One Thousand Words

I vowed not to write about my kid but that's the only thing on my mind right now for so many different reasons, all of them serious.

It's hard being a parent.

It's hard being a kid! But God when you're a parent you've got your heart running around outside of your body getting bruised and scraped and all you can do is hope it never gets broken, but you know it will. That's a big part of being alive.

Ahh, that's enough about my kid. Moving on.

We moved into our home 13 years ago. We've painted and we've put some art on the walls and we have a really nice rug in the living room but we've delayed a lot of what we've wanted to do with this place. Some of it is just money, some of it is just time, some of it is both. And a lot of this is a tetris of issues where we can't do A until we do B and we need to do C and D before we can do B but we can't do C until we do E and F and if we do F that'll affect D so we'll need to do G and H to solve THAT problem etc. It's very frustrating, it's stressful, and it's easier to just... not.

But we've gotten some Actual Art framed (original stuff by Shaenon Garrity and Lynda Barry) and we've got some funky shelves up and the art's on the walls and it's... an improvement.

Each year this place feels more like home. I've moved so, so much and it's nice to be rooted someplace and it's nice to shape it into home.

It's Sunday (and I spent most of today thinking it was Saturday so finding that out was a really big let down, let me tell you) and we still have leftovers of everything that I made, and some of it is probably going to go in the trash because it's not food I'm a fan of but made for other people and my husband keeps saying he's going to heat it up and eat it and then he doesn't so it's all still in the fridge.

I've been eating nothing but leftovers for three days (with the addition of scrambled eggs once) and I am very ready for something else so tonight... we're getting pizza.

The ham bone with the ham still on it is in the freezer. I think I'm going to make split pea soup next weekend, which will involve inviting people over to eat it (and maybe take some home with them) because I'm the only one in our house who enjoys split pea soup. Split pea soup and some good bread and I don't know what else. Is that enough for a meal? Maybe a lasagna or stuffed shells. Maybe baked macaroni and cheese.

Anyway, getting pizza tonight just means that tomorrow we'll still have leftover Thanksgiving food, but also we'll have leftover pizza as well. Which isn't a tragedy but it is leftoverpalooza.

I learned a few things this Thanksgiving!

1) Sweet potatoes work really well in the slow cooker. Put some foil around them or line the bottom of the insert in case they spill out delicious goo.
2) If you eat an entire sweet potato before the rest of the meal you will be too full to eat much of the delicious food on your plate.
3) Make double the amount of ricotta mixture when making a lasagna with boil noodles. I don't know why it's different but it is.
4) Food cools down FAST. I forgot how quickly it cools down. I'm very seriously considering getting a few sterno sets. I'm not a fan of room temperature lasagna! Well, ok. My lasagna is always good, even cold. But I prefer it hot.
5) When we redo our kitchen I'm going to ask for a spot with a warming lamp.
6) Related: Some way to put things like deviled eggs and cheeses on ice/a cool surface
7) I need more trivets, but towels can work in a pinch to protect surfaces from heat.
8) I need a longer table cloth. We were able to make things work with only one leaf but I'd have liked to put in both of them.
9) Next year for Christmas I'm asking for Nesko to get a third leaf made somehow. Our table has room for way more leaves than we have.
10) Unless I know for a fact that I'm having a lot of people over I need to make only a half pan of lasagna and freeze the other half for later. The broccoli casserole I made and the stuffing I made were both scaled for 8x8 pans and still made too much for our group. I can split each thing between bread pans and freeze half for later and cook the other half.
11) Pecan pie fucking slaps, and buying pies from a quality place is absolutely worth it. I already knew this but it's good to remind myself.
12) I need more vintage/cut glass/mid century modern serve-ware, especially bowls. Yes, this may seem to contradict #13 but I love how funky and cool it looks. Plus, having a plate with little impressions for deviled eggs is awesome.
13) Our everyday plates and glasses worked really well, I'm releasing my in-grained desire for really nice fine china holiday plates that need to be washed gently and delicately by hand and will fade and chip no matter how careful you are.
14) I might get another set of our plates and bowls, though, so I have another 4 each of everything and can thus accommodate more people. Nesko's immediate family consists of 12 people (so far, people might have more kids).
15) Having gotten used to the idea of every day plates for a fancy meal, paper plates are an option as well. I don't know why it helps me make that jump but it does.
16) It's really REALLY nice to not have to worry about dogs or small children and to thus have appetizers on a coffee table. I guess that's more "a reflection" than "a lesson."

