Warm and comfy!

OMG, I am dying from the cuteness.

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Uh Oh.

She must know she's on Teh Internets. She's got that "I iz Godz gift. Warz mah bow?" look in her eyes.

 

Thanks-Giving Us This Bread

Well, I did it. I got it ALL done, and it's even on time. THANK GOD.

 

Thanksgiving Focaccia.

Rolls are for wusses.

 

Serious Cause for Thanks

A year ago this month I was recovering from a lumpectomy.

It was my first time participating in NaBloPoMo, and I chose to participate specifically because I thought writing everyday would be a good diversion from whatever I might need diverting from, and perhaps a helpful therapy device.

As a diversion, writing about the experience wasn't always successful. As a form of therapy, I was grateful for the outlet.

My story from last November (which is accessible by clicking on the "November 2007" link in the archives section, just to the right) has a happy ending. The surgery, performed on the 6th, was textbook perfect. The results, which I received on the 9th, showed that my breast was cancer-free. My recovery was rapid; I never needed all the pain-killers provided in the prescription.

For all of these things I am deeply thankful.

I am also thankful for preventative medicine measures such as mammograms. Having said that, I should explain that my mammogram did not find my lump. I found it while in the shower. (Soapy water is the best method of discovery!) In fact, after I found the lump, neither mammogram nor ultrasound could definitively find it, although the lab techs were very able to confirm that it was there.

That was a terribly, profoundly, disgusting moment!! I had to admit to a small amount of relief that someone else was able to find the cause of worry that I had, yet it confirmed for me that I really did have something to worry about!!! The machines told me there was no lump. The humans in charge of the technology agreed (with me, not their tech-toys) that something was there. At least the humans were able to laugh with me and relate with me about the emotional conundrum I faced: "The good news is that we know you're not crying 'wolf', however, the bad news is that you may have something life-endangering growing inside you."

Again, that ended up not to be the case. I DID learn that the greatest benefit of preventative medecine is not always the procedures used, but the contact and reassurances one receives. I felt well-cared-for at each turn. That made a tremendous difference.

I have an obligation and an opportunity to get a mammogram every year. While I still must do my own self-exams, I feel like this clinical reminder is as helpful as anything else. It's as official as doing taxes and renewing license plates and voting. By putting that appointment on the calendar, I am making a commitment to my health.

I check my husband's breasts now and again, too. Breast cancer runs in his family. Never forget that men have breasts, and can be vulnerable to breast cancer! Because breast cancer awareness is not as promoted among men, it tends to be more lethal when it is finally detected, as it often goes undetected until a late stage of growth and has metastasized.

I celebrate my grim and joyful anniversary much as I spent my recovery: snuggling on the couch with my pets. Just for a moment, though. Life marches steadily forward, so I cannot stay here long! I embrace the activities with which I will fill the rest of my day.

I do enjoy this quiet moment as a gift.

 

Thankful Thursday: My Cup Runneth Over

Time for another list. I am well and truly blessed.

I am thankful for:

1.) this glorious day. The sun is shining, the temp is up around 70 degrees F (I've installed a bright yellow button along the right margin that blinks and says "convert me" which you can use if you prefer Celcius!), the sky is brilliant blue, and our autumn leaves are vivid and gorgeous against the cloudless sky;

2.) coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee; and while that is a daily given, I choose not to take it for granted;

3.) the Cleveland Browns, no matter how well or not well they do. They are a part of our city's heritage and football is an important part of our state's legacy! ON THIS DATE, Art Modell announced that he was moving our team -- OUR TEAM!! -- to Baltimore. Tonight we have a football game here at home on national tv. I am thankful that we have our team back with its colors and name and history intact!

4.) a clean kitchen and the tools and skills I use in it. They must be darn good, because my husband goes back for seconds and thirds every time.

Which reminds me, I've been cooking so much that we are out of key staples, and I need to replenish. Finally, I am thankful that I am both free and able to go to the grocery store and buy whatever I need from shelves that are stocked plentifully with a variety of items to suit my needs.

That's plenty for now!

 

... says it all, really.

 

Coming! Needles, Hooks, or Loom?

>SNERK< As if I need to be asked twice. "Yarn" is the new "shiny".

Garfield Minus Garfield publishes daily. It was my sister-in-law Leonor who introduced me to this very zen webcomic.

Of course, this particular strip was sent (rather pointedly) to me by My Beloved, who is still waiting for his first sweater and the half-finished half pair of socks I still have on the needles.

 

Glad to be inside! (Thankful Thursday)

Rick brought in the last blooming gladiolus after digging all the glad bulbs. There *was* frost this morning, after all.

I'm very thankful for my husband's thoughtfulness. He never stops making me smile.

