One Thousand Words

My thing about resolutions is that is not healthy to make one resolution for the entire year. That's just setting yourself up for failure, you know? You miss a day in mid-January and then that's it for the rest of the year? Set resolutions for the month, or for the week. Set a resolution that has a way to restart it easily if/when you fail.

Anyway, I have 2 resolutions this year.

1) is to make better pancakes. I used to be good at this, now I suck. I don't know what the problem is, but if I practice I'll get better at it. The upside to this is that I'll get to eat more pancakes.

I've had really good luck with recipes from Smitten Kitchen so I'm going to start there.

2) is to make more cookies. Specifically, I want to make 1 batch of cookies a month - hopefully with my kid! When I was my kid's age I was cooking meals and making stock and baking cookies and cakes entirely by myself. My kid can boil pasta and make ramen and heat up canned goods. That's it. Our kitchen is just so small and shitty with so few work surfaces. Ah well. 12 batches of cookies. Unless kiddo has a special request I'm going to do the following, in no particular order:

1) Thumbprint cookies, using a recipe a friend gave me. They're amazing: kind of a pain, but very worth it.
2) Snickerdoodles. The first time I had snickerdoodles they were bland. I didn't eat them again for fifteen or twenty years. I forget why I made them, using this recipe, but they were amazing. They aren't hard to make, just a little time consuming to roll them in the cinnamon sugar.
3) Chocolate chip cookies. Maybe following the recipe on the tollhouse bag, maybe doing one of those browned butter recipes.
4) Pecan snowballs, using a recipe I've had for years (from the webcomic "Sluggy Freelance" actually). I've been making these for... fifteen years? Longer? Since before I had my kid, who is FOURTEEN YEARS OLD (15 next March).
5) Chocolate Crinkles. These are especially good around Christmas time if you slap a candy cane hershey kiss on top. They're good alone, too.
6) Peanut Butter cookies
7) Oatmeal Raisin - I use the recipe on the oatmeal package, but I tweak the spices a little. I am very pro raisin in oatmeal cookies. It's a nice pop of sweet and a bit of condensed chew texture amidst a nicely flavored slightly caramelized oat cookie. I know people who swear by dried cherries or chocolate chips. Both are too sweet.
8) Spritz Cookies
9) Pinwheel cookies which I've never made before.
10) Cut Out Cookies - every year I ask for a recommendation for a recipe and every year I get a bunch and every year I forget to take note of which one looks the best. I'll need to research this. I'm not sure where I'd roll out a cookie, though, unless I dragged everything into the dining room to roll and cut stuff out there. What a mess.
11) Oatmeal Lace Cookies. I made these all the time as a kid, although not this specific recipe. I wonder how this compares to my memories
12) Gingerbread Men.

I didn't want to lean too heavily on Christmas-heavy cookies. I also want to avoid complicated things like stuffed cookies, bar cookies (no offense, bar cookie), or things made using a mix. I also wanted to avoid brownies and like... lemon squares... which sometimes crop up under the "cookie" heading/tag for some reason.

Got any cookie, or recipe, suggestions?

Fire Witch: Burning leaves, gunpowder, leather, cardamom, clove.

I don't like this in the bottle.

When I apply it, it smells gross at first. Several of the scents do but then temper down to something pleasant or even enjoyable.

I can kind of smell the cardamom in this but it's lost in the other scents, or is tangled with them. The leaves don't just smell burning, there's a bit of (pleasant) decay as well. The clove becomes more forward over time without smelling like medicine or ham.

I don't like this one. I don't hate it. There's scents that have repulsed me, that have been wild NOs, and this isn't that. But I wouldn't choose to wear this again.


Perfume Master List

I'm looking through an external hard drive and I found something I wrote about 20 years ago.

