Pomegranates and Sheeps

I painted these as a Christmas gift for my aunt. I bought a real pomegranate and everything. They are probably the most absurdly over-the-top ridiculous piece of produce I've ever seen. If you've never cut one up I recommend you try it. The seeds actually are pretty tasty, but their quantity is kind of unbelievable. It's like a clown car. They just keep coming.

And I painted this from a photo I took in Ireland. Gift for my Nana.

Custom Keds

I painted shoes for my sister for Christmas. These started out as plain white Keds slip-ons, and I used Pebeo Setacolor fabric paint. It stays nice and flexible, and was really just like painting on a stretched canvas.

My sister likes sweet potatoes a lot (Sweet Potato Latkes)

Today I did very little that was productive. It was great. I slept until 11, which I haven't been able to do in months because my internal clock is set for 5am. I checked on my Amazon order (Appalachian Trail Guide to Tennessee-North Carolina -- more on that plan later). I changed out my oversized men's sweatpants for my cowboy-print flannel pajama pants. I ate Christmas cookies. That was the first half of my day. Very worthwhile.

In the afternoon, I took my car up to the shop for an oil change and walked back home. I went and traipsed around in a field or two briefly as a detour. It's cold and snowy, but it was really nice to get outside and breathe cold air after so many days curled up in the house wearing flannel and eating cookies.

I walked around the Cauffiel House across from the park, and looked at the Delaware River. Across the river, New Jersey looked very cold.


Then I walked back up Philly Pike.
Then when I got home, I made sweet potato latkes (1 grated sweet potato, an egg, some flour, cinnamon). Hannah put maple syrup on hers and liked them a lot. Here's how you make them:

You need:

1 large sweet potato
1 egg
3-4 Tablespoons flour
Cinnamon
Frying oil (sunflower is best, or you can use canola, or mix butter into either)

Grate 1 sweet potato. Put the grated potato into a towel and wring it out to drain some of the excess moisture. Put it back in a bowl, and mix in one egg, and add flour. Add as much cinnamon as looks good to you, and stir it up until it's well-mixed.

Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet, until it's shimmering and hot. (I flick a few drops of water in it - if it sizzles angrily, it's ready.)

Scoop up the potato mixture by the spoonful and drop it into the oil. You can kind of smush it down a little to flatten it. Let it fry for a minute or two on one side, then flip it over and do the other. They're done when both sides look crispy and lightly browned.

How sometimes we wrap presents

Sometimes presents have packaging that isn't amenable to being wrapped. In the Andersen family, we don't let such things stand in our way.

At home with the Andersens.

Home in Delaware...and I'm not stripping wallpaper this Christmas!! Last year my siblings and I spent about three straight days with a wallpaper steamer scraping 50-year-old paper off of plaster walls, and then another day or two with a tub of spackle and various buckets of paint, as we delivered on the promised Christmas gift of a redecorated dining room. Not this year! The dining room is blue and will remain blue for the foreseeable future, thank all that is holy. All very coordinated with a painting I made a while back, and our second Christmas tree.


Adorning our other Christmas tree is a new ornament this year, crafted by hand out of a Humira self-injector pen. My Dad thought the red plastic could have a new life, after faithfully serving its first purpose as a drug-delivery device. Rheumatoid arthritis does Christmas. (Sustainability! Reduce, reuse, recycle!!)

In other news, I got my new blood work back. Negative rheumatoid factor (again), and no auto-immune markers (again). Pretty much normal, except for some elevated liver enzymes, which just means I need to stop taking anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers. And something called C-reactive protein was also high. Apparently it becomes elevated with inflammation, but doesn't give you specific info about what's actually inflamed, so not terribly helpful best I can figure. My fingers got nice and chubby on Wednesday, but all points of articulation seem to be fully functional today. I've been reading lots of medical journal abstracts though, am becoming increasingly convinced that RA starts in your gut with antibodies to food, and am still grudgingly on for pears, trout and sweet potatoes in 2011. Hooray.
john mansfield elimination diet rheumatoid arthritis alternative health joint pain arthralgia hypoallergenic diet young female autoimmune

"You've got a strong story."

I met my rheumatologist today. He listened to my tale of arthritic woe, and said affirming things like, "Yes, you make a strong case, you tell a strong story...especially with your Dad's history, it sounds like something inflammatory, it definitely sounds like something inflammatory." He seemed to be saying that I told a compelling story in favor of inflammation. My primary care guy just kept saying "There's definitely something rheumatological about you. Yes, you've definitely got something rheumatological going on." I suppose I was glad the specialist narrowed it down from there. There's something inflammatory about me, I guess? Or at least I tell a good inflammation story.

He told me I had a good story so many times I finally was like, "Thanks, I try to keep it interesting." He responded with something else about inflammation.

