Running "Hard" vs. Hard Running

Being the chronic procrastinator and lifelong learner that I am, I went ahead and did some "research" before my run this afternoon.

I Googled things like: "how slow is too slow for a marathon" (nobody agrees on a number, but a lot of people have very strong opinions about it) and "Pittsburgh Marathon cut-off time"

I'm afraid of being too slow to finish a marathon. I know my former 5k race times were pretty good - not great, but I managed a few sub-24-minute races in high school. That translates to under 8 minutes per mile, which put me right in the middle of any pack of runners in my neck of the woods. 10+ years older and out of shape, I ran my last 5k race two years ago at an 11 minute pace and was proud. I'm aiming for 12:30 per mile for the marathon - manageable, I hope, but not easy.

So it was reassuring that among the raft of articles I skimmed this afternoon there were a lot of people who sounded a lot like me: "average" runners. Most of them had finished within the time limits of major marathons. It's especially good to hear because day to day it feels like I'm not making much progress toward running long(er) and fast(er).

But then I found two articles which said: You're running too hard. Train Slower, Race Faster. In a nutshell: the best training you can do is at low or high intensity. The most effective runners, the ones who had the best race times compared to their training times, were the ones who took the "Slow" in Long Slow Distance runs very literally, ie; conversational shuffles and not a "race pace" distance run.

One article recommended for "easy" runs: "If you can hear yourself breathing, you’re going too fast."

And I thought: "Oh. Shit."

Because I can totally hear my breathing and I can not carry on a conversation during my long runs.

So today when I went out, I went out with the intention of running at a "conversational" pace - 15 minutes per mile... and it was tough!

I ran the entire 3 short miles from my running plan and running that slow was a drag. It was cold, it was flurrying a little bit, my muscles felt stiff and then achy, and it took forever to get anywhere. In short it felt like way more work (albeit way less sweaty work) than the 4 mile "comfortable race pace" run I did earlier this week. But science says that's the kind of training I should be doing more, so here's to training better, and not just training harder.

I'm registering for the marathon today before the cost goes up again. This is it, folks. I'm officially a marathon trainee.

1/3

8.12 miles today. It didn't feel nearly as torturous as I expected and I'm proud of myself. Not much compares to the endorphin rush one gets while running.

I was aiming for 9 miles, but close enough. I can now say I've run one third of a marathon! Or walked and jogged it, anyway. The important thing at this point is to keep putting miles on my legs and I feel confident at this point that I can in fact run 10 miles, which means in a few weeks I'll be doing 13 miles - which is half a marathon!

That's exciting.

It's been incredibly mild here this winter. Other than that one deep-freeze, most of our days are in the 40s and 50s and our nights barely hit freezing. I'm worried this means that February and March will be completely, miserably windy and icy. Cross your fingers.

The chickens got a half hour of outside playtime today while I pruned the apple tree and picked at the garden beds. There is so much outside work to do before Spring... prune the rose, cut the mulberry waaaaaay back (again), weed and fill the rest of the front beds, re-seed the lawn, re-fence, plan, and plant the back bed, rake the last of the leaves and compost/shred them, clean out last year's failed containers and prep them with fresh soil for this year's attempt... and don't get me started on the house projects. This year, I swear the deck is coming down. Whether we replace it or not is up for discussion, but it has to go. We pressure washed it in the fall and it's not as slippery when not covered in algae, but the boards are warped and cracking, the ends are rotting, screws are loose all over and the dogs keep wedging their lead between the loose boards and the frame.

Which reminds me I need to figure out a fence for the yard and/or a more permanent chicken tractor so that I can let the girls out in the summer and not worry that they'll fly out of their playpen or decide to cross the road.

So much to do, so little time.

Retail Never Changes

Questions I have been asked this year:

"Where's that [stuff you use to do the thing]?" (It's a good thing I speak Customerese!)

"Can you check to see if you have more of this in The Back?"

"Can you tell me how much a piece of carpet this big will cost?" (The one with the price per square foot right on it? Yeah, gee, let me break out the abacus...)

"Where's your [item sold at competitor]? I get it here all the time."
 
(On the phone) "Yeah, hi, do you have any clearance pallets of tile or laminate or something?" (No we don't, because I'm not your personal shopper and I'm not going hunting for the dozen clearance SKUs I know are 16' up in the racking and scattered across the width of several football fields so I can describe every single one, do all your math for you, and hear you say "Ok, great, I'll come in some time this week to take a look at them".)


And from today:


"What is email?"

When I'm 70, I'm going to be in a store some day and some bright young salesperson/bot is going to suggest that I [newfangled tech] my 3D HoloPictures to their warranty specialist and I'm going to ask them "How do I do that?" and I'll feel bad for being so taken aback by that email question. Or probably I won't remember at all.

Marathon training progresses at a crawl. I ran on the first and the second, then had a very busy couple of days at the end of the week, and then it got cold. I hate running when it's so cold your nose runs and then freezes into a miserable snot-lip-sicle, so I'm going to wait until my breath doesn't crystallize instantly before I go back out there.

...How is your 2017 going?

The things you'll never understand.

This got too long to post on facebook. It was a response to this post: "Today I had to explain to a 60 year old man why he was banned from the pub."

I wish the managers at my workplace "Got it" like this guy does. Last time I was harassed to tears by a pair of men, called a bitch and told that I, a four-year veteran of this place and smarter than 3/4 of the men here, didn't know how to do my job, the manager on duty waved it off and served them unquestioningly and with a friendliness that hurt me more deeply than the name-calling. Like I didn't matter. Like I wasn't worthy of respect. Like saving our company's reputation for "great customer service" was worth more than my humanity.

