Meta-blogging moment: I started the two themes of this blog almost two years ago, "Pique" which is basically any post where I rant about something, and "Reverie" which is any post where I do dream self-analysis, since I'm a vivid dreamer. The latter are probably rarely of interest to anyone aside from myself, but I am mostly blogging as a form of self-expression, anyways. Heck, both Pique and Reverie posts are forms of navel-gazing. This is the first post that has both joined together.

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Pique: I had a very difficult emotional day yesterday. There are several historical reasons why 11/1 is always a challenging day. It's the day my parents were married, and the day, 23 years later, that they separated. My Granny and a family dog both died on 10/31. I think these sorts of events have resonance across years.

But aside from historical reasons, three things occurred yesterday for me that have put me in a heightened emotional state, and which triggered a vivid dream.

1) I received in the mail some photographs taken by an old boyfriend (I refer to him as "the former love of my life") from when we were dating almost 15 years ago. He sent a lovely note with them about how the best ones capture my personality and my beauty. I looked at them yesterday morning, and they made me weep. I was so young and naive and unaware. And so thin and, yes, beautiful, but in a strange raw way I can't put my finger on. But what was most sad was how in love with him I was, and how I will never love anyone like that again. Not that I won't love someone, but it won't have that same innocence, that same openness. I'm amazed how he managed to capture all of that on film - the photos were excellent. I felt like he gave me back a piece of my soul.

"One day you're there, and then all of a sudden there's less of you, and you wonder where that part went, if it's living somewhere outside of you. And you keep thinking, maybe you'll get it back. And then you realize, it's just gone." - Peggy Olson, Mad Men

Maybe it finally came back.


2) I have finally decided, after agonizing over it and after discussing it with Mom, to put down my cat Chester. This decision isn't going to be popular with most people I know. Chester is 17 years old and she has renal failure, although I need to get the blood work done to prove this. She drinks huge volumes of water and urinates the same. She has destroyed the hardwood floors in my kitchen over the past two years and made my house reek of cat pee. I have tried everything I can think of to minimize the damage, including spending a lot on puppy pads which I lay down in her favorite peeing areas, but she scratches at them which means they don't cover the area any more and she pees under them. I currently have her gated into the laundry room where she is rapidly destroying the floors in there, and the linoleum is warping, but at least it's not hardwood. She has no life in there, and stays in her kitty bed most of the time. I try to make time to visit with her every day, but she cries now and then out of loneliness. She is also starting to vomit more, not due to hairballs, which could indicate that she's close to total renal failure.

My cats are like my children, and this is an incredibly painful thing to be doing, but I just can't handle this any more. Mom helped me with this and has been very supportive, pointing out that our pets trust us to take care of them during life and also in deciding when it's time for them to die. Very few house cats die natural deaths in their sleep.

Mom also pointed out that, now that I have decided this is what needs to happen, I should take a good friend with me when I have her put down. Someone who can be supportive of my decision and is willing to drive me home since I probably won't be able to handle that myself. I'm going to be a wreck. But -- please forgive me, those friends of mine who read this blog -- I can't think of anyone. I know that I have friends who would be willing to help me, but I can't think of anyone that I would be comfortable trusting with what will likely be me in hysterics. I guess I have problems A) asking for help and B) allowing anyone to see me like that. This should be one of those things where someone immediately leaps into your mind - your best friend, your boyfriend, your husband, something. I don't have those things. I have very old friends like tmc, who I'm sure would be willing to go, but I feel like he has enough stuff going on in his own life to deal with my crap, too. Plus, he doesn't drive. ;)

The fact that I don't have that sort of automatically qualifying relationship is my fault. I have only myself to blame for my inability to open up.


3) I was stood up by my date last night. This is just a final nail in the coffin for this situation, but it still hurt.


