Frenzied Daddy

I generally say that I don’t have Seasonal Affective Disorder. I like rain, I like sun — I like the mixture of the two, about three days of one, then about three days of the other. I say “about” because I like the unpredictability. However, it’s been getting harder and harder to keep my sunny disposition the last few winters. Part of it is the cold. I think as I get older and more acclimatized to how Ms B likes to keep the house (80 degrees? Really?) that stepping outside into 40, 50 degree weather gets more difficult. Or maybe my fur’s just thinning.

So what do I do to keep my head up when it’s cold and wet outside? Well, I’ve been off my meds for a few months now; the Prozac and the welbutrin. And I’m reluctant to go running in the wet. I’ve never been very good at indoor mechanical exercise (the elliptical or the rower), it just seems pointless. At least with running I’m “going somewhere.” So what I am doing is trying to eat more vegetables and drink more (vitamin D fortified) milk, and I’m taking the stairs at work.

I’m breaking work projects down into four hour blocks and feeling “accomplished” when I get them done. Small goals, quickly iterated over.

And I’m planning to get my bike fixed, and I’m waiting until it’s a little drier to start running again. Small goals, small successes and hope. That’s how I’m fighting depression.

How are you doing it?

Sometimes when I walk from the car to the office, I go past a huge child care place, down on first and oak (and second and oak, it takes up most of the first floor of this particular building). I like to watch the kids playing in there. One day, as I marched past, head down so I didn’t get rain in my eyes, I noticed something strange. There was one boy and two girls away from the rest of the kids, kind of tucked around behind a wooden play set. The girls were facing the boy and he was facing them. Behind them was the window past which I was walking purposefully, behind him was the wooden play thing. Kitchen? Yeah maybe a play kitchen. The teachers were on the other side of the room doing something with the rest of the kids and hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

The look on the boy’s face sent me back; way back to when I was cross country skiing* in Anchorage…

I went past a friend’s house. Her name was Katrina. We were freshmen in High School together. She was cute and I liked to pass notes back and forth with her in Social Studies. And, uh, math. Maybe some in english too. Bah, I liked flirting with her, and she never said “get lost.” The main problem was that I had a girlfriend at the time, Stacy. Stacy was pretty much my first “real girlfriend.” The first girl I kissed, and meant it. She went to a different school though, and Katrina was closer to home. As I passed her house, Katrina came out and waved me to a stop. She invited me into her garage where we could “talk” without her parents butting into our conversation. I took off the skiis, put them and the poles up against the wall (leaving would be more of a production now than just running off). And I went into the dark garage with Katrina, not knowing what to expect, but thinking it couldn’t be too bad.

This is where I learned that Katrina and Stacy knew each other. A sinking feeling, then some fifteen or thirty minutes of “discussion,” after which I was supposed to “choose.” And then, of course, both of them telling me to go away and not talk to either of them any more. I knew it was a foregone conclusion when I found Stacy at Katrinas. The Jig, as they say, was up.

The look on this poor kid’s face looked just like I imagine mine did when I was cornered like a dirty, lying, dog-faced, two-timing rat.

So, some advice for you, kid. Hang tough. Apologize to the women and hold your head high. Don’t make unnecessary choices. It’s not really “either x or y” — it’s more likely “neither” than “both.”

* Don’t mistake me. We didn’t get to ski a lot in Anchorage. I just happened to be tooling around on my skis.

This morning I realized why yesterday my brain wasn’t working quite right. I woke up with one of those dagger-in-me-right-eye headaches. It’s been so long since I’ve had one of those that I didn’t recognize the symptoms. So most of the day I was kind of surly and out of sorts, and couldn’t exactly place my finger on why.

This headache is different from the “omigod i need caffeine” headache. That one is more of a sick feeling and a dull pounding, roaring in my head kind of headache. The dagger in my eye one is the one where I put my hand over my right eye to feel better. It really does feel like something’s sticking in my head. This morning, I dosed up with ibuprofen, antihistamine and pseudopseudofed and went back to bed. After an hour’s sleep, I felt surprisingly better. My brain usually feels like mush after one of those headaches, which is why they’re so bad for me; the day before, it feels like it’s not working and the day after it feels exhausted and bruised.

To all of you who’ve suffered with me the last few days, I’m sorry. I’ll try to be better for at lest the next five or six minutes.