(they were stealing, too, which made it worse.)

He waved off my upset as if I were being oversensitive. He made their anger worth more than mine. And I don't think it ever crossed his mind that he was doing something harmful; he was just "solving the problem" by appeasing the customer. The fact that the customer had just verbally attacked one of his employees never seemed to matter. The fact that their sexist remarks and the hundreds of others I have endured are among the reasons I think about walking out every day doesn't impact daily store operations. Harassment isn't seen as an issue in our store even after one of our female employees was literally stalked and threatened by a customer. He showed up at her home after being told his advances were unwelcome. He touched other women inappropriately and repeatedly. He never opened his mouth without an off-color remark coming out and the men in our store laughed and joked with him and greeted him with smiles every time he came in even as his sustained harassment was discussed openly by the women they work with. They offered lame excuses for his behavior and discounted the stories when it came out that he had prior convictions for assault. And it took months, a sustained campaign by several women, and a police report for our store to ban the offending contractor "because he brings a lot of business in and we don't want to act rashly".

Women in the service industry allow people to attack us verbally, touch us in unwelcome ways, leer and make suggestive comments on a daily basis. We do this because the other option is to defend ourselves and lose our jobs, to become unemployable over something so small as our claim to self-respect. We ask our managers to watch and listen and stop this behavior and most of them refuse. Some declare that it's "corporate policy" not to remove customers for such "minor" behavioral issues. Some claim the company will lose much-needed business if we stand up for ourselves. Some tell us that they are just not comfortable with that fight. Many tell us we are not allowed to defend ourselves, lest we offend somebody or put ourselves in physical danger. But it's okay to be harassed constantly, because that's not physically dangerous - just dangerous to our sense of well-being and self-respect and obviously those don't matter.

So many managers (both male and female) aren't comfortable standing up for their employees, but I'm not comfortable with men putting their hands on my arms, shoulders, and back in ways that imply ownership, leaning too far into my space, or whispering "You have very pretty skin" while their wife browses just out of hearing distance. I do not welcome the stares when I bend to pick up a box or pallet, or the disrespectful "chivalry" of men who won't let me lift it because I'm "just a girl".

It would be nice if I didn't have to tell the men in my life all of this. It'd be nice if the harassment (which is mild in comparison to others' experiences) never happened because little boys were raised to respect everybody, not just to see women as foreign objects. But this kind of sexism and harassment is deeply embedded. Most guys don't even realize it, and if they do their first response is "I'm not like that!" even as they continue to defend the awful behavior of their friends and coworkers.

I have a sense of humor and a little self-worth. I know some of my own strengths and don't have to hear from someone else that I am a good worker or smart or pretty. I laugh at jokes about female drivers even as I run heavy equipment. I don't flinch when people jokingly tell me to stand aside and "let the men do it" (Why would I? You want to do my job? Sure, I'll get paid to stand around and watch you!). I am also struggling daily with the kind of depression and anxiety that leads so many people to suicide, and harassment doesn't help. So yes, I can function around sexism every day. But it's not good for me. It's not good for anybody.

And because it's such a damn tiring fight and I'm not out to hate all men or make the entire world a "safe space", I let a lot slide. I know most of the time, you guys don't mean anything by jokes about my driving and that if I fire one back you won't think anything of it, either. My personal line in the sand is drawn at disrespect, especially the kind of casual disrespect that damages women professionally - the offhand comments about "that time of the month" and the discounting of women's experiences and stories. The kind that says "You need work on conflict resolution" to me when I nervously stand my ground in front of an angry customer but pats my male manager on the back when he folds like wet paper in front of that same customer and calls it "making the customer happy". That attitude hurts more than all the harassment, because it's that casual discounting of my existence as a human being with the same goals, dreams, and rich inner life as you that leads to the kind of harassment that so many women deal with.

We are not foreign creatures. We are not sex objects. We are people. We deserve respect.

Sexism and Criticism

I've been link-hopping through the article that a friend thoughtfully provided for a little writing group I'm in, on sexism in Young Adult publishing, and finally hit this thoughtful article about critiques -  specifically critiques for/by female reviewers:

"The idea is, apparently, that women are so exhausted by the intellectual labor required to produce the text in question that we are unable to withstand any subsequent critique, and ought instead to fall back on some kind of rosy-cheeked sorority of lady writers, exchanging stain-removal tips and sob stories."

*sighs and reclines onto fainting couch*

The article makes some good points.

I think this goes further than just a fear of publishing criticism in YA. Across a hundred subjects and disciplines, from literature to food blogging to college classes, people have backed off strict criticism in favor of hedged, softened words of gentle advice or worse, silence. I'm guessing this change is due to a misguided sense that communities striving to be "diverse", "inclusive", and "welcoming" can not under any circumstances allow criticism - even constructive kinds.

But let's get this straight: Constructive criticism is not mean, it is not intentionally harmful to minorities (although unintentional harm should be part of the larger discussion) or non-inclusive or unwelcoming and it is the responsibility of the author when putting their work out into the world to accept the possibility that not everybody is going to love it and further that it is an author's responsibility to duly consider all reviews, both positive and negative and not to take them as personal attacks but as what they are - reader opinion which may or may not figure into the writer's personal growth.

