"It's Probably Just Gas"

This is the year of GETTING HEALTHY.

Of course, that probably means something different to me than to other people I know. Instead of training for super-marathons and pretending to like kale, I'm still working on eating a vegetable once a week and going outside sometimes. I am easily impressed by people who take multivitamins and worry about their fiber intake.

Maybe someday that'll be me. Until then, this is the year that I:

• Find a doctor. Aside from the time I got a Tylenol lodged in my throat in college, I haven't gone to a doctor since my pediatrician. That made it a little awkward when I had to get a TB test before I started teaching. The parents in the waiting room kept glancing over as if expecting me to pull a sick child out of my pocket, but the nurse gave me a cartoon lion sticker that said RADICAL! on my way out, so I guess it was worth the stares.
• Go to the dentist for the first time in years. Although I did recently start flossing AND using mouthwash. CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT?! Four days in a row so far. Flossing and mortgage payments are the marks of a real grown up. I'm halfway there.
       My teeth actually started this whole health craze. A week ago I looked in the mirror and yelped because I thought my bottom teeth were about to fall out. (Receding gums are in my genes. I guess everyone has some flaw.) So I ate an apple, flossed, and made a half-hearted search for a dentist.
       I'm not afraid of going or anything - I just really liked my old dentist in California. I liked the lady who cleaned my teeth and the Korean Bibles in the waiting room and the little chair-side TV screens with the animated fish tanks on them. Now my best option is Smilebuilderz, but I don't trust any medical "professionals" who would replace the S with a Z like that. I'm afraid they'll pressure me to get a grill.
• Eat salads that are at least 50% lettuce. The other 50% cannot be just cheese.
• Exercise enough that switching wet laundry to the dryer doesn't leave me winded.
• Work on being less paranoid about every little ache or twinge. But dismissing all symptoms isn't great, either. A nice, moderate amount of caution is probably best. For example...

Right now it's 3 in the morning. I've a pain in my lower right abdomen that's been getting steadily worse for several days, possibly from all my poking and prodding. The Boy is still out of town. I'm all alone and wearing a shark onesie. It's raining.

According to the interwebs, I could be suffering from:

• A peptic ulcer
• Appendicitis, naturally
• Crohn's disease. I'm not entirely sure what that is, and I didn't want to find out the specifics.
• Ovarian cysts
• Ectopic pregnancy (possibly an alien baby)
• Cramps
• Stomach bleeding. I took a lot of ibuprofen over the holidays and I'm very concerned about stomach bleeding.
• Gas?

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions, and I will google them for two hours until I'm pretty sure about my symptoms either way. Right now I'm resigned to appendicitis, but I want to hold off on going to the hospital. Every time my stomach hurt when I was a kid, my mom said, "It's probably just gas," with all the casual confidence of a woman who's raised six children. My plan is to repeat that phrase like a mantra until the pain either goes away or overwhelms me, and if anybody looks at me weird I'll just shout, "IT'S BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE" and let them make what they will of that.

The Boy had his appendix out last March. We took a 3am trip to the ER, and I cheered him up by singing every song from that one episode of Madeline until I passed out from all the excitement. After the surgery he was given some pretty nice painkillers and spent a week propped up on a pillow throne while I fanned him with palm fronds and washed his feet with my hair. Every sneeze and trip to the bathroom was agony, but at least he got a couple days off work. Better than an ectopic pregnancy.

Mostly I don't want to go to the emergency room alone. How much are you supposed to tell the person at the front desk about your symptoms? Would it be more or less uncomfortable to write a note explaining the situation and then stand there while they read it? Assuming I'm not hobbling and weak from the pain, how confident should I make myself sound? I could charge in and shout, "NURSE! PLEASE FETCH SOMEONE TO REMOVE THIS APPENDIX AT ONCE!" or go with a more casual approach, along the lines of "Welp, I may need a mop if my stomach explodes." I had the same problem a few months ago when I thought I had a lung infection and drove to Urgent Care. The nurse at the desk looked expectantly at me until I said, "Yeah, I...need some care? It's urgent."

