palace of winds

Hope hurts, fuck it, and near as I can tell there’s no reliable way to kill it. I hate everything about it. I feel like such an idiot for caring. There are some days I don’t know how to relate without also wanting to die.

In less emo news, the weather is downright unseasonable. It’s been raining. It’s mid-December and it’s raining. Note the lack of ‘freezing’ before that whole rain business. It’s hard to believe Christmas is less than two weeks away. (Though it’s easy to believe I still haven’t mailed gifts. Ugh.) I’m going to be very sad if at the end of the month Bryce and I have to give Allison the tour amidst lots of dead grass instead of nice fluffy postcard snow. Minneapolis, you have two and a half weeks to turn on the snowglobe charm. Get cracking!

Saza was sweet as pie last night. I spent a long time lungeing, working on the whole walking concept, and before our ride we spent a while checking out the new carts at the end of the arena. There are a few minis out at the barn whose owners are working on driving — which I hope I get to see some time, because how adorable. Saza was pretty convinced the carts were The Big Scary, though, so she spent some time eyeing them and sniffing and being coaxed closer by inches. I don’t think she’ll ever be one for cross country, though by the time we were cooling down she’d decided they weren’t going to eat her and mostly ignored them.

Sunday afternoon and evening we did Cookiepalooza at my parents’, which included Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for Korova Cookies, which I think are stunning. Usually I like chewy cookies, but these are decidedly crumbly and utterly delicious — the essence of dark cocoa. And I am very glad I brought only one home. I wouldn’t be able to leave them alone if I knew they were in my cupboard.

And I just remembered I have tomorrow off from work. That is downright spectacular.

December now and winter creeps in on soft, white-slippered feet. This morning there’s a bare dusting of snow over everything, the wind carrying thin sparkling sheets of it crosswise over the roads. It’s still new and sugary enough that you can feel a little like Gretel, wanting to break off and eat the sweet edge of this season. (The trick, I think, is to not get caught in the mall and roasted alive by that shared shopping fever.)

I don’t know that I really wrote at all last month, though I wanted to talk about Thanksgiving and my grandma’s love of my pumpkin pie, and my visit from Bryce with its dizzyingly delicious array of food (breakfast at Al’s and Hell’s Kitchen, our own nougat, the trek to True Thai that in the end felt like a pilgrimage, New Delhi and the parking meter, tamales and plantains and mole oh my) and the Decemberists concert like glimpses of something holy and Peru, Peru, Peru. Which has become this living presence in the back of my mind, something bigger than itself, something impossible that will nevertheless come to be. This sort of weird symbol for the way the walls of my life expand every time I push them.

But I didn’t write about any of those things, and so I’ve again fallen into that trap of not writing anything because as soon as I really write something else the door seems to close on all that stacked-up reminiscing. So I’m, again, just letting it go. It might happen in its own time, but if it doesn’t that’s okay.

Because I want to tell you that I read today that Alan Rickman and Johnny Depp will be starring in Burton’s film adaptation of Sweeney Todd, and that is wonderful in so, so many ways. And one of those ways? Is their promised duet. Oh tingling anticipation.

11/19 Sun: I…don’t remember now. Woe.
11/20 Mon: riding
11/21 Tue: rest (does cooking count?)
11/22 Wed: rest (does shopping count?)
11/23 Thu: rest (does eating count?)
11/24 Fri: riding (lesson)
11/25 Sat: 30 min C&S - JF Arms

Gym tally: 5

I’ve decided I need to start keeping a gym tally too, because if I don’t go at least 8 times a month I don’t get my medical insurance reimbursement. And as little as 8 times a month sounds, between riding and doing videos at home I am going to need to keep careful track of gym visits. Obviously. Woe.

I sucked more than I thought I would this week, but I was also really really busy with Thanksgiving things. Such as: rolls; cornbread stuffing; mushroom gravy; roasted beets, carrots, and parsnips; cranberry relish; pumpkin pie; and apple pie. I made the cornbread for the stuffing, guys, and the crust for the pies. Which…is not a good excuse, I know, especially considering I then turned around and ate the stuffing and pie. They were good, though. Especially the pie.

So sleepy. Usually I love fall Daylight Savings because you get this wonderful extra hour — the last two years I used it to sleep off Halloween parties, but I’m not sure where it went this year. Eaten, perhaps, by my inability to sleep until 8 a.m. no matter what time I go to bed.

Jo and I deviated from tradition this year and went to Maria’s party, which involved tasty food and much less alcohol and much more Pictionary and a pumpkin full of lighter fluid & fireworks, and was delightful. (And I don’t say that just because my team won at Pictionary. I really would’ve called it a tie; at the finish line we battled it out with Jo’s team through god knows how many rounds, so it was really just luck of the draw. …of the cards, not in a horrible punning way.) I went as Red Riding Hood, because I only decided on Friday to go and it was the only thing I could think of to make on such short notice. All the hood patterns I found online were some combination of complicated and baffling, so I wasn’t entirely pleased with how it came out, but I didn’t end up wanting to put it up at all so it didn’t matter.

I spent most of yesterday making tamales. Everything I read about them promised they were this arduous all-day affair best done with lots of people to share the work, etc etc, and I couldn’t quite believe they were that difficult — though I also know how much time it takes to roll sushi and make parathas and dolmades. In all my experience so far, individually-wrapped portions equals lots of time spent wrapping.

