realized when my sister died, though, is that everyone has problems. It's not as though I've got a shit sandwich while everyone else is eating caviar and sipping fine champagne, and there is always someone who is worse off. So even as I'm depressed and feeling sorry for myself and that kind of whiny shit, I really don't think of myself as worse off, somehow, than the people around me. In some dimensions, some of the time, yes, I could make that argument, but in general, no; I'm just bemoaning the particular shit sandwich I have in front of me.

So, yeah, happy fucking birthday.

Needs

2006-07-10T16:51:00.000-05:00

Larry raises an interesting point in his comment to the previous post, and it fits with things I realized about myself a long time ago. One of the things I realized was that I wasn't going to be Normal. I didn't know what I would be, I didn't know how I was going to do it, and I didn't particularly want to be Not Normal, but it seemed like I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Part of what that meant, for me, was that it seemed unlikely I was going to find a Partner. I'm a pain in the ass, along a number of dimensions, and, despite my willingness and ability to accommodate and get along and negotiate, I'm not the sort of woman that men particularly want to be with. Yes, there are all kinds of caveats to that--I have an exceptionally long list of male friends, along with several on that list who might have been More Than Friends if the geography had been arranged a little differently--and I'm not complaining, merely observing.

All that aside, I didn't seem to find someone when I was in my 20s--or my 30s, for that matter--and it seemed to me, during that time, that I had better learn to make friends, get along, and live happily by myself. If someone did come along, well, all the better, but living my life in expectation of that struck me as foolhardy at best. I also assumed I'd be supporting myself, which I don't think all women assume, and one of my biggest regrets about my current situation is that I decided to trust someone else to support me for a little while. That is, part of my current fear and panic is that I'm in a situation where I can't support myself right now--I don't make enough money, and, what with the money I'm owed in back pay, most of which I'll never get, the money I've loaned Dave, and the money with which I paid for our wedding, I don't have savings any more.

So, really, what I've done instead of expecting to find A person who knows me that well is to cultivate a lot of people who know me pretty damned well. They may not all know how I smell, but a fair number of them can finish at least some of my sentences, and some of them get my jokes (even though I of course miss the private jokes between me and Dave), and they all take care of me (and I them) in a variety of small, significant ways.

J and I were talking about "needing" people last week. I don't "need" any particular person, which is something that bugged Dave terribly and made him insecure when we were first together. We humans are social creatures, and we do, in fact, need to create and build and nurture all kinds of relationships with each other, so don't misunderstand me--I DO need people in my life, and there are friendships, like my friendship with J, that are transformative and transcendent and deep. We (or some of us) may even need to have the kind of partnership that Larry poses (or that my parents have maintained for 50+ years)--but then where does that leave someone like me? That is why I had to conceptualize a life where that kind of partnership might not happen--because otherwise I was relegating myself to unhappiness and incompleteness, and that struck me as not terribly healthy. In the end, I think that conceptualization has broadened and deepened the kinds of relationships I can have and have had and have now, and would even deepen a partnership, were one to come across my path.

But I do understand how it doesn't make much sense to my mom. It never has, really, and it frightens her, despite the education I've tried to do over the years. Still, she's my mother, and she's allowed to worry about me, even if it's in ways that make me crazy.

Now with more chores!

2006-07-10T12:54:00.000-05:00

So far today I've:

purchased a monthly transit pass, which involved a trip to the currency exchange
done the laundry (including getting quarters at the currency exchange, a roll of which cost me a quarter, which is bogus but unavoidable)
bought milk--turns out the grocery store nearby is actually not half bad, as a coworker had said; they've got the organic milk I like (though only 2%, not 1%), and a wide variety of grains and such from ethnic
done a bunch of change-of-address details
called about a rebate for my phone, and found someone at Circuit City who was extremely helpful and enabled me to avoid printing crap to get the rebate (I now have a printer from my old job but no ink cartridges and no idea whether the thing still works)
swept the floor, albeit in half-hearted fashion
sorted crap in the hall closet
got the answering machine portion of the phone/answering machine to actually record messages (no idea what was wrong or how I fixed it, but I think it's working now)

The only chores I still want to accomplish today are cleaning the bathroom, finding the Phallic Monuments postcards, doing some yoga (which isn't a chore, exactly), and sorting through the various money-related bits of paper I have in piles. The whole subject of money is sending me into a panic these days, but I'm hoping that resolves a little soon.

I had an interesting conversation with Mom this morning, who informed me that she hasn't told anyone about what's happening with me and Dave. I'm glad she's done that--or hasn't done that, as the case may be--because, really, most people simply don't need to know. She's also worried, it turns out, that I'm "alone again," but I reminded her of all of the people at the wedding who are my friends, and I think that actually made her feel a little better. The problem for her, of course, is that she can't conceptualize a life without a husband as anything but "alone." I recognize that my life is difficult to sort through for someone with her background and experience--hell, it's not as though it's obvious to me how to make sense of my life--but she's learned how to take the bits of reassurance I offer, at least some of the time. Okay, time to get back to that list of chores.

Odds and Ends

2006-07-05T21:35:00.000-05:00

I just need to hang pictures, and put away a smallish pile of crap, and figure out what to do with mail and bills, and hang things like the ironing board, and find frames for the Phallic Monuments of the World collection* so I can hang those, and hook up the printer, and deal with a couple of piles of bits of crap. Eventually I'll have to start cleaning again, too. The last bits always take longer, because it's the crap that was laying around with no particular home in the OLD place, too.

*Almost 15 years ago, on a whim that I don't even remember, I started a collection I called Phallic Monuments of the World, primarily by asking people to send or bring me items for the collection. It was mostly a postcard collection, and I encouraged people to be creative and thoughtful, rather than merely obvious, in their contributions. In fact, one of the things I like most about the collection is that most of it was contributed by other people, some of whom responded to the challenge in truly entertaining and amusing ways. I have some three-dimensional bits, too--an Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, the Eiffel Tower, etc.--but it's the postcards that are truly amusing. If I (a) find it and (b) frame it and (c) hang it and (d) find a camera, I'll post a picture of it for you.

Speaking of photos, the camera I got on the way to the anniversary party was kind of a dud. There are some great photos--me with my brother and two of my cousins, and one of my whole dad's side of the family (except a sister and her kids who live in Florida, plus one of the cousins from around here had left already), not to mention photos of me dancing with my nephews. I also managed to get a picture of the needlepoint I did as a wedding gift for my brother before the camera decided to die (with seven pictures unused):

I continue to discuss the World Cup with my coworkers, at least a little tiny bit, such that they now give me updates (today one of them came and told me that France had beaten Portugal). They've all been pitching in to do the massive croissant production, but I've managed to organize things such that it only takes about a half hour to do 14 pieces of dough (i.e., to make about 400 croissants). Friday and Saturday are still Festivals of Plain Croissants, and I can't always get help for that, but I figure it's a good tradeoff.

Okay, time to finish making the tea, watch a little more of the Tour de France, and go to bed.

Some Sleep, Please, with a Side of Don't Wake Me until Six

2006-07-02T20:00:00.000-05:00

So despite being exhausted last night, I woke up a little after 4 this morning, putzed around a little, and then headed off to work, even though it's Sunday. Except the second train I need to take doesn't start running until 6:05, and I got to the station at 5:39. I walked to the first/next station, but then decided to take the train. When I got to work, Johnnie let me in (the door was locked, it being 6:15 and all), and Jefe came to find me as I changed my shoes. I had mixed a batch (about 50 pounds) of dough for the cinnamon raisin croissants, figuring Jefe and I could crank them out today for the week, I could load up pans for tonight's and Tuesday's bake, and be out of there by noon or, maybe, with luck, by 11 (i.e., in time to make it to a yoga class). Anyway, the ciabatta dough is usually in the walk-in on Saturday night, but not croissant dough, and the dishwasher, as his last thing, takes it out of the walk-in. All the dough goes in big grey buckets. Alas, there was no ciabatta dough, but there was croissant dough, but he didn't know that and took it out of the walk in, so it was seriously overproofed by the time Jefe came in, meaning . . . no making of the cinnamon raisin croissants today. (He wanted to call me but didn't know my cell number was posted--and I had to put shit on pans, anyway.) It wasn't a total loss, though: I made the dough today again, he'll laminate and freeze it tomorrow and take it out of the freezer first thing on Wednesday. I pounded the butter for his laminating tomorrow and, while I was at it, for the additional 16 pieces I'll be doing on Wednesday. I did some other stuff (put oats in to soak; put all those damned croissants on sheet pans; figured out next week's production runs; helped slice and bag hot dog, hamburger, and dinner buns), and got out of there by noon. Plus, I needed some bread for tomorrow's activities--four loaves to be exact; with my discount it would have been about $20, but he came out as I was paying and said, "Give me $10 for it." Can't beat that.

Meanwhile, today is my baby brother's 42nd birthday. How did it happen that I have a 42-year-old baby brother?

I was supposed to meet a friend this evening, but he forgot and ended up at his advisor's house in Michigan. Much as I want to see him, I'll be happier to see him later in the week when I'm better rested. I've made my linzer dough for tomorrow, and I'm about to make some dinner, and I'd better get some sleep tonight is all I have to say.

Boardwalk Thoughts

2006-06-30T05:38:00.000-05:00

My favorite DJ started off his show this morning with "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)." I was going to mention that it's from the original album, but then I realized that's because I have so many bootleg copies of it from various concerts that I don't think of the original as the only one that most people are likely to have. It's a lovely way to start the day.

Last night I played two of the games that one plays right after moving. One is "That Doesn't Go There," which is what one discovers as one moves things around in the space, trying to find the right home for those things. The other is "Where Did I Put That?" You can figure out what that one entails. Eventually the two games cancel each other out--you figure out where everything belongs, and you remember where that is. I have not reached that balance, however.

Headbangers' Ball

2006-06-29T18:39:00.000-05:00

That's what's going on in my apartment right now, sort of. I had this portable CD player--a nice one--that I'd purchased about six months before I got the iPod. It's been sitting around, idle, ever since the Pod came along. Brad happened to mention the other day that he needs a CD player for his kitchen at home, so I told him he could have the portable. He'll need to wire it to speakers or something, but I'm sure he can figure that out. He wanted to know how much I wanted in exchange, and I didn't really want anything--I haven't used it in more than two years, and I'm just happy it has a new home. But I could tell he wasn't entirely comfortable with that--he offered lunch (a Philly cheesesteak, from the one place in the city where that menu item bears some resemblance to the cheesesteaks I've known and loved), and I said okay. Later yesterday, though, I said, "I know what I want: lunch, and a mix CD of your favorite music." I know he likes a lot of headbanging stuff, and there's no way I'd ever go buy any of that, but I thought it would be interesting to hear a fan's favorites. He brought it in today, and I have it on now--unfortunately, he neglected to label the tracks, so I have no idea to what I'm listening. ("Let the bodies hit the floor" is the current refrain; it's apparently from a band called Drowning Pool, or so Google tells me.) I think my request completely surprised him, and kind of pleased him as well.

I've kind of stalled with regard to getting things set up around the abode. I got a new phone system, and I'll probably set that up tonight, and I managed to make chicken stock and freeze it, but I haven't wired up the DVD player (I need a Y connector and an RF modulator), I haven't hung any pictures, I haven't found a home for two of the big plants, I haven't found a home for one of the green racks, and I haven't sorted the pile of crap that's on the chair next to the desk. None of these is insurmountable or even difficult; I just haven't gotten around to any of it. I even got out of work early-ish today (and yesterday, for that matter)--I can't tell whether I'm not working hard enough (i.e., finding other things to do) or whether I'm just being efficient. Rather than making all of the croissants myself, we've been running the almond and chocolate ones down the make-up line, which means that it takes about five or six of us about a half hour to make upwards of 350 croissants. I try to be organized about it so it takes minimal amounts of other people's time, and, since we're closed on Tuesday and there won't be any farmers' markets that day, I have fewer to prepare for the next four days. I'm going to work on Sunday, though, mostly because I can't afford a day off and partly because not working on Sunday will make next week's production more problematic, even with the advance stuff I'm getting done this week.

Okay; time to get at least one thing done around here.

The Beast

2006-06-28T21:50:00.000-05:00

I have come to believe that one of the biggest problems many people face is facing down the Beast of Unworthiness. It has taken me a long time to recognize the Beast, because my Beast is kind of a lower-case, not-really-much-of-anything version. This thinking has been sparked in part by an article in the NYTimes magazine a few weeks ago that talked about genetic protective factors that come into play--or don't--with people who experienced abuse as children. That is, why is it that some people who experience abuse as children survive just fine, and others don't? The researchers have found genetic as well as environmental factors (what a surprise). In short, some people are more resilient than others--perhaps they had mentors, which would be an environmental factor, and/or perhaps they have some of these genetic protections. I've come to believe that I got extremely lucky in that lottery. That is, I have and had people who support(ed) me, especially when I was a kid; I wouldn't be surprised to discover that I have the genetic protective factors going for me; and, although I've had at least my share of troubles as an adult, I didn't have any of the troubles--sexual or physical abuse, for example, or an addicted parent, for another example--that seem to me to feed the Beast.

The Beast of Unworthiness is ravenous, and it will consume you. The Beast makes you think there's a substitute for the first thing you need and the thing you really need most, which is love and compassion for yourself. The Beast makes you think you can substitute your love for someone, or someone's love for you, for the love you need to experience for yourself. The Beast regards love for oneself as its enemy, and rightly so. Some people learn to love drugs and alcohol, thanks to the Beast. If/when they get sober, if they're not careful, they begin to search for love from someone else, in a succession of relationships that never quite answer the needs that the Beast creates. The Beast also makes you self-centered, because the Beast only cares about the Beast. The Beast is relentless, the Beast always wants more. The only way to kill the Beast is to learn to love yourself, to accept yourself--and thereby be able to love, and accept love from, others. And if you don't do that, the Beast will wreck every relationship you're in. Why? Because the Beast will convince you that no one can, or should, love you, and you will believe the Beast, because that's what you've always done.

I think we all have our moments of self-doubt and/or depression--I've had my share of both. But even my depression, long-lasting (maybe four years?) and tenacious as it was, seemed to me, even at the time, to be circumstantial. I was deeply in debt for a degree I wasn't going to get to use and that had taken me seven years to get; I was unemployed; I was being forced to change careers; my mentor had died; I was broke; I had no partner, and many of my close friends had moved away. Anyone who wasn't depressed in those circumstances wasn't paying attention, was my thought about it. Even then, I didn't attribute my circumstances to total unworthiness on my part: I figured a lot of it was plain old bad luck. A LOT of bad luck, all piled in one place, perhaps, but bad luck nevertheless. On the other hand, in part because of that experience, I have more experience in reinventing myself than just about anyone I know, and I also have a lot of experience in cobbling together an assortment of jobs and resources and friends and whatever, which also stands me in good stead. My point is that the Beast doesn't really live in me, and I can't tell you how lucky that makes me feel. I try to share what I have, as best I can--what else can I do? it's one of those resources that only increases if you give it away.

Speaking of cobbling together resources, my current plan, now that I've moved, is to start accumulating enough work on the side to build a cash reserve--and in the past 24 hours, three different people have offered me the possibility of freelance writing, editing, or proofreading work. I'll have to balance things carefully, of course, and I want SOME time to myself, but I work fast, so it could work out. Cross your fingers for me.

