I started writing out the whole story of why I have so much leftover quinoa in my fridge but honestly, you don’t need to know that. All you need to know is that I have roughly two cups of cooked quinoa in my fridge that I need to finish, and a sudden, borderline violent, aversion to eating it.
With that context in mind, I present to you:
Things I Would Rather Do Than Eat This Leftover Quinoa (in no particular order, and not an exhaustive list)
– climb a mountain…wearing flip-flops
– catch up on the corporate compliance busywork assignments I have been avoiding at work for the last six months
– sniff week old roadkill
– put on wool socks and then scuff my feet all over the carpets in my house where the relative humidity hasn’t topped 35% in months, and then touch a lightswitch
– enter a space where two pounds of bacon has just been cooked to cripsy perfection and not be allowed to actually have any of said bacon
– go outside and roll in the snow (actually considering this one, as it would at least wake me up)
– have Joe Rogan show up and do running commentary while I walk on the treadmill for ten minutes
– cut the dog’s nails
– listen to 90 minutes of Yacht Rock on XM Radio
– try to explain the concept of corporate personhood to a gaggle of six year olds
– eat literally any other combination of things in this house to make up the equivalent of the nutrition my meatsuit would glean from that two cups of quinoa
I’ll try again tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be able to face it then.
This morning my husband told me a story from his childhood. He talked about how, when he was a kid, he lived in a place that didn’t have a lot of green spaces for the neighborhood kids to play and so they played stuff like rugby and football (soccer if you’re American) in the streets between homes, and in peoples’ driveways. He said there was an old lady across the way who didn’t like them doing this and would stick her head out the door or window yelling something like “take that ball away” repeatedly in an effort to try and get the kids to clear off. Then he said, “when you yell at the squirrels on the bird feeders, that’s what it makes me think of”. Like, literally his whole point of telling me about this formative memory of his childhood was to draw a comparison between that crotchety old lady…and me.
And I suppose he’s not entirely wrong.
You might remember last winter, when I was complaining about how the grey squirrels would launch themselves off the railing or the snowbank, trying to get up to the small bird feeder I had suction-cupped to my actual window, and how hearing them bodily hit the exterior wall over and over again was driving both me and the dog kind of bat-shit. Back at the start of THIS winter, determined to be a problem solver as always, I got two bird feeders and hung them up across from my office window. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to see the birds as up-close as with the window feeder, but at least I wouldn’t be listening to the dog scream-bark about the squirrels thudding and scrabbling against the wall all day every day.
I set the feeders up once the danger of bears had pretty much passed, and immediately had a flock of juncos (the birds, not the pants…you have to be of a certain age to get that reference) visit. The chickadees came shortly after, as well as the sparrows. Everything was pretty copacetic for a while. Then one day, I noticed a red squirrel at one of the feeders. It seemed very polite, sitting nicely on the edge of the feeder eating one seed at a time and dropping the empty hulls down on the ground while it quietly took in the scenery. I have no beef with that type of behavior and so I let it snack in peace. We went a couple more weeks with no issues, but the calm was clearly too good to last…
…because then came the grey squirrels.
Grey squirrels are cute, but they’re absolute birdseed hoovers. And worse, they’re destructive. They’re smart enough to know that if they can’t get at the bird feeder directly, then bringing it down is their next most direct route to stuffing their faces. Within two days of the grey squirrels showing up, I went out to find the roof of one of my feeders pulled apart – the squirrels had been hanging upside down from the edge of it to get at the seeds because they couldn’t fit their fat asses onto the perches at the sides, and had ended up pulling the roof halves right off the nails of the piece holding them together.
I fixed the roof and decided the squirrels no longer got a free pass going forward. I might not be able to keep them out of the feeders entirely, but I could at least make them have to work harder for their ill-gotten gains, and be really fucking annoying to them in the process.
I have this crow call I bought a couple years ago, thinking that I’d bring crows to the yard with it and finally get to live the Crazy Bird Hag In The Woods With Pet Crows life of my dreams. As it happens, that didn’t pan out because crow calls are actually quite difficult to master. If you don’t have the right technique, the thing basically just ends up sounding like you’re blowing through a glorified kazoo…but it’s a loud, sharp sound that is very startling if you’re not expecting it, so I started using it to scare the squirrels off.
Again, I will give credit where it’s due: grey squirrels are smart. The first maybe 20 times I blew the crow call at them, they dove for cover and would stay away for a few hours at a time. Eventually they got used to it, though. Not so used to it that they completely ignored it, but used enough to it that they’d just retreat to a nearby tree branch and sit there staring over at me like, “Bitch, please. The second you move away from the window, we’re going right back to that feeder”. Which they did. Repeatedly. I switched it up on them and started either banging on the window or opening the window and hissing or yelling at them when I caught them on the feeders and again, that worked for a few days, but now they just hop off a little ways and wait for me to go back to my desk. My next plan is to try Slinkies on the shepherd’s crook that the feeders hang off of, but that will have to wait another couple days because said Slinkies haven’t arrived yet.
