Adventures in Spicy Basil

Fresh basil added for artistic verisimilitude.

This is a work in progress. One of our favorite dishes at the local Thai is the Basil Duck and while there is no chance of me frying up duck breast, I can at least try the sauce, so I found a basic recipe here and added vegetables. Other than garlic, shallots, and a serrano chile - oh, and basil - there's no veg in the recipe. Also, I felt the ratio of soy sauce to fish and oyster sauce was not quite right, so I've cut back. And I eliminated the chicken broth altogether and doubled the sauce because the chicken and veg create enough juice on their own and all the veg requires more sauce. So here's what I did:

Mix:          2 Tb oyster sauce
                  1 1/2 Tb fish sauce
                  1 Tb soy sauce
                  2 tsp white sugar
                  2 tsp brown sugar
                  2 Tb Huy Fong chili garlic sauce (or a minced serrano below)

Prepare:    1/4 cup sliced shallots
                  4 cloves garlic, minced
                  (optional minced serrano chile in lieu of chili garlic sauce)

Chop:       1/4 of a head of cabbage
                 1 bell pepper (red is prettier)

Steam      1/4 - 1/2 cup string beans (I used frozen beans and broccoli)
lightly:     1 cup broccoli florets
                 and the cabbage

                  1 cup thinly sliced basil leaves

                  1 chicken breast (a half, in other words), chopped, sliced, however you like.

                  Minimal amount of oil for frying.

                  1 cup brown jasmine rice, cooked. Brown rice needs to be soaked for 20 minutes, drained, and then cooked in 1 1/4 cups water or less. Or use whatever rice you want. White rice is a waste of calories.

Fry chicken in 2 T oil on high heat until pink disappears. Time will depend on size of chunks, 2 - 3 minutes.
Add shallots and garlic (and serrano if you are using that instead of chili garlic sauce) and cook 2 - 3 minutes.
Add 1 T of the sauce mixture and cook one more minute.
Add the rest of the sauce and the vegetables. Toss and cook 1 - 2 more minutes.
Remove from heat and add basil leaves - toss them around.
Serve over rice.

Mincemeat

Or, How Not To Poison Your Friends

First you have to find suet. I don't want to go over what I went through last year trying to find suet at a grocery store that had it the year before. Almost had an aneurysm. I suppose one could use butter, but where's the fun in that?

I have used the following recipe from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook successfully so far. It makes twice what I could can at one time, so I would start with halving it. 

 The Fannie Farmer Mincemeat recipe:

Makes 20 pints/10 quarts – unless you do the math to halve or quarter it.

In a large pot, cook slowly until sugar and citron melt:

4 lbs chopped lean beef
2 lbs chopped beef suet
3 lbs dark brown sugar
2 cups molasses
2 quarts cider
3 lbs dried currants
4 lbs seeded raisins
½ lb chopped citron

Add and cook until tender:

3 lbs apples – peeled, cored, sliced

Add and cook 15 minutes more, stirring frequently:

1 quart brandy
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon mace
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons salt

Spoon into clean, hot jars leaving 1” headspace. Close the jars and process at 10 lbs pressure for 20 minutes. The book claims it will store indefinitely like this (and it will flavor through more with a bit of time) but I see online that 20 minutes is inadequate and although I’ve not yet given anyone botulism, canning meat or other low-acid foods takes 90 minutes. Check with an expert before doing any canning.

The We Ate All the Pies mince tarts

Now for the tarts. I got this recipe from the Standard Issue website, which is no longer. It's in Brit, so you'll have to convert. I have a kitchen scale, so that's no problem. If you're on the internet, which you must be to be reading this, you can find a site that will convert the temperature. I have that somewhere, but not on me right now.

I use muffin tins, which are larger than the ones described here, so the recipe only makes 12 (2 sets of tins) and uses less than a quart of the mincemeat, so there will be some left over. The tart pastry is very delicate, so take care in decanting the little pies.

225g cold butter diced

350g plain flour

100g golden caster sugar (or regular sugar)

280g mincemeat

salt

1 small egg (I don't bother with this or the icing sugar)

icing sugar, to dust

1.     To make the pastry, rub 225g cold, diced butter into 350g plain flour, then mix in 100g golden caster sugar and a pinch of salt. Combine the pastry into a ball – don’t add liquid – and knead it briefly. The dough will be fairly firm, like shortbread dough. You can use the dough immediately, or chill for later.