Critical reviews are an integral part of growing and improving as a writer. Ignoring the negatives because they make us feel uncomfortable should not be an option, and expecting that women (or men, or teens, or authors of color, or anybody else) can't handle the discomfort of a critical review is just plain insulting. We should at least read our reviews before we discard them as useless to us; we might find that a reader has pointed out a flaw we didn't see, or a habit we have fallen into without noticing. We might also find that our style or voice is better understood by certain kinds of readers. What we do with that information is our choice but I think the information should be available, which means encouraging reviews that are not all "I LOVED IT!".

This does not excuse the sorts of people who use the umbrella of constructive criticism to fire harsh words at authors they do not like. So we need to be talking openly about what constitutes _good_ critiques vs. attacks, and how we can educate ourselves as readers and reviewers so that when we read something that doesn't sit well with us, we can address it honestly and kindly.

Happy birthday to me.

Today I turned 30.

I am definitively no longer a "young adult". I'm supposed to have my shit together. Everybody else I know who is in my age group tells me they don't have their shit together either, but that doesn't help because all of them LOOK like their shit is together, at least.

I just got braces. I'm still working retail (although thankfully not still a cashier). I'm still "working on that novel". Ha, ha, ha. My shit is so disordered I can't even find half of it, let alone get it together.

All the things I wanted to do with my life seem to have slipped through my fingers like water through a sieve.

And sure, it's not too late to turn things around and do what I want to do. I have a friend who moved to Thailand and is thriving, for fuck's sake. But I'm not even sure what it is that I want any more, and I'm so tired of fighting for every tiny little accomplishment. Getting out of bed is a chore some days. Washing the dishes requires superhuman acts of strength and focus. Being at work all day drains me emotionally and often physically and I come home completely unwilling to deal with my house, my husband or my pets. Some days, my depression and anxiety play nice and I go out and feel good about myself. Most days, I do this: spend the day on the couch hating myself and feeling overwhelmed by everything I need to do and frozen into doing nothing at all, so I can stay up late hating myself some more, go to bed alone because husband's already asleep, oversleep, start the day off poorly and do it all over again.

Last week at work I was asked out of the blue to help staff a convention center booth for our local home and garden show. I made it there on Friday, lasted 6 hours, and barely managed to get myself home on the correct bus. Afterward I was cold, anxious, and exhausted. My throat felt sore and my mouth was raw (new braces and talking do not play nice together). I've developed a cough since then. Stress-related illness sucks.

So does being 30.

Winter is...

...almost upon us and as usual I've spent the last few days in a funk as the mercury drops below 55°. This time of year is gorgeous and I love the cool nights and warm days, changing leaves and the smells of drying grass and tannic leaves in rain puddles and sharp ozone before a storm. I also dread the coming chill and darkness, the four to six months of paralyzing cold when I won't see the sun at all some days, when the house's drafts make themselves known again, my hands and feet freeze, and I don't want to get out of bed let alone get anything useful done. The kitchen is drafty and washing dishes becomes a battle between the hottest water you can stand and the chill air sucking the heat right out and leaving a sink full of lukewarm suds. I hate lukewarm anything, but especially lukewarm dishwater. At that point you might as well just wash everything in cold.

Anyway, my point is that this time of year I start to reflect on what I have (or haven't) accomplished over the last 9 months. The list always comes up far short of what I hoped to have done by now, and I'm beginning to think it always will, but this year I had a resounding success. Just one.

Black currant jam.

Not only is it delicious on toast and bagels and pb&j sandwiches, it's the first thing I've ever made from my own garden that hasn't languished at the back of the fridge acquiring new forms of life before I gave up on it. I, grandmistress of procrastination and couch-weight extraordinaire, managed to not only harvest two pounds of currants from the bush before they went bad (a task I haven't completed with the mulberry tree in years), but store them in the fridge for only a reasonable amount of time (no mold! No shriveled berries!), settle on a recipe, successfully make it (no thin, watery sauce or overcooked rubber!), store it, and eat an entire jar of it in two months. I hereby declare the black currant bush the best plant in my garden this year. The tomatoes didn't stand a chance.

I'm feeling pretty good about that jam. Doubly so because I just enjoyed the last of the jar for breakfast. I have another jar, heat-packed but not canned, which I am hoping will keep long enough for me to crack it open in December and enjoy it. That will feel like a real success, both for my preserve-making and my fight against seasonal depression.

Here's to success!

New smells!

So because I'm daft for hand-made perfume blends and books, when my favorite perfumers put up an offer of 8 scents designed to match their friend's new novel:




(available now on Kindle!)

...I figured hey, why not.

Herein follows my first impressions of some of the delightful character-centric scents the girls at ZOMG Smells whipped up, in rough order of their appearance in the book.

Colin:
I'd give this to all the playboys in my life... if I knew any. ;)

Rich, complex and a tiny bit impudent. Regal French lavender overrides the other notes with a little "your reputation precedes you, sir"... and then the party starts. Amber floats through hauling frankincense behind it and gives the middle of the scent a full, sensual musk. The lavender hits its soapy high note ten minutes in and then mellows above the most amazing woodsy dry down where nutmeg and cardamom come gliding in like debutantes fashionably late for their own ball.

If YSL's Opium eloped with Old Spice, this would be their sassy Parisian baby. And while the end result on my hormonal female skin is a gentlewoman's lavender and spice confection I'd love to smell it on a dapper young man who might hang onto the woody notes a little longer.

(This review was also posted to their site)

Captain Westfall:
Smoky, salty, and strangely... green? That's probably the cypress and oakmoss - this scent brings to mind a Hollywood bayou, all moss-festooned cypress groves and dark waters edged by genteel plantations with none of the mud and rot. Smoke from somebody's fireplace lingers in the still, humid air. Grave dust haunts the drydown, unseen but raising hairs on the back of your neck. I have the urge to watch Interview With The Vampire.

