she's just saying...

kitty donut

kitty donut, originally uploaded by Meltrier.

In response to the overwhelming (5?) demand for kitty posts, here's today's OCKP.*

This batch was from last year.

*obligatory cute kitten photo

The Dis in Dysfunctional

OK, class. Here is your final quiz in "The Theory and Practice of Human Relations."

Consider the following scenario:

A woman spends a pleasant evening watching a movie. She reads in bed and goes to sleep around 11:00 pm. At 1:30 am, an inebriated man stumbles into her bedroom, takes off his clothes and passes out on her bed. The next morning, he wakes at 7:45 am, realizes he planned to go snowboarding at 8 am, and stumbles out again.

1.  What is the woman most upset about?

a. That a drunken man passed out in her bed.
b. That she wasn't included in the drinking.
c. That this is her last memory of spending the night with him.
d. That he left as soon as he woke up.
e. All of the above.
f. Nothing - why should she be upset?

2. What action does the man take?

a. Shows up at her door with flowers.
b. Calls her a few hours later and apologizes briefly.
c. Texts her an invitation to dinner.
d. Gets irritated with her for being upset.
e. b, c and d.

3.What is the predicted outcome of this situation?

a. She never speaks to him again.
b. They go to dinner and declare their love for each other.
c. He leaves town with the relationship unresolved.
d. Her blog readers decide she's an idiot and stop reading.

Buddhas all around you

A repeat worth repeating:

I go back to this paragraph, and its viewpoint on life, time and time again. I hope it can help you as it has me.

From A Path with Heart, by Jack Kornfield:

 "A traditional skillful (and at times humorous) reflection can be used to change our relationship to difficulties....

Picture or imagine that this earth is filled with Buddhas, that every single being you encounter is enlightened, except one - yourself!

Imagine that they are all here to teach you. Whoever you encounter is acting as they do solely for your benefit, to provide just the teachings and difficulties you need in order to awaken. Sense what lessons they offer to you. Inwardly thank them for this.

Throughout a day or week continue to develop the image of enlightened teachers all around you. Notice how it changes your whole perspective on life."

As The Neighborhood Turns..., brought to you by this blog.

For those who don't want to hear about the ongoing saga of Neighbor X, stop reading now. You know who you are, and you've been warned. Don't give me any grief.

For the rest of you, our story so far. In our last episode, N.X. had just informed Melissa that he was moving to Portland, a lovely city 3 1/2 hours away, on Monday the 16th. He then wanted to discuss how the relationship would move forward until he left. She wisely decided to have no more contact, since there was no future to the relationship being offered.

Well, those of you who've been reading along can guess where this led. We're now seeing each other daily, having wonderful meals and wine and talks and sweet private interludes. It's been lovely and loving and light. The clock is ticking though, and emotions are starting to build up. Or break down, in my case.

Five days and counting. I'll let you know.

The people have spoken. And they said: "Lemon Tart."

I am here to do your bidding.  (Re-edited for clarity.)

This is an amalgam of several recipes, and is essentially a shortbread crust filled with lemon curd and baked. It's foolproof (see note about tools) and simpler than it looks. It's indescribably good. Impressive, too. Especially if you artfully drizzle fresh berry syrup over it, with a dollop of fresh whipped cream. Or not.

So, go gather your ingredients and tools.

Crust
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon cream (I suppose you could use milk...)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups flour
2/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt (omit if using salted butter)
8 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut up

Curd
7 egg yolks plus 2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup lemon zest
4 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons cream (or half & half if you must)

Tools
tart pan with removable bottom
nonreactive saucepan and wooden/silicone spoon

(I can't guarantee your results if you don't use the following, but they're not absolutely necessary:)

food processor
candy thermometer
pie weights (or dried beans/rice)
parchment paper (or foil)
microplane
mesh sieve 

Make the crust first, as it takes awhile to chill and pre-bake.

Pre-Baked Shortbread Crust

If you've never made piecrust before, start with a cookbook, as I'm keeping this short on technique.

Whisk the yolk, cream and vanilla together, set aside. Pulse the flour, sugar and salt in the food processor to blend. Cut up the butter in pieces and drop in. Pulse or cut in to the size of cornmeal. Add the yolk stuff and blend until it forms a ball. If it's too dry, add a little bit of cream/milk a teaspoon at a time. Take it out, form into a ball, and chill for 20 minutes or so.

