From the Roof Deck This Morning

Pete stuck an old pie box in the railing to block a spotlight from a neighbor's yard that shines too brightly at night.

I can't drink coffee anymore. No caffeine for me. There are a lot of things I can no longer consume at this time. I'm perimenopausal. If you haven't heard, and I hadn't, perimenopause can cause a gal's hormones to run amok and make  her an insane, discombobulated, miserable wretch. And damn, it can sneak up on you too. You don't realize you've lost it until, from out of nowhere, you get a blessed flash of clarity and you find yourself in the middle of a swamp with no solid ground in sight. 

I didn't think it was my hormones. I mean, the last five years have been very tumultuous and involved a great deal of change and loss. I just thought it was my crappy life that was getting me down. Only I don't really have a crappy life at all. Trauma and profound loss don't have to ruin every aspect of your life. I've taken some blows but my life is far from crappy overall. That lack of perspective is an example of how I'd slipped off the rails. It starts with legitimate trauma and then before you know it you're careening down a dark and bumpy road, unable to see the exit ramps. 

Fortunately a friend told me about The Hormone Cure, by Sara Gottfried. IT REALLY HELPED. First of all, it spoke to me. I had almost every possible symptom, especially sleeplessness, foggy-headedness and rage. RAGE! I read the book and thought "THIS BOOK IS ABOUT ME!" (See - all caps. I really did.)

Based on what I read in the book, I determined that I had high cortisol. I ended up having to give up both caffeine and booze. I was so desperate I couldn't wait to give them up. I dove right in. It's been five months now and it's been so worth it. Sanity is worth whatever I have to do to keep it. I'm also taking fish oil and a number of vitamins to support my healthy temperament. It's been an adjustment but, again, so worth it. 

However, decaf sux. Over the years I'd come to rely on a comforting warm beverage first thing in the morning. The caffeine buzz was delicious as well but I understand I have to let that go. I feel a bit sad about letting go of the warm comfort though. There have been days I've sipped warm water from my mug. I'm picky about flavor. I feel that if something doesn't taste good, why put it in your mouth? Green tea wasn't cutting it. Herbal tea neither. I actually like echinacea tea but I don't think one should drink that every day. Mostly I've gone with decaf, attempting to view it as not coffee but a drink in its own right. It's not a very good drink in its own right. Those are the breaks. Oh well. 

So here I am on my lovely, un-sucky roof deck on a beautiful early summer morning with my excellent mug. 

The tall tree in the background is named Sasha Fierce

Things are not perfect. (I haven't set up my summer planters yet. There's an old, greasy pie box shoved in the deck railing. How am I going to attract a following for my blog if I don't have beautiful photos of how I'm doing everything right?) Decaf is unrewarding. I can't "party" like I used to. But I have a nice life. 

BAB

I will never be a "popular" blogger because I can't be bothered to take a pretty picture or gussy up the ones I take. Some artist. I'm supposed to be all about aesthetics. I am. Just not conventional aesthetics.

Any hoo, I'm all excited because I sent away for some fitness shake powder thingies and they came! 

This is Skoop B Strong. It's supposed to speed recovery after a workout, among other things. 

Since you never know till you try, I got a sampling of their whole line. It sounds like good stuff. I'm all about healthy skin, a healthy body, and plenty of energy. Why not give it a shot?  Plus they donate a serving of fresh fruits and vegetables to school lunch programs for every portion sold. 

Yeah, I got the mixing cup too. The sipper cap part clicks tightly into place which is good. I'm much less likely to spray my entire kitchen with soy milk and protein powder that way. 

So how does this B Strong taste? It tastes gross! I've never been one to tolerate artificial sweeteners before. I HATE diet soda. YUCK! This has Stevia in it. According to the website stevia can support healthy blood pressure (which I already have) and, I guess do other things for me that I don't need. 

I don't know, I'll choke it down. I might get used to it. If it helps me feel great I'll keep drinking it. 

Of course the best way to take care of your health and have plenty of energy is to eat right and exercise regularly - which I do a pretty good job of lately - and GET ENOUGH SLEEP. I don't get enough sleep. 

Holy crap! It's almost two! There's always so much stuff to do! That's why no one gets enough sleep. Gotta go! Later!

Not Bad

Despite a not very promising beginning (nightmares all night, then feeling as though I'd been hit by a truck when the morning came) today has gone pretty well.

Some of my fears about the onset of spring involve the overwhelming tasks that need to be tackled in my garden. SO MANY WEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH - SO MUCH MULCHING TO DO!!!! Evil grass to be eradicated, problems to solve, LIVES AT STAKE!!!! Plant lives, and those count to me.

