Crafting Triple Crown

Though I did not watch The Preakness this weekend, I have been busily trundling along on my own personal crafting triple crown: ceramics, cooking (and lots of eating), and knitting.

The platter above had some really funky runs which I liked and could not recreate if I tried. I was also supposed to attend a glazing workshop this morning, but switched to next Friday morning's session (the 21st) instead, as I desperately need a mental health day and have yet to take the second of my 2 discretionary days for the year. So Friday, I will spend the whole day at the pottery studio, ending with a dinner visit with my mom.

This weekend also saw my first attempt to create my own baby sweater pattern, and lemme tellya, the pattern math is killing me. However, I think baby Olivia is worth it :-) and I am highly amused by the Easter egg colors I have chosen: green, pink, and yellow. The pattern is a mixture of Little Bubbles and eyelet rows (see what I mean about math?) with banded stripes of color, knitted top down with a round yoke. I am also varying the sizes of the Little Bubbles boxes on Olivia's sweater (more math). The end result could be dizzying, but it'll keep me occupied, and hey, I can always make another sweater for Olivia (girly things are so much fun to knit!) Photos and pattern will be forthcoming once I am further along.

Last night, my friend Jane also organized a goat dinner. Resto's large format feasts serves an animal from nose to tail for groups of 8 or larger, and it was indeed tasty, but I did not take any photos as it just looked like very large platters of meat prepared in different ways. (Maybe my blogging hiatus has made me more picky about my food p*rn.) We pre-selected goat (you have to book ahead and put down a $250 deposit) which is not on their regular a la carte menu, but other options include pig, veal, large fish, etc.

Apparently, 3 courses of goat finished with Belgian waffles were not enough for us (!!!) as Jane, her husband Jim, and I went out afterward for coffee and dessert around the corner at Primehouse.

Jane ordered homemade "make your own" doughnuts which were truly scrumptious. The little squeeze bottles allow you to add your own butterscotch, strawberry jam, or chocolate filling.

I, on the other hand, opted for my first bananas foster, which came with its own almond crunch sugar cookies. Yummm....

Ironically, all of the booze at dinner helped me deal with this morning's noisy walkers streaming past my window: woke up at 6:30 and so was already puttering around when noisy AIDwalk folks streamed screamining past my window for 2-3 hours. Yes, I know it's a good cause, and I've raised thousands for the walk myself, but every charity walk (and there are quite a few during the course of the year) makes me want to just yell out my window on SUNDAY MORNINGS for them to just SHUT THE HELL UP!

Yes, I am always cranky when my sleep is disturbed on weekend mornings, and not just when I am newly single.

Tonight, I made not one but two batches of fruit muffins for my coworker Mike's birthday tomorrow, as I'm a bit ambivalent about how the first batch (carrot) turned out.

Although the low-fat carrot muffins are truly very moist, because they use crushed pineapple (?!) to add moisture, they are actually a little TOO moist (er, perhaps I underbaked them or didn't squeeze out enough moisture from the shredded carrots). I also threw in some chocolate chips and sliced almonds I had lying around.

Therefore, I made peach muffins as a backup. Since I haven't tasted them yet, I'm not sure how good a back up they will be (!) but the reviews online seemed positive, so here's hoping... I used thawed, chopped frozen peaches instead of fresh, and threw on some cinnamon (hence the dark speckles) in case the muffins didn't caramelize sufficiently. The fear of albino muffins was unfounded, but we'll see how the taste factor goes. Wish me luck!

Moms and babies

I have another grand-niece and she's a cutie! Olivia Kate (7 lbs. 14 oz.) arrived yesterday morning and mother and baby are doing well. Normally, I think infants look unnervingly like Yoda, but she actually looks cute! (As I may have mentioned before, my niece and her husband produce remarkably attractive offspring, and no, I am not biased; see: Yoda comment, above.)

When in a funk, babies (that you can return to their parents) and family (that you like) are very comforting, so my mom and I went up to CT for Mother's Day weekend and saw the gang.

It was Mom's first visit to see my brother-in-law in the nursing home and he was doing much better this time (fentanyl is your friend -- the absence of pain works wonders on anyone's state of mind). He occasionally had flashes of lucidity where he would recognize my mom or me. Then seconds later, he would be off in his own world again. (I have to admit that those flashes are more disorienting than when he just stares at us blankly.)

Also confusing -- to me -- is the fact that he looks better, but the doctors are mentioning "hospice" and urging my sister to think about "making arrangements". I understand intellectually why this is (I mean, he has now been taken off solid foods altogether because he may choke) but emotionally I'm in denial, I guess.

As for my non-romantic situation, I'm in the angry portion of the seven stages of grief (and when I get angry I eat apparently -- I have gained several pounds to date). I also distract myself with retail therapy (thankfully, I am cheap, so this involves outlets and eBay, not Bulgari or Armani) and vacation planning.

You can see why babies, Mom (I spend a lot of time at her place, knitting -- she found me the matching buttons for this sweater I finished for Sonya's future baby girl) and my lively family (Sonya is my brother-in-law's niece, by the way) are such welcome distractions, especially since my home (always a manifestation of my enotional health) is completely overrun -- it rather looks like the post-tornado Midwest, or as one friend said recently, "Jeez -- are you moving or what?" Yes, it's THAT messy.