Take out the chilled dough and form the crust. I use the patting method so I don't have to get out the rolling pin, but you can roll if you want to. (Quick chorus of The B-52's here) Make sure to go up the sides of the pan.

Cut the parchment or foil to fit the tart pan including up the sides. Fill with pie weights or dried beans or rice.

Bake at 375 deg for 30 minutes. Remove the pie weights and parchment and bake another 6-8 minutes til very lightly brown.

Curd

Juice and zest the lemons using a microplane or grater. Whisk the first four ingredients together briefly, then pour in a saucepan with the butter. Heat slowly, stirring constantly, until it gets saucy and registers 175 deg. on the candy thermometer. edited: Whoops! Forgot the cream. It gets stirred in now.

If you're really picky, strain the mixture first, then pour into the still-warm crust and bake at 375 deg. for about 10 minutes. You want the middle of the pie to still be a little jiggly.

Remove, cool for an hour or so. If you've baked it in advance, you can lay a piece of waxed paper right on the top to keep it nice.

Before serving, dust the top with confectioner's sugar through a sieve. Drizzle with berry sauce.Add little poufs of whipped cream, lemon twists, berries. Go wild.

Feel proud and enjoy.

Next up: Henry's favorite breakfasts...

Your wish is my command

OK, I'm a blogging slacker. Or a slack-blogger. I have run out of original thoughts, cute badger photos, fowl-wear information, and knitting news. And the Neighbor X  situation is a little complicated right now.

So, I'm taking a survey. This is not quantitatively valid research as it's a self-selected sample with no demographic weighting or statistical significance tests. (I do love market research.)

Q: What do you want Melissa to write about next?

Choose up to three of the following choices, or write in your own suggestion in comments.

1. Chicken knitting
2. The Wii-Fit flop
3. Dance Dance Revolution
4. The on-going saga of me and Neighbor X
5. Badgers
6. Kittens and puppies and babies
7. Household budget tips
8. Random blog memes
9. Blogging about blogging
10. My lemon tart recipe (involves 7 eggs and 1.5 cups of butter)
11. Henry's breakfast favorites, starting with Pad Thai
12. How not to build a water feature in your backyard

Or anything else. I'm open to suggestion (way too open, historically).

Why I love market research

Who's Using Hair Spray?

Top 10 DMAs in which adults used hair spray more than once in the last seven days:

1 Ft. Smith/ Fayetteville/ Springdale/ Rodgers, Ark.

2 Tri-Cities, Tenn./ Va.

3 Green Bay/ Appleton, Wis.

4 Davenport/ Rock Island, Iowa/ Moline, Ill.

5 Knoxville, Tenn.

6 Madison, Wis.

7 Charleston/ Huntington, W.Va.

8 Grand Rapids/ Kalamazoo/ Battle Creek, Mich.

9 Toledo, Ohio

10 Oklahoma City, Okla.

Source: MRI's Market-by-Market study, www.mediamark.com

Unfortunately, Melissa has nothing else to say

Via Kathi D (whose blog I keep telling you to start reading, for crying out loud), who stole it from someone else, who got it somewhere, etc. comes this mindless meme. (To my sister: a blog "meme" is a random game bloggers steal from someone else and call it a meme so they don't have to give anyone credit. It's a prime desperation move when you have nothing else to blog about.)

The "unfortunately" meme: go to Google, type your name and the word unfortunately in quotations, and share the results.

So here goes. I picked only the good ones to share - most of them are pretty damn depressing, actually. I ignored the fatal diseases and The Bachelor references:

---

Unfortunately, Melissa’s head would be the only thing I hit all day.

Unfortunately, Melissa is spotted by the killers, who are hit man Bruno Decker and his employer Rudolph Hartman, who turns out to be Walter's client.

Unfortunately, Melissa couldn't keep all her food in her mouth and off her chin.

Unfortunately, Melissa was a bad doll, a very bad doll.

Unfortunately, Melissa took her actions as hostile, and attempted to kill her.

