Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Wednesday afternoon things

* Kind of sick of reading about probability. Oh, I've finally got to the more familiar-for-me part of things in the book (distributions, especially the Gaussian), but yeah, I'm kind of sick of it. I have two more books on probability I intend to read but am really tempted to intersperse with either a history-of-botany book or possibly one on mycology.

* Another overcast day and I've fought a low-grade headache much of the day. Not bad enough to say "No, I'm not gonna work on the continuing ed" but not pleasant either. I don't know if it's allergies (I spent about an hour last evening pulling up blackberry vines and I was down close to the soil, where the molds live) or if it's that we're heading back into a rainy pattern and the air pressure is changing.

* Thinking about making bread again this weekend; at first I thought of a chocolate bread (one recipe is here, but then I remembered the tomato bread I used to make years ago (I cut down the recipe for the old bread machine I had, but I'd do this one the "real" way - with hand kneading and everything).

The recipe is from "Square Meals," which is a fun cookbook (I am pretty sure it's OOP but I got my copy from a used book seller for not a lot of money). The recipe is like this:

Heat up a cup of tomato juice (I plan to use sauce here, I have no juice on hand and also juice is way saltier). Add 4 T sugar, 1 T salt (I might cut both of those back), 1 1/2 T melted shortening (I will use butter). Stir all of those together, cool to lukewarm.

Also mix the equivalent of a packet of yeast (the jars usually tell you, as do the big brick packs) with 1 1/4 cups warmish water that has 1 T of sugar in it. Combine that with the juice mixture and stir.

It takes about six cups of flour (you always have to kind of judge; humidity affects it and also the KIND of flour - I might break into my new King Arthur bread flours for this). Knead 10 minutes. Let rise ~2 hours, punch down, let rise another 30 minutes. Shape, put in bread pans (it makes two, 9 x 4 loaves). Let rise another hour or two until it fills the pan, bake at 400 degrees F for about 40 minutes.

This bread is good just buttered, but it also makes *excellent* grilled-cheese sandwiches, as you might guess. (It's also good with many leftover meats, as a meat sandwich). You can also make pretty good pan-fried garlic bread with it.

The recipe is apparently of WWII vintage, as the Sterns note - the government apparently tried out various additions to bread to make it more nutritious. The tomato bread was allegedly unpopular with GIs, but I have to admit I like it a lot.

There are other recipes online that are fancier and have you put garlic and Italian herbs in with the juice (and some call for juice AND sauce), and that might be good too, but I admit I like the plainer original.

In this case I will probably freeze (or maybe slice and freeze, so I can take individual slices out) one of the loaves. It's hard for a single person to use up a whole loaf, even, of bread before it goes bad - I keep mine in the fridge which adversely affects the texture but it's better than finding the loaf has gone moldy, and if you heat the slice a bit before eating it, it's better.

* The hummingbird and now some kind of a butterfly (a skipper, I think) have found the basket of callibrachoa I have up. I would love to get some more plants, especially for my backyard, but I am once again unsure about driving to Sherman to Twin Oaks, because they seem to have a lot of cases. I wish there were some way of knowing if the reported cases are the tip or the iceberg - if they're the iceberg, it would probably be okay; if it were just the tip, it would maybe not be quite so okay.

I could go to the Lowe's here again, at a low-busy time, since we have far fewer cases, but I admit after being snapped at rather than more gently told "no, you can't come in this way" (the signage was poor), I'm...less inclined. I drove by the Tractor Supply one day and they didn't seem to have much so I don't know.

I wish there were somewhere that delivered plants but there is nowhere around here that does. Come fall, I might order some perennial rootstocks (though Native American Seeds pretty much only has grasses, and I would want forbs, especially ones good for pollinators).

It frustrates me how hard everything seems now, and how I have to weigh the likelihood of getting exposed (which is admittedly low, even in Sherman) against whether the "fun" is worth it (and also: will I be uncomfortable the whole time there, which erases a lot of the fun).

And yes, masks: but wearing one protects other people more than you, and while I am 100% on board with wearing a mask on the random chance I get exposed and spend a few days being an asymptomatic carrier (I would not want to sicken anyone else), it seems a critical mass of my fellow citizens here don't care that much - last time I picked up a wal-mart order, except for the workers (who are all masked), only about 10% of the people I saw had them.

If we all wear masks, protection rate is high. If few people wear masks, the people NOT wearing them are the most protected, and....I admit that offends my sense of "fairness."

* The whole fairy-tale disillusionment thing for me was less "maybe my prince is never actually coming" and much more "if you are a kind and good person and do what's right, you will be rewarded, and most people operate under that expectation" and I admit one thing I'm realizing in this - I complained a lot at the beginning of this "will there be anything LEFT to go back out to" (as small businesses and restaurants bleed out) and now I'm more feeling like "Given how some of my fellow humans are acting and talking in this.....do I even WANT to go back out into the world?"

But yes, one of my favorite fairy tales as a kid was the one where the girl who was getting water at a well was approached by an old woman (really a faerie in disguise) who asked her for a drink, and because the girl was just a kind person, she kindly said "of course" and carefully dipped out the clearest and coolest water....and she was rewarded for her action (diamonds and pearls would fall out of her mouth when she spoke, which actually doesn't sound so great) and her selfish sister, when approached by the SAME faerie (here in the guise of a young noblewoman) was rude to her and fundamentally said "get your own water" and she was cursed to have snakes and toads fall out of HER mouth....well, yes, you can obviously see the moral lesson there, but the childish part of me always liked the idea that people who strove to be kind, even (especially?) when there was no expectation of a reward, eventually they are rewarded for that.

Like I said: I know that's childish to want that, but....

* And yes, I am maybe being over sensitive about that. I'm sure the guy was having a bad day, had dealt with a lot of people making the mistake I did, but....when you have ALMOST NO interactions, an unpleasant one looms very large in your mind. And yes, I do tend to be oversensitive to that kind of thing anyway; I always have been. If a teacher was short with me when I was in school, I often started crying; even now, when someone uses a tone that might be they're tired and frustrated with something else OR they might be snapping at me specifically, I interpret it as the second and feel bad for most of the rest of the day. (I don't ever really mention it, which I suppose makes me less of an exhausting friend than if I did, though I have had people say to me "you got really quiet all of a sudden" or similar and I will kind of shrug and go "I'm tired I guess" or some other deflecting thing even though my feelings are actually hurt - though that's because at least 8 times out of 10, the person wasn't actually being rude to me, they were just overburdened in that moment and it came out wrong)

And yeah, something else happened online that inflamed my sensitivity and I can tell my feelings and especially my capacity to feel hurt are way nearer to the surface than normal. (Not that they are ever that far from the surface; I wish I were tougher and cared about stuff less).

I dunno. I vacillate between three general moods: "mostly okay, going along and working on stuff, mostly pushing the bad stuff to the back of my mind" or "this really sucks but I am stubborn and can outlast it" to "everything is terrible and why was I even born if this is how my life is going to finish up, there's never going to be an end to this and maybe the terrible leadership we seem to see is intentional to distract us from the fact that we are actually doomed" and then I start worrying about everything and also feeling very sorry for myself that I didn't have more fun and do more things when I had the chance; that my whole life has been one long deferred gratification and I got suckered, there isn't a pay off for trying to be good and prudent and working hard and all of that.

And I can switch between those modes scary fast. Though usually it's a DECLINE in mood and not an improvement, the only thing I can do when I get really down in the evening (it's usually the evening) is to go to bed and tell myself I will feel better in the morning.

sometimes, if it's close to what should be a mealtime, eating something nutritious helps. (I don't always feel hungry when I need to eat. I sometimes wonder if the bad bout of gastritis or something I had about four years ago damaged some of my ability to perceive hunger - all I'll know is all of a sudden I'll feel shaky and either really irritable or really sad, and I'll look at the clock and go "wait, it's been eight hours since I ate anything" and then I eat something and do better)

* I talked to my mom this evening and she told me about how one of the groups (I think it was a retired-professors' thing in her state) had apparently either not got or had lost the notification that my dad had died, and sent a bill for his dues this past week, and she had to call them and go through phone-tree hell to get it fixed and it just made me sad all over again. I mean, standard disclaimer: I'm glad he's not having to live through this and I now have a very small taste of the unhappiness he experienced with being stuck at home and not being able to do much (though I can also get up and go out and work in my  backyard, he couldn't even do that when his knees and back got really bad) but yeah. Sad again.

And wondering: will I be fit company when it's okay to go out again, or will I have become so solitary I've forgotten the rules of conversation and things like that? I was never the most socially-adept person, even in the before-times, but I really worry I'll just become Interrupting Cow or that person who is completely blunt and walks into a room and says what they need without any kind of "hello, how are you" and stuff like that, and that I'll forget how to do eye contact.

2 comments:

purlewe said...

I think people are so in their own mindset and they expect everyone to be in the same one (and cannot see outside their own) My bet is that guy who treated you badly goes to work everyday and basically thinks EVERYONE is going to work every day even tho that isn't the case. He expects to yell at people all day bc he is yelled at all day. No this isn't a good scenario. But that is the one I imagine.

I hope today and all days get better. I wish i could magic myself there and help you drive to your moms bc I haven't left the house in 60+ days and if I could just get you to a place where you could be with the people you love I think your outlook would be at least easier.

Chris Laning said...

I recognize version 3, and it's called depression, yo. ;) Becoming depressed is *not* your fault, it's something you may be susceptible to, like someone with weak ankles tends to sprain them more. Oh, and being "too" sensitive to rejection? That's another thing that is *not your fault.* some people just *are* (I am too) and it appears to be something in one's neurological wiring, not necessarily dependent on past experiences or personal choices.

I find that when I make an effort to "distance" these things from myself — to see them as something I *have* rather than what I *am* — it helps.

And then I can go about brainstorming, and then doing, things that actually help. For me that includes getting enough sleep, eating something with nicely prepared vegetables, taking deep breaths of fresh air, and accomplishing something I can write down at the end of the day and say "I did that!" even if it's something small. (Like "finished that row of knitting where I have to add another 50 beads one by one.")

Also reading nonfiction helps me -- especially the sort that has enough science to keep me happy but enough narrative or travelogue to be fun. I've recently read books on jellyfish and fighting dragon fish, for instance. (I'm a botanist like you.)