I’m fairly sure it’s all for naught at this point, as the feeders are close enough to the propane tank that I believe the squirrels could just jump from the top of the tank on to the feeders if they wanted to, and the ground is frozen with a bunch of snow on the ground at this point so I can’t easily move them until spring. But I have to keep trying, just out of principle.
Plus, you know, at least I’m yelling at rodents and not actual kids, so I’m not QUITE as bad as that old lady my husband (rather un-generously, I feel) compared me to. In theory. I’m sticking with that.
“You know you don’t even sound like a crow, right? Like, you don’t even sound like a BIRD. You sound like a middle aged woman with a little bit of disposable income, an internet connection, and too much time on her hands. I’m just saying.” – that squirrel, probably.
Remember yesterday how I was telling you the mild panic attack I had over the fact that I somehow ended up purchasing what amounted to 15 pounds of crocus bulbs, and I was contemplating how many holes I’d have to dig (which will always be too many holes because I don’t like digging holes or really yard work of any kind) in order to plant 15 pounds of bulbs, and I was pointing out that I likely wouldn’t get them all in the ground before snow fell, because what kind of fucking idiot buys anything to plant in mid to late October in the mountains of New Hampshire (I’m not a Swiftie, but it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me)?
Welp, few things to follow up on:
1. It snowed last night. Not a lot, only a dusting, and we were frankly lucky to get all the way through October without snowfall, as that’s not the norm around here. But still.
2. The bulbs got delivered today, and you guys, something has gone awry in this process somewhere. The UPS tracking had said 15lbs, as established. I was figuring it would be a fairly good sized box, at that weight. My dog’s food comes in 12lb bags, for instance, and those are…good sized boxes. So I had a concept in my head of what to expect. However, the box that showed up is…well, it’s small. It’s not tiny, but it’s like maybe only a little bigger than a 5lb sack of flour. So that was weird.
3. What was weirder was that, when I looked at the label on the box, it actually says 16 lbs:
Exhibit A
4. What’s even weirder than that, is that when I picked the box up, it was most definitely not 16lbs. Not even remotely close. It was in fact so far off of 16lbs that I immediately pulled out the kitchen scale to weigh it:
Exhibit 2
That’s 2lbs 11.4oz, for the record. That’s 13lbs and whatever whatever ounces short of the reported 16 pounds.
I don’t understand. Like, how did they get it THAT wrong? A pound or two, sure, I can see that…but 13 pounds? That seems like ‘thumb firmly on the scale’ territory to me.
I mean, it was a flat shipping fee so it literally doesn’t matter even one bit, but this is the kind of shit that mystifies me.
Anyway. There may or may not be more updates about this situation as it unfolds.
A couple weeks ago, the weather was dreary and depressing around here. I mean, it’s late autumn in New England. The odds of dreary, depressing weather are usually pretty good. Anyway – on this dreary day, I was looking up information about forcing flower bulbs indoors. I have some mini daffodil bulbs I bought as a pot of actual blooming flowers last spring and then, predictably, left them in their pot out by my front steps all summer long and never put them into the ground. The bulbs had started to sprout new growth recently and it got me thinking about whether I could just bring the pot inside, let them grow over the winter, and end up with another cheerful pot of mini daffodils next spring. As with most things in life, the answer was, “well, it’s not quite THAT easy, buckaroo”, which was just about the time I got distracted with the idea of instead buying some crocus bulbs to plant outside for spring. There are currently three individual crocuses that come up in our yard each spring and the amount of joy they bring my serotonin-starved brain come late March or early April is hard to quantify. The idea of being able to multiply that joy many times over simply by digging some holes and dumping some bulbs in and then forgetting about them was especially appealing on aforementioned dreary and depressing day, so I indulged in a little retail therapy and bought a selection of crocus bulbs. I got two different sets: one is just crocuses, and the other is a “Farewell Winter” mix (which I immediately renamed as the “Fuck Off, Winter” mix) that has crocuses, mini hyacinths, and…I don’t know, other stuff. I’m not a botanist. I’m just a person with seasonal depression, regular depression, a credit card, and poor impulse control.
So, I placed my order for the bulbs. There was a warm spell coming up in the forecast and I thought, ‘perfect, I’ll be able to get the bulbs in the ground while it’s warm and they’ll be so happy that, come April, they’ll completely fix my life and everything will be glorious’. A few days later, I realized I hadn’t had any sort of shipping info yet, so I looked up my order on the website. The order still showed as pending, but the company is based in Connecticut, which is only like a four hour drive from here (which, for the non-Americans that might be reading this: that’s what qualifies as relatively local here. I know, it’s bonkers, but this place is huge), so I thought to myself, you know, no big deal. Once they ship, it won’t take long to get here and I can still get the bulbs in the ground while the weather is warm. Certainly before we have any hard frosts, anyway.
I’m sure you can see where this is going by now.
I placed the order on Oct 20th. It shipped…yesterday, Oct 31st. Not only is the few days of warm weather we had long gone, but we’ve now had two nights of hard frosts with temps in the low 20s. Conventional wisdom with bulbs is to plant a few weeks before the first hard frost (which, as an aside, I have always found that to be problematic logic because how the fuck am I supposed to predict when the hard frost hits, you know? This is New Hampshire. It’s like the weather spins a roulette wheel every couple days and you get what you get. Snow in mid May! 75 degrees for three days in mid October! Mother Nature does what she wants and we all just hold on for the ride. But I digress). That window has clearly slammed shut and been locked for the season. Crocus bulbs specifically are pretty hardy though…they come up through the snow, for fuck’s sake…so I’m thinking probably putting them in the ground after a few hard frosts isn’t going to ruin them.
Today, I got an email from UPS saying that my shipment has been delayed and that they’ll be delivering the bulbs tomorrow rather than today. Ok, fine, I wasn’t going to get to do anything with them until the weekend anyway. While looking at the tracking info, something struck me, though: the weight of the package shows as 15lbs.
Fifteen. POUNDS.
I guess I didn’t realize just how many bulbs I was ordering? Because I was not expecting it to be 15 GODSDAMNED POUNDS. Like…that’s a lot of holes to dig. And I am not what you’d call a very ambitious person when it comes to physical labor. I pay someone to mow my lawn. I whine when I have to shovel a path through the snow for the dog. I will 100% call roadside assistance to change a flat tire rather than do it myself. I am a modern woman who certainly CAN do hard things, but I’ll be honest, I’d kind of rather not most of the time if it can be helped. Which, should I have taken this into consideration prior to hitting that “Place Order” button? Probably, but that’s really giving me more credit than I deserve in the realm of capacity for forethought.
So, yeah. It might take me several weekends worth of hole-digging to get these shits planted. I may very well be out here in the yard digging through snow to plant them by the time all is said and done. But you know what? Fuck it. Worst case scenario, none of them take and I have created a makeshift snack vending machine situation in my yard for the local rodents come spring. Best case scenario, I put all the bulbs in the ground, completely forget where I put any of them, and then have the unmitigated joy of seeing them all pop up around the yard in the spring.
Best BEST case scenario, I get all the joy of seeing the crocuses coming up and also have some kind of life-changing revelation about how hard physical labor is a means to salvation or some other Puritan bullshit and I suddenly gain a new interest in doing yard work and cleaning my house.
I’m not going to hold my breath on that one, though.
I bought some weed gummies last weekend. They’re called Snoozeberries and they’re a 5mg 1:1 THC:CBD situation that’s supposed to promote restful sleep. Yes, I am the boring person who buys cannabis products not to get high, but just to try and sleep better.
Look, I’m no stranger to weed. It was often easier to get than alcohol when we were in high school, especially since I grew up in backwoods Vermont and basically every third classmate’s dad had a plant or two growing in their basement or garage or back behind the barn at any given time. It wasn’t fancy weed – there was no like, Apple Pie Gonzo Balls or Purple Hazy Headwrecker, or any of the other stuff you can get now. All the weed we got ahold of came in crumpled plastic baggies and usually looked a lot like dried oregano (side note: we smoked actual oregano once by mistake. Very much do not recommend). There was just one flavor profile available in our backwoods weed: an unholy mixture of roadkill skunk, gasoline, and those pine tree air fresheners everyone had in their car in the 90s. It was pretty weak stuff for the most part, which suited me fine because I am generally not one who enjoys the feeling of loss of control. I would go from “oh, this is a nice floaty feeling” to “SWEET FANCY MOSES, I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS, THIS IS THE END BEAUTIFUL FRIENDS, TELL MY CAT I’LL MISS HIM” very, very quickly. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have been Too High, and those all involved drinking copious amounts of alcohol in addition to the weed I smoked.
Point being: I’m not a total n00b, but I also was never a heavy user to begin with, and I’m not generally looking to get high anymore so much as I am interested in whether cannabis can help some of my chronic issues (no pun intended).
I’ve never slept well, even as a kid. Over the years I’ve learned some things that help: taking a magnesium supplement in the evening, for instance. Eating less refined sugar. Not firing up TikTok after 7pm if I can help it, because otherwise I’ll enter a time warp for three hours and only be able to hear snippets of Doja Cat songs on loop for another two hours while I lay there watching the flashing lights on the insides of my eyelids. However, there’s always room for improvement, and I felt like adding a little THC to my existing CBD regimen (I have taken 25mg of CBD oil daily for years, I find it helpful for some of my pain and anxiety) to see if I could dial the sleep in a little better.
Enter: Snoozeberries.
Vermont has relatively recently allowed the sale of cannabis for recreational use and new dispensaries have been popping up all over as a result. We happened to be near one last weekend so we stopped in. It was nice and the staff were very friendly, which was good because their menu was totally overwhelming. A huge blackboard ran the whole width of the back wall of the shop, listing all sorts of different flower, edibles, and other cannabis products. I stood there blinking at the board for a couple minutes before the large jovial man behind the counter asked if I needed help. I told him I wanted something edible to help me sleep and he said, “ok, you want Snoozeberries then”. He handed me a jar with a cute little sheep on it, fully of little bitty purple cubes. I handed over my $55 (which, I’m sorry, but $55 for 20 5mg gummies seems like A LOT, doesn’t it? *shakes cane*), and went on my merry way.
When I was ready to test the gummies out that night, I cut one in half to start with. They’re only 5mg each, but I fully subscribe to the “start low, go slow” doctrine, especially since edibles are absorbed differently than smoking. I don’t want to end up one of those “I ate too many gummies and ended up plastered to the bed for six hours having hallucinations of emerging from my own womb over and over” cautionary tales. So, half a Snoozeberry went down the hatch. I sat around watching TV for a bit, then went to bed and read for a while. I was maybe a little more yawn-y than usual, but otherwise felt no noticable effects. My sleep tracker didn’t indicate that I had slept any better the next morning, either.
I did the same thing the next night, and the night after that, to the same result. Tuesday night I finally bucked up and decided to take a whole dose. Tuesday night is game night at our house, and that’s not a euphemism for anything, you perverts. We literally play a board game or card game most Tuesday nights. I took the full Snoozeberry right before we commenced with game night. We played 4 or 5 rounds of Exploding Kittens and then it was time to get ready for bed since we had to be up stupidly early the next day. Mark took Keppo out for the last walk of the evening and, as usual, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth.
That was just about the time my brain entered the Snoozeberry Zone apparently, because I…could not brush my teeth. Like, I COULD, and I DID, but I had to think so, so hard about how to hold the toothbrush and move it around in my mouth the whole time. I kept having to stop and adjust my grip on the toothbrush to try and get a different angle because it would start to feel all wrong. And just to show you a little slice of how my brain works, I stood there wondering if I was having some kind of stroke or seizure for like 30 seconds before I realized it was probably the gummy. It was so weird though, because I truly didn’t feel the least bit high otherwise. I felt totally normal, except that my fine motor skills had apparently fucking left the building. I had the same issue with my water-flosser after brushing, and it’s a genuine wonder that I didn’t end up blasting myself in the face with that thing, I swear.
I sort of just shook my head at the whole situation and headed to bed. I checked the CPAP tank, fluffed my pillow the way I like, got my little battery-powered candle turned on and shut the light off, and laid down. At that point I did notice that I felt markedly more relaxed than I usually do when first laying down. I sort of just melted into the mattress, in a good way. I laid there enjoying that for a couple minutes before I cracked my book open, when suddenly the whole “struggle-bus tooth brushing due to weed gummy consumption” thing actually hit my brain and it. was. HILARIOUS to me. I mean, I laid there laughing like a fucking loon for probably like three minutes straight. I will admit that I did feel a tiny bit high at that point, but it really didn’t last long. And, again, no discernable difference in actual sleep quality or duration.
So in summation, I believe I paid $55 for some cutesy-named weed gummies, a brief lapse in my dental hygiene, and yet another confirmation that I may now officially be too old to hang…but it was a weirdly good time in its own way, I suppose.
On closer inspection, that sheep does actually look kinda high…
My dear sweet mother-in-law sends us a calendar from Wales every Christmas. I always look forward to them because I enjoy scenic landscapes and trying to guess how the Welsh words printed on the calendar are pronounced. My husband enjoys them because occasionally there will be a month with a picture of somewhere he’s been and he can point to it and say something like “it’s really nowhere near as nice as that in real life”. I don’t fully understand how castles and fields full of sheep could ever be construed as not nice, but I generally take his word for it.
ANYWAY.
So, there is one small problem with the Welsh calendars Mum sends us: they’re printed in the British style, where the weeks start on Monday and end on Sunday. I suppose it’s not the calendars that are the problem as much as my brain, because OH MY LORD, I CANNOT GRASP THIS CONCEPT. You would think, especially many months into the year, I’d be able to make that mental adjustment and hold onto it, but you would be wrong. So wrong.
The calendar gets me at least once a month. I’ll think I’m on top of things, I’ll be so proud that I looked at the calendar and, gasp, PLANNED AHEAD, even…and then I’ll realize that no, I’m a day off AGAIN, because I don’t actually look at the names of the days on the calendar, I just look at the…I don’t know, spaces, I guess? I CAN read, I swear. It’s just that my brain memorizes shapes and patterns way more easily than it absorbs actual alphanumeric data, so if I’m looking for Friday on the calendar my brain will always look at the second to last square on the calendar grid. Except on a British calendar, that’s Saturday, not Friday. Can you see how that might become an issue?
The latest casualty to fall to my inability to visually process the British calendar is the vacation we’re leaving for next week. It’s not a big trip, just a long weekend in Maine, but it’s something I’ve been super looking forward to because work sucks and life is meaningless and I really like eating lobster while listening to the ocean. Mark booked the hotel, wrote the vacation on the calendar and drew a line through all the days we’d be gone, so that we had the visual reminder. I then did the admin stuff I needed to do: I booked the time off work and I booked a reservation for boarding Keppo. I did my stuff with the understanding that we were leaving for Maine on Wednesday 9/13, because the big thing that said “MAINE” on the calendar was written in the 4th block of the calendar grid. The one smack in the middle of the week. You know, Hump Day. WEDNESDAY.
You are smart and I’m very predictable, so I’m sure you can see where this is going.
Mark and I were texting today about some other stuff that needed to happen next week before our trip, mostly that I had to reschedule a chiropractor appointment and I did it for Tuesday next week rather than my normal Wednesday, because, YAY, we’d be on our way to Maine Wednesday! That was all fine and good, no problems. Then this afternoon Mark texts me again saying that something I had said earlier kept niggling him for some reason and he finally figured out what it was: it was that I said we were leaving for Maine on Wednesday when, in fact, our trip starts Thursday. I was like “no no, it’s written on the calendar for Wednesday, I swear! I booked the dog in for Wednesday! I took Wednesday off! We’re going to Maine on WEDNESDAY!”
Then I went out to the kitchen and looked at the calendar. There, in blue marker, were big block letters: M A I N E, written across the 4th block of next week. The middle day. WHICH ON A BRITISH CALENDAR IS FUCKING THURSDAY.
This image belongs to Disney, by way of some random site that gave it to me when I googled it. I hope Disney never figures out how to sue for pirated images playing in our brains because I’ll be honest, I am the Angry Stitch gif in my head about 17 times per day.
I hate being wrong. Even more than being wrong, I hate an already too-short vacation being shortened by a whole entire day because I read the godsdamned calendar wrong. I feel like I’ve been cheated out of a day of staring at the ocean for hours and I’ll tell you what, I blame the British on a very deep and personal level.
I also hate that I think I need to ask my mother-in-law to check if the calendars she’s sending us are Dumb American compatible going forward.
1. The correct order in which the Morning Things and Bedtime Things must be done in order to satisfy the dog. Mark usually handles the Keppo stuff when we first get up and when we’re getting ready for bed. There’s a certain order to these routines and Keppo knows it. If I make the mistake of trying to make myself a cup of tea before we go out for walkies, for instance, I’ll hear about it. And gods forbid I take too long in the bathroom before bed, because the whole valley will hear about it. Keppo should just about have me re-trained by the time Mark gets back to resume these duties.
2. It doesn’t matter that I’m off work and don’t have to wake up early, don’t eat chocolate or sugary ice cream in the evening. Just because I don’t HAVE to get up early doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to get myself jacked on sugar or chocolate and then be unable to sleep for half the night. Also, my body is programmed to wake up at 6:30am regardless of whether I’ve fallen asleep at 10pm or 2:30am. Fighting it does no good. Going back to bed after waking up at 6:30 does no good.
3. If I buy a box of cereal and a carton of milk, that’s 3 meals a day for 3 days, at least, that I don’t need to cook. And if I get the puffed oatmeal squares that have a bunch of fiber in them, I don’t even need to worry about not eating vegetables! I’m not proud of that, but I’m nothing if not pragmatic.
4. The dehumidifier tank is heavier than I give it credit for when it’s full.
4a. I am perfectly capable of schlepping said heavy dehumidifier tank up the basement stairs to empty it. Is it fun? No. But I can do it.
5. It’s nice to have extra room in the bed, but it’s nicer to have company. Specific company, I should say. As in, my husband. I’m not interested in fighting just anyone for the blankets, thank you.
6. I will get bored after two days off by myself, and rather than converting that boredom into useful activities like cleaning the house, I will instead become a toad who only wants to read books, play video games, and eat cereal (and chocolate). All the to-do lists in the world can’t help me after day 2 home alone. If I’m not getting everything crossed off that list by sundown on day 2, it’s likely not getting done any time soon because I’ll be way too busy in Mediocre Supernatural Fantasy Romance Novel Land or Shoot Colorful Bubbles To Help A Cat Get To Space Land. I might switch it up a little and sit at my desk to try and struggle-bus through writing a blog post (ahem), but that’s about it.
7. I am braver when he’s here. I’m also funnier, smarter, less prone to bouts of extreme weirdness, and more responsible. I spent a large portion of the first half of my life alone. Not just unpartnered, but pretty literally alone. I don’t want to make this sound like I shouldn’t or can’t be alone, or that I think there’s anything wrong with being a solitary person, because that’s not it at all. I was often a very functional person whilst living alone, and there are still plenty of times when I really enjoy my own company. It’s just that I got quite used to existing mostly just inside my own head, and even after almost 14 years of cohabitation with another actual human being, it’s still SUPER easy for me to slip right back into that space, that rut of believing that I’m basically a ghost just flitting through everyone else’s lives instead of a tangible human being living my own tangible life. Mark grounds me. He’s the weight at the end of my balloon string that keeps me from floating off into the atmosphere, eventually landing in the ocean, and choking some poor unsuspecting turtle. Or something.
This is what I wake up to most mornings when Mark is away. I like to anthropomorphize and say that he’s laying in Mark’s spot to keep me company, but in reality I know that he’s probably been hotboxed out from under the covers by my constant flatulence because I’ve been living on Oatmeal Squares for the past three days.
I’ve had it in my head for at least a week now that I wanted to make some muffins. Specific muffins: they’re pumpkin muffins with spices and nuts and dried cranberries and maple syrup in them and they’re delicious. They’re the kind of thing that I’ve made so many times that I eventually got sick of having to bring the recipe up on my phone and almost dropping my phone in the bowl of muffin batter while trying to read and measure at the same time, so I scribbled the recipe down on a scrap of paper and now it lives on the side of my fridge.
This morning was perhaps not the best morning to embark on my muffin-baking fantasy, in retrospect. Last night was rough. I was up and down several times in the night, as was my husband, with our various respective bathroom-related issues. My FitBit practically asked me if I was OK this morning when I brought up my sleep data…or lack there-of. Suffice to say, I have not been firing on all cylinders today.
But those muffins. Those sweet, sweet pumpkin nuggets of joy with the walnuts and the cranberries. I had been thinking about them for days. I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. Because if there’s one thing I DEFINITELY want to do when I’m tragically overtired, it’s eat baked goods. I mean, I want to eat baked goods 24/7, basically, let’s be honest. But my decision-making barometer goes especially askew when there’s a lack of sleep and sugar involved.
Once I saw my husband off to work and got the dishwasher going, I had roughly 35 minutes to get the muffins going before I had to log into work and start pretending to give a shit about non-muffin subjects. No problem, plenty of time. I measured my drys in one bowl, my wets in the other, then I combined the two. Mix mix mix, taste to make sure it wasn’t poison, and bingo! Ready to bake! I got out my trusty scoop and started portioning muffin batter into the wells of the pan. Everything was going splendidly…
…until I got to the end of the batter after 11 muffins rather than 12.
Hmmm, I thought. That’s not right. This recipe definitely makes 12 muffins. It always has! And I didn’t even do extra rigorous poison-tests this time like I tend to do with cookie dough, so it’s not even like I could blame myself for having eaten too much of the uncooked batter (yes, I know, raw flour and raw egg, clearly I don’t value my life. If I get salmonella I won’t come crying to you, I promise). I stood there looking back and forth between the scraped-clean bowl and the empty muffin cup for what probably would have felt like an embarassingly long time had I been operating on enough sleep to feel shame. Or anything other than muffin-lust.
I grabbed the recipe and started going down the list, mentally checking things off:
Pumpkin? Yes.
Brown sugar? Yes.
Oatmeal? Yes.
Maple syrup? Two eggs? Flour? Baking soda? Salt? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
100 grams of oil.
Uhhh…
100 grams…of…oil.
I looked at the measuring cup I had been using. Dry as a bone. Definitely hadn’t held oil since the last time it was washed.
Well, balls. That was a no on the oil, then.
