Old-School Question Time Post

Time: 8:28pm

Wearing: t-shirt and shorts! (It's been a magnificently hot day, and I've been hiding inside in the blessedly cool air conditioning. I'm so glad that I used this year's tax return and bought an air conditioner on the very first hot day of the year. I was not going to wait and see how hot this house could get.)

I'm procrastinating from: the pile of unfolded laundry, the full dishwasher, and figuring out what I'm doing with my life.

Tea of the day: mango green iced tea. (Murchies!)

On the TV: first season of Poirot

I'm amused by: period pieces from the 1980s, when you get bits of 80s fashion here and there.

I'm oddly pleased about: the amount of time I spent hanging laundry on the line today. It was such a nice excuse to spend time out in the sun, which always helps my mental health. And we have a lilac bush that's blooming now, which makes the whole backyard a lovely place.

Desperate Measures

The day started off looking beautiful.  The sun was shining and I thought "I'll definitely be able to get a lot of work done today!"  I had a good start to my day.  And then the sun went away and it started to snow.  I started to droop.  And so I decided to make it springtime inside this apartment, even if it's winter-ish outside. 

Thankfully, Chris had brought home a bouquet of flowers a couple of days ago (he does that periodically when the sun hasn't been shining, because he's a wonderful Christopher who likes to find ways to cheer me up).  I decided to take a break and arrange the flowers.  I took one of our antique mason jars and cut the flowers way down to fit:

And then I drank my tea out of my pink teacup.

And now that I've used my SAD lamp for an extra five minutes, I can even enjoy the fact that it's snowing instead of whining about how dark it is outside.  Maybe I'll even get a little more work done this afternoon.

Just the kind of day I needed

It's sunny and warm outside, and I went walking on campus with a friend.  The sun shone and we walked through the university's flower garden.

And then I went to the library and found a really helpful book, that uses the same basic framework I'm using in my dissertation. (This initially panicked me, when I discovered that he is even drawing from the same theorists as I am, and I went momentarily to the "Oh no, am I just rehashing someone else's work unwittingly?" place, but he only looked at newspapers and at a different time period, and so I've decided that this is wonderfully helpful rather than scary.)

And then I came home to two packages in the mail, both of which contained cards for me: one from a blog pal whom I'm helping with a secret mission, and one from my friend Gillian in England, who sent me a necklace from her trip to Italy. 

And then I made some Earl Grey tea and sat in a sunbeam.

Emerging from the haze

I'm finally coming out of the haze from Sunday's Worst Migraine of My Life, which continued into Monday's Pounding Headache and Maybe Do I Have An Ear Infection? (Conclusion: no. It was just a headache. Apparently triggered by the weather, my allergies and a need to go to the chiropractor. All of those have now been remedied, thankfully). A few happy things have been helping make it all better:

• Bronwyn is in town and came over to visit us last night! Chris even got to show off his robot.
• I made pulled pork for supper, and the recipe I tried this time worked fantastically.* (Cooking successes always cheer me up.) And it was cheap, because pork's a reasonable price (thanks to people mistakenly thinking that eating pork causes Swine Flu). I'm still dreaming about those sandwiches. I'm going to do that again soon.
  
• I got a phone call this morning from my friend's hilarious four year old. Celeste particularly wanted to talk with me about her wish to have macaroni for lunch (and informed me that it is "tasty" with ham and peas). We also discussed how I am, in fact, not trapped inside the phone, but am at my house that is far away from her. Preschoolers are crazy.
  
• I'm well enough to go to my yoga class this afternoon, which also means that I'll be leaving the house soon.
  

* I promised a few people that I'd share the pulled pork recipe. I took it from The Joy of Cooking, but it's in my own words and with the adaptations that I did:
Take a pork shoulder/butt roast and cover it with a dry rub (mine used 1/4 c each of brown sugar and chili powder, a whole bunch of paprika, a few tablespoons of cumin, about a tablespoon each of chipotle pepper and red pepper flakes, and then a bunch of salt and pepper) and wrap it all up in a couple of sheets of foil. Refrigerate it for anywhere between one and 24 hours (I did it for an hour and a half).

Take a dutch oven (or other pot that can go from stove to oven and can be covered by either a lid or heavy foil) and brown the roast in a tablespoon of oil. Cover with the lid or foil and put it in the oven at 325F for 3-3 1/2 hours. (This is for a 4lb roast. Mine was only 2lb, and I pulled it a little before 3 hours.) Shred the pork with forks, mixing it with the pan juices, and add barbecue sauce. (I made my own barbecue sauce starting from long strips of sauteed onions, and using a decent amount of vinegar, but I don't even know if I could accurately recount everything I put in the sauce.)