Please advise.

...I looked up Crohn's disease. I couldn't help myself.

I wish other humans were awake so they could talk me down. Until then, I'll assume that nothing's really wrong with me after all. It's probably just gas.

How to Keep Your Resolutions

I am very strict about resolutions, New Year's or otherwise. Once made, I do not rest until my resolution is achieved, which actually made "Stay awake for a week straight" pretty easy.

In every area of life, it's wise to keep your standards low and your expectations in check. This is especially important for your goals. For example, I would never choose a resolution that required me to do something every day for a year, like "Have at least one pleasant conversation with another human being every day." Completely unrealistic. I might as well challenge myself to lasso the moon each night. Which would be impossible, because some nights there is no moon.

Instead, choose a resolution that requires sporadic effort and has subjective results. This year I resolved to develop a thicker skin. Literally and figuratively. I've burned all my shoes and warm clothes so that the elements can toughen up my skin, but that only takes care of half of it. If I want to write, I'll have to deal with regular rejection, humiliation, taunting, and threats, and I can't let it get to me. By this time next year I want to be so thick-skinned that I don't even notice when people judge me.

Since yesterday was my birthday and The Boy was out of town on business, it was the perfect opportunity to work on my resolution. So I decided to throw myself a birthday party and only invite new friends and acquaintances. I bought a ton of food, made myself a cake, and stood outside the Taco Bell for two hours to hand invitations and extra napkins to everyone who went through the drive-thru. I also invited the maintenance guy for my apartment building, the crossing guard by the elementary school, and stuck invitations under my neighbors' doors. Then I joined an online forum for reptile enthusiasts. I did not invite anyone from there. I'm just interested in any advice they can give me about growing scales.

That evening I laid out the Twister mat, put ABBA's Greatest Hits on repeat, and waited. A few people stopped by, but they didn't stay long. A couple left threatening notes or unflattering drawings of me labeled "loser" or "weirdo." All really good, hurtful stuff, useful for developing the thick hide I need to destroy any criticism that gets in the way of my success. Although one person took it a little far and left a flaming bag of poop on my doorstep. I stomped on it to put the fire out, but burned my feet pretty bad since I got rid of all my shoes. Smelled awful. I suspect it was the crossing guard.

Overall, my birthday was a great success. I could not have been more pleased with the results. Four people total wished me happy birthday - half as many as last year, super good for my resolution - and my grandma pretended to forget not only my birthday but also my name. She hung up soon after I called. I ate an entire cake by myself. Cried for thirty minutes. The maintenance guy stopped by today, ostensibly to make sure the pipes to the washing machine weren't frozen. He didn't mention the party, but I saw him eyeing the pound of mini corn dogs and leftover sodas sadly. I didn't ask him where he was last night. Like any good friend, he was helping me achieve my goals.

So I'd say things are going very well. At this rate, I'll have the hide of a dragon and no feelings left to hurt by Halloween.

Here are some ways you can become less sensitive and grow a thicker skin:

1. Walk into a high school classroom in your underwear. It's picture day and yesterday you cut your own bangs. Also there's a test you didn't study for.
2. Post your diary on the internet. Nobody makes fun of it. Because they didn't read it.
3. Put on a ton of weight. Go to your college reunion.
4. Tell your family about your job.
5. Enter a contest. Any kind.
6. Open mic night.

GOOSE DAY REDUX: Traditional Christmas Dinner

Last year The Boy and I roasted a goose for our own little Christmas celebration before flying to California to spend actual Christmas with my family. The goose looked like a dinosaur and tasted like grease on a stick, but this year we're amping up the CHEER by making a traditional Christmas dinner with flaming plum pudding and everything. Actually, I'm considering serving the entire meal on fire to make it the Most Exciting Christmas Dinner Ever.

THIS MEAL IS ON FIIIIRE

(Topical, I know.)

