Dreams and Alcohol Aversion Therapy

My blogging is falling off.  I know, I know.  But I'm getting stressed out about this fall's new class, and that's been where my energy has been going.  So what's new with me?

Well, this weekend I had some alcohol aversion therapy practiced on me.  On Friday, Ted took the day off, and so we went to Tamari for happy hour dinner and cocktails.  There, we ran into Katie and Randy, who thought that the idea that Nick texted us -- Sidelines for $1 Shot Night -- was an excellent idea, as did Davin when he found out about it.  When we got there, Friend Dave and his lady Shannon were also there!  Such good times!  $1 shots!

I was hungover on Saturday.  I don't know what happens to you when you get old, but your body just can't party like it used to.  But on Saturday, we had plans to meet Sarah and Roger for dinner at Mad Mex in Monroeville, and then attend the monthly Arthur Murray Saturday Night Dance Party.  Sarah and Roger are professional dance instructors, and once a month their studio holds a a BYOB/F dance party.  Now, Ted and I don't dance.  We're physically awkward and uncoordinated people, and it's no surprise that we can't waltz.  But Sarah, God love her, is a proselytizer for her field.  So she showed me the basic steps for a Hustle and Rhumba (the box step), and then told her students that I could participate in either.  Sarah's students are nice people, and so whenever we attend these dances, I usually have one or two guys who come over and ask me to dance.

Except instead of one or two dances on Saturday night, I got asked to participate in like, a dozen.  Imagine this: you are hungover.  Someone comes up to you, makes you stand, spins you in a circle for two minutes, and sits you back down.  Repeat.  When you're not spinning, Sarah is trying to force you to drink sangria.

Oooooog.

Ted and I spent Sunday cleaning the house.  Both the fridge and the stove top got cleaned, hooray!  And SO MUCH CAT HAIR.

This week, my mother's come down twice to paint my kitchen cabinets, and that's not going well.  I like the look -- we're moving from an ugly fake oak laminate to white -- but so far, after two coats ... we need a third coat.  And yes, we scuffed and cleaned before we painted.  On both of those days I got no work done on the class, and this is stressing me out additionally.  Plus: making dinner with all of the cabinet doors and drawers hanging half open is no picnic.  But today is back to reading about the Gulag.

Oh, and we're totally broke and there's still like, a week until the end of the month.  While we were able to be really frugal in June, that seems to have fallen apart in July.  I don't know, people.  I don't have the heart to be parsimonious.

***

Another thing I'd like to bring up is a dream I had last night.  I know, there's not much that's less interesting than other people's dreams, so I'll try to keep this brief.  It had many of the nonsensicalities that one finds in a dream, typically: inexplicable jumps from place to place, one person turning into another part way through, absurd situations, etc.  Still.  Suffice it to say, Ted and I had started a business together in an exotic locale, and I was very happy with it.  But then we abandoned the endeavor at Ted's request.  We became wealthy (I don't know how) thereafter, but I was still unhappy without the business.  Plus, Ted started cheating on me*, and I had to throw his new lover out of our house.

*NB: Poor Ted!  In my dreams, he is CONSTANTLY cheating on me, even though in real life he has never, in all six years we've been together, demonstrated anything but commitment and fidelity.  I'm well aware that Actual Ted would no more cheat on me than he'd pluck out his own eyes, but Dream Ted is a dick, and always running around on me unremorsefully.

Anyway, none of that's really the point.  The point is that throughout the dream, my Uncle Bill, who passed away last year, was following me around, comforting me and consoling me in my losses.  At the end of the dream, he gave me a big hug, and the money to go back and reopen the business I so missed.  His face and body and voice -- his entire physical presence -- were particularly clear to me throughout the dream; when I hugged him, I had the sense that he was acting not just on his own behalf, but on his brother's, my grandfather's, as well.  (My grandfather George is long dead.)

I awoke from the dream in the middle of the night, in the middle of a lightening storm, and had a particular sense that Uncle Bill had in some way been there in my dream, not just as a memory or a construction of my own psyche, but really, actually present with me.  This is strange.

I'm a practicing Catholic, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I have any particular deep faith in the unseen world.  I practice religion because I think that having a spiritual practice is good (for me), and because it helps me to be a moral person.  As far as whether or not God exists, or there is an afterlife where my deceased loved ones are awaiting me ... eh?  I don't know, it seems unlikely?  The older I get, the more unlikely it seems.  (Poor Ted.  When we were discussing this one day, he goes, "Wait.  You've been dragging me to church for years, and I believe in God more than you do??")  I don't know.  I'm not saying that God and the afterlife don't exist -- I tend to believe these are questions the answers to which I cannot know -- I'm just saying that in 30 years I've got no evidence to offer you that they do.  I can only factually assert that religiosity helps me to be a more moral and centered person.

Despite this agnosticism, though, the sense as I lay in bed last night that my deceased uncle had visited with me in a concrete way, and as a representative not just of himself but of his dead brother, was intense.  I don't have anything else to add, other than to recount the event.  I said a little prayer that went, "God, I don't know if You're there, or if my uncle and grandfather are, but if so, thank You, and thank them for me," and watched the lightening until I fell back to sleep.

Living in the world is a strange thing to do.

I Have Eaten and Drank All the Things

Well!  So, Friend Will is in town from the west coast, and so, after two months of thrift and boredom, we have been OUT and ABOUT.  Will flew into town on Thursday, and Ted and I picked him up at the airport.  Our first order of business was to drive straight to Piper's Pub, for breakfast and beer.  Because breakfast and beer is the best possible solution for overnight airplane rides.