The dog likes this one, too. Longevity is great.

"Bitter vetiver, cypress essential oil, a worn leather scabbard, the scent of woodsmoke mingled with the docks he came from, the sweet amber of the wealthy he now mingles with, and the Lady's oakmoss and gravedust."

Gabriel:
Earthy, ragged, and a little bit moon struck. Shares some notes with Westfall and Green Lady, which makes sense as Gabriel claims the Lady's favor. Gabriel's scent is heady with frankincense and cedar, and the "grave dust" note lends sharpness to the background just as it does in Westfall's blend. My impression is rich dusty wood and resin, preservative notes that tickle the nose and hints of things old and unseen. Charming and dirty, like Gabriel. Moderate longevity.

"The background of his scent is of the grave: frankincense and myrrh, cedar planks, freshly turned earth and patchouli, the warm skin-scent of sandalwood that he shares with Drake, and the Lady's sharp green galbanum and bitter gravedust."

Deirdre:
Bitter medicinal herbs, sweetened only slightly by the lavender poultice. This scent is sharp on first application and mellows grudgingly into something a little warmer as it dries and the resins come out. Brings to mind an apothecary's work-table, the wood stained and infused with the scents of all kinds of poultices and infusions. The result is not unpleasant but standoffish due to the bitter tea; would require conviction to wear this to social events. Fits the character very well, but doesn't seem to fit me and on my skin has poor longevity. I wanted to like this scent because it sounded lovely but it doesn't quite deliver the way I had hoped.

"Bitter black tea, dried herbs and dusty herbal flowers, a fresh poultice with lavender, and the resinous evergreens of the North."

The Green Lady:
If Captain Westfall smells like the Hollywood idea of a swamp, The Green Lady smells like an actual swamp. Her scent is the one from which Gabriel and Captain Westfall take their dusty backgrounds, but there's quite a lot more dust in Green Lady. I don't smell the lavender here until the end (in fact, didn't even recognize it until I read the notes). My husband smells pine and I get the smell of fresh wet earth, mingling with sharp, slightly rot-sweet green things - like burying one's face in a forest floor. The drydown settles into earthy, warm, dusty cedar and the tiniest hint of lavender. The projection on this scent is great at first but drops sharply as it dries down, leaving bare hints close to the skin. Longevity doesn't seem great on me but sometimes woods will cling for hours after I expect them to fade, so who knows? Entirely appropriate for those times when you need a little bit of wildness (or want the perfect scent to accompany that witch costume on Halloween night).

"Sharp green galbanum, fresh wild lavender, cedar coffinwood, vetiver, patchouli and sandalwood for a last touch of the living on their lost ones, and grave-dirt."

Summer Fun

Facebook just notified me of the yearly summer neighborhood block party, which I have not attended once in the five years we have lived here... the first year, I didn't know about it. Every year since, I've either worked or been too socially anxious to show up.

I work again this year, because feeling mentally pretty good right now means that of course my job will ruin my chances of having a social life. It's only when I'm utterly depressed and only want to spend time in a hoodie-shrouded ball on the couch that I get time off which coincides with such things as happy hours and friends' plans.

I keep saying I need to get out of retail but I haven't done much about it. This year, I want to change that. Stay tuned.

I wrote all of this in response to a Facebook post.

The subject was the $15 minimum wage "debate".

And someone said:At one point I ... but instead of whining to the government I ... bigger pay checks... better solution than complaining to the government.

Get a marketable skill and the economy will reward you appropriately.

So I got mad, because yes, ok, complaining doesn't solve much. But a staged series of protests in favor of a higher, livable minimum wage is not complaining, it's constructive criticism and a public awareness campaign. It's Doing Something About It. And the government is the entity that controls the minimum wage laws, so yes we do need to tell them if we want something to change. But regardless of one's stance on the protests... here is my rebuttal, which got too long and ranty to post on facebook.

A) if everyone got "marketable" skills and were magically rewarded by The Economy there would be no one to wash our dishes, serve our burgers and staff our stores. Therefore your "solution" is at best short-sighted and at worst sheer ignorance of the way the world actually works. Either you pay someone to serve, or you do it all yourself (and good luck holding down a full-time job, paying the bills, feeding and clothing yourself entirely from your expansive farm and workshops, and still managing to find time to read facebook). And if you're paying someone to serve, you're The Economy, and you're rewarding them... with poor wages, poor working conditions and a holier-than-thou attitude.

B) "marketable" changes by region, age, gender, time of year, date (what was marketable in 2004 may not be now), economic state (recession, anybody?) etc. It's not as simple as picking a degree in a STEM field and going for it, and even if it were, some people aren't cut out for STEM degrees (or [insert applicable skill here]). Some people might even enjoy flipping burgers for a living, if they could make a living at it. See point A.

C) You NEED service workers, therefore their skills ARE marketable to somebody, but you're not willing to pay them what they can live on because you don't want to have to recognize that you're abusing them in the first place when you demand cheap goods and services and continue to use and pay for those things that we provide to you. Everyone is guilty of this, some more than others, and honestly those filthy rich people that we love to hate because they're making more in a week than we'll see in our lifetimes are probably the LEAST guilty because they at least are generally aware that quality comes with cost (although the inverse is not always true) and they are willing to pay more for their goods and services, although half of them are doing so while running corporate empires that pay their workers shit and beans.