They took three tubes of blood and an x-ray of one hand, ordered a bunch of bloodwork (ANA, RF, CBC, CMP, CRP, CCP), and gave me four samples of what look like the world's biggest nicotine patches, but instead of dosing you with nicotine, they dose you with diclofenac (an anti-inflammatory). Each one is about as big as a paperback novel - they're a little ridiculous.

I was also given a little slip of paper that the Dr. pulled out of his pocket and handed to me. It reads:

Dr. Nami wants you to take these vitamins:

Fish Oil - 4 g daily
Vitamin D - 1000 I.U. daily
Glucosamine/Chondroitin - 1500/1200mg daily

I will try the fish oil after I try my elimination diet. Which I did not tell Dr. Nami about because if he had said, "There hasn't been any conclusive research into the connection between diet and arthritis," I'd have said, "Okay, so what?" And if he had said, "That sounds stupid, have an NSAID!" I would have said, "Um, no thanks." And if he had said, "That sounds great, have fun!" I'd have smiled cheerily and agreed.

I did not show him my spreadsheet, as he seemed happy enough to take my history out loud and I did not want to make him think I'm crazy yet.
john mansfield elimination diet rheumatoid arthritis alternative health joint pain arthralgia hypoallergenic diet

A year ago...

It occurred to me today that a year is a hell of a long time. I started thinking, for no particular reason, about where I was a year ago. I had a life all settled in Chicago, had broken up with Ben a month before, was an emotional train wreck, was still working for Grosvenor, and a week or two before flying home for Christmas I had been suddenly hit with the thought that I might want to move to North Carolina.

Here's part of an email I wrote, almost a year ago today:

I wrote two emails this morning asking people to be my job references, and am filling out an application for the Southern Teachers' Agency (the people who got me my Queen Anne job). I can rent an f-ing HOUSE with TWO BEDROOMS and a YARD for like, 700 bucks in Winston. Screw this thousand dollars a month bullshit, geez. So we'll see about that, but I think I might do it. You've always told me to follow my dreams and what do I really want to do and so on. . . and I think I'd really like to live in the south and be near friends and family and have dirt to plant stuff in and open space to wander around in. So we'll see.

And in another email two weeks later...

Spent the first day of the new decade making art with my new pastels, cleaning old shit out of my house, and sending my resume to recruiters in NC. Juliet has given me all kinds of great reasons why Charlotte is an awesome city and I should totally move there. Nelson has good things to say about NC, but doesn't like Charlotte because it has too many southern people in it. Kristen's gonna call me back later and tell me all about TFA in Charlotte. And I, meanwhile, need to start applying for some other things in case TFA still doesn't want me. But, fact is, I can basically do whatever the hell I want to, wherever the hell I want to do it! I'm really excited and really hoping I get the TFA gig, but either way, I'm crossing that Mason-Dixon!

I guess it's just nice to look back on that, sitting here in my apartment in Charlotte, getting presents ready to drive home for Christmas (because I can drive now, not fly), steeling myself for two more days of rowdy teenagers who are just as anxious for break as I am...able to think hey, I started at Point A, decided I wanted to get to Point B, and here I am. Funny thing is though, all that does is make me think about what else I want to do... if I wanted to move to NC, decided to do it, and then actually did it...what else do I want to do?

(P.S. It sometimes snows a little here and it's beautiful!)

Fun times with arthritis and Excel

Those of you who are unfortunate (and wonderfully patient) enough to listen to me complain about things, or respond to frantic phone calls that I'm dying of some bizarre food poisoning or rare disease I came across on the internet (okay, so I have a problem with googling things), know that for the past year and a half I've been treated to a diverse assortment of mysterious joint pain. Random arthritic knees that show up for a couple days and then vanish. (Yes, knees themselves appear and then disappear.) Fingers that are stiff in the morning. Or fingers that are inexplicably swollen and so I can't bend them and so when I hold the pole to stand on the bus all my fingers grip it except my middle finger that sticks out awkwardly straight so it looks like I'm flipping off everyone around me. Always good for a chuckle.

Anyhow, assorted docs in Chicago assured me they could find nothing wrong with me.

Well, they thought it was Lyme disease at first; despite the fact that I could think of approximately one-half of a very remote chance I'd been anywhere near deer in the past six months. Managed to rule out gout (oh boy!) and finally gave me a quasi-diagnosis of "Well, you're just hypermobile, and sometimes hypermobile people have unexplained joint pain. You should try some strength training." Right. I mean, okay, yes my fingers can bend backwards kind of strangely, and yes, I googled the living crap out of "Benign Joint Hypermobility Syndrome" and it's a real thing, but should I be lifting finger-weights? What?