"And in the middle of investigation, I break down"

2006-06-24T18:36:00.000-05:00

Think how we learn to use the expressions "Now I know how to go on," "Now I can go on" and others; in what family of language games we learn their use.

We can also imagine the case where nothing at all occurred in B's mind except that he suddenly said "Now I know how to go on"--perhaps with a feeling of relief; and that he did in fact go on working out the series without using the formula. And in this case too we should say--in certain circumstances--that he did know how to go on.
--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, section 179

Unlike B, however, I have no clue how to go on. Knowing that would mean knowing, first, the situation in which one has found oneself, and, second, at least some of the options for what one would do next, given that situation; it's often helpful to have some idea how one got into the particular situation, as well, as it often gives clues. So things are fragmented in the Goldman household. I do the "next things" that are obvious to me--go to work, unpack boxes, throw away garbage. I make lists of things I have yet to do (get a working goddamned land line, which would enable me to buzz people into my apartment for example, or make a phone call on something other than a cell phone; get parking permits for guests, because parking is restricted on many of the streets in the neighborhood; buy groceries so I can cook something; sort through the Big Wad of Paper; hang pictures). I participate in entertainments and amusements of various sorts with friends (and enjoy them). All of this can occupy a fair amount of time. But then I look at the calendar and I remember what I was doing a year ago: preparing to go out to dinner with Dave, his family, and my family, would be the correct description.

I look around me, and I wonder how the hell I got here. I can identify each step, I can elaborate and enumerate to beat the band, but the steps do not add up in any way that makes sense to me. Dave says--and I know he means--that he would do anything to have me back, but I don't have a clue where "back" would be at this point. Back to what? And, please understand, that is not a criticism of Dave, but, rather, of me.

I wanted to put that picture before him, and his acceptance of the picture consists in his now being inclined to regard a given case differently: that is, to compare it with this rather than that set of pictures.
Philosophical Investigations, section 144

Here's the thing: very little that has happened in the past six months came completely out of the blue. There were precursors, or similar things, or whatever, over the seven and a half years we've known each other. Even some things that seem to have changed in the past month or so have, in some ways, mostly been reinterpreted. The reinterpretation is pretty dramatic, mind you, but it's not a big surprise, if that makes any sense (and I'm being intentionally vague, because a lot of it isn't my information).

Given the precursors, then, I increasingly feel that I should have acted differently--years ago. Those of you who remember Dave's post from a few months ago might be saying, "But, but, but, what about that stuff he did and said!" And, yes, you're right, but every relationship has two people in it. I'm neither stupid, nor naive, nor willfully ignorant.

I suppose if I could come up with some kind of useful analogy it would help--something about straws and camels' backs, or about ropes breaking would seem obvious, but they do not feel right to me. It's more like seeing the same situation through different pairs of glasses, each of which filters the scene in a different way. All (or most of) the information is there, no matter which glasses you wear, but your view of the information really differs dramatically. Not a good one, I suppose, but the best I can do now.

In any case, all the analogies in the world don't help me sort through this for more than a few minutes at a time. I think I have some clarity about this or that thing, this or that aspect (just to continue the Wittgensteinian theme, for those of you who've read him), but I cannot get all of the pieces to fit together. It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, except the pieces in front of you are from more than one puzzle, and you don't have a complete version of any of the puzzles. There--there's your analogy for the night. Meanwhile, I've committed myself to hooking up electronica, and/or sorting papers, because sitting here having a pity party will not help.

Random Notes

2006-06-21T21:35:00.000-05:00

My forearm has turned an interesting shade of purplish-brown, but the pain is actually more in the joints (wrist, shoulder, a little in the hand), probably from the wrenching.

I did not go to yoga tonight (as readers of the last post already know), and I sorely/surely need to do that one of these damn days. It's not entirely clear yet whether I'll be able to carve out a space for yoga in the living room, but I think I will. (There's more room in the bedroom, but also carpeting, which doesn't mix well with yoga mats.)

I actually have an even better lake view from my bed than I did in the last apartment! It's not head-on, given that the bed can't be opposite the window, given the closets that are there, but it's really pretty amazing.

The apartment only has one ceiling fan, in the dining area, and there is practically no cross-ventilation, so more fans are going to be required. I may be able to make do with the one other fan I have.

Casualties of the move so far: one crystal glass and one really beautiful dish from an old friend. Two of the three movers were kind of dicks--they were determined that the move was going to last as long as possible/estimated, and it took them longer to unload the truck than it did to load it, which is ridiculous.

My hallway looks like a Home for Abandoned and Neglected Boxes. A friend with a house has offered to take them all away and store the ones that are reusable (which is nearly all of them). Most of the boxes came from someone who works at the aquarium and are hence labeled "Instant Ocean," i.e., they once held salt. This means they're sturdy and a really useful size for about 85% of the things that need packing. The source of the boxes also had a bunch of bigger boxes, many of which had been used at least once or twice before she used them. It worked out well; I didn't buy a single box. Several rolls of packing tape, but no boxes.

This apartment has so much closet space that (a) I can stash a bunch of boxes that once lived under my bed, plus a bunch of boxes with which I'm not ready to deal, plus some other stuff, and (b) I can put all of my clothes out (rather than only the summer or the winter ones), and--get this--there's still room left over. I've never lived anywhere that had this much closet space. It's kind of surprising, actually, because the building was built in 1927 (the previous place was built in 1931, but was a hotel; it's not clear whether this had a life as a hotel, but I wouldn't be surprised), and old buildings (and houses) are notorious for the lack of closet space. People didn't have as much shit, plain and simple.

Okay; I've had pizza, cookies, ice cream (Fossil Fuel), and wine, so it's time for bed.

Boxes, Boxes Everywhere, and They're Mostly Empty

2006-06-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

Can I get a woo-hoo!

Because I'm nearly almost done with the unpacking. I have a big pile of papers through which to sort (and I mean BIG fucking pile), I have about six boxes of books that will remain packed until I figure out where to put the other bookcase and how to configure the rest of the furniture, I have not hung any pictures, I have not wired the electronica (except the television), and I have not done things like hang a hook on the bathroom door or hang the iron and ironing board, but it looks better than it did even a few hours ago, and, consequently, I feel better as well. To celebrate, I'm going to have the last slice of leftover pizza and crack open the bottle of wine in the fridge--then I'll probably make my iced tea for tomorrow and go to bed, so it's not like dancing in the streets will occur or anything. Now if I could only get a land line so my cell phone bill isn't astronomical.

And speaking of astronomical, happy solstice, everyone.

1-2-3 Contact

2006-06-19T10:18:00.000-05:00

We have internets! And cable TV, presumably, though that's still untested. I also have four MILLION boxes of shit (yes, I know, that's what moving entails), but they are largely sorted into their proper rooms, about 85% of the kitchen is in place, and I'm rummaging around trying to find room for everything else. Although it LOOKS like I have a lot of room, and, relative to many of the teensy Easy-Bake Oven size kitchens I saw, I DO have a lot of room, but I like to cook and bake, as we all know, and I have the tools to do it, so finding places for everything, plus the food, is really a challenge.

Meanwhile, the phone guy has shown up . . . and there's a Problem (some kind of short on my line). We'll see if he can solve it without it costing me a bunch more money.

Update: Of COURSE it's going to cost a bunch of money--minimum $150. What a pain in the ass.

also also wik: Except the building people said they'd take care of it, seeing as how the problem is somewhere between the box and my apartment, so maybe it won't cost $150 after all.

In other news, I'm nowhere near done unpacking, but I've made significant progress and I'm just going to keep hacking away at it for as late as I can stand it.

Lucky

2006-06-17T21:47:00.000-05:00

In addition to that being the name of the dog we had when I was a kid, I'm feeling lucky right now, even though my arm is in pretty severe pain. I was stupid--I had my arm in the bowl of the 40-quart mixer, scooping streusel out, before the paddle had completely stopped, and I wasn't paying attention, and the paddle crushed my arm between it and the bowl. I had lowered the bowl about halfway, so it smushed (and really badly bruised) my arm, but didn't break it. I got through work, but it hurts--and I'm still feeling lucky. (Okay, REALLY lucky would have been not getting my arm smushed at all, but, given a smushing, one that doesn't break anything is really preferable.) Yesterday I whacked myself in the temple with a full sheet pan and crushed my index finger between a wheel and a heavy rack, and the skin on my heels is cracking and sore (thanks to Krazy Glue for Skin, I can seal up the cracks, more or less), so I've kind of taken a beating the last couple of days. I have some last-minute things to do, but they're just not going to get done tonight, I can tell. J is coming over tomorrow when she gets up, and other volunteers are coming over a little later ("later" given how early J usually gets up, anyway; she's the only person, other than my mother, whom I can call at 6:15 am and not worry about waking), and I'm going to enlist them to move the electronica, the plants, and a couple of boxes I don't want the movers to move. I'll probably clean here, as best I'm able, while waiting for the movers, and I have to get the crap out of the freezers and refrigerator.

Mostly, I'm tired. Yes, there's pain of various sorts, but that makes me tired, too. I have no idea whether I'll actually get back my internet connection by Monday--the cable people (and the phone people) are theoretically coming in the morning, but who knows how that will work out--so this may be the last dispatch for a few days. And I'm going to have to start paying for that shit, to the tune of nearly $100/month (it's free in this building).

Blah, blah, blah; yes, of course there's all kinds of psychological bullshit going on, but I think it's better if it stays in my head, where I can ignore it properly.

Cookies and Wine

2006-06-15T21:59:00.000-05:00

I'd intended to have popcorn and wine, but never got around to making the popcorn (there's a little left I wanted to get rid of, and I haven't packed the popcorn maker yet--though I realized on the way home I didn't have anything sufficiently large into which to pop the corn). And I packed all the glasses, so I'm drinking the wine from a Pyrex measuring cup. Classy joint I got here, I know. I did call a moratorium on moving-related crap tonight; I'll finish up tomorrow and Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, I'm winning over my coworkers. For Artie (the Whistler), I put the little ends of the cinnamon-raisin croissants to be baked; they can't be sold because they're too small, and they can't be reused, because of the raisins and cinnamon, so I just have them baked anyway and either the store staff can use them as samples or someone scarfs them down. I discovered that Artie likes them, so I try to bake one each night for him and hope the night guys don't grab it. Phil helped me with the chocolate croissants again today--and when he went to put some sun-dried-tomato-garlic-rosemary-whatever rolls to cool, he came back with one for me, because usually when he takes them out of the oven he knows I snag a couple. Johnnie came into the main part of the bakery (from the cake room, where he mostly works these days) and yelled "Goooooaaaaaaalllll!" today, mostly to entertain me; when Brad's not around, he comes in and calls out for "the professor," which is what he calls Brad when he's not around, and he does it even more, now that he knows it cracks me up. I've also been asking Artie and Phil about the scores for the World Cup games to which they're listening, which means I'm learning the names of countries in Spanish.

And Brad made a corny joke first thing this morning, and when I didn't respond, he said, "Not today?" And I said, "Not today," and he left it at that. (A couple of weeks ago he made some dumb joke after I had a particular trying night with Dave, and I just said to Brad, "I'm really sorry, but I am just not in the mood for that today. It's nothing to do with you, but just don't." And he saw I was serious and let me be, which I completely appreciated.) Mostly I've tried to win them over by (a) getting my work done without keeping them from getting their work done, and (b) lending a hand if I'm standing around between tasks--helping Phil with some bread dough, putting parchment on sheet pans or sprinkles on cookies for Artie, helping Johnnie with something. And I nearly always ask Brad if he needs anything else before I leave--he usually doesn't, but sometimes he does, and it goes a long way toward keeping him happy. I figured out recently that he's actually in his early or mid-twenties, so I suspect he's still trying to figure out the authority thing, which is made more difficult by Jefe's lack of support.

None of this will advance me in any appreciable way, but it helps me figure out how to get along in a new environment, and it makes the working environment that much more pleasant. It's also interesting to try to do this across a language barrier--it means the usual conversations aren't an option. I still need to learn Spanish, though.

Leaking

2006-06-14T20:18:00.000-05:00

Today, dear readers, is not a Good Day. It was going fine at work (GOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!), and then I came home. I fired off an email, and then . . . I fell apart. i've been doing that periodically for about four hours now, and I'm really fucking tired of it. I pack some shit, and then I find, oh, how about the baseball salt and pepper shakers that Dave saw once while killing time waiting for a repair and got for me because he knows I love baseball? (They came with a barbecue fork and something, with handles shaped like bats; I packed those on Sunday.) Or how about the napkin holder he made in Boy Scouts, of his eight-year-old (or so) hands? Or how about the emptiness of the cabinets in the kitchen? Or how about the boxes piled in the rooms we once shared, the boxes we've packed separately, making sure our stuff isn't intermingled any more? I'm just really, really sad; my face keeps leaking all over the damned place. I realized that yoga wasn't really an option tonight--there's a limit to what I'm willing to display. (I realize that I'm putting it out here for you guys, but that is so not the same thing.) I'm sad for Dave, too, because I know he's aching every bit as much as I am.

In less depressing/ed commentary, I found one of my pedometers while I was packing desk shit (my smoking cessation friend gave me a couple), and I threw it in my pocket today to see what would happen. By the time I got home from work, I'd logged over 12,000 steps, and I probably added a bunch more packing boxes.

I keep thinking I'm nearly done packing--and I am, really, all things considered--and then I see a little pile of something I haven't dealt with yet. I'd hoped to have it all done tonight, every last bit, but I think that's not going to happen. I think I'm going to make some dinner (finish the last of the broccoli) and have a glass of wine and go to bed. The crap will still be here tomorrow.

Not the strangest thing I've ever eaten,

2006-06-13T21:01:00.000-05:00

but close. A week or so ago I put the tortillas in the freezer, because one of them was moldy and I thought I could save the rest of them. Lo and behold, they were ALL moldy, which meant I had to concoct something else to eat the black beans with. So: black beans (the Moosewood recipe with sweet potatos in it), some mango-passion fruit something from pastry school (a base for a souffle, maybe?), a little ginger ale mix, and, voila, a weird pasta sauce. I had a little chunk of ricotta salata to crumble over it, and there you go: dinner. I managed to get rid of or nearly get rid of three things, so, hey, I get an extra cookie for that one.

It occurs to me that I should clarify something from my last post: the friend who has joined the chorus at least part way is someone who knows me extremely well, who wants me to be happy, and who is worried about me (because she knows about the shit I've gone through as well as the shit that's coming down now). I WANT her to give me her honest opinion, and I know she will, and that's worth more to me than anything else. And, really, I think it's smart to continue considering all of my options as well as all of the aspects of my reality that are apparent or relevant at any given time. She also agrees that I can't make any of these decisions yet: I have to move, and unpack, for two things.

Work has been grueling lately. I don't say this to complain--I think it's educational, as a matter of fact. One of the things I'm figuring out is that Jefe would rather pay overtime than do the organizational things necessary to apportion work differently or have it done differently. I think part of it is that he doesn't like conflict, so, for example, he's unwilling to back up Brad and get Whistler to clean up after himself better. Another annoyance factor has been the World Cup, of all things. It's on the radio, constantly and loudly, and in Spanish; this morning we were treated to more of the Spanish music that sounds like someone's strangling a cat (it's probably the Hispanic version of Easy Listening or something). I am getting me a radio for my corner of the bakery (or, rather, the corner I use most often).