 

Brrrrrrrrr!

We had an overnight visitor. Call him "Jack".

When I let Cleopatra outside this morning, I hadn't the foresight to slip on socks before I snuggled into my slippers. It would seem, however, that my running-onto-the-porch-in-just-slippers-days may be nearing an end. See the next picture:





If this car were parked on a new car lot, one could imagine this white substance was the protective wrap that keeps the finish from scratching or succombing to the evils of acid rain.

This car is not on a new car lot.

This picture was taken in my back yard, on my driveway. That's frost.

>sigh<

That's nature. That's astronomy. That's what happens as the earth tilts away from the sun.

'K. I'll adjust.

More coffee, please!

 

BERT!

BERT!
Originally uploaded by sunspotting.

She's apparently sorting printer ink and writable CDs. I don't think she's going to be any help.

I wonder what the neighbors think when they hear me use her name ephithet-like. Like I did just now.

Like I probably will again in another 20-25 minutes.

 

Watcha watching right now?

If you're like me, you're watching the "town hall"-style presidential election debate.

If you're A LOT like me, then you can barely contain yourself each time John McCain opens his mouth, to yell, "LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!!!!"

But Tom Brokaw is definitely the most entertaining of the 3. It is clear why he went into broadcast journalism rather than teaching (NO classroom management!) or goatherding or playground ball organization. He canNOT keep these guys within their time limits! And it's visibly frazzling Poor Tom.

Poor ME. I just want to hear answers to the questions, but it's not often these two men are able to harness their attention spans to actually address the issue during the allotted time.

Does anyone else want these guys to SIT THE HECK *DOWN*?!??

 

Aaarrgghh!! We need a pirate's 'tude!

We had a chance to plonk Gary Sheffield on the top of the 1st inning. While the option to NOT do it may be seen as good sportsmanship, and while I may approve wholeheartedly of that, the Indians *WHOPPINGLY MISSED* a strategic opportunity.

If Tribe pitcher Jeremy Sowers would have beaned Detroit batter Sheffield, he'd've reached on HBP, not by a double. No big deal right? Because nobody scored.

*HERE'S* the big deal: if Sowers had been the first pitcher to hit a batter, the Indians *and* the Tigers get a warning, and THE NEXT PITCHER GETS TOSSED.

How much you wanna bet Jim Leyland's coaching staff (mgr of the Detroit Tigers; though not he himself -- he's got a weekend 'discipline pass') took advantage of that as soon as White Hat Eric Wedge passed on it??

Wuss vs Puss.

 

Thankful Thursdays: Brad Meltzer and the Superman House

Superman was "born" in Cleveland.

Most people think he was a native of Krypton, but they're wrong.

Superman was born in a modest house in the Glenville neighborhood of the eastside of Cleveland, on a summer night in 1932. He wasn't born to bold Kryptonian Jor-El and Lara-El, nor even rural WASPish Jonathan and Martha Kent. He was born to a shy, inner-city Jewish kid named Jerry Siegel, on the night his father was either gunned down (according to one side of the family) or died of a heart attack as a result of being robbed at gunpoint (according to the other side).

I love my city. But this guy Brad Meltzer, an author of novels and comic books (which makes him cool "squared" mathematically, in my estimation), has made me feel very queasy-embarrassed about one way Cleveland has tragically fallen short.

Superman, the comic book, in its early form as produced by Action Comics, was written and drawn by Jerry Siegel and his neighborhood pal Joe Schuster. And Superman, the icon, has stayed relatively true to its original form. He's died a few times, but if you're going to be a legitimate comic book character, you'll do that more than once. In fact, you're going to die, be resurrected, have your history ret-conned, have your side-kick turn on you, meet yourself in a parallel universe, be drawn for several issues as a zombie or as a very small child with very small children superhero friends, have ridiculous animals assigned as your pets (or worse, peers), I mean the list is longer than Superman ought to have lived, and he's (given the number of lives he's lived) probably older than the United States by now. Just because that's mathematically impossible doesn't make it a feasible plot for a comic book...

What is sad, though, what has me so queasy and the issue which Meltzer has been shining the light on, is that the Siegel house is still there.

No one has built a Rite Aid on the site. Yet.

In fact, there's a family that lives there. By all accounts, they are remarkably friendly!! They know the history of the house. They've taken great pains to paint the house Superman red and blue. You can't miss the house on the street, it's said.

People visit them all the time, in fact, and they throw open their door, glad to invite them in to take a look at the house where Superman was born, to see the very room in which Jerry Siegel first conceived of the idea of The Man of Steel. They do this with a smile. Always with a smile.

The exterior may exhibit Superman, but the interior exhibits downtrodden, foreclosed Cleveland. I'll let this video speak for it.



