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One of these is not like the other. *snarf* Somebody was clearly not paying attention when they posted their romance novel on PaperBackSwap this week. Hee! And apparently the owner hasn't noticed, because it was still up there in the Cooking category yesterday.

Okay, I promise to shut up more when I'm back at work, but since I'm effectively quarantined at home at the moment, and my sore throat disinclines me to chat on the phone, daytime television is a wasteland, there's only so much TiVo I can plow through without my eyes crossing, and I'm not feeling well enough to concentrate on a good (or bad) book, I'm afraid this leaves me eyeing my blog rather a lot. Sorry.

Yes, I do take 3-4 hour midday naps like a geriatric patient (actually, my 80 year old mom is WAY healthier and more vigorous than me!) and sleep 8 our more hours a night, but still, lack of energy (yes, I know -- it's called: being sick) does not predispose me to tackle my hamper of dirty laundry or clean my mind-bogglingly messy apartment.

Jeez. Yeah, I'll take some cheese with that whine.

Actually, I know that I am very lucky to have such supportive co-workers ("stay home till you're well and don't worry about the work") and an employer with a sensible sick day policy that discourages presenteeism (see: stay home, above). Trust me, I realize that life is pretty darn good, especially when I can stay home on days with 8 degree wind chill, like today.

So to that end, I will use the rest of this post for fun, silly things like the perfectly named FoodPornDaily. Oh my. Can't remember how I wandered across this site, but WOW. A new photographic standard to aspire to, methinks.

(And the reason I never use the term "food p*rn" in full on my site is not because I'm a prude, but because I want to avoid spam engines, since whenever I even mention ins*mnia, I get spammed!)

Pinova apples are my new fruit discovery at the supermarket. They just looked so gorgeous that I bought 2 on my way back from the GP on Wednesday, and now I want MORE! (Besides the one above, I actually killed off the other one yesterday as well. Heh. Toldja I liked it.)

They're a crossbreed between multiple strains/varieties of apples, juicy and with a crisp crunch and a mild taste that's vaguely... dunno, banana-y? In any case, I think it's way more interesting than the Golden Delicious from which it's partly bred.

In Europe and some parts of the US, it's called Pinova, but it is also marketed as the Pinata apple. Since the licensed (!) US grower is in Washington state, it's not surprising that there is a Seattle restaurant which is making all of its apple dishes exclusively with the Pinata/Pinova.

Wednesday I also scored a 3-pack of Honeycrisp apples (YES!!), which are keeping the Pinova and Fuji apples company in my bowl... but not for long! The Pinova WAS the big apple on the lower left, and the Fuji is the darker one underneath the others. Right now, I'm off to another serving of Greek yogurt to help replenish the GI bacteria that is also being carpet-bombed by my horse pills.

Bye!

Aw, nuts

So today I went to see my GP (whom I have known for many years) and did the classic, "Aaaah...!" with the tongue depressor. He pressed on my sinus cavities (forehead, under the eyes) and gland areas (under the jaw) and asked, "Does this hurt?"

Um, why YES, it does actually!!!

Okay, so I understand why he needs to do that, but isn't it morbidly humorous when doctors press on an injured area (say, like when you're in the ER and you just broke or sprained something or might have appendicitis) and ask calmly, "Dozzat hurt?"

So according to my GP, I have picked up a trifecta of infections (sinus, throat, and bronchial -- but no fluid in the lungs: that's my sweetie) and have been therefore started on a 10-day course of horse pills, er, I mean, antibiotics. (Please note that they are actually ever so slightly WIDER than a quarter, when I put one on top of the coin.) Thankfully, they must have some kind of coating, since otherwise I cannot imagine how much fun it would be to swallow that twice a day with a sore throat.

Yes, my sweetie has been battling a nasty case of bronchitis all month, or "pre-pneumonia" as his GP calls it (i.e., had he waited any longer to go see the doc, it WOULD have been pneumonia) and is now back on his own course of (smaller-sized) antibiotics for round two. Don't we make a lovely couple?