Ted ordered Toad in the Hole at Piper's: bangers in Yorkshire pudding with onion gravy, which turned out to be motherfucking awesome breakfast.

After that it was naps, and then we went out in the evening to the Brillobox, where delicious beers were again enjoyed, and I ate a plate of nachos for dinner.  Because I could.  Friends Carley and Lindsey and Acquaintances Tom and Amber were also there.

Ale aged in tequila barrels.  It was a hell of a beer.  I kind of want more of it.

Then Friday I got up and actually cooked a meal -- biscuits and sausage gravy and eggs and tea and orange juice -- cause it seemed like the hospitable thing to do.  But later it was out to Kelly's for happy hour.  There the three of us were joined by Will's friend Michelle, whom I'd met before, but upon being reacquainted with, I like a lot.  Many $4 cocktails of the day were had, along with Pittsburgh Bites and mac 'n' cheese.

On Saturday, Will made four loaves of zucchini bread shirtless in my kitchen.  Woo?  Then Ted and I ended up going out to Eleven to meet Friends Carrie and Roger.  More cocktails.  Plus a stop at the pop-up beer garden in Larryville for veggie dogs from the Franktuary truck.

Tomato juice is a vegetable ...

Then Sunday was BRUNCH, which is my favorite meal in the world, and I always LOVED having with Will be fore he inconsiderately moved away, and which I haven't had in AGES, cause blah blah broke.  We were at Casbah, and the prix fixe there is amazing, and so much food.  There're little muffins and scones and biscuits, and then my appetizer was a smoked salmon plate with truffled potato cake, capers, red onion, and aioli.  Then the main course was eggs benedict with prosciutto, served with roasted potatoes and fruit.  Plus a bloody mary and a mimosa.  Holy breakfast, Batman.

This is The Most Smoked Salmon.

Now this evening we're going to PD's Pub in Squirrel Hill for wings, and apparently tomorrow is happy hour at Tamari.  Then on Wednesday Will is going home.  I don't even know.  We have charged a shit load of food and booze, and eaten practically no vegetables.  I feel ... conflicted.  Mostly about the vegetables.  Still, it's been quite a staycation.  I'm sort of not looking forward to going back into spend-nothing, research-for-free mode.  I am looking forward to eating more vegetables.

If there is any more perfect thing than hollandaise sauce and runny egg yolk dripping over a toasted starch and a salty meat, I do not know what that could possibly be.

The National and the Personal

Apparently, I was wrong.  Chief Justice John Roberts does give the tiniest fuck about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution.  Good for him?  In the meantime, Anthony Kennedy, I'm so fucking sick of you.  I mean, sure, Tony Scalia is a ranting old man, and Clarence Thomas is a joke, but I know those things about the SCOTUS going in.  But I keep holding out some hope for you, Anthony, I guess because of Lawrence v. Texas, even though I knew clear back when you were fretting about how grown-ass women couldn't be trusted to live with the consequences of their own choices in Gonzalez v. Carhart at that you were an asshole.  ("Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision, Casey, 505 U.S., at 852–853, which some women come to regret. In a decision so fraught with emotional consequence ..."  You know what, Anthony, you don't need to worry your pretty little head about us ladies not knowing the potential emotional consequences of abortion.  We're adult citizens of this country, who are entitled to make decisions without your paternalistic trolling -- there's no such thing as taking away someone's rights for their own good.)  Anthony, if you fuck up gay marriage next year, I don't even know.

But you know, living in the world is strange.  I used to be much more political than I am now.  I was the president of the Pitt College Democrats when I was in college, and a committeewoman for the Pennsylvania Young Democrats; I volunteered for many political campaigns, mostly as a grassroots organizer, and I wasn't bad at it.  But at some point I was standing in a hotel room in Harrisburg, drinking cheap beer with a lot of 40 year old men in bad suits who had basically no principles whatsoever, and I realized that to pursue a career in politics was more or less tantamount to voluntarily giving up your soul.  I stopped that shit.

But that's not what I'm thinking about.  What I'm thinking about is the levels of the world.

So today, everyone's very worked up about the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare.  I'm glad they did for several reasons, the first of which being, simply, that the law is constitutional.  So, really, we could just come full-stop there.  But beyond that fact, I also want to see health care reform in America.  I support single-payer, government care; I am, in fact, extremely dubious about the government forcing me to buy anything from a private corporation.  I know and am fine with the fact that the government can take my money; I am not fine with private companies being able to take my money.  I also think that any system in which private health insurance coverage is anything except a niche luxury for the very rich who want "Cadillac Care" is not really any kind of solution for our nation's health care problems.  Like I said: government-provided, single-payer, universal care.  Nothing else will ultimately suffice.

But anyway, everyone on my Twitter feed and a lot of people on my Facebook page, and Americans in general on teh interwebz are all thinking and talking about this big national issue.

At the same time, I found out last night that a friend of mine tried to kill themselves yesterday.  They're in the hospital, and OK for the moment, thankfully.

