On Freezing…

I have done a most excellent job of organizing the change involved (on my end) in expanding our life to encompass dad. Shaun has had the much more difficult end of packing up his house (while working full-time) and taking care of him until they can get here. Not to mention dealing with both of their feelings.

Unfortunately, I hit one of the glitches in my personality, and froze.

I don’t have time to freeze.

Jane getting stuck: I have to look up the menu online for a new restaurant, or I will panic, and blindly order what the person next to me is having. When I open a menu in a restaurant, The words swim around like little fish Haikus. I consider myself pretty about good at reading? So this makes no sense.

I’d find myself, horrified, shrinking back from a plate of shrimp, clam chowder, crab, or lobster. There might as well be a murderous psychopath glaring up at me from the plate, waving a sharp implement. (I’m allergic to shellfish.)

It’s not important enough to fix, in the scheme of Things That Could Use Fixing (at $150 an hour). I am positive there is no menu trauma in my past, so I found a workaround, and moved on.

Thursday, I was planning Unfamiliar Food menus. 14 years of marriage, and I never noticed Shaun was the planner. Note to self: appreciate Shaun. I give my problem the $150 per hour test: is it worth it? No. Need a work around. I put out an all points bulletin: Jane needs food help!

(I have truly amazing friends, who, if they are fazed by my glitches, never let on.)

Hilary comes to help me sort out menus, the grocery list, and strategize how to get back on track: somehow, in the midst of this, she also manages to clean the bathroom.

I am awestruck.

Forget that she’s an incredible trainer. She can do MENUS and clean a bathroom at the same time. I’m speechless.

The next day, I get half the food in my cart, and stop, paralyzed by what I see on the list.

It made perfect sense when I wrote it down. Now, I have no idea what I was thinking.

I stand there and wonder if I can really ask a clerk:

“On which aisle might I find “Frozen Crap”?

Once I finished giggling, and Daisy texted me back suggesting ‘Frozen Crap’ could possibly be pre-prepared scalloped potatoes, etc.

1. I knew I had to tell you.
2. I took it global in my brain: where do I freeze around horses? Or do I?
3. Where do other people freeze?

Today’s question:

Where do you freeze? Is there any area in which you freeze around horses? What’s your work around?

(Yes, I’m begging: I don’t want to stand alone in the freezer aisle.)

Murphy Monday: In Which We Rest…

Murphy is resting from all the recent excitement. What better way than to sleep within one’s breakfast?

Wake up. Eat.

Zzzzzzzzzz….

Wake up. Eat some more…
What better way to handle life as it happens, than surrounded by food?

(I believe he inherited this from me.)

Reason 2,573 I Love My Dog

He is the only sentient being in my house that knows I ate two chocolate old-fashioned donuts while I was supposed to be grocery shopping for healthy stuff like celery and chicken.  It wouldn’t even cross his mind to rat me out.

It gets better.

He’s happy for me.

Duuuuuude, you totally scored!  Where’d you find ’em, huh? Behind the bush next to the dumpster? Whoa those smell good. You ROCK, mom.  I hope I get that lucky.  

Pause.

Wanna play Kill The Fake Squirrel?

No guilt. No secret wondering if this is the start of The Great Chocolate Old-Fashioned Donut Binge of 2011. No projecting how fat that could end up making me, or how bad my arteries will clog. No wondering what psychological stressors drove me to the donut section. No calculating how much psychotherapy it would cost to keep me away from said donut section.

I love my dog. Who else is gonna just be happy for you that you were lucky enough to stuff your face?

I wonder if he’d like maple donuts….

Eat Like the Wind!

My life is hurtling ahead of me, just out of reach, and I’m running to catch up.  If  I can’t catch it, I’m going to start throwing rotten fruit at it in frustration. And probably eat lots of highly sugared carbohydrates that contain a lot of fat. (translation: cake)

We had another flag-snapping wind day, with a very brisk cold edge.  Trainers working horses were dealing with explosion after explosion.  I turned Hudson loose to run it out before we worked.

You know, we really are a lot alike. Hudson, running eating like the wind:

I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna GO, I wanna…

…is that…food?

Spring, the Musical

This is for folks still suffering with the white stuff, and/or eternal rain.

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Can you hear the birds?  Feel the yank on the lead rope as your normally obedient horse tries desperately to lunge at the lush green stuff? This is what is blooming: grass, wild marigolds, oxalis, California poppies, nasturtiums, periwinkle, the rose, some sort of agave, and no clue what the pretty pink stuff is. There’s an entire grove of golden chain trees: (that I forgot to photograph, so this will have to do)

A rose did burst into bloom today at Bella’s.

These are pics I took all around the barn, with my cell phone.  It was 90 degrees out there. Ninety.  Not a typo. That’s a 50 degree difference from two days ago.

Not complaining.  Marveling.

I went early to weed whack all the luscious grass outside Hudson’s paddock, to prevent another eating accident and chiropractic bill. I need to widen the swath, but this should disappoint him sufficiently that he’ll leave it alone. I also turned him out in a grassy area while I whacked, to hopefully mitigate the urgent need for green.

Tomorrow, when the batteries are recharged, I will change the horsey-neck reach from “highly unlikely” to “why bother trying, it’s impossible”.

I’m going to go back and ride tonight when it’s cooler. All the horses were happy, but a bit dazed by the heat. I didn’t want to inflict heat torture on either Hudson or myself. We’ll get used to it again, but why push things?

 

When Compassion Meets Passion

You get a man like Narayanan Krishnan:

CNN video Feeding the Hungry, Nourishing the Soul

(embedding is disabled, but you will be glad you clicked, sat through the ad, and watched.)