2.     Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6/fan 180C. Line 18 holes of two 12-hole patty tins, by pressing small walnut-sized balls of pastry into each hole. Spoon 280g mincemeat into the pies.

3.     Take slightly smaller balls of pastry than before and pat them out between your hands to make round lids, big enough to cover the pies. Top the pies with their lids, pressing the edges gently together to seal – you don’t need to seal them with milk or egg as they will stick on their own. (The pies may now be frozen for up to 1 month).

4.     Beat 1 small egg and brush the tops of the pies. Bake for 20 minutes until golden. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack. To serve, lightly dust with icing sugar. They will keep for 3 to 4 days in an airtight container.

The Christmas Bread

 This is a simplified version of a recipe for a coffee cake that can thence be converted to the Christmas bread. The original recipe (possible from Southern Living) was a bit complicated, with the "instead" and "addition of" stuff. The original also called for "shortening" but, for heavenssake use butter because we know what's in butter, don't we? 

Norwegian Christmas Bread


1 1/2 c milk, scalded 
1 1/4 t salt 

1 c sugar

1 package of yeast

6 c sifted flour (will probably need more)

1/4 t allspice

1/4 t mace

1 t crushed cardamom

 3/4 c butter,melted

3 eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 c of seedless raisins

3/4 c diced citron

To the hot milk add salt and 2 T of the sugar.   

When lukewarm, add the yeast, 3 c of the flour, and the spices.  Mix well and set covered in a warm place to rise to double its bulk.   

Add remaining sugar, the shortening, eggs, raisins and citron.  Add the flour, mixing to a soft but somehow not sticky dough.  Knead and place covered in a greased bowl to rise to double its bulk.  Shape into loaves and place in greased pans.  Again let rise to double its bulk. 

Bake at 350 degrees about 50 minutes.  Makes two loaves.

Idea I Had After Seeing A Book Title

First Woman, Detective

Eve called her family in for dinner, but only Adam and Cain showed up. “Where’s Abel?” she asked. Adam and Cain looked at each other. “I don’t know,” said Cain. “He was with his sheep last I saw,” said Adam.

Eve went looking for Abel. She saw the crows circling over the field and went to look. There was Abel, face down, his blood drying in the sun. Near his body was a rock with blood and hair on it. She leaned over to look at it and then at her son’s head. She touched him and he felt cold. He was not asleep. Abel is dead, she thought, this is the first one. We will die, just like the Lord said.

She walked slowly back home. “Abel is dead. His head is dented by a stone. Someone has killed him.” She looked at her husband and son. “Did you kill Abel, Adam?” Adam looked stunned. “No!” he said, “why should I?” Eve turned to Cain, “Did you kill Abel, Cain?” Cain licked his lips and then burst out, “Why do you accuse me, Mom?” “I’m only asking, Cain,” said Eve patiently. “Why do you take Dad’s word for it?” he challenged. “Just answer the question, my son,” she said. “You always liked him best!” Cain accused. “Did you kill him?” Cain stared for a moment and then looked away. 

“Is this about the offerings to the Lord again?” asked Eve. “He never accepts my offerings!” cried Cain. “It’s always lamb, lamb, lamb!” Adam put his hand on Cain’s shoulder, but he shook it off. “Of course he accepts your offering,” he said. “Not with favor,” sneered Cain. “How can you tell?” asked Adam, who hadn’t bothered to offer anything since leaving the Garden.

“We’re getting off the point,” said Eve. “Someone has killed Abel and there are only three of us. I didn’t do it. Adam says he didn’t do it. Cain, did you kill your brother?” Cain lowered his head. “Yes, Mom. I lured him to the field and struck him down. I did it in anger.” Adam rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy – we’re in trouble now.”  “Why?” asked Cain. “There’s no one to tell.” “The Lord already knows!” exclaimed Adam. “He knows everything! But first He’ll pretend He doesn’t and will ask you and what are you going to say?”

“Look,” said Cain, “if we all just keep calm and say nothing, no one will find out and no one will get hurt.” He dragged his toe in the dust. “It’s not like there is anyone else.”