Feh

2006-06-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

I'm inching ever closer--so close that my typing is echoing slightly in this room. Today I arranged for local phone, cable, and internet services, and changed the address on my long-distance and cell services. I packed more boxes. I picked up the keys to the new place. I did a couple of loads of laundry, and then packed nearly every bit of clothing except my chef clothes, some underwear, a pair of jeans, and a couple of t-shirts. Right now, I'm running the dishwasher, and then I'm going to pack all the rest of the dishes except a cereal bowl and spoon; this isn't just to get the dishes packed, it's also so the kitchen will be empty and therefore cleanable. We have to take down a few more things from the walls, remove some anchors, and do some spackling, too, but I don't think that'll be too much of a problem. All of this means I didn't really get a day off this weekend, and I won't next weekend, either. Originally I was bummed that the 4th is on a Tuesday, because the bakery is closed, which means I have an unpaid holiday, and I can't really afford that. Now, though, three days off in a row sounds like heaven. Of course, there's every possibility I'll need to work on the 3rd, so we'll see.

One of my friends is joining the chorus (led by my mother) urging me to Get A Different Job, specifically, one that enables me to support myself and has benefits attached to it, even if it has nothing at all to do with baking or pastry. (Of course, that's made more complicated by the fact that the whole impetus for the career change was that I couldn't find a different job--I couldn't even get an interview for two jobs for which I was perfect, and it's worth pointing out that they probably paid significantly less than the job I had, so it's not as if I was holding out for some fab big-money job.) On top of that, Dave wants to know what my long term plans are, not least because he wants to know how long he has to help support me. Some days I think things will be okay--that I'll pick up enough money on the side, that Dave will willingly give me at least some of what I gave him over the past seven and a half years, that I'll figure out what the next step is and I'll be able to afford to take it and it'll be the right thing. Some days I listen to the chorus and think I should find A Different Job, and then I remember how little success I had trying to find one of those (i.e., none at all), and then I start to panic a little. None of this is helped by the realities of my current job, which include long hours, physically taxing work, low pay, and neither paid vacation nor benefits. It's really not good when Plan A is "win the lottery."

I tried to write more about three times, but I keep erasing it. Suffice it to say that Dave and I had some terrible, wrenching conversations today, which were pretty much the definition of Not Fun for both of us. I wish, with all my heart, that he were (or becomes) able to be happy with himself.

Because They Won't Pack Themselves

2006-06-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

Am I done packing yet? Of course not. But! It's getting close. Tomorrow I'm going to do laundry and pack some more and spend time on the phone figuring out phone, internet, and cable services; if there's time, I'm also going to stop and get the keys to the new place. I really need to get done, or nearly done, tomorrow, because at least two days this week I'm not going to get home until later (I'm watering a friend's garden). I really don't want to have to come home from a 9-plus-hour-day shlepping croissant dough and then pack more shit. One of the advantages of my current job (and, believe me, I've been looking for them lately) is that I don't need to wear office clothes to work (i.e., I can pack nearly all my clothes) and I can more or less feed myself at work with day-old stuff (i.e., I can pack most of the food and dishes and such). Thanks to That Brazen Tart, I got a lot done today: she came by and kept me company (and brought some chocolate caramels with lime zest and fleur de sel, which I am not sharing with anyone), which meant I couldn't pack a couple of boxes and then slack, and then pack a few more, then slack some more--basically, I just kept at it, albeit wandering aimlessly occasionally. As a result, the kitchen is nearly done. I even kept up the momentum for a few boxes' worth after she left, but hunger finally forced me to quit.

I went to a yoga class this morning, for the first time in two weeks, in part because my hamstrings were throbbing in pain when I woke up this morning. I must, must, must do more yoga; I can also feel pain in my wrists and hands on a regular basis. Here's the best news, though: On Thursday after work I went to the YMCA that's a block from the bakery and asked whether there were any handball players around. A staff member took me to the courts (a rather labyrinthine route) and there were a couple of guys there--they offered to teach me to play until I explained I already KNEW how to play, I just needed a new place. There are people there on Tuesday and Thursday, they said, and I should just come on by. I'm very excited--handball is on the list of things to do after I move, for sure. I've been missing it terribly lately.

The chef who got me the job at the bakery came in on Saturday to drop off some pate de fruit for Jefe and to pick up some gibassier (a delicious little treat that's flavored with ground fennel and orange water and candied oranges--it totally rocks). Going to talk to him about my plans is also one of the next orders of business when the move is complete.

I realized today that this move feels so difficult because the last time I moved, it was only within this building. It was a pain for other reasons: Basically, I was switching apartments with someone who wanted a one-bedroom (we live in a two-bedroom), plus Dave was moving in with stuff from his mother's (where he'd been living) and from a storage locker (where his belongings were living after he and his wife split up). In addition, we agreed to leave the one-bedroom early so they could paint it and also redo the kitchen in our new place; as a result, we shared a teeny, hot, awful studio in the building for two weeks. We had a bunch of my stuff stashed in the new place, though, in one of the bedrooms, which really helped reduce the pain a little, but the studio was hellish. Nevertheless, I was only moving up four floors, and I was able to do some of that before the move date. I moved into this building in 1997, I think, so it's really been nine years since I moved in a major way.

The whole thing still feels surreal at times, not to mention sad. But, just as the croissants won't make themselves, the boxes won't pack themselves. I keep in mind Horrible Moves I Have Witnessed Or About Which I Have Heard, and I do not want to join those ranks, so I grab another box and some tape and have at it. Yes, it's true, this is not how I expected to spend the weeks leading up to my first anniversary, but that's the way it goes. The boxes still won't pack themselves, and I know that if I don't pack well, the unpacking will suck even more than it usually does (the boxes also will not unpack themselves). One thing that I think will work out reasonably well is that the new place has a layout that is strikingly similar to the apartments in which I've lived in this building--the dimensions of the rooms are almost exactly what the dimensions of this apartment are (though the new place only has one bedroom, it's larger than the bedroom I now occupy). This place is built-in glass-fronted cabinets next to the dining room window, which is where my dishes went; the new place doesn't have those, and has somewhat less counter and cabinet space, so that might be a challenge. On the other hand, the new place has a lot of closet space--two in the bedroom, one in the living room, one in the entry-way, and what is essentially a large built-in dresser (shelves and a lot of drawers). There's carpet in the bedroom, without which I could do, but the rest of the place is hardwood floors, so I'm hoping to carve out a little space in the living room for yoga--if I really can get my act together, I may even be able to use the half hour I'll save on commuting to do some yoga a couple of mornings a week. Don't hold your breath on that one, but you never know.

Vroom Vroom

2006-06-05T21:41:00.000-05:00

I spent yesterday watching cars go very fast and turning left--a friend took me to a Champ Car race yesterday, and it was quite cool. The green side of me is appalled, but I really liked it and would happily go again. On the way home, we stopped and picked up boxes (including bubble wrap!) from my yoga friend, which I proceeded to fill today. Despite the piles of filled boxes, I still have a ton of stuff to pack. Unfortunately, I'm once again out of empty boxes, though I'm hoping to get some from work tomorrow (the dishwasher has been saving them for me).

Use it or move It: Those are my choices these days with regard to food, so I'm trying to eat stuff. On the days when I make dinner, pasta is easy, as I could eat it every day and be happy. I'm getting through some of the frozen odds and ends on the days when I don't feel like dealing with pasta. Breakfast cereal isn't a problem, except there are bags and boxes that I got for the Kid (and his father). I hacked up a butternut squash the other night, and also managed to finish off a couple of onions and the Swiss chard that was about to go bad in the vegetable drawer. Still, it's more difficult than you might think, given the changes in eating habits.

The building manager called today and said they had to turn over 20 apartments at the end of the month, so if I could move out early, well, it turns out they'll rebate on the rent after all. I signed the new lease and handed over the security deposit, plus checked out the new place again. If I could get the boxes and fill them, I could move next week instead of the week after, but I don't think that's really possible, plus Craw still has a bunch of stuff here that isn't packed yet. At the new end, I have to do all of the change of address stuff and I have to line up the phones, internet, and cable. I really can't manage everything in the next week. This turns out to be another one of the down sides of hourly-wage jobs: if you take off, you don't get paid. Plus, with schedules as tight as the ones at our place, taking off can really disrupt the whole production. I'm increasingly becoming reminded of the downsides of these jobs, and that isn't helping my mood any, but I'm not going to bitch about it here/now.

Still More Moving Crap

2006-05-31T05:03:00.000-05:00

Is it worth $250 to not have to lift any boxes? Two movers provided me with quotes that come out to about $400, and figure another $60 in tips--let's say $500 total. Renting a truck (truck rental, mileage, gas, a dolly, insurance, tax) will be about $175, I'm guessing, and figure another $75 to provide food and beer for the friends who help me move. Either way, I may try to rope a friend into moving the bed and some essentials (teapot, stereo, shower curtain, towels, soap) the day before, so I can get that shit set up first. If I have everything packed--and I fully intend to do that, because any other plan is a fucking nightmare--then it might be possible to do the whole thing in less than six hours. (For the move mentioned below, I assembled a pickup truck and three or four station wagons, plus about ten people, and the whole thing was done in a little more than two hours, though there was no furniture.) All in all, I'd probably rather spend the $250 throwing a big-ass party for the people who help me move, you know? And maybe getting a good massage.

I asked the building management at the current apartment whether they'd pro-rate the rent, and they said no. Thus, even though I'm planning on moving out on the 18th, they don't get the keys until the 30th. Fuck 'em; if I'm paying for it, they can wait. That also gives me an extra week or so to collect mail and the like, and provide a birthday pie for the doorman (if I am sufficiently organized to do that, which is probably questionable). Money-wise, it doesn't make that much difference, as the new place is apparently giving me June for free.

I have half of a post in my head, about food, or, rather, the gendered aspects of food and eating, but my brain still thinks I only need four hours of sleep, and I'm not going to try to write it now. I don't ever remember having this much trouble sleeping. I suspect that more exercise and more yoga would help tremendously, and, hey, I'll get right on that. Soon--first thing, in fact.

I found a website that has a word a day in Spanish, so I bookmarked it and try to go every day. I still don't know what to do with verbs, or any of the other grammatical bits, for that matter, but I figure it doesn't hurt to add vocabulary. Anyway, today's word is grosero, which means rude or coarse, according to the definition. Except the sample sentence's translation spells it "course," as in, "He was a course man." I keep trying to invent meanings for that sentence.

In this corner . . .

2006-05-29T16:17:00.000-05:00

we have piles of boxes--about 70% of my books, which were even dusted before they were packed (thank you, J), some kitchen stuff (cookbooks, wine glasses), the bins that were under my bed, and tchochkes. In that corner, we have a pile of winter clothing, bedding, and towels, all of which are waiting for acceptable receptacles, but which have been sorted through. On the chair, we have the items that are destined for the Salvation Army (I'm not a fan of their homophobia, but they pick up, which means one less thing about which I have to worry). If I had some boxes I could do more, but I'm out of boxes, and I can't bring myself to buy something that I should be able to get for free by the end of the week (including bubble wrap!).

This packing reminded me of Memorial Day weekend, 1993. I had applied for a job at the university, a three-year, full-time, but non-tenure-track position that was for people like me, i.e., people who had finished their dissertations but who had not found a position for the next year. I was one of the ten people interviewed by the committee; there were five positions. One Thursday, I found out that I did not get the job--via a secretary leaving a message on my answering machine. I never got any other notice, even though I knew several members of the interviewing committee. (By way of contrast, the chair of the hiring committee at Swarthmore called in person to tell me that they had--by a very narrow margin--chosen someone else for the position for which I had interviewed. He told me what the committee had said, he made it clear that he had supported me, and he made it clear that the committee thought I would make an excellent professor.) The next day, I came to the north side of the city and found a new apartment, after obtaining promises of assistance from my parents (seeing as how I was unemployed).

The following Tuesday, I told the rental office in my university-owned building that I would not be there for the summer--"Oh," they said, "you had to tell us by Friday. So you have to pay the rent for the summer after all." Mind you, I had lived in the building for seven years and had been a model tenant; in addition, my long tenure there meant they had been able to avoid repainting the apartment, etc. "But," they said, "someone is coming next week to find a place to live, and if your place is empty, maybe they'll rent it." I had originally planned to move on June 15, after graduation; I had nine people coming in from out of town for said event. Nevertheless, I changed my moving date to June 1 or something like it and spent Memorial Day weekend packing all of my worldly possessions (which, at the time, didn't include furniture, because I had rented a furnished apartment). The move, and graduation, went off without a hitch, but, of course, no one rented my apartment, and they still made me pay the rent.

And I think last Memorial Day weekend was the wedding shower.

All in all, though, I got at least some stuff done, and I think that, with the boxes, I can do the rest of this pretty easily. There are a couple of Corners of Crap--like my desk, for example--that will take some sorting, and the kitchen will be, as always, tedious beyond belief, but it'll be okay.

Comments

2006-05-29T07:58:00.000-05:00

I'm tired of dealing with haloscan--damn you, haloscan!--so I switched back to blogger for comments, which has the apparent effect of deleting all of your comments (or storing them in comment purgatory, maybe?). Which is a drag.

Okay, back to the packing and sorting (though I'm contemplating hiring movers; I'll at least get an estimate).

Some wine with that blackout?

2006-05-28T20:17:00.000-05:00

So J shlepped me to pick up boxes from the back porch of the Brazen Tart, and then she came back here with me and packed books for awhile, even dusting them before packing. She did that while I sorted clothing and packed a few boxes and tried to think. Then I insisted on taking her to a local quasi-asian joint, where we had food, and wine . . . and then the lights went out. The power was out for quite awhile, so we were comped our dinner plus a lot of wine (a bottle plus) and Enrique brought three bowls of dessert (vanilla ice cream, coconut ice cream, and lichee nut sorbet) on top of that. The lights came on about 15 minutes before we left, but we were still comped (even though, by the time the lights came on, we were the only non-employees in the joint). Needless to say, Enrique got an even larger cash tip than usual. He always comped me and Craw extravagantly, and a few weeks ago, when he wasn't there and we asked for Carlos instead, we were comped half our meal. We tend to tip, large, in cash, and it comes back to us. More tonight than usual, of course, as dinner only cost the tip.

Tomorrow is the Emma Goldman Festival of Sorting and Packing. A lot more of the former than the latter, as I don't have a lot of boxes yet, but that's okay. My yoga buddy is moving Tuesday, and she has promised me free boxes AND bubble wrap and the like, when she's done with it, so I don't have the heart, or the budget, to buy what I can get for free. It means I can only sort rather than pack a lot of things, but that's okay. I've decided that sorting things into piles is nearly the same as packing, and I'm probably right about that. Right this minute, I don't give a shit. (Wine does that to a person.)