Our pre-California Christmas is on Saturday, and this time around you're getting an account of preparations for the entire week! HOORAY!


Monday: The Menu

-Roast Goose. Neck still attached. 
-Bread Sauce. Because sometimes "traditional" and "gross-looking" mean the same thing.
-Pigs in a Blanket. Bacon wrapped around sausage. Mélange à breakfast meat.
-Roasted Potatoes. Roasted in goose fat. Soo hip.
-Caramelized Carrots. Obligatory vegetable, swimming in a puddle of butter.
-Roasted Brussels Sprouts. Pretty much a table decoration.
-Mince Pies. Not entirely sure this is actually food.
-Plum Pudding. Served with brandy butter and set on fire. Like all food should be.
-Hard Sauce. Five points for the best guess as to what that is, ten points if you've eaten it before. 
-Maybe some Wassail? WHO EVEN KNOWS.

This doesn't even include the traditional raw oysters and clear turtle soup.

We invited some friends to help us eat all this, but the three inches of snow predicted and an unexpected trip to the hospital (shout-out to Owen, infant who cannot read!) might mean we're on our own. We may have eaten our way through all the courses by the time the snow melts.


Tuesday: No Baking.

Winter descended upon us with an unceremonious snow dump, so I stayed home and watched White Christmas over and over until the neighbors downstairs complained about my singing and ungainly tap dancing.

Well. They leave a tiny Christmas tree and a pair of big snow boots outside their front door, presumably for Sinterklaas to leave candies in, even though no decent human should eat candy out of a boot (couch cushion or car floor is fine). Late one night I'm planning to sneak downstairs and trade the snow boots for these:

It's hard to tell without any feet in them, but those are baby boots.

I'm hoping they're not very bright, so they'll just stand there in wonder, trying to figure out whether their tree grew or their boots shrank.

But I'll also get them something nice. Like a copy of White Christmas so they can learn the songs and harmonize with me next year instead of getting all uppity and sending me fake eviction notices.


Wednesday: THE SHOPPING TRIP

To give you an idea of how this holiday season has gone, I went to three stores to buy ingredients for a traditional Christmas dinner that's also gluten-free, dairy-free, and egg-free. BECAUSE I WILL NOT SACRIFICE CHEER FOR ANY DIETARY RESTRICTION. I fought a lady over some Brussels sprouts and wandered up and down the aisles shouting, "HAVE YOU ANY SUET FOR A POOR GEHL AT CHRISTMAS TIME?"

The checkout lady examined the canned mincemeat before she scanned it and asked, "Is this any good?"

I straightened my collar and gave a little laugh. "As a mincemeat connoisseur," I told her, "I would have to say this brand ranks about a 3.5 for me. Of course I would prefer to make it from scratch from my personal recipe tweaked after years of mincemeat trial and error, but I really just haven't the time this year. Why, I still have to butcher the goose I've raised from a gosling and find homes for all the children at the orphanage. NOT TO MENTION THE PLUM PUDDING."


Thursday: The Plum Pudding

This pudding is a three-day process. Today the prunes, currants, and raisins soak in Madeira and make my fridge smell like an old person doused in booze. Tomorrow, who knows! Recipes are for chumps!


Friday: Pudding, Day Two + Mince Pies

Fact: Most English food has the color and texture of week-old porridge. I am fondly calling this Christmas dinner "50 Shades of Beige."

You'll see when it's all on the table.

The pudding is worrisome. From all the pictures I've seen, plum pudding is supposed to be a dark, glossy mound that looks like chocolate but then you find out it's all raisins and prunes and you realize life is just a slow, painful process of disillusionment. I'm pretty sure that's the reason people started setting it on fire.

However, mine just looked like oatmeal. I'd hoped it would turn plummy and delightful once I added the dried fruit all plump with Madeira, but instead it just looked like oatmeal with raisins. I'm not sure where I went wrong. It's steaming away, and maybe that will darken it somehow, but my hopes aren't high.