So...here's what I am almost embarrassed to be proud of. I've got an appointment with a new rheumatologist down here. And, thanks to my time in the hedge fund industry plowing through spreadsheets, and my TFA indoctrination (data! data!! DATA!!!) . . . I have determined to solve my rheumatological mystery with Excel!!


Yes, I really made a graph. I am a huge loser. But when you have data over like, 18 months, and you can turn it into numbers (I rated how inconvenient/painful my joints were each day, and how many joints were involved)...how can you NOT want to make that into a graph? I need Edward Tufte to make me some beautiful, visual data.

Anyway. I am determined to get some doctor to give me something I can do so that I don't have weird swollen lumps of fluid popping up on the back of my hand (even if they're useful to gross out students with). At the very least, I will show up to my appointment with enough paper in hand that someone will have to diagnose me with something before I leave. I'm the obnoxious patient who gets made fun of on "House" because she read something on the internet and is insistent about it. Well, unless Hugh Laurie wants to be my doctor...I have no shame. I come equipped with records of symptoms and my diet and ... oh yeah! That's the other fun part!

I've been reading on the internet (I know, I know, where all the wacky alternative health crazies hang out) a lot of anecdotal evidence about people with rheumatoid arthritis (oh yes, this is my tentative self-diagnosis, by the way) have eliminated certain foods from their diet and been symptom-free for months, or years. Scared it into remission with leafy green or something. Some people think food intolerances can trigger autoimmune responses and blah blah blah, whatever. Point being, after Christmas, I am going to be trying an "elimination" diet of typically-hypoallergenic food (lamb, pears, salad, olive oil, and approximately four other things that don't go together...venison is okay, for example, and bananas) for a couple weeks to see if my symptoms go away. Then if they do, I reintroduce food groups back into my diet to see if anything triggers symptoms again. It's like a fun (okay, 'fun' might be an overstatement) puzzle, with lots of data and lists and tracking (TFA!! Get out of my head!!!) and other fun stuff. Like, am I a huge fan of lamb and pears? I mean, when I can't eat them with anything good like sugar or rice...not so much. I'm not going to like going carb- and dairy-free for a while. But. I also like having full use of all assorted limbs, thank you very much.

That will be the big adventure upon my return from break. To be honest, I need some joint or another to stay painful until then because otherwise I'm going to find the motivation hard to come by. I like food. A lot. All kinds of it. But I also like keeping track of data and trying to find patterns and being OCD about lists of things. And as mentioned before, I like my joints. Bring it, Dr. Something-Persian-sounding whose practice is all the way in Ballantyne. Brace yourself. I come with spreadsheets.
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Christmas!!! (and pickles)

Me and my friend Sarah went to lunch on Sunday. The Atherton Mills Farmers Market had Sunday hours, so we went down to Southend to find lunch and then hit up the market. We ate at the IceHouse on South Blvd., and because it was Sunday (or just because I like fatty food), I got chicken and waffles, with sweet potato and bacon hash. I'd heard of chicken and waffles as a meal, but somehow always imagined it like, chicken and dumplings, or something with gravy involved. Nope. Piece of fried chicken, big ass waffle, little cup of syrup. Why not serve two amazing foods together with a sugary condiment? Fried chicken is not something I know how to make, but I might have to learn soon. (Dear family, I will be frying sweet potatoes and bacon together when I come home.)


The whole reason I wanted to go to the farmer's market was to buy meat. I got a Netflix trial last week, and finally watched "Food Inc." which increased the number of generally icky feelings I have towards our food industry. (Admittedly, not enough to turn down fried chicken on a waffle.) So I got some ground beef and eggs and bratwurst from the Windy Hill Farm guy and had a lovely conversation about the slaughtering regulations for assorted animals. (He can kill his own poultry and rabbits, but has to send his pigs, cows and lambs to a slaughterhouse in Greensboro.)

Then Sarah and I were enticed over to Pickleville. The friendly proprietor (a Jew from Philly who used to make pizzas and now makes pickles) let us try a million kinds of pickles, and I wound up spending five bucks on a tub of the most amazing pickles ever. I got half regular dill (light years beyond Vlasic) and half "half-sour" which I guess aren't pickled as long and so are a little fresher tasting.

Maybe tonight's dinner wasn't picturesque, but damn was it good. (Two kinds of pickles..!! Bratwurst from a pig who got to root around in the forest and eat real pig food!!)


And finally...the best thing to come out of my farmer's market trip? A Christmas tree!!!!!!!

We prefer ridiculous.

To continue with a review of last week's holiday celebrations...

I was in Hagerstown, Maryland with my family and my mom's family. My Uncle Chris lives in California, and because he wasn't able to make it home for Thanksgiving, joined us by video chat. We stayed at my aunt's house, my Nana and my uncle live up the street. In theory, if we had wanted to include the whole family in a conversation, we could readily have gotten all the Boyers and the Andersens in one room, and had Uncle Chris on the video chat. But my family doesn't like to do things logically. We prefer more ridiculous.