Unfortunately, Melissa is very disorganized and is usually late and so this does not help her in her difficult quest. [Who told them??]

Unfortunately, Melissa is frequently adulterated with other aromas like lemongrass, lemon or citronella.

---

Well, I enjoyed that. So go try it and have some mindless laughs on me. 

From a random blog:

"Charlotte loves the water. Melissa loves the pigs and has bathed them and cleaned up after them the last couple of days.  Chris said she could pick up Charlotte without a squeal.  Unfortunately, Melissa was at work tonight, otherwise I’d have a picture of that."

Darn it.

Top 10 Tues: Even better than the real thing

OK, enough emotional, personal, soul-searching posts. Let's talk tuneage.

I have mixed feelings about cover versions (songs that are re-recorded by other-than-the-original artist, to explain the term to my sister). Often there seems to be no point to them other than an attempt to link the new artist to the popularity of the original. Then there's the cover that becomes the definitive version to me, the one I hear in my head when I think of the song.

Here's my top 10, in no particular order. Please share yours!

(Disclaimer: I'm not going back to the Beatles, Elvis Presley, etc. covering even older songs. This isn't a music history blog, it's a personal favorites list. Plus, Christmas songs don't count.)

Top Ten Covers that I like better than the original:

1.  Patti Smith belting out Van Morrison's "Gloria," live in Paris in '77 and on "Horses"

2. Johnny Cash's wrenching acoustic version of Nine Inch Nails "Hurt" (not his version of "My Own Personal Jesus" - not better, but weirder)

3. Cowboy Junkies: "Sweet Jane" - I'm guessing Lou Reed would agree

4. Talking Heads "Take Me to the River" vs. the wonderful Al Green's

5. Speaking of Al, "Funny How Time Slips Away" with Al Green and Lyle Lovett

6. Jerry Garcia singing "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" on his birthday, right before his '92 collapse

7. "Run on for a Long Time": The Blind Boys of Alabama - a crazy pounding gospel threat

8. UB40's reggaed-up "Can't Help Falling in Love With You" versus you-know-who

9. "All Along the Watchtower" (written by) Bob Dylan by way of Jimi Hendrix' psychedelic interpretation

10. "Mucho Mas," Frankie J's Spanish version of Extreme's ballad "More Than Words." Sweet.

 

As the French say, "comment?"

Hey! I think this qualifies as a  on Friday post!

Just when I think nobody but fowl-wear fetishists read this blog, I get some great comments on my posts. The posts I think will get lots of comments often don't, but other random ones stir my readers up.

Hear's a shout-out (do people still say that?) to my most common commenters:

Kathi D. She always entertains, she gets me, she's a great commenter and blogger, and her blog is my must-read every day.

YrBigBro, aka Steveh, aka Henry's uncle, aka any number of aliases. He was an early reader and a frequent and generous commenter.

Susan, my big sis. Occasionally ascerbic, but always honest and thoughtful.

Chris the Monkey, who does witty and elaborate photo illustrations on his own blog; even if he is a Yankees fan.

Elise and Jen, Bend women compadres who I never see but am in touch with via facebook, twitter, blogs and the like.

PJ, Sarah, Julie and Cindy, wonderful knitters and wonderful friends.

Together, the above folk account for probably 90% of my comments, and I hope I show up on their blogs as much.

Everybody else, please say hi now and then! Clearly bloggers are narcissists and attention-seekers; otherwise we wouldn't be broadcasting our blatherings to the interwebs. So we love knowing you're out there.

my sister knows my weaknesses

PS: I forgot KG! but that would make 11, so I wouldn't get my Top Ten tag. Hey, Kevin, thanks for reading/commenting! One of my first!  And your dad says hi.

waking up down

Snowshoe, our lynx, really doesn't like snow.

Oh, the blues again. No boyfriend, no health club, no money, no excitement, no interests, no time. It must be March. Or close enough.

I've arm-wrestled with depressive moods before. Sometimes I win, sometimes the mood prevails.  My depressions are not the scary black holes some writers describe, but more of a flatline effect. My old therapist could recognize them, even when I couldn't, because I would start to lose interest in everything. There's a psychiatric term for it, even: dysthymia, basically a low-grade low. It comes and goes. Pharmaceuticals can help, but not always enough. 