The original recipe calls for suet, which is hardened fat with a high melting point. Also it looks like housing insulation and apparently isn't sold in any grocery stores in the United States.

British people: Please explain.

Nigella Lawson said vegetable shortening could be used instead. But first I had to freeze it and then grate it into the pudding. Which I did - or tried to do, anyway. It worked about as well as the time I froze some Jell-o and took a cheese grater to it. On the bright side, my arms are completely waterproof now.

I did remember to add a coin to the batter, though. Whoever finds it without choking to death will find prosperity in the year to come! Which means you get to keep the sticky pudding quarter. Congratulations!

THEN CAME THE MINCE PIES!

For those of you who've never tried mincemeat, you may be surprised - like I was - to find out that there is no meat in it. Way to be intentionally confusing, old-timey Brits. Instead, it's all citrusy and jellified and surprisingly tasty. I went the easy way this year and used store-bought mincemeat and frozen pie crusts, because I tried making a gluten-free pie crust.

Once.

These little guys actually turned out better than I expected - sweet and zesty, so tiny and cute - all in the traditional English color scheme of Various Shades of Brown.

Since tonight is our Christmas Eve, The Boy is picking up Chinese food and later we're going to bake cookies and drive around to look at Christmas lights. Both at the same time - won't that be a feat! Meanwhile, the goose is prepped, the pudding is bubbling away, and we're all bundled up for the snow storm. Seems like the perfect time to watch White Christmas.

Much to the downstairs neighbors' dismay.

Stay tuned tomorrow, won't you, for the Second Annual Goose Day Live Blog!

*               *               *

Saturday: Goose Day

9:30 am - No snow. Have never been more disappointed. Am standing at the window with my nose squished on the glass, letting out a long, high-pitched whine of sadness.

10:30 - Coffee is made, presents are opened. But am I happy? No. Because there is STILL NO SNOW.

1:50 - Watching the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol and stringing cranberries and popcorn onto floss (waxed, unflavored) to make garland. The Boy is having problems with the admittedly complicated pattern of popcorn-cranberry-popcorn-cranberry. Mostly because he's eating most of the popcorn, and I guess it's throwing him off. This wouldn't be a problem if he ate an equal number of cranberries, but he said they were "too tart" or something. Whatever. I bet starving people in Dickens novels would be happy to eat raw cranberries, with or without the floss. Way to keep the Christmas spirit.

1:53 - Garlanding finished. The string is about a foot and a half long and is now draped over one section of the tiny Christmas tree like it was just named Miss Tannenbaum 2013.

2:43 - Extremely tense kitchen atmosphere because of some heavy whipping cream. I'm using a janky stand mixer to whip it, whip it good, but if I turn the dial too high the kitchen becomes speckled with white dots, so I've been hovering for ten minutes watching the mixers turn ever so slowly, hoping it will still whip. Would I be better off using a whisk and my own raw power? Will the cream get too warm? The last time I whipped cream that was less than chilly, it turned into butter. Please advise.

2:55 - The cream is in the freezer to cool down for a while. It will be beaten. As God is mah witness, Ah'll nevah make buttah agayun!

3:00 - Pretty sure this is the longest post ever.

3:07 - Potatoes have been tossed with goose fat and paprika, and the goose fat has been drained from the roasting pan, which required taking the goose out. So, I confidently stuck a barbecue fork handle-deep in from the neck and scooped up the rear with a big ladle. Then, my elbows all akimbo and my sad little arms straining with the weight of the 10-lb bird, I quickly transferred it to a platter, dumped the fat into the sink, and wobbled the goose back into the pan. Only need to do that three more times.

3:10 - I DON'T KNOW WHY I EVEN CARE. THE ABILITY TO WHIP CREAM DOES NOT DEFINE ME.

3:12 - It whipped! Cooking is magic, you guys.

4:00 - The pudding is back on the stove and bubbling away. Things are getting pretty merry up in here.

4:12 - Snow! Big, fat flakes of it. Am standing at the window with my nose squished on the glass, letting out a high-pitched whine of joy.

