Day 13

Somewhere you’d like to move or visit.

Move: I have no idea, right now I’m pretty happy with Maine.

Visit: SO MANY PLACES

I’ll limit it to the first three places I can think of.

-Barcelona, Spain.

 

-Edinburgh Scotland

-Grand Canyon (I know its touristy, but its something I’d like to see.)

I also want to do a road trip across the US at some point. That would include the grand canyon.

Wanderlust.

Cookies Make it Better (a review)

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I spend a lot of time talking about how great and talented my friends are. This is because I have an upsettingly large number of people in my life who are exceptionally good at what they do. One of those people is my friend Rosemary. She is a baker, and makes some of the best vegan sweets I have ever had.

So when she called and asked me to review her new line of cookies I jumped at the chance. I get to eat cookies and talk about my friends? Seriously, is there a downside to this situation? Is someone going to jump out from behind me and punch me in the neck? Why is this even a question?

Cookies Make it Better
all of these cookies are all dairy-free, egg-free, vegan. they are made with all-natural ingredients, organic whenever possible (includes the evaporated cane juice and palm shortening) and chocolate items contain soy.

First, I just have to talk about the packaging. The Martha Stewart colors and the clean mod pattern serves as a perfect juxtaposition to the concept of these cookies.

The idea of the Cookies Make it Better line is to help you say those things you want/need to say to your friend / lover / significant other / co-worker / parent / classmate / cat / stranger on the subway, while softening the blow with a delicious cookie.

You can also use them if you want to be a dick, but an endearing dick. Thats what I would do.

Just kidding- I’m going to start with the meanest cookie in the bunch because it is also the most awesome. Imagine it, you hand this lovely heart-shaped cookie to the lady / gentleman / person / cat / timelord of your choosing.  They are momentarily filled with either  joy or anxiety and then they read it and react accordingly. With one simple cookie you have sent this person on an emotional roller coaster ride and you have given them the gift of either humor, or (if they cry) catharsis. This shortbread heart dipped in semi-sweet chocolate is not overly sweet, and has a delicate flavor. Perfect for whomever you choose, to choke down while crying in the bathroom, putting a sweet flaky band-aid on that emotional wound.

I hate your new haircut- I can’t hide it any more. Your Dorothy Hamill with permed  bangs just does NOT work for you! Here, have a Peanut butter sandwich cookie with organic raspberry jam center. This cookie is seriously good, the cookie is strong enough in flavor that the sweet jam doesn’t overpower it and they work together harmoniously, unlike that new weave and your  orange highlights.

You’re sweaty- We all know that feeling of being touched by someone who is overly sweaty. Whether it was your friend, having just run a mile in august, or just a stranger in an elevator trying to reach for the button. How about next time you see that arm coming at you, skin glistening with perspiration, you hand them this chocolate-chocolate chip-pecan sandwich cookie with DELICIOUS AS FUCK ganache center and let it tell them what you are too grossed out to say.

My food is my food, not yours -

Honestly, I wouldn’t share this oatmeal raisin sandwich cookie with caramel filling either, I would probably punch anyone who wanted to take it away from me.

Stop wearing so much body spray-  Here, maybe the smell of this chocolate chip cookie with chocolate gnache centre will over power the scent of that… what is that? A chemical treatment plant? a flower grown in a caustic garden? The spray you use to make bathrooms smell like toxic potpourri ? Why would you want to smell like that?

You own several pairs of ugly shoes- It just needs to be addressed. Those went out of style before shoes were invented. This cookie will never go out of style. a light flavored sugar cookie with lemon curd filling. This flavor is timeless, those sneakers that your 7th grade boyfriend drew a lopsided skull and crossbones on are not.

Don’t you feel better now that all of that is out in the open? no? Here, have a cookie, it’ll make it better

These cookies can also be made gluten free, and gluten free vegan on request, and for those of you who have allergies, complete ingredient lists are available by request and can be included in the box.

Want to buy some? HELL YEAH YOU DO. There will be information about how to purchase on the Virago website by monday. They’re the perfect antidote or addition to valentines day.

Up the Week (1)

Current art-making: no current art making, unless you count the pile of tissues in my trash can as some sort of modern art sculpture addressing the themes of illness in our dystopic modern world.
Mostly I spent the last week lying in bed, wondering if I could die from nasal congestion and fevers, and reading crappy magazines.
Magazines that just happen to have my gay boyfriend on the cover. This is my “I’ve been coughing for 24hrs” face.

Happenings: This past week (since last sunday) Rosemary (see photo) came to portland, and we drove from Maine to Philadelphia. Annddd then I got horribly sick. Its possibly the flu, maybe the plague, maybe I’m not long for this world and a couple weeks from now someone will find me in a pile of tissues, my cat having eaten half of my face.

Art Obsession:
Wanda Ga’g
I am just in love with her illustrations, particularly those in Millions of cats.