Here we have two computers and one telephone. Me and dad are video chatting with Hannah, my Aunt Amanda, and my cousin Zoe on two different laptops across the table. Nana is on the video chat from up the street with both of us, and my Uncle Sean (red sweater) is on the phone with Nana. Chris, off in California, is the ONLY ONE for whom a video chat is the most sensible way to communicate.

I'm not sure if this is an improvement on last year, when Chris's disembodied, digitalized head joined us on the dining room table for Thanksgiving dinner. I believe we took a family photo with his video-chatted face included in the shot.

Why I don't mind getting up early sometimes...

Hannah and I rolled out of Charlotte shortly after six on Wednesday morning to make the six-hour drive up 81 to Hagerstown, Maryland. I bribed her awake with cooked breakfast, and we were on 77 before the sun came up.
I have a bad habit of taking photos while trying to drive.

The drive up was glorious. Mountains and glowing trees and an Amish man silhouetted against a beautiful sky as he drove his buggy across an overpass. Photography-while-driving reflexes weren't fast enough for that one, sadly. The drive back was much longer. Traffic on 77 was miserable for a while, and at one point we went back and forth between a standstill, and gaining maybe five yards at 2 mph. Towards the end of our incredibly aggravating stint in traffic, the highway wound around the side of a mountain and instead of being stuck at a standstill looking at dark highway trees and oncoming cars, we were suddenly stuck at a standstill looking across a valley at this...
I'm pretty sure I have at least one or two other posts comprising of similar sunset photos, but I find myself faced with something like that and I can't help myself. If we hadn't been stuck in traffic, it would have flown past in my periphery in a few seconds. I was glad for the traffic.

Do you know who Sarah Josepha Hale was?

Because I did not.

I'm embarrassed to admit that if you had asked me yesterday when Thanksgiving was first established as a national holiday, I would have had no idea. Today, in my internet meanderings, I discovered that it was officially declared a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War, of all times. Cool, I thought, way to go Lincoln!
Then I meandered through the internet a little more, and discovered that it wasn't Lincoln's idea at all. A woman named Sarah Josepha Hale (who wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb) had spent 17 years writing letters to presidents trying to get one of them to make an official proclamation that the last Thursday of November would be a national day of thanksgiving. (FDR changed it to be the fourth Thursday so that the Christmas shopping season would be longer.) She wrote editorials in her magazine about a national Thanksgiving holiday, and finally Lincoln listened to one of her letters and voila, the whole country eats poultry, bakes pies, and watches football at the end of every November.
And so, for your cultural edification (and as a little reminder of how much more eloquent and literate people used to be), here is Lincoln:

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Trout! (Pan-fried)

I bought trout at the Atherton Mill Farmers Market last week. It was caught in NC and was sold to me in a ziploc bag. I have never bought or eaten or cooked trout before, but the guy asked what kind of fish I wanted and when I said I didn't know but I wanted something I could fry in a skillet, this is what he handed to me.
First of all, isn't it beautiful? Fish are amazing to me sometimes, with their little sparkly rainbow scales. Like that kids book, right? Almost too pretty to eat. Except...not really.

For all my years as a fish-eating vegetarian, I know approximately one way to cook one kind of fish. I can pan fry salmon. That's it. So I wasn't entirely sure what to do with two whole trout, but I figured if I messed up the first one I'd still have a shot with the second. So I did what I always do when unsure how to cook something...I fried it in buttr!!

Pan-fried Trout

a fish (1 lb seems to be two fishes worth of fillet)
flour
salt and pepper
butter

Rinse the fish, and use a sharp knife to separate the two halves of the body from each other if they're still connected (mine were). Pat dry with a paper towel.

Mix a half-cup or so of flour with salt and pepper on a big plate. Dredge the fish in the flour on both sides.

Melt the butter in a cast iron skillet until it's bubbling, but not starting to brown. Put the fish in the pan, skin side down, and cook for a couple minutes (3? 4?) Flip the fish over with a pair of tongs and fry on the other side. Ideally, you only flip it once. Shouldn't take more than 10 minutes (max!) to cook through. Yum.

Done and done. The result? The absolute best piece of fish I think I have ever eaten. Like, seriously. Not as the result anything fancy I did, but because I swear the little guy must have been swimming around the day before. I'm never buying fish at the grocery story again. I'm absolutely serious. If you're going to eat food, why eat the crap version?

On patriotic symbols...

We learned about propaganda today, and watched a bunch of campaign ads.
(If you never caught the Demon Sheep ad...I suggest you check it out. Good for a big wtf.)