Today I was able to walk around the garden and make a huge, multi-page list of all the things I could see that needed to be done. I know I missed some and that even more tasks will become apparent as time goes on but I just wrote down everything I could see today.  Then I broke the list down into three sections based on importance, urgency and logistics (i.e.: pull weeds then mulch) Finally I listed every task in the order in which they should be done.

Some tasks clearly require more energy than others (like assassinating all the brambles versus moving a vine support) so in the interest of getting everything done I should do one difficult/urgent thing in a day then some less taxing/important things.  I think I'll get to the end of the list more quickly that way without killing myself.

I feel much better now that I have a sensible plan. Now I just need the weather to cooperate. I know that I'm very unlikely to accomplish every task to my satisfaction but that's just part of gardening. Hell - it's part of doing anything. Some things you just have to let go.

Another thing I did today was try out my cupcake maker. I bought it last summer from Think Geek (who doesn't sell them anymore but they do have this really cool customizable pocket knife)  because it was cheap ($20) and I wanted cupcakes but since it was summer and really hot, I didn't want to turn on my oven. Since last summer bit so hard I never had the time to try out the machine. Today was finally the day.

There it is, baking away. You can also see my nifty, beloved new silicone-tipped cooking chopsticks (from jbox.com - or jlist if you're feeling porny) which were excellent for getting the cupcakes out of the machine.  The machine is basically a waffle iron with divots instead of a waffle grid. Fill the divots with batter, close the lid and in eight minutes you have seven mini-cupcakes. 

The cupcake maker is not a time saver. You can cook something like two-dozen mini cupcakes at a time if you use a real oven and a mini cupcake pan. (I could go look at my pan and count exactly how many you can make but then I'd have to get up) Making only seven at a time makes the baking process more like making cookies - you have to do batches. But, as I said before, the cupcake machine doesn't heat up your house. Also, Fay has no interest in attacking counter-top appliances. The same cannot be said for the oven. I got to make these cupcakes in peace and she didn't have to go to jail. The machine works well. The cupcakes didn't stick at all and they're delicious, home made cupcakes. 100% win.

Naturally not all of the cupcakes made it into this photo.  Pete and I had to do a little sampling first. Then I ate all five of the frosted ones you see here. I had to. Well, okay, maybe I didn't have to. 

Letting The Cat Out

Pete and I have a number of things that we like to do when we go to La Jolla to visit my family.

The first place we have to go is Mr. Taco. Everybody in the family knows that.

The second place we have to go is Tokyo House in Pacific Beach.  Everybody knows this too.  What they don't know is that Pete and I have begun to indulge in the beer and sake special: if you order a big beer (22oz. bottle) you get an order of sake with it for a penny. At lunch time.  Yes, this is what we like to do.

I looked at a couple of the yelp reviews and some of the unflattering ones do have a point.  This place is a little scuzzy. Pete and I like scuzzy (I'm looking at you, Peppermill)  The people who work there are really nice and the food is great.  The music is unreliable, which is always entertaining.  Tokyo House is also a refreshing change of pace from the mostly fancypants stuff we do in California.

After our beers, sakes and makimono we like to go to the fifteen dollar store two doors down.  Everything there is fifteen dollars or less.  Like these rings.  They're all for sale at three dollars apiece.

 I went home with the one with red eyes on my middle finger.  I probably should have just bought them all so I could wear them all at once, as shown.  However, my beer-and-sake-addled head remained cool and I didn't.

Birthday photos tomorrow.

Fried Eggs

Jose Andres ruined me for regular fried eggs.  A few years ago I picked up his cookbook, "Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America."  The photos caught my eye and I read the recipes and saw that they were easy to make.  There are a number of recipes in there that I make all the time, like the spinach and chickpea stew.  I bought the book when I was vegetarian so there are a lot of good veg recipes or recipes that you can easily make veg.

But I mentioned the fried eggs.  He shows a technique where you use a fairly high heat, a lot of olive oil and tilt the pan so the hot oil pools and you almost deep fry your egg in a regular frying pan.  If you do this your egg comes out rounded, crispy and browned on the outside but still has a runny yolk (if you like it that way - you can always cook it longer) Since I'm uncoordinated I couldn't figure out how to tip the pan with one hand and get the egg in there with the other.  You're also supposed to spoon the hot oil on top of the egg while it's cooking.  I'm way too uncoordinated to do that.  I just fry the eggs flat in the pan with a lot of olive oil and flip them.  It still works.  I'm now addicted to crispy fried eggs.  Regular fried eggs are disappointing.  Boo-hoo!

Bottom line, I highly recommend this cook book.  It has definitely added new techniques and ingredients to my cooking arsenal without a lot of labor and sweat.