So for the moment, we are exclusively a phone relationship, since the last thing we need to to catch each other's bug.

My mom is convinced he made me sick, since to her all respiratory infections are the same animal, even though I protest that we have completely different symptoms and medications. Heh.

Her mom gene kicked in an she asked me to go stay with her so she can coddle me. Since my GP looked very unhappy when I suggested returning to work this week (i.e., and possibly infecting my coworkers), I pointed out to her that I really, really didn't want to make her sick either.

So I will stay home for the rest of the week (with a doctor's note -- something I haven't gotten since grade school... or come to think of it, last January, 362 days ago, when I went out on disability!) but I will check in with my boss tomorrow morning and see if there I something I can work on remotely from home, since (a) daytime TV is rotting my brain, and (b) when your department is cut in half by layoffs (Dec-2008) every nemaining person's absence is felt if they're out for more than one day.

In the meantime, here are photos of oven-roasted peanuts I made the other day when I found a previously opened can of salted peanuts that had gone a little stale. Alas, I left them in the oven just a few seconds too long (maybe 10-15?) and they turned out "well done" though still tasty and no longer stale. Heh.

Okay, it is now WAY past bedtime for me, but since I wind up coughing half the night no matter what, you can see why going to bed early doesn't necessarily equate to a lot of rest, right?

Mom Can Cook

If you think Yan Can Cook you've clearly never been fortunate enough to eat food made by my mother. People used to wonder why I never knew of any good restaurants in Chinatown.  Wonder no more: my Mom is DA BEST! Why go out? (Well, except for Peking duck or dim sum -- too much work for the home kitchen.)

Luckily, we had previously arranged for a dumpling / wonton-making lesson (Mom uses the same filling for both) for last weekend, before I started doing my Peter Brady imitation full time. Therefore, I can soothe my poor throat with wonton soup a la Mom and me (we both made them, although she outpaced me by 2 or 3 to 1, but then, I'm a novice and she's a pro).

The following food p*rn brought to you courtesy of my compulsive photography and the aforementioned lesson.  While not all of the steps are included, the prettiest ones are documented. ;-P

Blanching the napa cabbage and greens:

Minced, blanched greens, prior to squeezing out the excess liquid:

Mom uses pork shoulder meat that she has the butcher grind (she does not buy the pre-ground meat) and THEN she comes home and minces all the meat again by hand (the food processor I bought her one year sits neglected on a top shelf in her kitchen somewhere). She then squeezes out the greens (again) prior to combining it with the pork. She used to also include shiitake mushrooms but my foolish relatives (you hear that kids?!) picked them out [ !!! ] of the fillings so she doesn't include them anymore. *sob!*

Two dozen of the finished product.  Altogether, with about 4-5 pounds of pork and a giant volume of greens (pre-blanching -- much smaller post-blanching of course) we made 103 dumplimgs and 85 wontons that afternoon. These 2 dozen below were destined for dinner that night.

Mom does too appreciate the fine qualities of nonstick baking sheets, even though she doesn't bake. See? They're excellent for helping to freeze dumplings! HA! (And no, these are not all of them.)

My sweetie and I had pan fried dumplings that night for dinner. (Life is good -- I made him cook them. Heh.)  They were the 2 dozen unfrozen soldiers pictured above.

Mom also recently discovered enoki mushrooms and has been coming up with tasty combinations ever since.

So until the dumpling-wonton extravaganza, every time I visited Mom, she had some new dish in the rotation involving enoki.  This particular one had enoki, snow peas, and shredded pork.  Sometimes she swaps the pork with braised tofu.  (A little tofu -- or grapefruit -- is acceptable, according to my oncologist. Just don't go nuts.)  In either case, veggie or carnivorous, the end result was yummmmmmy....

And now, despite my 4 hour midday nap, I feel it is time for beddy-bye for Squirrelette The Sick again.  Tomorrow, I am slotted in to see my regular GP so that my throat can get checked out.