Serve on kaiser buns.

The Tea Granny Guide - Updated with Pictures

These days, the West Coast's unrelenting cold and darkness has me consuming more and more tea. Tea, my SAD lamp and my rubber-soled slippers get me through the darkness that is January in Victoria. I thought I would share a few of my favourite tea-related things that have been making me smile this month:

1. My beloved Bodum Assam tea press. It sits next to me every day, while I'm sitting at my computer under the fluorescent lighting of my home office.

2. My newly beloved Bodum double-walled tumbler, a set of which Chris gave me for Christmas. These cups are huge (more latte-sized than teacup-sized), which is fine by me when I'm drinking Earl Grey by the pot, and it warms my hands without burning them. (Bonus: it looks like you're drinking iced tea, because you're drinking your tea out of a tumbler, which then tricks your brain into thinking that it's summertime.)

3. All those teas that I got from Murchies while Lynnie was visiting, which have been on regular rotation for the month so far: Green Mango (one of their new ones), Murchies Afternoon, and Earl Grey. (Their Earl Grey is the best I've ever had. Poor Ky and Lyn got to hear the lady at the shop and I have a long and animated conversation about the glories of their Earl Grey tea.)


4. Making the aforementioned Earl Grey tea and then bringing some to Chris in his new Memories of the Future mug (from Wil Wheaton's CafePress store), while announcing the words on the side of the mug: "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." It makes Chris giddy, because he can pretend he's Jean-Luc Picard, and that cheers me up.


These things are keeping me sane, along with the fact that I'm reading Oliver Twist whenever I sit under my SAD lamp. (It's another way of tricking my brain: during my undergrad I only read Victorian novels during the summer. Oliver Twist + SAD lamp = my brain thinks it's summer outside.)

Today

Making me feel sluggish today: fourth straight day of clouds and rain.

Making me feel exhausted today: yoga class + my utter lack of leg muscles.

Making me feel like a cliché today: I had quiche with arugula for supper last night. And will do so again for lunch.

Making me feel accomplished this week: I had a very successful weekend of cooking and baking. The chocolate zucchini cake was perfect, and I will definitely use that recipe again. Christina's suggestion of using bacon fat on the turkey = delicious.

Keeping me entertained this week: comedic mysteries. Jasper Fforde, Castle (a newish show that has strong Remington Steele overtones? Yes please), and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Making me feel frightened and outraged today: Russian historian arrested in clampdown on Stalin era (from the Guardian). (Seriously: read this article.)

Talking about the weather

Right now it is beautifully sunny outside, as it has been for the past several days. I just looked at the weather forecast, where I found a whole row of rain clouds:

I strongly suspect that the West Coast's rainy season is imminent. Should I forget about the housework and spend the rest of the day laying in the middle of the backyard, enjoying every last second of the sunshine before it's gone? Inquiring minds want to know.

Sunshine

I'm sitting next to Ky right now, just a little over from Vicki the Wonder Puppy, having finished a fully day of transcribing German and now sitting in a patch of sunshine. It's funny what a difference a sunny day makes. Yesterday morning was cloudy. I had a meeting with one of the counselors from Counseling Services, learning about the "Yoga for Depressed People" (as I call it) class that they're offering (free yoga class!). Since it was a cloudy day, and I hadn't used my SAD lamp that day, I really sold the part of "I belong in this class." I was a super dopey, I forgot the word "insomnia," and I was borderline-weepy the whole time. I took the BDI test and scored a low "medium depressed" (21 out of a possible 63). And it's funny to think of that today, because today is sunny. Today I'm all "What? More tired than usual? I'm so energetic I could run around the block!"

And that's why it's a good thing that I'm taking a class that forces me leave the house, and forces me to be physically active, in the autumn, when the days start getting darker again.

In other news, I am a klutz. I was sitting in the microforms room in the library basement, and was worrying that my squeaky chair might be bothering the other people studying. And so I got up to switch my chairs, hitting my head on the metal microfilm reader. The "KOOONGGGG!" noise of my head against the metal was about a hundred times louder than any squeaking chair.