___

From death comes life: the importance of organ donation

When I die ( and I know this is a question not of if, but of when, base mortal that I am), I want doctors to hook me up to machines to keep my body alive just long enough for them to come in and remove all my useable organs: corneas, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, skin. Anything they can use for other people, I want them to take. What good will it do me, mouldering in some grave, rotting away, returning to the ashes and dust from which I was formed? I have my preference marked on my state I.D., and have told my fiance in detail what I want done with my body after my death.

There are two things that have convinced me that I want to be an organ donor. One is the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach , which details what happens after death, from the funeral industry to the donation of cadavers to medicine or science. The other is my experience with a woman who had three kidneys, none of which worked.

I used to work at UIC’s west side dorm’s front desk. I checked new residents in and took the keys from departing residents. I handled small problems, and got the appropriate authorities to handle large problems. I answered questions and answered phones. Most of the people I dealt with during the school year were students. However, over the summer we had foreign exchange students and Intensive ESL students (usually from China), and all year round we had people under long term hospital care stay with us. I’m not sure which hospital they were at… Rush or Cook County, probably, but I’m not sure if it was one, both, or neither. If they were undergoing several operations, distantly spaced, they’d stay with us. Or if they were in the hospital for a long period of time, their families would stay with us. It was cheaper and had more amenities than a hotel.

One such guest had total kidney failure. Both of her kidneys were essentially dead, but had not been removed. She had a third, healthy, kidney in her but it was getting acclimated to her body and hadn’t been hooked up yet. She’d joke about it, having three kidneys, none of which worked. I admired and respected that, because she looked like the walking dead. She was a thin, almost frail woman underneath bad edema. She was grey and puffy and her hair was falling out. She didn’t walk, she shuffled along, stoop-shouldered, because lifting her feet was too much effort. In the time she was with us, she broke both of her feet, simply by walking on them. She was also in a very bad mental fog.

In health, she had been a take-charge, adventurous, active woman. A large part of her still was. She’d leave her room to take a walk, and get as far as the lobby before getting exhausted. She’d sit, in pain, silently. And then she’d get up to go back to her room, and couldn’t remember where it was. There were two interior paths leading to the lobby, and an exterior door. Despite the fact that she’d just come through one of them a few minutes ago, had come through it several times, she could not remember which way to go. She did not remember her room number, or what her door looked like. She was intelligent. She remembered us, the people who worked at the desk. She knew her name and made jokes about her condition. But she could not remember what the room she’d been staying in for a week looked like, or how to get there.

Her donated kidney was hooked up before she died, thank God. I was there when she checked out, and she looked completely different. Her thin, matted hair was more lively and vibrant. Her skin was a lovely, healthy, pinky-brown. Though her feet were still in casts, she moved spryly. She looked like she’d been wrapped in the foggy specter of death, and had finally managed to shove him off. She was a completely different person. She was alive. And she knew how to get to and from her room.

This woman was in her thirties or forties. She had teen-aged kids, and she had nieces and nephews. If someone hadn’t donated a kidney, she would have died. Now, barring some hideous accident or complication, she’ll live to see her kids grow up and have kids of their own.

This woman, this down-to-earth woman shuffling through a disease-induced fog with grim good will and black humor, brought the importance of organ donation home to me more than any number of commercials featuring cute young children with wispy blonde hair and big blue eyes sitting up in too-large hospital gowns in gigantic hospital beds.

This was a real person, a real woman. This could be me.

So, when I die, I don’t want to be hooked up to machines giving me a selfish half-life, in desperate hope that some medical miracle will be able to save me somewhere down the road. I want my machine hookup to be brief, just long enough to keep my organs fresh and alive until they can be harvested. We are born from dust, and unto dust we shall return. Nothing is permanent. The dead live in on the hearts and memories of those who loved them…and in the hearts and memories of those who have received their organs. This is the only kind of immortality I know of.

An aspect of my life has exploded dramatically and horrifically, although not as badly as it could have gone.

I continue begging the universe: can we have ONE MONTH with no catastrophes?