Bye Bye Whip

The night before last I was out with Liz at The Haven in JP.  I was feeling pretty optimistic, possibly due to the great company, the fine Scottish beer I was drinking and the delicious Scottish food I was eating.  I was telling Liz how "interesting" I'm finding the grieving process.  Ain't I something?

Right after I put up the post below I got an e-mail letting me know that a friend of Pete's and mine has inoperable cancer.  Well that kicked my ass.



Let's just say that the whip's been put away and I won't be looking at it again for a while.

Adieu, Vegas!

I interrupt this bummer to bring you the final installment of Our Trip To Vegas:

The image below is not Photoshopped (except to decrease the file size) Pete really did snap a photograph of this storm trooper enjoying the view of the fountain at the Bellagio.

If someone offers you a free "Velvet Emerald Isle" don't feel bad about saying "thank you, no." Michael Collins whiskey is fine - say yes to that, just avoid everything else on the drink menu below.

The party's over: Pete's last beer in Vegas.

Notice that there are only men in the background in this shot? Ladies, if you're going to Vegas to meet guys, don't stay at the Venetian, the Palazzo, or Paris. All the guys are at Treasure Island. Likewise to you men, if you want to see more hot chicks by the pool you might want to stay someplace a tiny bit girlier.

The Cake

is good. The middle layers stayed put too.

Lump

I have been playing a lot of video games since December. I got an amazon.com gift certificate for Christmas which has helped.

My favorite game, though, I got before Christmas to entertain me on the flight to San Diego. I have played it every day but two since the day I bought it at Costco, December 15th. 2009. It's for Nintendo DS and is called "Style Savvy." Here's a review and here's the link to amazon where you can read lots of reviews.

Basically you operate a boutique and sell clothes of various fictional brands to customers. You make money to buy more inventory, set up window displays, participate in fashion contests, make friends and go out with customers, collaborate with some of the brands to make new designs, promote your store, change your own outfits, hair and makeup, and maybe even get a date with the elusive store owner, Dominic (it turns out he's very shy for a dreamy, rich guy!)

It's all the fun parts of retail jobs without the downsides. There are no rude people or shoplifters and you don't have to work bad hours.

I have found myself looking at people on the street and determining which fictional brand of clothes they're wearing. For example, my Aunt Joy, wears exclusively "Alvarado," the highest-end brand. Goths wear "Raven Candle," Punks wear "Mad Jack." I suppose Anthropologie clothes would be "Sonata" or "Epoque." Sometimes I look at real people and think about my e-inventory and whether I have an article of clothing they'd like.

I recently picked up a couple of other DS games to entertain me on the flight back from Florida, where we went to visit Pete's parents. They are "Cooking Mama" and "Gardening Mama." They're fun enough. "Style Savvy" immerses the player in a more complex world which I find more absorbing and rewarding.

I've also been playing a lot of Wii. "My Fitness Coach," which is similar to, but not as good as "Yourself!Fitness," "Wii Fit Plus," which is more fun than it is exercise, "Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3," at which I am not very good but it's still fun, and "EA Sports Active: More Workouts," which is good exercise but doesn't register my sit-ups properly, which is extremely frustrating.

I'm beginning to wonder if all of this video game playing is, in fact, making me stupider. I've been feeling pretty brain dead lately. I firmly believe that what comes out of you is a direct result of what goes into you. Mostly I've been eating too much party food, drinking too much booze and playing video games instead of reading books. I feel like a lump despite all my Wii playing.

I need to pull myself out of my lumpy rut but I'm not feeling strong or energized. None of the other things I usually like to do are appealing right now. What to do? Maybe I'll eat some nachos and think about it.

I'm Secretly Really Into Makeup

November thirtieth, here you are again. It's the final day of NaBloPoMo and my final post for the month - unless I think of something better to say before midnight.

Looking back it doesn't seem as though I've had a single interesting thought all month. So in that vein I shall come clean about the latest Kool-Aid I've imbibed.

Yes, I love Bare Minerals foundation. I never thought it would happen to me. I've always been a "please God no foundation" type but everybody was making such a stink about the stuff I decided to try it. If you hit the link above you will go to the page on Sephora.com where they are selling the starter kit (while you're there you might want to pick up this, or this, or one of these as well - all bear the Mel stamp of approval - except the first one which I haven't tried and hope to get for Christmas because I'm a big dork and I believe everything I read in a product's advertising copy) This is also bound to be good. When I say "good" I mean "fun."