“Dinner’s getting cold,” said Eve. “We’ll discuss this later, young man.”

“Why am I always the one getting in trouble?” grumbled Cain.

Eve was sad, but at the same time she was oddly satisfied. I have solved a mystery, she thought. And she wished there were more.

“Who’s watching the sheep?” asked Adam.

“Oh, shit,” said Eve.

Where Did That Watch Come From?

This has annoyed me for ages.
If there is a watch, there must be a watchmaker. Yeah, okay. Therefore, if there is life on planet Earth ...
No, no. Let me stop you there. You skipped something.
Where did the watchmaker learn to make the watch? Where did she get the parts? Did she imagine it all by herself? How did she know time should be divided up the way the watch divides it?
Do people really think that inventions spring fully-formed from the forehead of some really smart person (or a god)? Everything we have, that we make, is based on technology that has come before. Everything we make has evolved. And it took a long, long time to get from one idea (Time - Hey, when's the best time to plant some crops?) to another (Ooooo, digital watch!), but often the latter stages start coming fast and furious. Sometimes technology gets stuck in a rut for a while until someone figures out some nuance to get it going again. [Cold fusion? Helloooo.]
But the fact remains that a watch developed out of hundreds, maybe even thousands of years of cutting time into pieces. And one of the prerequisites was the need for cutting time into pieces.
Let there be light! There was Dawn with her rosy fingers, noon when the sun was at its apex, and tobacco-stained Dusk. As the seasons changed, daytime and nighttime would duke it out and become longer for one and shorter for the other and then go back. The hours of the day were not uniform throughout the year. What good was a timepiece that divided the day into regular intervals? Who would care? Where was the need? (Apparently, there was a need to limit politicians from talking too long, but a water clock worked for that.)
What sort of technology goes into a watch? Let's imagine one of those cool. old-fashioned fob watches. Very basic. You wind it up, and it ticks. First of all, it's made of metal. You need to be able to extract metal from ore and shape it. Oh, wait. You need fire first. You need to control that fire. It probably needs to get pretty darn hot to melt metal. Well, we're at the Bronze Age now. No problem. Some folks worked that out for us.
What about that winding? Someone has to invent a spring. Alternatively, someone has to discover the properties of the pendulum. What about gears? Where did that idea even come from? Someone has to find a way to make all this much smaller, more accurate, and also attractive.
Thousands contributed to the making of a watch.
In 1972 I bought a watch in Switzerland, because that's what you did. And now I don't even wear one. I have a phone that is my watch, my camera, and a total time-sucker.  The watch has evolved right before my very eyes.
So, just because I didn't see life on this planet evolve and can't explain exactly how it happened, doesn't mean life didn't evolve. It took an amount of time and slow change that I would have difficulty fathoming because it is just so vast. At the same time (haha), the technology of a simple watch is something I could not replicate. I couldn't even begin to know how to smelt ore. I leave that up to the experts. And I leave all the steps up to the experts as it seems the human race has a hive mind with everyone running around being expert in their own thing and contributing to society as a whole. Sort of the way every part of our body performs a different job and shares the results to make us live.
I can see the parallels. Or do I mean paradigm? Let me check my phone. Siri might know.

The Old Lady in the Mirror

Yesterday I caught sight of myself in the mirror at work. It was accidental. I have not quite perfected my mother’s trick of just looking at the hair, or whatever it was she wanted to check, and ignoring the wrinkles and wattle. The gestalt hit me. I’ve gotten old. For a brief handful of seconds I caught myself thinking, What have I done with my life? Why did I put off living?

Then I suddenly remembered that I did not put off living. I put off settling down. What needs to happen is to go over my early life and remember that I did what I damn well pleased for over 20 years. I am not waiting to retire so I can do things. I’ve done them, begad.

After college, I worked at low paying jobs and played around with theatre. I was in a musical with Garry Moore. My then boyfriend (sort of affectionately known as The Wicked Step-Ex-Boyfriend) had talked about moving in together and I moved 800 miles away leaving instructions with my parents to not divulge my whereabouts. We are both much happier. He has his home and his partner and I have mine. Our years together (on and off or at a distance) were filled with adventure, if not happiness.