How does one navigate the world?  Where should our focus lie?  What is the connection between big national problems and those of our day-to-day lives?  I'm not suggesting that my friend's situation implies anything about Obamacare -- they're getting care in a hospital, so they're apparently OK.  I'm just saying that there are so many concentric circles around us, from the very intimate and personal to the international, that today I'm wondering how we decide how to parcel out our concern.  I know that personally, the older I get, the more my concern shrinks.  I cared enough about today's Supreme Court decision to have an opinion about it, but not enough to like, volunteer for a health reform group.  But that's not necessarily the choice everyone makes -- many people stay active in large issues their entire lives.  I don't know why I choose to keep my focus on myself and those immediately around me -- it's probably some laziness.  And probably also an affect of what I've described previously, the need -- in order to protect my mental health -- to have a small life, lived day-to-day.

I wonder, though, if engagement at a society-wide level is important to living a good life, or a satisfactory life.  Am I losing something by restricting my chief care to my family and friends?  Is it a responsibility to care about people I don't know and things I can't directly control, but only marginally influence?  (Though one could say that I can only actually marginally influence even those relationships that I think of myself as having the most power over.)  I don't actually think I have such a responsibility (to whom?), but am I missing out on an important aspect of life in the world by withdrawing from engagement with large concerns in favor of small ones?  Between one person in a hospital bed and 300 million people fighting over how those hospital beds get paid for, where do we draw the circumference of the ultimate extension of our effort, if not our gaze?

I don't know. I'm just asking.

Clarifications. Also: Wherein I Rant About Ann Romney Getting $77,000 from the US Government for Her Ballet Horse

It was not a particularly eventful weekend. We'd been supposed to meet Friend Randy for drinks on Friday, but he came down with some food poisoning, so those plans were put on hold -- we spent the evening on the couch.  Saturday, my mother came to visit, and the combination of my mother and my husband is always a fraught one.  They're both lovely people, but they act all weird around each other, and stress each other out, and stress me out, and it's never a very pleasant arrangement.  I don't know that any mixing of in-laws is ever quite normal, so I don't think this is very strange, I just don't think it's a very awesome way to spend a Saturday afternoon, either.  Mom did treat us to breakfast at Piper's Pub, though.

Then Saturday night we went to The Oaks to see The Princess Bride - it was this week's Moonlit Matinee.  The Princess Bride is pretty much one of the best movies ever, and I'd never had the opportunity to see it in a movie theater, with popcorn, so that was awesome.  

Sunday was noteworthy because we splurged on take-out Indian from Taste of India up on Penn. Yesterday my mother came to visit -- just she and I this time -- and we had lunch (at Jimmy Wan's, which has a nice lunch special: a variety of entrees [I favor the General Tso's Shrimp and the Dim Sum Sampler] that come with your choice of rice [brown, white, fried] and appetizer [I like the hot & sour soup, Mom usually goes spring roll] for between $9 and $12) and a beer and went to the farmers' market.

I made the mistake of complaining on Sunday that I was bored.  Several of my friends on Facebook took this as an opportunity to tell me I should get a job, as though jobs aren't boring as hell.  I think they were well-meaning -- either that or misery loves company -- but it made me decide to make some clarifying statements about being broke for months at a time while not working.

To begin with, when I say I'm bored, I don't mean, "I miss work."  While I like my job as an adjunct as much as I think it is possible for me to like a job, that doesn't mean that I love work per se and do it for any reason other than the need of money.  If I had the option, I would never work at a job another day in my life.  No, I do not think that work, in and of itself, is ennobling; no, I do not think I have a responsibility to contribute.  (To what?)  If Ted made more money, I would stay at home, reading, blogging, tidying, cooking, and otherwise amusing myself for the rest of my life, joyful to never again suffer under the yoke of responsibility that is work.

And besides, what possible job would I get over the summer?  Subway sandwich girl?  No.  Just no.  If Ted was unemployed and our home had been foreclosed on and I was living in my car with five cats, I would go work at the Subway.  Otherwise ... just no.  If that's the only job you can get, and you need a job, that's fine.  But I doubt very much anyone would say that they wanted such a job, or would go out looking for one if they didn't absolutely need it.  And anyway, how on Earth would such a job alleviate anyone's boredom?  Have you ever worked a job like that?  I've never worked specifically at Subway, but I've worked as the girl behind the snack counter at a movie theater and the girl who takes you to a table at Eat 'n' Park -- such jobs are boring as shit.  The hours crawl, only slowed by the moronic bullshit trail left behind by The Public and the idiot managers who are inevitably 55 IQ points below their dumbest employee.  And it's not like such a job would pay well enough to alleviate the actual problem, which is ...

I miss going out.  I miss going out to eat.  I miss going out to the bar.  I miss going to movies and such not.  I don't miss work, I miss money.  I realize that I've got a lot of privilege to be able to complain about this -- other people don't have enough food, let alone enough entertainment.  I have a house and two window air conditioners and healthy food and an internet connection -- no one's actually suffering here.  But since this blog is about an unemployed academic over the summer, I might as well make clear that I don't miss work, I miss money and the things it buys.  The sad thing is, compared to people who actually have money, I have only the most plebeian of desires: to go out for Indian food and sushi and cocktails.  It's not like I'm like, "Oh damn, I couldn't afford the entrance fee to the dressage tournament" -- I just miss drinking at Sidelines instead of on my couch.  (Though I'll confess I do miss going for pedicures with Friend Carley.  My toes are all sad looking lately.)

