Renewal

I spotted some Spotted Dick

These past few weeks have been pretty nuts. I don't really even feel like going into it all, but all sorts of strange things have been happening. Family stuff. Work stuff. The stuff I do when I should be working. The stuff I don't do when I should and the stuff I shouldn't ever try. It's all there in the last few weeks. 

Chaos usually motivates me. Give me calm seas and I settle into complacency. Shake my world up a little bit and I will try to keep the ball rolling, at least for a little while. It's a good thing for the most part. Especially since the last few months have not been worthy of my Tackle 2011 project. I blame the knee in part, but I think I also used that as an excuse longer than I should have and for more than I should have. That said, I decided to throw caution to the wind and go on my first jog since my little MCL issue. Jog went well, though I am totally out of shape and I didn't push it past a mile. I was sore as could be, and so the next day I went on a bike ride with a friend in Charleston, and did some yoga. So, in addition to a sore knee, my thighs, ass, calves, arms, neck, and wrists all hurt as well. I am going to try to run again tomorrow, so I can totally overdo it. 

I am also working on some austerity measures in my day to day life. I am working on refinancing my house at a significantly lower interest rate (cutting the rate more than half, actually) and for 15 years instead of 30. All that and my payment will still be less than it is now, though just barely. Today I worked on my first batch of homemade laundry detergent!!! I found a recipe online for vegan detergent and I modified it just a tad.

1 C Borax, 1 C Washing Soda, 1 bar Dr. Bronner's castile soap, and ta-da! Less than 5 cents per load.

I took the detergent for a spin today and my thoughts so far are pretty positive. Most of my sheets and towels are white and I am always struggling to keep them bright. I hate the idea of using bleach, but I do use it just to get the whites brightened from time to time. However, one wash with this detergent got my sheets whiter and brighter than I can ever remember! It was pretty amazing. The only downside is that the laundry doesn't really have that laundry smell. Not that I like the overly perfumed detergent smell, but even the Seventh Generation detergent leaves a pleasant and light smell. Oh well. Maybe some essential oils will jazz things up?

It's not total austerity over here though...I splurged and bought an iPhone. I almost want to say that additional money spent on the monthly iPhone plan is less than the value added, so it's almost like I got a deal or something.

I ended the day making a brand new recipe! Never before! And it was fucking amazing, if I do say so myself. Roasted butternut squash with sage (from the garden!) and pine nuts over pasta. So freaking amazing. It wasn't too complicated, though it did require planning since I roasted the squash. Definitely one to save for D&C.

the wind bludgeons and blows...

third tree to lose it's head

Working down below

Saddest backyard ever. Ugly house. Tears.

So, last Friday lumberjacks did their worst to my trees. No more shade. No more privacy. No more...grass. I feel like I lost a part of my home or something. It's hard to explain. I know it needed to be done, but there is something unsettling about sudden change, even when it's expected.

In other news, the lovely H&B came to visit for the weekend. We ate food and drank drinks and rode bikes. Yup! Little gimpy me managed a 8-10 mile ride on Saturday. I wasn't able to ride my bike, but borrowed H's (I thought the clips might be a problem). The only time I felt gimpy was while going up hills. My knee needed a 30 minute ice bath and some ibuprofen afterwards, but all in all it went as well as my wildest dreams would allow. Afterwards, we made cake!

That's about it. I am going to eat dinner now so I can justify eating leftover cake.

Record highs...

So, I read in the paper yesterday that the weather has been breaking records this month. They say that the high temps in June are all in the 90s, which apparently has never happened. The plants don't seem quite ready for weather this hot, so I have had to water them more than I would prefer. I harvested and ate my first squash yesterday, but I think it was too soon. The seeds inside were really tough, but edible. I am going to harvest some basil today and make a batch of pesto. Now is a great time to harvest and re-harvest basil, because it doesn't want to go to seed quite yet, and is still putting a ton of energy into putting out leaves. It's time to take advantage of this!

So, word got out at work that I am vegan. I tried to keep it under wraps for as long as possible. My boss is a very lovely woman, but at heart is a stereotypical Jewish mother type in some ways. She loves to feed people. For instance, she brought some matzo crackers in one day. There is a kitchen at the office, and the kitchen table there is usually some sort of communal food offering. I was snacking on some matzo one day, and she walked by and saw me enjoying my matzo. She was overjoyed that I was eating something from the communal table. She made a comment about bringing in some more, and the next day there were 4 more boxes of matzo!!! And then of course I felt the tinges of residual Catholic guilt and had to eat the matzo just to make her feel appreciated. See kids, this is what religion does to people. I had never had matzo crackers before, and I am now a big fan.

