Happy New Year, y'all!

Tasty veggies

I was folding clothes this morning and watching the Cooking Channel (actually, Alice was watching the Cooking Channel, which is her favorite sort of television to watch, and I was just tagging along while I was doing domestic duty), and it was an old episode of Giada deLaurentis' Everyday Italian show. To be perfectly honest, I'm not hugely into Italian food. But one of the recipes she threw together was so pretty, I felt strangely drawn to it. And since I was going to be stopping by the grocery store after my IV iron infusion treatment this afternoon, I picked up the ingredients and made it at supper. It was even better-tasting than I thought, and I want you guys to try it because it was Just. That. Good.

Basically, I used the following ingredients:

Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

Thinly-sliced green onions (she used shallots, but the grocery store didn't have them, so I substituted a couple of bags of green onions and they were fine, just use any of the milder onions or leeks and it will probably be great)

Minced fresh garlic (one or two cloves at most)

Sliced or quartered mushrooms (button ones, baby-bellas, whatever's small and inexpensive) (I used one carton of pre-sliced ones because they were the same price as the non-sliced ones and I figured I'd save some of the work)

A small bunch of fresh basil, chiffonaded (she used tarragon because it was a Venetian-style recipe, but the grocery store I went to didn't have any fresh tarragon so I subbed in basil which I'm quite fond of)

Sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper

A bunch of small asparagus spears, sliced into 1-inch sections

A container of grape tomatoes

(Giada also used some thawed frozen artichokes, but again, the grocery store didn't have them, so I left them out)

Shredded Parmagiano-Reggiano cheese to taste

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Heat up the pan, then drizzle in some EVOO and toss in the thinly-sliced onions. Sweat them for about 30 seconds, then toss in the minced garlic. Turn the heat to medium so you don't burn or caramelize. Pitch in some sea salt and black pepper, and toss this around for a few minutes.

Next, toss in the mushrooms and sautee them for a little while until the EVOO is absorbed. Then add some more EVOO in and pitch in the asparagus spears. Toss this mixture for a while until the asparagus starts to tender up just a wee bit. Add more sea salt and black pepper, and toss in the chiffonaded basil.

After this has sweated down a teeny bit (about three to five minutes at most), pitch in the grape tomatoes and toss them for no more than about a minute. You don't want to complete liquify the tomatoes, just warm them through a little. Sprinkle a teeny bit of finely-shredded Parmagiano-Reggiano cheese and serve immediately.

Giada actually made a dressing out of tarragon, white wine vinegar and EVOO to drizzle over the top, and I would've loved this, but my kids aren't fond of vinegary foods, even if they're mild, so I opted out.

The dish is extremely beautiful-looking and tastes out-of-this-world good. I'd've taken a picture of it, but it disappeared so fast I didn't have a chance. I think the aroma of the onions and garlic were so pervasive that the kids just inhaled it faster than I expected. And it's totally good for them. But don't tell them I said that.

Merry Christmas...

I miss Karen Carpenter. Her voice is one of my earliest and strongest vocal influences... one of my earliest senses of what was lovely and real and beautiful.

Autumn Bradford Pear I

I've started a second one to go along with this one, but I have several major projects hanging over my head that absolutely have to get done first, so it may be a while before I get that other one done. Or I may continue procrastinating on those other things. You just never know. I gotta go with the inspiration when I get it. At least that's what I tell myself.

I found out a few days ago that a local newspaper is doing a feature story on me and my art classes. Today they interviewed me and took some photos. I think this will be coming out some time next week, so I'll share the article and pics with you then.

Regular school is done on Friday afternoon, but I really don't get to completely let my hair down for several more days after that. A teacher's work is never done, and the cover of the yearbook is due, so I'm going to be concentrating pretty hard on that until it's done. It would be simpler if it were just dependent upon me getting things ironed out, but I am also dependent upon submissions from others, and those items are just not dependably forthcoming.