G'night!

Home Disrepair

So although I was a bit wistful that my (last of 2009 vacation days) vacation / semi-staycation ended yesterday, I was happy to have a job to return to... but it was not to be.

Now don't worry: I haven't been laid off (or at least, I'll worry about that when they move our offices down the street sometime mid-year -- you know, like when you moved homes as a kid and suddenly various things "got lost in the move" that oddly enough, your mother never seemed to like in the first place).

No, late last week, I picked up a horrible sore throat somewhere, and although I feel much better today, I sound very much worse, with all of the volume and projection of a rubber ducky / doggie squeak toy. So even though it (mostly) no longer hurts to swallow, my voice is now so bad that my mom and my sweetie both have problems hearing me when I'm standing next to them in the same room, much less when I'm trying to tell them something on the phone.

So it was not surprising that when I got to the office today, my co-workers looked at me first with relief (i.e., yay, you're back to share the work) and then cringing with alarm (i.e., eeek, you're sick -- go away and don't breathe on us).

Since it was pouring rain today, with winds up in the 50-65 mph category, they were amazed I even came in. (I mean, seriously, check out some of the damage; they also closed off some streets downtown since the winds blew stuff off construction sites and even a sign off the Brooklyn Bridge!)

But I didn't want to pull the ever suspicious sick-day-after-vacation (even though that actually seems to happen -- honest -- to various people, myself included) so I went in since I wasn't feeling sick, if you see what I mean. However, after hearing me they all kindly but firmly told me to GO HOME. And really, in their shoes, I don't blame them -- I wouldn't want someone who sounded like me to breathe all over the workplace, come to think of it (duh).

Um, am I protesting too much?

Anyway, I came home, changed out of wet clothes and into fuzzy jammies and robe and noticed that my bedroom window shade looked a bit odd.

Well, that would be because I have a leak. See the hole? And the discolored wall? And the now ruined, expensive custom-made (by a previous owner) window shade? Oops.

One of the handymen came to inspect it (there's a reason I am happy to fork over the annual holiday bonus check to the building maintenance staff), looked perturbed (since there was no way to tell how many floors this affected), and went off to check if my upstairs neighbor was also having problems. Not surprisingly, they were not home in the middle of the day, so I won't know for a bit what the situation is.

Honestly though, I can't get that upset about it. It's only stuff. After the year my family and my sweetie's family have had, it's not that big a deal. It just means I get to start another savings fund at Smarty Pig for long-delayed home repairs, or perhaps get to check out just much my home insurance really covers... Perhaps if I lived in an apartment as small as these nutjobs, er, people do, then I might be more freaked out.

I did think that the binder clips my friend Laura sent me were hilariously appropriate today though. Ain't multilingualism grand?

Instead I retired to the couch, to curl up under the quilt made for me by my friend Shelley, and watched some of my TiVo backlog. (Another sign that I'm sick: watching hours of cooking shows does not leave me hungry, not even peckish. In fact, I wasn't hungry at all today, a most unusual occurrence for Ms. When's My Next Meal or Snack?)

Come to think of it, my TiVo probably represents an odd cross section of interests, all starting with C: cars (my sweetie loves watching Top Gear in particular -- I watch sometimes because the guys are funny, especially the episode with their mothers (!), but the technical aspects of the car talk are incomprehensible to this non-driver), cooking (I am currently obsessed with the cooking shows on commercial-free WLIW - Create and found out today they have Sara Moulton episodes -- woohoo!), and crime (CSI classic [in Las Vegas], although occasionally the Miami one is amusing, but never EVER the LA-masquerading-as-NY one, The Closer sometimes, and Numb3rs).

And then after endless cups of warm tea for my throat, I surfed across a 1959 Hammer Films color version of The Hound of Baskervilles, co-starring of course, Peter Cushing and a very young Christopher Lee (who looked distractingly like a young Nicolas Cage -- weird). Check out the trailer for the movie, which was actually pretty good (the movie, that is -- the trailer is just classic Hammer horror cheesefest, which is fun in its own way). Christopher Lee actually gets to play a good guy this time, in well tailored clothes and no cape.