***

Speaking of dressage, and I know this is completely switching gears, but I have to get it off my chest: what the fuck, Ann Romney?  It's probably apparent that I'm no fan of the Republican party or its presidential nominee (which doesn't mean I'm a huge Obama fan either, but that's not the point at the moment).  Of the many, many, many things I dislike about the Romneys, one of them is the fact that they are rich as Croesus.  Not just, "Oh good for you, you worked hard and succeeded and have a nice house and paid for your kids' undergrad degrees and get to go on vacation every year" rich.  Like, Solid Gold Mansion on the Moon with an  Elevator for Each of Their Three Dozen Cars rich.  Which is ridiculous -- no one should be that fuckin' rich.  No one needs to be.  Wealth redistribution foreva, bitchez.

So anyway, apparently a thing people who are incredibly, unnecessarily wealthy do is buy horses that cost as much as the house I live in plus the house my mother lives in plus another house, and teach them to dance daintily to music, and this is called "dressage".  Fuckin' horse ballet.  And apparently, in 2010 Ann Romney got a $77,000 tax break for her ballet horse. Let me repeat that: A SEVENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLAR TAX BREAK FOR HORSE BALLET.  $77,000 is more than the average American household's income -- about $27,000 more.  How the fuck do you get a tax break for horse ballet?  Well, apparently, Ann claims that her dancing horse is a business.  Now, to my mind, teaching a fancy horse to dance around all fancy for fun sounds like a hobby at best, but apparently the government disagrees.  So she got to write off the money she spent on her ballet horse as a business loss.  (Never mind that people that wealthy shouldn't get to write any fucking thing off their taxes, except for charity.) (No, horse ballet is not a charity -- I see what you're thinking, there, Ann.)

Look, there's a lot to be said about income disparity in America, the privilege of the haves and the sufferings of the have-nots.  I don't feel like rehashing all that here.  My point is this: Ann Romney, who is a multi-millionaire, got to deduct a sum of money far greater than the average American household income from her taxes, because her fancy dancing pony is a "business".  Meanwhile, almost a quarter of all American children don't have enough food to eat (and yes, Mitt Romney wants to cut food aid to the poor).

What the everloving fuck, America?

/rant

Image from the awesome www.shakesville.com

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

I had one accomplishment yesterday, and it was this:

Holy. Shit. Dinner.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy.

Yinz, I fucking love biscuits and sausage gravy.  It is the best.  The trouble is, I live in a northern country, and biscuits are hard to come by.  Generally, they come out of fast food drive thru windows or Pillsbury's tubes, full of trans fats and other unsavory elements, the processed chemical shit storm of modern food science compressed into a little roll.  Gross.

The trouble is, I can't bake.  I think this blog and my other social media makes it clear that I like to cook, and I'm even good at it.  But baking?  Nyet.  For years I could bake one thing -- chocolate chip cookies -- and frankly, that did me.  I think I've mentioned my baking fails before here, actually.  

But the biscuits.  I needed biscuits!

I take no credit for the recipe.  You can find it here, on Friend Mark T's blog.  The thing is, even with this recipe, it took me half a dozen batches of biscuits to arrive at really good biscuits.  The first batch was literally inedible.  You'd think it wouldn't be so hard to follow the fucking directions, but you know, there it is -- I really can't bake.  But still, with every batch I made progress, thanks to Mark's help.  I'd send him some biscuit-related text message that ended in ":(" and he'd provide advice and comfort.  

So now I can bake two things.  I think that'll do me.

The last step was the sausage gravy, which turned out to be super simple.  I think the key is quality ingredients.  I got Parma sausage and Snowville Creamery whole milk -- don't skimp on this stuff, cause there's practically nothing in the recipe, and if you get some shitty Bob Evans sausage or whatever, you'll be able to tell.

Here's how you make an absolute shit-ton of sausage gravy.

1 lb of bulk sausage -- I favor Parma, but wherever you get it, make sure it's good quality and fresh.  (Probably you're supposed to use breakfast sausage, but I actually used mild Italian. Shrug.)

3 Tbl of butter

1/2 c of flour

5 cups of whole milk -- again, make sure it's good milk.  I like Snowville (it's local, non-homogonized, and from pasture-fed cows).

Brown the sausage in a skillet until it's cooked through and crumbly.  Set aside.

Over medium-low heat, add the butter and then whisk in the flour.  Let this roux cook until the butter-flour mix has turned a darker shade of gold.  Turn the heat to low, and then slowly pour in the milk, whisking all the time.  Once the roux has dissolved, you can turn the heat back up a little.  Add the sausage back in, stir, and allow to simmer gently, until the milk is thick like gravy.  

Voila, sausage gravy.  A crap load of it: like, enough for six people.  Or less people with lots of leftovers.  Pour it over Mark's biscuits.  (Leftover-wise, the gravy reheated just fine in the microwave the next day.  The biscuits I'd recommend popping into the [toaster] oven to reheat, so they don't get mushy.)

Oh, and if you're curious, the salad was some local cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and red onion, mixed up with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.  Because, you know, health.  Health with your biscuits and sausage gravy.  Ahem.

I am way too proud of myself over these biscuits.

Where Should You Not Eat? Let Me Tell You!

Sorry the posts have been spotty here this week.  I still feel kind of like shit.  I did have a nice day yesterday, though.  Friend Mark J. and I went out to lunch at Tamarind (and with my awful math skills I realized last night I ripped him off to the tune of $10, but I promise I'll get him back), and then we drank cheap wine on my couch.  Mark is good to talk to about things like I blogged about in my last blog.  He is a reassuring soul.  He also introduced me to Torchwood on Netflix.  Indian food and cheap wine and science fiction TV with good company is a pretty awesome day.