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2006-05-28T06:22:00.000-05:00

My brain will NOT let me sleep much later than 4 or 4:30 most mornings, which is getting annoying (and tiring). The move will cut a half hour off my commute in the morning, so I'll move up the alarm a little (now set for 4:54, but I don't remember the last time it went off, as I wake up before that) and see what that does. I'm actually looking forward to beginning the packing today--much as I hate the chore, what I hate even more is knowing it needs to be done and not having it done. If I don't have enough boxes to start, I'll either buy some or just start sorting and piling. I'd hoped to have Craw's room for that, but it's still full of his stuff, and I think it's unlikely that he'll have all of his stuff out of here much before I move. Yesterday I bought some packing tape, some duct tape (for the heavier stuff), and some rags, so I can dust stuff as I pack it (and I know a lot of stuff is rather dusty). Yeah, I know, I could have sacrificed some t-shirts or something, but the rags were only about $2.

One of the side effects of my current job is that my upper body is gaining significant strength/muscle--my arms and biceps and shoulders are noticeably more muscular. (If I get to play handball again someday, it'll be interesting to see what effect that has on my game.) Another side effect is that my diet (in the sense of what I eat on a daily basis) has gone to hell in a handbasket. I try to have my bowl of wood chips and burlap bags in the morning, and I probably do that three, sometimes four, days out of five, but I no longer bother to pack a lunch. I end up nibbling stuff all day--bits of bread, day-old baked stuff, the occasional cake scrap with some fudge icing. I try to eat a reasonable dinner, if I haven't had too much crap, so it's not a total loss, but I don't really have lunch, per se. It's cheaper, for sure, and I make an effort to eat more bread than cake, so it could be worse, but it's still a lot of crap.

A lot of the products we make involve a mix of some kind, especially the cakes, cupcakes, donuts, and muffins. Even that stuff has real eggs, milk, buttermilk, sour cream, etc. in it, so it's not just powdered mix plus water (which is pretty common at most places). Our croissants are all butter, which is practically unheard of in this city, and we use butter (as well as something called "puff-flake"--you don't want to know) in our puff pastry, again unlike anywhere else in the city. We use real chocolate in our fudge icing and cocoa in our chocolate buttercream frosting, as well as in our chocolate mousse (again, most places don't use real chocolate). Yes, we use a lot of shortening, but we also use a lot of butter. Yes, we use a whipped-cream base, but we also use heavy cream with it (the base helps stabilize it, which is important if you're going to have a cake sit for more than an hour or two).

I'd say the two things we do best, though, are breads and croissants. As noted, the croissants are all butter--and I laminate the dough by hand, every day. And the bread--lordy, the bread is good. Some of it has shortening or oil in it, but many of the things we make have little or no fat, and a lot use organic flour. It's no wonder I nibble it whenever I can. My favorites are the semolina sesame, the roasted onion and walnut, and several versions of a tomato bread. The miche is dense and tasty, and the baguettes are beautiful and delicious. All in all, they are really exceptional products.

All of this is relevant in part because I have to figure out what I'm going to do. The mixes make life a little easier, but they also make life a little cheaper. If I don't have a location where customers will pay the higher price for the no-mixes products, then I won't be in business for long. The other thing I have to figure out is how much and how hard I want to work. Jefe spends at least 75 to 80 hours a week at the bakery, as best I can figure. He has a good manager in Brad, but Jefe still spends many hours with his hands in dough. Partly that's because he likes it--he wants to be making stuff, not dealing with the details of the business, and he only does the latter because he has to (and his wife and Brad both do a chunk of that). The other thing is that the three people who do the bulk of the rest of the production--the whistler, the baker, and Johnnie--have been there for at least a decade apiece; Johnnie has been there more than 15 years. The people who come in at night have been there a similarly long time. If I buy an already existing business, chances are I'll get the employees, too, which has good and bad aspects.

One of the problems this place faces is that the Hispanic guys resist certain kinds of changes. Jefe and Brad put up a white board in December. It's supposed to be used to list things that need to be ordered and to list things that need to be made. Brad and I are the only ones who use the board. He's tried to get the guys to use it for their ordering, but they just won't, in part because Jefe won't enforce it and Brad can't enforce it single-handedly. (That is, one could only order things listed on the board, which will eventually mean that there aren't eggs or butter or something like that, but Jefe will go to the whistler and ask him how many cases of eggs or milk he needs, meaning Whistler doesn't have to use the board. So he doesn't.) It may be that the guys aren't terribly literate, especially not in English (I've seen some of their labeling, and I suspect that's true), but that's going to be the case no matter where I go. (Hell, at this point Jefe and Brad both ask me to proofread whatever they're writing--I sometimes think I could make a living just doing freelance writing for places like this.) The upshot, though, is that Brad or Jefe have to go around the bakery and ask each employee whether s/he needs anything from a given supplier, which isn't terribly efficient. It also means that production is similarly inefficient--whenever Jefe asks Whistler when we're going to have Product X (something that Whistler makes), the answer is always "Tomorrow," because the question is what prompts Whistler to put the product on his production list for the next day. There are some exceptions to this system--Whistler keeps track, more or less, of what cakes he needs to make for the decorated cake orders--but it's how the cookies and muffins and cupcakes get made, by and large. Again, it's inefficient as hell, but it's the way things are done at the bakery, and trying to change it wouldn't work very well. If I buy a place, I'll be buying these systems, too, and I know better than to think major changes can be instituted overnight.

Move to the Music

2006-05-26T20:38:00.000-05:00

I might possibly have found a place to live--I put in an application today, anyway. It's in the building I described a couple of posts ago, with the indoor laundry and elevator and so on. The building is U-shaped, with the U facing east (which is the lake); I'm at the top corner of the U, facing south. On one hand, being there means I face the courtyard (except for some lake from the bedroom window), and therefore my neighbors, but I'll be on the 7th floor (of 9), so I should get a fair amount of light. The place is a godawful pit right now (including old food in the fridge), but they'll clean it up. Part of my brain kept thinking that I should Keep Looking! Because there's a Perfect Place out there somewhere, and for less money! But fuck that. It has a gas stove, a big kitchen, a big dining area, hardwood floors (except in the bedroom), lots of closets and built-in drawers and shelves, a window in the bathtub, it faces south, and it has an indoor laundry room. Oh, and it will cut a half hour off my commute in the morning, and it's three blocks from the lake. Thanks to the day I spent wandering from hither to yon and back again, I know that there's a lot worse to be had for the same price in the same neighborhood, and I really (really, really, really) do not have the energy to expand the search to some other (theoretically) More Perfect neighborhood.

On Sunday, J is going to meet me, with her car, and we're going to pick up boxes from the Brazen Tart, then head to Whole Paycheck and then come back here so J can drink wine and watch me pack. I've started formulating a Packing Plan (yes, I know, you're shocked that I'd have a plan or a system of some kind), and now I just have to execute the plan. A yoga friend may also drop off more boxes on Monday, so I can just pack to my heart's content. Woo-fucking-hoo.

My aim is to get out of here by mid-June, if possible; I think Sunday the 18th would be a fine day to move, especially since that gives me Monday to unpack. (I'm capable of being sufficiently organized such that I could probably have 80% of the unpacking done by Monday night if I worked at it. We'll see whether I can actually do that.) That also has the effect of having me NOT moving on our first anniversary. I really wanted to avoid that, though D doesn't seem to mind so much. I saw him and the Kid tonight for the first time in a couple of weeks. It was great to see the Kid, and to see D, for that matter; we have things to discuss that can't really be discussed in front of the Kid, but it was a nice dinner and I'm really glad we did it.

Meanwhile, I'm rather exhausted. I like getting the overtime pay in my paycheck, for sure, but working the hours is draining. My back feels something like a 2x8, except without the flexibility of a board. And this weekend is going to be a festival of chores: the apartment is, once again, one of the circles of hell, in terms of neatness and cleanliness (even I, with my nearsightedness, can see the crud in the tub), and I have laundry. And packing. Did I mention the packing?

All those fine thoughts of going through my possessions and weeding things out . . . well, let's just say that expediency is going to be the watchword here, rather than thoroughness. Years of living in small apartments (rather than, say, a house) helped me curb whatever packrat tendencies I might have had--hell, if I suddenly bought a house, I wouldn't be able to fill it with what I own. (I find that thought depressing sometimes.) I keep thinking I should be working on my Master Plan, my Long Term Goals, or whatthefuckever, but then I remind myself that I have a lot of chores to do in the next six weeks, and those have to take priority. I have limited time and energy--I can't steal 15 minutes while at work to deal with the cable company, for example--and I have to focus on the necessary. And did I mention the packing? My yoga teacher suggested deep breathing while I pack--and some rock and roll on the stereo. She knows whereof she speaks.

Signed, Glad They Met

2006-05-25T21:54:00.000-05:00

Unhappy, unhappy
You have no complaint
You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't
So listen up buster, and listen up good
Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood
John Prine, "Dear Abby"

Perhaps not surprisingly, I was in kind of a funk on Tuesday, and, while sitting on a bus, it started morphing into feeling sorry for myself. Then my iPod served up the above song, which made me laugh. I met a friend for some beer and free Indian food, which helped with the attitude adjustment. As I talked about my weekend, I realized that part of what had been so unpleasant was the lying I described in the post below. (The post makes it sound like I knew that at the time, but I didn't.) Talking about it definitely improved the situation, too, in the sense that I was able to figure out what was giving me mental indigestion.

Oh--I promised you all the story of how my parents met, didn't I? My mother and M have been friends for nearly their whole lives, and M is the one who told this story to the assembled multitudes. My father espied my mother and decided he wanted to know her. As luck would have it, my mother and M were in a wedding that my father attended with a woman named Antoinette. My father--whom I have seen dance MAYBE six times in my whole life--came trotting over to my mother to ask her to dance, and every time he did this, my mother grabbed M's fiance and made him dance with her. My mother didn't know whether Antoinette was a girlfriend or what, but she wasn't comfortable having my dad abandon his date for her. After about five tries, dad figured out that mom wasn't going to dance with him. Luckily, however, one of his friends lived next door to my grandparents and mother (and I had heard this part of the story before), providing him with additional opportunities to talk to her. Then, because M's fiance was in the army, whenever my mom and dad went on a date, they took M along--the three of them would even go to the drive-in together (and my mom would fall asleep while my dad and M watched the movie). (My dad said on Monday, as we talked about this in the car, that he should have told everyone that he dropped M off first at the end of the evening.) They started dating in July 1955, got engaged in November, and got married the following May, 50 years ago tomorrow. Kinda cool, really.

Weekend with Emma's Family

2006-05-24T21:25:00.000-05:00

So the worst part of the weekend, I realized last night, was the fact that I spent most of it lying. The very first thing my older nephew asked was, "Where's David?" I practiced my lie on him ("He got a new job recently, and he had to go to a meeting at the last minute"). I told this lie at least 20 times on Sunday. I also lied to the four people who knew the truth (mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law), in that they kept saying they just wanted to make sure I'm okay. Of course I am, I'd say; I'm fine. That's not quite as much of a lie, but it does blur a lot of the truth, like how my head spins sometimes. But I really did not want to go there.

One of the things that was interesting, in a meta kind of way, was to which people I almost told the truth. One was my mom's first cousin; she's a couple of years older than my mom, and I've always thought she was the best. She continues to be active in (and get arrested in the course of participating in) various anti-war and social justice movements, and she has a son in his early 40s who has schizophrenia. Because of my past (I once dated a man with schizophrenia) and some of the work I've done, I've talked to her a lot about her son. Not only did she come out here for the wedding, she came out for my Ph.D. graduation, which I thought was pretty cool. Another almost-told was my first cousin--my dad's youngest sister's oldest son. He's almost two years older than me, but because of how our birthdays fell, he was only a year ahead of me in high school. His younger brother and my younger sister were close in age (only a couple of months apart) and in the same grade in high school. His younger brother committed suicide about 17 years ago, so we were able to talk about our parents and how they've dealt with losing a child. I've always liked him a lot, and I'm glad to get back in touch with him. He was also one of the two cousins who made it a point to tell me that their daughters remind them of me--the daughters have the same color hair as me, wear it long, get good grades, and are . . . strong-willed. That was kind of entertaining, and flattering, if you want to know.

Two of my mothers friends want to work in my bakery--one wants to do wedding cakes (she used to have a cake business), and the other, my parents' next-door neighbor and long-time friend, loves to make bread and would work in the bakery for free.

My younger nephew is scary-smart, though I'm not sure everyone realizes it. First off, he's reading--he won't be six until September. And I don't mean reading simple stuff, I mean reading whatever he comes across. His older brother has apparently taught him multiplication (only through the twos, but still). But most entertaining was the Wagon Experiment. When I got there on Saturday, he was standing in a wagon and riding it down a hill. It crashed and he fell out and bumped his arm and that was the end of that. Sunday after the party we were hanging around outside again--brother and older nephew were shooting their bows again (my brother usually uses his recurve bow against my nephew's compound bow, but bro had pulled out his compound bow that evening--and my nephew was still beating him, I believe). Younger nephew had the wagon on a different hill, and he'd replaced himself in the wagon with a bucket of rocks. (I'd also told him he needed a crash test dummy, so he went and got one of his stuffed animals.) He was setting up rocks on the hill and aiming the wagon at it--and there seemed to be some complicated reason for this. I asked him what he was trying to accomplish with the rocks and he said he wanted the rocks on the ground to strike the axle in such a way as to make it turn. Why, I asked. Well, so when a truck hits something it doesn't flip over (or turns in a particular way, or doesn't go off the road; I forget the precise thing he wanted to have happen). Is the wagon axle the same as a truck axle, I asked. So he took me over to the truck and pointed out the axle. There was also a bit about what happens to the engine in a collision, and where the airbags were, and so on. One could speculate that this is, in part, a reaction to the fact that he was in the truck (a different one) when my sister-in-law hit and killed someone a few weeks ago (an elderly woman ran a stop sign and my SIL broadsided her--it was absolutely not SIL's fault, and she couldn't have prevented it). But one should also notice that my nephew had a whole experiment and a paradigm and who knows what else going on--which I thought was pretty impressive for a five-year-old.

The party itself was fun, mostly, lying notwithstanding. The uncle who's going through chemo was there, looking better than I expected, but still not great. (Ever since I was tiny, he'd wait until I'd give him a kiss and then say, "Best one I had all day." He still does this, much to the delight of both of us.) There was much dancing, though not by me (I don't know how to dance, really), except when the cousin mentioned above snagged me and when younger nephew got me out there. I also for the first time heard the complete story about how my parents met, but that will have to wait for a subsequent post.

Toast

2006-05-24T19:38:00.000-05:00

I found out Sunday morning that I was giving a toast Sunday afternoon, so I wrote it out. I also brought it back with me, so I'll share it with you while I write more about the weekend:

On behalf of [mom] and [dad}, and on behalf of [brother], [sister-in-law], and David, I want to thank you all for being here today. You all know what special people my parents are, but [brother] and I know, and [sister] knew, what special parents they are. They taught us, by their examples, the value of hard work, and they've shown us that any job worth doing is worth your best effort. They taught us how to live with love and compassion in our hearts. They showed us how to live with devastating loss and with the adversity that is part of life. They've shown us how to enjoy happiness and create and share joy. And so I'd like to ask you all to raise your glass with me and thank them, for sharing their lives and their happiness with each other and with all of us.

Croissants, anyone?