Gever Tulley has a list of five dangerous things that you should allow your kids to do.

He persuasively argues that allowing your child the freedom to explore will help them learn bigger life lessons than ones “you can learn from Dora the Explorer.” One of his examples is fire; teach your kid to play with fire and actually let them poke around with it. Learning how to control and work with a mysterious and primal force is one of the great things that people learn. It teaches them about intake, combustion, and exhaust, the three crucial pieces of “fire” that you’ll need for a fire.

( this quote is somewhat paraphrased because I suck at typing).
when we remove every sharp object, every pokey bit from the world, then the next time the child comes into contact with something not made out of round plastic, they’ll hurt themselves with it. We rob our children of valuable opportunities to learn how to interact with the world around them. And despite our best efforts and intentions, kids will always figure out how to do the most dangerous thing they can in whatever environment they’re in.”

The video linked above is somewhat less than 10 minutes and is worth the time spent watching it. He’s very persuasive.

I don’t like to write about my life in Anchorage. I always feel that y’all are gonna judge me based on it. But it was a long time ago, and things have changed a lot for me. However, somethings have stuck with me. First, most of my “formative” years were spent in a trailer park that was built on, what to all intents and purposes used to be a swamp. I hated it. Well, I didn’t really know different, so I can’t say I hated it, but looking back, it was pretty bleak.

The toilet pipes ran under the trailer, and would freeze once or twice a winter, and our toilets wouldn’t flush and the shower wouldn’t run. We had a small bathroom next to my room, and in the middle of it was the washing machine. It was almost always pulled out of where it was “supposed” to be, sitting in the middle of the bathroom connected to the bathroom sink. It was difficult to get past, my clothes didn’t get cleaned, and I rarely got a shower. So I was greasy and smelled funny.

I was embarrassed by our trailer. One time in Junior High school my Science Teacher (Sandra Dexter) took several of us to a science fair. I asked to be dropped off last, basically because I didn’t want any of the kids to see the trailer. I still can’t believe that my father brought up two boys in that single wide. “At least,” he would say, “it’s paid for. We couldn’t afford the rent on a house, and we have this.”

It’s funny; I never really thought of my dad, who would crawl under the trailer with a space heater or a hair dryer to unfreeze the pipes. It was “something he did,” and so I didn’t think too deeply about it. But it would be hard to get myself to crawl under there. Dark, closed in, smelly, muddy. I can’t even crawl under my car to change the oil.

Anyway.

I routinely violate the main tenet of working from home; I stumble out of bed, pull my pants on (usually the ones from yesterday), get a cup of water, and stumble downstairs to the computer, where I stare at the Internet until my brain works enough to start working. A shower isn’t really in that plan. If I don’t have anywhere to go, taking a shower doesn’t enter the picture. For that matter, I’m frequently in the same shirt I wore to bed. In this way, I’m repeating my childhood; I’m sitting in smelly wrinkled clothes and haven’t showered in days.

Some days I’ve turned around to see Miss B “ready to go to school.”

In the same shirt she wore yesterday.

I’m hoping it’s only a role-model thing and not a “totally uncaring” thing. At any rate, I have even more reason now to shower every morning, and change my shirt.

Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen‘s post on how to improve the quality of your meat with a handful, no, two handfuls, of salt has hunger inducing photos of delicious looking steak.

The secret is salt. And like Alton Brown, she recommends Kosher (or sea) salt. Because when you put this much salt onto a piece of meat, you don’t want to taste the iodine. Basically, take your hunk of cow (or buffalo, or pig, or chicken) flesh, and cover it in enough un-iodized salt that you cannot see the color of the meat. Turn it over, and do it again. Let the salt sit on the meat for one hour for each inch that the meat is thick. One and a half inches thick? Let the meat rest for ninety minutes.

Rinse the meat extraordinarily well and pat very dry. Then cook.

Jaden also includes some diagrams of what she believes is happening; basically, the salt sucks the water out of the meat, creating “wet salt” on the surface of the meat. Then, because some of the salt has dissolved into the water that was sucked out of the meat, and there is no salt in the meat, osmosis takes the salt back into the meat. Her explanation of how the salt turns the proteins in the meat from “tight-assed stuck up” to “totally relaxed, fun loving” is priceless.