Also, people recognizing skill with larger pay checks is utter BullShit(tm). But keep lying to yourself because it's way more comforting than facing the cold hard reality that America is full of spoiled middle-class brats spouting platitudes about hard work and rewards while people go without health care because The Economy doesn't see fit to reward them for their work.

Sure, there are better solutions than "complaining to the government". Learn to garden and grow some of your own food, if you can find the land and the time. Save a few dollars a month until you have enough to buy some foods in bulk so that you can save another few dollars a month. Find rich friends and hang out with them and hope they can network you into a better standard of living. Figure out a better mousetrap and make a million dollars. Get a degree and then spend 50 hours a week spamming your resume to every place that's hiring, get lucky and get hired at the job of your dreams. Win the lottery. Pay off your student loans by selling porn on a cam site. Go to your boss and demand a raise, rinse and repeat until he either fires you or you're making enough to live on. Work your ass off at three part-time jobs, give up on all of your dreams, wear every lucky charm you can find to ward off any undue accidents, and keep your head down for ten or fifteen or fifty years until you've saved enough money in your 0.5%-interest savings account that you can afford health care and start thinking about a car, maybe. There are loads of options for bettering one's life! You just have to do it! Oh, and maybe not be mentally ill or physically disabled or transgendered or gay or old or female or a person of color or....

I'm all for good-old-fashioned work ethic and think that everybody should take pride in what they do, work hard, and better themselves. I don't presume to set the bar for what "better" means to other people, because there is a fine line between recognizing concrete improvements in essential life skills and telling someone they should have the same end-goal (and thus the same improvements in life) as you. A well-rounded education is a great thing and aids public discourse but is it necessary for everyone to attend college to get it? And to assume that "bettering" oneself must include getting more marketable skills just so that one can afford to eat is inhumane. I think we can all agree on that, yes? 
 Or maybe if people are worth so little that they don't deserve to be paid enough to eat, can we agree that they need to be culled? Because I could get behind culling all of the people that society deems "worthless", as long as I get to decide who has value. That's fair, right? 

That's basically what we're already doing: deciding arbitrarily who has value based on who has what job. Your job is your stated value to society - not your degree, your hobbies, the amount of fun you are at parties... but the thing you do to earn money because capitalist society has decided that you need to pay for the degree, the hobbies, and the parties with an imaginary currency that demands your time, attention and resources for the best years of your life and in return gives you little green pieces of paper (or these days, little electronic bits in a computer somewhere) which tell everyone how much society should value you. Except the system is broken, and while raising the minimum wage won't fix it by far, it will at least stop people from trying to better themselves with degrees only to graduate into jobs that don't let them pay their bills. It's not just fast-food workers who struggle with poor wages; they're just the loudest right now and the least likely to get a promotion or raise that will take them above the poverty line.

I also do not for one second think that people who take pride in what they do, work hard, and better themselves are somehow going to have the universe or the economy turn upside down and shit rainbows and winning lotto tickets over their heads, nor do I presume to understand the reasons other people have for not giving 110% at their jobs or in the rest of their lives (although often money is one of those reasons). I wish the world worked this way but it doesn't. It's cutthroat and competitive and horrible and it doesn't get along well with others, and it doesn't always play fair. So no, your anecdotal story doesn't matter to people who are still fighting to earn enough to live on. And it provides no evidence at all of a fair and just economy which rewards people for simply improving themselves.

The universe is not kind nor friendly and it doesn't give a fig how hard you work and it will not always reward you for that work. When it does, it may not even reward you in ways society considers a success. But if money is required for life then the least that we as a society can do is pay people enough that they can live, so that they have the chance to better themselves in the first place.

Nothing.

Today (Sunday) I did nothing.

I got to bed late and overslept our alarm. Shot our of bed still groggy at 9:45 to let the chickens out because it was cold enough on Saturday night that I worried they would not be comfortable in their doorless coop. I had shut them in with plywood over the door instead... They were warm but  displeased with their late access to breakfast.

Then I had cookies and cocoa for breakfast. I sat on the couch with my laptop and read articles my friends linked on Facebook and thought how dreary and gray the weather was and how cold the wind and decided I'd rather not go work on winterizing the coop right then.

Except it stayed dreary and cold all day and I had a headache and my eyes hurt. I went to lay down and slept all afternoon, did not feel any better and went right back to the couch and an interesting travel blog from China.

Today was pretty worthless. So I'm going back to sleep, hoping to sleep through the night so I can get up, go to work and waste all of tomorrow too.

Long Slow Decline

The weather is getting colder again. The sun has been quietly slipping away from long evenings and is later to rise in the mornings; a sleepy thing still full of summer's yellow heat but none of the summer's vitality. The leaves won't be green for much longer. The nights are cool, bordering on cold, and the mornings are dewy and crisp. Two weeks ago some of the stores got out their Christmas stock and pumpkin spice creamer and put them out to sell.

Many people love this time of year. I try, but as someone who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder (and hates being cold so intensely) there is something final and terrible about fall. It's hard to enjoy crisp autumn mornings when you're focusing on the next 4-6 months of frozen toes, sinus infections and cabin fever. And when one works retail (as I do) the spectacle of Christmas merchandise in September is bone-chilling indeed. I used to at least attempt to enjoy the holiday season and I think last year I put the tree up more out of a sense of obligation than any desire to be festive and jolly. I felt like I had to have at least one facebook photo of myself or the cats near the tree, so I could prove to everybody else (and maybe convince myself) that I wasn't suffocating under the weight of winter cold and early darkness and mindless holiday consumerism.