Anyway, one of the propaganda techniques we covered was the use of patriotic symbols. Sarah Palin's PAC ad is thoroughly doused in American flags, for instance. We asked what other patriotic symbols they could think of. One of my favorite kids took that as a springboard for a little tangent about eagles:

"Yeah, we got them symbols man like, ain't that why we believe in the eagle? Man, you don' wanna fuck with an eagle. I'm tellin you man, I seen one of them fuckin' eagles, he walkin right up behind me and he was bigger than a dog, man! That fuckin' bird was fidna pick me up! That how big it was! Man, and I'm afraid of heights!"

School-appropriate language? Nope. Do we have bigger battles to fight? Yup. Couldn't not laugh.

I guess when you ask...

So I'd been feeling kind of church-less and un-rooted this week. I finally (yeah, should have done this sooner) prayed and asked God to find me the perfect church. I'd been going to this one for maybe two months or so, and it just hadn't felt permanent yet. I'd emailed someone about joining a small group and hadn't heard back, and I felt like everyone I met on Sunday disappeared the next Sunday to be replaced with more people whose names I wouldn't remember and whose faces I wouldn't recognize next week. So, I prayed. And hey, guess what happens when you actually DO that?

The day after I prayed I woke up and the guy had emailed me back about small group - they're just getting started but hope to start meeting this week or the next.

Then I find out that a friend from college who recently moved out of Charlotte went to Hope (this church) for three years and loved it and the people there. And he knows the guy with the small group and tells me he and his wife are lovely people.

Then I went to Hope this morning. The sermon was on this one idea that God has been pounding me with all week. The pastor reads the EXACT scripture that has kept popping into my head all week (Luke 12: 31). There's a baptism, and the dad reads this unbelievably beautiful "blessing" thing for his daughter that's, AGAIN, about the same idea. (And man, I'm a weeper when it comes to dads reading beautiful blessing things to their little baby daughters - sheesh.)

Then we sing two of my favorite songs at the end of the service (How Great is our God, and Be Thou My Vision).

And then the couple sitting behind me invites me to lunch with two more of their friends from the church. And they're just cool as can be and so friendly and legit, not friendly in a fake-churchy way.

Okay, thanks God, I get it. Church = found.

Brown-sugar baked pears

I'm always overwhelmed by the 38 kinds of pears you can buy, so this week I bought one Bosc pear and one Bartlett pear and decided to actually compare them instead of just eating one and thinking, 'Oh, that was alright' and then the next time I go to buy them forgetting what kind I bought the last time. So, last week I baked a Bartlett pear with a brown-sugar/maple syrup/butter glaze. Pretty good, but overly sweet. I thought I'd try again with the Bosc pear. Recipe worked better, but the Bartlett pear I think is better for baking than the Bosc.

This was my breakfast yesterday:

Fry them in butter!!! Once they were browned on the open side, I dumped brown sugar into the butter, melted it all around, spooned it over the pears, and threw them in the oven for 20 minutes. I ate them with cottage cheese, although some kind of biscuit or something would have been better to soak up the syrup. Oh, and check out how resourceful I am. I don't have a melonballer but found that a teaspoon measuring spoon works great for scooping out the cores. Ha!

I'm Irish and I love potatoes.

I'm also Norwegian and I love mugs that have the Lord's Prayer written on them in Norwegian. Thankfully, I can enjoy both.
I've been trying lately to get good at cooking basic things. I've spent the last year or two teaching myself to make things like balsamic reduction glazes and orange-honey popovers and things that aren't like, basic food I'm going to want to eat for dinner most days. So I made chili the other day. And decided to figure out how to make breakfast potatoes today. They turned out fantastic, so in case you're interested:

Easy Breakfast Potatoes

Potatoes (1-2 small white or yellow potatoes per person)
1 TB paprika
1 TB ground black pepper
1-2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
olive oil (a few TBs)

Dice a bunch of potatoes. (That's like, one potato in the photo.)

Boil them for about 5 minutes - just until they're barely tender. While they're boiling, dice some onion and start sauteing that in vegetable oil.

Drain the potatoes and rinse them in cold water.

Mix up the following in a bowl: a bunch of paprika (a big spoon), a bunch of black pepper (another big spoon), some garlic powder (like a teaspoon or so), and some salt (another tsp). Go easy on the salt cause you can always salt when they're in the pan. Add enough olive oil to make a kind of slurry. Then toss your potatoes in the spice/oil until they're coated.

Chuck them into your skillet, which should be hot by now and still have the onions cooking in it. Fry them until they're crispy on the edges! Add whatever extra salt and pepper you want at the end.

Potatoes are best enjoyed while wearing ridiculous bedroom slippers and reading Orion magazine.

Lizard!!