But for pure super-cheesy fun, I recommend two things:

• a 1974 Hammer Films - Shaw Brothers co-production, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a/k/a The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (randomly interspersed kung fu battles + Peter Cushing + Christopher Lee + gratuitous scenes of topless village maidens which earned it an R rating in 1974). How could you resist a film which stretches its budget by flipping the film stock and showing it twice?? Example: shots of screaming villagers running left, and then... running right, over exactly the same hill. Heh. And then, the shameless tagline: "Black Belt vs. Black Magic!"
• Fashion shoots from the 1980s! Check out the 1986 Vogue Classic Knits book I am sending on to its next owner (via PaperBackSwap): the hair! the colors! Andie MacDowell when she is blessedly silent!

And now, to bed, to hopefully recover my voice in the morning.

Sisterly stuff

Yay! I found the rubber spacers for the Mario pot/oven. Those of you who've seen my home (thank you for not running screamining into the night, by the way) know that many things reside there, some of which have been "put in a safe place" and so, um, well, occasionally I run across those safe places while on a completely different errand. Whoops.

This photo also gives a better idea of the color, sort of a darker orange, like the persimmon fruit they are named after by the Mario folk.

Remember how I, er, mentioned that I have a lot of STUFF? Well, my previously semi-empty cookbook bookcase is rather full now. Oops. In fact one night, I came back from the compactor room downstairs (see? I do really try to chuck stuff out!) to find my sweetie rearranging the shelves (he's an engineer -- he likes things organized, heh) which inspired me to tidy the shelves up a bit this week. Librarian + food nut = ever growing collection of cookbooks. You are SO shocked, I can tell.

Yesterday I treated my sister to a Wednesday matinee showing of JERSEY BOYS. I am happy to say she had a great time, since Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, although perhaps "oldies" for my generation, were popular (the first time around) when she was a teen. In fact, she told me yesterday that Sherry was one of the only things that would get get me stop crying when I was a baby, and so now I know why she always sang the phrase "Sherry Baby" to me when I was a little girl. HA!

We had a fun time, being part of the matinee crowd (despite the nighttime photo of Times Square from my cellphone that I am sharing from another evening) and it was quite eye-opening to see the demographic of the normal Wednesday matinee Broadway crowd: my sister may be 60 but she certainly doesn't LOOK 60! And my hair looked positively pitch black in comparison with the sea of blue that surrounded us! Whoa!

In fact, when we got there around 1pm, there was such a long line that I was startled and wondered f the performance was at 1:00 and not 2:00pm! I mean, it's a Broadway show, not a movie theater: you have assigned seating! When I asked the box office clerk what was up, she politely indicated that she had NO idea but hinted, "YOU know to come back at 10 minutes to, right?" (heh) Why yes, yes I do.

So my sister and I went off to have a quick lunch at the corner diner (an excellent one I will have to keep in mind) and of course, to use their facilities (hey -- would YOU want to battle all of the blue hairs for the very few restrooms at the theater before a 2-1/2 hour show?!)

It was interesting to see the matinee cast, because there was a different actor portraying Frankie Valli (he only does the 2 weekly matinees -- the singer I originally saw in December, Jarrod Spector, does all of the evening performances and was on the 2009 Emmy telecast) and they had switched the performer who played Bob Gaudio. I preferred my "evening" Frankie but sister liked her "afternoon" Frankie and was perfectly happy with his performance, and since yesterday was all about having a fun day out for her, that's all that matters :-)

We continued our day out with a nice dinner at the Elm Street Oyster House where we had delicious seafood. I wound up splitting my towering crab and avocado stack appetizer (yes, that was an appetizer) with my sister.

We then went on to our respective entrees, a pan-seared red snapper with broccoli rabe for her, and the pan-fried oyster appetizer (yes, I ordered an appetizer) for me. Yuummmm... no wonder our server said the pan-fried oysters were his favorite (appetizer), and they were rich enough that the smaller portion was perfect.