Look at me. Moping inside on a 78* fall day - and a Saturday off, to boot! - , prophesying doom and gloom for the months to come.

Something needs to change.

Reunion

I can't believe this, but my 10 year high school reunion is coming up on Saturday. Yeah. I graduated that long ago. I am apparently An Adult. So this weekend the best and brightest of my tiny class of 100 are getting together to size each other up over beer and buffet food, and I won't be there, and I'm (kinda) (okay, a lot) glad.




High school wasn't easy for me. College was only marginally better, socially, but at least there wasn't much bullying in college and I had a goal and some supportive friends, and more importantly a clean slate. I like clean slates. After the hurdles of a toxic elementary school environment, going into seventh grade with a clean slate was amazing. I was in a new district with new classmates who didn't know my old nicknames or that I had been at the bottom of the social pecking order. And then I realized I was still the same awkward thrift-store-jeans-wearing misfit I had been in sixth grade, and my classmates also noticed it, and it was elementary school all over again except by senior year we had actually matured enough that the kids who did band and musicals didn't have to tolerate being slushee'd every morning and some were in fact the cool kids (playing the leading roles, of course). But I still didn't have a lot of friends, didn't get the cool toys or wear cool clothes, and after graduation I didn't really feel all that sad to be leaving high school behind. So why would I want to go back? The nostalgia factor just isn't there. I don't know the people I graduated with any more. I haven't spoken to 9/10ths of them since 2004 and any curiosity about their lives could be satisfied by judicious use of Facebook.

But the real reason I don't want to go is this: My social anxiety hasn't gotten much better since high school and entering a room full of people who knew me back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth is infinitely worse than, say, interviewing for a job or going into a restaurant/store/office for the first time (both things I avoid if at all possible). Logically I know that most of them barely remember me, just as I barely remember them, and that any vague notions they might have about me are probably relatively positive (I was smart, a decent runner, and - so everyone else tells me anyway - pretty, although at the time I felt stupid, clumsy and ugly, still do, and it's taken me years to even accept that other people might not see me that way). I just can't convince the illogical fear-stricken lizard brain part that a reunion would involve anything but blood and tears. In my mind I see it looking something like the prom scene from Carrie except a million times more mortifying because now we have facebook with which to memorialize forever the horrible things that happen at class reunions. And probably without all the death. I don't have psychic powers as much as I wished for them when I was little.

But anyway, I got the facebook invite for the reunion some time last fall and then the class president and vice president (high school popularity contests apparently confer the winners with responsibilities long past graduation) started posting dates and times and people started responding that they were coming and I thought "I'll tackle that anxiety-inducing beast and RSVP later". But I never did because every time I considered it, the spectre of vicious high-school teasing reared its ugly head. And even though we are adults and the teenage boy who was my worst bully is dead (long story short; he was drinking with a friend on the night before graduation and there was a vehicle accident), I just didn't think I would want to be in the same room as all the people who if they did not bully me also never stood up for me. I knew I would stress out every day until the day of the reunion and then break out in sixteen kinds of pimples and a rash two hours before getting in the car and walk into the reunion looking much like I did back then, wearing last decade's fashionable hand-me-downs, glasses with the paint chipping off them, and a face full of adolescent pimples. And they'd judge me like they always did and find me lacking and not want to talk to me, and I'd end up in the corner with the three friends who came, like always, and it just wouldn't be an enjoyable night.

And since we really can't afford a rental car and I can't drive the vehicle that I use as my daily driver (it's just not reliable for long trips), my husband would have to drive me, which means he would either have to amuse himself alone while I was at the reunion or he would have to accompany me while I wished him away (for both our sakes; he hates crowds, especially crowds of strangers, and I'm marginally less uncomfortable in crowds of "friends" when he's not slouching awkwardly in a corner, staring at his phone while I try to make small talk). We are an awkward couple in public because we are both introverts and have different ways of dealing with people; hardly a unified front or a fun one. That's fine by me, but I don't want to try to explain it to a dozen silently judging classmates.

And if that's not bad enough, half of my classmates are probably happily married to people who either have or are on their way to having Important Letters after their names, like "J.D." or "M.D" or something. In other words, Successful People. I married... a guy who is excited about the games coming out for XBox one this fall. (He also cooks, cleans, takes care of the pets, chauffeurs me around, fixes the cars, and occasionally sews and builds simple furniture, but people in my age bracket seem to define each other and themselves first and foremost by their jobs, and he works bare part-time hours, in a field that isn't exactly prestigious, and I don't have anything better to offer, so our job-selves are effectively poor white trash, of which I am painfully aware any time anyone asks me what I do for a living and then tries to spin-doctor my response by imagining that I am some kind of in-home glamour consultant). They're working in their desired career areas. I'm working as a "Sales Specialist", although at least I'm not a cashier any more. They're having kids. I get to explain to everybody I meet why we never want kids without throwing my hands up and impolitely telling them I think everyone should stop reproducing for the good of humanity, or at the very least question their infernal desire to procreate. They went on yearly vacations/honeymoon/road trip to Aruba/Machu Picchu/Portland. I... didn't. This year was my first summer vacation since high school.