I'm not saying more, not because I'm being coy but because one of the principle characters doesn't want me to blog about them. If you know me well feel free to shoot me an email or DM on twitter (although if we're twitter pals you already know, probably).

Anyway, if you have prayers or well wishes or anything else you can shoot our way please do so.

This is about a recent episode of "The Mandalorian," which I'm going to put behind a fold because Spoilers.

I do want to note that it has 3 great guest stars: Lizzo, Jack Black, and Christopher Lloyd, all of whom are EXCELLENT.

( Read more... )

No city can ever be truly personal car free.

There will always be people who need to use cars due to disability. Always.

There would have to be a vast fundamental shift in the way our society is run, absolutely vast, for that to be possible.

However, there's ways for cities to be more accessible than they are right now and I, a city dweller, am going to list some of them. Some of these can also work for suburbs and small towns.

Clear snow, leaves, mud, ice, and debris from sidewalks and bus stops
Sidewalks need to be kept clean. Can residents and places of business do the job? Eh... what happens to people who are disabled and can't do it? People who are out of town? What happens when the task is just too much? We got a foot and a half of snow all at once one year. Where do people put that much snow? An easy answer is municipal sidewalk clearing. "Isn't that expensive?" Baby, everything is expensive. This keeps a city running. Bus stops and train stations should also be kept clear of snow and other debris. I've been unable to board/exit a bus because the entire sidewalk/shoulder was just heaped with snow. People get let on/off in the middle of the street, which is dangerous. Get all that stuff clear.

Keep sidewalks and curb cuts in good repair
I barely remember it now but when I was a kid every corner had the same height curb as the rest of the street. You had to step down into the street to cross then step back up. If you used a wheelchair this was basically impossible to do. If you were on a bike, pushing a stroller, pulling a wagon, using a wheely cart for your groceries, etc. it was difficult. If you had bad knees or a bad back the stepping down/up could be painful. Curb cuts, where the curb slopes down to be even with the road surface, make it possible to use a wheelchair to get around while also making it easier for everyone else as well. The textured plates embedded in the curb cut are a tactile signal to people with visual limitations. Curb cuts in some areas aren't well maintained, though. They crack and crumble, becoming tripping hazards. Sidewalks in general, especially in low income areas, are frequently in disrepair with large cracks and gaps. When my kid was young enough to need a stroller there were certain places I just didn't go because pushing the stroller down the sidewalk was so difficult. I had that choice, and in some situations I could muscle the stroller around a dangerous curb cut. Someone in a wheelchair can't do that. Speaking of people in wheelchairs, I once had to push someone in a motorized scooter (at their request and with their guidance) over a bad bit of sidewalks. They were stuck, completely stuck, because the sidewalk was in such poor repair. I'd just had surgery and could have injured myself. People with gait issues, people who can't life their feet high, there's a lot of people who just plain need a smooth flat surface to travel on. This shouldn't be hard.

Keep restaurants from blocking sidewalks
Keep patios and signs from blocking sidewalks. Seriously. I shouldn't have to step into the street because a restaurant's outside eating area chokes the sidewalk. There's people who CAN'T step into the street. Ban restaurants from putting those folding signs in the middle of the sidewalk. Two people should be able to walk abreast down a sidewalk.

Keep storm drains clear of debris and properly graded
Storm drains get clogged with debris really quickly, even when residents work to keep them clean. This can and does cause flooding. The flooding can be inconvenient - nobody likes wet shoes - to impassable. I've had to wade through water that reached to mid-shin. It was significantly higher on my kid, who at the time was 5. Clogged storm drains can cause flooded streets that damage cars, and that flood basements. Sometimes it rains so heavily there's going to be flooding no matter how clean the drains are. Other times intersections flood and stay flooded for days. Sometimes a drain sits higher than the deep puddles/flooded area. What the heck.

