2013

Well it's 2013 and I haven't blogged in AGES.

2012 ended off with me starting a new therapy program.  It's a year long course of DBT.

I also learned to crochet and crocheted up a bunch of scarves for everyone for Christmas as well as making a bunch of jewelry to get into the gallery for Christmas.

Christmas at my sister's was wonderful and much  more peaceful than I was expecting what with a house full of dogs and all.  I was sent  home with buns, Luciano sausage, and a brand spankin' new iPod among other assorted goodies.  The generosity of my sister and her husband as well as my mom and her husband humbles me and makes me feel blessed to have them.  And how much my sister's in laws make me part of the family fills me with warmth and happiness. 

So instead of blogging I've been putting pictures up on facebook from my iPod.  Well, when I'm not crocheting that is...

Check out my  new hat that I crocheted myself!

New Year's Eve was spent eating seafood and I had my first and only raw oyster.  It doesn't taste bad...just kind of salty really.  I just wish it didn't look and feel sort of like thick mucus.  I guess foodies would call that a "creamy" texture.  I just call it slimy.   I'd try it again.  Mostly because I'm stubborn.

So here it is, January 2013, and I find myself in a fairly deep depression at the moment.

As the Bloggess says, depression lies.

And coincidentally, my therapist said that to me today too.  At one point I was ramping myself up to a good 'ole, "WHAT'S THE POINT IN ANYTHING IF WE ALL DIE ANYWAY" and she just looked at me and said, "That's just shit your brain is telling you and it's not helping!"

She's right.

But goddamn I am under the water right now waiting to breathe again.

But she says these things come in waves.

Maybe I need to make some sea glass art like I've seen at my friend Joan's house to remind me of the waves and  how they come and go.   She makes the most beautiful things.

Maybe it's ok to do that for myself.

my victory lap aka my cookies are pretty and can kick cancer right in the nads

So I tend to think of myself as a completely non-competitive person.  Being competitive is like sports and I don't do sports so I'd just rather forgo the whole competitive thing altogether, yanno?

I'm more of a watch the figure skating for the outfits kind of gal and I stopped doing that about 10 years ago.

So anyways, Sheila told me there's a bake sale at her work and wouldn't you know it, it's a cancer related bake sale.

No, not raising money for cancer...it's already a greedy mofo.  It's for cancer research at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.   As  y'all know I lost my husband David O'Farrell to cancer almost 3 years ago and wouldn't you know it, I can bake!

I was damn well going to make cookies for that bake sale.

Dave T inspired me to make the cookies with an autumn colours theme and while I was trying to fall asleep the other night I remembered that I have a maple leaf cookie cutter.

BAM!  FALL LEAF BUTTER COOKIES!!!!

It's SUPER easy to do.

Just make 3 bowls of what I call "cheater royal icing".  It's basically royal icing without the meringue powder.  I just mix icing sugar, warm water, and vanilla until it's the consistency of thin pudding.  It's creamy but will drizzle off the spoon easily.  Just make sure it's not runny because it needs to give a nice coating on the cookie.   Too runny and the icing will be too thin and you'll end up with more icing on the countertop than on the cookie.

Colour one bowl red, another bowl yellow, and the third bowl orange.

Pour the contents of each bowl into a larger flat bottomed bowl (I used a shallow corning ware dish) one at a time and in different parts of the bowl.  Take a skewer or something (particularly something you don't want stained) and swirl the colours together slightly so that they mix up a bit but they do not blend.

Take your cookies and dip them into the dish and set them on racks for the icing to set and harden.  Oh there will be icing drippage so put wax paper or  plastic wrap under your racks...trust me.   This is what happens under the racks....looks kinda cool actually.

The white blobs are from the chocolate cookies I made to go along with the butter cookies because I can never, ever,  just make a little bit.

Yeah.  This is what I made for the bake sale.

Aaaaaaaaand guess who got unofficially voted the PRETTIEST COOKIES OF THE BAKE SALE???

ME BEYOTCHES!

That's right!

And even though I priced my leaf cookies at $3 dollars a plate they sold for $10 dollars a plate!

SUCK ON THAT, CANCER!  FEEL MY RESEARCH MONEY GOING RIGHT FOR YOUR SOFT UNDERBELLY!

Ahem.

Does being smug take away from my good deed?

So much for having no competitive streak.

I am still here

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. 
The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. 
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. 
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. 
You will find a good man soon.” 

The first psycho therapist told me to spend 
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet 
with my eyes closed and ears plugged. 
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking 
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. 

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. 
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness 
when they care more about what they give 
than what they get. 

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” 

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me 
forget what the trauma said. 

The trauma said, “Don’t write this poem. 
Nobody wants to hear you cry 
about the grief inside your bones.” 