Another co-worker asked me to pick up her CSA share while she was on vacation, which I was more than happy to do. There was a ton of great veggies, including a whole pile of beets!!! So, I am not the biggest beet fan, but I was determined not to let them go to waste. So, I scoured the internets for recipes with beets that looked good. I stumbled upon an interesting recipe for chocolate cake made with beets! So, I gave it a whirl last night and I must say, the resulting cake is quite tasty!

I always come around a little too late....

So, I am beginning to wonder if the cheap tree guy is avoiding me. He probably came to his senses, realized he totally under-quoted me, and decided to block my number. I should have accepted his offer when he made it. I've called him twice and left him a voice mail each time. No response. I am just waiting for the day when my neighbor decides to sue me...

In other news, I've been watering plants and cooking dinner and cleaning stuff when it gets dirty. My life isn't very blog-worthy. All I can do is take pictures of the things I see, or the food that I make, or the faces my dog makes.

Veggies and cashews and tempeh, before I added green curry sauce. mmmmmmm.

Nuts

I am sitting at BWI, waiting for my flight back to the deep and dirty. I have had an eventful trip, one that seems much longer than 5 days. I enjoyed my "training" and have come to the realization that soon enough I will be very busy with work. I was able to see some of my favorite people, which is always awesome. I ate lots of delicious food. I took quite a few pictures of food while I was gone. Here is a selection:

I also ate at Soul Vegetarian, though I forgot to take a picture of the giant plate of vegan mac and cheese I stuffed in my belly. It's okay, cause I went on a bike ride afterwards to burn it off.

So, that is that. I am heading back to the daily grind. Tomorrow is going to be pretty rough, since I haven't really been getting enough sleep and my flight doesn't arrive back in SC until 11:30. That's okay, I only live once.  Another thing I have been thinking about on this trip is that I need to go on more trips. So, that is going to be another goal of mine down the road. I can't really afford any big vacation to Prague or whatever, but I think I have plenty of domestic land to explore.

My Adversary...

Some days just exhaust me, like today. Especially after yesterday.

One thing I hate most of all in this job is that I always feel like I am asking for something. I am asking for a deal for a client, I am asking a judge to grant my motion (or not to grant the state's), I am asking for bullshit charges to be dismissed, I am asking a cop to cut my guy a break, I am asking asking asking. Sometimes my ego just gets tired of it. Sometimes I end up in a screaming match with a solicitor. Sometimes I hit things in my office. I get frustrated.

In addition, my clientele is in large part a population of drug addicts, alcoholics and schizophrenics. Everyone is poor. No one has a job. Everyone has had a tough life.  I am polite. I shake their hands, which some of my co-workers refuse to do. I talk to them about their family. I ask how long they have been smoking crack, how many beers they had that morning before they came in for our appointment. It took me a while to get comfortable asking such personal questions, but it really does help my relationship with my client. Yeah, it takes  a little longer, and requires a bit more patience. I see grown men cry and cry and cry, not because they have criminal charges, but because they just don't know what else to do.  For the most part, getting caught isn't the problem.

I have clients I love and clients I love a little less. Today, for hour after hour, I heard story after story. My office smelled like cheap beer evaporating from human pores. A client who was released from the jail this afternoon shows up right at closing time without a jacket or a place to stay.  A lot of my job is social work, and I really don't mind.

Don't get me wrong, I still wash my hands a lot....

In other news, I made another recipe from my new cookbook. This one was DE-LISH! Totally a keeper, good for making a big batch at the beginning of the week:

Chopped spinach and quinoa salad, with garbanzos and homemade vinaigrette

I won't post the recipe, since it isn't mine, but if you ask me nicely I might let you borrow my book...

Week Four, wrap up

Today is the last day of week 4. I have been doing pretty well staying on task, though not 100%. I have applied to a different job each week for 4 weeks. Though I only heard back from one so far (they had already hired someone), I am still hopeful that something will come up. It has to, right? In the meantime, I have to remember to be thankful for the job I do have.

I tried my first recipe from my new cookbook. I tried the spinach lasagna with roasted cauliflower-tofu "ricotta" and homemade marinara. Here is a pic from before it went in the oven:

It looks pretty tasty, huh? Well, I have to say it was kind of...bland. I tried another recipe to go along it as a side - shaved brussel sprouts! I decided to add sweet potatoes to the brussel sprouts and I have to say I like the idea of thinly sliced brussel sprouts. They cook soooo much faster, which means I can eat them sooner. Not sure if I would make the lasagna again (at least not without adding, um, flavor).

Veggie overkill?

