Battle of the blogs

First came a letter from Janine Kovac to her "friend", Doris

Then came a LOT of responses - the best of which is this alternative letter that sums up just what I, too, think of Doris's "friend."

And then Doris' friend Janine apologized for being an ass. Which I have to say I really respected - it's a heart-felt apology, not one of those awful "Sorry if I said something that might have offended someone" non-apologies I'm so tired of.

I love you, Interwebs.

Us - as cartoons & non-preppers

I drew these for a little announcement flyer to distribute in our neighborhood, so people know who we are. We're adorable!

Hopefully, it won't take months to meet our neighbors, the way it did in Canby. As I told a friend recently, I'm the opposite of a "prepper" - instead of isolating myself and creating a fortress and seeing everyone as a "taker" or potential enemy, I get to know my neighbors. That's partly because I like people, and partly because studies show that people that survive disasters are the ones that are part of communities where members have a strong sense of helping one another.

Not that we don't have enough supplies and equipment to get us at least five days without electricity or the car. But if civilization can't rebound in five days, we're totally screwed.

The move

I've been a gypsy since I was 22 - I've moved 13 times in 25 years. Most of the times, it's been for work, but sometimes, not: I moved to Austin, Texas to find the me I lost (and I did!). You would think I would be really good at moving. I'm not. As I posted on Facebook, I start off carefully packing each box, making sure each item inside is protected, making sure each box is not too heavy, and packing things together that will be unpacked and placed together; but midway through, I start just throwing things in boxes and hoping for the best.

As I blogged about earlier, we bought a house in December, and are now living in Forest Grove, Oregon. We had started moving a car full of things every weekend since just after Christmas, and were feeling really optimistic about how much we'd moved and unpacked in four weeks time. But the Friday before our big, main move on Saturday, both of our offices were largely unpacked, and we both ran out of boxes. At around 8 in the evening, Stefan at last relented and said that, indeed, we needed help moving - my weak knees and slow-as-molasses-in-January ways just weren't going to be enough. We agreed that I would start calling at 7 in the morning the next day, trying to find movers.

That night, I slept 4 hours. 4. I need 7 just to be functional. I rarely have insomnia - I worship sleep, and do everything I can to have a really decent night. When I don't get enough sleep, it leads to tears, poor-decision-making and panic attacks the next day - I'm so not exaggerating. At university, I pulled some all-nighters, true, but that was 25 years ago - my middle-aged brain just can't handle that anymore.

At 7 a.m., we got up and I was on Yelp almost immediately, looking for movers. My first call was to VOZ Workers' Rights Education Fund - I really wanted to be supportive of people who really want to work, but the web site said one thing about when they were open, the Facebook page said another, and none of my calls were returned. I called four other places recommended (for the most part) on Yelp; two called back and were quite gracious but were fully booked - both said they could do it on Sunday. Then I called College Student Movers. Kyle said they were booked all day, but could be at our place in Canby by 3 to help load - but they'd only have time to load, not unload. I said YES!

A friend of Stefan's from work came to help load, and was AMAZING. I posted to my public Facebook account lamenting our need for movers, hoping for a recommendation, and my neighbor showed up - his daughter had been reading over her mom's shoulder on Facebook and said, "Oh, Mom, we HAVE to help her!" I went and got muffins and biscuits for munchies for our crew, blocked off the kitchen for Albi, and found little items for the kids next door to take out (they were DIEING to help).

By noon, I'd realized that we were going to be packed up and on the road by 2, and therefore would need the guys to help us UNPACK instead. Since they are based in Hillsboro, which is near Forest Grove, I was pretty sure this news would go over well. And it did - a text message and phone call and we were all set.

I loaded up what I could in the car, put Albi's bed in the very back of the Honda Fit, and then it was time to get Albi in. I was worried - she hadn't been in the car in many, many months. She's always loved to ride in the car, but in the last few months, her joints have become very sensitive - no more deep tissue massages like she used to love, as they hurt her now. I'm sure she's got more aches and pains than even me. I walked her out to the car, picked her up, and she tried to bite me. Good thing she's blind and couldn't see! I felt miserable for hurting her and started to tear up. As I drove off, I could see her in the rearview mirror, ears back, looking angry, and listening to figure out what in the hell was going on. I wondered if I was going to have to pull over to the side of the road. But within a couple of miles, she was doing the circle-before-I-lay-down dance, and she stayed reclined for the hour-long trip to our new home.

Once we got to Forest Grove, the movers were already helping Stefan unload. I left Albi in the car - she was laying down on her bed, seeming to be relatively content. And I left her there for an hour while I directed the movers to the proper rooms and made coffee.