Music/Other : The Paul Baribeau/ Ginger Alfrod version of Thunder Road

I jam out SO HARD to this song every time it comes on my car CD.

see you guys next Saturday!

Update:New Format.

Attention all 25 of my readers,

Starting Sunday December 19th I’m going to be switching to  weekly update format. It will be all the rambling and art and ridiculousness, but a (better) thought out,  weekly update as apposed to periodic mindless rambles.

Xoxo your friendly tyrannical blog overlord

Coin operated shower

While bicycling through upstate NY, Rose and me ran in to a couple of unpleasant coin operated showers, one of which you had to put the coins in, then push a button and you would get a minute of really cold water, then you would have to push it again to get more water every minute until your 5 minute shower ran out. Out of that, this song was born.

(To the tune of “Coin operated boy” by the dresden dolls)
coin operated shower
you are such a whore
making me pay more,
when I’m not that dirty you still make me pay
that is not okay.

you’re made of tile and cheap plastic.
you are cold and not long lasting
I could ask for so o o much more.

you whore.

This song is best when sung while bicycling…
uphill.

 

 

 

 

 

*Painting is acrylic on 6 5X7″ canvases. It is a painting of Rosemary.

This one time…

This one time, I was riding my bicycle up the side of a mountain and a guy asks if he can use my handpump (for pumping up tires, creepo.) He is about 40, medium build, a little on the scruffy side, not particularly threatening and there is a lot of traffic on the road so I hand him my pump and wait on the side of the road for him to return. The pump doesn’t work and he tells me that they are old bikes and maybe it has a different valve or maybe the tubes have disintegrated and I say that I hope he figures out the bicycle problem and make moves at to continue my journey up the mountain, but he stops me and proceeds to tell me the following.

At the time, he was living in town, but came up the this house on the weekends to work on it, and his ultimate goal was to get it in a condition that he could live there full time. He’d been coming up to the house to work on it a little at a time for 2 years, and he thought he still had at least another year to work on it. He had bought the house shortly after he moved back to the states from Germany where he had been living ever since he was stationed there with the army. While he was there with the army he had started playing for a local german Hockey team and he had liked it enough to stay there for a while, and a while turned in to about 5 years. He said he liked it over there, and had a girlfriend  who was also an american, but they were just friends now and she “still came to visit him sometimes even though it was a long flight.” I asked him why he had decided to move back, and he told me that he had moved back because he had started to feel homesick for New England. He had lived in a city in Germany and had missed the wildlife and nature. He had grown up in the area and had always wanted to live on this mountain, he said that he liked being on high ground, it made him feel like he could see more, even if there were trees everywhere. I asked him if he had seen a moose (at the time, we were seeing dozens of signs for moose crossing and not a single moose. I live in Maine now, and I still have yet to see a moose.) He said that he saw moose all the time, but his most interesting animal encounter was when he had first bought this house. He had no electricity yet so for dinner he was making hotdogs outside on the fire and all of a sudden he had caught sight of a bear “medium sized” he said, “couldn’t have been much bigger than me, but wasn’t small enough to worry about the mother” on the edge of the ring of light shed by the fire and the bear had just sat there. He knew that if he made any sudden movements he could scare the bear in to attacking so he just sat there for “what felt like an hour” and then the bear just got up and left. He said that he liked to think that the bear was sitting there with him, not just because of the hotdog smell.

At that point Rosemary showed up (she was biking in front, and when I hadn’t shown up for a good 45 minutes she began to worry and had backtracked to make sure I wasn’t dead.) So ends that encounter, but throughout the trip people kept telling me things about themselves. One man (a mechanic at a bike place in NY who was very nicely giving us a lift to the shop because I had my tenth flat tire) spent a 15 minute car ride telling me about his ex wife who lived in Jersey and his decision to move to upstate NY after the divorce, it was strange because in my mind that isn’t something you tell someone you’ve just met. I think something about Rose and I bicycling this far, doing something so out of the ordinary made people feel like we were somehow witnesses, that they needed share with us so that they could have something about themselves, some crucial part of their lives or person on record with us. Or maybe they were just chatty people, who knows.

Welp, here goes.

Everything starts tomorrow. At 8am I go over to MECA to do my final registration. I’m going over so early so I am sure to get an early time slot so I can get out of there by 1:30pm and get to work by 2 where I will be until 9:30pm. I will then promptly drive home and pass the hell out so I can be up again at 7am and go to two days of orientation friday/saturday and then work sunday. When everything starts for real I’ll be schooling 8am-6/8pm mon-thursday and working friday-sunday. Days off are for chumps! I’m really not very worried about my ability to handle this schedule, it just looks daunting when every day I have at least 6 hours of somewhere I have to be, you know?

Because of my 24/7 schedule you’ll have to expect less updates from me (I know, I know, my 15 readers are just torn to bits.) For the month of september I’d guess that I’ll be updating once a week at most, but I will hopefully be doing Vegan Mofo IV in october (note:link goes to last year’s.) so you should expect a lot from the then.