Okay, back to the topic at hand. This Bare Minerals stuff is great! First of all putting it on is a very calming ritual. It's powder - but not super-drying - so it isn't cold and gloopy and you don't have to worry that you're not spreading it evenly. You just dust it loosely all over your face with a big, fat, soft brush. If you want more coverage you do it again. If you have spots to cover you hit those with a dab of the touch-up brush. You can't apply it badly (though you might want some help choosing the color to use) First you do the base, then you do the blush (I often skip the blush as I tend to be ruddy in the first place), then you do the translucent top coat. It takes no time and you don't even have to look while you're doing it.

You can't feel it on and, by some miracle, it really stays on. One thing I always felt was humiliating about foundation was the way it could end up on a person's shirt collar - UGLY. This doesn't do that - though I can't say I've rubbed my face in my shirt to force it.

Not only that but it's got SPF 15 and it's completely unscented. Since all the ingredients are inert they won't give you a rash either. High frigging five!

At first I thought, "well this stuff's fine I guess" but I kept doing it because I liked the ritual and because it has sunblock. More recently though I've grown accustomed to having really good-looking skin. Maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe that makes me product dependent. Nah - I can live without the stuff. I am chocolate dependent though.

There are plenty of brands of mineral makeup out there. Some are super-hippie-crunchy-pure and some are fake. I haven't tried any of those. I just know Bare Escentuals. Typical. The department store brand. I'm so bourgeois.

Thus ends my third NaBloPoMo. Now I shall go celebrate my success with a martini with blue cheese stuffed olives. Unless I go pomegranate - in which case, really no olives.

I Think I Drank Too Much Coffee This Morning

This is how this year's INaBloPoMo seems to be working for me: I do a post early in the morning to get it over-with. Later in the day I think up something that seems better and I post that too. I hope I'm not over-posting. Sorry if it gets annoying. Feel free to skim.

The morning post for today is about Regular Exercise.

I recently found myself a copy of Wii Fit Plus. I wanted to get Wii Fit last year but it was sold out everywhere. Good enough I guess - I feel like I lucked into the update.

I haven't figured out how to get a good work out from it yet but it is really fun. Unfortunately it keeps telling me that I have physical retardation. I've always been uncoordinated but I never knew my balance was soooo bad. I manage not to fall down most days so I figured my balance was good enough. Not for Wii Fit Plus.

Most of the games are very balance-based. You have to keep your center of gravity within a certain zone to do well. It grades your yoga for God's sake! It's not enough to do the pose as well as you can without falling down. You have to be still as well to rack up the points. Points in yoga! How are you supposed to "accept yourself as you are" when they play the sad music at the end of a pose because you only got thirty points?

One thing I found out is that I'm a spazz. I didn't know. When things in a game start to go a little off I freak out and overcompensate. I always thought I was kind of laid back. Not when it comes to control of my body. Who knew? Probably everybody who knows me.

For a real workout I've been using "My Fitness Coach" which is the Wii version of "Yourself!Fitness." I love "Yourself!Fitness" as you can tell because I post about it all the time. The Wii version is not quite as good but it still delivers an excellent workout. I am good and sore most days and I keep going back for more because it works and it's not boring.

One helpful feature of getting regular exercise is that it inures you to discomfort. ("Inures." Like that? Crossword puzzle word) Exercising is a little uncomfortable while you're doing it but it needs to be done and you're busy doing it and you don't want to think about it too much so you keep going. Fine. No big deal.

This is good because later on, out in the non-exercise world, when you're in a situation where you are forced into discomfort you're used to it and you barely notice.

Did I go on enough? Sorry. It'll probably happen again.

Good Laptop

I've seen a couple of good "shows" this week. One was the movie "Let The Right One In" which we rented from Netflix. The other was the Joss Whedon show, "Dollhouse."

I saw "Dollhouse" on Hulu. I liked it more than I thought I would. Maybe once you turn the set (or in this case, laptop) off the residual feeling you get is that it's all nonsense but it's pretty nonsense. Good looking actors in yoga clothes. Certainly entertaining enough to watch while crocheting.

This blog summarizes the show's concept better than I can.

The thing about the show that fascinates me most is the characters' living situation. During their down-time the characters live in a yoga spa-like atrium and do tai chi, arts and crafts and take showers. They sleep in pits in the floor like John Lennon in "Help."

I always wanted a sleeping pit.

It feels wrong for some reason but I kind of like the yoga spa atrium the dolls live in.

They've got fountains and streams and polished wood and granite and leafy plants. Their bathroom is really cool - well, what you can see of it.

The viewer is supposed to feel conflicted about the plight of these characters who have had the appearance of an ideal "enlightened" state imposed on them. Personally I'm envious of their pad.

"Let The Right One In" is a winsome vampire movie. It has a subtlety, beauty and charm that you wouldn't expect from a horror film. Maybe it's not a horror film. Well worth seeing.

This post has too damned many quotation marks in it.