I left my cell phone in the car, and during the move, Stefan was texting me , asking me to bring him coffee, and wondering why I was ignoring him. Sorry, honey!

One of the moving guys, Nobel (pronounced Noble), said he always wanted a German Shepard, so I picked him to help me get Albi out of the car. At first, I thought we'd try a ramp for her to walk down, but there was no board long enough that would give her any easy walk down. So I decided we'd just pick up the entire bed, with her on it, and lay it down in the drive way. Well, we could have walked Ms. Queen of Sheba into the house for all she cared. We laid her down on the drive way, and she just laid there, listening, wondering what in the heck was going on, but not making any effort to move - she was perfectly content on her bed. Sorry I didn't get a photo - I had no idea where my camera was. Eventually, I got her up to walk and I brought her and the bed into my office. I closed the door, and an hour later, when I checked on her, she was laying on her bed, just listening. Geesh what a good dog.

We had everything inside the house by 6 p.m. I tipped the movers big time - they so earned it - and then we heated up some leftover chinese food and talked about how hard this whole process has been. Because it's been HARD. I got the Internet working, Stefan put our bed together, and I realized for the first time how huge our bedroom is now and managed to do a little dance in celebration (plenty of room to put up Stefan's German closet without making the room feel crowded - I wasn't expecting SO much room!).

We spent about an hour on the Internet each, I took Albi out for one more pee, and we crashed at around 10.

Unfortunately, Albi was wired from all the new smells and surroundings, and got up more than a few times in the night. Finally, I got out of bed, took the pillow and covers with me, and slept in the floor with her. It was the only way she'd sleep. And I was so tired from the day, and from having only 4 hours sleep before, I slept soundly on the floor.

We still have stuff in Canby, even after going there again on Sunday and loading up a car full of stuff. We have paid rent through January, so there's no immediate deadline to get it all out, but it's frustrating to keep having to go back there. We have a growing list of repairs HERE that we'd really like to focus on.

My downfall, in terms of stuff, is books and papers. Once I started working from home, I had to create space for an entire career's worth of such. And I use a lot of the materials regularly - it's amazing what I can find in my little library that I can't find online. But I long to spend a week doing nothing but scanning things so I can throw the paper versions away. I've committed myself to getting rid of at least two full boxes of books and old software - I hope to do so through a combination of eBay, a garage sale, and a donation to Goodwill (there are SO many Goodwill outlets in Oregon - what's up with that?).

I'll try to scale back my non-work-related library, but the last time I did that, in 2000 in Austin, I deeply regretted it, as I love to re-read books, and I ended up hunting down some of those books in used books stores and re-buying them. I don't want to make that mistake again.

We bought a house

Haven't updated in a while because we have been immersed in HOUSE BUYING HELL. What an awful process. I've done tons of research over the years, asked friends lots of questions, and I thought I knew what to expect. I was wrong. I'm just really glad we were with a credit union rather than a for-profit bank - I can't imagine how much more awful the process would have been, how much more vigilant against getting scammed we would have had to be, if we'd been with a for-profit bank.

So… we bought a house! And we've moved fom Canby to Forest Grove. We hope it's the right move: that Stefan will, at last, be able to be a volunteer fireman (hope this can happen later in 2013), that he'll have a shorter commute to and from work, that I'll have an easier time getting to and from Portland via the barely marginal PDX public transit system (we continue our struggles to be a one-car family), and that the city will feel like home in a way that Canby never did.

I'm now a home owner, something I've never experienced before. I had a very particular image in my mind of what buying my first house would be like: it would also be the last house I bought, because I would love it so much, I would never want to leave it. There would be a back porch, room in the vast yard for every crazy gardening idea I ever wanted to do, a small bunk house for visiting motorcyclists, a chicken coop and small chicken yard, and space for my pet donkey that I would adopt soon after I bought the house. It would also be in a city and state I wanted to live in forever - I'd still travel, but I'd never move again.

That didn't happen. What we bought is not my dream house that I want to live in for the rest of my life - I couldn't find that house, unfortunately, at least not within my price range or that didn't need at least $100,000 worth of work. Our house is, instead, the proverbial "good investment." Given what I experienced in the housing market since July 2012, there's no question the economy is getting better, and will continue to do so, and buying a house now makes really great economic sense. Therefore, in five years, after ripping out all of the carpets in about 2000 square feet and replacing such with laminate that looks like hardwood flooring, replacing the single-pane windows, painting, putting in a french drain, retiling the main bathroom, putting in a French drain, getting the chimneys in working order, cleaning all the ducts and dealing with whatever huge problem I know is waiting in the wings (furnace? plumbing?), we will, supposedly, be able to sell this for much more than we paid for it.