So I'm sitting on my couch watching the news and eating my chili when I hear a sudden, soft thud from across the room and see something move in my peripheral vision. What is it? Oh, just a freaking LIZARD jumping onto my armchair.
The weather's gotten chilly lately and so evidently, my little anole friend (who lives outside by the recycling bins, and whom I recently spent a silly amount of time chasing off of my car) had decided to come inside where it's warm.

I'm pretty good at catching insects and letting them go outside. Unless it's going to bite me, or is a centipede, I usually try to just relocate any home invaders. (Cockroaches are another story; I went after one a few weeks ago with hairspray and Clorox bleach cleanser to no avail.) However, I've never had a lizard pop up onto my living room furniture fixing to make himself at home. It took me some time to find a box I could put over him without catching his ridiculously long and fragile-looking tail, but I finally managed to corral him into one of the big filing Tupperware we keep our students' work in.
As much as I'd love to have a little pet, I'm not trying to breed crickets, or fool around with heat lamps. While he waited patiently in the Tupperware, I did a little research and discovered that the Carolina anole usually hibernates in winter, hiding under wood or rocks or in other sheltered places. Apparently it's not uncommon for them to find their way inside when it gets cold out. It still is cool as shit to a yankee like me, however, as I've never lived anyplace where wild lizards show up in your living room.

I took him outside and set him out in some sunny grass. And then, because I'm a giant nature dork, I sat and watched him for a while. Everything on him is so tiny! He's got these tiny little eyes, and the pattern on his skin is so delicate and precise. I get a little blown away sometimes by things in nature that are beautiful. He was almost sparkly in the sun. He's shedding too, which you can see starting on his two back feet.
Anyway, coolest thing to happen all day. I get way too excited about wildlife, but like, how can you NOT be amazed at that? Does it ever just blow your mind how there are like, millions of kinds of animals and they all work perfectly and are perfectly adapted to wherever they live, and they're all completely, completely different from each other? Cause I get a little freaked out sometimes by just how insane nature actually is, when you sit down and think about it.

Two Successes, One Almost-Success, and One Not-Successful-Yet

Our kids bombed their midterm (we're talking like class averages in the 50s). And then they bombed the quiz we gave them on Friday that was designed to be relatively easy and give them a confidence boost after failing the midterm so miserably. However, I refuse to count this a failure because we have three more quarters to get them ready for N.C.'s End of Course exam; it just goes in the category of not-yet-successful. This morning I got up and cranked out two study guides for them to complete as homework on Monday and Tuesday in preparation for their test on Wednesday. Do you know what two people make up the city's Executive Branch? How many justices are there on the N.C. Supreme Court? What is our state legislature called? No? Well, neither do a lot of our students...yet. But they had damn well better know it on Wednesday, because we will have worked their butts off and they will have no excuse. End of story.

Success #1 today was finishing spray painting my porch furniture. Well, almost-success. I got two hand-me-down white plastic deck chairs and a matching bench from my no-longer-neighbor Genevieve before she moved. I wanted them to be something other than white, so I decided to try Krylon's Fusion paint, which is supposed to bond right to plastic without priming or sanding or any prep work at all. The stuff is magical! My two chairs look beautiful.
The bench, on the other hand, had been painted white in a previous life (white paint on top of white plastic...not sure what sense that makes). The Fusion paint does indeed fuse beautifully to plastic, without chipping or looking blotchy or puddling up or anything. However, it does not fuse beautifully to crappy old paint. I tried to scrap off as much of the old paint as I could, but it still looks like the furniture equivalent of someone with a skin disease.
Gross. I'll have to make a seat cushion, and throw some pillows on it.

My second success of the day was chili. When I lived in Chicago, I was fortunate enough to live a block away from a fantastic chili and pizza and hot dog place called Chili Mac's. If you're ever in Chicago and want an amazing chili dog instead of those funky "Chicago-style" hot dogs with neon-green relish and celery salt and nasty little "sport" peppers... take a 22 or 36 to Briar and Broadway and thank me later. I'd never heard of "Cincinnati-style" chili and honestly had no idea what made it any different from what I knew as like, normal chili. Chili powder and cumin = chili, as far as I knew. BUT! I did some googling this morning, found a couple recipes, and actually made a batch of chili that I won't get sick of and throw away after a week. It has cinnamon, coriander, allspice, paprika, cumin, chili, cayenne, and bay leaf (as well as the usual garlic, onion, etc.) I have a tendency to relegate things like cinnamon and allspice to cookie recipes, and forget they can make other things too.
Next up: polyurethaning my blue bookshelf and putting plastic insulation film over my windows.

Fantastic Weekend.

