Coffee and Tea

I’m a seasonal caffeine drinker. I like hot teas in autumn and winter when the steam from the cup warms my cold nose. During the summer, the last thing I need is to burn my tongue on some hot tea, so I usually go for coffee, which is always cooler due to adding some soy creamer. I’ve done this for many years now and though it may seem odd, at least I never tire of one or the other. Lately, I’ve been going back and forth between the two. Seasonal transition time, I guess.

I made a frowny face when I realized I was using the last of my strawberry preserves. Luckily, I thought to buy another jar the last time I went shopping, so I had plenty. Above is my favorite green tea. I got it at an asian market and I’m almost out!

I shake up the soy creamer I get in the little pint carton quite vigorously to get a little froth going. It makes me think I’m sorta having cappuccino.

*Cricket chirp*

So, one month of the new year down and I’ve barely posted anything. I’ve taken about as many photos as I’ve made post entries on this here bloggy. I know some people come here for The Pretty Stuff, but sorry, eye candy will be lacking for a while so you may want to go ahead and take your tumblr/pinterest trigger clicker fingers elsewhere.

I’ve not been the least bit motivated to pick up my camera at all. Zach says I got burnt out from doing two years of 365s back to back, which I do think may be part of the problem. But also, I’m in a very normal (albeit boring) routine right now and trying to keep it is proving tedious. I work stupid hours (11:30am – 7:30pm) and have very little time to do much of anything before or after these stupid hours. My focus this year I mentioned in an earlier post has been about my health and exercise. I started off strongly, but after seeing everyone fall down around me with illness like soldiers on a battlefield I eventually succumbed to illness myself. I’m still getting over a nasty cold/bronchial/sinus infection mess. So exercise has gone out the window and usually when I get home I dissolve into a snotty mess of tissues. Yep, I’m still fighting the sinus battles. The ENT I went to was a class act capital Jerk so I’m going to find another one.  Dealing with all this means photography takes a back burner for now.

It’s also winter time and though this winter has been really weird, it’s still dark sooner than I’d like and that puts me in cocoon mode. I’d rather pile on blankets on the sofa and read instead of photographing something or even exercising. It’s been quite amazing to read about Europe getting slammed with insanely low temps (-40F!) and snow while here we’ve only had one measly 2 inch snowfall. The temperatures have been mild to say the least. Yesterday was a proper spring day at a balmy 64F! In February!

Anyway, this post is simply to say I’m still here but may not be posting as much nor adding photos. I honestly don’t have much to say.

Musings and then some

I’ve been craving pancakes something fierce lately. When I made some a few days ago, I wondered why they weren’t fluffing up and looked funny in the pan. It wasn’t until I was done cooking the third one when I realized that plain flour was in my pancake mix container. So I basically made flour with an egg and soy milk… and a few frozen blueberries. At first, I thought breakfast was ruined, but soaking them in the last of my favorite maple syrup saved them a bit. This morning when I made pancakes again (with proper mix this time) I used some homemade cranberry sauce for a topping since I’m out of maple syrup. MUST. GET. MAPLE. SYRUP. I don’t do the “pancake syrup” stuff shown in tv commercials because that’s just gross. Give me my Grade A DARK amber (or grade B if I can find it), thank you very much. Last night in a panic for breakfast foods I grabbed some basic Bisquick pancake mix at the meagre selection of “food items” at the drug store. It’s ok, but the Aunt Jemima Buttermilk is better. The one nice thing about this breakfast was the tea. I used another flowering tea and was delighted when this one opened up after pouring the hot water over it. Little tiny yellow flowers burst from the bundle and floated to the top as the rest of the tea bloomed. I actually gasped and smiled the whole time. The little flowers ended up in my tea cup every time I poured myself some.

Every six months or so I go through a Manic Purge Mode. I look at things around me and am amazed at how much junk I’ve accumulated. What’s worse is when I try to get rid of the junk it sits in my car for another six months until I can be bothered to dump it at the local Goodwill. Tonight I did a mini organizing to my tea cabinet to subdue my manic restlessness. I threw out teas I know I won’t drink or don’t like anymore and also found some I’d forgotten I had. I’m not going to buy any more tea for at least a year! I must get through this crazy stockpile I have that’s threatening to take over the whole cabinet.