Would be wonderful to remodel the kitchen and oh-so-pink main bathroom as well, but I'm not sure we can afford it.

And then there's our furniture - our furnishings are a hodgepodge. A couple of pieces are from my university days. Some are cast-offs from friends who were upgrading their own homes. Much of it is from Stefan's first apartment back in Germany. These will be the last things we replace, and that won't be for a couple of years, at least.

I don't at all regret not buying a house before now, as I've blogged about before. I hope I don't regret it now. Buying a house means no more looking for a job outside of PDX. It means I'm tied to this area in a way I've never been tied to anywhere before, and that scares me, the gypsy, hugely. If anything goes wrong, I have no one person to call to fix it - I have a growing list of numbers to handle the problems that are inevitably coming our way.

I'm happy to be here and I think that, in a couple of years, I might even be in love with this house, once the insides and outside look the way we want it, and we see that we can still travel as much as Stefan's vacation, and our budget, allows.  

I like the house, but I love the neighborhood. We live in a historic neighborhood, and many of the houses are gorgeous, either because they have been restored to their historic beauty or because people have remodeled them to be really funky and fun. In some ways, it reminds me of the Highlands in Louisville, though most of the houses are much smaller and much father apart. It's more of a feeling than a look.

Our house has tremendous potential. I think it will be beautiful once we've done all we want to, and that I'll love showing it off once those things are done. This is a neighborhood where it's normal to put raised beds in the front lawn for vegetables (the back yard is too dark for what I want to grow), and I can't wait to really garden again, something I haven't gotten to do since I lived in Austin. There's room for a green house in the front as well. I have a great idea for replacing part of the fence along the side of the house. And the backyard is going to be a great place for corn hole and grilling out, especially on very hot days. There's a big patch of bamboo, and I have all sorts of ideas for harvesting it and using it in various ways.

So... we bought a house!

Cooking With Jayne

I never learned how to cook when I was growing up. I wanted to learn, but my Mom shooed me out of the kitchen every time I asked to help. Mamaw, my paternal grandmother, would let me mix things if I asked, but it didn't really teach me anything about cooking. There was no Internet - for me, anyway - and I didn't dare just start messing around in the kitchen, for fear of setting the house on fire.

At university, I could make mac and cheese, or frozen pizza, or a bowl of cereal. Otherwise, I ate out at a school cafeteria (or, if I was really lucky, Taco Bell!). It wasn't so bad - I lost 25 pounds my freshman year, mostly because I was getting exercise for the first time in my life (walking up and down the highest point in central Kentucky 2 - 4 times a day) and because I couldn't afford to eat more than one real meal a day. After university, living on my own, I made anything out of a box that had explicit directions on the box and didn't require anything more than pouring one thing into another thing and cooking it on a burner for a few minutes (and I still managed to screw it up half the time) - or spaghetti. 

The first thing I ever really cooked was a turkey for a Thanksgiving with friends. I have no idea why I decided to do it, but I did, and the directions on the package, and the Internet, were explicit: it came out perfect, and I made a turkey almost every year after that, even if it was just me. Given how easy I discovered Stove Top stuffing was to make, and how much I love it, I was content to eat turkey and stuffing for a week.

In my late 20s, I complained in a rare phone call with my mother about my lack of cooking skills, noting that I have no idea what it really means to even sauté something, how I don't know how to buy fish, let alone cook it, and on and on. She said I should buy Betty Crocker's Cookbook. She ended up buying it for me for Christmas or my birthday (probably for both, since they are just three weeks apart). And she was right: it was the perfect book to use to learn to cook. At 30, I moved to Austin and it became my cooking bible. It still is - I use it not only for meal ideas, but also with other cookbooks, when those others don't provide enough detail on how to prepare something (for instance, when the direction is "roast the such-and-such before mixing", I had no idea what they meant by "roasting").

I didn't get a microwave until I was in my 30s - another gift from my Mom. And I rarely used it. I used it for popcorn, for the most part. I think I was afraid if I started using the microwave to cook, I'd never stop - and never learn to really cook. 

While I was in Austin, I got the best cooking advice ever while having lunch with a woman I was woo'ing to give my project money; in her spare time, she taught cooking classes, and her favorite was a class that catered to divorced and widowed men. I told her I had no idea what to cook, that I looked at recipes and they just seemed completely overwhelming. We were eating at one of my favorite restaurants, Mother's -- which is also one of only two vegetarian restaurants I've ever liked -- and she pointed to my plate and said, "You like to eat. Start with just two things you like to eat together, and make that. Keep it simple." And she was right: you don't need to make a five course dinner - a two course dinner can be just dandy if it's prepared well.