I did, this morning, write a restaurant review of Brasserie 33, which Ted and I visited, Groupon in hand, on Monday night.  It was pretty abysmal!  Please read all about why you shouldn't eat there here:

Brasserie 33: What the Hell?

Now I have to go to the grocery store and then buy Father's Day cards.  Nick is coming over for dinner, and I'm planning on homemade biscuits and sausage gravy, vegetable TBD.  I finally got around to watering the plants.  I think that all's going to be sufficient for today.

More Death. (And a Boyz II Men Concert.)

I did a lot of cool stuff between Thursday night and Sunday morning.  Then my aunt died unexpectedly.

Liz was technically my great aunt: she was in her early 80s, so she lived a relatively long life.  But her death came out of the blue; she hadn't been ill at all, except for the various standard complaints of old age.  Then she got a blood clot in her brain on Sunday morning and died.

I feel like a jerk because her birthday was three weeks ago.  I had meant to write to her, but hadn't gotten around to it.  There is no way now to amend for this.

What I'm troubled by is the fact that this regret only matters to me.  It cannot matter to Liz now.  Nothing can matter to her.  Liz is dead.  All the matters of her life are over, and that is that.  Someday nothing will matter to my mother.  And nothing will matter to my husband.  And nothing will matter to me.  And given that fact, it is hard for me to say why anything matters now.

***

I had my midlife crisis extremely prematurely.  Starting in junior high or so, adults -- my relations and teachers, mostly -- fed me a lot of bullshit about how I was Special and Talented and Smart, and was definitely going to succeed in life.  I don't think they were deliberately setting me up to fail, and I don't even think most of them were lying.  Given where I'm from, I was Special and Talented and Smart, and seemed like a good bet, at least compared to the general population of my peers, to succeed in life.  I went to college and continued to receive reassurances about my future.  I went to (a very prestigious) graduate school, having been reassured by an actual, professional literary author who was mentoring me at the time that some day I would write books for a living.

Of course, this was all horseshit.  I'm not saying it was ill-intentioned horseshit, but come on.  My imminent disappointment began to make itself felt in my final term of graduate school.  I seemed to know without knowing.  I began to suffer from panic attacks.  I developed what I called a "doom cloud"; it is difficult to describe what this was, other than to say that there was a constant, dark weight at the back of my mind.  It wasn't composed of any specific or articulated thoughts -- just a layer of discontent and anxiety that was my constant, looming companion.

I finished my thesis and graduated with my masters, magna cum laude.  One of my advisors at the time gave me the following career advice: "Clean up your thesis and then get an agent."  Really.  That was it.  I tried to place a few of the stories from my thesis, but that went no where.  I was unemployed for nine months while I lived with my (also unemployed) husband in what I can only describe as a garret in the ghetto.  I applied for a variety of jobs, and finally was hired as a Clerk Typist II for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.  I answered the phone in a windowless room and performed minor clerical functions.  Everyone assured me that this was a Good Job, because I had Benefits, and would someday retire with a Pension.

I honestly thought about killing myself almost every day.  I had dark and violent thoughts I couldn't suppress.  I concluded that I couldn't actually kill myself because 1) my mother and Ted would feel so bad, and 2) Jesus would be angry.  So instead I would walk along the edge of the sidewalk at my lunch hour and to and from the bus stop and hope that I got hit by a bus.

I quit my job to go back to school for a career that I didn't particularly want.  Everyone had told me that I absolutely couldn't quit such a Good Job, so I studied for and took the LSATs and got a scholarship to go to law school, because at the rate I was going, I was never going to get a bus to hit and kill me.  Going Back to School is a socially acceptable reason to quit a job -- apparently, violent depression is not.  More could be said about how fucked up that is, but I'll just leave it there for you to contemplate.

I ended up dropping out of law school because it was expensive and I didn't want to be a lawyer.  But by then I was working part time as an adjunct, a job I like, and which I now do "full time" (at least for two-thirds of the year), so everything worked out.  Plus I didn't dislike law school per se -- I like learning things, and the atmosphere of academia is like a warm blanket to me.  My doom cloud finally dissipated.

My point is that all of this took a lot of readjustment.  Once it became clear in my mid-20s that I was not going to Succeed as promised, I became very depressed, and the prospect of a lifetime at that Good Job made me, as I said, honestly want to die.  I don't know if other people find it so difficult to live in the world, but it's clearly difficult for me.  Finding a way to do it took a few years.  I decided that my only ambition was to live a happy life (that was still guided at least in theory by moral principles).  Eating curry and drinking wine and watching Star Trek make me happy: today I will eat curry and drink wine and watch Star Trek.  Visiting with my friends makes me happy: today I will visit my friends.  Reading books makes me happy: today I will read a book.  Mission accomplished, mission accomplished, mission accomplished.

I am, basically, happy.  I love my husband and our little family of cats.  I have good friends and enjoy myself most days, though I wish we had more money -- but who doesn't?

But it is a very small life.

And small lives don't stand up to death well, do they?  Someday you will wake up and not finish out the day.  You will die, and nothing will matter to you again.  And so what will have been the point of all that mattered previously?  Even if it was difficult to live in the world, so what?  You're dead now.  So what if you found a way to be happy, eating curry and drinking wine?  You're dead now.  I realize that this is solipsism and nihilism, but there it is.  I don't know -- I guess I just haven't been in a very good mood since Sunday.