Fully subsidize public transit
Make the trains free. Make the buses free. And by "free" I mean "subsidized by taxes." It is not financially possible to make public transit self-supported, self-funded. It's expensive. Roads, even toll roads, aren't self-funded either but we all pay taxes for them even if we don't drive. If someone can just board a train or a bus at the spur of the moment without having to think about how much money is on their card, if you remove that bit of friction, more people will take public transit which means less people on the road which means a safer road for cyclists and a faster trip for buses and also less pollution.

Expand bus and train routes
Stretch those bus and train routes further into the city and further out from the city. What parts of the city are under-served? What parts of the city are hard to get to? Where outside of the city do people who commute to the city live? How can you make it easy for them to get to the city? Expand the bus and train lines, and also provide ample parking at the terminals and the train stations located further out of the city. If Joe Suburb wants to come into Chicago he can either sit in traffic and then pay a bunch for parking or he can drive a much shorter distance to a train station, park, play bejwelled on his phone for a while, then got off a few blocks from his destination. If Claire Urbanis wants to visit her cousins in the suburbs she can walk to her station/bus stop, hop on public transit, listen to a podcast while not having to drive, and get picked up by her family. Or possibly rent a bike, scooter, or even car. When I was in college the only way I was able to attend classes my first semester was because I could take Metra into the city. After that I got on-campus housing and could take the CTA everywhere I needed to go.

Make all buses and train stations fully accessible
All buses should kneel, and should have ample room for people using wheelchairs, strollers, wheely carts, etc to ride safely. All train stations should have elevators that are quickly repaired when broken. Stations and stops should have shelter that keeps users dry, and warm with heat lamps that aren't on a short timer. Don't want to waste electricity by having them on for long stretches of time when nobody's there? Fine. Don't want to "waste electricity" by keeping unhoused people warm? Fuck you. Stations and stops should have seating that is comfortable, not narrow or divided or sloping downwards to prevent unhoused people from sleeping there.

Provide affordable, accessible housing
This might seem unrelated but I promise you, it is not! Unhoused people are our neighbors and they are human beings. Like all human beings they need shelter. That in itself is enough reason to provide affordable, accessible housing to all. I shouldn't have to give more reasons, but here we are. One of the big complaints about public transit is all the scary scary homeless people riding it/camping in bus shelters. Subsidize transit, and subsidize housing. 24% of our homeless population is kids. Over 80% are couch surfing/staying temporarily with family or friends which is both crowded and precarious. Over 20% are employed. Meanwhile, it's really hard to find a job when you don't have an address and have a hard time taking showers or doing laundry. I could get into a whole long list of amenities/social services this country could be providing but doesn't but that's a post for another time.

Dedicated bus lanes kept clear of debris
Dedicated bus lanes kept clear of debris by which I primarily mean snow. Buses carry far more passengers than cars do but when they get caught up in traffic that doesn't matter as much and also everyone gets irritated at the delay. Dedicated bus lanes keep things moving quickly, and make it obvious to drivers that buses are a viable superior option.

Dedicated bike lanes kept clear of debris
Yes, yes, cyclists, I've finally come to you. Your time has arrived. Dedicated bike lanes, clearly marked, kept free of debris like snow. Make it so vehicles can't park there, either. No trucks loading/unloading, nobody parked "for just a minute" as they "run into the store for just a second." No cops hanging out there (why do they do this???). It's a lane for bikes, for bikes only.

Bicycle and scooter rentals
We've got bike rental stations all over the place here and they're in constant use. People absolutely use them instead of cars. But there needs to be a way of preventing people from leaving them on sidewalks, blocking others (especially people using wheelchairs/assistive devices, strollers, etc) from using them.

Bike racks
Just put bike racks everywhere, but the good kind... the kind where you can lock your bike up in two different areas. Those big Us are ubiquitous for a reason - you can lock your bike in two distinct areas.