Most of us know this with our animals, but finder it a bit difficult to step forward and do this with humans, at times for very good reasons.

I’ll let the video speak for itself.

How I Ended up Naked During a College Final Exam

I may be remembering this now from going through old photos of a younger self.  Or it may be fever-induced memory from the flu.

I know it’s every school-attending person’s recurring nightmare. But. It really happened.

• I had finals.
• I was naked.
• No one seemed to notice.

I’m terrifically happy no one noticed.

I have a theory about why no one noticed:  they were also naked.  I believe everyone was too busy looking at the walls, their toes, or their books to notice each other.  Much.

The University was a little lax on protocol.  I went through the cafeteria line one day, about to dig my spoon into the self-serve cottage cheese when I realized why it was still untouched.  Someone had meticulously sculpted ten pounds of cottage cheese into the shape of the Venus of Willendorf.  Curly leaf parsley topped the Venus area.

Visual aid. Imagine picture with the V of W in cottage cheese:

This is not exactly digression.

The V of W incident was described to show you exactly how slightly lax the University was. (Or maybe they hired only art students for sous chefs?)

In a surreal move, the professor put the site of our final exam to a student vote. We could take it the next day in our classroom, or three days later at her house on Friday night. It was unanimous. Potluck Final with beer, at the professor’s home.

She gave country directions: take the main highway out-of-town, left at the fork,  up the big hill, turn right at the bank of 12 black mailboxes on one long post.  Wind down the hill, pull left into the apple orchard.

There were at least 3 banks of 12 black mailboxes at the top of the big hill. After passing the driveway six or seven times, I park in the orchard, stagger up her front stairs with my rapidly cooling macaroni and cheese casserole, nearly tripping over my floor length hippie skirt, my long sleeves catching in the goopy cheese. Drat. I knock.  A man opens the door. I recognize him as another professor from a related class. Oh right.  We’re combining both classes for the final.

When he steps forward to help me with the casserole, he’s no longer hidden by the door. It’s a good thing he grabs the casserole, because I nearly drop it at an angle that would definitely have burned him…badly.

He’s naked.  As in…completely.  As in please please please let me be dreaming, or having a psychotic break.  I have no desire to see…

I catch my eyeballs before they can drop.  I refuse to look below his goatee. He doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort.  He turns and casually waddles to the kitchen, his white, blind-bottom-of-the-ocean colored butt cheeks quivering.

I wheel around and go back out the front door.  More students are coming up the walk laden with aluminum foil covered shapes, waving cheerfully.  I can’t speak.  I sit heavily on the stair, hand sideways across my mouth.  Unbidden, this thought comes into my mind: two white piglets bouncing up and down!

I giggle, in a panicky sort of way.

I’m having a psychotic break, it has to be.  All the people coming up the walk have their clothes on.  I have my clothes on. He probably had his clothes on too.

Okay.  Fine. Deep breath. It’s just a teeny little break from reality. I can deal with that. Note to self: ignore naked professor and any talking footstools. Take the final.  Go home. See if still psychotic in the morning.

Good to go.

I make myself follow the Vegan Pie people into the house.

The Vegan Pie people and I walk into a room full of naked bodies.

California is Not Getting Slammed With Snow: You Hate Or Love This

Daisy sent me this photo.  She’s looking out of her office window in downtown San Francisco this morning, as the sun rises.  Yes, that’s the Transamerica pyramid.

There’s a walnut tree in front of my office.

We Visit The God of Cake, Discover Hyperbole and a Half, and Jane Feels Better About Her Childhood Induced Sugar Traumas

In the nobel cause of providing humor to fight the common cold, we’re cross posting again today, going to the hilarious blog, Hyperbole and a Half, to read about:

The God of Cake

My mom baked the most fantastic cake for my grandfather’s 73rd birthday party. The cake was slathered in impossibly thick frosting and topped with an assortment of delightful creatures which my mom crafted out of mini-marshmallows and toothpicks.  To a four-year-old child, it was a thing of wonder – half toy, half cake and all glorious possibility.

But my mom knew that it was extremely important to keep the cake away from me because she knew that if I was allowed even a tiny amount of sugar, not only would I become intensely hyperactive, but the entire scope of my existence would funnel down to the singular goal of obtaining and ingesting more sugar.  My need for sugar would become so massive, that it would collapse in upon itself and create a vacuum into which even more sugar would be drawn until all the world had been stripped of sweetness.

Finish reading here, so you can laugh and laugh and laugh

Cake: especially for you Aarene!

We Have Whack

There’s a lot of psychological theorizing out there, about why someone’s whack might go out.  There are the straightforward reasons: death in the family, jerk in the family, owning a bathroom scale.

But usually, it’s more amorphous.  Something along the lines of “Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Think I’m Gonna Eat Some Worms…”

At times, the first kicks in the second.  That’s a doozy.

I was at the point yesterday, of wondering if I was going to go for the fat red night crawlers, or the skinny white worms.

Why?  I don’t know.  It was a good day.

Whacks.  Go figure.  When they disappear, they leave mass destruction of psychological gray matter.  Ben and Jerry repeat ring the doorbell, and peer through the windows.  I stayed away from home.  I did the grocery shopping.  (This is not the smart place to go when one is trying to get away from Ben and Jerry.)

I got attacked by not one, but TWO old-fashioned donuts, pretending to be a healthy lunch.  A big Vegas style sign appeared over my head, flashing:  LOSER  LOSER.

Oh for Pete’s sake!  Get it right: the correct term would be; GAINER.