palace of winds

12/10 Sun: 25 min jogging – gym
12/11 Mon: riding
12/12 Tue: jogging & weights – gym
12/13 Wed: 55 min C&S – ABS
12/14 Thu: rest
12/15 Fri: riding (lesson)
12/16 Sat: 30 min yoga

Gym tally: 4

Oh the struggle that was working out on Saturday. I wanted to do nothing but lie on the couch all morning, waiting till it was time to go out to my parents’ where we’d finish making holiday treats then proceed directly into diabetic comas. (Last week we did sugar cookies — which, incidentally? BEST sugar cookies I’ve ever eaten, seriously good — and gingerbread men and spritz and the aforementioned Korova cookies; Saturday we rounded it out with chocolate fudge, chocolate-dipped pretzels, cornflake wreaths, lemon bars, and my coup de grace: caramels. I made the first attempt at the caramels at home, where they went from too soft to toffee-hard in the blink of an eye, so I tossed the whole batch and tried again at my parents’, where they came out pretty damned perfect, much to general astonishment. Or personal astonishment, anyhow.) Um, anyway, my point before the litany of butter and sugar — I should’ve done something more strenuous, but the thought of anything other than Baron Baptiste’s gentle and uplifting yoga left me cold and lying uselessly on the couch, so yoga it was.

I’ve never been much of a New Year’s Resolutions kind of person, but the beginning of January marks an end to holiday insanity (and a beginning to work insanity, but I find it best to ignore that until it’s actually happening, and longer if I can manage it), so I’m going to try to lay down a more defined exercise program then. And cancel my gym membership, because right now it’s just making exercise boring and stressful. My goal is to not feel fat for my San Diego trip in March, assuming it happens. My other goal is to sew a dress for the opening reception. Not that I’m holding my breath on any of it: trip, non-fat-feeling, or finding time to sew. But I am crossing my fingers.

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.