2006-05-19T05:12:00.000-05:00

My brain has been deciding that 3:30 or 4:00 am is a FINE time to wake up. I disagree, but I've learned that there's little arguing with my brain on this point. I know that some of it is circumstantial, but some of it is circadian, too; I'm much more likely to do this when the days are long and sunrise comes early. It's catching up with me today, though, and it's going to be a grueling day at work, so I'm not as pleased about it as you might think.

I've been trying to fit a full week's production of croissants into four days; the only upside is that the farmers' markets have only just begun, so I'll probably only make about 2,000 croissants this week. That number will go up to closer to 3,000, as best I can tell, by the height of the markets. I can't make them all myself, at least not in a nine-hour day, so I have to be organized enough to get everyone else involved, too. Wednesday we did almond croissants, which involved Jefe feeding blocks of laminated dough through the sheeter and then through the feeder/roller, the dishwasher brushing the flour off, the machine cutting the dough in half horizontally, me using a plastic guide to cut four-inch-wide strips, Brad squirting almond filling (of which I'd made a huge batch) and egg-washing the edges cut by the horizontal cutter, Brad and the baker rolling the croissants and egg-washing the outside, and the whistler dipping the egg-washed croissants into sliced almonds and putting them on sheet pans. We made approximately 250 croissants this way.

Then we switched to chocolate, and we called in the college guy who manages the front of the bakery to help with placing the bars of chocolate and rolling the pieces up. We only made about 140 of those on Wednesday, but Brad, Jefe, and I made another 175 or so of those yesterday, plus we made over 300 plain croissants and about 65 cinnamon raisin. (I can still handle the ham-and-cheese production, because we don't sell those at the markets.) There's apparently a machine that rolls the plain ones, but one of the belts doesn't work right now, so I sheeted the dough, Jefe cut, and Jefe and Brad rolled the pieces.

I've been making 24 pieces of dough at a time--for those of you doing the math at home, that's 24 6-pound pieces, plus 36 pounds of butter, once the dough is laminated. Tuesday and Wednesday I made 144 pounds of dough, divided into three bins. Wednesday and Thursday mornings, I divided the dough into six-pound pieces (two pieces per floured sheet pan), covered it in plastic, and shlepped it downstairs to the walk-in freezer, where I have to have someone help me actually get it in the freezer. While it rests, I pound the 36 pounds of butter into pound-and-a-half rectangles and put it in the walk-in refrigerator. I then have a little time to do something else; I've tried to have a couple of pieces of frozen laminated dough sitting out to thaw, which means I can make some ham and cheese croissants while the new dough is resting. When it's sufficiently cold, I drag the rack of dough out of the freezer downstairs and wrestle it back to the walk-in refrigerator, and Jefe and I start laminating. Even with his help and a steady pace, it takes awhile to laminate all that dough. After that's done, I give each of the 24 pieces a second turn, then take the rack BACK down to the freezer. I find something to do for an hour or so, including taking a break in there somewhere, and then start production.

In subsequent weeks, I think I'm going to organize production so we do the almond croissants for the week on Tuesday, the chocolate on Wednesday, and the plain and cinnamon on Thursday, and maybe some plain on Friday as well. This also means being sufficiently organized so there's enough dough to do all of each kind on the designated day, and it means being sufficiently organized so I have enough of the other kinds to fill the wholesale orders and produce croissants for the store as well. And this can't be done too far ahead, because the laminated dough only lasts for a week or so (either as dough or as a frozen croissant). My guess is that I'll be getting some overtime, which is fine for me.

Which brings me to the next tale. I talked to my mom last night, giving her enough info about what's been happening here (and I have not told you all, and will not unless/until D decides he's comfortable sharing the info) to explain D's absence tomorrow/Sunday. She's worried about his job and his ability/willingness to support me, so of course her first response (after concern for his and my well-being) is to tell me that I have to quit this bakery thing and get a higher-paying job. I told her I did not want to hear that from her again. She has been the absolutely least supportive person with regard to this career change--shit, she's not supportive at all. The part I really like is how I'm supposed to go get some fabulous high-paying job. Um, mom? I tried that. My failure to achieve that was part of what made me rethink this whole thing. And have you noticed that I don't exactly have a personality or a resume likely to get me a high-paying corporate job? Quite the opposite, actually.

I have to admit to my own anxieties in this regard, and I've realized that I really must start drumming up some side work. The guy who does the computer stuff and website for the bakery says that his customers need people to write stuff for them, which I can do. Basically, I have to find writing, editing, and/or proofreading jobs that I can do on my own time. Of course, I also have to seal the new apartment deal, pack my stuff, and move in the next six weeks, but what the fuck ever. Hardly a surprise that I'm waking up at 3:30 am with little anxieties running through my brain. I'm hoping that I can get through this weekend (including two flights--did I mention I HATE to fly?--in three days) and then begin to focus a little better.

Which reminds me of something my yoga teacher said a few weeks ago. One of the Big-Name teachers she really likes is Gary Kraftsow, though he's not as famous as some of them. He points out that we tend to measure our physical selves with a lot of numbers--height, weight, bench-press ability, cholesterol level, etc.--and suggests three other criteria: lightness of body (by which he does not mean weight, per se); ability to withstand change (which is not the same thing as, say, adapting to change); and ability to focus. By those criteria, I'm doing doing too badly; I can also see the ways I'm not doing as well as I'd like. Of course, more yoga would help in that regard.

Okay, time to get moving here. If I don't talk to y'all until after I get back, you'll understand, I hope.

Candidates for Home

2006-05-15T21:32:00.000-05:00

I must have walked five miles today (uphill through the snow in both directions . . . yeah, like this city has any hills), crisscrossing the neighborhood in which I expect to live.

The first building I saw is one of the two candidates for Emma's New Home status: it's a mid-rise (maybe 10 stories), with laundry indoors, and with decent-sized apartments that have big kitchens with attached dining areas and dishwashers. There's likely to be an apartment that faces south opening up in my timeframe; the manager will know for sure later this week. Price? $800/month, with the first month free.

Then I saw a bunch of crap, mostly around $750/month. All had outdoor laundry access. One had spongy floors (I think they put some kind of cushion under the fake hardwood floors), which was kind of eerie. None of the kitchens was tiny, but one was from about 1947. The built-in cabinets in that one were kind of cool, if you want to know, even with 50 coats of paint, but that was a two-bedroom and the guy who showed it to me didn't know what it cost. The one-bedroom in the building was $750, so the two-bedroom was almost certainly over $800. The laundry room had one washer and one dryer, for more than a dozen apartments, which doesn't seem like enough (and what if one breaks down?). One other apartment had a kitchen that's smaller than some closets I've had.

Finally, three hours and too many apartments later, I saw the other candidates for ENH status, or, rather, saw two apartments in the building that likely houses the apartment I'd want. One had a separate dining room ($750), the other had an eat-in kitchen (which really was big enough for my table and chairs) ($725)), and the building manager used to play handball--at one of the places I used to play, no less. He has an Irish accent you could cut with a knife, too. It turns out that a south-facing apartment on the third floor (it's a walk-up building, which means even more stairs to do laundry) is about to come open this week, once they finish evicting someone, and it's one with the eat-in kitchen, i.e., $725, and the manager said he'd try to get me a dishwasher in there, too. If he succeeds, then I have to decide whether it's worth $75/month to not have to schlep down three flights of stairs to wash my kitchen clothes each week. The laundry room is pretty decent, though, so I'd probably just bring a book and sit there while things spun in various machines.

I'm seeing a place tomorrow, too, that looks pretty spectacular, but it has a July 1 date, meaning I'd have about 24 hours with no place for my stuff. The candidates from today would facilitate a June 15 lease, which would enable me to vacate here in a reasonable fashion and would probably also enable me to move on a day other than our anniversary. Part of me is leaning toward the second candidate--I liked the guy who's managing the buildings, and they seem nice and well-kept, and it's clear the owner is willing to maintain them. But indoor laundry AND a dishwasher? If they really will give me the first month rent-free, then the price is nearly a wash over the course of the year (which I hadn't thought about until just now). I'll wait and see whether a south-facing apartment comes open, I guess, and wait until I see the apartment in the 3rd-floor walkup, and decide then. I could keep looking, but I suspect I've seen a pretty fair sampling of what's available, and either of the candidates could be home. Plus, then you guys won't have to read my whining about finding an apartment--don't worry; I'll find some other whine-worthy material.

"Cozy" = "Small"

2006-05-14T20:33:00.000-05:00

Things I did today: called my mom and wished her a happy mother's day; went to a yoga class; wandered around looking for apartments in a neighborhood in which I want to live; actually saw an apartment (really nice, but REALLY small; have to think about it); had lunch with the Kid, who seemed really glad to see me, and his father; read through a bunch of ads and identified a dozen or so places I want to see tomorrow; went grocery shopping. Things I didn't do but maybe should have done: laundry; sorting through the bills and such in my mail basket; some more cleaning or organizing (I did do some yesterday, as this apartment had turned into a circle of hell). I have to stay reasonably organized this week, as my flight on Saturday is at 9-something in the morning. I'd been thinking it was noon, but that's actually when I get in. It remains to be seen whether I'm going to have company with me at the 50th anniversary party; it's clear, however, that it's gonna kinda suck for me no matter what happens. If D goes with me, he's going to be miserable, and likely I will be too, though perhaps we can manage a good front. If he doesn't go with me, some story will have to be told to my parents, and a story (not necessarily the same one) will have to be told to all the party guests, many of whom attended the wedding less than a year ago and will wonder where he is if he's absent. Forward to this I am not looking. I keep reminding myself that it's for my parents, that it is NOT about me, that I can get through it and even enjoy some of it, and that what's most important is that THEY enjoy it.

While walking to Whole Paycheck today, I could see the fog rolling in off the lake, which is always a trip. I've always loved fog, and the apartments in which I've lived for the past 12 years have afforded an amazing sight when it happens.

One of my yoga classmates is moving at the end of the month (to the area of town where I want to live, no less), and she's promised me her moving boxes. I'm going to see if That Brazen Tart wants to get rid of hers, too, which will solve the problem of finding the boxes. Transporting them might be a little more difficult, but perhaps not. And even though I'm determined to see a bunch of apartments tomorrow--and, hey, maybe I'll even rent one of them--I've otherwise decided to give myself off from the search until I get back. I'm going to have to work longer hours this week, because (a) we're starting the farmers' markets in a big way this week, which means increased production, but (b) I'm not going to be here next Saturday. (I also wouldn't mind getting in my 40 hours in the four days I'll have to work; that's the down side of hourly work, for sure.)

The place I saw today almost convinced me. It got reasonable sunlight (including a window in the bathroom, which I like), it has a great kitchen area (big stainless steel fridge, nice countertops, dishwasher, microwave, lots of cupboards--not a gas stove, but one of those flat-top stoves, which are okay), it has a washer and dryer in the unit, and it's close to transportation. It's a condo, and the owner is keeping it even though he's moving out. The downside, however, is that it is quite, quite small. I would not have room for my kitchen table and chairs (and I kind of like them, even though they're getting kind of in need of a cleanup), the desk would be a squeeze even though it's a small desk, and I'm not sure all the bookshelves would fit. I saw a different apartment on Friday, and the dealbreaker on that one was the have-to-go-outside-and-down-three-flights-to-do-laundry part, plus the walk from the el to the apartment is through a not-great area. Given my current occupation and the need to do laundry frequently, the former will wear exceedingly thin in February. The apartment was very large, though--too big, almost. (I feel like Goldilocks--too big, too small. I'm holding out for just right.)

I had a nice conversation with the guy today. I told him that with every apartment I've ever had that I really liked, when I walked in I thought, "This could be home." I almost felt that today--the washer/dryer is extremely appealing, and the kitchen is nice, though small--but I think I can get more space for that price, even if I sacrifice the washer/dryer and dishwasher. A surprising number of apartments have dishwashers, so I could get lucky on that one. I found a penny today; maybe the luck will carry through to tomorrow.

Habit Forming

2006-05-10T20:46:00.000-05:00

Maybe sheetrocking wasn't one of Sully's favorite jobs, but like most physical labor, there was a rhythm to it that you could find if you cared to look, and once you found this rhythm it'd get you through a morning. Rhythm was what Sully had counted on over the long years--that and the wisdom to understand that no job, no matter how thankless or stupid or backbreaking, could not be gotten through. The clock moved if you let it.

--Richard Russo, "Nobody's Fool"

I've been thinking about habits lately. My yoga teacher suggests that we notice our habits--which way do you cross your arms, or clasp your hands, or sit cross-legged? We fall into patterns, unthinkingly, and our bodies "grow" that way. Sometimes it's helpful to not just notice those patterns but to try to change some of them and see what happens when we do that. (I try not to set up my mat in the same place every time I take a class.)

We get into mental habits, too--ways we respond to people or situations--and I think our habits feed off of each other, in good and not-so ways. It's one of the factors in what's been happening in my head: one of my fears, since this drama really escalated, was that, even if Craw managed to change some of his more undesirable behaviors, I'd either keep looking for them, or keep seeing them. Another factor is that I know he is capable of some kinds of change, because I've seen it with my own eyes--but I've also seen the habits that have persisted. And I'm sure he could say the same about me; one of the things that's true when you spend a lot of time around another person is that, if you're paying attention, you really can say, "I know how you get." When we first got together, for example, one of the habits Craw had was to store up grievances. In his last marriage, one did not bring up issues when they occurred--oh, no; one stored grievances. Why? Because if the other person had a grievance, then you could bring out one or more of the stored grievances and brandish it/them. Whoever could pile up the most grievances in a given battle "won" the title of Most Aggrieved, and then the other person had to eat shit; it was an all-or-nothing game. I wanted absolutely no part of that particular game and not only refused to play, I denied the legitimacy of the game. To his credit, Craw gradually pretty much gave it up, too; he didn't enjoy playing it, and I think he realized that I absolutely was uninterested in playing it. He falls back into it sometimes, but I think he'd really rather not readopt it as a way of airing one's grievances. In any case, Craw and I did fall into habitual responses. We could discuss which ones were helpful and which ones not so much, but they really weren't all bad.

The other thing, though, brought to mind by the quote at the top: the creation of rhythms or patterns--which aren't so different from habits, in at least some ways--can ease the flow in ways that are ultimately useful. If you're trying to turn out a consistent product and you're doing the work with the same tools every day (and especially if you're doing a bunch of it--like shaping croissants--by hand), then you'd better find habits that enable you to do that. Just as the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, it's also the case that you can't do things differently every day and expect the same result. The trick, I suppose, is figuring out when you want to get the same result and when you need to change what you're doing so you get a different result.

Ready . . . Set . . . Move

2006-05-09T21:13:00.000-05:00

The building manager called yesterday and wondered if I would be interested in getting out of here by July 1, because there's someone in the building who for-sure wants the apartment then. So I'm going to tell her yes, which will save a little money, which means I have about six weeks to find a place to live, sort and pack everything, and move. Sometimes you gotta say what the fuck. Time to enter the Zone--you know the one. The one where you make lists and do the next thing on the list without thinking too hard about it, and then cross it off and move to the thing after that. If I can get moving boxes in here by next week, I'll be in pretty good shape, I think. (Or so I tell myself.) I'll need someone to drive a rental truck for me, but I bet I can talk S into doing it if he's around, and I know he's capable of it. (I have a driver's license but you really don't want me to use it, and especially not for a big truck. I would have nightmares about this--literally--if I let myself think about it.)