She even encourages you to mix some spices in with the salt, so they get pulled back into the meat like Christina Aguilera’s entourage.

It sounds absolutely nummy, but because of weight watchers, I may have to avoid her tip of topping freshly cooked beef with garlic butter.

We’re on Weight Watchers again. While it’s $17 a month for one person, it’s saving us that much in milk alone. Generally, we go through 4-5 gallons of milk a week. And when milk is more expensive than gasoline, that’s a lot of money. I get emails from Weight Watchers with recipes, and yesterday I made this:

Summery Ratatouille
Combine 6 large tomatoes, chopped; 4 medium zucchini, thinly sliced; 2 large onions, thinly sliced; 2 bell peppers, seeded and chopped; 2 garlic cloves, minced; 1 large eggplant, chopped; 2 teaspoons dried basil; 2 teaspoons dried oregano; salt; and ground pepper to taste in a slow cooker. Cover and cook on high until tender, 4-5 hours. Makes 6 servings, 1 cup each.

When I told Miss B that we were having Ratatouille for dinner, she said she didn’t want to “eat a poor little cute fuzzy rat.” I just raised my eyebrows at her. Then when Ms B asked, and I told her the same thing, she said “I’m not eating rat.”

Just what do these people think I feed them, anyway?

So, finally, I went up and put everything in the crockpot. I had an “nearing expiration” bag of spinach and tossed that in, and with it about a cup of red wine. And told them that the next person who asked what was dinner, I was sending to the kitchen to stir the “Rat Stew.” Nobody asked. When dinner was ready, everyone except Miss K had a bowl. It was “ok,” but needed salt. It went well with the grilled cheese sandwiches. I doubt I’ll make it again.

I wonder how they’ll take to this?

Pineapple BBQ Flank Steak
Peel and shred 2 medium sweet potatoes and place them in the slow cooker. Lay a 1-pound flank steak, well trimmed, on top. In a large bowl, combine 1 small onion, finely chopped; one 8-ounce can crushed pineapple in juice; 1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth; 1 teaspoon ground dry ginger; 1/4 cup reduced-sodium jarred barbecue sauce; 1 tablespoon honey; 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard; salt; and ground pepper to taste. Pour this mixture over the steak. Cover and cook on high until the steak is tender enough to shred, using two large forks, about 6-7 hours. Makes 4 servings, about 1 cup each.

These recipes can be found here.

Are yummy delicious blueberries still considered healthful when baked with …brown sugar, oats and butter and served with vanilla ice cream?

… have lead me to this point.
The last two times I’ve gone in to donate blood, the screener has reported that I have a somewhat regular arrhythmia. Both times, less than ten skips per minute, both times they suggested I talk to my doctor. Neither time did they actually turn me down. I had to make an appointment this past Monday in order to get my prescriptions refilled, and so also brought up the heart thing. Actually I had to go back in to discuss it. I was mildly distressed to learn that not only was I ten pounds over what I thought I weighed (243 instead of 233, which is too high anyway), but also that my blood pressure was slightly elevated (like in the 145 over 95 zone) I thought this was because of the day.

When they ran the EKG on me, they didn’t find any arrhythmia, but my heart shows evidence of high blood pressure. So I need to go back in a few weeks for another check. What the hell? I’m glad I went back in for the EKG but … hypertension? Old people get that! I’m not old, dammit! Actually I’m more upset about the aging than I am about the hypertension itself. If I’m going to live with high blood pressure, I have to make some dietary changes (which will help with that freaking fat butt too ). You know, eating more fruits and vegetables. Eating less hamburgers. It’s the DASH diet.

Not to be outdone, Mrs B started complaining last night about pain in her chest and shooting arm pains. Oh and nausea. And feeling clammy. You know, heart attack symptoms. Mrs B’s father had a massive heart attack at 32, so we’re a little sensitive. We rushed her to the hospital and let the doctors have their way. It was a crazy day at the ER and it took us about three hours to get an EKG. Her heart was “normal,” but of course they were going to admit her and run some tests. Instead (because we had the girls and we all had to work in the morning), we came home at 2AM and she made an appointment to see her doctor.

Her doctor says it’s not her heart and is treating her pain with Naproxen. I’m still a little worried but, as I usually do, I’m trusting the doctor to do their job competently.