Afterward, we came back home to my brother-in-law and the home health aide (she and my older niece were waiting for him when he arrived home from the adult day care center in the late afternoon) and I saw how my sister patiently negotiated things with him, and gently taught the aide the best way to manage him.

Once again, I was impressed by how much grace, strength, and good humor my sister has, dealing with a spouse of 35 years who has regressed to the mental status of a child. As anyone who is the parent of a toddler knows, they can frequently be frustrating enough to make you want to scream, but my sister is just calm and persistent when trying to get him to change his clothes (left to his own devices, that doesn't happen very often), or put on his coat, or drink his juice, or ... the list is endless.

Fortunately, as I've mentioned before, his temperament is still similar to before the disease -- gentle and good humored -- but he can be very stubborn: just like a two year old, sometimes "No!" is the easiest answer to any request, especially if you don't understand what the person is saying, and he frequently no longer does (comprehend your meaning, that is).

If I understand it correctly, (which I probably don't, since I don't have his test results) my brother-in-law has a combination of Alzheimer's, frontal temporal lobe dementia, and fluent aphasia. The aphasia is best demonstrated by his communication style, which is clearly articulated, fluently spoken, but incomphrensible, as if you threw in the air a pile of the magnetic poetry words used on fridges and used them to converse with another person.

Occasionally, he will still surprise you with a short burst of coherent conversation, so you can't completely discount what he says. For example, he asked me how my mom was and it was at a moment when he understood who I was, and (presumably) who my mom was. Then again, my sister asked him yesterday how his day was, and he replied that it should have been taller.

So I do what little I can, whether it be to take my sister out for a show (she is really surprised/amused by my fondness for Frankie Valli songs) or to act as her own personal geek squad for her computers, although replacing the missing period key pried off by my younger great-nephew is a little beyond me.

The Far Shore

So my sweetie had consoled me a while ago to just ride out my wave of menopausal insanity/depression until I reached the other shore, and I think the far shore may finally be in sight. I don't mean I've reached it yet, but hey, at least I can see where I'm aiming for, finally. I mean vivid, horrible nightmares every week, knots in my neck, and clenching my teeth constantly -- these are not the signs of a happy camper.

On the other hand, they sure as heck beat frequent bursts of wild sobbing, so hey, I'll take the trade.

I will spare you all the details of the menopausal process (which will go on probably for the rest of the year, I'm guessing) except to say that I got so fed up last night I was ready to cry (again) whereupon my engineer (once again) consoled me. He reminded me that when I finally finish this process I will NEVER have to deal with it again. EVER. That cheery thought did perk me up. Well that and a sympathetic (or is that empathetic?) smooch.

At least I am starting to get back on track with some of my normal activities, like knitting, which is good, since between friends and family, 6 babies are expected to show up between now and mid-May. Yikes!

Of course, it's a bit difficult to be productive when I am loath to move a cute kitty when they park themselves on my knitting. Say hi to Spot, looking adorable and disinclined to move.

Other entertaining sights include the little boy on the subway this week, as posted above. I saw him enjoyably absorbed in his big picture book on dinosaurs and was amused because in addition to his serious look of concentration, at one point there was an older businessman sitting next to him who kept looking at the dinosaur book instead of reading his own report from the office. Who could blame the guy? Dinosaurs are WAY more fun than paperwork.

Although I haven't started cooking again, and my apartment still looks like a tornado hit it, Santa (via my engineer's mom) was good to me this year, and brought a long coveted addition to my kitchen: an enameled cast iron Dutch oven!

An episode of Cook's Country, the fluffier cousin/sibling to the revered Cook's Illustrated, reviewed the 6-qt Mario Batali pot as one of their top 2 picks for the budget category (by which they mean $100 or less). The exact same product review is posted on the CI site (which makes sense, since the same staff works for both magazines) but the Cook's Country website is free, and only requires registration (I think). Huh.