I know this isn't true of all of my classmates. I know there are probably some like me who are struggling, or unhappy, or socially anxious. But all of the ones who replied to the invite seem so happy and well-rounded and comfortably middle class in their facebook profile pictures: shots of well-made-up young ladies standing on beaches or mountainsides with the wind in their hair, and a tall, handsome, outdoorsy man by their sides, or equally well-made-up young mothers or aunts with their kids/nieces/nephews, reading books or laughing, or handsome young men doing athletic/political/cultural things with lovely fiancees in tow. They look very normal and I am uncomfortably aware of how not-normal I am. Half of my profile pictures are taken with my webcam with an ugly wall behind me because we don't go anywhere interesting enough to provide a good photo backdrop. Before my jaunt to Colorado two weeks ago my photo was a memorial to the chicken that our dog killed: a shot of her looking quizzically at the camera. Happy family photo > memorial chicken photo. I even lose the facebook comparison game.

Does that sound like a good time to you? Me either. And don't try to tell me your reunion was so much better. Are any reunions not awkward even without social anxiety issues?

So because I'm too socially anxious to deal with awkward reunions I'm going to be working my retail job like I do every Saturday. I almost prefer customer service to taking two precious vacation days, driving 4 hours north and paying to see people I haven't spoken to in a decade who will almost certainly make me feel bad about what I haven't accomplished so far. I can feel like that on my own. I don't need their help.

Sorry to my few friends who will be going - I'll have to catch up with you guys privately, when I can devote my vacation time to you. I like it better that way.

A food post

Rick and I had a really funny back-and-forth while brushing our teeth the other night and I can't remember what it was, but you probably wouldn't think it was that funny anyway. So.

Tonight I made myself dinner for the first time in... a while. With Rick at home more often than I, he usually cooks for both of us and I stuff my face and make appreciative noises in his direction. A few nights ago it was Southwest Quinoa Stuffed Peppers. Then homemade pizza, then burgers. I'm spoiled.

Tonight he didn't want to cook, though, and I had a cheeseburger (on a homemade bun!) for dinner last night and a hamburger (ditto) for lunch today and didn't feel like another burger (Rick cooks in large quantities) so I whipped out a chunk of salmon, salted it, pan-seared it and then used the pan to heat up some previously-blanched garden fresh green beans. Yet the plate didn't look good enough for instagram so I cast about for something else and realized I had three very sad beets in the bottom of the crisper drawer.

So I peeled and diced and sautéd them in a nice bit of olive oil and rosemary and THEN I thought about it a little bit and decided hell, I'm a grown-up (yeah, right!) and I can cook with wine and the last of the wine that's been languishing in the fridge for a week would be perfect reduced over the beets, too.

It turned out ok. The fish was perfectly crisp outside and moist and flaky inside and had some great chunks of salt-crust (oops). The beets could have done with less oil. I am not, in fact, a master chef. But I felt pretty good about it. Maybe it was the wine?

I didn't instagram it by the way, because I ate half the fish before the beets were done.

Update!

Ok. So.

I think every time I have the urge to tell Stalkerbook what I'm doing, I'm going to think about it some more and decide if it's really important enough to share. If it is, it can be a blog entry instead.

If it's not, well. You who follow me there won't miss any boring updates, and I won't waste as much time getting distracted by what everyone else is posting.

First update is totally worth a blog, though. I'm making kale chips! (And while they bake I'm eating peanut butter cups and a York peppermint patty. Gotta have a balanced diet.)

My sister has been trying to get us to make/buy/eat kale chips since at least Thanksgiving when she came to visit, and I still haven't. But there was kale ready at The Farm tonight, and one of the guys refreshed my memory on baking time/temperature, so I figured "why not?".

I hope they turn out ok. I'll feel like a real housekeeping failure if I can't even bake a kale chip properly.

....and I think I ruined them.

They smell burnt.

Sigh.

Today's Topic is Anxiety

Click. Read.

I don't so much worry about the car blowing up, but I do worry about people judging the car I drive, or the way I dress, or how I write, or any number of other things. Or being mean to me because of those things. Or confronting me about things. I hate confrontation, especially the kind where I can't do anything to solve the other person's problem. Feeling helpless makes my anxiety (and related behaviors like picking at my skin) spike and it takes a long time to come down off that spike. I would gladly hide under a desk  to avoid confrontation and feeling helpless, except hiding under a desk makes you a weird crybaby, so I probably wouldn't hide under the desk if anyone else were around to see me do it. Also it's a pretty helpless action, isn't it? I'm trying to find ways to vent my anxieties that make me feel better, like accomplishing small household tasks, but a lot of the time I just give up and hide.

Yeah.

Anyway, anxiety. It sucks. Be kind to people. It helps the anxiety.

Fragrance Review: Zeppelin to the Moon

And since I planned to review all of these in December and am currently planning an order... here's a very late fragrance review.


An extra thrown into my 'squee party' set from ZOMG Smells, Zeppelin to the Moon is the sort of scent one puts on when one wants an 80s power scent and can't find the Drakkar Noir. It's pushy, it's daring, it's kind of like Captain Jack Harkness invading your personal space.

"A dashing, old-school captain's-cabin scent. A scent wearing a greatcoat with gold bits on, if you will. Teak wood, redcurrant, oak moss, geranium leaf, and brown musk with a spot of treacle."

In the bottle: Tangy geranium leaf, sweet redcurrant, inviting musk and a hint of wood.

On skin: Ever had your face pushed into a freshly polished teak conference table?

I want to like this scent, because I want to like all of ZOMG Smells' scents (and also because I do tend to like oakmoss and geranium and musk in other scents). But when I put it on my wrist (admittedly heavily, hoping to counteract my skin's absurd scent-eating abilities), the first half-hour was just sickening amounts of teak and musk, and the geranium went from pert to pushy. I could smell it when I moved my hands even slightly, and I felt like I was breathing Murphy's Oil Soap. I get the greatcoat the description alludes to - heavy and smelling of oil-polished buttons and rich wood, and a little too much for a warm spring day.