Public showers and lockers
If you walk/jog/cycle to work, especially in the summer, it's very likely you'll work up a sweat and arrive in a less than fresh state. Public showers and lockers, locking cubicles/change areas, are the answer. There was once a plan to provide this in Millennium Park in Chicago, but people objected and it didn't happen. The main objection? Homeless people might use the showers. People objected to homeless people bathing. Provide the facilities, ensure the locks function well, keep the area well staffed and in good repair. Let people bathe.

Establish more public seating in general, and public parks
Give people green spaces, spaces to walk to, spaces to sit in, spaces to get to know their neighbors and neighborhood in. Encourage people to start walking and they'll continue walking, get in the habit of walking. Give kids places to go and they'll keep going.

Encourage more grocery stores
People shouldn't have to travel to buy groceries. Full stop. People shouldn't have long bus rides, sometimes involving transfers, to buy groceries. Establish more grocery stores in places lacking grocery stores. Drugstores, too. And keep diapers and razors unlocked. Allow people dignity.

There's more, I know there's more. So much of this could happen if cities were just willing to spend money on something other than cops. Not to get all ACAB but the city of Chicago spends tens of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits concerning police misconduct... aka police officers beating, shooting, crashing cars into, etc. people. In 2021 Chicago shelled out nearly $80,000,000 in police misconduct settlements. In 2022 Chicago paid out $25,000,000 to settle three misconduct cases, another $11,200,000 on another three - only three!- misconduct charges. I haven't been able to find a full tally of 2022, coverage seems to be entirely behind paywalls (a huge issue in its own right).

But Chicago's Public Library system has a budget of a little over ten million dollars - $10,000,000. 2021 Police Misconduct spending amounts to 80% of that. We spend almost as much paying out settlements for theft (civil forfeiture), torture, and murder as we do on public libraries.

That's a lot of money that could be spent on things that actually improve our lives.

Ok. If I post-date this then I think it'll show up sticky-like at the top of my feed, right?

Anyway, here are some monthly goals for January of 2023.

Financial:

• Eat out no more than twice a week. Each time we WANT to eat out, put that equivalent amount of money in a savings account, then at the end of the month pay toward a credit card.


• Pay $500 more than usual toward debt (see above re: eating out).

VERDICT: Could have done better! Lost no-eating-out steam in the second half of the month.

D&D:
Take notes during game, write summaries after.

Reading:

• Read 4 prose books

Review books on goodreads

Still To Do:Review!

Household:

• Wash sheets every Monday


• Sort through pots, pans, etc and put things into storage


• Fold laundry within 24 hours of it coming out of the dryer


• Spend 5 minutes a day sorting Lego pieces

NOTES: 5 minutes a day isn't enough, pots pans etc. still needs work/needs to be redone.

Kid:

• Review homework on Aspen every Thursday, ensure all is turned in Friday


• Teach to cook 1 new thing

NO This!! Has been!!! A shitty month!!! For my kid!!!!!

Personal Health:

• Take iron at least 5x a week


• 1 extra flight of stairs Tuesday and Thursday at work


• Continue dorsiflexion exercises 4x or more a week


• Continue knee exercises DAILY

Social/Fun:
Visit MSI at least once

I'm going to check in February 1st and see how well I did!

UPDATE:
I hit more than I missed, and we made it to MSI twice. We managed to get the Art of the Brick exhibit before it closed. I wish we'd been able to see it twice, it was great.

Sleep Paralysis: Patchouli, ripe figs covered in dark chocolate, a cabinet full of imported spices behind a bouquet of brightly blooming flowers.

I'm not a fan of this in the bottle, really, and the initial application on my wrist was A Bit Too Much. Muddled, and fruity (figgy?), and funeral-floral, and kind of decaying... but not decaying in a romantic goth way, decaying in a "how long has THIS been here? get me my mop bucket and a priest" way.

I set it off to the side with "you're in a cult."