Once I figured out how easy it was to steam veggies, I steamed my favorite vegetables two or three times a week. The microwave started getting used more - for re-heating leftovers, which I always had, cooking for one. 

In Germany, I was introduced by the man that became my husband to Maggi, a German brand of dried spices that you combine with cream and pour over meat, potatoes or noodles. Maggi is to German cooking as Campbell's cream-of-whatever soups are to Southern and Midwestern working class cooking: fantastic short-cuts to more-than-decent meals. I realize that last sentence makes the heads of foodies explode, but there it is. Throw in some green beans and or onions and or mushrooms during the baking process and it's even better.  

I definitely prefer baking meat and steaming veggies - or throwing everything into a crock pot - than any other form of cooking. It wasn't until 2004 that I learned how to cook brown rice properly (thank you, Internet), and I still get any kind of rice correctly made only about 50% of the time. Frying is too hard. I have yet to fry anything properly and have pretty much given up on it. I also can't fry fish - I have messed it up three times now, so I bake it, period. I can sauté meat and veggies in a sauce, but almost always end up over-cooking one or the other. I leave the grilling to Stefan, though I torment him with new ideas and food he doesn't like ("Here, honey, grill this egg plant for me.") Even with my various cookbooks, I couldn't cook at all without the Internet - I often have my laptop in the kitchen while I cook, for easier referral.

I don't cook at all like my mother or grandparents, except when it comes to a Sunday roast. I don't know how to fry chicken (and my husband doesn't like such anyway - he doesn't like anything still on the bone - but he does really like Shake and Bake!) and I don't know how to cook chicken and dumplings (he doesn't like that either, actually). I use various herbs and spices when I cook, something my mother or grandmothers never do, as they flavor everything with pork or other meat (and I don't eat pork). I love things in a cream sauce, something I never grew up with. I love trying to cook Asian food, and my resolution for 2013 is to try to cook some Middle Eastern food. Unlike when I was growing up, I don't have meat at every meal - and as a result, meat has become a more special event than it was when I was growing up, helping with my budget and health, and also making me really enjoy a meal with meat more than I ever did before.

Another thing that has helped me become a better cook has been cooking while camping. We camp while motorcycle touring, and cook via a one-burner back packing stove that has two settings: high and off. Being able to cook on that has made me a far better cook at home. It's super easy to sauté veggies - yes, we eat veggies while camping. I don't at all understand why people buy those crap MRTE (meals ready to eat) at REI or Bass Pro Shops or wherever for camping. Instead, just buy some Farm House flavored rice or pasta, particularly the ones that don't need milk (although, if you have a cooler bag, you're all set to have some milk), take some oil to substitute for the butter, and you can buy the ones that are in a cream sauce as well. Buy a can of tomatoes or green beans at a gas station convenience store when you stop for gas and throw that in there as well. Or buy the fried chicken breast at the same gas station convenience store, take off the skin (and, if you're me, eat it while you cook), take the meat off the bone, cut it up and throw that in there as well. Learning just how easy it is to have a good meal while camping - not that we don't still sometimes just buy a couple of cans of ravioli - has made me a much better cook at home.

What I still don't know how to do: to easily cook any kind of burrito or enchilada. I can cook those things, and they are really good, if I do say so myself, but they are sooooooo complicated - I really don't like using four pans to cook something, but I can't seem to find any other way to do it. I also don't know how to cook a really great homemade pizza. What I make I like okay, but it's not anything I crave - I cook it more as part of an ongoing quest to try and try again.

I'm not a great cook. I think Anthony Bourdain or Gordon Ramsay would run screaming from my house if they were served a meal here. I get it wrong - a lot. But at 46, I can, at last, walk to cabinet and the fridge, and pull together a meal that has at least three food groups in it and that's more than edible. And that's a huge accomplishment.

Also see:

Jayne's crockpot pumpkin soup

Crockpot garlic veggies - something missing?

