her able hands

Thank you all for the kind words and commiseration. I’m feeling tons better and the rash is just about gone. Terrified to eat a shrimp again, but that’s how it goes. It was a bummer to toss that entire pot of soup out, because it was delicious—I highly recommend making your own dashi to use in soups. It’s super easy and oh, so tasty. I wonder if it freezes well?

This week will likely bring a bit of overtime at work, so posting will still be light, but I’m getting ready to blog the Great Basement Clean-Up 2008, as well as the winter sowing of perennials, the living room, dining room and kitchen painting and the dining room chair re-upholstery. I’ve only had the fabric and foam since May and have decided that I’m simply going to do the seats for now because the wood is in very decent condition. That can come later some day when I don’t work outside the home a full 40 hours a week.

In other news, I’m gagging and fuming and wishing I could bitch-slap the FDA for saying it’s safe to eat cloned meat. Factory farm at its finest, people. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat meat in a public food setting ever again. A whole new layer of “from whence came this meat” is added to the already mysterious game of eating. Will they put on the menu “Chicken-Thrice-Removed Marsala”? Chew on that.

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Saturday night I made a soup with a dashi and miso broth. Dashi is made by simmering water with a piece of kombu seaweed, then turning off the heat and adding bonito flakes (fish) and letting it sit until the flakes all fall to the bottom. Then you strain it, which I did into a pot of sautéed mushrooms, carrots, bok choy, ginger and shrimp.

An hour after I ate it, I was hanging over the toilet, turning myself inside out. I now have a disturbing looking rash all over my lower face and neck. Tiny red dots that may be broken capillaries? I have no idea. It’s not pretty, though.

I’m assuming it was a shrimp because nobody else got sick.

Such a shame, it took me almost two hours to make this soup and it looked, smelled and tasted so healthy and yum. Going down, at least.

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I wish I had my camera with me on the drive in to work this morning so I could have shared the nuclear winter sunrise that blasted out of the horizon in the rear view mirror. There were deep purple clouds layered just above the tree line and the sun a hot pink and orange ball sitting just perched on top of the frosted trees. Most of the storm had cleared out but it was still snowing lightly and bitter cold so everything sparkled. One thick, throbbing ray of orange-pink light shot straight up into the sky for miles and miles and the sky all around glowed and seemed to positively roil with light and shadow and energy.

Because I was less than a mile from my job at the time that I noticed this extravaganza going on behind me, the elation mixed with a dash of bitterness. Work. Meh. I gazed at that beam of sunshine shooting up at daybreak (while trying to keep the car on the road) and felt the ache in my jaw from the nighttime grinding of teeth that has apparently become a recent habit. My teeth hurt. A lot. Wouldn’t I have loved to just turn that truck around and head on home to write and fold laundry and listen to music without headphones? Why yes, yes I would.

Focus on the light, I told myself. Feel the warmth even though the thermometer on the truck readout says it’s 8 degrees. And just get in there and fake it for another day. And so I did.

I’m thinking a lot about intention. And about complaining less while I’m at work. So I intend to practice at at least catching myself when I’m complaining and zipping my lips. So I caught myself about a hundred times today, but not so much with the zipping the lips part, no sirree. No, it was more like Wow! I’m bitching up a storm here aren’t I! And aren’t I justified!? I sure am! And here’s why!

But I’m also thinking a lot about how much I’ve picked at and picked on myself in recent years, and about how that just makes me feel worse and even less like growing and changing. I’ll actually share something kind of gross and personal with you because hey! it’s a blog! that’s what we bloggers do, right?

I pick at every blemish on my skin. It’s a habit that has become worse with age and now I’m a 40 year-old woman whose arms and legs are covered with angry red-purple scars. I even do it in my sleep. All of my sheets have tiny blood spots from where I scrape off tiny blemish scabs with my fingernails in the middle of the night. My hands are always snaking up my sleeves and picking away at whatever tiny bumps and imperfections pop up on my skin. I haven’t worn a skirt in years.

So these are two big things that I believe are well and truly tied together in a nearly fool-proof knot, and two big things that I intend to work on every day until I no longer do these things unconsciously. Maybe then, once I’ve brought some consciousness to the habits, I’ll be able to let them go.

Happy New Year.

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