It's settled down now, and the oakmoss and wood are coming through a little more subtly with the sweetness of treacle in the background. I say "more subtly", but no one will ever mistake this for a gentle lady's perfume. Even as it fades the scent still has presence. I'm going shopping, and I'll sniff my wrists again when I get back but the opening has me solidly convinced that this is not a keeper for me unless I can layer it.

If you have an affinity for greatcoats, though, you should quite enjoy this one.

Update: The scent has lasted a good solid six hours, which is lovely, and still projects a little. The drydown on me smells reminiscent of incense smoke - sandalwood? Huh. While I do like it, it's not uh-may-zing.

Perspective

I have work at 6am tomorrow, so my husband did me the favor of waking me at 6 today... and while I'm normally not a great morning person, today I'm glad I got up. I have the day off so there was no stress about getting things done before work, or packing a lunch (I need to start packing lunches the night before). I took the dogs for a nice leisurely walk before I even had breakfast. We explored a neighborhood we hadn't been through before and we found all kinds of interesting things, like an abandoned house at the far end of our street, a tiny front yard planted entirely in strawberries, and some lovely city views.

Looking South toward downtown.

And then we came home and the dogs crashed and I made tea and let the chickens out and sat on the porch sipping mint tea and watching my three little hens scratch in the compost pile.


  I'm glad I took a walk.

Belladonna.

 Oh, by the way. We adopted another dog, because one was not enough for husband dearest. Sigh.

Anyway, we're walking along, just me and the two dogs, and I started noticing that Mystra, our older dog, looked like a downright saint walking calmly next to the new dog as he bounced from one edge of the sidewalk to the other, trying to yank my arm off, tangling the leashes and marking telephone poles. And I thought, isn't that funny, because if you asked me last week I would have said she's the most horrible walker ever. But Zepar (the new dog) has the power of making our poorly-behaved five-year-old look like an obedience school graduate. Perspective is everything.

And it hit me that she's been making incremental improvements all along, but it's been slow progress and sometimes unsteady, and I had stopped looking for improvements because I was thinking this was as good as it got and I was feeling like Sisyphus rolling that damn boulder, at least as far as trying to get the dog to walk nicely was concerned.

Abandoned garden.

We get stuck in ruts sometimes, where a situation has gone on so long - like drowning in student loan debt, or being "bad" at math, or trying to get the kids to pick up their toys, that we stop seeing change. We stop looking for change. We expect things to go on forever just the way they are because we are tired and used to them this way, and sometimes we think: I'll stop fighting, because what difference does it make?.

Sometimes all it takes to get us out of the rut is a little bit of perspective.

Looking south-west at the river valley.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

The coop isn't done. My back still hurts. My little sister graduated today and I wasn't there to see it (but I watched it online, thanks to the university live-streaming the ceremony). So proud of her. :)

I didn't get out to the urban farm this week due to my back injury before the first work day, and my sister's commencement ceremony during the second. I wouldn't mind so much but it started raining shortly after noon and hasn't stopped so I've been putting off doing any work outside at all, which means my garden still isn't planted either, and since the weather has suddenly gone from 40s and rain to 70s and rain, I'm really worried about missing the best part of the planting season.

The chickens are out in their run for the day. They need to get used to being out there full-time now that the weather has warmed up, although I still can't leave them outside overnight until I can finish the coop. We saw a racoon up the hill on the way home the other night; I'm now twice as worried about leaving my little featherbutts unsupervised. They seem to be ok so far, other than mad about the rain. The run roof isn't fully finished and the wind blew rain into the covered part as well as soaking through everywhere else. They're huddled in the back corner under the coop where it's still dry, and they scolded me when I go out to check on them. Poor girls!

The girls yesterday, enjoying the cool evening breeze.

If the rain stops at some point today I can get the fourth wall of the coop set up and ready to put on, as well as getting the roof cuts made and maybe even start on the nest boxes. Once all that's done the final touches should be easy! Here's hoping, anyway.

Struggling

It's been a struggle this year. I've been having mood swings that might properly be termed bouts of depression. I haven't finished my sister's handmade Christmas present or the gift for my friend's baby daughter that I started in December. I haven't exercised since some time last year, unless occasionally hanging from the pull-up bar in the kitchen doorway counts.

And I've been working 40 hours a week, and the spring has been cold and wet and miserable when I've been off, and sunny when I'm stuck at work till 10pm, and I haven't gotten the chicken coop done or written any blog entries or kept the sink clear of dishes or anything.

By the way, we got chickens.


And then tonight, in an utterly embarrassing move, I strained my back... picking up a cat.

yeah.

Basically the cat got into the basement and I don't like closing him down there sans litterbox, so I went to grab him and must have reached too far out from my crouching stance. It felt something like having a knife through my back just above my left hip, and every pain receptor in the area lit up light a christmas tree. It was not dignified and it made me feel very old and weak and tired all of a sudden. I really did not need to feel any older or tireder or weaker, but the universe has a sick sense of humor.

The ibuprofen, ice pack, menthol rub and wine are helping. And now I have the time to blog, because I can't exactly go out and do any more work on the chicken coop (although I did insist on finishing and mounting the gate to the run, despite the pain). Moving hurts, damnit. I just hope that by tomorrow I can manage at work. I do not want to have to explain that I, captain of the safety team and worker who routinely picks up and sets down 50lb boxes of tile, picked up a 5lb cat the wrong way.

The cat is fine, in case you were wondering.