I saw Craw's new place today, and it's pretty nice. It's a little on the small side, but, given the sequence of events, he ended up in a pretty good place. (That is, he probably could have gotten more apartment for about the same or a little more money, but this way he didn't have to completely break a lease that was only about a month old, he could move within his building, etc.) He doesn't have room for all of his stuff, meaning he'll have to store some things somewhere, but, realistically, he could also move when this lease is up next year, and he can manage nicely in this place in the meanwhile.

We still haven't figured out what to tell my parents: Craw really doesn't want to go to the 50th anniversary party, but what excuse is plausible but not hurtful? Work is probably not a good excuse; what employer would demand that you skip your inlaws' 50th anniversary party? Feigned illness requires something dire enough to prevent attendance but not so dire as to raise alarms. As of now, they all still think Craw's attending, but it's on the 21st, and the RSVP date is this Friday, so we'd better come up with something soon. And I'm trying not to think about flying, which I'll have to do and which I hate even more than driving a car.

Gone

2006-05-06T19:05:00.000-05:00

I keep forgetting to tell you that she of the gasoline thong got fired. It's not clear whether she mouthed off to Jefe's wife one too many times, or didn't follow a rule one too many times, or had to go get her kid at school one too many times (one of her kids is diagnosed with childhood bipolar disorder and is on a raft of meds, including antipsychotics, and has behavioral problems), or some combination of all of those. It's much quieter around the bakery, and the hispanic guys still walk through the kitchen calling out "Excuse me!" the way she used to do. I found her entertaining in many ways, and interesting, but I figured it was only a matter of time before she got canned; she has almost no impulse control. I think it's fear, mostly; she was in an abusive relationship for quite awhile, and I think she's afraid of letting go of the behaviors that she thinks helped her survive that.

In other news, Craw and I had a long, occasionally tear-stained phone conversation yesterday. In part thanks to an email exchange with Larry (thanks again, Larry), and in part thanks to (another!) conversation with J the other night (she is redefining the meaning of "friend"), I began to get some clarity on some things yesterday. I never expected Craw to provide everything for me (emotionally, psychologically, financially, entertainment-wise, intellectually, whatever), but that was perfectly fine (I think expecting the everything is misguided, anyway). I expected to get some of what I wanted from various other people and relationships and so on, and I expected he would do likewise. We also have different tastes in a variety of things. For me, then, my relationship with Craw was a fabric, woven of the time we spent together, the time we spent sharing the things we did like in common, the time spent working out the details of living with someone, etc. In other words, the partnership, and the trust at the core of that, were what held the other whirling bits together.

The issues that Craw and I described in earlier posts are not new ones: we've gone through variations on the same theme more than once or twice, and there are other difficulties we haven't discussed much here (and won't). This latest round really blew the center out of things for me, though. I don't know all of the reasons why it was worse this time--certainly one reason was that we were married, i.e., it seemed like even more of a betrayal to me. I have no idea whether I could have eventually trusted Craw again--maybe yes, maybe no. But what do we have without that part, without the thing that was holding the center together? Yes, we both miss going out to dinner on Sunday night; we agreed that we'd managed to work out an equitable sharing of the chores; there are the everyday things that you have when your lives are intertwined. But those aren't enough, by themselves, I don't think.

I could not give Craw more than an uncertain maybe--I didn't see the path back, but was perhaps willing to believe it existed. Craw didn't want to wait; he wanted an answer, either so he could work on things with me (whatever that turned out to mean), uncertain though that path was, or so he could move on. Plus, around the time he moved out--end of March? early April?--he met someone new, and they are apparently more compatible in many of the ways that we are not (music, for one thing, which is extremely important to Craw). Bad timing, yes, but there it is: if Craw and I were to decide to try to work things out, it would be difficult, at best, and neither of us really knows what "work things out" would mean. (And why, really? That is the question up against which we keep bumping.) On the other hand, he can start over with someone new, someone with whom he already seems to share a lot. If I'm not in a position to say "yes," then it seems to me I should just let him be, even if I'm not absolutely, positively sure that "no" is the right answer.

I'm tired, when it comes down to it. We've had the same damned discussions, over and over. Would we have more of them, or has Craw changed (or is he in the process of changing) enough of the behavior that was at the root of them? Would I be able to trust him, even if he has changed? Who the fuck knows. It's not fair, in my mind, to either one of us, to stay in a relationship that doesn't have a foundation of trust. And here's where my inexperience is relevant, I guess: I hadn't been in a committed relationship in nearly 15 years when I met Craw, so I don't know how these things go. I don't know when to keep fishing and when to cut bait, and I don't know what criteria I should use to figure that out. I believe, in principle, that one should try to work things out, but I also know that one reaches a point where that's not the right thing to do (though the reasons why are myriad). The short version, for me, seems to be a question of which path is less likely to increase the pain, both in the short term and the long term.

I'm also terribly, terribly sad. I can still find the anger, yes--that's definitely there. But the grief is starting to make its presence felt, and it just grabs me by the throat (or the heart, more like), luckily mostly when I'm alone. Craw is slowly but surely moving everything of his or the Kid's out of the apartment we shared. Last night I reached to turn on a light--and it was gone. (It was Craw's and I knew he was taking it, I just hadn't noticed until that minute that he'd taken it.) Today I stumbled across a copy of our marriage license (it was in a bunch of papers on my desk), which was wrenching. I hate this; I hate it. And I don't know that there's an alternative that would be an improvement or that would result in something better for both of us.

Phone Me

2006-05-05T21:05:00.000-05:00

I am an idiot. I got a new cellphone, because I could. That is, even though my old phone worked okay, it's getting old, and it's (literally) been through the wash--it stopped working briefly, but Craw dried it out and brought it back to life for me--and I was switching plans anyway, so I asked if I could get a new phone and they said yes. Anyway, it's a flip phone, which actually would not have been my first choice. So today I'm on the landline with Craw and the cell rings and I manage to answer it long enough to arrange a callback later, and I get back on the phone w/ Craw and mention that I haven't figured out how to answer my new phone yet. "Is it a flip phone?" he asks. Yes. "Just open it; that answers it." I laughed hysterically--I had no idea that that's how one answered the phone--I kept looking for a button to push. And, really, laughing is good.

Next Up

2006-05-03T22:23:00.000-05:00

I've been writing a post, but it's not a happy shiny one, and I haven't decided whether I want to put all that out there on the internets. My head continues to spin, in some ways, because I'm still dealing with a dry drunk, so we have festivals of denial, self-justification, rationalization, accusations, etc., when we try to get together, but, of course, it's all My Fault--if only I would make the decision to work things out, then we could make a go of it somehow. Ah, fuck it, I don't feel like writing about this tonight.

In other news, my boss, Jefe, is trying to convince me to compete for a spot on the team that would represent the US at the Coupe de Monde. It would involved videotaping myself making croissants; if, as a result of that video, I was invited to compete at the regional level, I would do that locally, where I would have eight hours to make three products; the regional winners compete at the national level for a spot on the team; the team itself practices for a year or so before the competition. Of course, I don't have any expectation that I could actually get to the top levels of this, so it's not like I have to really worry about the costs involved (which would be considerable). But competing at the regionals could be interesting, and my boss seems to think I could do it.

Yesterday, for example, another local pastry chef came in, bearing croissants for Jefe to examine. This other chef also went to the school I attended, albeit eight or nine years ago and he has his own shop, but Jefe isn't so impressed with him (even though this other guy apparently thinks they don't even need to bother holding the competition, as he's clearly going to win it). After the other guy left, I noodged and asked what was wrong with the other guy's croissants. Jefe grabbed one and showed how the dough was too stiff and didn't have enough surfaces showing to get through regionals, then grabbed one of mine and pointed out that it had four surfaces, the dough wasn't too stiff, etc. (By surfaces he means basically how many twirls in your croissant; I can't really explain it w/o pictures.)

So we talked some more--where would I practice, I asked. Well, I could make something each day in the bakery (and the bakery could sell the products), and then come in on Sunday when no one's around and do everything. (That means giving up one of my days off for the forseeable future.) I contemplated a ricotta filling that could be used in a pastry, and he thought it sounded good. He loves my croissants. Etc.

The real question is whether I can (a) move all my worldly possessions, (b) deal with the drama that is what's left of my marriage, (c) put together some kind of business plan, not to mention a plan for what I do next, and (d) put in the time necessary to do a good job in such a competition. Something would have to give on that list--and I really hate to give up all my free time, because my sanity depends on having some. On the other hand, Jefe went to France and beat the French, and he could (and would) teach me a lot. Something (else) to think about, eh?

Reclamation Project

2006-04-28T21:48:00.000-05:00

You may remember that on our wedding day, I went to a yoga class. The teacher taught a beautiful, heart-opening class (she was coming to the wedding and, thus, knew what I'd be doing that afternoon), and, as always, she ended class with a line from the yoga sutras: "Surrender to your heart." Lately, though, when I've managed to haul my sorry ass to her class, I find myself in tears by the end of class, even before she gets to that line. The class (but not practicing by myself at home, for example, and probably not classes with other teachers) ends up reminding me that I won't exactly "celebrate" the first anniversary of our marriage. But, in part thanks to a conversation with a friend about this dilemma, I've decided to reclaim the whole thing. The other thing I was thinking about today was a woman who was a fellow guest speaker in a smoking cessation group I did awhile ago (maybe last summer or the summer before). Unlike many people, she quit smoking in the middle of an extremely stressful time in her life--getting a divorce, a couple of small kids, had to find a job--which isn't always a good strategy. For her, though, the stress actually helped her quit smoking; as she said, everything else in her life felt so out of control, she decided that quitting smoking was the one thing she could control. So I asked myself: what can I control right now? And I realized that I can control my yoga practice--when and whether I practice, most notably. That didn't make me actually come home and practice, but it was nevertheless an important realization. Maybe it'll help me reclaim the class, too.

What I did do was come home--late (after 5:00 when I got here, which is late for me), because I worked my ass off today--and pour a bottle of Liquid Plum'r (or howeverthefuck they spell it) into the tub (still! from this morning!) full of water; talk on the phone for an hour or more; balance my checkbook (though I can't do the end-of-the-month accounting that's joint with Craw until he does the same); clean up some of the crap around this pit; eat some dinner; and lament that my tub remains full of water and Liquid Plum'r. Looks like no shower for me in the morning, which is a drag, because that's how my brain knows to wake up. They should have it fixed by the time I get home, though, which is one of the advantages of living in a building this expensive, at which point I will be able to clean the bathroom, which was on the original list of chores for today. I still haven't vacuumed up the dust buffalo roaming freely around the apartment, and I won't get to that one tonight. I also haven't done more than an initial sort of my mail basket, but I've done enough to know that there's only one bill in it right now.

Yes, I'm still stressing mightily about finding a place to live, and I'm starting to get on my own goddamned nerves already. It's probably a way of not thinking about, for example, the anniversary party for my parents, to and from which I must fly and which I must attend with Craw, or about what I'm going to do next, or whatever. It's as if I've poured all of my potential anxieties into this one arena. Whatever; I don't have endless patience for my own crap. I had a nice little pity party on the way home from work today, and by the time I walked in the door I was pretty tired of it. Cleaning things up around here didn't hurt, either, standing water in the tub notwithstanding. I know: maybe I was just sad because my apartment was dirty, and cleaning it up made me feel happy! Yeah, that's it!

Om Shanti

2006-04-24T20:40:00.000-05:00

Saturday night, instead of coming back to an emptier apartment, I went with a friend to see/hear/chant with Krishna Das. I'd never been to a kirtan before, and I had no clue what to expect, but I like his CDs very much and I figured I should take advantage of his presence in my city. He was very personable; I liked his warm stage presence, and his voice is lovely. The venue was a church, which was a little strange, in that we were basically trying to fit an Indian worship form into a European setting. This was notable in two regards. First, though I've never been to a kirtan, my impression was that it wasn't set up in an audience-facing-performer kind of way (and, when you think about it, it's interesting that a church is set up that way, too). The fact that the venue imposed this arrangement meant that we couldn't hear our own voices quite so well and also meant that movement was constricted, perhaps even moreso than at a concert of some other kind. The other notable part, though, is that this form of worship is explicitly both interactive and responsive: Krishna Das said right up front (jokingly but seriously, too) that if we didn't respond, he was outta there. That is, he would sing/chant a line, and we were to sing/chant it in response. I'm no expert on western religious forms, but I don't think that that's how most worship services go. (Someone who knows more about gospel singing could perhaps compare the two.)

I did, in fact, enjoy it; his voice is very rich, and the interactive nature of the event is pretty cool. I don't know that I'd go to another kirtan on purpose, but I wouldn't run screaming if I found myself in the middle of one somehow, and I'd particularly like to see KD in a different venue. Some of the participants were a little . . . off the beaten path, not surprisingly, most notably the two males and one female dressed all in white, with white gauze turbans wrapped around their heads. That always seems odd to me, but I suppose it isn't that much more odd than Krishna Das himself, who's a basic middle-class American guy by birth, I believe. It does raise the question of an authentic self and how one knows one's own, but I think judging someone else's enlightenment is a risky business at best.

In any case, I managed to avoid returning home until this afternoon, and the time away included, in addition to the kirtan, two delicious dinners (one at a restaurant, one some homemade lasagna), wine, chocolate, good company, and not one but two lovely walks in the woods and sun. The original walks in those woods were in the fall and winter when the leaves had pretty much gone completely--now everything is GREEN and blooming, and it was really, really nice. This afternoon's walk reminded me that getting outside, and getting outside my head, is important. In those and many other ways, it was a really nice weekend. Every so often I'd remember that my husband was moving out of our apartment, and it would feel less nice, and then I'd just move on. Why dwell on things outside my control? Which is most of life, so far as I can tell.

I still need to find a place to live, but I've decided to put that on hold for a little while. This lease isn't up until the end of July, and I just need to chill a bit. I want to sort and pack my things properly, I want to find a good place to live, and I want to make sure that Craw and I have a financial arrangement that works before I sign a lease. He has been extremely reassuring verbally, and his actions have, so far, lived up to his assurances, so I'm not as uneasy as I could be, but I still want to see how it plays out, especially once he's no longer getting severance pay (which has given us a cushion). When I think about the various bits of things going on in my life, I can manage any given bit; when all the bits converge, it's kind of disconcerting: a lot has changed dramatically in less than four months. So I go back to dealing with whatever bit is in front of me right this minute and focus on that in whatever way makes sense. There isn't much else I can do, really.

Being Elsewhere

2006-04-21T20:09:00.000-05:00

I thought perhaps the stars would align, but, alas, no go. I called the managers of the current apartment building to see whether there were still people in line for this apartment, but they didn't want to wait any longer and signed a lease two doors north of this building. Okay, then: I reminded myself last night that (1) there's more than one good apartment in the city, and (2) it really would be nice to have a chance to pack my stuff deliberately (e.g., dust books before I pack them; get rid of clothes I don't want), not to mention (3) at least two friends have offered space in their abodes, for me and/or my stuff, should the need arise. That would not be the preferred option, of course, because it would entail moving twice when, really, once is enough, but I don't have to worry about being without a place for my stuff (thank you George Carlin). I still have to find a place, of course, but it won't be right this minute.