I moved to Manhattan to break into theatre. First, I freaked out and went to Cambridge, MA for a while, staying in someone’s dorm room. A friend found a foothold in Manhattan and I joined him, where I went to auditions, hung out in piano bars, did odd jobs in corporate libraries, advertising companies, and at HBO. At HBO I ended up in an office overlooking Bryant Park and the NY Public Library. I watched the lights come on the Empire State Building (which I tended to call the Statue of Liberty because I’m easily confused by monuments) each night from my office window. I worked for a literary agent and for some famous authors.

Eventually I moved on to Boston, where I did six shows in two years as opposed to no shows in three in Manhattan. I worked as a paralegal and took classes in cartooning, tapdance, cooking, and ancient Greek. I might still be there if I hadn’t fallen and broken my kneecap. Then again, someone had to go back south and look after our parents, or as I called them My Parents and my sister called them The Parents. I started back into theatre and slowly wound down into a full-time permanent job with a house of my own, thinking I had the rest of my life all worked out. All that slipped away when I found someone that actually wanted to marry me. And after I got over bursting into tears every time I heard the “M” word, I finally settled down.

None of the above really exposes the warp and woof of what went on: getting so drunk that I lost track of how I got from one end of Manhattan to the other, parading as a female impersonator on Christopher Street, meeting other actors with interesting abilities such as silverware impersonations (loved the shrimp fork!), having my glasses broken during a fight on the Boston T, trying to train a cat to be tossed in the air for a show (didn’t work out so he was just carried on stage briefly), portraying the Token Tapdancing Lesbian in a gay musical only to have my roommate find out about it later … All good fun.

But settling down has not, really, stopped me from doing whatever I damn well please. It just seems that with age, what I damn well please involves more napping. And jigsaw puzzles online.

Personsplaining

My pies don't look like this. Pie by Bob.

Mentally I'm scrolling through all the couples in my book group Rolodex (remember those?) to see if I can find a "traditional" male. It's not enough to say that my own husband is not afraid to stop and ask someone for directions (while I cringe) and has all our important dates at the tip of his tongue ( I do remember his birthday, but because he was born on a distinctive date: Friday the 13th - can't quite recall what year). Just about everyone I know has a husband capable and often willing to do cooking and other housework. No one complains about channel-surfing or any of those other alleged traits that I can't even remember at the moment. At this moment, I am at work and my husband is doing the laundry. It was all I could do to sneak in and change the bed linens.

That doesn't mean I haven't seen traditional types, but there simply aren't many in my circle. And I'm not a young person.

This prompts me to rise to the defense of men in general and not forward Man Jokes that crop up in emails or on Facebook. You know the ones, the ones that are like Blonde Jokes - perpetuating an unfair stereotype. Stereotypes that don't even line up with my own dad, born over 100 years ago.

Blondes can forward Blonde Jokes if they want. If men can write some funny Man Jokes, they can share them among themselves, but I'll be no party to them. They just don't speak to my experience. People just aren't that simple. We're all nuanced.

I get that, despite decades of women's liberation fol-de-rol, men are still in power. They're getting nervous about it, for sure, and the pendulum has to swing back and forth before it comes to rest in the middle, but they still have the majority of power. Ridicule is a potent weapon the powerless wield against those above them. I just think it's time to put that WMD aside. Use it surgically on a specific individual instead. Don't use it to further divide us.

The Director's the Thing

F. Molnar

The names have been changed to protect, I dunno, somebody.

Many, many years ago, I was in a show. I wouldn't even have remembered this incident if Marlene's imminent visit had not caused me to drift back to the bad old days where we did not tread in case someone asked us, "Are you sisters? Well, then, how did you meet?"

Anyway, I was in a show. The director was a lawyer, but thoroughly trained as a director at a regional professional theatre. He just sort of drifted into the law by accident. Sort of. The show was a fluffy summer comedy of two seasoned playwrights manipulating the lives of those around them, unless you were one of the other actors, in which case it was a romantic comedy about a young man whose heart is broken and whose antics are observed by two cynical, middle-aged non-entities. I was one of the cynics.