Today I bought two new plants. I’m a little afraid to buy certain kinds of plants because my apartment is a temperature nightmare. There’s a solid 30-40 degree difference in this place between summer and winter, which a lot of tropical plants don’t like and certain picky plants freak out about and die no matter what I do. However, I decided to go ahead and buy some more. I lost my two snake plants this past summer/autumn for very odd reasons that I’m still not able to figure out. They were acting strange for months and finally died. This depressed me a lot because it’s VERY HARD to kill off a snake plant. You could leave a snake plant in a closet for two months in total darkness and it could be fine. In fact, it would be happy. But I managed to kill them! I wasn’t watering them too much, but parts of them still kept dying off. It was weird. Whatever. I bought another one today and I’m starting over. I did notice that after leaving all my plants out on the deck for a day in the rain this past spring to get a nice “natural” watering that brown spots showed up on a few of them, which freaked me out and I almost lost my huge pothos in the kitchen, but it’s still holding on. I think I need to trim some of it back though. It’s looking quite haggard, poor thing.

I simply want to purge all the ridiculous stuff I have that’s taking up space and then surround myself in a few books, some nice paintings, and plants. I’ve been thinking a lot about paintings and changing out the wall decor here. I love the Dan-ah Kim prints Zach got me, but I’m sick of everything else. I want big paintings with rich colors of english “country” scenes with people wearing riding habits and coon hounds sitting all proper in the foreground or women and men all dapper  in overflowing bunched up fabric like in Gone with the Wind sipping sherry at a garden party. I’ll even take a nice impressionist rendition of the Swiss Alps – something with lots of chunky paint daubs on it.

We saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows today. It was good, but not as good as the first one and I was disappointed in the lack of Holmes-ness in it. I thought there would be more references to little things in the stories, but either I didn’t catch them, or they were so obscure  that again – I didn’t catch them.  I understand the director’s whole approach to Sherlock’s “method” being the inner monologues and slow-mo sequences, but it wasn’t as nice as actually hearing him call out everything he sees, which always dumbfounds everyone around him. That’s what I like. That’s SHERLOCK! The plot for the movie was a simple one, but I felt got very convoluted so in the middle of it I was bored and even briefly wondered what the point was of what they were doing. So not a fan of the gypsy woman making a threesome to the party. It’s better when it’s just Watson and Holmes. Stephen Fry as Mycroft was hilarious, but a certain scene with him and Watson’s wife had me rolling my eyes incredibly because of how HORRIBLY out of character it was for him. Bleh.

I started my 2012 Challenge (I think I mentioned that already?) and am almost done reading the first book, Nicholas Nickelby. Not a fan. It’s ok, but I think it’s one of Dickens’ weaker novels. I started off well enough with grand life-changing, eye opening things happening to the protagonists and then everything starts to even out. Now it’s nothing more than a roller coaster of mini events of mild interest/importance leading up to one kinda big event and for some reason there’s more characters being introduced. I’m not all that interested/sympathetic towards the protagonists anymore because the mini events they’ve been through thus far have been so incredibly boring I’m wrinkling my nose with disappointment. The characters are as all Dickens characters – highly exaggerated caricatures of human adjectives such as Vanity, Greed, Avarice, Lust, Wholesome, Honesty, Self-Righteousness, etc… etc….

Off to bed now. Unlike many, I have to go to work tomorrow (so does Zach – I grumble for both of us).  If you happen to have off tomorrow – have a nice breakfast for me.

Foggy night

Strange – the word that comes to mind when describing the weather this winter. We’ve gone back and forth like a see-saw between freezing temperatures and early spring temps (50s and even 60s!) every week. After a few temperate days at the beginning of last week a cold front swooped down on us so quickly a thick fog blanketed the whole city. I was quite glad for the street lights downtown because without them I wouldn’t have been able to see down one block when I drove home from work. While Zach was cooking dinner I stepped out to get a few photos.

Green is yummy

For the past week I’ve been drinking at least one green smoothie a day. I may up that to two by making a double batch (half for taking to work and half after exercising at night or with dinner). When I decided to eat meat again, I looked at what else I needed to change in my diet and realized getting more vegetables was necessary. I’m not a huge vegetable eater although I do like most of them. But with our wee, ridiculous fridge that hardly has room for the basics, keeping veggies is a bit difficult. It’s also difficult since Zach is not a vegetable eater. He dislikes most of them. I love kale, but don’t like how easily it goes bad in our wee fridge, so I looked up alternatives and came across the word “smoothie”. Perfect! I’ve bought frozen spinach, kale, banana, mangos and peaches. Our poor super wee freezer is now packed to the gills (we seriously have tiny appliances and it’s very annoying) with smoothie supplies.

I’ve read so many variations of recipes I decided to make up my own, but keeping in mind I needed to keep the ingredients simple and complimentary to each other. My usual ranges from a mix of spinach/kale (handful each), a couple banana chunks (I’m so not a fan of banana, but it makes the smoothie more smoothie-ish), handful of mango chunks or peach slices, and 2 cups of unsweetened soy milk. I know I can add powders and about a million other things to make them SUPER GREEN SMOOTHIES, but I like to keep mine simple. Plus, I’m not into all the powder stuffs. The only powder I have I might add is matcha (powdered green tea) for when I take my smoothies to work and need a bit of caffeine to help me out for the day.