Our kitchen is both small and poorly laid out, to the point that while it seems like two people should be able to work in there at the same time they really can't. I say this as someone who's an experienced cook who's used to small, poorly laid out kitchens.

I started telling my husband yesterday that he needed to plan dinner for tonight that did not involve cooking because I needed to be in there... cooking. Because Thanksgiving.

He's in there right now. Cooking dinner.

He bought something for our kid to eat, but not for himself, because... ???? So he's in there right now cooking. Which means not only is he in the way of me getting things done but he's also using up work space that I can't use, and creating more dirty dishes that will need to be washed. And yes, even if he's the one washing them it still takes time to do so and it takes time for dishes to dry and part of the plan was to put all the clean dishes away and also put the dish rack away to free up that small additional amount of workspace. That's how little space we have to work with, that putting the dish rack away is necessary before getting work done.

Which means I'm going to be up at least an hour later than I'd planned on. At least.

I feel like Cassandra over here, telling people not to do X because it'll mean Y and people just blithely carry on doing X.

Went to Whole Foods to hunt down Yukon Gold potatoes and maybe "Yukon Gold" is a brand? They had "Gold Potatoes" which look the same and WHATEVER I just want to boil them and mash them (and later on I'll stick them in a stew I guess. Or split pea soup.). Anyway, we went to Whole Foods and it made me really remember how much I hate Whole Foods. This one was especially bad, poorly laid out, and with a cheese selection that was really lacking. I could find better at Mariano's and they aren't even a Wisconsin chain any more!

I was set to do some cleaning and prep etc but someone rolled their ankle earlier today and now it's swollen and bruised blue, probably a sprain, and they needed some babying. This mostly consisted of me making them soup and toast and bringing them ice water, a cookie, and pain killers then listening to them complain. It's the little things, you know?

This has put me behind on cleaning and prep and also I kind of don't care. I did a lot over the weekend and I'm sitting here now unable to remember what day of the week it is (Monday. I think? Yes, Monday.) so perhaps I just need to... not do anything this evening.

Tomorrow I'm going to make the broccoli casserole and the lasagna - two things that sound daunting to many people but, at least in the case of the lasagna, isn't that bad at all really. I'm debating whether I should bake them ahead and then reheat them or not and the time difference isn't that great so I'm going to assemble them Tuesday then bake them on Thursday. Of course I won't add the cracker crumbs to the broccoli casserole until right before it goes into the oven. I'm probably going to toast up some panko with some butter and seasoning as well - this really elevates any casserole but especially home made macaroni and cheese. Toss some butter in a pan, melt it, throw in some panko and your favorite seasoning, and stir it around until it's browned but not burnt or anything. You have to keep it moving!

I might make the gravy tomorrow also, I'll see how I'm feeling. Tuesdays are usually especially busy at work as a very specific weekly thing happens that day, and we're already behind on some other stuff. So either it'll be off the wall or it won't be and I don't know which it will be which means I can't easily brace myself.

Speaking of gravy, I neglected to make the red sauce for the lasagna which I really should have done tonight. I'll put it on the stove top ASAP tomorrow when I get home from work and start on the broccoli casserole and mix up the ricotta filling for the lasagna, at least. Assembly is easy.

When I was a kid we (by which I mean my mom and I and none of the other three people, all male, in the household) would finish cleaning the kitchen after dinner, do ALL the prep and assembly the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and then spend most of Thanksgiving putting things into and pulling things out of the oven. Having these extra days before hand is helpful and I don't know why my mom didn't take advantage of them, although obviously she had reasons not to (the reasons might have been she was working 62-80 hours a week and just wanted to sleep).

Anyway, I'm scattered because I'm sleepy and also these blog entries are kind of acting like notes for next year. Reminder to self that red sauce can be made well in advance and then frozen. I forget about freezing things like that sometimes because our fridge/freezer is very small and generally very full with stuff that would fill a "normal" sized fridge only 2/3s of the way up.

1) What's something you’ve done recently that you really enjoyed?

In addition to watching "Andor" with my husband? My weekend D&D game is a life saver. My go-to class is Rogue. I am very much An Old and have so many other TTRPG rules cluttering up my brain that it's full and D&D stuff slips in and slides right out again. For whatever reason I'm finding Rogue the easiest, and I love sneak attack damage.

2) You come into possession of US$20 million dollars, no strings attached. Obviously you are a creature of grace, sensitivity, and philanthropy and are going to make the world a better place with it. But in the meantime what non-ultra-luxury thing will you buy with it for yourself?