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Reverie: I am in the top floor room of a brownstone in New York City, and Carrie Bradshaw, the lead character from Sex and the City, is there. She's actually the character, not Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress. Carrie is going through her results of a personality test. She's telling me that she took the test at an official testing site of some sort, and it's the MBTI (of which I am so fond). Except it's not, because there are the usual I/E, J/P, T/F variables, but the N/S variable is replaced with Q/something. Carrie has scored a Q in this area, and we're trying to figure out what it means. Then our discussion becomes a montage, as though it were part of a SatC episode, and in particular, I am Miranda. We're discussing what it means to be an F, and how we think Samantha is a T, and we're laughing and sharing our insights with each other.

Suddenly we cut to a scene where I am in bed with Steve, Miranda's husband from the show, and we're cuddling and talking about my conversation with Carrie, and how I felt really close to her. Steve is appreciating the story and seems very happy for me that I had a good time with my best friend.

The end.

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Analysis: I think that this is almost certainly complete wish fulfillment, especially with what went on earlier in the day.

On Sundays I usually make a big pot of something and put it in the fridge to nibble on all week. This week, I made this yummy Tomatillo Black Bean Soup I saw on Kalyn's Kitchen.




I really like Kalyn's Kitchen as she does South Beach and gluten-free recipes, and a fair bit of crockpot recipes. Worth checking out, although I find it funny that a supposedly vegetarian recipe contains chicken broth, but that's easy enough to correct. I found the soup a little bland, so I added some tobasco sauce, and found it went well with sour cream on top. Nice, easy, tasty recipe.

Today I also steamed an artichoke for the first time in my adult life. Not sure why I've taken so long to get around to it. I made a butter sauce which I poured on top which consisted of:

1/2 stick melted butter
1 dollop grey poupon
generous shaking of Penzey's Pasta Sprinkle (oregano, basil, thyme, garlic)
healthy squirt of lemon juice
capers

I poured in on top of the artichoke when it was done - turned out to be a nice compliment.

For the Geek Beer crowd, here are a few photos from Hunter's going-away Geek Beer:

We're having a tremendous heat wave in Durham right now - in fact the entire east coast is having a heat wave. We're supposed to reach 102 degrees today! It certainly doesn't feel like spring out there.

Fortunately, my friend Melanie was house-sitting for another friend who has a pool. I was invited over to brunch and a swim yesterday. I haven't been in a pool in years - probably since ~2000. It was fantastic. I loved swimming as a kid (learned to swim at age 3) and used to spend every summer day in the pool if I could possibly help it. This really brought back those times, particularly because we were listening to classic rock, some of which was new during those years. This is the second experience I've had lately that has really brought back the early 80's for me, the other being the Duran Duran concert, of course.

So after a lovely day at the pool and getting a little bit sunburnt, I went home for a while and then to my friends k & b's for a small dinner party where I had my first boiled crawdads. I've had crawdads before, but not done in this way. A couple of the attendees were New Orleans natives who were displaced by hurricane Katrina, and they taught us how to go about eating the little things. It turns out that most of the meat is in the tail, but there's occasionally retrievable meat in the claws, and some people like to suck on the heads (I didn't find this appealing.) They were very tasty, and I eventually got my eating skills honed pretty well. It was amusing to hear all the slurping and sucking noises around the table during the frenzy. :)

It was still super hot out until about 9pm or so, but k & b had a lovely new gazebo set up in their back yard with mosquito netting and hanging candles. It made for a lovely summer's day and night. Too bad it's this hot in spring.

Thanks to Melanie & Chris S., and k & b, for a great day all around.

with friends or family: politics and religion. Over the past two weeks I've violated both of those guidelines, and it almost never goes anywhere good. You'd think I would learn.

It was 21 years ago today that a good high school friend of mine died as the result of a car accident. I'm feeling a bit down about it.

Wish you were here.

My friend Phil over at The Archer Pelican is a great house-sitter who has sat for me in the past. I felt very secure with him keeping an eye on things while I was out of town. He's currently available between 11/30 and 1/10, so if you need a house-sitter, I can highly recommend him.