Evolve or become irrelevant

A followup to my blog the day after the election, will the GOP wake up now?, where I noted how extreme Republicans have become, so much so that people like Dick Lugar aren't welcomed in it anymore:

There are so many topics that I cannot understand for the life of me why they have been branded left-wing. All of the following should never have become politicized in the sense of one party saying such is "good" and the other saying such are "evil socialist plots." These are the kind of topics that everyone except the most extremist among us should be supporting, in principle (I understand approaches can vary):

• science 
• fossils 
• bicycling 
• solar power 
• the right to choose an abortion OR to carry a pregnancy to term without the government interfering in either of those choices 
• birth control use and access
• public school funding and the vital importance of quality public education
• public university funding
• wanting clean air and water for *everyone*
• growing food in your yard
• climate change is happening and is exacerbated by human activities
• access to affordable, basic health care, particularly preventive care
• Pell grants
• equal pay for equal work
• consenting adults having sex
• adults forming families
• social security

I get why various aspects of foreign policy, labor relations, trade, how to structure social security and taxation are politicized, I do. But the aforementioned? I don't get it at all. Being against those things is... well, it's ridiculous. Really, it goes against what the GOP says it's about. How can you be the party that is against government interference, but want the government to decide when a woman should or should not carry a pregnancy to term? Or want the government decide which adults may, and may not, get married and form families? How can you be the party of personal responsibility but think access to affordable, basic health care, particularly preventive care is socialism? How can you be the party of business and innovation and be against SCIENCE?!?

Ben Stein was on CBS This Morning last Sunday, was doubling down on the Republican Party stance, saying it's just that the Republicans need to do a better job of selling their "values" to Latinos, blacks and women in order to get back in power. You would think the extremists in his party calling him too "moderate" would have gotten his attention, but, apparently, he still doesn't get it. So let me try:

Dude, you are never, ever going to convince women that they should allow the government to limit their access to birth control or abortion. Never. You are never going to convince women that the government shouldn't be working to ensure equal pay for equal work. Never. You are never going to convince women to support a party where your rock stars call them "sluts." Never. You are never going to convince most 20 and 30 somethings that they should stop caring about the environment, stop supporting gay marriage and stop taking Pell grants. Ever. You are never going to get back into the White House if you stay so freakin' anti-science, denying the age and origin of fossils, plate tectonics, and evolutionary biology - and saying things like "legitimate rape" doesn't cause pregnancy, or that pregnancy resulting from rape is actually a "gift from God."

I dig your rhetoric about personal responsibility and working hard in order to get wealth - but when I see massive tax breaks for extremely rich people and companies that are making record-breaking profits, when I see CEOs getting payoffs for leaving a company while the pensions of the rank and file are called "excessive", when I see that the number one reason for personal bankruptcy in the USA is health care costs, it's really hard for me - and millions of other voters - to take your rhetoric seriously. You need to be walking your talk. 

Republicans, you can be conservative without being stupid. Read up on Eisenhower, at the very least. Try some Barry Goldwater as well.  

Moderate Republicans - you have just got to be out there, surely. Take your party back! Talk about how you do support science, you do not believe that President Obama is a Muslim nor a socialist, you believe the government should stay out of bedrooms and women's medical decisions, and you want to see public schools succeed - and then offer fiscally-conservative ideas about taxation and conservative ideas about foreign policy (which would lead to LESS wars, not more of them).   

Also see white guy Eric Garland's excellent letter-to-a-future-republican-strategist-regarding-white-people.

Jayne's Crockpot Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients:

2-3 tablespoons butter
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 apple, peeled and diced
2 cups fresh pumpkin  (the smaller the pumpkin, the better the taste)
1 tablespoon sage leaf
2 celery sticks, diced
3 cups chicken stock
salt & freshly ground black pepper

OPTIONAL
up to 1 cup cream (I think just 1/2 is really all you need if you want to use cream at all)
2 teaspoon thyme
4 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoons minced garlic


Directions:

Scrub whole pumpkin under water, removing all dirt.  

Cut up the whole pumpkin into pieces that will fit into your steamer pot. Using a spoon or an ice-cream scooper, take out all the seeds and stringy insides. Separate seeds for roasting later.

Rinse pumpkin pieces under running water, and then place into your steamer pot.

Steam pumpkin pieces for 20-25 minutes.

Remove pieces and let them cool for 10 minutes (otherwise, you will burn yourself). Remove skin, or, scoop out softened pumpkin innards (these should scoop out very, very easily after steaming). Puree.  Empty into a large bowl. Use 1 cup of chicken broth to rinse out residue from blender and pour into same bowl. Put aside.

Dice and steam carrots, celery and apple together, about 15 minutes. Puree together. Add to bowl with pumpkin. Use 1 cup of chicken broth to rinse out residue from blender and pour into same bowl or crock pot.

Melt butter and saute onion together, about 8 minutes. Puree. Use 1 cup of chicken broth to rinse out residue from blender and pour into same bowl or crock pot. 

Pour all ingredients, including herbs, but NOT the cream, into the crock pot. Stir. Cook on high for two hours, stirring every 30 minutes. Pour in cream, change temp to low, cook for one more hour.

Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Divide soup among 4 soup bowls and serve immediately.

Kinda based on this non-crock pot recipe and many others.