elainegrey

Leading worship the past few Firstdays, trying to fold in the telepresence component, and filling in for others, has been stressful. I've three Firstdays before i lead again.

Today went well, nonetheless. One thing about Zoom is that digital picture books are easier to share. I read What Matters by Alison Hughes even though there were no kids. What Matters is a little fable of one small act (throwing away some trash in the park) and all the repercussions that unfold. A small act having global impact seems very meaningful to contemplate. Wash your hands. Alison Hughes also has a lovely book, When the Silence Slips In that i would recommend as well. That one is a bit more about centering, and also seemed it could be useful.

Compassion is what comes to my mind, over and over, but i didn't have a go-to referecene. Poking around on the internet turned up Compassionate Presence by Nolasco, Rolf R., R. Vincent MacDonald, and Andrew Dreitcer. I didn't run across anything that seemed uncommonly well put, but one mindfulness meditation included

Now bring to mind a layout of your day— tasks that need to be carried out, people to connect with, and other activities that need your careful attention, whether significant or trivial, one by one.  Simply become aware of them and as best as you can refrain from strategizing or planning how you will approach these activities. 

One then mindfully inventories one's reactions, feelings, bodily sensations and so on through all the upcoming tasks and then

Gather all this— the schedule of day and the attendant states of mind— and imagine laying them down at the altar of grace (or foot of the cross) as an offering.

"The foot of the cross" isn't language used much by Friends, but the image of one's day as an offering -- to Grace or the Light or to God or to Love and Compassion -- really struck me. Becoming mindful of the day -- not the sort of overwhelmed panic that i can get as i try to remember everything that ought to be handled -- seems like a good idea.

--== ∞ ==--

Meanwhile, Dad is depressed and he's doesn't have the knack to get Mom to do something she doesn't want to the way my sister does. I just wrote her

I had a brief chat with Dad. He’s admitting he’s depressed and — not directly related — he’s not able to get mom to walk. (She’s giving him the “I’m not doing that today”) I told him I’d call tomorrow morning and ask her about walking and try to get her to walk — but maybe you would do that instead? A morning FaceTime with Mom? I will make sure to get her to walk on Wednesday — I know that I can use the “You don’t want to disappoint Laura after you were doing so well” when I’m there, but I’m not sure how well it’s going to go over FaceTime. Anyhow there’s that.

--== ∞ ==--

Meanwhile, i'm feeling panicked about the Terrifying project. There's a meeting regarding the Surprise project, tomorrow, too, about which my sympathy has eroded to a nubbin. I found myself cursing a good bit more last week -- stress -- and just thinking about it -- harrumph. But i need to focus on Terrifying project because of the terror.

One mystery is why i could install the python parse module on my personal laptop but not on my work laptop (despite apparent success in installation). It's a nifty tool that will help me pull data our of some log files without spending hours writing "regular expressions." While i've known a few folks who preen over their regex (the compressed form of "regular expression") foo, most software engineers make disgusted faces when confronted with the task. I hope i can get it working.

--== ∞ ==--

Meanwhile, i did have a bit of a meltdown Saturday when i found that (some of) my seeds were wet and (a few were) mildewed and moldy. It wasn't as bad as it first seemed, and i think i recovered the most important to me.
( Gardening and yard meanderings )

--== ∞ ==--

Meanwhile, i'm eating violet leaves as salsad greens. Best foraged weed green ever. They grow in clean clumps, so the leaves are as easy to pick as any small greens i've grown. They're profligate in the garden and yard, they don't have any particular flavor. Salads of violets, sorrel, a few leaves of garden lettuces (all still tiny plants) and thinnings from spinach are delicious. Not having the ease of slicing up a heart of romaine is motivational. Christine had grocery store bib lettuce, grown hydroponically, and the last choice left on shopping day.

The poke weed is sprouting: i'm not brave enough to try poke salat. The deer will eat the plants outside of the orchard: i've left two to grow in the orchard for birds and maybe some day a dye experiment.