It didn't smell bad enough to remove with alcohol, and a few hours in I like it. It smells like incense, a lovely warm smell, not at all over bearing. I can smell my skin through it, too, if that makes sense.

I used to wear patchouli a lot. I know it has a bad reputation, but on some people it plays with their skin chemistry really well and just smells NICE. I'm one of those people. Folks would compliment me on my scent, ask about it, then look weird when I said patchouli. It took me a while to realize it, but the naggingly familiar note I was getting from this perfume is patchouli.

So far there's only one scent I dislike, and this is one of three that's going to be going in rotation.

We finally set aside a chunk of time to watch Disney's "Strange World."

Like a lot of people in my age group I'm a fan of pulp fiction, including those stories about brave and bold explorers finding weird underground chasms full of weird biomes, plants, and animals that nobody has seen before. Or maybe they get shrunk down super small and enter a human body and find out where the soul is located. Or maybe there's some cavemen, or dinosaurs are still hanging out.

It was pretty neat to see a movie with such a pulp feel to it.

The opening animation was really nice and I wish we had more movies in that style but I'm not sure it would have suited the strange flora and fauna of the underworld that Searcher, Ethan, et al explore. It's a squishy springy and sometimes translucent place.

And coming from a personal place here... it's a movie where the moms are alive. Searcher's mom is alive (she's 60 and married to a hunk). Ethan's mom/Searcher's wife is alive, and is on the trip with them. And for all Ethan is like Searcher, and Searcher is like Jaeger... he's also like his mom. As a mom this means a lot to me.

It's a good movie, it's a fun movie, it's got a bunch of dorks running around and having an adventure and learning things about themselves and each other and also about the environment. There's a cute dog that loves to give kisses. I laughed a lot while watching this movie and it was really nice to spend the first day of 2023 laughing.

It's a little predictable but I'm an adult. This is aimed more at the tween/early teen crowd, I think, although there's stuff in there for adults without it feeling like a nudge nudge wink wink adult-issues-in-disguise-as-a-kid's-movie (vampire going through a midlife crisis because his daughter gets a boyfriend I'm looking at you).

We spent a lot of time re-watching the same media when my kid was younger and this is absolutely a movie that would hold up to multiple watches.

Like a LOT of Americans my age I grew up saying "main-gah" and "ann-ih-may." My kid is quick to correct me. It's "mahn-guh" and "ah-nuh-may." Then my kid goes and reads a bunch of it online and I don't get any credit for making this possible.

Which sounds like I'm making wild and sweeping claims, painting myself as some key player or something, when really I'm just a sucker willing to shell out $40 for a VHS tape with 3 episodes of "Sailor Moon" on it in 1996, proving that there's a market for Japanese import animated tv shows and movies in small towns outside of Chicago.

I remember a friend of mine managed to get a volume of "Battle Angel Alita" and brought it to school, showed it to me during art class. I hold to hold it a specific way, the edges of the pages, not open it too wide in case I cracked the spine. My volumes of "Blade of the Immortal" are all photo reversed so as not to offend delicate American sensibilities. My kid casually informs me that if I want to read the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure volumes we've gotten them then I have to start at the back because it's not like American books. I fish these books out from under the couch, pick empty glasses off them, close them when they've been set down splayed open. They're just books, they aren't rare. You start at the back of them, mama, JEEZE.

We watch stuff together, and sometimes I'll explain something... a specific word/phrase, or cultural thing, or laugh at a joke referencing a different piece of non-American media. My kid looks so bemused when I do this, is sometimes impressed and sometimes condescending. This kid is 13 so sometimes manages to be both at the same time. It's MAHN-guh, mama. JEEZE. It's FRENCH.

It's such a change.

And it's wild to see young people complaining about spending a whopping $25 for a season of an anime on Blue-Ray or be upset that something published a month ago in Japan hasn't been translated and published in the USA yet.

It's not Japanimation any more.