P.S.  Still haven't heard from God.  After 30 years, I'm starting to feel a little stood up.

***

As to all of that fun stuff: on Thursday, Ted and I went to see Friends Sarah and Roger host a dance recital at their Arthur Murray studio.  It reminded me of when I was little and took jazz dance classes at the YMCA, and we would have little performances for our parents periodically.  Except this event was for grown ups.  We chatted with Friends Saundra and Neilbert -- Neilbert even danced a rhumba! -- and got to see Roger's newly grown ponytail in action: he is bringing the Latin Heat, dear readers.

On Friday we had dinner with Friends Carley and Lindsi. It was Lindsi's birthday, and she decided to nom at Pusadee's Garden, in our hood.  I was so, so happy to not cook dinner.  Then they both came back to our place for some gin 'n' tonics, and finally Sarah stopped by, too.

Apparently, this is what tailgating looks like.

On Saturday, I tailgated for the first time in my life.  Ted and I and Carley and her boyfriend Chris and Friend Nick all had tickets to the Pirates game.  I hate baseball: baseball is boring as shit.  BUT.  After the baseball game THERE WAS A BOYZ II MEN CONCERT.  HOLY SHIT YINZ GUYS. ABC BBD.  Chris has a big truck, and so we decided to tailgate before the game.  This turns out to be basically sitting in a parking lot while eating and drinking.  Carley brought fish sammiches with guacamole and cilantro; I brought ginger-stewed beets, haluski, and Doritos; Nick brought beer.  We had an unusually healthy tailgate, is what I'm saying, but it was nice, and when Chris helped some other parking lot drinker jump his car, the guy gave him $20, which covered the price of our own parking.  Sweet.

But then a cop told us we had to clear out of the parking lot, so we had to go into the actual baseball game.  It was only the fourth inning.  Good Lord, getting through that baseball was interminable, especially because I couldn't afford to buy All The Beer.  SEVEN FUCKING DOLLARS FOR BUD LIGHT.  Nick, I think feeling a deep sympathy for me, even though he loves baseball, actually bought me a $7 Bud Light.  I literally was so grateful I teared up a little.  I then scraped together $7 of my own for another godawful beer.  These two beers got me through to the end of the baseball.

SO INTERMINABLE.

The baseball was made even more interminable by the world's most obnoxious eight-year-old boy, who was sitting next to us.  His mother was not paying any attention to him, natch, and every 15 or 20 minutes or so, he would want to exit the row, forcing all five of us to stand up while he filed past, obnoxiously shouting, "Excuse me!  Excuse me!  Coming through!  Make way!"  Then a few moments later he would realize that he had forgotten money, or whatever, and come back through.  Then go back out again.  Over and over again.  So eventually, every time he came past, I said something hateful to him.  "You're an asshole."  "I hope you fall down the stairs."  He finally responded to me when I said, "I hate you."  "Why?"  "Because you're obnoxious.  GO SIT DOWN."

Yes, I was a bitch to an eight year old.  No, I have no regrets.

But finally, my trials over, Boyz II Men began to perform.  30,000 people sang along to "On Bended Knee".  They played all the hits.  It was fantastic.  The nostalgia was rolling out of PNC Park and wafting down the river, eastward into the night (in the direction of Motown Philly, of course).  Ted had not anticipated any of this; he had no idea everyone my age in the park was going to wig the fuck out.  It's kind of a weird phenomenon.  It's not like I'd buy a new CD from Boyz II Men.  Their moment is more or less over.  But their moment was so formative of my and Carley's junior high school years that we sat through most of a Pirates baseball game so that we could sing along at the top of our lungs to "End of the Road".  I don't know if this is good or bad for the Boyz, sad or reassuring.  In any case, they've got an album of covers coming out.  They sang a Journey cover on Saturday.  If nothing else, they know their audience.

But Pittsburgh is The Best.  Ever.

BEERFEST! Also: Dolphin Grey is More Like Pigeon Purple

It has been a full three days, yo, in spite of our newly imposed frugality.  To begin with, on Friday, I had a fucking day as a housewife.  First, one of the "kids" woke me up at 5:00 am -- George the kitty nosed me awake, and when I grabbed him and squoze him in retribution, he just flopped over and fell asleep.  Lucky for him, but I never got back to sleep; finally, as Ted was leaving for work at 9:00, I just got up to do the errands.

The first stop was the Strip District, and -- and granted, I am out of shape, but -- that was a fucking workout.  Hauling 50 pounds of groceries around for 45 minutes at least felt like a fucking workout: that cabbage was the heaviest cabbage ever grown by man.  Now that we're broke all the time, the Strip seems like the best primary food shopping destination, as it's substantially cheaper than the grocery store, and at decent quality.  Stan's Market doesn't have vegetables as beautiful as Whole Foods, but with the farmers' market up and running now, that's OK, I can augment.  I'm still going to Whole Foods for some things, like local, pastured milk and chicken thighs that have come from marginally better-treated chickens, as I look at these things as ethical matters.  Of course, I also hit up Parma Sausages, and asked where they sourced their pork from, which was a mistake, at least mostly.  Apparently, the prosciuttos have to be made from a special kind of pig, a Berkshire, and those pig parts all come from one farm in Iowa.  The guy behind the counter was like, "Those are some happy pigs -- right up until the last minute, anyway."  And I can live with that.  But the other pork comes from "all over", so you can bet, since 95% of American pork is factory farmed, that the pigs who make up the sausages and salami I bought were not "some happy pigs".  Le sigh.