And now, lunch time is OVAH.

Life, Continued

So. As I and many people agree, Mom is both perceptive and hilarious. She wanted to know why the engineer had wasted 4 or 5 years of my life. Since our second anniversary would have been this month, I wondered if this meant that my life speeds up as I get older, kind of life dog years. But no, I informed her, it was only 2 years. (Apparently my mom is as angry at him as I am. Heh. I feel free in saying all this stuff here since he has never read my blog while we were going out [in retrospect, perhaps a hint I should have picked up on] so I don't see why he would start now.)

Today's conversation with Mom continued in this perversely entertaining but erroneous manner for a while until my express bus to MSKCC arrived. Today was my first check up with the oncologist since I stopped treatment.

Everything seems okay (more details on my tamoxifen test in a minute) but I will not feel at ease until Wednesday, since my onco-doc won't get my blood test results until tomorrow. These tests screen for cancer antigens and other happy signs. So if I do NOT hear from her tomorrow, well, no news is good news! If I do hear from her tomorrow, I will be a nervous wreck.

But on to more positive results, like the genetic testing for my tamoxifen metabolization rate. I got to swab my mouth just like the "perps" on CSI, and send in the swabs for analysis. Apparently I am an "intermediate" metabolizer, so while my body doesn't chow down on it like Oreo cupcakes (see above -- YUM!), neither does it spit it out like beets or mint jelly (flavors I personally loathe, okay?)

This is a relief since there are apparently few alternatives for younger women like me that aren't toxic. Ick. So I am perfectly happy with being (as always) a "B" student.

Yes, I had so gotten out of the habit of blogging that I completely scarfed down the Oreo cupcake I ordered on Sunday afternoon at Society Coffee, a mellow cafe near me with deliciously frosty air-conditioning (it was around 90 on Sunday AND humid -- ugh) and free wifi after 4pm on weekends. Hence, the photo above is taken of one of the survivors under the cake dome. The frosting tastes like pureed Oreo filling... Mmmm...

While I was hiding in the air-conditioning, I was pondering my vacation options for the rest of the year since I have 16 days left (!) and intend to spend them all travelling to cities starting with the letter "S".

In chronological order, they will be Seattle (hi Margaret!) where I can indulge in my fascination with her adorable son, San Francisco (hi, Bim! hi Shelley!) which was postponed from last month due to viral gastroenteritis, and Shanghai(woo!) which I never got to see properly since I was working like I fiend when I was there in 2006, although I did find time to snap a photo of that bizarre statue above (and no, I have absolutely NO idea what it is, besides a possibly demented looking fish).

My cousin Peyen is living there now for work, and I have enough FF miles to go there in business class (yippee!) -- a critical consideration since a direct flight from Newark is almost 15 hours! Also, I was pondering squeezing in a side trip to HK or Beijing (hey, Brian -- are you around in late November?) while I was there...

I also have been knitting away at a sweater for my almost-cousin Sonya's future daughter. Gotta admit that the Little Bubbles design from KnitPicks is simultaneously addictive (endless color combo possibilities!) and monotonous (endless rows of stockinette...)

So all in all, I seem to be doing better post-breakup than pre, surely a sign that I done right. Not that I still don't get into funks now and then (and I have apparently quite a reservoir of resentment bottled up) but on the whole, I have been doing a lot more Stuff generally.

Looking for Mr. Hershey Bar

So okay, you may have noticed that I've been kind of quiet here recently. That's because I've been rather miserable.

As of today, I am officially single again, and I feel much better. Coincidence? I think NOT.

So here's how my dinner with Mom went tonight (timing is everything)...

Mom: What? Your boyfriend is too busy to come to dinner?

Me: He's not my boyfriend any more.

Mom: I knew it! He went on that vacation with another woman, didn't he? [Mom's 2 husbands did not give her a high opinion of male fidelity. Yes, I know my dad was one of those two men.]
Me: No, Mom. That's not it. Remember how I said I was waiting for him to decide on getting married or not? [Note: I am distilling long conversations about our different relationship issues into concrete terms she can relate to. See also: vacations without ME, above]
Me: Well, he said he doesn't want to get married [which is essentially what it boils down to in the end, even if I'm not even sure that I myself want to get married] so I broke up with him. Now I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Mom: Oh.

Mom: Well good. No sense in twisting in the wind any longer than you have to. Best to break it off sooner rather than later in that case. [Mom is very pragmatic.]
Mom: Now that you've broken up, I can tell you I always thought he was very unappreciative. [Why do people never say these things until afterward?! It is true, however, that he did not apparently appreciate ME enough.] I didn't tell you before because you'd just get upset and defensive [true] but NOW, I can tell you how I really feel!
Me: Okay Mom, I don't want to talk about this anymore, remember? [Don't worry, she got to enumerate all his faults after dinner while on the phone to my sister... none of which I could really disagree with. Heh.]

Yes, I am more than a little angry (it's easier to be angry than disappointed and upset) but that's all I'm going to say about the subject (for now).

Tomorrow, I think it will be a fine time to go pummel some clay in the studio. Benchtime awaits.

In the meantime, enjoy the funky "teardrop" drip of glaze in the bowl I just collected from the studio this week. More photos another day.

And now, on to some more angry eating... for some reason, I've been craving Hershey bars lately, even though I normally avoid them.