A bouquet of freshly-sharpened pencils

Last night, I tried to write a post about coming to terms with the end of summer. I entitled it "Summer Gone" (referencing David Macfarlane's melancholy novel that takes place over several Labour Day weekends), and wrote about how it was the last night before Chris went back to teaching, about how I had to shut the windows because of all the rain, and return to wearing socks.

I ended up deleting the post because writing it made me feel more melancholy than I already was. I was tired (having just cleaned the whole house in anticipation of the busyness of Chris's first week of school), and wasn't forming words clearly.

But then this morning I sent Chris off to his first day of school, said goodbye to Ky as she left for her conference in London, and took the bus to the university. I'd been hoping that, seeing as it was the last day before classes began, it would be a little less crazy on campus today than it will be tomorrow. I somehow forgot about orientation, and the president's barbeque, and the hoards of first-year students who don't yet know that they don't need to spend every waking hour on campus. I walked by hundreds (possibly thousands) of students, lined up all the way across the campus green, behind two small tables of free hotdogs and hamburgers. I ran into several friends, including one who just moved here from Saskatchewan to get her MA here. I met people from my department as they milled around smiling and wearing brightly-coloured name tags.

I went to the department office and received a copy of the brand new journal that our grad students put together. I went to Health Services and joke with my nurse about the crazy first-year kids that have filled the campus today, questioning whether the free hamburger was ever worth a more-than-an-hour wait in a line.

And I got a ton of work accomplished. Even though the school calendar doesn't have any effect on my work schedule,* there's something about the cooler air and the bustling crowds that inspires me to make real progress and to cross even the intimidating parts off of my to-do list.

As I bussed home, I found myself smiling. I was actually looking forward to my necessary trip back to campus on Thursday.



* I sometimes have little patience for the "When are you starting again in the fall?" line of questioning I continually get. Because you must be taking classes if you're going to school, right? (I mostly get these questions from the same people, over and over.)

Clearing out my head

It was one of those days: I was starting to get myself out of that usual procrastination-guilt-avoidance pattern (at least I recognised it and caught it comparatively early), and trying to get a bunch of work done so that I could get caught up today. I spent a long time going through all the review exercises in German, getting back to where I need to be. I forced myself to look at my research and send emails requesting information. My brain was starting to hurt from all of the effort of making myself deal with everything I've avoided. That first effort of facing everything I've been avoiding always makes my tummy hurt a little.

And then, just as I was at a point where I really did need to take a break, Chris asked if I wanted to take a quick run to the beach with him. He was preparing for tomorrow's Biology class and needed a few different varieties of seaweed.

We went to my favourite beach , the rocky one by Beacon Hill Park that has an amazing view of the mountains. It was the best time to go there, because the sun came out today and the weather decided that it's now springtime (a month later than usual). It was exactly what my brain needed: I wandered around, watching the waves and taking pictures, free from my wool coat and my gloves. My head is full of sunshine now, and I'm actually looking forward to doing some more research tonight.

Five Days Without Update

The past few days, in bullet form:

• We pretty much replaced our wardrobes, thanks to birthday/Christmas money and Boxing Day. It's kind of exciting to own pants that fit and shirts that aren't t-shirts. This took up a surprisingly large part of the week.
  
• On Saturday we lost one of the best old ladies I've known. Anna, my friend Rebecca's grandmother, was one of the first people who really made us feel at home and like family in Victoria. And she was one of those people who held everyone else together, even though she was quite unwell for the whole time we've lived here. Her death was unsurprising, and yet hard. And it happened when most of our church people were away for Christmas, and so it fell on Chris and me to contact everyone. It's all still sinking in.
  
• It's crazy how busy the holidays are, even though we stayed in Victoria. Little Christmas Eve, and then Christmas Day, and then Boxing Day busyness, and then Anna stuff, and then a Hanukkah party, and then dinner with a family from Chris's school, and then New Year's Eve, and then Derek's birthday. Then Chris goes back to school.
  
• Not that I haven't spent all my spare time watching Food Network marathons.
  
• This is how scattered my brain is right now: I spent part of the day feeling draggy, and trying to figure out why I felt this underlying sadness. And then I remembered: oh right I lost a friend this week, one who figured pretty prominently in the last three years. Also, since all the snow melted, it's really dark outside and I can never handle that.
  
• You know, tonight was really nice. One of the teaching assistants from Chris's school, whose kids are also at the school, had Chris, Ariann, Derek and me over. I like collecting good people.
• Have I ended this on a positive enough note? I feel like there's been a melancholy/whiny edge to this blog lately.
  