5:00 - One hour until guests arrive and everything has been planned down to the minute. Goose comes out in half an hour, gravy is going on now, and at 5:30 the Brussels sprouts, carrots, bacon-wrapped sausage, and potatoes start cooking. I feel an odd sense of calm amid the chaos, like the moment in disaster movies when the characters pause to turn back and watch in awe as the gigantic tidal wave crests over whatever city's being destroyed that day. Not that I think this meal will be a natural disaster, just...you know. I'm so zen.

5:35 - The carrots are being abandoned! The Boy is making cranberry sauce! It's bubbling over in orange foam but is no longer my problem!

5:48 - HOT DAMN these bacon-wrapped sausages are delicious right out of the hot oven, but also my taste buds have been singed right off.

5:49 - "YOU GUYS! IT'S - ARE YOU COOKING OR SOMETHING?! IT'S LIKE SO HOT IN HERE FROM...LIKE, THE BURNERS AND STUFF, I GUESS. THE OVEN IS SUPER HOT TOO, LIKE A MILLION DEGREES OR SOMETHING. SO, I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT. I'LL CHECK IN WITH YOU AGAIN EVERY TIME YOU OPEN THE OVEN DOOR. TAKE IT EASY."
-the fire alarm

5:51 - The Boy asked about the bread sauce I mentioned earlier, and I just laughed and laughed and laughed.

5:56 - WE ARE ALL OF A DITHER AND IT'S SO HOT IN THIS KITCHEN

6:02 - Doorbell rings. I assume my best Katharine Hepburn voice to offer mixed nuts and crudités and cheese. The Boy entertains until it's time to carve the goose, which he picks up in his pot-holdered hands like a football and manhandles into submission. I collapse on the ground and die.

6:20 - "Now, we can beginnn the feeeed!" -The Walrus

7:48 - The pudding is on fire (and yet the fire alarm didn't go off when there were actual flames in the apartment). The boy was a little too enthusiastic while pouring on the brandy, so it's more like a moat of fire around a soggy lump of dried fruit. Let me know if you want the recipe.

7:51 - Tastes great! If it were possible to squeeze Essence of the Elderly out of grandparents, I think it would taste just like plum pudding. The one person who made it through all the snow to share our weird Christmas meal insisted that it's not that bad and ate an entire plateful of pudding. He's a good man - a brave man.

Nobody found the coin.

10:13 - Completely forgot to take pictures of the meal, but that doesn't matter. The table looked pretty much like this:

Delightful!

And now the kitchen looks like that episode of the Brady Bunch where Mr. Brady helps Marcia with her cooking badge. After dinner we played Settlers of Catan, my Christmas gift for The Boy, and Snapdragon, which involves snatching raisins out of a bowl of flaming brandy. I forgot to bring out the hard sauce at all, so I'll be taking a big spoon to that whipped cream later tonight.

AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, ELEVEN DAYS EARLY!

Flutterby

This morning when I walked out to my car, a little monarch butterfly was waiting for me on the sunroof. From the agitated way his wings were clamped together, it seemed that I had kept him waiting. I reached out my hand to show I was sorry, and he stayed still and let me pet the edge of its wing.

"Oh no...Are you just dead and petrified, little guy?" I whispered. "Am I just standing here petting a dead bug?"

Indignant, he swept off. To settle on the hood. Although to be fair, I guess that's a respectable distance for a butterfly.

"If you wanted a ride, you could've just asked," I said. "I would've let you sit on the steering wheel and everything. As it is, I'm late and have no time for your moods. Oh--good morning, Mr. Henderson!" I wish I could say this is the first time my neighbor has caught me in the middle of a one-sided conversation.

I shut the door and started the engine. The butterfly stayed where he was. I turned one corner, and then another, and he clenched on with his little butterfly feet (Do butterflies have feet? Grippers? I have no idea how he stayed on, honestly) and his entire body flapped in the breeze until it was almost horizontal. Finally as I was waiting to turn onto the main road, he took off back the way we'd come.

