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.
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"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.
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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!)