Dreaming of Citrus

As autumn has deepened and the days have gotten darker, I've been dreaming of lemons. It's funny to me because I do not normally love lemons: I always pick out the yellow candies and trade them for other colours with friends who are willing to eat lemon-flavoured candies. And usually I'm too cheap to buy fresh lemons, since most stores around here sell them at a dollar each.

But lately, especially on cloudy and drizzly days, I've been craving citrus. Any and all citrus. Brightly-coloured fruit that cut through the dreariness of November. I found a big bag of lemons for cheap at the store yesterday, and was thrilled to discover that you can easily freeze them whole, meaning that I can make this sunny little fruit last long into the winter, for whenever I suddenly need to make lemonade and pretend that it's summer for a while.

Well, first I made my favourite banana bread recipe and didn't ignore the part where it calls for fresh lemon zest.

In which I talk about the weather

I keep checking Environment Canada and gazing at the promised weather forecast for this weekend. The clouds and the cold are driving me crazy.

Victorians receive their punishment for bragging about the February crocuses

(Click to embiggen)

It's snowing outside right now! Other than a wee bit in early December (which melted immediately), this is our first snow all winter. And it's not actually winter anymore. And Chris's students are in the middle of their Spring Break. Ha.

I love it. I'm torn between wanting to go outside and watch everyone act like it's the apocalypse, and fearing what happens when Victoria's notoriously bad drivers try to handle a little bit of ice.

What's making me smile today

Styleygeek sent me a picture she just took of some spring flowers in Australia. It's currently my desktop:

It's nice to have a little escapism and to pretend that it's spring and not autumn. Things have been really busy this week. So busy that I've hardly had time to procrastinate until today. I don't know what I think about being too busy for procrastination. Yesterday, I was booked solid with teaching obligations from 9:30 until nearly 2:00pm, without a lunch break. I ended up eating part of my sandwich while leading seminar. (I totally had to do the "One moment please" holding up of the finger, while I finished chewing.) After that, I just didn't have the energy to do any of my reading. Which isn't good.

It's going to be an interesting semester. I'm often too tired I'm having a lot of trouble not feeling overwhelmed by it all.

Today is not at all for chumps

The sun is shining! Huzzah! Hooray!

I feel like I'm waking up for the first time all week, SAD lamp notwithstanding.

I think I'm going to read my book on the back lawn today.

Update: Reading on the back lawn was clearly my Good Idea of the Day. Well, unless you consider how slowly I was reading. The problem with sprawling on a blanket in the sun is that you start feeling like drinking iced tea and reading leisurely, even if the book you're reading is about Italian socialism.

The following are for chumps:

• Using one's SAD lamp in July;*
• Wearing socks during the summertime,
• Especially while the rest of the country is sunny with hot weather,
• And especially while still dealing with blisters as a result of flip-flops and a touch of sunburn;
  
• A week straight of rain;
• Having to use the furnace in July.

The following items are decidedly not for chumps:

• Green grass and roses outside, when it's usually dead and brown here by this time of the summer;
  
• The ability to wear both sweaters and sweatpants without dying of the heat;
• Naps while it's raining outside;
• Being able to drink hot tea;
• Consoling oneself with televised murder mysteries.
  

*Note: it is very difficult to refer to it as "Seasonal affective disorder" when you don't get the summer off.

He gave me back my smile, but he took my camera to sell

What do you do on those days when your brain feels like an old sock? How do you snap yourself out of the fog?

I was getting pretty draggy for the past few days. I know that a large part of it had to do with the fact that it had been raining for several days in a row. My SAD lamp does wonders for keeping me coherent and not crying all day, but there's still a difference between cloudy and sunny days, I find. It also didn't help that I hardly moved around and I didn't leave the house. Oh, and I was also feeling really directionless and like I didn't know what I was doing anymore, academically-speaking.

Yesterday morning, I got frustrated with all of my dragging about that I've been doing. I talked things through with my goal group, and then did the following:

1. Played my Mary Poppins record;
2. Danced around the living room;
3. Ate a bowl of dilled carrot soup;
4. Bounced on my exercise ball;
5. Had a cheerful talk with the Crazy Mommy;
6. Phoned my mother;
7. De-cluttered the living room;
8. Cooked an elaborate supper.

By the time Chris got home, I was so bouncy that I think I frightened him a little.