"You're welcome!" I shouted. That butterfly carried way more drama than I had time for, but it would have been fun to sneak him into work with me.

The moral of this story is that butterflys are ungrateful and also I don't know the plural form of butterfly because it's so early.


Image via Comic Vine.

Fairy Tale Lessons: Beauty and the Beast

The story about the beggar lady in the introduction still confuses me. It's all about the importance of charity and hospitality, but nowadays kids are warned not to talk to strangers. The prince may have seemed selfish, but to be fair, if an old beggar woman came up to your house and asked to stay the night, you probably wouldn't even open the door.

"Go away, old woman!" you'd shout. And even if the woman began to cry, and rolled about on the lawn, and intercepted your mailman, chewed up all your mail and then spat it out onto your begonias, you still wouldn't show her the least bit of hospitality.

 But the prince did talk to the old beggar woman, and he was turned into a beast for his trouble.

Whenever someone comes knocking on my door, I creep away into the bedroom until the door opens and it's the maintenance guy and I holler, YOU CAN'T JUST BARGE IN HERE, and he says, "But I had a key. I'm here to fix your window. You called like an hour ago." So I shout, I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO BURGLE ME. NEXT TIME MAYBE ANNOUNCE YOUR INTENTIONS. And then he asks why I'm not wearing pants.

"That's rude," I say. But I still offer him a bite of my grilled cheese and a sleeping bag, just in case he considers cursing me.

The moral of that story is: Get a padlock for your front door. Can't nobody open those bad boys from the outside.


Image via Desktop Nexus.

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There's a fetus - INSIDE YOU

Recipes from Auntie Carrie's Kitchen: Soft Shell Crab

If you've never seen one, soft shell crabs are all blue and spidery, and I wasn't entirely convinced that they were dead. 

"Are you sure that one's not just old and sleepy?" I asked the man at the seafood counter.

He gave me a look, but I couldn't tell if I was the weird one or if he was trying to cover up his guilt.

A nice, warm bath would be just right for these old freaky claws of mine, those crabs were probably thinking as they tried to get comfortable on their bed of ice.

They never saw the hot oil coming.

Because their eyes were gone.

I had to Google how to eat one. When I did, I found out that people also eat soft shell turtles. Since we went to the park earlier today and saw some turtles paddling around all plump and juicy, I surreptitiously checked the town's laws on removing animals from a local pond for human consumption. As far as I can tell, it's a no on fishing, but turtling isn't even mentioned.

I guess it's no coincidence that the Mayor of Lancaster's nickname is TURTLE SLAYER.

I'm not really sure why I feel okay about frying up turtles and not crabs, but that's beside the point. You come to me for fine culinary information, and I'm here to give it to you. Fortunately, there really isn't much to making soft shell crabs, which is good because I don't want to think about it any more than I have to.

1. Dredge 'em.
2. Fry 'em.
3. Set 'em in front of your squeamish girlfriend along with a big bowl of hot sauce.
4. Sit back and watch as she starts to cry a little bit. Adorable.

It wasn't all that bad when I was just poking at it with my fork, nodding my head and trying to look super adventurous and totally game while The Boy ripped an entire claw off his crab like some feral beast. I put my head down and daintily cut off the tip of a leg, dipped it in hot sauce, and set it on my tongue just as The Boy said, "Okay, I don't know what this green stuff is that just shot out, but I don't think it's bad." 

Here's an artist's rendering of my face, drawn on a used paper towel:

Just look at those eyebrows.

I made it through one claw and a bite of meat before I had to give up. So while I ate a lovely, light summer salad with sliced strawberries and vinaigrette, The Boy finished up three crabs by himself, then tried to to make me feel better by showing me pictures of all the gross sea creatures he didn't try to feed me for dinner.

But now, one of us is bent over the toilet, and it isn't me.

The crabs always get their revenge.

Image via Sober in a Nightclub.