I mention all of this because I just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals last night.  I think I'm going to mull it over and write about it more fully tomorrow, but the Parma experience weighs into the whole affair.

Meanwhile, after hitting the Strip, I drove over the Whole Foods (for chicken thighs and local dairy products), and ... my car stalled.  This happens about a half dozen times a year.  Marshall, my Honda Accord, is 15 years old.  He just passed inspection, so I can't tell you why he stalled, other than to say that every now and then he just does.  I called AAA, but then luckily I got to cancel my tow when the engine finally turned over.  After that I took my perishables from the Strip home, just in case, and then returned to the grocery store, but as is typical after such a stalling incident, there appeared to be nothing wrong with the car, and no problems have occurred since.  I think sometimes Marshall just gets fussy.

At home, I made batches of green curry to freeze, as well as batches of black beans in the slow cooker. Kindly, hearing of our brokeness, Friend Davin offered to come over with a bottle of good liquor that evening, and in return, I included him in taco night: chicken thighs stewed in Mexican seasonings on Reyna's flour tortillas with cheese, sour cream, some homemade salsa, black beans, and cabbage.  I love taco night.  Then we got to sippin' on some Knob Creek Single Barrel Reserve, which is 120 proof and might have tattooed the inside of my esophagus, and after they were done with work, Friends Sarah and Roger stopped by too.

The downside to Friday was that I managed to sprain my foot somehow (as diagnosed by Friend Frank), and it hurt to walk on for the next two days.

On Saturday my mother came down and took us to lunch at Pusadee's Garden, which regrettably we don't get to eat at as often now that they're only open at lunchtime on Saturday.  I firmly believe -- and yes, I've been to Nicky's and The Smiling Banana Leaf -- that Pusadee's has hands down the best Thai food in the city.  Those other places are good, but they're not that good.

Green Curry.  Yum.

Then Mom and Ted set about painting the dining room and kitchen.  We chose Glidden's "Dolphin Gray", which turns out to be more lavender-ish on the wall, but is still an acceptable "pigeon color", as I like to call them, by which I mean, when we started picking paint colors, I realized that I always gravitate to colors that one might find adorning a pigeon's feathers.  That project continues today, insofar as Mom is down here, painting.  I try not to get involved in these projects -- I suppose it is exploiting my loved ones, but I'm strangely comfortable with that.

After that little project, it was time for ... BEERFEST.  Before we were broke, Ted and I bought tickets to the Penn Brewery Microbrewers Fest.  We had been several years ago, and there since then has been a real change in the festival's composition: almost every brewery featured was actually a local or regional brewery.  From Pittsburgh metro alone you had Penn, of course, Fat Head's (which is technically brewed at their small facility in Cleveland but is still a Pittsburgh establishment and company), Church Brew Works, East End Brewing, Full Pint, Rivertowne, Rock Bottom (a chain, but the beer is still brewed here), and Arsenal Cider.  There were also breweries from Altoona, Erie, Youngstown, Slippery Rock, and other nearby points in Pennsylvania*, Ohio and New York.  There was a Philadelphia brewery that had a little sign up saying, "We did NOT brew 'Crosby's Tears' - that was ANOTHER brewery!"  There were a few non-local breweries -- Rogue, Avery, Harpoon, and etc., which were being represented by local distributors rather than actual brewers -- but you got the feeing that they were there just to fill up the remaining spaces.  (One non-local brewer came all the way from Missouri, and was actually really good: O'Fallon.  I really liked their Wheach**, which is strange, because I am normally not a fan of fruity beers.  And another, New Holland, from Michigan, had what Ted thought was the best beer of the day, their Charkoota Rye.)

The Beers.

The point is, a few years ago, I don't think a microbrewers' fest in this city could have been populated by a majority of local and regional beers.  I think the fact that now it can be is a great sign for like, how awesome Pittsburgh is for you if you are an awesome person who likes good beer; but I also think it's a good indication of the region's health in general: I have no science to back this up, but I would bet that areas that are doing well have a lot of microbreweries, and areas that aren't, don't.

By the by, part of the price of admission was noms from Penn's restaurant.  I had a sausage and sauerkraut sandwich with a side of warm potato salad, which was tasty as hell.  That place has really good German food.

Food to eat while drinking beer.

Sunday rolled around and I missed the Queen's Diamond Jubilee flotilla down the Thames to go to mass, because there was supposed to a meeting of the Parish Life Committee's youth group organizing subcommittee, and ... then there wasn't.  I've decided not to air my grievances about this here, out of tact, but let me just say this: do not join a church committee.  Just don't do it.

Sunday rounded out with an awesome visit from Ned, who is an old college pal of mine.  He lives in DC now, but was up in the Burgh visiting, and so we got to have some wine and chat, which was great.  I like Ned a lot, and we always make the effort to see each other when I'm in DC or he's in Pittsburgh.  Except college pals always make me feel old.  Sigh.