Craw is moving out some of his stuff tomorrow, so he and the Kid and I had some dinner at our usual Friday night place and, despite Craw's announcement to the contrary a couple of weeks ago, he and the Kid will be staying here tonight, the better to get an early start tomorrow. I have to work, and it's just as well, if you ask me. The croissants still haven't learned to make themselves, and I really don't want or need to be here to watch the physical dissolution of a shared life.

The Lam(b)inator

2006-04-20T21:39:00.000-05:00

I needed some crumbs the other day and there weren't any in the cake room bin, so the boss told me to use the six leftover lamb cakes, but to behead them first, because there were toothpicks in them (to hold the ears on). There are now lamb heads in a couple of locations around the bakery . . .

I still haven't found a place to live. The place with the gut-rehab kitchens gets no damned light. The place that gets light and has two bedrooms and so on is for May 1, and I can neither manage that date nor justify spending the extra $860 it would take to get the apartment and have two of them for a month. Three, really, counting Craw's. It's extremely tempting, though, because it's otherwise a pretty great apartment.

But I can't think about it any more, at least not right now. It's making me crazy.

Tell Me a Story

2006-04-18T18:36:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it seems perfectly normal, the right thing to do, the only rational choice. Other times, I'm overwhelmed by a sense of unreality. As I've said to several people recently, I've gone from "everything's (mostly, apparently) fine" to "we're splitting up" in four months, and it's a bit much and a bit fast. I mean, really, what the fuck? But it gets us out of the endless loop we were in, where we'd have the same conversation, over and over, usually with tears in there somewhere and no resolution with which both of us could live. Feh.

So Craw went and found a new place to live today--basically, a one-bedroom apartment in the building where he has his office/studio. They're going to let him move from the latter to the former, without penalty (though there will be some costs, like moving the phone and internet connections and so on), and they're going to add an additional deadbolt lock, and it has a new kitchen (with a dishwasher, no less), and the whole thing is much bigger, but not a whole lot more expensive, than the studio apartment, in which he kept contending he would live if necessary. Now I have to find a place to live. I'm looking at two places this Thursday, the one I mentioned below that will have a new kitchen and another one (or more) in a different neighborhood. Actually, Craw's joining me for the apartment look-see, and we'll then head to his new place, if he has the keys, so I can see it, and then to grocery shopping, and then back here to start dividing up our stuff.

I just wish I could come up with a way to talk about this, something that makes sense, but doesn't make one of us sound like an idiot or a bad person, because neither of us is either of those things. So how do two reasonably smart people make such a dumb mistake? Or maybe that's the wrong question.

But, right now, I have no clue what the right question is, and I'm tired and hungry, so I'm going to make some dinner and maybe watch some television (!), and then get some sleep. Maybe the right question will come to me in my dreams.

A 93.5% Solution

2006-04-17T08:20:00.000-05:00

Not very long after Craw and I met, we were having dinner at the place where we had our first date (and where we ate together last night, for that matter). Craw said, "You're the most amazing person I've ever met." He was shocked to see me get this slightly sickened look on my face--until I explained to him that I've heard that more than once, from more than one man, and it's usually a precursor to being told that the person doesn't want to actually be with me. The weird thing is that, in at least a couple of instances that I can recall, the men were quite serious; it wasn't a case of them coming up with a version of "It's me, baby, you're great, you're amazing, but I just can't, I'd only hurt you, blah, blah, blah"--the old let 'em down easy tactic. When I explained this to Craw, he understood the look on my face, and, over the past nearly eight years, he has repeatedly informed me that I'm still the most amazing person he's ever met. (I'd argue that he doesn't get out much, but leave that aside.)

What we realized last evening is that that wasn't a good reason to get married (or perhaps even to get into the particular relationship we were in). It might be the case that he wanted to keep me in his life--and I wanted him in my life, too--and the only path we could imagine is the one that led to that ceremony last June. It wasn't all bad (and still isn't), but it's become clear to both of us that Fighting To Save Our Marriage probably isn't a good strategy for either short-term or long-term peace and mental health for either of us. We think we can come up with a short-term and long-term solution that will enable Craw to give back to me what I've given to him (in the form of financial support) and will enable Craw to pay back money he owes me, and probably even allow us to be friends, which wouldn't be the craziest thing we've ever done. It also enables us to delay telling our parents for awhile, which suits both of us just fine (his mom was very happy to see me, and I her, and I think the Kid likes being around me, too, and Craw wants me and the Kid to be able to stay in each other's lives, even if we don't spend as much time together). I know better than to think it's all going to be fuzzy puppies and pretty flowers--no relationship is ever that, and one that's been this fraught would certainly not be an exception--but at least we can move forward in (separate) ways that make sense for each of us and that enable us to stop making each other crazy.

Wish us luck.

Space Odyssey

2006-04-12T17:53:00.000-05:00

I forgot how much I fucking hate moving. Actually, I take that back: the moving itself is relatively painless, thanks to my many systems (more on that in a second), but the finding of the apartment just blows. I'm now dashing out of work (yesterday, today, and probably tomorrow, too) to go see prospective apartments, and what I've mostly seen are uninhabitable (by me) shitholes. The first one wasn't too bad--except the laundry was outside and down the back stairs and then into the basement, and I am WAY too fucking old to be doing that in the middle of February so I have clean socks. The second two weren't much better, though the laundry was in the building. The fourth one had incredible counter space, but not much else to recommend it, plus it was on the first floor, which I don't particularly like. The rest of the place was tiny. The fifth and sixth ones (in the same building as the fourth one) had kitchens the size of closets, and that's just not workable for me. The guy who was showing those apartments told me about another building, however, where the rent is a little bit higher BUT the kitchens are being completely redone AND there are separate dining areas. I'm hoping to see those tomorrow. Today's apartment got a fair amount of light, but it was on the first floor and it had an electric stove. The building manager also manages the building across the street, where they have jacuzzis and in-unit washers and dryers, but no vacancies right now. The biggest problem is that not everyone knows what they're going to have for June, but I don't want to break the lease for this place unless and until I know I have a place to go. Cross your fingers that the ones with the new kitchens will be nice.

As for the move itself, well, what a surprise, I have systems for that, too. Only pack things you actually want to take with you. Throw shit out. Start packing as soon as you can. Pack everything you're taking in an actual box. Label each box with the contents and where it goes. Have enough people (if you're not hiring movers, and I don't think we can afford to do that)--this one may prove to be the biggest challenge for me. If you can, think about where things will go. Unpack in an order that makes sense. Unpack each box completely, rather than randomly opening boxes. Have enough beer and pizza for your movers.

But I don't need to bore you with this shit; there are several weeks before any actual moving will occur, and I have plenty of time to obsess.. Meanwhile, I have to make plans to go to my parents' 50th anniversary party--yes, with Craw. We decided to not dump our drama on my parents before their party.

At the bakery, we have a person working with us for a month who grew up in this city but has spent the last 12 years in England; she's a baker in a fancy hotel over there. She's sort of apprenticing with the boss, learning as much as she can. She seems nice enough, and a good enough baker and all, but she's acquired a British accent, after only 12 years, which just seems . . . odd to me. She's in her late 40s, so that makes it even stranger. I mean, I've lived here for nearly 20 years, and I still sound like where I came from rather than from here. I can see picking up some expressions and so on, but a whole accent?

We've also been making a zillion Easter and Passover products: today I was dipping the heads of lamb cakes in chocolate (white chocolate for the white cake with buttercream and coconut lambs and dark chocolate for the chocolate cake with fudge lambs). We've got macaroons, and honey cake, and multi-colored bread, and I don't know what all. Today i got stuck next to the radio for the lamb-head-dipping operation, which meant I had to listen to the shitty Spanish music for awhile, and then the whistler put on the baseball game, which was somewhat better, except I don't like the teams here. Whine, whine, whine. As you might have figured out, the drama has continued around here, and I'm still not going to write much about it. I'm going to return my library books and make some dinner, and maybe have a glass of wine, because I think there's a little left in the fridge.

One Headlight

2006-04-10T21:35:00.000-05:00

That's what S had until yesterday, when I went to his place and helped him replace the one that had blown out. (He's got a Jetta, and it's difficult to replace the driver's-side bulb without taking out the battery, but my hands are sufficiently smaller than his so that I could do it for him, which he appreciated greatly.) It's a fine day here--nearly 70 degrees, sunny, clear--and I must get outside again eventually; maybe when the laundry is done. (I have to do at least a load of whites every week so I have clean chef clothes.) I dutifully made lists of apartments yesterday, but haven't done much about it today. There are several chores I'm avoiding today--send shoes off to one of our commenters here, return the library books and get some new ones, buy a few groceries, price moving boxes, get some facial moisturizer so I can stop smearing body lotion on my face, corral the dust buffalo roaming the apartment, wash the pans from the other night--and I can't bring myself to give a rat's ass.

Sunrise

2006-04-09T07:14:00.000-05:00

I want to live alone in the desert
I want to be like Georgia O'Keefe
I want to live on the Upper East Side
And never go down in the street

Splendid isolation
I don't need no one
Splendid isolation

--Warren Zevon, "Splendid Isolation"

Of course, that's not true at all for me. I lived alone for 20 years and liked it just fine, and the prospect of doing it again doesn't bother me, but I don't really enjoy isolation per se.

In this apartment, the buildings east of it are spaced such I can sit up in bed and watch the sun rise over the lake, which is about four blocks east of here. I've enjoyed doing this--way more than I would have predicted--for the past four years. Even this morning, I woke at 5--one's brain gets into these patterns, I guess--and, burrowed in the flannel sheets, I watched a particularly beautiful sunrise. Of course, that, too, makes me sad, because, while Craw is not so much with the getting up early thing, that early-morning quiet was something we shared, and, if I'd gotten up to make coffee for us (decaf for me, thank you), he'd be awake enough to watch some of the sunrise with me.

I hate thinking about these things.

So I'll go to a yoga class in a little while, then come back here and clean this place, then start making lists of apartments to see. I spoke with the people in the building, and there's apparently a waiting list for two-bedroom apartments here, so we might well be able to move out early, which would be useful.

Incidentally, kStyle tells me that the blog has been eating comments, which just blows. If you remember what you said, particularly about the last post, email it to me.

Space Considerations

2006-04-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

The great apartment search is on, even though the lease isn't up until the end of July. Craw and I can't afford this apartment plus parking on our current household income, so a move is necessary. The upside, such as it is, is that we've been spending so much on rent plus parking that we'll be able to find something cheaper without a problem. It remains to be seen what we do about our living arrangements, but we know we're moving out of here, so I wanted to start seeing what the other neighborhood possibilities are. I've been pleasantly surprised so far, though I haven't looked at any actual apartments (a lot of stuff is online, so I can check out floor plans and the like).

I hate moving, though, and the thought of doing that makes me cringe. In my previous city, I lived in seven different apartments in five years, and it was a complete pain in the ass. In this city, I've lived in five apartments in nearly 20 years, and only three buildings. (Twice I've moved within a building, including this last time.) I've lived in this building since 1998, and we've lived in this apartment since 2001, I think. It's not a huge place, so we haven't had the luxury of stashing stuff in an attic or garage or something like that, though Craw does have some stuff in the basement and in his ex-wife's garage and maybe at his mom's place. All of my stuff, such as it is, is here, which will make the packing and moving portion of the program slightly less onerous for me. It would be nice if we didn't have to hire movers, though we'll almost certainly have to rent a truck.

I've realized that the things I want are: proximity to public transportation to work; a gas stove; preferably a southern exposure and actual sunlight; heat included in the rent; and onsite laundry. A reasonable grocery store nearby would be nice. It would be very nice if friends with cars can find a place to park when they visit (in some neighborhoods that's practically impossible). A decent kitchen is pretty much a must--that turns out to be way more important to me than I once realized. (By "decent" I mean "enough counter space to cook and a nearby dining area, so I can talk to guests while I prepare their dinners.") Access to cable and high-speed internet is important, and likely not a problem, though we'll have to pay for it on top of the rent (it's included in the rent in this building). A dishwasher would be lovely, but not a necessity; since a fair number of the buildings at which I'm looking are relatively recent rehabs, it's not out of the question. I don't much care about having a microwave; we have one built in here, but I've otherwise always made do without one. I really like having a window in the bathroom, particularly in the shower, but that's just icing and not necessary at all. I prefer hardwood floors to carpet. I don't care at all about air conditioning; there are window units in this building, and I can count the number of times they've been turned on, mostly when Craw's mom is in town.

Yeah, I know, I know, I'm rushing things, but that's the way my mind works. I like to organize whatever can be organized, because I find it minimizes hassles. I've learned to pack boxes in an organized fashion, not least because it makes unpacking them easier. I've learned which things must be dealt with first: the cold/frozen food, the shower curtain, the bed, the stereo, just about in that order. I've learned to start packing as early as possible, which enables getting rid of the crap that one doesn't want to move and minimizes the chances of a last-minute-packing nightmare. There are various other nightmares in my head right now, but, luckily, it's getting late and I have to work tomorrow, so I'll put them aside for now; it's not like they're going to go away, but it's also not like I'm going to solve them tonight, or here. Out of curiousity, though, what do you consider when you move?

Freezer Bingo

2006-04-02T06:44:00.000-05:00

My hands hurt, as they generally do on Sundays. In part I suspect it's a week's worth of work, because they generally feel much better by Tuesday. Yesterday I got the task of cleaning out the freezer, and that took a toll on them, too. Lately one of the fans has been making a noise that's a lot like sticking your head in an airplane engine, and the claim was that it was because of ice. First I moved everything off the racks: some stuff went on rolling racks and into the downstairs freezer, some went into the walk-in refrigerator, and some went in the garbage. I took the racks out of the freezer, and the dishwasher washed them while I scrubbed down the inside of the freezer. During this part of the program, however, I discovered that it wasn't ice causing the noise; rather, one of the fans was loose in its housing, causing it to rattle against the metal of the freezer. Thus began an effort (by the owner's dad, not by me) to fix the fan, an effort that hadn't become successful by the time I left around 2:00. I assume they'll get it fixed by Monday.

I don't even want to tell you about the crud in the freezer. Imagine your home freezer or refrigerator, except bigger, with more nooks and crannies into which things can fall or get lost, and 10 people using it, hundreds of times a day. It's clean now, or clean-ish, but . . . ew.

We were pretty slow yesterday in the back (they were working their butts off in the store, but I don't care about that, except insofar as people are buying the croissants I make), which is partly why I ended up with the freezer task. I had to make the croissants, though--mostly the ham and cheese, as I was ahead of myself on all the other kinds--and the Whistler actually hung out and helped me, either on his own or at Brad's suggestion or request. I was appreciative (it did speed things along), and I suspect it was partly because I got a little in the weeds one day this week when I had to do muffins for him.