I looked at the portioned-out batter again. It looked fine. It had definitely seemed slightly thicker than usual even before I realized I was a muffin-cup short, but it certainly wasn’t thick enough to make me think something was very out of whack. LIKE THAT I HAD FORGOTTEN THE OIL, FOR INSTANCE. I poked at it. I tested for poison again. It was a good batch. The spices were really nice, it wasn’t overly sweet. I REALLY wanted these muffins to happen. And I REALLY didn’t want to try to scoop batter out of 11 portioned out muffin cups so that I could mix oil in and then portion them all out again.
I checked the time. 8:55. I needed to punch in by 9. With a lack of time as my final justification for not fixing my mistake, I muttered a resigned “YOLO, I guess” and slid the pan into the waiting oven.
20 minutes later I came back to survey the damage. The muffins certainly smelled nice and they didn’t look too shabby either, aside from not having puffed up much. I tested them with a toothpick and they seemed done so I pulled them out to cool a bit while I made a cup of coffee.
Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore and I tore into one. The muffin wrapper was…reluctant to come off. That’s putting it nicely. Probably close to a third of the muffin hung on to the paper like cement. The part that did come off was basically fine, though. The texture was a little weird but the flavors were good and the muffins were certainly edible. I stood there picking stuck crumbs off the muffin paper like some kind of kitchen gargoyle after I finished the main event, so that should be a testament to the flavor. Or at least my level of commitment to muffin consumption. And possibly my addiction to carbs in general.
So, in summation, I would offer you these points:
– you can totally bake muffins without oil in them. Would I recommend it? No. But will they be at least vaguely edible if you skip the oil? Probably.
– maybe double-check your ingredient list BEFORE you portion out your muffin batter, if you don’t want to live life on the bleeding edge of culinary experimentation like some of us.
– weird muffins are better than no muffins. I think this is probably a good metaphor for some kind of deep life observation or something, but I’m too fucking tired to go there right now.
One thing nobody mentioned when I was talking to various people ahead of buying my first house a few years ago was buckets. Plural.
“Make sure you buy a step-ladder”, they said.
“You’re going to need a roof rake for the winter”, they said.
Extension cords, a shop-vac, those disposable drain-zippers that pull disgusting squirrel-sized clumps of hair out of your bathroom sink drains…all things that were suggested to flesh out the basic tool kit I had been maintaining for the nearly two decades since I had moved out of my parents’ house. And all of these things have come in very useful in the last almost three years, for sure.
But what happens when you have to open a drain pipe to replace a P-trap and the sink is full of gross water that hasn’t drained in days and is full of gods only know what? How do you store water for flushing the toilet during a big storm where the power will surely be going out? How do you tansport sand and salt for your inevitably icy driveway in the winter time?
Buckets. You need them.
And I…did not have any. We were making due with large mixing bowls, empty plastic totes left over from moving, reusing gallon water jugs…you get the picture. It’s not like we’re in a constant state of needing to contain fluids around here, by the way…but you know. Stuff happens. And it wasn’t that I was resistant to buckets or the buying there-of in any way. It was mostly just that buckets were never front of mind whenever we went to the hardware store, so they never ended up getting purchased.
Fast forward to last week. Back to back ice storms (thanks, climate change) turned our driveway into a slush-fest, which then froze over into an icy death trap. We had been storing some driveway sand in one of the aforementioned plastic totes, but those totes are big and sand is heavy. Plus we only have a small car, so while getting an empty tote into the trunk and out to the town sand pile is no big deal, removing said tote half-full of heavy, wet sand from the small car’s trunk upon returning home is a full-on struggle bus situation with much back-tweaking potential. Which is all a really long-winded way of saying that our driveway was icy as fuck, we needed some sand, and we had no reasonably good way of transporting said sand.
“Maybe we should get a bucket,” was my contribution to the sand-acquistion logistical discussion we had after using up the last of last year’s sand to try and get the car unstuck for the third time last week (which didn’t end up working, by the way).
Once we were able to get out of the driveway again, thanks to an entreprenuerial snowplow driver with a sander on his truck, we made our way to the local hardware store in search of a bucket.
Turns out the store had more sizes and types of buckets than we were expecting (which was one. I was expecting 5-gallon buckets and nothing else, given that this is not a big box store. Shows how much I know), so we ended up getting buckets…plural. We got two 5-gallon buckets and a 1-gallon bucket, the idea being that the big buckets were for sand transport and the little one was for sand dispersal. We went and got sand the next day, made the driveway much less treacherous, and felt pretty accomplished afterward.
And middle-aged. Because what screams “middle aged home owner” more than purchasing multiple buckets for the conveyance of driveway sand? Not much, for me. I’ve bought cars, furniture, appliances, insurance, even this actual house…and none of that made me feel quite as adulty as spending a Saturday morning buying buckets.