The director is fascinated by stage business. He claims that one of the hardest things to do on stage is eat. One of the playwrights orders a huge breakfast, eats very little of it, and leaves the rest for the hungover playwright to finish. And my instructions were to finish the whole deal: beef, chicken, fish, eggs, etc. It is a point of pride for me that eating on stage is a mere nothing. The only thing I seem to be unable to do is whistle in front of an audience, but eating! Ah! Eating is my forte. While eating, I was to listen to the romantic lead moan on and on about his the loss of his love and how his life was over blah-blah, select lines that were particularly catchy, and write them down. I was, of course, a playwright, and all human drama is but grist to my mill.

As the scene rolls on, I go from hungover to delighted with my discovery of a vein of pure gold issuing from the mouth of Mr. Romantic Lead. I am no more than a yard from the nearest audience member in a small, semi-round theatre. I'm not mugging at them - just eating and jotting notes through this whole scene.

Mr. Romantic Lead apparently (according to the denizen of the Box Office) was lying on the carpet in the lobby, pulling at the skin around his eyes and thinking sad thoughts before his entrance into the scene. [Mr. Hoffman, next time try acting.] He was put out during performance by the laughter in the audience. He simply could not reconcile this laughter to the tragedy that was, at that point of the play, his life. He could not figure it out. My back was to him. So he invited his then partner to watch and see what was going wrong. His partner told him. I was making notes and eating.

Now, to this day, this whole incident upsets me - not as much as it did at the time. At the time, I was enraged, furious, impotent, and nigh-on murderous. Today I merely make my eyes ache with rolling them. In order to keep me from doing anything that caused laughter, Mr. Romantic Lead came up behind me and clamped his hands on my shoulders. He was then able to do his scene (part of which had involved going up to the back wall and resting his forehead against it, which he dropped because that got a laugh as well) of misery without me distracting the audience from his scene chewing.

We came out of that scene with me ready to shred him and he as pleased as punch - grinning. No amount of explaining swayed him. He had won. He had, in fact, killed the scene and removed business given to both of us by the director.

At this point in time, the director was spending as little time with the production as possible, probably suffering from depression. I didn't want to bother him and we had another performance coming up. I did the only thing I could think of: I moved the chair so that I was at an angle partially facing him. If he tried anything else, he would have to upstage himself. I continued to eat and make notes, but this time having to turn to get my food or make my notes.

When the director did finally learn of this, he was more than slightly perturbed. "Why didn't you tell me?" he said. Well, we didn't want to bother you. And it was fixed.

Amazingly enough, Mr. Romantic and I did another show together, along with his partner. And his partner cast me in another show. And thereby hangs yet another tale, but one for another day.

The Famous Club Sauce Recipe

Pretty as a picture! 

This is the family recipe for Club Sauce (according to my notes, it originally came from a nice lady named Rose Petz who had 2 Siamese cats called Si and Pinkie. Pinkie was the one with a big pink lipstick mark smeared on the top of its head every other day ... Okay, that wasn't all in the notes, but I remember her. She was a housekeeping mentor for my mom. Mom stopped by on Christmas day to bring her a gift and Rose was baking Christmas cookies. "A little late," my mom ventured. "I like my cookies fresh," snapped Rose.)

I'll start with the half recipe, in case no one has 20 lbs of tomatoes on hand.

10 lbs of tomatoes peeled and diced (or 10 of the what-used-to-be 1 lb cans but are now 14.something oz.)

3 cups of sugar

2 cups of vinegar (I used cider vinegar because I like the flavor)

2 T salt

4 onions (keep in mind that this is an old recipe that comes from the time when onions weren't the size of grapefruit)

6 red and/or green peppers

Cook all but the peppers 2 hours or until thick. Add peppers, cook 10 minutes. Might make about 6 quarts and a bit.

Getting ready to can.

1/4 recipe

5 lbs or cans of peeled, diced tomatoes (I love those petite diced ones)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup cider vinegar

1 T salt

2 onions

3 red or green peppers

It only made 6 1/2 quarts, but I needed to fill
the middle space to use less water and the
measuring cup was to hold the half-filled
quart down.

The "Marf, I only have 2 cans of tomatoes in the pantry" recipe:

2 cans of peeled, diced tomatoes

3/4 cup sugar (can't you people do math?)

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 T salt (I have a 1/2 T measure, but a heaping teaspoon also works)

1 onion

1 big green pepper (for color)

Now, the cool thing is, you can throw in anything else you think might add to the flavor, like some jalapeños or whatever. And then you can call it "salsa."