Want to help??? Please do. You see the need. Click HERE.

I was first made aware of this "Save the Superman House" movement by Rick, and lately other people are taking up the cry. I'm glad to hear that. It would be a shame to let this landmark simply crumble into dust.

Here in Cleveland people come to visit the placque in front of the Heisman house (in Ohio City) and the Christmas Story house (in Tremont) and President Garfield's tomb (Lakeview Cemetery), and dozens of other important landmarks. Our friend Mike leads bike tours to show at least half a dozen interesting former auto manufacturing sites of long-past models (White, Studebaker, Peerless, others) that still exist, though in different capacities from their original uses. It's fascinating! It's all part of history. It's all part of what makes this city remarkable, and part of why I really love it.

People clearly want to see the place where Superman was born. It'd be a shame to deny them. It would certainly be sad to lose a cultural icon simply because of apathy.

The source of my queasy embarrasment is that the City of Cleveland is doing nothing to help save this landmark. They have been given opportunities. So it's falling to ordinary people. That's sad, really, because Cleveland does a good job of responding to needs of urgent natures; it's clear Superman's Birthplace isn't as urgent to the City of Cleveland as it is to potential visitors. Hence, it was the brainchild of an outsider, a non-Clevelander, Brad Meltzer, that sparked this movement.

I am deeply thankful on this Thankful Thursday that Brad Meltzer has taken up this great quest to save The Superman House.

It's Comic Book History. It's Jews-In-America History. It's Cultural History. It's Pop-Culture History. It's Movie History. It's Cleveland History.

It's OUR History.

 

Fresh from the backyard!

Mmmmm. This is when "summer" becomes "yummer".

Hot & Tasty

...and so easy.

This is a variant of a thing my mom used to make when I was a kid and the weather was too hot for cooking.

It's easy. Here's how.

Boil pasta. Drain canned meat: tuna, salmon, chicken, whatever. Probably not Spam, though if you like it, I'm not gonna knock it. Put the drained meat in the bottom of your serving bowl. If you have leftover veggies from another meal, dump those on top. (In this case, I had baby peas.) They'll warm through just right (and they're already cooked, anyway!!) once the rest of the concoction is added.

At about 5 minutes left of the pasta cooking time, add frozen vegetables to the pasta and pasta cooking water. Make sure to add some extra time -- 2-3 minutes -- because the cold of the frozen stuff will lower the temp of the boiling pasta. *Note*: don't put it in earlier than 5 minutes. It'll mess up the pasta cooking time. When it's all done, drain. Drain it well!!! Shake the collander, let it sit for a bit, even.

Dump all of that on top of the meat and leftover vegetables in the bowl. Add whatever seasoning you like: salt, pepper, fresh cilantro, dill, chervil, fresh onion or chives, celery leaves, garam masala, like that. Mix it a little.

Dress it!! What my mom used was simply mayonnaise. That was fine, but I prefer light Caesar or a raspberry vinaigrette or some sort of oil+vinegar+garlicky thing. Something with some bite to it. If I'm seasoning with garam masala, though, I'll stick to the mayo.

Mmmm. It's yummy. Good served warm or cold. Fresh or leftover.

Try it!!

 

August: "...gosh, it's hot..."

NaBloPoMo (dumb VOLUNTARY thing that makes me post every day) (I'm so biddable) has set the theme for August: HOT. Entirely appropriate, as I am melting from heat and humidity as I type.


via videosift.com

Mmmm. Brownies.

>drool<

Brownies. Triple chocolate brownies. ALL of it dark.

We're not big on milk chocolate in this house.

Yum.

But the big thing to celebrate in this picture is the baking pan. It's a Pampered Chef stone. Right now it's new, but in time, with careful seasoning, it'll be as nonstick as any good old cast iron *anything*.

I'm so pleased to have this because I *used* to have one, but I tripped and dropped it. That was a couple years ago. All the alternatives I've tried in the meantime have been bitterly disappointing.

I'm a perfectionist with my baking. I'm a good artist; my baking, however, is beyond excellent. It's really bothered me to be without this important tool. NOW there's no holding me back.

I won't settle for anything less than perfection, in the case of my tools, unglazed stone bakeware. I expect to serve perfect baked goods; this sets me back on that right road.

NOMNOMNOMNOM. Comfort Food.

There's not a whole lot of food that's much better than homemade fried chicken. Doesn't even matter what goes with it. It's just GOOD.

Good Morni--- eeewww.

What is it about early morning bare feet and slimy hair balls that inevitably drives them to find each other? And why can't I have some method of immediate, fresh, hot, strong coffee delivery right at my bedside?

And as long as I'm at it, I've looked at the calendar: where's my hovering car????