clickmom

Food I should not have eaten

Some New York Times food writer did this whole story about the art of Thanksgiving day pies and she went in search of the ultimate perfect pie recipe (apple, pumpkin, pecan) and one of the takeaways was that pumpkin doesn’t make a great pie and the best squash to make a pie is butternut squash and the best way to use it is to roast the butternut squash first so that it gets nice and caramelized so I did that and I made a “Pumpkin“ pie and I didn’t tell anybody and nobody knows and now I feel so sneaky.

Also, the pie came out great. I had a slice for breakfast. It’s day 2 of eating everything I’m allergic to. I decided this year to just have fun and eat the tasty food. I used butter instead of margarine. I ate the pies. Everything was delicious.*

I also made an Apple strudel for the some reason of wanting to eat tasty puff pastry. I didn’t use a recipe, I just flew by the seat of my pants and it came out great too because - puff pastry. You really have to work hard to screw up puff pastry.

Probably the most delicious (puff pastry wise) thing I made was a mushroom pie. This recipe a friend passed along to me uses puff pastry as the crust. I used one of the prime mushrooms I found this summer. I used the second maitake mushroom I plucked from the area around our driveway. Only Josh and I ate it, which is tragic because it was delicious.

I used real butter on the sweet potatoes and my mouth almost exploded when I took the first bite. It was so good. When you don’t eat milk products that taste of butter is so incredible I wanted to moan while I ate. There is a reason why butter is in everything delicious.

The other new thing I did this year was spatchcock the turkey. It will be my forever recipe. No soggy bottom! All skin crisp. What is not to like there?

*with the exception of the green bean casserole. What a freaking abomination. I thought I would make one AS A JOKE because I thought it would be delicious in the same way that macaroni and cheese is- delicious warm soothing comfort junk food. But NO!! It was vile. Canned green beans and canned condensed soup. I want to hurl just thinking about it. And I ate one spoonful during prep and not even a single fried onion during the meal. I can’t even believe I put it out. Never again.

beverage

I used to wonder how my parents could sit on the couch night after night for 5 hours every night and just watch television. And now I have become them. And I hate it. I am so restless, and not interested, and bored- it's not like regular bored it's hard core bored and all I want to do is something fun, (but not something un-fun like cleaning the house) I wish I lived with someone I could talk to about photography. I wish I lived with someone I cold talk to period. Watching the husband's eyes roll back in his head as I speak is so infuriating to me that I have pretty much given up talking to him. You enever know when he is going to just get sleepy, and it is as demeaning as it sounds, watching him sink away to sleep no matter what is coming out of my mouth- like seriously, I could be pouring my heart out and having some kind of psychological miraculous breakthrough and there would go his eyeballs and then his head would follow. Annoying as f**k. And I don't want to be told he can't help it. He doesn't try to fight it. It would be one thing if he was strugglign to stay awake, but that's not happening. 

Anyways, what I really came here to say is that I might be experiencing a turmeric miracle. I admit to watching the entire social media feed of some woman who claims that the turmeric she started consuming for it's anti-inflammatory properties caused her to lose a bunch of weight and go from a nice round chubster to a healthy weight. So, I have been taking turmeric, but also for it's anti-inflammatory properties because of the trifecta of pain in my three heel area injuries, and it has been working. But for the past couple of weeks I have been drinking a mushroom beverage because it contains a mushroom that is supposed to help restore the correct intestinal flora. And with my personal history of antibiotic use, no choice, with my pneumonia and bronchitis history, there isn't a chance that my internal flora isn't messed up. I mean, look at all these annoying AF food sensitivities I have! Something has to be wrong, right? This mushroom beverage also contains other mushrooms and also spices, one of which is turmeric and now I am wondering if perhaps the added turmeric was what I needed to put me in weight loss mode because... wait for it... Somehow, without trying I have lost 10 pounds. The key here is the without trying part, because never in my entire nearly 57 years on this planet have I ever shed a single pound without seriously trying to do so. So, the first thing I thought was AHA! Turmeric! but then as I thought more about it, maybe the mushrooms in the beverage powder are making me healthier somehow.... I don't know, all I do know is that now I might be dependent on spiced mushroom beverage. I'll worry about that when I weigh some weight that takes me out of the covid high risk category. 

Choice

Sometimes when when I share some of the stories that are seared into my brain with a friend I think, Oh! I should share this on clickmom and then I wonder…… Have I already shared this?