Brats with the homemade Hot Sweet Mustard Sauce
as well as the Famous Club Sauce. No bun. Buns
are "edible" napkins. Use a knife and fork like a
person.

Photo is the Serving Suggestion. The brats are from the hot dog section of Publix and I like them better than the Boar's Head ones because 1. they're slightly cheaper and 2. you get 6 in a 1 lb. pack instead of 4. Also pictured is my family's famed hot, sweet mustard sauce. Recipe for that on request.

How To Ruin Someone's Day

Gage and the iron rod that was blasted
through his skull.

Yesterday my day was ruined when I didn't get my senior discount at a grocery store that shall remain nameless so I don't get any more tweets from the Employee Retribution Department - and it "ruined my day." That's what I told my husband, anyway, and proceeded to do some serious moping because what is the point of getting old if you don't reap some minor benefit of sixty cents off or something.

Anyway.

My husband said, "Don't let this ruin your day." I pouted more. "Well, only let it ruin your day for a little bit," he amended. "Like an hour or two?" I bargained. And really, if I hadn't embarked an hour later on nattering about my reading of an article about Phineas Gage, my ruined day would have continued with sullen silences and meaningful sighs, even in the face of BBC Radio Comedy and All the Jigsaws In the World.

So, if I don't want the careless clerk tracked down and lectured/humiliated/docked/fired, then how do I intend to remedy this situation? Well, by golly, next time I will repeat my demand for the senior discount right there at the till even if there is a line behind me. If I want that discount so badly, I will just have to keep insisting on it, despite the embarrassment entailed and the annoyance of people behind me. If the company does anything, it should be to tell everyone how this seemingly minuscule slight causes pain and suffering all out of logical proportion. I mean, look at Phineas Gage! His iron rod was blasted through his skull one day and did he whine about it? Did it ruin his day? Well, it may have ruined that day. And maybe a few after that ...

Most of my job is customer service (that which isn't playing with puppets, singing songs, and making simple crafts with children), and I have to rain on someone's parade every day. I get no pleasure out of telling people they can't have a laptop because they don't have a child with them. It would make my work life easier and more pleasant if I could just hand out the laptops willy-nilly without having to check to see they 1) have a child with them, 2) have a clean library account, and 3) don't run off with it. But it does give me pleasure to find a book for someone and put it right in their hands in a timely manner. I don't give up after looking for one minute or pausing to answer someone's question. I will stick with it until I have either found something or determined that what the patron was looking for just plain isn't there. I would be mortified to discover I had done less.

So, unnamed clerk, you are forgiven. I'm sort of over it. Some day when you look in the mirror and see your parent's face looking back at you and you reel in horror, that free coffee (ew!) for being over 55 or sales tax forgiveness of 1% for being over 85 may be all there is to make you feel better and you'll understand.

By the way, Sam Kean's book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons sounds delightful!

Torn

I consider awarding myself a new badge.
Which one is for Existential Dread?

A mom with two toddlers in tow (riiiight, like they aren't bouncing off the walls) brings a woman to the library to help her with a résumé. 

My mind starts running like this:
Gosh, those kids are bouncing off the walls. Is the Children's Room the right place for this? This is a loud adult conversation - will this intimidate the children whose space this is? They're doing this right at the coloring table. Oh, never mind. That other little girl is going to color there anyway.

Then it moves on:
You know, we all sit around wishing we could help someone and thinking we have no time for it, but this mother, who has her hands full of toddlers, is making the time and is actually doing something. I should be doing something. She is actively helping someone get a job. I should be teaching someone English in my free time.

And then I get all angry:
Why? Why does this mother have to do this? She's making a  résumé for this woman and doing a practice job interview (that the woman is floundering around in). Surely some of my taxes are going to pay some people to do this. In fact, the Jobs place is barely two blocks away from here. I've been there myself when I was looking for work. 

I have actually asked my co-workers about this. Why do the people come here instead of going to the Job Connection? Someone there sat down with me and went over my résumé and gave me advice and showed me how to look for jobs on what passed for a search computer in 1990. A co-worker's response was: We're nicer. 