I can't really even think about Christmasey plans yet. I was hoping I'd get to do some Christmas baking for the first time since we moved into this house 2.5 years ago, because today my oven finally arrived (!!), but Rick fell down the stairs the other day and broke some ribs, and he's absolutely unable to do the labor required to remove the drop-in cooktop so we can install the stove. I've waited this long, I guess I can wait a little longer. He really is in a lot of pain, so I'm not going to be mad. At this point, I'm just hoping to have a working oven by January 1. If it happens before then, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

We've been really struggling with the chaos of living with a mentally-ill teenager, too. It will be necessary for us to do as little socializing as possible during the lead-up to Christmas because it just sends her over the edge. After the Big Day, it will be easier to deal with her, but she just can't cope with anticipation and expectation and excess. Her moods have been pretty severely swinging. Right now we have given her only five changes of clothes to manage, because there are some pretty unspeakable filth issues she refuses to deal with (including her own body). Limiting her choices is pretty much our only option in this matter. I wish things could be different... I wish she could be like the other kids her age and have a celly and go have sleepovers at friends' homes and things like that. She just can't cope; she loses all mental cohesion and slips into complete delusional mania. What's the most frustrating is that she SEEMS like any normal teenager to everyone else around us. Nobody sees the transformation but us. So we seem like irrationally restrictive parents. I really don't care what most people think, but it's tiresome when we have to continually re-argue the point with her because she can't remember and learn from past experiences. Every day's new, and if she's been "good" for the past hour, that should be enough to make up for everything. Then when we don't give in, she begins swearing like a sailor's parrot, and then later remorsefully cries and insists she can't help being that way, so we should give her what she wants because she can't help it. It wears me down.

I need a private vacation. Preferably one involving warm sunshine and a massage therapist named Viktor who specializes in River Rocks and Aromatherapy.

This guy KNOWS cats...

I swear, I think this guy has a video camera and watched my kitty-boy Dude when we put up the tree. There are always about six ornaments down on the floor that we have to go pick up and replace on the tree.

Word of the day

My feet are freezing. I don't expect they'll thaw again til, oh, sometime next June. And that's living in Texas. I don't know if my feet ever thawed when I lived in Iowa. I first became re-acquainted with my bare feet back in 2006 when we moved back to Texas.

Any-hoo, I know it's late in the evening for such activities, but Sundays being what they are, I figure nobody really cares overmuch. Today's word is going to continue the temperature reference from yesterday.

frigiferous (adj) bringing, bearing or causing cold

Frigiferous winds blew over the desolate corn stubble.

They say we'll have 70 degree highs midweek here. Texas weather is so weird this time of year. You just never know. I mean, in Iowa, we knew. We didn't know how MUCH snow or ice or desperately cold wind, but we could count on those things nonetheless. Here? We could have six inches of snow one day and have it all melt off in balmy warmth the very next day.

I think I'll move to Fiji. I'm betting there isn't a whole lot of variability in their weather patterns...

On the watercolor board...

Current project, based loosely on the photos I took on Thanksgiving day. It's still in progress; I have been working while my students are also working on their own projects. They really like it when I sit down with them and work, because they get ideas and inspiration and learn techniques that it's hard to teach in a lecture-style setting. I don't always get to do it, but I love to when I get the chance.

Word of the day

Since I'm wishing for warmth, here's what I chose today, as seen on Luciferous Logolepsy:

vesuvian :relating to the volcano Vesuvius :an old-fashioned kind of match; fusee
vesuviate :to erupt; burst with heat

Okay, so maybe it isn't the kind of heat I was looking for, but warm feet would be nice nonetheless.

Word of the day

Anomie

I was reading my copy of National Review (love that magazine... love it... it always gives me at least one or two new vocabulary words to use) and the word "anomie" was used. I had absolutely no idea what it meant; the context gave me some notion, but I still wanted to find the precise meaning of it. Here's what Merriam-Webster says:

anomie : social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values; also : personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals

It's pronounced "ANNA-me" and here's a context for you:

The fraying ligature of the landscape of the United States reveals an inner geography of alienation and anomie. Living on the island of Manhattan, I daily negotiate an urban layout of practical, but identity-decimating grids -- a cityscape of harsh, inhuman right angles ... a geography that renders street encounters abrupt, curt and intrusive.
Social Media and the Architecture of Anomie, Phil Rockstroh, 7/12/2010

I love learning new words... even bleak, depressing ones like anomie. In fact, I'm going to do my best to combat the anomie I find around me today. How about you?

I said a word...

I freely confess. I did say a word after I accidentally kicked the corner of the TV stand last night. And it wasn't "Ouch," although it did have four letters as well. Sorry if this disappoints anyone.

One friend asked if I planned to call an ambulance or a toe truck... and my Aunty Ada exclaimed, "Krakatoe-a!" Aren't puns just awesome? I love them.

A word from the prophet Isaiah

from Isaiah, chapter 9, in the New Living Translation:

1 Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory.

2 The people who walk in darkness
will see a great light.
For those who live in a land of deep darkness,
a light will shine.
3 You will enlarge the nation of Israel,
and its people will rejoice.
They will rejoice before you
as people rejoice at the harvest
and like warriors dividing the plunder.
4 For you will break the yoke of their slavery
and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders.
You will break the oppressor's rod,
just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian.
5 The boots of the warrior
and the uniforms bloodstained by war
will all be burned.
They will be fuel for the fire.