So, since this blog isn’t catalogued I will now share with you (possibly for the second or third time) the story of how my view of death by disease was forever written in stone by the devastating death of Mrs S

My dad had his own little firm. At some point he made his second man, Phil, his partner. From January to April my dad and Phil would have family members come in on saturdays to help out. (It was such a REWARD to make photocopies and answer phones for Dad) (Also, this was before computers) Phil’s mom was Mrs. S. Mrs. S was a well dressed, perfumed, meticulous makeup, freshly painted nails, just got hair done presenting woman. I marveled at her.

She got breast cancer and died from it. One day, not long after shenpassed, I was helping out in the office and I overheard Phil (agonizing) crying to my dad and confessing to him that Mrs. S had asked him to bring her pills to end her life. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, she was his mom, he couldn’t even believe that she had asked him to help her, and then two days later she wasn’t able to talk anymore and she lasts for about two torturous weeks (or some amount of time that was enough that he was sure she had suffered a great deal) and he was so incredibly guilt ridden that he had not helped his mom when she asked him to. After hearing Phil sobbing in pain like that I knew that I would never put my kids though it and I would take care of it myself should the time come, but also, that we, as a society, were totally fucked up by not allowing people to go on their own terms.

To this day I can not think about someone coming to the end of their life without reminding myself of Mrs. S., how she passed, and what it did to her son. Overhearing that conversation changed me. I heard a news story about a town (state?) where there was an effort to get every single person to make a detailed end of life plan saying what their wishes were before they were desperately ill. Almost every single person wanted not to be a burden and most importantly not to extend their suffering in any way. Amen.

I wish this wasn’t so hard.

I had a good therapy session with the shrink who doesn’t let me beat around the bush today. We talked a lot about being judgmental because I told him how I have been grappling with the decision of whether or not to include the story of my psychologically grueling one day experiment of sitting in the backyard and photographing all the birds. I’ve been going back-and-forth and back-and-forth about including the narrative and I finally I reached out to Evan because he is the only person who has really held and leafed through the book. Evan asked me what I was afraid was going to happen if I didn’t include my own personal story and a gigantic lightbulb just exploded in the sky over my head. It all boils down to the pictures giving a very different perspective of the day then my experience of the day and my fear of being judged as being inauthentic or a fraud if I don’t inform the viewer that they are welcome to have their own experience with the images but it wasn’t mine.

So the shrink and I had a big discussion on judgment and feeling judged and being judgmental and he pointed out some language I used when I talk about myself and how I am constantly judging my own actions and behaviors and I feel like this may have been a little bit of a breakthrough. My job now is to pay attention when my inner voice tells me I “should” do something and question my motives.

The shrink tells me all of the time how common my behaviors are for people who were abused or neglected and MAN, DO I HATE HEARING THAT!! Apparently my childhood messed up my wiring and I have to become acutely aware of the damage in order to deal with it. I would like to remove those behaviors like a big coat, let them slip to the floor behind me and simply walk away. I wish this wasn’t so hard.

skipped

Just realized that I completely forgot to update about my whole shingles ordeal. You need to get that shot. Just get the shot. You do not want to know shingles.

Holy greaking hell does shingles hurt- and I had a mild case! Seriously, the area of skin that itches, burns, stabs and just hurts nonstop goes beyond the area that has the rash. I had the most adorable little rash ever, it was exactly 3 tiny little disgusting yellow weeping pustules and it was GROSS. Except, the pain felt like I had crashed a motorcycle and removed all the skin off my side and half my back. It was crazy. The muscle spasms came and went with the shingles, so I am thinking that perhaps they were related. I do know that the chiropractor did nothing for the muscle spasms. Nothing was broken from the little trip in the woods, because I did go to the orthopedist who took X-rays and suggested I see the physiologist, and also told me she thought it was shingles. Then, once I got the pustules, I cancelled my appointment with the physiologist because there is a chance of being contagious and I would crumble with guilt if I passed this on to anyone, and as the shingles died down so did the muscle spasms. Eventually I ended up pounding OTC pain killer around the clock because I was so over the pain, and once I did that for a few days in row the pain never got as bad- but- the itching and burning? Yes, still in the area where the rash was, just south of my left armpit. And, this is not area one wants to scratch raw, you know? Forget about bras. As if they weren’t unbearably uncomfortable enough after not wearing one for the first 3 months of the pandemic, can you even imagine wearing one with a baby shingles rash underneath? Yeah, not my favorite moments of the day.