Oh, and dinner was stuffed shells, which I bring up so as to report on what I regard as a strange thing.  This is my second round of stuffed shells, and on both occasions, I used a very simple tomato sauce: a can of whole plum tomatoes, an onion, and butter.  (The onion is halved and allowed to simmer in the sauce for about 45 minutes, then removed -- blend tomatoes if they don't break down in that time.)  On the first occasion, my ingredients were: 1 28-ounce can of Muir Glenn plum tomatoes, one white onion, 5 tablespoons of butter.  On the second occasion, my ingredients were: 1 28-ounce  can of San Marzano plum tomatoes, one yellow onion, 5 tablespoons of butter.  (Neither can of tomatoes contains anything but tomatoes in juice.)  The sauces turned out completely different in color and flavor!  I don't know if it's more to do with the onion or the tomatoes, but this time the sauce was golden red and very cream-like in consistency, whereas previously it had been much redder and had much more of a tang.  I find this sort of fascinating.

Plus isn't that a great looking salad?

So anyway, as I said, Mom's back again today, painting away, and then we're going to get lunch, hit the farmers' market, and maybe get a drink.  Ted is in Columbus for work today, and this is awesome, since he's going to return with a case of Two-buck Chuck from their Trader Joe's (Fuck you, PLCB.  Fuck.  You.) and a box of Tim Horton's donuts.  It's the little things.

We moved the hutch to paint, probably for the first time since we moved in, and discovered a treasure trove of lost kitty toys.  The kitties were VERY excited.  (We also found a lot of dust.  Ahem.)

* One of the brewers there was Stoudt's, which I now have a fatwa against.  During the Pens-Flyers play-off match, Stoudt's Twitter account tweeted "Pittsburgh dirty city = dirty hockey".  I don't really mind the accusation of dirty play -- sports is sports -- but the "dirty city" line was sufficient for me to be like, "Well fuck your beer then."  I bring this up because I think it's illustrative of the importance of handling your business's social media with care.  I don't follow Stoudt's on Twitter; rather, a local brewery that I do follow retweeted the remark.  If you have a business situated near Philadelphia that also sells in Pittsburgh, I don't think anyone in the Burgh would deny you your right to root for Phily per se -- but the extent of your commentary on the subject ought be no more than "Go Flyers!"*** and "Nice game, Pens."  Because, seriously: common sense.

** Also, HOW CUTE IS THE WHEACH?  They should have stickers and buttons with this little guy on them. 

*** Except actually, no one should be like, "Go Flyers", because they are The Worst Thing on the Planet Earth.

Death

Today started out ... varying.  On one hand, I've had a backache for 2+ days now.  My spine is my enemy.  I've had surgery on my lower back twice, and it and I are still in contention.  It's the sort of thing one just has to live with, and I do, but, y'know, allow me a couple of sentences to bitch about it.

But the day perked up when Friend Nick asked me join him for Indian lunch buffet, this time at People's.  That is two Indian lunch buffet lunches in a row, which is #Winning.  People's is very good, but variable: by this I mean, some days you go and it's good and spicy, and some days it's bland -- there's no way to know until you're there.  Today, unfortunately, was bland, though the food was still good, just too mild for the likes of me.  However, two things about People's that are always good: it's $8 even, and they put out delicious chai with the buffet.  Mmm, chai tea.  (Yes, Friend Sarah and I reviewed People's for the Great Indian Buffet Tour.)

Plus also I got to have a nice long chat with Nick, who is one of my best friends, and whom I always enjoy seeing and chatting with.

After that, I spent the afternoon reading Atonement by Ian McEwan.  It was recommended to me by Friend/Boss David, who raved about it.  So far I find it compelling, but also flawed, in ways that I plan to discuss when I finish it.  Wait for the review.

The big event of the day, though, was visiting Friends Katie and Randy at the viewing of Katie's father, who passed away very unexpectedly this Monday.  I felt helpless, and mostly talked to Randy (her husband), who is the sort to make jokes in the face of sorrow, which is also my wont.  I don't know what to do around death, in part because I inherited my mother's stolidness on the subject: they're dead now, what was there is gone, and so that is that.  But I realize that other people aren't like this -- which is probably a good thing, because my mother and I might be dancing the line of sociopathy on this one -- and since it's a friend, I want to help.  But how? I didn't know what to do with my hands, and I kept sweating, which I do when I'm nervous.  Katie said she wouldn't turn down a casserole -- it was all I could think of.  Mumford & Sons, which is a band I like but isn't necessarily profound or anything, has a song containing the lyric, "In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die."  Something maudlin comes after that in the song, but I kept thinking of just those two phrases today.  That's all there is to it.  I think the only way most people can live their lives is to forget, from moment to moment and day to day, that they will  some day die -- and even when you have it put in front of you -- in this body I live and in this body I will die -- you still can't actually embrace it; something in your brain turns it aside and paves over it, over and over again.  At least, that's how it works for me.

Take that, mortality.

After the viewing -- Me to Katie: "We're gonna head out, we're helping your husband be inappropriate" -- Ted and I got in the car and drove, literally, across the street, to D's Six Pax and Dogz, the one on Northern Pike in Monroeville. It's not as good as the D's in Regent Square: the pizza wasn't as good (though it certainly wasn't bad) and the service was indifferent, plus the entire place had the faint odor of raw potatoes to it.  But Ted and I ordered a large "Three Little Pigs" pizza -- sausage, pepperoni, and bacon -- to, as we put it, spite death.  Because what else can one do?  I've paved you over, today, Death, with pepperoni.

A kitten picture, since things were getting a little heavy, there.  Did you know Matilda is laser-equipped?