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi dove
into the Hudson River convinced 
he was entirely alone.” 

My bones said, “Write the poem.” 
The lamplight. Considering the river bed. 
To the chandelier of your fate hanging by a thread.
To everyday you could not get out of bed.
To the bulls eye of your wrist
To anyone who has ever wanted to die.
I have been told, sometimes, the most healing thing to do-
Is remind ourselves over and over and over:
“Other people feel this too.”
The tomorrow that is coming, gone
And it has not gotten better
When you are half finished writing that letter 
to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried
But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back”
There is no bruise like the bruise of loneliness kicks into the spine
So let me tell you I know there are days 
it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets 
when you break down like the doors of the looted buildings
You are not alone 
and wondering who will be convicted of the crime 
of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame
You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy
I have never met a heavy heart
that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside
Some people will never understand 
the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside
Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house
But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing
A life can be rich like the soil
Can make food of decay
Can turn wound into highway
Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says 
“It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.”
I have never trusted anyone 
with the pulled back bow of my spine 
the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat
Screaming for their pulses to find the fight to pound
Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge 
I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town
Calculating exactly what I had to swallow
to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down
What I know about living is the pain is never just ours
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo
So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window
When I can see what I couldn’t see before,
through the glass of my most battered dream
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.
So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, 
don’t try to put me back in,
just say “Here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better
but knowing as bad as it hurts our hearts, made of only just skin, 
knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming —
let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here
asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet
you — you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.
Raising your bright against the bitter dark
Your bright longing
Your brilliant fists of loss”

Friends, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my God that’s plenty,
my God that’s enough,
my God that is so so much for the light to give,
each of us at each other’s backs whispering over and over and over
“Live”
“Live”
“Live”

The Nutritionist— Andrea Gibson

Ooops doesn't even begin to cover it...

Okie dokie, so it turns out I've been accidentally OD'ing on one of my meds for over two weeks.

 That would certainly explain a few things. 

After a couple of frantic phone calls with my team it's been determined that I should settle out in a week.   Oh and I won't die...just sayin'.

It is, however, kinda serious so I feel like an idiot. 

I used to take 2x250mg pills in the morning and 2x250mg pills at dinner of a certain med.  The prescription changed to 1x500 pill morning and night.

I sort of didn't notice and kept on taking 2.  

ALWAYS READ THE LABEL KIDS!

 I AM A DOOFUS!

Once in a blue moon...I baked a cake.

It's a blue moon tonight.

Wiki has an interesting article on what a blue moon is HERE . 

Read the article and you'll understand where the saying "once in a blue moon" comes from.

Sheila decided this occasion needed a cake and I volunteered to make one...as if I wouldn't.  I didn't want to just make a regular cake though.

I wanted to make a BLUE MOON CAKE!!!!

I had all these grandiose visions of having the man in the moon on the cake, all sorts of nice craters and things showing up, and I even thought of putting up some moon landing stuff for fun.

My vision was pure art I tell you.

The reality was more like this,

Yeah.

It's just half a sphere with blue icing.

BUT, I made a spherical cake without one of  those spherical cake pans!  IT CAN BE DONE!

And there was minimal cutting involved.  I used 1 9inch springform cake pan, 1 pie plate, and 1 pottery bowl.    FYI the batter in the pottery bowl cooks up fine, it just takes a bit longer.  The only thing I cut was the cake out of the pottery bowl because the bottom side wasn't flat enough.  Other than that, stack them up in a 3 layer cake and ice it into a sphere.

In other news, I made my first home made pasta sauce recently.

We had an insane amount of roma(plum) tomatoes from our garden out back so I blanched roughtly 2 colanders full of them, peeled them, and chopped them up.  I also used a bunch of onions from the garden out back and sauteed those with fresh garlic and olive oil.  I added fresh basil paste, fresh chopped oregano, salt and pepper, a bit of sugar to balance the acid in the tomatoes, and I have to admit I didn't have tomato paste so I threw in a store bought can of sauce to help it thicken.  I also browned some lean ground beef and made it a meat sauce.  Oh and I added a little hot sauce and one secret ingredient to give it some zing.  :-)

Here's my very first ever from the garden made pasta sauce!

IT WAS AMAZING!!!!

I worked hard on that sauce and even burned my thumb.  Yes, suffering and love went into that sauce people.

WHAT?

IT ADDS TO THE FLAVOUR!

I can't believe I had an Italian grandmother and I never got around to making a home made sauce until I turned 40.  She'd probably pinch me and be proud of me at the same time.

Wish I could have known you Grandma Ida!

Dave, tell her good things about me ok?  And tell her I love elephants too.

Miss you.  Always will.

I think of you all the time...not just once in a blue moon.