I'm home, arriving from NOLA via Baltimore on Friday night. I slept in and then read all day yesterday, finishing Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear. It was the best book of the trip, and i started it as we landed in Baltimore. It is about many things, but it is also about childhood trauma, coming to terms with identity and managing one's self with psychoactive medications, and choosing community. The space opera is great, as well, taking the scrappy, rough-and-tumble, making-ends-meet point of view. It's a rich universe and Overdrive gives it a series title of "White Space" which leads me to hope for more stories.

Today ... well, we'll see. The mental dump of the past week's dining adventures took a while. I have made some housekeeping efforts and i need to go rake for an hour as exercise in the sun.

( meals and memories )

I am craving and wishing for a bunch of uncommon citrus: blood and cara cara oranges, meyer lemons, and i would like to try kumquats. I suppose i'll see if the grocery has kumquats. They had Buddha's hand citron when i was there last.

But grocery store citrus leaves me sad, as i think about roadside stands in California. When we drove through Florida last i looked for roadside stands but what i saw seemed stuck in 1970.

( Florida (and one Louisiana) citrus shippers )

I am generally unfamiliar with ramen outside of cellophane packets. The local co-op is selling freshly made ramen and dumplings for $10 and $5 for take out once a month. (tickets here.)

I guess i need to spring for it to find out if it's worth it. I wish they had more photos. It might be enough for two?

Current state of the Me: I aggressively rested yesterday.

I did run some errands which included clearing out more than i brought home, which was good. The bringing home included a failed solution for dealing with the weather stripping at the base of the front door. My attempt to install the slide-on door sweep ruined the doorsweep past returnable condition, to my personal standard, so i was cranky about that.

Feeling uninterested in doing some things i need to do, i began going through email, texts, and my journal to assemble for Mom a narrative of her stroke. I think it was good to remember how hard that time was.

Marlowe had the day out and with Carrie yesterday. It's gone well, although Carrie does get a little excited. Carrie seems to know to run outside when she gets excited, so that's a lovely behavior. Marlowe is hanging out at the back door or at a window where she can look out: we certainly won't let her out until she's been spayed. I really don't want to deal with constricting her space.

FRIDAY

My employer has become much more oriented towards surveillance. I’m sure the motives are honorable, that is, the expense is justified as protecting the organization from users clicking on websites that may deliver malware, but it leads me to be aware how little privacy i have despite working at home. A colleague has in the past determined how to keep non-work traffic from going through the work VPN, which is desirable from simply a bandwidth maximization point of view. I shall figure that out sooner or later. Nonetheless, the surveillance does motivate more separation of private life from work life. I am glad this is not the era of my horrible director during which journaling was a thin thread to hold onto sanity. Nonetheless, my current depression isn’t peaches, either. At least it’s not directly tied to a particular person.

I did not join Mom and Dad in the visit to the pulmonologist visit today, as i’ve been coughing enough to be mistaken for the patient.

Yesterday i started on two culinary adventures. One is less dramatic falfel waffles from here.

The other is making a rye sourdough starter from wild yeasts. Some recipes [here] indicate that there are yeasts enough in the flour. I found another recipe that used rhubarb from the garden, which called to mind Pascal Baudar's advice of using foraged plant matter (juniper berries or other berries or grapes) that have a bloom [here].

While the sourdough starter gets underway, i should receive sproutable rye seeds today. I'll sprout those and then dry the grains to make my own malted rye flour. After reading the internet for a bit, i understand the point of diastatic malt in bringing enzymes to the party.

Once i have my malt and starter, i can move on to actually making Estonian black bread. I bought a packet of Must Ronk leib as i was leaving Estonia and ate it as part of my picnic meals for the rest of my trip. Oh i did love that bread, and the black pumpernickel vacuum packed in the international section is a pale semblance.

I'd thought of making my own rye bread before, but life is short. However, if i can pull off the rich tenderness of Estonian bread, well, life is enriched by a good bread.