You bet your butt that some of those once a week updates will be continuing the book talk feature. I like doing that, it gives me an outlet to rave about books without driving my friends crazy.

And of course I will be posting art as I make it. The good, the bad, and the ugly (oh, there will be PLENTY of the latter two, believe you me.)

Ta!

Finally!

Yesterday, I found a cheap ($15) book case at target. FINALLY I’d have a place to put (most of) my books. I thought “gee, it won’t be hard to put together, It looks the same as an ikea unit.”

No. No, it was not easy to put together. it took me an hour and a half, and that was after I had given up on hand tools and brought out the big guns (read: drills)

None of that matters though, because I finally have most of my books in one spot.

Cue angels singing and bright lights.

I mean, its not organized, and the bottom 2 shelves are stacked 2 books deep as well as having the books on top of books look, but its a receptacle for stuff and I thoroughly appreciate it. Plus, it makes it look like I don’t have a hoarding problem. I mean, that sure as heck doesn’t look like I have too many books (not by any stretch of the imagination) So I get to feel good about myself.

(note tiny brass unicorn and art project atop the case.)

I also wanted to show ya’ll my guys.

The lovely Rosemary of Rosemary’s Bakery and (very recently) Things to Do with Tea Tins (don’t think I didn’t notice, rosiespoo!) Gave these to me as a going away present, she found them at this great place in lansdale called The Archive.

They have hundreds upon hundreds of old pictures, prints, postcards, magazines and books. It’s an insane place and if you’re ever in that part of the world you should most definitely check it out. (note to pennsylvanians: its a block away from the lansdale stop on the R5.)

Job interview went…okay. I’m not going to talk about it because I am consistently convinced that I’ve made a fool of myself. If I don’t get it, its no big deal. I can always apply for more minimum wage jobs.

I have 6 pie plates.

6! I really don’t even bake pies unless its thanksgiving. I have no idea how I got all of these pie plates.

Alright, today we’re talking about stuff I like, watermelon, my day, and why you should keep on keeping on. Sound good? here we go.

I woke up feeling okay, I could hear a couple who live here fighting outside my window. needed to go to the bank. Once I was showered and dressed though, something just felt off. I was anxious and jittery, and taking that step outside the door was harder than it has been in a while.  Once outside I was okay, I had my sunglasses to protect me and it was warm and sunny.
Then I got to the main drag and I just started to spiral. I felt like I could feel hate vibes coming off of everyone, someone who was sitting outside a store told me to “pull up my skirt” (I thought at first he was being helpful, that perhaps my skirt was hanging low and about to fall off, but it was secured firmly around my waist. The skirt goes to the top of my knee, so I can only interpret this demand as one to show more leg?) I felt attacked. I was uneasy on the way home, too. Generally I was feeling ill at ease and my day did not really brighten up until I decided to slaughter my watermelon.

It was so juicy that I had to put the entire operation in the sink. And as I was working my way through this deconstruction, a breeze picked up and the smell of a wood fire came wafting in to my kitchen and suddenly life was good again. Its the little things that really matter, right? Simple sense memory let me believe again that there is good in everyone and that tomorrow it will be entirely worth it to get out of bed.

Little things like woodsmoke, watermelon, The most recent installment of “My milk toof” and the most adorable notebook i’ve ever seen.

(art by Jeffrey Brown)

So thats the story of how crushing social anxiety was defeated by line drawings of cats and I lived to fight another day.

Daiya Pizza!

Today’s post is brought to you in part by Nature’s harvest.  I went there today (after helping my mom clean out the garage) to get vegan-friendly versions of the supplements my doc has me on (more on that later) and GUESS WHAT THEY CARRY! 

DAIYA! They have the mozz and cheddar flavors so I obviously got one of each and I made a Pizza with the mozz flavor for dinner: 

It was obviously delicious, though the crust wasn’t optimal (in a frenzied, desire-filled passion for pizza I grabbed the only thing Nature’s Harvest had, which is that strange already-kinda-cooked stuff that isn’t refrigerated.) It was still really delicious and I ate too much and feel kind of gross but it was worth it. 
I’m probably going to make grilled cheese sometime this weekend with the cheddah. 

On another note: the reason I was at Nature’s Harvest in the first place was to get vegan-friendly supplements for Iron and B-12. NH has a lot of veg-friendly pills (you can even buy empty capsules and make your own) and its a great break from the gelatin-based pills from the vitamin shoppe.
The reason I need so many damn supplements is because there is something wrong with me. Jury is still out on what exactly. My doc thinks I may still have Lyme? or have it again? Regardless, I am deficient like woah in vitamin D, and My thyroid is not functioning at 100% I’m also kind of low on iron Iron (I should take the b-12 regularly anyway, since I can only eat so much nutritional yeast.)  So until it is determined what exactly is wrong with me I am stuck taking a gajillion supplements a day (plus my new, weekly, prescription strength 50,000IU of vitamin D.) to keep me from keeling over. 

I feel like an old lady.