The very first day I worked there, the owner showed me how to use this new machine that deposits a set amount of batter into whatever you've got under the spout. It's really great for portion control, and, once you get coordinated enough with it, you can zip along. (The first day I kind of made hash of it, getting batter all over the damned place, even though you can control the speed, in the sense of the amount of time between deposits. For awhile, I used the foot pedal to deposit each hit of muffin batter, because it was easier to control the speed that way, but I've since become adept at holding down the pedal and moving the muffin tin and doing so at a fairly quick pace.) I also have to take the machine apart and clean it and reassemble it, and that is the much bigger pain in the ass. It also seems to be the case that the owner doesn't want the Hispanic guys to have much to do with that part of the program--he certainly hasn't taught them how to do it--but I'm not sure why that is. And, of course, as with any place like this one, if you do a job correctly, especially if you do it more than once, it becomes your job.

All this makes me contemplate the notion of (in)efficiencies, not least because I'll have to take some of them into account to have my own place. Would it really make sense to teach everyone to use and clean the machine? Probably not--but if too many knowledges accumulate in only one person, that's a different kind of inefficiency.

Language Games

2006-04-01T16:28:00.000-06:00

Good lord, people! I leave you alone for a few days, and a war about words breaks out! It might take me several posts to sort through this all, but, seeing as how I actually wrote several hundred pages about language, I have something to say on this subject.

First off, I do not regard language as separate from practice, any more than I regard mind as separate from body. They are intertwined, at a deep, meaningful level, and efforts to extricate one from the other (classically, in a Cartesian fashion), are only going to make your head hurt. (You'll also notice that I'm talking about language, rather than only words: I think that glances, and acts, and so on, are every bit as meaningful as words.) The last line of the Tractatus that I quoted below is, in my opinion, the beginning of Wittgenstein's later and much more powerful work, the Philosophical Investigations. In the Investigations, Wittgenstein introduces the concept of "language games," by which he means language and the actions into which the language is woven, and throughout, he shows how we interweave language, practice, meaning, and judgment as we live our lives. In the Tractatus he tried to systematize language; he had been working with Bertrand Russell, and the idea of having language be as precise as numbers apparently were was very appealing to both of them, at least for awhile. (I suspect that Kurt Goedel's work would have been problematic for them, and maybe Heisenberg's too, while we're at it.)

After finishing the Tractatus, LW went off to teach schoolchildren somewhere, and, after watching how they learned, decided that the Tractatus was flawed, or wrong, or incomplete. ( I don't really know what HE thought of it; I see it as a kind of failed experiment, and one can learn from those as well as from "successful" experiments.) When he got back down to it, he started trying to elaborate the ways we use language, rather than trying to simplify language down to a mathematical or model-like (and, therefore, knowable) quantity. I'm not going to explicate the whole thing for you, but the Investigations basically enables one to see, and, in some ways, exploit, the dynamic, embedded nature of our language and language games. (By "exploit" I mean specifically "exploit for social science purposes.")

What does this have to do with the fight that broke out? First off, I think that words can, in fact, create reality, and in a short period of time, though I understand your point, Larry. I think that, in our personal lives, giving voice to something, naming something, can be a very powerful act--even if not everyone agrees about the name. However, I do not think words ARE our reality; words are embedded in practice, and vice versa. I do not think that there is a single ultimate reality: I really do think that, for deists, the world has gods, and that my world does not. We can agree about many other cosmological questions, but to try to argue a god or gods into or out of existence, well, that's another enterprise. (I had another friend who thought there was only one reality, but that we were only capable of imperfect, if shared, representations of it, and I can live with that view, at least up to most points.)

kStyle, thanks for the Lao Tzu; that was quite nice. I think that Asian texts, like that one, aren't so dissimilar in important ways from, say, church ritual in Europe--praying the rosary is probably not so different from other forms of prayer and meditation, for example. What I think many of those techniques do--whether or not there's a deity involved--is enable one to access some of the other information we take in on a daily basis. That is, there are more data out there, around us, flooding us, than we can consciously sort; we learn to sort it, and disregard this part or that part, and to pay special attention to this other thing, in order to make our way at all in the world. (Disorders on the autism spectrum seem to have to do with a flaw in that system, i.e., people with autism spectrum disorders have tremendous difficulty sorting and, especially, learning to ignore some stimuli.) But our sorting comes at a price: we may miss something that's important, because we've taught ourselves not to see it, and sometimes we're lazy, too. I think it's why so many people want a drug to treat their stress: that seems easier than exercise and diet change, for example. Our bodies are sending us messages, and we ignore those messages at our peril--even as we have to ignore some or many of them, or we become insufferable hypochondriacs.

And I'm still a fan of pragmatism, no matter one's spiritual take on any matter. I find that figuring out what the next thing to do is, and then doing it, is useful, and it often distracts one from too much thinking. It's why any kind of work is useful, and meaningful or sufficiently complicated work is even better. One runs the risk of doing the wrong thing, of course, or doing something badly, but, at least for me, it beats sitting and stewing. As I've been saying, the croissants won't make themselves.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann . . .

2006-03-28T20:17:00.000-06:00

darüber muß man schweigen.

In English: What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence. (Or: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.) The philosophers among you--and perhaps Larry, given his background in semantics--might recognize that as the last line of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. (I'd originally thought to open with some quote from T. S. Eliot, who, despite his anti-Semitism and Catholocism, wrote poetry that has always resonated with me. Given that I don't really like poetry, or religion, or anti-Semitism, that just seems weird to me, but there it is.)

Larry's comment to the last post made me recall the ways in which I avoid words, when I do that. As you might imagine, given my (b)logorrhea, I don't mean that I don't talk about things. It also doesn't mean, as Larry speculated it might, that I somehow exist on feelings (the very thought of that gives me hives AND shivers). I think what I mean is that I try things on, verbally, with a very few people I trust, even more often only with myself, and I see what starts to sound right. By that I mean something like: Does this accurately capture, name, or describe the reality(ies) in which I'm enmeshed at the moment? Have I included enough perspectives? Is there enough color and light? Is the point of view tenable, or does it fall away like an Escher drawing? (And I find it interesting that I'm turning to visual analogies here . . .) What I often discover, especially when a situation is complicated, messy, drawn-out, fraught, uncertain, still in progress, mutable, etc., is that, even when I think I might have the occasional piece of it right, even when some phrases resonate in that deep way that lets me know I've probably hit something real, even when something becomes clear to me (perhaps in part because I've found the right words for it), I know I still don't have enough of the picture, or the story. Interestingly enough, that's fine with me.

When I wrote my dissertation, I really didn't know how it was going to turn out. Some people set out to do a certain kind of statistical analysis, say, and they run the numbers and report them. (I'm not criticizing that kind of work, at least not right now.) In part because of the multiple layers of the work I was doing, I really didn't know what I was going to find, or what I would or could say about it, until I was done writing it. Nevertheless, I did manage to write it--that is, I'm not made completely uncomfortable by not knowing how something is going to Turn Out. I like the uncertainty, sometimes, if you can believe that--I can immerse myself in it, if things aren't TOO crazy, and just kind of marvel at it, and maybe even enjoy some parts of it. Go figure. (It's probably why I like watching sports so much: nearly everything else we watch--most movies or television shows or whatever, and even a large part of the "news"--well, if you can't figure out in the first few minutes what's going to happen in the subsequent minutes, you're not paying attention. But when two people or teams enter a playing field or arena of some kind, there's no telling what's going to happen. I usually can't stand the announcers, though.)

One Ride Only

2006-03-27T05:58:00.000-06:00

If I had ever been here before
I would probably know just what to do

Despite David Crosby's claims to the contrary at the end of that song ("We have all been here before"), and even if his claim is true, this is the life I'm living now, and I'm not always so much with the knowing just what to do. I keep trying to focus on the immediate necessities, because that's what I do: make croissants, manage our resources so we don't get backed into any more corners than necessary, do the mundane task(s) in front of me. Because, when you come down to it, the croissants won't make themselves. But I'm coming up hard against the realization that the things toward which I've been working may not be possible after all. Leave aside for a moment the interpersonal drama (yeah, go ahead and avoid the herd of elephants in the living room . . .): even if one has a good business plan, and reasonable financing, and even a moderately successful business to start (which is extremely unusual), this is still a very low-margin business, and there's not much profit to be had. At least for a few years, you really can't expect to make very much money; it's really more about the losing money in the first years. So I need a Plan B, as well as more detailed work on Plan A (all while shoveling elephant shit), even more than before. And, today at least, I don't have much energy. My brain has been deciding I don't need much sleep (I'm trying to convince myself that it's hormonal, which could be true, as that causal chain does work with me), which also doesn't help. And I need more exercise, except, wait, no handball--even now that the season is over, because S blew out his arm in the all-the-marbles-and-a-new-jacket championship match the other day, which totally sucks. (It might be a torn triceps, and, really, you don't want to be tearing any muscles if you can help it.) I need to do more yoga, I suppose.

I'm sorry; I've been short on details here, for two reasons. One is the privacy of others--I don't much care what people know about me, at least up to a point, but putting someone else's stuff out here has its limits for me, and I've probably even said more than I really wanted to say. The other, more important reason is that, even though words are one of my favorite media, words contain things, they fix things in an order, they shape what we think happened, what we think will happen next, what we think is going on. Sometimes that's useful--necessary, even--but sometimes it's better to let things kind of settle, let the words shape themselves, see what emerges rather than try to impose a structure. I don't know what the fuck will happen next, I often don't know what's happening now, and it's easier to make the croissants and do the side jobs and try not to think. Today, this morning--and yesterday, for that matter--the thinking is happening anyway. I suppose I should put it to good use and start developing a business plan or a database or something.

Plus I've apparently lost my wonderful, soft, colorful, polka-dotted, angora and wool scarf that one of my best friends sent me for Christmas. And it's still cold here. (Yeah, okay, that was just whining--unlike, say, the rest of this post, you say?--but still. I really liked the scarf a lot.)

Pastry Chefs Gone Wild

2006-03-26T07:35:00.000-06:00

Last night I got to see not one but two of my ex-classmates, one of whom is an intern at the school and the other of whom is working as a pastry chef in a fine-dining restaurant. The intern and I had some dinner down near my place and then headed out to the burbs to see the pastry chef; of course we ended up with both three comp desserts after dinner (because it's the Asian place where Craw and I always go and we got our favorite server) and four desserts at the fine dining place, so I think I've had my fill of dessert for awhile. The latter were really quite nice: almond beignets with almond ice milk (that one was kind of eh; the beignets didn't quite work, and neither did the ice, but it wasn't terrible); a chocolate cake with sauce and ice cream thing that apparently our fellow student came up with and that was quite good; ice cream made from organic cream and strawberries, which was cosmic; and a three-cheese (mascarpone, cream, and fromage blanc) mousse with a graham cracker tuile and rhubarb (which I ignored) that was also cosmic. The only problems I had were that, first, yesterday morning my brain decided that 3:00 am was a FINE time to awaken (I have to disagree, but there wasn't much I could do about it), so I was so tired I was about to tip over, and, second, I found myself drinking massive amounts of water as we ate our desserts; I have no clue why I was so thirsty. It was kind of strange, really.

The intern is very happy with the internship, in many, many ways--how could she not be, given that she's spending so much more time with the chefs from the school, who will be even more willing to help her do whatever she wants to do next? But. As she will tell you, she doesn't get to make much stuff (though I'm really, really hoping that will improve for her, and it might), and one of the pickier chefs comes up with tasks for the interns like "rearrange the storeroom THIS way." It's an entertaining contrast to my situation, where several concepts--like having all of the recipes in one place, or labeling all containers in the walk-in, or knowing how many of what are being sold on a given day, or organic anything (though I think we have some organic flour for a couple of the breads)--are really quite foreign. On the flip side, however, I don't just GET to make stuff, it's my JOB to make stuff, in mass quantities. I think, quite honestly, if I'd gotten the internship I'd be regretting it right about now (not least because the lack of money involved would be seriously problematic for us). I've hesitated to say that, because I really don't want it to sound like sour grapes, but, given the problems I've got going on right now, it would have been extremely difficult to sustain. In addition, of course, my boss is great (despite his politics, which we assiduously avoid discussing), he's extremely good at what he does, and he's very generous with his knowledge--he knows I want to open my own place, and I suspect, when the time is closer, he'll help me in whatever ways he can.

The other grad, the one who's a pastry chef, is both happy with the experience and a little disgruntled. (Hell, his personality is such that he's ALWAYS a little disgruntled; he makes me seem positively Pollyanna-like.) He doesn't much like service (i.e., the plating of desserts for restaurant service), and my guess is that the pay and the hours aren't what he would prefer (he's probably making less than I am--certainly no more--and he probably doesn't get home until after 1:00 am). I knew that I wanted nothing to do with working in a restaurant, even though, if you get into a good hotel restaurant, you can make decent money (one other grad started at $13/hour with very little experience on his resume) and, because they're unionized, you get health benefits. (Most places do not offer benefits, including my place.) I suppose I'd do it if I had to, but I'd really hate it. I don't like the rush of service (at the bakery, what's happening up front has nothing to do with what's happening in the back); I don't like the fact that the pastry people are always the last to finish (because everyone ends the meal with dessert); I don't like the drug-and-alcohol-related craziness that's rampant in the industry (read Anthony Bourdain's books if you don't know what I mean--I'm way too old for that shit); I would absolutely hate the hours (I do not want to finish work at 2:00 am); and I would not put up with the abuse that's rampant in the fine-dining portion of the program. (For example, one local and very famous restaurant is notorious for Wal-Mart-type abuses, i.e., you punch out--and then clean for four hours. At many places, you're paid a certain amount of dollars for a "shift"--and if the shift were actually eight hours, it would be decent pay. However, you're expected to work about 12 hours for that pay, so the hourly rate drops pretty significantly. At other famous places, people are literally on a waiting list to work there for free, because then they can put it on their resumes. I get paid for every minute I work, plus overtime.)

So, all in all, I realized again that I've really fallen into a great place--for me. It wouldn't work for everyone--if you really want to become a famous pastry chef, for example, it would not be a useful place for you, and it wouldn't work for anyone who really needed to make more money, though, if that were true, then you're in the wrong damned industry.

I couldn't stay out too late last night, though--by 11:00 I was practically falling asleep at the bar. The Intern drove me home (she had her dad's vehicle last night), which was extremely nice of her (I'd come prepared with a book so I could take public transportation), and I was asleep within ten minutes of walking in the door. Now, though, I have to clean this place up a bit and get some copyediting done--maybe get most of it done today, which would be useful in several dimensions.

Lunch

2006-03-23T19:38:00.000-06:00

When you make a big (60-pound) batch of something, you rarely end up with exactly the right amount. Ideally, you want to be a little bit over; for example, when I make the funeral cakes, I shoot for 25, and I usually end up with 25.5 or so. I put the extra in a smaller pan and we cut it up for samples. For other things, though, the extra bit gets made into something that the guys call "lunch," i.e., a unit that's too small to sell, but just the right size for eating. So far this week, I've scored a small loaf of cinnamon raisin brioche (it's in the freezer, but will eventually be made into French toast), a hunk of the California bread (a wheat dough with apricots, cranberries, nuts, and something else) that was sitting around this morning, and, in what turned out to really be my lunch, a small loaf of walnut-roasted onion bread that was truly fab. I cut it in half while it was still warm and threw some of the Swiss cheese for the croissants in the middle and it was extremely quite good. You're never gonna go hungry if you work in a bakery.