Verdict: it probably would be a very fun activity to do with other people who like things like standing in the kitchen for four hours on a Sunday afternoon. But it was also nice on my own; sort of meditative, leisurely. I finished listening to Mrs. Dalloway and, out of anything new, started Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell again. I made fillings and soaked corn husks and made masa dough (such delightfully easy work with the new mixer), and then spread and wrapped and tied and spread and wrapped and tied. And then I steamed them in the pressure cooker, which cut 40 minutes off the finishing time. And then I finally tried one, and they were delicious. It might’ve been partly knowing how much work had just gone into them, but standing in the kitchen eating this heavenly warm fragrant corn-sweet tamale straight from the husk was a toe-curling affair.

I made three fillings (and happily the book described three methods for rolling, so I tried them all): black bean, corn with carmelized onion, and adobo. The adobo is far and away my favorite — it’s a paste/sauce/thing made from dried chiles and it’s unholy tasty. It’s not hot at all, just — flavorful. Voluptuous. All rich sweet chile and vinegar and these whispers of cinnamon.

So now I just have to keep out of them until Wednesday, which is family dinner night. I’m doing the Dia de los Muertos thing, and I was going to do pan de muerto, the traditional ‘bread of the dead’, but it calls for an unconscionable amount of eggs. So instead I’m using unconscionable amounts of butter to make Maya’s Day of the Dead Cookies, which are shaped like skulls. And no good pirate can pass up an opportunity to make skull-shaped cookies.

In the last year or so I have gained pretty much zero pounds. I feel pretty much seven thousand times fatter, though. Tonight, at least.

I realized this evening that I have exactly zero sweatshirts that fit me. Zero articles of clothing perfect for crawling into when it feels like the whole world is sad or bad or just tired. (I have some flannel pajamas and some sweaters and these wonderful black stretchy yoga pants and any number of things that feel comforting sometimes to slouch around in, but there is a particular mood that only a sweatshirt will answer, something so-soft inside. I used to like roomy sweatshirts, believed there wasn’t such a thing as a sweatshirt that was too roomy, but there is. It’s not comforting any more when you’re hanging half out of it, needing to shove and tuck and fold and rearrange when you move. A sweatshirt needs to be close. Cuddling on up, saying Well *I* don’t think you’re disgusting.)

I hate doing stupid things. I hate them even more when they’re the result of disorganization. I hate it when I use my credit card for little things, to pay for parking or a few dollars at a convenience store, and I’m in a rush and tuck my receipt away and then forget, later, to go back and write it in my check register. That’s the scale of money-related stupidity I’m okay with. To forget a few small charges every few months; I balance my checkbook often enough to catch them quickly, to still remember that Yes, I spent that and then forgot to note it.

Tonight I went grocery shopping and forgot my entire wallet. I only realized it halfway through the checkout, opening my purse and staring into its too-meager contents. Thankfully I’d gone to Whole Foods, too lazy to go further afield to Cub, and so I managed a seven-minute round-trip home and back. The sweet, cheerful guy bagging my groceries was the same guy who so concerned himself over the dissatisfying taste of the frozen yogurt Bryce and I got a few weeks ago. I wonder if he remembers that I was the lady who wanted to exchange a pint of frozen yogurt because it just wasn’t that good. Next time I’m out by my bank I’m going to get a little extra cash out to keep in my glove compartment, in case I’m ever that brainless again.

My neighbors in one of the houses out back have a gigantic tacky inflated glowing pumpkin in their yard, and a handful of huge plastic skeletons hanging from one of their trees. I’m unbelievably in love with them for it. Normally I don’t go in for things like that, for big illuminated holiday displays, but damned if it wasn’t something I needed to see tonight.

It made me think of the neighborhood I grew up in, and trick-or-treating, and the one house where every year this guy would dress up in a big gorilla costume and wait for kids to ring the doorbell, and then come tearing out from around the garage, bellowing and waving his arms. My sister and I had seen it happen to other kids and were so terrified that we never went trick-or-treating there. We couldn’t've been lured even if they’d been giving out entire candy bars. (I still remember the glorious year that one of the couples down the kuldesac were out that night at a party and so left an entire garbage can full of pop out. I don’t remember if I picked strawberry or grape, but it was dizzyingly marvelous to’ve gotten an entire can of pop while out trick-or-treating.) Anyway, sometimes it feels like that’s a nice metaphor for my whole life. Scared of a man in a gorilla costume.

I joined the gym across the street tonight, and stupidly was too shy to ask for the joining fee to be waived. I’m sure they would have. But that’s all right, I suppose. There’s only so much room for worrying in my head, and this new bit doesn’t seem to’ve fit in anywhere. I am going to give it a month and see how often I use it, because really between doing tapes in my living room and riding three or four times a week, I don’t know that I need to be spending the extra money for what boils down to, for me, a treadmill.

I’ve decided I am going to cook through Camellia Panjabi’s The Great curries of India, something I’ve been thinking about doing for ages. I’m hoping to do a recipe a week; there are fifty curries, so that’d take me through to next fall, which is kind of a crazy thought. Apart from having less than a year of cooking Indian under my belt, I think the biggest hurdle is going to be apt replacements for all the meat. I know a big part of cooking is playing, trying things out, but there is such a tradition in Indian cooking of carefully-balanced tastes that I know I don’t know enough about, that I know I will inadvertantly trample all over. Since I don’t know anyone to teach me better, I also don’t know anyone who’d eat my food and find me out, so there’s that. Up this week: Rogan Josh, a mildly spicy curry from Kashmir. (With my other big hurdle, which is my curious reticence to buy most things milk-based [an impulse I’m not ready just now to examine further]. So I’ve bought my first container of soy yogurt, and lord knows how it’s going to muck with the consistency and taste compared to the traditional full-fat cow yogurt called for in the recipe. Falala. Whole Foods also didn’t have black cardamom or mace, much to my surprise.)

Entirely unrelated: I need to quit chewing gum again. My jaw is killing me.