This was a good trip. I’d been feeling nostalgic about Chicago lately, and missing parts of my life there, and contemplating in that back-of-your-mind kind of way what it might be like if I moved back some day. When I drove away in April I wasn’t leaving anything behind that I hadn’t loved for the time I was there. There were things I was moving away from, but not to escape them, just to grow up from them. So I was afraid that I’d get off the plane on Thursday, drive through the city, go for a drink, walk around my old neighborhood, and wish I still lived there. But I don’t, and that’s a really good feeling.

Since graduating from college I’ve felt kind of pulled from one place to another, without feeling like I could ever safely start to put down roots in any one place. Maryland was always a temporary stay, and although at first Chicago felt like it might be permanent, slowly that idea showed itself to be less and less likely. I told myself I wanted to move to North Carolina because I wanted to live in a place I felt could be permanent, but I’ve only been in Charlotte since July, and that’s not a lot of time for a place to really be home. Missing Chicago the last couple weeks was kind of unsettling, in an actual sense of feeling not-settled anymore, but being back for the weekend was just what I needed to feel settled again.

Everything was just as I left it – maybe some people had lost a little weight, my friends’ kids were six months bigger, new businesses had opened, new construction had started…but it was comforting to know the city was still there, and that my presence or absence makes very little difference. Comforting because it means I can go away for as long as I want to, and come back, and it’s still there. Nothing is happening that I’m missing out on. I think I’m always a little paranoid about missing out on things. Not that I really thought the city would disappear Brigadoon-style, but our egocentric selves have a tendency to imagine that if we can’t see things, they stop existing. It’s good to be put in our place sometimes. It’s good to feel small.

I heard a speaker talk last week about how we have such a hard time holding on to God’s promises to us, really trusting that he wants to give us good things. The guy was speaking in the context of relationships, and how often we hold on to relationships we know aren’t what we need, or even what we want, because we don’t really believe that God wants us to find the intimacy we’re looking for. We try to grab hold of what little of it we can get on our own. I think the same idea holds true in so many other areas of life, and I know for me it’s been a struggle to really hold onto the promises God’s made that convinced me to go out on the biggest damn limb ever and pick up my whole life and move it to Charlotte.

I had a great time this weekend, catching up with friends and spending time with people who mean a lot to me. I got pistachio gelato at L'Appetito with Shan.

We dressed up for Halloween (Shan was an owl, I was Mr. Rogers) but I failed to take any photos of our get ups, and will have to get them from Shan. I went to Covenant on Sunday, got brunch at the Bristol with my fantastic small group ladies and stopped by Pastoral later for some fancy cheese. I got to enjoy the 146, 77 and 50...none of which I can say I missed especially. Waiting for the bus though at least gives you the chance to look around and enjoy the outdoors...which was GORGEOUS and cool and the leaves were all yellow and blowing all around.

I think what’s even better about this weekend though was that God relented a little bit, and gave me a little reminder of why I really should trust him after all. I didn't freak out and want to move. I didn't notice all the things in Chicago I miss in Charlotte - in fact, I missed things in Charlotte that I realized I didn't have in Chicago. I’m still thrilled to be in Charlotte, I’m still excited for my future there, I’m still thankful for my time in Chicago and grateful for everything it taught me, and I’m still ready for whatever’s next!

Everybody loves a sunset

Especially from the window of an airplane, getting ready to fly someplace they love, to see people they love, at the end of a very long and exhausting month of 10 hour work days and disappointing test scores and too little sleep and one very nasty cold.

Woke up this morning at Shan's, maybe three blocks down the street from my old apartment on Briar, in the middle of my old neighborhood. I'm drinking some Taiwanese green tea, wearing fuzzy tights and a tank top and feeling cozy and leisurely. Riding through the city to get to Shan's I was surprised at how not-weird it was to be back. I remember when I came home to the states from my semester in Vienna - things seemed strange and everything that seemed familiar was like seeing a long-lost friend. This is completely different. I just feel like I've been away for a few weeks on vacation and now I'm back. It's a nice feeling, that a place you got to know and feel safe in is still there, still familiar and doesn't demand you live in it to feel connected to it.

SLDs and IEPs

I'm taking this online class right now with UNCC (towards my Master of Arts in Teaching) that talks about "diverse learners." Basically, this means kids with learning disabilities, behavioral disabilities, kids who are English language learners, or who have some other issue that classifies them as EC (Exceptional Children.) I teach three blocks of inclusion, which means all of my classes have a variety of EC kids included with other non-EC students. Their issues or disabilities are ALL over the map, and are challenging, heart-breaking, and aggravating as hell in turns. Or, all at once.

To give you a little idea of what some of these kids are like, and the challenges they face just PASSING a class, here's one of my recent forum posts from my class. (We have to post three little reflections every week.)