Probably a piece of jewelry from NDN Silver by Wings. Absolutely gorgeous, incredible craftsmanship, so many of the pieces have called out to me. They're a luxury to me now, or at least a stretch. Less luxury but still a splurge is perfume from Sucreabeille. So many of the scents smell good. Even less of a luxury is more patreon subscriptions for delicious locked content.

3) What's your go-to hot beverage, and how do you like to prepare it? What's your lazy indulgent hot beverage, and how do you like to prepare it?

I never thought I'd be a coffee person and yet here I am, assuming that "coffee" means "cup of black stuff with a few candy bars and some heavy cream melted into it." Yes, I like a hot latte with caramel syrup - or peppermint mocha, depending on time of year - and maybe some Baileys in it and/or whipped cream on top of it. I'm a sucker for hot chocolate, too, prepared the same way.

4) Have you ever been told that you look like a famous person? If so, who was it? Do you agree?

I'm a fat white woman in my 40s so it went from Camryn Manheim to Melissa McCarthy. Insert shrug emoji here.

5) What type of geographic feature/area would you most like to live in? Desert, mountain, wetland, forest, etc?

Man let me tell you, I want to live right on Lake Michigan. It's way out of my price range. Just... being near the water? Bliss. My husband prefers the mountains, he's a mountain man. We could compromise but only by living in a place in the mountains that has a really nice pool.

Thanks to oursin for this link:
Literacy in Early Modern England
We've got this modern vision of earlier humans, no matter when or where, as ignorant rubes who didn't know how to eat properly or clean themselves or travel or... read and write. This is yet another article about how humans from early modern England were more familiar with writing, and with holding a pen, than is generally thought. And I want to note that "using a pen" absolutely is a skill - not just with modern pens and pencils, but especially with old quills. It's incredibly easy to fuck them up entirely, to not be able to make a mark at all or to just leave a big old blotch.

"The Girl Who Smelled Pink
Interesting article about synesthesia. For me, personally, some numbers (10-12) have a personality or general feeling/aura about them. 12 is the vaguest and frankly might solely be the result of having had to memorize times tables but not being good at it.

Dyslexia Doesn't Work The Way We Thought It Did
Little article that doesn't go super in depth about the topic, but essentially dyslexia doesn't seem to be language related. It's a brain plasticity/memory thing.

I temped for a long time before landing full time office employment. As a temp I was frequently just a bridge between one employee leaving and another employee arriving. I was never that arriving employee because even though I demonstrably could do the job (I was at one place for over a year), and generally wound up training the new hire, I didn't have a college degree and general basic office work often REQUIRES a college degree no matter how much experience you have or how well you've shown that you can do your job.

Part of welcoming new hires is making sure they can settle into the job and take off running. They need pens and notepads and paper clips and stuff.

At my last position we had a lot of churn, a lot of turnover. I had to welcome new employees roughly once every month or two. I developed a set list of stuff they'd need to start - stapler, staplers, staple remover, big black markers and dryline tape whiteout (for redacting documents), notepads, etc. I'd fit it all in a box that file folders came in, and hand it over along with the blank case files (file folder filled with forms) that I'd put together... I had both English and Spanish.

At some locations employees not only had to assemble their own blank case files... they had to photocopy their own forms. Their forms looked like shit.

I kept a supply of blank case files, extra documents, and handouts organized by type and language. This was all apparently unusual! Nobody else did this! There were two other people in my position who supported different teams and their employees would come and take my blank case files, which I didn't realize at first but when I did it explained why I was running out so fast!

Basically part of my job is to anticipate basic needs and try to meet them before they arise.

So when we heard that we had a new hire I immediately began assembling a set of office supplies for her, pushed hard to get some storage boxes moved out of her work area, scavenged letter trays, and printed out a map of the building, phone lists, calendars, and forms... I filled out sample forms, even.

I also passed on the 30 or so page document I'm creating (it's a living document) that spells out what we do and how to do it.

For instance, we have to answer phone calls. I don't just have a quick explanation of group X vs group Y that we send most of our calls to. No. I have the numbers to several of the departments or agencies we direct calls to, and also a list of very specific questions that we get and who to direct those calls to. I keep the document open during the day and add to it as new things arise. I also included explicit directions on how to check voicemail.

Someone multiple levels higher than me stopped into the office to say hi and noticed the office supplies on her desk and tried to grab something. I said no, that's not random supplies, that's for the new hire who hasn't arrived yet. THIS STOPPED HIM IN HIS TRACKS. (Also I gave him what he needed from our supply shelves.) NOBODY was doing this! Basically new hires are just shown to an empty desk and can pick through whatever pens previous employees left behind. THIS. IS. HORRIBLE.

He asked me to send him a list of what I normally put together, and I sent him a list of very basic things along with things that we office associates specifically need but that someone in a higher position probably wouldn't. A two hole punch, for instance. Most likely somebody ELSE would be assembling files.

He says very positive things about me, talks about how impressed with me he is - a LOT of people I work with do the same. I'm not saying this to brag... I'm good at my job and people recognize that and it's gratifying. It's just a fact. The problem, though, is that people expect me to move on to being an office coordinator or personal assistant or executive assistant and no. I've seen the extra responsibilities and I've seen the pay increase and let me tell you the money isn't good enough to cover the extra responsibilities. I absolutely don't want to be in a supervisory position over someone. But people keep pushing me to apply for higher positions! Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

"But Brigid, isn't assembling office supplies like that something an office coordinator might do?"

No, but they might direct someone in my position to do so.

"But Brigid, isn't assembling a training document something an office coordinator might do?"

Yes, but bear with me.

If I assemble the training documents then I assure that people DO THINGS MY WAY.

I'm just a bossy controlling jerk, basically, and I want my life to be as easy as possible.

Getting everyone to do the same jobs the same way makes my life easier (makes theirs easier as well) so I take the extra time to fine tune the document... but it's also a document I use!

Sometimes putting in more work early means less work later and it's absolutely worth it.

But I don't want to discipline anyone. I'm very happy right now going up the chain of command to my supervisor who then talks to the other person's supervisor, who then talks to the person. I dislike conflict, but I love being in control.

Crabgrass by Tauhid Bondia for 11-15-2022

There's two big issues with planning things for Thanksgiving:
1) How to get everything so it's hot and ready to be put on the table at the same time
2) How to plan out what needs to be IN the oven, what needs to be ON the stove, and what can go in a slow cooker.

I'm doing a ham, 325* for 10-15 minutes per pound, which will probably take up an entire oven rack.

I also need to juggle in the oven:

Reheated Lasagna (oven, 375*, 30 minutes, until filling is 165*)
Reheated Broccoli Casserole (oven, 375*, 30 minutes, until filling is 165*)
Mashed Potatoes (stove top)
Gravy (stove top)
Stuffing, Slow Cooker, High, 3-4 hours
Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Slow Cooker, High, 5 Hours

I can fully make, including bake, the lasagna and broccoli casserole ahead of time. Then I can pull them out of the fridge an hour ahead of time and heat them up for 30-40 minutes. The broccoli casserole? I'd put the crunchy cracker stuff on top of the casserole only before heating it up - not at the original bake.

One of the big questions will be if I want to cook red sauce from scratch or not. It's something I can do ahead of time. Even ahead of time, though, it's still time consuming. It tastes so much better though.

Monday:
Double Check All Bakeware and Serveware
Pick Up Grocery Order

Tuesday:
Make Red Sauce?
Cut and Steam Broccoli
Dice Onion, Celery, etc. and store in water
Slice and Dry Bread

Wednesday:
Assemble & Bake Lasagna
Assemble & Bake Broccoli Casserole (NO crumb topping)
Make Stuffing
Peel and Cut Raw Potatoes and store in water
Set the Dining Room Table
Buy Bolillo Rolls

Thursday:

The sweet potatoes need to go in around 10:30.

The stuffing needs to go in at noon.

Appetizers Go Out, Guests Arrive

Casseroles need to come out at 2:00 to come to room temperature.

If I want to eat at 4:00 then I want the ham out around 3:15. It needs to rest before being served, under a tinfoil hat. The time it goes IN will depend on the SIZE of the ham, which I don't know yet because I haven't bought it yet.

If the ham is out at 3:15 then the two casseroles can go in at that point. Just bump the heat, stick them in. Check the temperature after 20 minutes.

The potatoes, peeled and cut previously, needs to go in boiling water immediately when the casseroles go in.

The roux for the gravy needs to be started immediately after that.

Another option, though, is to make half pan lasagna and broccoli casseroles and put them in earlier with the ham so they come out at the same time and rest at the same time. They can all cook at 350*. Since it's all cooked ahead of time we can have more set aside in the fridge as leftovers/for people to take home.

If I had a third slow cooker I'd cook the broccoli casserole in that. I might get a third slow cooker, which I've been meaning to use for a while.

Either way I'm going to have to disappear into the kitchen around 3:00 and the room is so small and poorly laid out that nobody will really be able to come in and help me. I'll have to really make sure I have room to put things, and to work.

It's only going to be 4 adults and 1 picky teenager at most so I'm just going to use our regular plates and cups and things. It's not a big crowd.

Last year's Thanksgiving was a total and absolute bust. I had pretty low key simple plans for Thanksgiving but they relied on a lot of help from Nesko. Nesko, who'd had the Covid and Flu booster/vaccine just previously. Nesko, who spent the day in bed moaning but was perfectly fine the next day. Really bad timing there.

This year I've invited two people over - 2 people who work from home and rarely interact with others - and with windows cracked and air filters running it should be ok, right? Right?

We're running around trying to get everything guest-ready which is honestly A Big Job because we have a leak in the kitchen that's rendered wall cabinets unusable so all the stuff that was IN those cabinets is now in the dining room and it's a lot of stuff. So the dining room isn't currently usable and I need to sort through all that stuff and see what can be packed away and what needs to be stored because I use it frequently and It Is Quite A Job and also I recently went from working in the office 3 days a week to working in the office 4 days a week so I can't spend two lunch breaks + time I'd usually spend commuting on the task, I'm down to one.

We got the carpet thoroughly shampooed using one of the best investments we've made - a carpet shampooer. It became very obvious that we need to do this much more frequently. I want to say that last time we shampooed the carpet we made the same revelation then quickly forgot because it is, quite frankly, a lot of work to move the furniture that is ON the carpet. Which we did. We even raked the carpet thoroughly and rotated it to help with wear patterns etc. It's pretty obvious where we walk on this beautiful carpet which was itself an investment... it cost something like $300 and we were so broke at the time that we paid for it in installments.

I like to do a big Fall Cleaning as well as a Spring Cleaning because we're about to close the house up for the next five or six months and I'd like to be as pleasant as possible and not... musty. Close. Slightly gritty. This place gets dusty like woah and it's possibly because our back parking space is gravel. Probably, in fact. But I don't remember my childhood home getting this dusty when we had a gravel driveway. Maybe that's just because kids don't notice dirt.

We still need to put some of the smaller furniture back in the living room, and then sort out the sunroom which is Lego Central and holy SHIT do we have a lot of Lego... 3 big bins full not counting the assembled sets that are on display. Childhood Lego + Birthday Lego + Christmas Lego + This Is Really Cool Lego + This Star Wars Lego Is Going To Sell Out In A Few Days Buy It Now Lego really... it really adds up, gotta say.

The big thing that's weighing on me though, back to our horrible half-disassembled kitchen, is our fridge. I scrubbed the outside down two weeks ago during my ADHD-Style Clean Sprint which is where I just wander around the house and tackle whatever cleaning stuff I notice. If it gets boring I quit. If it gets too involved I quit. If something else distracts me I quit. I got a lot done including scrubbing the toilet bowl, washing all the dishes (in stages), scrubbing down the front of the fridge as mentioned, and cleaning handprints off woodwork and doors. I organized some stuff too. So the outside of the fridge looks... fine, I guess. It's 14 years old and was brand new when the previous tenants moved in, like actually from a store brand new and not refurbished, and when we moved in I assumed it was at least five years old. No, it was one year old and part of how they trashed the placed. So the front of the fridge looks like someone took a sander to it in spots. It's weird! They stole doorknobs and one of those sink strainer baskets! Why!! But even though it's kind of unsightly we can cover that in cool magnets and take out menus and it's not grimy.

It's the inside that's been bugging me.

I've been picking away at cleaning it, tossing stuff here and there as I see it. I went in today and tossed everything that was expired or spoiled or "what the fuck where did this come from." Everything that's left is food we use regularly. Milk, eggs, butter, cheese, a few cans of soda, salted caramel coffee creamer that's lactose free, a jug of high quality maple syrup, english muffins, etc. There's not much else I can toss, although we can eat up the stuff that's in there and... I don't know. Forgo english muffins for a while? The thing is, the fridge is only like 1/3 empty.

"How can you have THAT MUCH food????? That is SO American." Well yes first of all it is but second of all this fridge is small. It's not a mini fridge but it's a small fridge. If you've rented a cheap apartment you've probably had a fridge like this. It's only about five feet tall. I'm 5'3" and I can see the top of it while standing flat footed, bare footed, on the floor. So we have a very small amount of food, considering, and yet. AND YET. And yet our fridge is still almost full. Not packed, but almost full.

I do not know how much Thanksgiving stuff I can pack in there!

Well, it's only going to be 5 people so I guess I can juggle things and maybe I'll get a cooler to fill with ice to hold drinks so they're not in the fridge. It'll be an adventure.