Today, I tried to keep up the encouraging stuff, but start getting work done. The first thing I did when I got up was finish an editing project that I've been avoiding for a week. I printed it off and it's sitting beside me, finally off my conscience. Then, I walked to the post office, picking up a healthy snack for the walk home. Now I'm going to read through one of my books from my comps list, but force myself to move around while I work (I may sit on my exercise ball for a while again).

How do you get yourself out of a funk?

December Forecast: Thinky and Emotional

(Like every December)

For some reason, December always takes me by surprise. December's like a concentrated version of summer for me: I spend the whole year idealising it and looking forward to it, and then I build my hopes up too much, end up somehow disappointed, and end up crying.

For me, December boils down to birthday and Christmas. Once December hits, I remember the stress of money, of final assignments and exams. I get panicky that my birthday won't be anything special, and it'll be like those years of my early teens when I didn't have enough friends to have a birthday party, or those many years afterward of stressing myself out by overcompensating for those friendless years. I usually cry on my birthday. (And don't even get me started about how emotional I get about Christmas...) Not that I have any problem with aging. Actually, I keep accidentally referring to myself as 26 already. How am I not 26 yet?

No, it usually ends up something like my 16th birthday (otherwise known as "The First of the Overcompensating Birthday Parties I Threw For Myself"). I invited a heap of people. For some reason, nobody in my family was helping me clean, and everyone else was making the house messier with the things they were busy with. I was trying to do a billion things at once, and to make things worse, my little brother was following me around the house saying (in his most sarcastic voice), "Sweet sixteen!" And then I got frustrated and started crying. Crying because it felt like I was the only one making a big deal about my birthday. Crying because it was the first time I was inviting all my new high school friends over to my house and I was really insecure. Crying because I expect my birthday to be the best day of the entire year and everything about it must be perfect, and then when it isn't, I fall apart.

Or, it's like last year and I have a valid reason to cry, but spend the day determined that I'm not allowed to be sad on my birthday, bottling up my feelings for one more day.

This year, I've already been weirdly emotional about my birthday, and it's still a week away. You see, Chris is working evenings these days, and so on my birthday he'll be working from 2-10, and therefore will be out of the house from 1-10:30. Otherwise known as "Most of the part of that day when I'm awake." And so, this morning, I came to terms with the realisation that there's no way that I'll be able to have my birthday party on my birthday. And that my church is having our Christmas dinner the next day. Which is starting to look like it's going to be difficult to have any birthday party at all. Poor Chris, because I got weirdly emotional about it.

Maybe I'll fight against both sides of the emotionalism, and just invite a couple of the girls over for my birthday, and just watch a movie and eat some cake. No fondue stress, none of that other stuff. Just "come hang over at my house, because it happens to be my birthday." Then, at least, I won't be spending the whole day alone.

Or maybe I'll spend the entire day in my pyjamas, eating a cake. I'd also go for that.

I know. I know. I'm overthinking it.

This has been another installment of "I Use My Blog As Therapy" with the Queen of West Procrastination. Yes, after going through last December's archives, she is also aware that she was far funnier and more interesting last year.

I love umbrellas

I love umbrellas. Like, really really love them. When I was young, I was a flowergirl in a wedding where we carried white parasols (with a lace fringe) instead of flowers. I loved that parasol, and somehow that parasol became my parapluie. I started taking it out in the rain.

Okay, and sometimes I'd use it when it just looked like it was about to start to rain, or when I felt a single rain drop.

I never got over that love of hiding under an umbrella. Maybe it would have grown old, had I lived somewhere rainier and with less of a vicious wind, a wind that unfailingly flips your umbrella inside-out. But maybe it resulted from the excitement of seeing the raindrops and hearing them patter against that fabric roof above your head, but being protected from actually getting wet. Maybe it was strongly connected to my love of hiding in couch-cushion-and-blanket forts, where I would spend hours reading and watching the light filter through the blankets. I have the same "fun secret fort" feeling when I live in a tent as when I use an umbrella.

Maybe it's because of all the Mary Poppins associations.

One thing that the SAD lamp has returned to me is my love of rain. While it still annoys me when it's rained for weeks straight, (and walking and bussing are going to be inconvenient) a good rain shower thrills me. It's satisfying. And rain means umbrellas, rain boots with clown faces on the soles, yellow raincoats, and splashing in puddles.

I'd forgotten all that, once my brain became wired to associate rain with darkness with sadness.

(I think, now that I own more teapots than I can reasonably use, I'm going to start collecting umbrellas.)