I also think that the rye bread agrees with me far more than white bread. I'm not sure what it is about wheat breads that is problematic. It's not gluten. Someone suggested it might be yeast, but i'm not confident that's it either. I felt fine with rye during the trip, so i am hoping investing time in lieb, the Estonia black rye bread, will be good for my health, too.

Back to the Estonian recipe: i wonder how important the oat bran is.

Now i want pickled herring and black bread for breakfast. Sigh.

No news re the nodules in Mom's lungs. She came out of the thoracic procedure extremely thirsty and apparently coughed much yesterday. I've got the CT scan results: the presumed primary area hasn't changed size in two weeks, and her heart which was "mildly prominent in size" two weeks earlier was deemed normal. I've been buoyed by the doctor's absence of caution around the fibrosis, and now realize that she might have lung surgery while i am out of the country. Oh. Well, we will see.

Christine asked about what would happen if Dad's mother needs him while i am out of the country. Exchanged brief messages with my sister over that and should be able to set Christine's mind at rest regarding that.

Christine had a nightmare about the compost bucket: i should see if she's anxious about visiting the worm bin while i am gone. I think i will find some vegetative matter to harvest for them and leave them with a bin of greens and shred paper for the two weeks i'm gone. I'll think of a place Christine can dump the coffee grinds if she wants to not trash them while i'm gone. Otherwise, i rather think i'm the main cause of vegetative scraps.

We split the first blackberry from the orchard. There will be a second, but almost all the other flowers seem to have not set fruit, or they aborted during the dry May weeks. I ate a very young green bean: no where near as pleasant as grazing on peas. Maybe tomorrow i'll dig a few more potatoes and have green beans. I can finally see black walnuts forming in the trees

Yesterday evening i went to Apex to meet up with a colleague who attended the Code4Lib conference at NCSU. She wanted Eastern NC style barbecue and i tried to find a place. I'm not sure a place that sells lavender and lemon kombucha is an appropriate place from which to order eastern barbecue. As i perused the menu i realized that if i wanted to do a meat trial before traveling, this was the best time and place. So i had the chopped pork BBQ. And meh. My colleague said the meat was A+ but the sauce was completely underwhelming. I was not impressed with either. Christine & my's eastern barbecue tuna is excellent. I find i really don't miss the meat and i will be happy to avoid it in the future. The good news though was that i have had no physical reactions, so if i do get a dish with meat in Tallinn or Stockholm by accident, i won't be risking misery.

While we were there, a thunderstorm dropped rain, then dramatically large hail. (Golf ball sized, my colleague from Houston pronounced.) As i drove K-- C-- back to the campus hotel, fog rose from the hail accumulated at the edge of the road. On my return home i hit another squall line, the sound of the hail on the roof of the truck was quite dramatic. The clouds created an early dusk. Rain was so hard i could barely see, so i quickly pulled off the road and waited for it to ease a bit. By the time i got home, the squalls were past and the sky quickly brightening. Wer'd had a half inch of rain while i was gone, but no damage that i would expect to remain after anything like the hail i saw.

I watched far to many episodes of Lucifer while i waited for Christine to return home.

It's been three years and a week since we arrived from California.



Top: photo my sister took when she inspected the home before closing. The summer undergrowth hadn't taken off yet, and it's clear that the owners had done some clearing off the deck to sell the place.

Bottom: Today, with a very similar view of the deck railing, window box with miniature roses, and the cluster of black cherries to the left. The thicket of young trees on the right is gone.

We woke to the sound of a nice steady rain. What luxury! Carrie was on her bed beside the bed and stayed after i stirred. I said hello to Greycie Loo on the porch, and she was inside curled up next to Christine the next time i looked. The boy-os sprawled at the foot of the bed.

Rain fell.

It was good.

We finally have a diagnosis for Greycie Loo. ( Cancer details and grumbles. ) She has s few months at best. We'll enjoy her company as long as she is comfortable in giving it to us.

