Sunday, November 27, 2016

November Review

Hoooookay, mooovin' on up. Though sort of in the context of everything else going down the crapper? By which I don't mean to be coy, the horrendous prospect of Donald Trump as the president of the United States and, worse to me, the parlous state of discourse in this house divided. Perhaps this itself has been galvanizing to me, I surely do appreciate that the country flushed itself just to cheer up little old me. But mostly I think the Lexapro is working, I emailed my doctor a couple weeks ago that I thought it was working but was I supposed to *know* that it was working? But I'm not having any side effects so it's no skin off my nose to keep taking it, so then I was out on a little walk mit der schweetums and was chirping about how much I loved my shoes and totally flashed back to the time that I got baked on vicodin, haha. It's kind of just like that, without the dry heaves and lockjaw.

Well, we shall see! I'm working on some other interesting stuff with my therapist, too.

November picks:

My neat schedule was scattered for most of the month, I decided to up my therapist to every week from every other week and that more than anything threw me off, though I've also been trying to pick up where I left off with figuring out who my representatives are and that had to be fit into my life, too.

Luckily I had really low expectations for this month.

HOME: Make a better place

1. Pick anything.

I started the month picking up little piddly tasks—making chicken broth, sorting laundry, setting the thermostat for winter— and finished out the month with a couple good projects:

I seasoned the two cast iron pans that Box and Brawla gave me, I used these instructions from Serious Eats, though for the oil I used Crisco, I read that someplace else. They turned out amazing!

woww #castiron what should i make in them

A photo posted by Pauline Pang (@allapoppy) on

I want to cover our little odd-shaped couch, but I have almost no ability to visualize how anything works in 3D. I had to physically work it out with a scrap of fabric. I'm looking forward to finishing this because the times before when I've done something nice for my surroundings have been really uplifting.

really ridiculous how painful this was to puzzle out, i'm trying to make a couch cover

A photo posted by Pauline Pang (@allapoppy) on


Asking what I can do for my country also falls under HOME: I've made phone calls to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, my senators, and my representative opposing Bannon and supporting Obamacare, sent emails to my alderman asking him to support measures to protect Muslims, Latinos, and blacks in this city, and to Obama asking him to demilitarize the police at Standing Rock, and mailed a postcard, again, opposing Bannon:

#postcardavalanche #stopbannon

A photo posted by Pauline Pang (@allapoppy) on

Though honestly demanding action from my representatives is not really satisfying to me, I won't abdicate my responsibility to do my part with that but I prefer my own agency at the end of the day. I was poking around Volunteer Match for something I could do, it was interesting what appealed to me and what didn't. I didn't want to write. I didn't want to raise awareness. I wanted to work. In a minute this thing about a footwashing clinic popped up, so I sent them an a email. I wasn't really expecting to hear back very soon, I figured it likely that a volunteer organization would have their hands full enough to not be able to attend immediately to my need to feel like I was making a difference. But, Barbara from the foot clinic emailed back in a day asking if I could come in that weekend. So, I did. It was pretty much just what I thought it would be, and just what I wanted. The clinic is the third Saturday of the month, it's simple physical work and I feel like I especially understand the problem as a trainer. Though it's the opposite of what I work with as a trainer—undoing what almost always sitting does to the body. Homeless people are almost always standing, that's going to do something else to a body not to mention their feet. Not that I'm there as a trainer at all, just fill the buckets from the sink and fill the foot baths from the buckets, then empty the foot baths into the big bucket and empty the big bucket into the sink. I suppose what I bring to the party is, lifting that big bucket ain't no thang when you can squat proper.

SYSTEMS: Sharpen the saw

2. Pick anything.

Well, I'm sharpening my brain-saw with my therapist once a week. And, I have a new crown. In my mouth, not on my head. And guess what, I finally ordered those damn glasses. Lol, I get bifocals now.

I'm also putting together a new chart for my life, which is the interesting thing that I'm working on with my therapist. See, this is how I do, circumspicere. I dig myself out of depression by writing myself a routine (in chart form) and then I'm good for a while. Then the routine starts to feel routine and I get depressed and I trash the routine and then I'm good for a while. Then I get anxious. Haha. So I write a new routine. Around and around and around. And you know that's worked all my life, I have been seen as very functional and not even as depressed until after my stroke; that in itself has been quite isolating. My therapist is sort of pro-routine, which is sort of surprising to me. I think the self-help that I've been soaking in has been mostly of the busting out of routine nature. Anyway my therapist wants me to put together a routine and see what happens, and if it starts to feel routine and I want to trash it, then we are going to talk about that.

PLAY: Study movement and muscles

3. Keep watching Functional Patterns videos.

Erk, idk, I only have one day left to do this if I'm going to do this at all...

[ETA 11/29/16: Done!]

PASTIME: Write alla Poppy

4. Keep editing and publishing recipes.

Not done, I didn't even do November Eats this month. I wasn't even going to do this review, but I started feeling cheerful about my shoes and in any case these reviews are actually useful to me. Eats, not so much. I know what I eat, I don't have to look back on what I've eaten. This is the state of the blog at the moment, I have to figure out what it's for.

Going out

Kind of a light going out month, early in the month I went to the South Side Pie Challenge with Problem and Karma:

sweet and salty pumpkin pie, savory sweet potato pie, buttermilk pie

A photo posted by Pauline Pang (@allapoppy) on

The next weekend me and der schweetums rode bikes to Minerva's to watch UFC 205, and a couple weeks after that Box and Brawla hosted an early thanksgiving at the Aloha Palace, and last weekend I went to see Fantastic Beasts with Biggie.

Staying in

It turns out that MJ really likes Harold's Fried Chicken, he normally hates talking on the phone but he's happy to call Harold's and place our order and then go pick it up. He texts me at work on Fridays to ask when I'm coming home so he knows when to call, haha. Though work is winding down and I don't work late so much. So Friday nights we have fried chicken and watch TV, this month we watched this SyFy series The Expanse that's based on a famous series of books, which I got into reading for a couple weeks. Then we fell into a nest of action movie duds: Mechanic: Resurrection, Ghosts of Mars, Oblivion, and the remake of Point Break. I thought I had pretty low standards for action movies, but it turns out I need a story and characters to resonate with. Huh. We did also watch The Man Who Knew Infinity, which I liked. I like movies about math. That's like I love space but have less than zero interest in going into space myself.

Yeah, nope. Nope nope nope.

December picks:

Let's keep it simple, shall we?

HOME: Make a better place to live in

1. Pick anything.

SYSTEMS: Sharpen the saw

2. Pick anything.

PLAY: Study movement and muscles

3. Keep watching Functional Patterns videos?

PASTIME: Write alla Poppy

4. Figure out what this blog is for.


Sunday, November 13, 2016

Please Stand By

Uncle, for now. I'm figuring stuff out, BRB.