Recently Randomly #2

This week has been all sorts of “blah”, but luckily it’s over and hopefully next week will be better. Aside from being physically ill, I’m starting to feel the holiday pressure of making sure I’ve got everything, even for those who off-handedly say, “Oh, I don’t need anything” because I know they’ll have gotten me something and I’ll look like that inconsiderate person if I don’t have anything to give as well. Man, the psychology that goes on with gift giving during the holidays needs it’s own terminology. I know plenty of others are in the same shoes I am where I throw my hands up in the air and roll my eyes and then spend another hour giving myself a headache trying to find something useful to give to people for the holidays. I find it tends to get more difficult with each passing year.

This past Monday I went to an ENT for my insane sinus issues I’ve been having from this summer. I’m now on even MORE medicine and while I was hopeful I’d notice a greater change this time, I’m not. It’s about the same as it always was, which is disappointing me. I’m not prepared yet to resign myself to a lifelong battle of chronic sinus issues. I’d say I’ve got a partial resignation to it, in the same way Charlie Brown says to Linus in the Christmas special, “I just don’t know Linus, I just don’t know.” I can tell there’s some hope, but not much and not entirely sure of what that hope might be in that statement and that’s where I’m headed right now with my sinus issues.

Last Saturday I broke a personal best record of running six miles solid along the river trail. And then I completely ruined my exercise routine this week with being ill, taking lots of medicines making me jittery and unable to sleep (thus rendering me worthless after work to go out and run or do much of anything other than want to die at the end of each day), and gorging on Rudolph cartoon themed cupcakes.

For some reason we’ve still got flowers in our little deck garden, which is mostly dead or full of weeds. The few marigolds that have held on make me smile.

The last photo is of Zach eating french cut styled green beans from the can. I don’t know how he can do that, but he prefers them that way. I always like to warm mine up first.

Tomorrow we’re going to pick out a Christmas tree. More cheery posts to come, promise.

Serene

Yesterday started out hot, muggy, and annoying. The temperature rose as did the humidity. I wore an orange short sleeved shirt and a black linen skirt. The clouds rolled in and as I worked successions of rain and blue sky chased each other. Children and parents began walking in wrapped in light jackets with hunched shoulders, slightly shuddering, many frowning. I caught a whiff of the wind as it raced through the doorway: crisp, cool, soothing. I began to smile more as the rest smiled less. The only thing to have made me angry was being at work so late, mostly due to the mistake of someone else there – who left early, which should have never happened. I’ve accepted I’m the one to get the proverbial “shit” end of the stick there.

Freed at last just as the sun set and though I’d brought a light cardigan to wear, it stayed tucked in my bag while goosebumps formed on my arms. Traffic, move faster! I need to get home. I need to get a parking spot before it’s too late. I need many hugs and a hot dinner. A car pulled away down my street right across the front door. Huzzah! I sat in Zach’s lap, wrapped up in hugs, cursing the person who made me late.

After a hodgepodge dinner I asked, “Can we go for a walk?” Jeans on and now I put my arms through the sleeves of the light cardigan. Zach said when he got home he opened the back door to let in the breeze and I smiled as he used the words “autumn”, “cool”, and “decay”. He wears his hoodie and makes little hunched shoulder motions saying “Brr!” when a gust of wind blows the ends of my cardigan away from me. “Oh, it’s not so bad.”  Most AC units are off except a few we come across. Don’t they know it’s below 60F outside? This is fantastic! Open the windows! Stop wasting electricity!

We stop at the ice cream shop for fudgey thick chocolate ice cream. I asked for a small in a cup and got 4 scoops: three on the bottom and one on top. My eyes widened and thought – THAT is a small? This could feed a family! I bite off bits from the top as we walk on in the neighborhood. Zach wants to go to the drug store, but I convince him to go further to Whole Foods for a few more items. He groans and throws his head to the side, not wanting to walk so far, but really it’s not that bad a walk at all – especially in this weather. He then points out that our plan to save half the ice cream is ruined b/c we’re out walking more with it and we’ll end up nibbling on it until it’s all gone. True. I put the empty cup and spoon on the counter as I pull out a wad of cash to pay for our groceries. Mind you it’s his wad of cash.

Home with a stomach ache from so much dairy. Shower, slathering of lavender lotion from a sample I got from Thymes. The best lavender lotion I’ve ever smelled. The fan is in the window to bring in a cool breeze, chilling the room. Perfect sleeping weather. Sitting next to it now with cold fingers on the keyboard and glad it’s Friday.