We have a new removable plate waffle maker, and i just tried making grilled cheese in it. Next time i'll stay within a single waffle instead of using the center. Much of the pimento cheese spread went spilling out, which is why i would have never attempted this in our old waffle maker. Next experiment will be to make Almojábanas (Colombian Cheese Bread) in it. (Gluten free decadence.) I have another gluten free recipe i like with either creamed corn or pumpkin adding moist tenderness. I hope to make that a little more often as a way to increase my gluten free options for sandwiches and similar nibbles.

Belgian waffles, not gluten free, were how we initiated use of the iron: they were wonderful, even if from a mix.

Gorgeous day with very little wind. (Did i mention that i didn't go to the lake because of wind?) While i was talking to a colleague a hawk swooped by the window and briefly perched in the tulip poplar.

When i went out to pick greens for lunch, i added wild garlic greens, chickweed, and bitter cress to the pile. That wasn't hard at all, since i was already bent over to pick greens. Maybe i'll forage more. I do so like having fresh greens at lunch.

I also have been drinking my hibiscus, today with mint. That was a lovely tonic. The fresh hibiscus today -- a bowl of hibiscus pods wait for me to cut the seeds out and lay them out on the dehydration racks -- made a much more red drink than the dried hibiscus i had last week. Was it the presence of dried mint, absence of ginger, or will the red remain if i dry quickly in the dehydrator?

I wonder if i should use the dehydrator on mint, too.

Work has an edge to it today, but eating from the yard is a pleasure.

Yesterday we had a bit of a downer as we looked for a place to stay with Carrie at the beach. Rental places look reasonable and then there's linen fees, cleaning fees, pet fees, etc.

Another dog event of note, on Saturday's off-leash headache exercise, Carrie found two three limb bones still connected at the joint. It was disgusting, she rolled on it, gnawed on it.... Oh i hope it didn't make her sick. I just realized she threw up first thing this morning. Hrm.

I spent last night cooking, and it was a bit frustrating.

The first dish was to use up some beets and apples that had been aging at the bottom of the crisper and were no longer crisp. (Actually, one apple was fabulous. I wish i knew what type that keeper was.) I used this recipe as an inspiration, less the orange, and i added some similarly sad carrots: http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2013/11/ginger-citrus-maple-roasted-beets.html

This seemed to go just fine.

The next dish was to address the eggplants and fresh black-eyed peas from the veggie box. I added far more coconut (sweetened) and didn't churn it into a paste. Also, no curry leaves or fenugreek. (Thank you wikipedia for translating unfamiliar ingredients into those i had a prayer of finding.) I wanted to use the pressure cooker and i also added rice. The step of frying the onions and spices went well, but tossing in the rice and then eggplant hit some strange issue where the "high" stove eye setting seemed to be interpreted as the neighboring "off" setting. (I had just put water on to boil on the back stove eye: coincidence?) After realizing i wasn't toasting the rice, i got the heat back and thought i was doing well building up pressure when i realized the rocker wasn't rocking but all the steam was existing through a rubber pressure release. I tapped it a few times (with the corner of an empty pasta box) and managed to somehow have the release go in against the pressure and release even more pressure.

I think i managed to get the rice and beans cooked. I was very tempted to stand and pick out every black-eyed pea to eat after tasting the first six or seven to see if they were cooked. (Boiled peanuts: i miss them.) This is lined up for lunch today, and three other servings are packed in the freezer for lunches into next week.

http://www.ohtastensee.com/2013/01/27/kaaramani-kathirikkai-kuzhambublack-eyed-peas-and-eggplant-spicy-curry/

Finally, i prepared this salad. The pasta suffered first from neglect as i realized that the heat had left my curry dish, and then it too lost heat and so the pasta was cooked in weird cycles of boiling and cooling water. Something about the flavoring was lost, although i had just spent a good amount of time in a curry scented sauna. I wish i'd had oil cured black olives instead of brine cured. Also, i think lemon instead of red wine vinegar would have dressed it more to my taste.

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/nioise-pasta-salad-10000001909080/