Really? We are?! OMG, how horribly must those people be treating the job searchers over there?! I know we get really cross with patrons gaming the system and we are not supposed to help them too much (we can get them started, but we cannot sit with them and walk them through using computers and getting an email address - we have classes for that), but despite all our sighing and frowning and glowering and such, we're nicer than the people at the Jobs place?!

I don't believe this.

In the end, the mom watched her kids' puppet show and made them pick up the amazing messes they made before they left. But I am still "so utterly fussed and rattled and torn." I don't want to deny the nice mom her good feelings of helping someone - a specific someone - in distress (no job, nowhere to live). I like being helpful, too. It feels nice. It feels much better than glowering at someone for perceived transgressions. And most of that comes from dealing with the public day in and day out. 

So, perhaps this is what has happened over at the Jobs place. Day after day they deal with people who have no computer skills (and most jobs have to be applied for online these days) and less and less desire to actually get work. 

I remember how frustrating it was for me. You just want to give up. I was out of work for four years. Eventually I took poorly paying positions, one after another, until I was able to get this library job. But being unemployed is disheartening, even when you are in a comfortable situation - I was living with my parents and had plenty of money saved. Sure, living with my parents put me back in the Child Role again, and I was pretty unhappy about that, but I had no utility bills and didn't have to wonder where my next meal was coming from. There's a big difference there, and I was still dispirited. 

In the end, the experience of both the unemployed and the people tasked (and paid) to help them wears them down and breeds a dull hostility. At least I get to help a little kid find a book and I get to watch the excitement when it's something he really, really wants. The Jobs people don't get that. I guess. So it's up to us at the library to take up the slack. 

But should it be?

I don't know.

What Does This Say About Us?

This ad was removed. It was for disposable cat litter sheets.

Our house has litter all over it. The area around the litter box is loaded with those little clay gravel things, but I blame most of that on the wonderful man who cleans it out every night for me so I don't have to do it. Let's face it, litter sticks to cats and not all parts of the cat with litter on them will touch this "nano-cling" sheet. Worse: it's something else for the landfill and to be replaced continually. I'm too cheap thrifty for this.

I dunno, disposable cat dishes?

Is this not the worst idea ever? How much trouble is it to wash food and water bowls? Don't you have to wash your own dishes? Again, it's something for the landfill.

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Okay, this doesn't seem too bad but, boy, are we lazy! However, just look at the picture. Does this cat look happy? It looks like it was caught on film just before the ears went back. Cat runs up to the new hiding place only to discover it's an over-engineered litter tray. A better photo would have a cat leaving it - but then the text would have to be somewhere other than dead center.

Here's my two cents: make a catnip toy for your cat. They like those.

Pride Goeth

There are many things that pop up in my memory to make me cringe. Long ago I decided that when this happened, I should say, "Hahaha!" to defuse it, but that hasn't worked too well. However, there are moments of great pride I can turn to in these moments and I will share them with you.

My inclusion in the acknowledgements of North and South by John Jakes, a similar inclusion in the biography of Jackson Pollack that won a Pulitzer, the day a co-worker called me an a##hole (which doesn't happen to women often, so I felt I'd finally crossed a divide), an appearance as Miss Palmetto Prunes on the tv show "Real People," and my crabrarian persona in the Unshelved comic strip.

I would recommend finagling your way into a favorite comic strip. It's worth the $$. Here's your chance: Unshelved Goes Digital Kickstarter.

Otitis Nostalgia

I've been reading Mary Poppins to cheer myself up. It has been so long that it seems almost new to me. Jane's earache reminds me of all the earaches I had as a child. I never get them anymore, and I wonder why. Well, I can get an earache from the cold, but it will go away after the ear warms up.

An earache takes me back to an actual doctor coming by our actual house. This was called a "house call." The only time in recent years I've seen an actual "house call" was in the case of a hospice patient confined to a bed in her home. Anyway, the doctor not only prescribed some eardrops, but had them in his black bag. No really, just like in an historical drama!

At that time we had a daybed in the family room, so it was before the room was paneled and the shelving put in. The daybed was a dark red with some sort of pattern and I was probably moping on it. I was given some tangerine segments to take the taste of the eardrops away after they had slid down the eustachian tube. What a great mini-anatomy lesson that was!