“I shall miss this thing when it all rolls by” – Dave Matthews Band
I have 72 hours left before The Man comes to take me away. Clearly I’ve been busy quoting Dave Matthews and dressing in clothing circa 1999 because it still fits, God damn it! I’ve also flirted with 2009 a bit and it seems to be an excellent kisser. I think 2009 and I might go all the way.
Happy New Year, kids.
“Christmas is the gentlest, loveliest festival of the revolving year – and yet, for all that, when it speaks, its voice has strong authority.” ~W.J. Cameron
I think I might have more Johnnie Walker Red than I had originally thought as evidenced by my returning home and crying and emailing and drinking the Chenin Blanc that had exploded all over my freezer. Please note that crying, emailing and drinking are not three activities that should ever be done at the same time. It’s like mixing napalm and well, oxygen. Police are so upset about people drinking and driving well psychotherapists and close friends should send out warrants for the arrest for overdramatic 20 somethings with a proclivity to confess The Feelings at 11:39 PM while weeping over a large glass of wine.
Woe!
The Spirit has been in and out. Next week when I’m sitting at home for 12 glorious, God sent, Jesus kissed days with nothing to do but write, write and maybe write some more, I will tell you about Friday night and how Susan had to keep me from jumping off my balcony while had a house full of people.
Merry Christmas! Try the eggnog! Excuse me while I leap all of three stories to my death but what would actually be a broken hip!
There is no proper segue here except that I need a very long break. Not a week off of work where I go somewhere else and pretend to be thrilled about TSA giving me an anal probe but a week off where I sit and read and play with my new Hayden Harnett. Speaking of which – and an utter digression of where this post is headed – I bought two Hayden Harnett bags for myself for Christmas. I even had them gift wrapped with a gift note. The gift note: “Dear Heather: You rock. Don’t ever change. Love, Heather”. So you know there’s that: Even if I’m feeling unloved by the world at large at least I love me and that’s what really matters.
Anyway, while I’m home I’ll probably bake and practice making gluten free goodies (post on why I find myself blatantly lying about why I don’t eat gluten coming soon to a crapass blog near you!). In the meantime I will leave you with these:
Gluten free pumpkin cupcakes. I’ve been holding onto these bad boys for a month now waiting for the right time to release them on you because people are terrified by the no gluten thing. As if anything sans gluten will taste like chalk paste ground up with salt. These are quite delicious. And I’m not saying that because I put my blood, sweat and tears into them but because I was apprehensive and had resigned myself to defeat that I would just have to suffer in silence. I test out everything I bake on my coworkers before I give them to actual people. The feedback from these was a resounding, “Quit your job and bake”. So if things in politics don’t work out and President Obama doesn’t want me in his administration because of my facebook/twitter/blog/MySpace sex shots (I AM KIDDING) then I can always bake for a living.
Gluten-free Pumpkin Cupcakes (from Simply Recipes)
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature (I only had 3/4 of a stick so I used that and added 2 Tbsp of olive oil. It worked fine.)
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 Tbsp molasses
1 Tbsp honey
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin purée
2 cups Red Mill’s gluten-free flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice (1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon lemon zest)
1/2 cup buttermilk*
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup raisins
Frosting ingredients:
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup confectioner’s powdered sugar, sifted
*Note to make your own buttermilk, combine 1/2 cup of milk with 1/2 Tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice. Stir and let stand 10 minutes before using.
Cupcakes
1 Preheat oven to 350°F, and place rack in the center of the oven.
2 Using an electric mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, molasses and honey, until as light and fluffy as it will be, about 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the pumpkin purée and vanilla and beat until incorporated.
3 In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. Add the flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to the pumpkin batter, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
4 Add the pecans and raisins. Mix in by hand.
5 Set paper cupcake holders in a muffin tin. Spoon the batter into the cupcake paper cups, close to the top of the cups. Bake approximately 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.
Frosting
6 Using an electric mixer, mix together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add maple syrup and confectioners’ sugar and mix to combine. Once cupcakes have cooled, apply frosting.
Makes 16 cupcakes.
Below we have your basic sugar cookies but with a lemon glaze frosting because I had no patience to whip up vanilla frosting and think vanilla frosting is a product of the Devil. I did have powdered sugar and some lemons lying around so I made lemon glaze which made an ordinary sugar cookie taste like magic. If you’re ever looking to impress your coworkers or mother or parole officer; tell them that you made sugar cookies from scratch without the help of Pillsbury and they’ll all bow at your feet and tell you how fucking fantastic you really are.
1 Cup of sugar
1 cup of butter
3 tablespoons of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 egg
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of Baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1. In large bowl, combine sugar, butter, milk, vanilla, and egg. Blend well. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. Add flour, baking powder and salt; mix well. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate for atleast 1 hour.
2. Heat oven to 400 f. On lightly floured surface, roll out 1/3 od dough at a time to 1/8-inch thickness. Keep remaining dough refrigerated. Cut with floured 2-inch cookie cutter. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet,
3. Bake at 400 f for 5-9 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet decorate as desired.
Serving size is one cookie with frosting…
Enjoy!
Number of Servings: 72
Frosting:
Whisk 1 ½ cups powdered sugar, two tablespoons lemon juice, and 1 ½ teaspoons lemon peel in small bowl. Frost.
And with that, have a very wonderful Holiday, listen to Carol of the Bells, drink eggnog spiked with four kinds of hard alcohol and I will see you all next week.