I’m all healed up now, less itching and pain every day and more convinced than ever that signing on with the husband’s doctor was a huge mistake. I called him on the Friday that the orthopedist told me she thought I might have shingles and he did me wrong! He did not prescribe an antiviral, and by the time he did I was on the road to recovery so I didn’t take it because it only helps if you take it early on and also because the side effects sounded kind of gnarly, and I asked the pharmacist how likely I was to have the side effects and he replied “Oh, you’ll get them.” and I said, F that, I don’t have time for nausea. vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, dizziness etc… I already felt bad enough!!

An interesting symptom of shingles is nausea, and I actually have some food aversions that took hold during the shingles hey day which I can’t seem to shake and tragically, the thing I instantly feel queasy when thinking about is mushrooms. MUSHROOMS!! I literally have hundreds of dollars of both dehydrated and good quality gourmet frozen mushrooms and the thought of them all makes my stomach flip flop. For real. I could live on toast right now.

Also, because I just bask in this sort of thing, let me report hat the pharmacist asked me when I would turn 50 when I told him I had shingles, and I, feeling as ragged out as I ever feel, was so shocked that I didn’t look like an old hag was speechless and couldn’t even answer him. I don’t know how much longer this could possibly last for so I am soaking every second of looking younger than I am. I am not lying when I tell people to gain 100 pounds and they can make their own wrinkle filler.

Shr00ms

So, after a seriously fun last couple of months of mushroom hunting I finally started to find out about the medicinal qualities of some mushrooms. The mushrooms I wanted weren’t the ones I was finding though, and one in particular is supposed to be good for a girl’s gastrointestinal flora and fauna and that’s the one I wanted! So, I bought this trendy mushroom drink and decided to drink it for a solid couple of months to determine if it was helpful or not. Today was day 3 and while it might seem early to have any results I will say that I am hopeful. The first day I mixed up the drink with hot water and I didn’t know how I was going to get through the experiment. The next two days I mixed it with hot oat milk and honey and let’s be honest. Hot oat milk and honey on its own would be a passable drink, but at least I have found a way to make the mushroom deal palatable.

There have been quite a few things I meant to write about but didn’t get around to so now we will have another edition of long texts I sent to friends during the past week.

3 inches of water in basement. Been shop vacuuming it for the last two hours. Came upstairs to put the trail cam out.

Me: Husband, I am going back downstairs. Why don’t I give you that half a sandwich you did not eat for lunch and I’ll embellish with some macaroni salad and stuff.

Husband: Hmmmm. I think it’s a bit too early to eat. I’ll eat at 7

Me. Great. I’ll just stop shop vacuuming all the basement water up and run back up here to service you an hour from now. (8 angry face with cursing emojis)

Thank god I have a sink down here

Holy shit. I’m calling it a night. I got most of the water up. Unbelievable. Thank god for that shop vac!!!

There is more to do but my back is threatening to walk out on me if I do anything funny. There is not enough water left to shop vac anymore. Just mopping. I’ll put some fans down there tomorrow.

Here’s another funny. Am waiting for Husband’s doctor. Last time I brought him to the lab he pulled his mask down and blew his nose in the waiting room- two other people were in there. So just now I asked him if he would like to blow his nose so as not to have to do it in the waiting room. He rolled his eyes at me. I said “I’m surprised those people didn’t say something to you” and his response…. OH, ITS A GOOD THING THEY DIDN’T. I WOULD HAVE GONE POSTAL ON THEM. (9 laughing emojis)

Then I hooked the handicap sign to the rear view mirror and he pulled himself out of the car leaned on the car, grabbed his cane and hobbled to the elevator.

It gets worse. The doctor takes us into her office for the conference part of the visit and Husband throws himself- all 6.5 feet- backwards into the chair because he is too weak to slowly lower himself so he just drops causing the chair to fall backwards and slam his back and head into the wall behind him and trapping him between the chair and the wall. (2 crazy face emojis)

We both had our backs turned towards him when it happened. I was closing her office door and she was making her way around the desk. We both swirled around, looked at him, looked at each other, then stepped towards him. He couldn’t move because he was smooshed in there. I asked DID YOU HIT YOUR HEAD?? And she said something about his back, which, who cares??? I was thinking another concussion! I immediately took charge of helping him by pulling the chair back out from underneath him so he could roll over and get up. She backed away. She is about 4’8” and probably weighs about 75 pounds. She wasn’t going to be physically helpful. As I’m helping Husband I hear the doctor say out loud, “Of course we should worry more about his head” so I am guessing she realized that I had been down this road before and had it under control.

On the TV news just now they insinuated that there are concerns of people giving out “edible cannabis” infused Halloween treats. One the one hand it’s a warning for people with little kids but on the other hand maybe it’s time to go trick or treating just in case!! (2 laugh til you cry emojis)