Although the Mario Batali Dutch oven (annoyingly named "the Essentials Pot" in their official branding lingo) also comes in a luscious Chianti color (i.e., deep red), that is (a) out of stock from the official supplier, and (b) $30 more. I got it for less -- with free shipping and no sales tax -- at Chef's Resource, which only stocks their persimmon (i.e., orange) pot. Since orange was my favorite color as a kid, this bothered me not at all.

Since I was intent on buying a pot/Dutch oven with a metal knob, did NOT want phenolic (i.e., plastic) knobs (are you listening Le Creuset?), did NOT want to pay Le Creuset prices (I'd rather buy dining chairs, thanks), and really liked the clean lines of the Mario pot (In the words of the Cook's gadget geek, "a very handsome pot"), I was quite pleased.

And yes, I will remove the label and wash the pot before using. Although I foolishly threw out the rubber spacers it came with, which would be useful for storage purposes (the manual suggests storing the pot with the spacers and lid inverted), since I suspect this heavy sucker will live on my stovetop (besides which, I have no more room in my kitchen cabinets), this doesn't really matter.

On the flip side re: cost, I found these 2 cookbooks on the stoop the other day. Yes, I follow in the time honored NYC tradition of "freecycling" (i.e., garbage picking).

Deep fried goodness

Somehow, when the temperature plunges, the thought of deep fried foods becomes even more appealing than usual, so when my friend Jane expressed curiosity about Forte Baden Baden Restaurant yesterday, well...!

BBNY now has its own website with photos but nothing is quite as hilarious as the visual directions provided by one humorously named website, since there is almost no signage in English, and the actual entrance door on the second floor is a very unwelcoming dark brown metal with only the letters "BBNY" indicating that you MAY have the right place.

It somehow seems appropriate, in a NYC kind of way, that my nice engineer (Scottish-Ukrainian heritage) introduced me (Chinese-American extraction) to it, so that I can bring my native New Yorker, Korean-American high school friend to a Korean-German beer bar in K-town.

Since my sweetie was home in bed with a nasty chest cold, it was up to us three (me, Jane, and her husband Jim) to demolish giant platters of deep fried rotisserie chicken with double-fried french fries, deep fried beef strips with onion rings, and sticky rice cakes (accompanied by 2 hard boiled eggs and fish cakes) covered with spicy kimchi sauce. I almost hurt myself (it was a close thing) but we managed to kill most of the food, and still leave 4 giant slabs of chicken.

Actually, though you can't tell in this medium, I had to take a quick break and inhale, er, I mean -- savor one of the leftover pieces of chicken as my mid-afternoon snack. Yum...

These photos were actually taken during a visit on December 20th with friends visiting from Pittsburgh, but what can I say? I stick with the same fabulous dishes.

Although I have tried others here, when introducing first time visitors, I am happy to order my top 3 recommendations. As you can see from the post-destruction oil stains on the empty doilies, my friends usually have no problems with my suggestions.

The last photo was also taken on the 20th, and shows the restaurant's sign in the upper right corner, along with an uncharacteristically deserted West 32nd Street. It was the night of the 8"+ snowfall in the city.

While that may not seem like a lot to some people, for NYC, that was huge. To give you an idea of the storm, that same evening, my sweetie's parents were blanketed under 24" of snow in south Jersey.

These days, we're not having lots of snow, just 0 degree wind chill.

Plus One

Okay, on to more cheerful topics (even though it is always so much easier for me to self-flagellate than self-congratulate) -- according to yesterday's WW weigh-in, I gained only 1 pound between December 16th and January 6th. This covers a span of 2 family Xmas dinners, my birthday, 3 multi-day visits to both sets of moms (truly deadly), multiple meals out with friends, and unlimited access to my kitchen while on staycation (not to mention vast volumes of emotional upheaval). So although I did not actually lose any weight, the damage could have been much worse, it's true.