6 For a child is born to us,
a son is given to us.
The government will rest on his shoulders.
And he will be called:
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 His government and its peace
will never end.
He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David
for all eternity.
The passionate commitment of the LORD of Heaven's Armies
will make this happen!

Camera Tossing 2010, Take #3

Actually, this wasn't so much "tossing" as just "rapid waggling."





The Nikon captures color so much more effectively than the little point-and-shoot, understandably. One of my serious photographer students, Lauren, said that she had done the camera-tossing experiment but had just made rapid circular motions with the DSLR camera instead of actually tossing it. I decided to give that method a try and see if I could improve upon the color.

The result really makes me think of the big Nam June Paik neon sculpture in the Smithsonian. I like it.

Ha!

The GI doc today took a look at my iron numbers and said (without any suggestion from me), "You might want to talk to your gynecologist about a hysterectomy; your iron numbers are terribly low and you just can't afford to lose so much every month."

Hmmm... my thoughts exactly. Ablation procedures wouldn't do a thing to improve my ovarian cyst situation, so I would think I might be a good candidate for a hysterectomy.

We shall see.

Health update

Got a call from my hematologist this week, who looked over my labs from last week. My iron is at 22 (she wants it to be above 40) and my ferritin is at 5 (she wants it to be at least 10). So I have to have four more rounds of IV iron, starting this Friday. Each infusion takes about an hour or so, which means I get to take my Nook e-reader and enjoy a quiet hour in a recliner hooked up to what looks like a bag of liquified rusty nails.

Back a few weeks ago, my hematologist had ordered a pelvic MRI to determine the nature of some nodules in my groin. Those turned out to be nothing, but they did find that my ovaries were full of cysts. She recommended at that time that I really should see one particular gynecologist about this. I kept putting it off, of course -- I already knew that my ovaries were cystic, and I was just so doggone tired of doctor's appointments and procedures and crap. Well, since then, I have gained about twenty pounds. This is not okay! Granted, I really had gotten a little close to the edge of being too thin (who would've thunk such a thing possible?), but twenty pounds is just not okay in this short of a time. Plus, my face and chest and shoulders and back have broken out in severe acne. So obviously there is something seriously out of whack with my hormones, which would explain the strange weight gain. The gynecologist's office staff is supposed to call me back when they get all my records so we can make an appointment to be seen.

I wish they'd just go in and take all that reproductive machinery out. I really do. It's totally screwing up everything, and it doesn't work properly, and it's a cancer risk thanks to the stupid cysts. Of course, if they did decide to do that, it probably wouldn't be in this calendar year, which screws up the finances even worse. I've already met my deductible for 2010. I wish I'd just gone ahead and made the appointment back a few weeks ago. Grr!

Today, I received my second round of botox injections to treat a fissure that refuses to heal. Fissures and hemorrhoids really are incredibly undignified afflictions.

Tomorrow is a follow-up visit with the GI doctor. He's a nice man, but he gets really freaked-out if I tell him that I'm taking naproxen every day for pain... but he doesn't offer me anything viable as an alternative. Sorry, dude, but Tylenol just doesn't do it. So I keep taking the naproxen, and I just don't tell him. He wants to freak out on me? Let him suffer for A YEAR AND A HALF with an open wound that re-injures every time he goes to the bathroom and delivers knife-like stabs of persistent and unending PAIN. Then we'll talk. Until then? I'm taking naproxen. I swear, it took a fargin' act of Congress to get the man to prescribe a tube of lidocaine so I could find a few seconds without pain every so often. What is so hard about a TUBE OF LIDOCAINE? Can someone explain that to me? I shouldn't even need a bleeping PRESCRIPTION for that.

Can you tell I've not been at my best? [eye roll]

On the other hand, I have generally maintained a cheerful front. I saw a cute saying today: Be as happy as a bird with a french-fry. I like that visual.

And I have decorated my classroom door for Christmas, even though I'm the only one this year (nobody initiated a decorating contest)... it's just lights and student-made ornaments, but it's festive and bright and cheerful and Christmasey. And I've been playing Christmas music in class, which adds to the holiday mood. I'm also putting together a care package for a former student who's deployed in Iraq right now, which has been delightfully fun. Other teachers have contributed to the effort as well.

I guess that's enough of an update for now. Merry Christmas, y'all!

Happy December 1st!