So here's my frustration with IEPs. As I've mentioned, I teach inclusion classes, and have a LOT of kids with IEPs and 504 plans. Their IEPs say things like "extra time on exams" or "testing in a separate setting" or "read aloud their tests." Okay. That's all well and good, and those accommodation definitely help them come test time. But what IEPs don't do is give me any idea of HOW to actually help these kids LEARN better.

We try to use a variety of teaching strategies, and try to engage kids with different learning styles, and so on and so forth. Obviously there is a LOT more improvement we can do in this area, and there's lots to learn about how to best teach all of our students. But I find myself just at a loss with some students, particularly those SLD kids that have retention and comprehension problems. I can sit and talk through an assignment with a student and watch the wheels in his or her head just spinning and spinning without gripping anything.

One student in particular (although there are several) has unbelievably bad retention; you can tell him what a word means, have him say it back to you, and then five minutes later he can't remember it. This same student has a really hard time making sense of what he's reading. We can read a sentence like "President Obama opposes the ban on gays serving openly in the military and wants Congress to repeal the law" and when I ask him to talk through it with me, and ask him "What does Obama want Congress to do?" this student will think out loud something "Obama opposes...with the gays...they are serving openly?" He can carry on a perfectly intelligent sounding conversation with you about his life, but when faced with a piece of text he has absolutely nothing to even grab on to. It's as though he's reading a foreign language with nothing familiar to guide him to meaning.

It's students like him that motivate me the most to learn how to teach better, and at the same time make me feel like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall, or whatever metaphor for futility you choose. His IEP provides no guidance as to how to help him LEARN, only guidance as to how to make it easier for him to show that he HAS learned what little he actually retained. I hope this class will give me some practical ways to help him, and my other students like him, make some degree of progress and acquire new skills.

I can name at least four other students right now who are similar to the one I describe above, in that they struggle so painfully hard to hold on to even the simplest piece of information - and yet sometimes will pull the most random facts out of thin air. Their reading comprehension skills are so bad as to make reading almost a completely non-viable way to acquire information independently. I honestly do not know if their challenges would have been made easier by better teaching throughout the rest of their academic careers. My hunch is yes, but that it would have taken extraordinary teaching to get them up to grade level, and it's going to take beyond-extraordinary teaching to even get them half-way to where they should be. I honestly don't know if we're up to that. I hope we can figure it out. These kids deserve so much more than what they've been given so far. They deserve every chance I've had, and it's just plain shitty that they've had to work so much harder to get just as far as they have.

Hey October, where the heck did you go??

Seriously though. The last two weeks have gone simultaneously very, very slowly and astonishingly fast. I am thoroughly exhausted, have been living off not-enough sleep, with no time for breakfast, and Bojangles for dinner. Consequently, I woke up yesterday with a monster of a cold. My face feels like it's being pounded by mallets. I've been throwing down EmergenC, stocked up on anti-viral Kleenex, and my skin feels crawly and gross. Not a fun way to spend my Saturday (and, so far, my Sunday). But...I'm going to Chicago on Thursday to visit for the long weekend, and I'm pretty ridiculously excited about that. A light at the end of the tunnel!!

In the meantime, I've accomplished a few things the last two weeks.

I had a bunch of friends (including my sister!) over for dinner. I made curry and we drank a lot of beer.

I repainted a shelf that my old lady neighbor friend Genevieve gave me. It was dirty black when I got it, with a dead cockroach sliding around on the bottom shelf.

And now it's a kind of robin's egg/turquoise! Matches my Kandinsky and Picasso prints.


I stocked up on flannel from the Goodwill!


This morning, I decided I should put a coat of satin poly on the bookshelf, and repaint the white plastic deck furniture Genevieve has also given me. So I threw on clothes and went outside to go to the Home Depot, only to find my anole friend camped out on my car.


I spent 10 minutes chasing him around the car until he finally jumped off. Pretty ridiculous. I'm glad nobody was around because they'd have seen me walking in circles around my parked car saying things like "Seriously? C'mon friend!" to a small lizard. He kept changing from green to brown as I chased him around the car; pretty adorable. And...since I finally have a new phone(!!!!) I could actually take pictures of him.
I finally pulled the car out of the car port and got him to run off into the bushes.

For the remainder of my Sunday, I'm collecting sources for our kids to use to research their current events project. They're each going to do a presentation on some issue they feel strongly about. Our options so far are: Prop 8/Gay Marriage; the Westboro Baptist a-holes/free speech; Islamic Community Center/Mosque in NYC; Texas and their social studies standards/are we a "Christian" nation?; CA Prop 19/legalizing weed (guaranteed to be a favorite); AZ's immigration law; offshore drilling; and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' decision to close/reshuffle a lot of low-income schools in Charlotte.

I'm also going to try out Krylon's Fusion paint, which is supposed to stick directly to plastic without any sanding or priming.

Is it wrong that I'm way more excited about the latter?