The Lexapro seems to be kicking in (hallelujah!) since I seem to be nearing the far shore (my engineer suggested I look at the depression which swamped me over the holidays as a wave which I should ride out until it washed me up on the opposite shore -- he put it better than that, but I think you get the idea). I still get freaked out, but instead of my general mood being "the glass is half empty & about to shatter into dozens of shards (while I am barefoot) because it's a crappy glass", it's more like "the glass is half empty and I may -- or may not -- accidentally knock it off the table, but at least I'm wearing my slippers" which is an improvement.

And I bit the bullet and finally picked up my Rx of tamoxifen yesterday night. Now that the doctors have untangled my medication conflicts, I went back to the pharmacy near my office where I had dropped off the Rx in early December, and they released the pills to me. While this has been quite a long delay (over a month since I received the scrip from my oncologist), trying to transfer a Rx from one location to another -- especially when there is a hold on the meds -- is not a fun task with the pharmacy clerks and drug benefit company (which is separate from the medical insurance company -- the health insurer has been GREAT; the drug folks, not so much). Well okay, and yeah, my slip IS showing, Dr. Freud.

At least the prescription is very reasonably priced: $5 for one month's dosage.

Also survived my first day back at work yesterday (woohoo! a job to return to: always a treat these days) and shocked two of my co-workers senseless by showing up on time today (and almost on time yesterday) AND it was before my boss and three other folks. Okay granted, two of them were delayed by train trouble, but still! (heh) One of them jokingly grumbled that he will not be getting morning coffee hand-delivered by me any more, since 9am is too early for him to start his second cup of the day.

So far, so good on that particular new year's resolution, but my staying up this late is NOT helpful (that alarm tomorrow morning is going to suck big time), so off I go to bed, leaving you all with a photo from last month's holiday display in the Time Warner Center atrium. The lights cycle through color changes, but this one shot was nifty because each star had multiple colors, instead of all 14 of them being the same solid shade (e.g., all stars were all red, etc.)

Staycation

As you may have noticed, I haven't felt very chatty lately. I have not even checked e-mail in about a week, a mind boggling concept, I know.

It's been a rough holiday season. I took some time off work, since I still had some vacation days left, and that yielded a nice stretch of 12 days away from the office (including holidays). Tomorrow is my first day back at work, which is sort of giving me a flashback to last January, and my disability leave.

Although I had many grandiose plans for tidying up my apartment during my staycation (stop that gaffawing right now -- I can hear you all from here) in reality, it was just a much needed mental health break -- that is, I spent much of the time having a nice little nervous collapse. (Put it this way: I now have strategic stashes of Kleenex in all 3 rooms of my apartment.)

Thanks to copious amounts of sleep at Mom's the last 2 nights (20 hours in 2 nights! yes!) and a new Rx of antidepressants on the 31st (Lexapro, which I really need to read up on soon, I suppose) which should not interfere with the tamoxifen that I have yet to start taking, I feel considerably more human.

Yes, being completely off meds while dealing with hormonal insanity, family stress (my brother-in-law is really, REALLY, not doing well, and so things are very difficult for my sister), tri-state holiday logistics, turning 42, post-treatment side effects (guess what? those will linger all year, oh yay), and insomnia (it doesn't seem fair to get both lethargy and insomnia when you're depressed) well, I will spare you all the soggy details of my wild mood swings except to say that I am glad to be within sight of equilibrium.

True, there were fun and warm and fuzzy moments within the past few weeks (Xmas with both sets of families), but I am just not feeling particularly communicative (see: depressed, above). Just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive, and regaining my sanity.

And now I leave you with some amusing photos of misprints from the Despair.com calendar gifted to me remotely by my friend Laura (she ordered it while stationed abroad). The top photo shows the original placement of Martin Luther King Jr Day (um, no, not usually on a Wednesday -- if you click on the photo, you can probably read their snarky disclaimer) and the bottom shot shows the "After" shot, using the cover up sticker supplied by Despair. Heh. Since it is my first post of the year, I thought a nod to a 2010 calendar was appropriate, no?