“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” ~Sam Keen
Winter heading into spring was hard. Terribly, gut wrenching, heartbreakingly difficult. To the point where it physically hurts to allow my mind go back to March or April. I’ve been pretty good at keeping my bipolar cycles at bay and not projecting them onto the world every few months which is something I’ll discuss in the near future. But some days were far more difficult than others and to have it all exacerbated by being so fucking livid and feeling like a failure; well that made me the most wonderful person to be around ever. That fire that was shooting out of my eyeballs was actually cotton candy rolled around rainbows.
I was standing in the water today in Aquinnah and I said in a sing-song voice “My future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades”. And my mother looked at me and asked what I was talking about for apparently she spent 1987 busy or something trying to keep me from choking the hell out of my baby brother. Anyway, let’s just say I’ve been going between some kick ass aviators and the most absurd, but they totally work, pink sunglasses for a few weeks now.
Speaking of Aquinnah and vacation. Here’s how it’s been thus far or at least from where I see it:
Me: Do you want to go hiking and take photos?
La Madre: Hell no.
Me: Do you want to go kayaking for a few hours?
La Madre: Fuck no.
Me: Do you want to wave jump and be sucked down by giant swells and get sand in your crotch?
La Madre: Ok, I was never going to tell you this, but you’re adopted.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” ~William James
Last weekend my brother, mother and I ventured out to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend. This will probably not be the most pretentious thing I have ever said but dear Lord, I am so thankful for my mother’s second mortgage on an ISLAND. It’s why every time I step off the ferry I feel the need to kiss the ground then tell my mother how nicely her hair frames her face.
One evening G and I were walking around and he took this deep breath and said that he feels better here. Without the congestion and constant ambient noise and the yelling over the din of sirens every 14 seconds, it’s so damn peaceful. And once you get over the tiny army men that have been deployed to battle your sinuses, it really is lovely.
I returned home so full of love, flowers and happiness that by Monday I gave a shit about nothing. Not in an apathetic way but when shit hit the fan every single day last week, I didn’t get upset or irate or threaten to quit or even threaten violence. I was totally chill. Like being on Martha’s Vineyard turned the LOSE YOUR SHIT switch in my brain to the off position. I shrugged my shoulders when met with adversity and handled things the way normal people handle bullshit that they can’t help; with class and a modicum of dignity.
By Friday, when I normally would have been ready to toss my body in front of an oncoming vehicle, I laughed because the absurdity of the entire week was just so fucking funny. I was literally powerless towards everything that was thrown at me during the week. And because I couldn’t fight it – one cannot be responsible for the stupidity and general harsh behavior of others – I went to Denver for a faux vacation.
As I’m thinking of it now, I’m pretty sure that my relative calm was because my week was sandwiched by two weekends of tranquility. Denver is another one of those places that prides itself on its placidity and full of the nicest people who are less than aware that in two months their city is going to be swarmed by several thousand people. In fact I found their naivety towards the rampage of self-important people to be downright charming.
The added bonus to my past travels and the travel that is to come over the next 60 days is that in every city I go to someone greets me with open arms. During this trip to Denver Aimee and Julie were ever the most gracious hosts. With Aimee pointing me towards sushi restaurants in Cherry Creek so that I wouldn’t have to go through withdrawal from my eel sashimi addiction. And Julie being…well…Julie. If you’ve ever met the woman you know what I mean; you know those people who are just nice? That’s how Julie is all I can think is “Oh my God, is it possible to be that fucking nice?”
Last night while Aimee was putting her son to bed, Bryan, her husband, and I played the WII. I had eyed it earlier in the evening and had to keep myself from telling Aimee that while it was nice of her to invite everyone over for dinner, I would rather sit down here and play tennis against myself. Bryan and I golfed and then boxed. After I had thrown my entire body into protecting my Mii from any oncoming left hooks thus rendering me covered in a film of sweat, he mentioned that you don’t really need to put so much effort into the WII. In fact you would get the same results by gently maneuvering your body while sitting on a couch with a cold beer but flinging yourself around just gives it that added authenticity.
I return to Denver in two months at the very end of a 60 day slug fest with my senses. Bryan and Aimee have already offered me an opportunity to come over and box the shit out of the air to get out the aggression that will have eaten me alive and spit me back out by then. So while I like to give myself a generous pat on the back and tell myself that I’m handling so much shit so well and my, do I look gorgeous today; I am pretty well aware that this is just the calm before the storm. But unlike every other time when the clouds roll in (just to keep up with the analogy) this time I feel a little bit more prepared; like I have my umbrella nearby.
Like a prayer
“Vacation used to be a luxury, but in today’s world it has become a necessity.” ~Author Unknown
The other night Sarah and I had to explain to Danny what it was like to drive in snow. Like how suddenly you believe in Jesus as your personal savior and remember that time you were saved as you grip the steering wheel with a force previously unknown. We explained what it’s like to white knuckle it all the way home while praying that you make it to your front doorstep without the Grim Reaper knocking down your walls.
All he could do is shrug his shoulders and say, “That’s why I live in California”.
I’m pretty sure they don’t believe in snow in Orange County. Snow is an abstract thing seen in photographs and paintings but doesn’t really exist. In no way, shape or form is it natural for water to freeze while coming out of a cloud and form piles and piles of frozen stuff that one must shovel their vehicles out of. I wish I had a photo of Danny’s reaction when Sarah explained the dirty snow and the way canines pee and poop on top of it like it’s nothing.
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At Fashion Island I found myself meticulously checking my work email that is until my crackberry died. Without warning it was gone. I cannot turn it on and it no longer holds a charge. I called my secretary to tell her of my dire news to which she exclaimed, “Well good for you!” I suppose I’m really on vacation now. Hot damn, high-fives and terrorist fist bumps for everyone.
Now, who’s up for a shot of Patron?
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Photos as they come