What helps most is Henry, the cats and dog, movies, knitting with friends and work - anything that takes me out of myself for awhile. What helps least is alcohol, Neighbor X troubles, boredom and helpful friends who recommend odd diet regimens.

It's snowing here, which I love. It looks great and feels festive and cozy. That helps too. Things will get better - they always do, before they slide downhill again.

I'll bet you think this post is about you

In the face of my big sister's disapproval, I must admit that Neighbor X and I slid back into seeing each other again for the twentieth time a few weeks ago. Just dinners, wine and closeness, all very nice. I enjoyed being courted and felt content to not define it, just enjoy my best friend.

Then last Monday after my knitting retreat he invited himself up for dinner and told me he was moving to Portland. (In an odd coincidence, he told me the exact same thing exactly a year ago after I returned from my knitting weekend then. Either Valentine's Day, my knitting or February in general seems to trigger this reaction. Hmm.) He then wanted to talk about how we were going to move forward in the six weeks or so before he left.

It was clear to me that "we" weren't going anywhere, so what would be the point of continuing to see him other than the thrill of masochistic pain, which contrary to the evidence I'm not actually into. So, no contact seemed appropriate.

We've had the ritual last phone call and last email, the porch-to-porch exchange of Tupperware, and the careful avoidance of the mailbox at key times. We've done this so often that it's not even ludicrous anymore, it's just routine. (Getting back together is never routine, though, which is why we kept doing it.) Now I'm waiting for him to leave, and looking forward to spring and a return to the garden.

Speaking of the garden, the trees and plants have once again been fooled by our February thaw into thinking that spring is near. They're budding and sending up shoots, lulled into life by the recent warmth and soft rain. They don't seem to recognize the false spring or know that hard winter will return again with snow and ice in March.

I'm irritated and saddened by their naivete, as inevitably they'll get frost-burned and come up all stunted in April. You'd think by now they'd learn to wait for the real thing. I don't get it.

Clearly...

Or not so clearly, I need a better cameraphone.

busy day

Everybody's having fun...

Free Day at the Museum

Just opened and already crowded. Wow. It's normally $10/adult in the winter and $6 for kids, so a pretty good savings. Most of the visitors today only come on Free Day, so it opens the museum to many who would not otherwise be here. Nice. But crowded. My advice - if you can afford it, come on a regular day. Updates later...

not your normal office sign

I'll bet you don't have a sign like this in your office.

Though maybe you need to.

A (blasphemous) adoption memory

 Ten years ago today, I got a phone call at work. The woman on the other end of the line said: “We have a baby boy for you! But I have one question I need to ask you first.” I prepared myself for a tax issue, a concern about my boyfriend, something on my medical form, but was not prepared for what came next. 

“Do you take Jesus as your personal savior?”  That stopped me. 

Clearly they were trying to ascertain if I was Christian. I had been evasive on the adoption forms and the required autobiography, and they were now pinning me down. My agency did not require a particular faith, but the Texas agency they were working with did. (Their website states: ... the policy of the agency is to place our children in Christian homes where both parents believe that their salvation is through Jesus Christ, the Son of God as written in John 3:16. Very specific.)

So, standing there in my office, I stumbled on about God loving everybody, going to the Unitarian fellowship, etc. She said, “Right, but do you take God as your personal savior?” I realized she was trying to give me an out, changing “Jesus” to “God.” I thought about the newborn baby in Texas waiting for me; contemplated my principles, and said: “Yes, I take God as my personal savior.” I anticipated some vengeful God who I didn’t believe in sending down a lightning bolt through the phone.

“Good – just stick with that,” she said, and started to discuss travel plans.

.

How not to hold a baby

Henry and Clementine, February 2009

Random things I learned this weekend

herringbone braid
short row garter stitch heels
modified conventional bind off
braided cast on
designing traveling cables
three-color fair isle on two hands
color dominance management
Viking rune patterns
horizontal purl braid
Japanese short rows
driving to/from Tacoma sucks (I already knew that)

Photos to come. Bet you can't wait!

Vikings who knit

Learning new stuff is always exhilarating. Elsebeth Lavold created this technique and taught it today. Expect intricate traveling cables in all my future projects...