Thankfully it’s still a lower-case problem and not a PROBLEM…but still.
And yes, I know, I’m the person who is obsessed with chipmunks, and goes to outlandish lengths to befriend them. Chipmunks are not squirrels. Chipmunks hibernate in the winter. They’re tiny and cute and the holes they dig in my lawn are very small. They don’t inhale entire pounds of sunflower seeds on a daily basis. And, key point to this particular story: they don’t launch themselves bodily up the side of my house, trying to gain purchase on the siding so they can claw their way up to the bird feeder that is attached to my office window.
Did you know that a chunky grey squirrel traveling at a high velocity can hit a wall hard enough to knock things off the interior windowsill of the affected wall? It’s true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes multiple times the past few weeks.
The squirrels are also stressing Keppo the fuck out. Between the thumping on the wall, the scratching noises of them trying to climb the siding, and the chittering tirades when the red squirrels show up to invade what is apparently historically grey squirrel territory, there has been SO much barking. Patrols of the perimeter, which necessitate me being on the end of a leash because it’s not safe to let him out on his own, have also increased dramatically. Today we had to go out every 90 minutes all morning, for instance. I enjoy the walks but it’s really doing a number on what was my frankly already dismal rate of work productivity.
All of this is what led up to me desperately Googling “how to repel squirrels” the other afternoon. The top three ideas that kept coming up were:
1. Spray predator urine in the area you want the squirrels to stay out of. If you’re a country person or grew up around hunters, you probably know that bottles of synthetic fox and coyote pee are readily available in most stores that sell hunting gear. Some hunters use it to mask the human scent on their clothes before going out into the woods. Initially this seemed like the best and most effective option for my squirrel issue but then I realized that:
we already have foxes and coyotes all over the place here and I really don’t want to pique their interest, thus bringing them closer to the house that my small defenseless dog lives in,
the main spot that the squirrels hang out is under the bird feeder attached to my office window so that means I’d be spraying a canine-piss-scented substance directly under a window that I open multiple times a day, and
the smell would probably drive Keppo almost as bonkers as the actual squirrels have been doing.
2. Put up an owl decoy. This appealed to me simply because I like owls. I also got very excited at the prospect of neighboring owls possibly coming by to check out the decoy. Then I read that if you go the decoy route, you have to move it regularly because otherwise the squirrels will figure out its fake and then never respect the decoy OR you ever again. Which…that seems reasonable, honestly. What did NOT seem reasonable was the price of owl decoys though, so we were on to option number 3, which was…
3. Spread human and dog hair around the area you want to keep the squirrels out of. The idea is that they don’t like / are scared of the smells of humans and dogs so scattering hair around will keep them away. Since this was the cheapest, easiest, and most readily actionable of the top three ideas, I figured I’d give it a try.
Mark brushed Keppo on Friday evening and collected all the hair in a little cardboard box. We put the box out in the mud room so that, should it get knocked over, it wouldn’t go all over the house. That turned out to be fairly smart because literally the next morning I was out in the mudroom putting a bag of trash out and what did I do? Knocked over the box of hair. Side note: this is how we learned that Keppo will attempt to eat clods of his own hair once they are detached from his body. My special, special boy.
On Sunday morning I cut Mark’s hair and while that doesn’t result in a lot of clippings anymore (sorry dear), we figured what the heck, we’ll throw those in the Box of Hair as well. I also cleaned out a couple of my hair brushes, and I shed almost as badly as Keppo does, so by the time it was all said and done we had a pretty good stash going.
This morning when I took Keppo out for our first patrol, I also took the Box of Hair. I carefully sprinkled it all around under the bird feeder and my office window. Keppo only tried to eat one chunk before he found some bird seed hulls that were even more illicit and therefore became his sole focus. We got everything set and then did our circuit of the house and returned back inside. Once back in my office, I opened the window a little bit and looked straight down just to make sure our placement was good. Perfect…a nice even coating of…hair. A hair barrier, if you will. A…hhhhhbarrier? Hair-ier? Wait no, that’s something different. But you get my drift. Pleased with my ingenuity, I sat down to get to work.
All of ten minutes later I hear the characteristic scrabble-clunk-scrabblescrabble-crash of a fat-ass grey squirrel launching itself up the exterior wall. By the time I got up to go look out the window, a second had joined it. A red squirrel came barreling around the corner shortly thereafter.
Not one of them gave a sweet blithering fuck about the hair barrier. They didn’t even slow down to sniff at it. I might as well have just scuffed my feet around the leaves a little as far as they were concerned. It was right back to business as usual for them and lack of ability to get any business done for me.
So I guess it’s time to invest in an owl decoy and see how that goes.
How Bad Can It Go? 