I was working on February's to-do list, and while it looks mostly the same as January, I have added some more sit-ups, so I am going from 25 a night to 50. I've managed to do all my cardio and weight tasks, and I am beginning to grow little arm muscles!!!

Another thing I added was a February project. If anyone has been to my house they may have noticed that surrounding my house there is a 4 brick-high retaining wall about three feet wide all around the front of my house. I have no idea when they were put in, but the wall has seen better days. The top layer of bricks have come away from the mortar, and weeds are growing all over them. So, I have decided to take down the retaining wall, reuse the bricks, and pull out a lot of the crap that is planted around the house. It's going to be a big project, but it needs to be done.

I have made progress with the fiddle. I now can play the first 8 notes from Joy to the World! I find this to be a huge milestone, that I can play something that sounds like music instead of just the normal screeching of drowning rats. Maybe one day when I get a little better, I will post a video.

Oh, one more goal for February: go to bed by 10:30. It's going to take me some time to get used to that, so each week I am going to cut 15 minutes off my bedtime until I get to 10:30. For whatever reason, I am dreading this goal....and on that note, good night, dear reader!

Hail Seitan!

Greetings Reader!

So, today I got up around 8:30 and started up on my weekend cleaning list. I won't bore you with all the details, but I do have a confession to make. I hate taking compost out to the compost bin. I have no explanation for this, other than I am lazy and I hate stepping in dog poop, which invariably happens when walking in my backyard. So, instead of taking my compost outside when the jar gets full, I dump it in plastic grocery bags and put it in the freezer. I use a bag until it gets full, and then I start another. Sometimes if a head of cauliflower goes bad, I just stick the whole thing in the freezer. Go ahead, judge me for my laziness. But anyway, I decided to take the many bags of frozen compost outside today. I figured if I wanted it to decompose in time for spring, the freezer was a bad place to keep it. Yeah yeah yeah.

So after dumping all the compost, my freezer looked empty and sad. The only thing left in there were blueberries from last summer and some other fruit for smoothie making. So, I decided I would fill it with a supply of homemade seitan! 

This is the log o'seitan "resting"

After it rested, I sliced it, and it looked like gingerbread

This is after boiling it for an hour or so.

 

The texture is not the best. I should have used a recipe

In other news, I have decided to start an experiment. I am going to give up shampoo. Or try to. We will see if this solves some of my hair woes, which are too numerous and boring to go into. Here is a pic of the results after the first shower without shampoo...for comparison down the road:

Not bad, eh? Let's see if I leave a grease spot on my pillow tonight.

And because everyone loves pictures, and because I don't have anything else to say, here is one for fun:

Drink, little bird, drink...

So, right before Christmas our bosses announced that we were going to switch over to a team system...meaning, instead of each of us getting all types of cases within our levels of experience, we were going to get specific types of cases based on which team we were on. I think there are six: minor felony, major felony, violent crime, criminal sexual conduct(CSC)/domestic violence, DUI, and drugs. They asked if we had a preference, and the only thing I said was that I would prefer to not be on the CSC team. Before this, I was handling everything from murder to CSC to lesser felonies, and the occasional misdemeanor case. Now I am on the drug team. There are three of us on that team. My caseload increased by about 100 clients, but the severity (measured by possible prison time folks are facing) of the charges on the whole has decreased, and I have a handful fewer clients in jail. All in all I like it pretty well. I have a feeling drug clients won't keep me up at night quite as much, though I did wake up at 5:30 the other morning because I realized I needed to call one of my clients about something. That was the first time in a month, which is a huge improvement.

The to-do list is getting tweaked this week. I am going to add 3 days of cardio/week and 5 sessions of fiddle practice. I feel like 3 days of cardio is on the light side, but I don't think I can regularly fit in 4 days at the gym. Once it warms up I will be out and about and it won't matter, but while I am going to a gym for my cardio I don't want to push it. I will adjust as needed. I've been counting fiddle practice even if it is just for 10-15 minutes, but I play pretty much every night so I figure I should get some credit for it.

Depeche Mode every day when I come home. It hasn't left the record player. I am soooo in love with that album. Best $10 I have ever spent.

I don't have much as far as updating goes. I haven't heard anything about the other two jobs I applied for. I need to find another one to apply for this weekend. Finding jobs to apply for is difficult in the NC/SC  region. I don't have a problem branching out. I'd go anywhere. Except Florida. Or Oklahoma. I'd like to get to Asheville though, or NC generally. I will settle for SC if I can find something awesome. Chances are I won't....

I just emailed my mom a picture of my new tattoo. I figure this way she can deal with her disapproval in the comfort and privacy of her own home.

You know what I have been totally obsessed with? Brussel sprouts with sweet potatoes: