Winter Solstice 2016

It's the day with the longest night of the remaining year, which has only 10 days left in it now. I still haven't made any significant effort to do any gift shopping yet for Christmas . . . shame on me. I thought I'd procrastinate yet some more with making another entry. I thought the previous one would be the final one for the year, but instead I'll make it the penultimate one. I sheepishly admit that I woke up right at sunrise (9:15 AM here) on what is already the shortest day of the year. Judging on that, I guess I'm already not too ambitious to do much with the rest of this day. After a copious volume of coffee just to open my eyes, I then finally finished the last stages of piecemeal piddling around with catching up on correspondence, and re-integrating the rest of my digital music library to cloud storage to play with all my Bluetooth devices (whoopy-doo). While doing that, I found some celebratory music for the day. The perfect sort of musical selection I picked out to make a uniquely sort of pagan-esque Canadian celebration of the coming of this solstice day is the progressive rock album 2112 by Rush  (21/12, today's date, get it?). The word "solar" is uttered a few times (in a voice that isn't in Geddy Lee's regular constricted-genitals sounding timbre) within the opening 20 minute overture. It seemed appropriate given that today marks a solar phenomenon.

It makes me wonder, how we (we, as in people like me who are of Northern/Central European heritage) would celebrate this time of year if Christianity, or any of the other two Abrahamic religions, didn't dominate or influence the ethno-cultures of this part of the hemisphere, and we remained true to more pagan beliefs*. The Celtic, or Germanic tribal holidays, like that of Yule (Jul) probably would take over. We've already incorporated so many of those pagan traditions into the Christian Christmas ethos. Like the author Jared Diamond**, I'm a believer in the theory that we are like any other animal: our biology and geography is our destiny. I believe that it would be just an automatically instinctual thing to build on traditions to make things look greener and brighter to counter the dullness, cold, and darkness of the year, to decorate such that it makes things look more alive and life-giving. We'd do what we could to get extra calories and fatten up for the colder season; we'd feast a lot. We'd drink more, play games, and do whatever it took to make more social merriment and fellowship, just like we tend to do now to stave off and slake away boredom and depression through the cold and darkness. I speculate that there would be very little difference in the appearance of the solstice holiday from what Christmas is now throughout these colder, darker latitudes of the Earth. If Christmas, or its precursors, never existed at all, given the environment we are in, we'd be doing a lot to make up some sort of winter festivities in lieu of it.

It also makes me wonder: if attempted European colonization was destined to occur on this continent in this alternate historical timeline, where Christianity wasn't an affixed part of Occidental culture,
would there have been other or better attempts to integrate solstice traditions with the Aboriginal cultures here, with the spirit of that we all live under the same sun, or would those native traditions be swept away like so many others with the rise of colonialism? It makes me wonder what that would look like. The Vikings*** who settled at L'Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland around a millennium ago, probably were the closest historical precedent for this paradigm (in this country, if we indeed became a country) in which they were the primary holders of such traditions. However, that didn't go over so well, and no (accurate) written records exist about the process of the settlement. Their colony collapsed: either by famine, disease, or from conflict and hostilities with the indigenous people, who may have eradicated the entire Nordic settlement, or other maladaptive factors, before it could have a chance to thrive and evolve. This sounds like a theoretical element of the PC game Civilization VI to test, play out, and observe.

I explain it this way to my readers who aren't Canadians. Making this land we call Canada a more tolerable and habitable place to endure throughout the winter with festivities has been a natural and necessary thing to do to as a cultural meme for European colonization to have a foothold here throughout this nation's history: from the times when the Voyageurs and Coureurs du Bois established L'Ordre de Bon Temps (the order of good cheer), that is to make provisions for the means for social recreations a mandatory thing by the fur trading companies, to quell the rigours of winter. to hockey leagues and curling clubs, right up to general making a prolonged Christmas season compared to most other nations.

I didn't realize just how deeply Canadian I was, a true product of my environment, until I spent my first Christmas in a tropical country. It was just too weird and unnatural for me to process for that season. It made me feel quite homesick back then. I was getting strange looks and responses from people, who never experienced a day colder than 25 degrees Celsius, as I explained them how much I was missing my sub-zero temperatures, and the snow and frost covered vistas, as I sat on some beach or drank at some outdoor café. I couldn't find a way for it make sense to them, or to myself either for that matter. I really do need my cold and snow for the yuletide season. Winter, as much as I can hate it at times, is just engrained in me that much. It makes me think of the new immigrants, who are coming from mostly the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, from desert, tropical, or more equatorial latitudes who are having the same degree of challenge of adapting to this climate and holiday season.

So, for those who celebrate whatever cultural event or religious holiday amidst or surrounding the solstice season, like Christmas, Hanukah, Aboriginal/Wiccan Solstice Day, the release of another Star Wars movie****, etc., take care, have a blast with it, but also be responsible.

*- I should add that thoughts like these have been prompted by entertaining myself with more than one alternative history scenario with a.) playing the Wolfenstein: The New Order video game, with a storyline where the Nazis end up taking over the world, and b.) re-reading 1984, by George Orwell; though fictional, it's a sobering book everyone should read and to note the parallels that are occurring now with the manipulation of the truth in the media, the end of privacy, and the assertion of a military-industrial complex moving toward totalitarianism keeping us in a state of perpetual war and conflict. 
**- His book, Guns, Germs and Steel, is the best book ever written for a concise overview of cultural anthropology, and global human sociological development and evolution of civilizations: from our rise as homo sapiens, to our continental migrations and colonisations.
***- Watching tonight's episode of Vikings and the debate between King Egbert and Ragnar about Heaven and Valhalla was also a prompt for me to write these thought experiments with alternative histories that model/result in a non-Christian medieval Europe.
****- It's valid to include that. There are a lot out there who (sadly) are going to find a more spiritual experience for themselves watching this modern folklore than appreciating the other traditional holidays.

The 12 Month Random Resolution Game

There has been a long lapse between entries, mostly because there has been so little that has been good or positive, or of any importance to comment on. Four months of this year that I wished to make better have been stolen from me, and I've simply been trying to make moves toward getting back to some sort of normalcy: if there ever was such a thing for me. People who know me know that I've just been trying to work and move towards a full recovery, which has been progressive, but going so slowly in my mind that it has been a real test of my patience. Physiotherapy can be refreshing and relieving on one day, and then torturous on another, as micro-traumas are being worked out of the joints and muscle tissues in my arm. There is some noticeable nerve damage, but thankfully it's only slight. Given what I had going on during the initial days after the accident, things could have easily turned into something much worse. On top of that, I've been depressed and disappointed about the elections down south, and the state of the media coverage used to be corruptive for such an affair already laden with controversy and conspiracy. It was a shameful display all around. The latter third of this year can be summarized in three words - it sucked balls. There's nothing at all about it that I really want to recollect or recount.

Year's End is just 20 days away, and I'm already making plans for trying to have a better go in 2017 even before I attempt any Christmas shopping. I invented a sort game for myself: something that has meaningful projects and acquisition targets set up for me to try and gain for each month of the coming new year. Perhaps it's a flaky idea: one that evolved out of the combined urges of defeating some boredom, wanting to play cards (but no company for it), to play with odds and sort gamble a bit (without staking any of my Christmas shopping funds), and inventing a game of chance where I'll somehow always win*. I found a way to deck my halls with a deck of cards. I am sharing it for those who are also wanting to use it to make a more hopeful and prosperous coming new year.

Materials:

• pen and paper (enough to create up to about 144 slips, plus to write a category list)
• scissors (for cutting such slips)
• 12 sealable envelopes
• a deck of cards, OR alternatively, if you aren't a card player . . .
• a pair of dice, or a 12 sided gaming die (if you are a Dungeons and Dragons geek)

Method:

1. Make a list of 12 categories of 12 things or deeds that you what to have or do during the new year. They can be of anything you want: charitable or selfish, serious intellectual pursuits or something fun and foolish, skill building or talent oriented, material possessions or intangibles, whatever, so long as each category involves things that genuinely go towards your sense of well-being, happiness and life satisfaction. Have them be all affordable within a month's budget, and overall achievable within a month's time, and such that they can be available to have or do at any time of the year. Here's about 12 things as examples that may or may not interest you. (Some of) these categories below aren't necessarily reflective of mine. It's deeply personal thing, so make up your own 12 categories of 12 things to list in each. Strive for 12 things to list in each category, but if you can't, you can repeat some items to make up twelve if practical, or stick to some number under twelve. Some examples here are: 
• 12 career skills you want to build on
• 12 tools/implements you want for your workshop/space
• 12 items you want as home decorum, or things you want to change in your home
• 12 thing-a-ma-bobs you want to collect
• 12 subjects you want to study intensively
• 12 people/places you want to visit
• 12 books you want to read/memorize 
• 12 songs you want to learn to play on your[whatever musical instrument you have]
• 12 charities you want to donate time/money to 
• 12 exotic ingredients you want to sample/experiment with
• 12 restaurants you've never eaten at yet, but wanted to try
• 12 novel liquor ingredients you want in your cocktail bar**
2. Take one category, and write each of the 12 items you listed from that category on a seperate slip of paper. You'll have 12 slips of paper if you've listed 12 items in the category. Put them face down on the table and mix them up.
3. Lay out all the 12 envelopes on a flat surface with the open side up.
4. If using playing cards, take a full red suit out of the deck to use, discarding the king. Shuffle the 12 red cards and place one card, face up, on each envelope. Then, take a full black suit out of the deck, discarding the king. Shuffle the black cards and put them face down on the table. Draw a card from the top of the black card stack. Take one of the face down slips of paper, not looking at it, and tuck it into the envelope with the red card with the matching face value as the black card (i.e., if you draw a black 3, put one slip of paper in the envelope with the red 3 on it.). Turn the red card over, or remove it to indicate that this envelope has been loaded. Repeat the same steps for each draw of the black cards in the rest of the stack. Once all the slips of the category have been put in each of their respective envelopes, re-shuffle each stack of the red cards and the black cards, shuffle and lay out the envelopes again, open , side up, and repeat for the 12 item slips of the next category. Repeat until all remaining category list slips are packed in the envelopes. Alternately, if you prefer handling dice . . .
5. If using a 12 sided die***, arrange the envelopes such that you can visually mark them as 1 to 12 (like the face of a clock, for example). Roll the die and place the slip into the corresponding envelope that matches the number on the die. Turn the envelope over once it gets its one slip. Remember, no peeking at the slips! Reroll the die if the number is repeated, and continue rolling, and filling the corresponding envelopes with their single slip of paper until the slips are gone. Shuffle and redistribute the envelopes again, turning the envelopes open-side up again, and repeat for the slips of the next 12 items in the next category. Repeat this process until all categories are done.
6. Once all the envelopes are filled, seal them and shuffle them. Select one and write "January" on it, select the next and write "February" on it, and so on until each envelope is labelled with one of the months of the year from, January to December****, inclusive.
7. Keep these envelopes in a safe and secure place. On the first day of each month, open the envelope labelled for that corresponding month. Set an alert on your smartphone calendar if you need to be reminded.
8. Start, do, or get the stuff listed on the 12 slips of paper that you find in there. You have the entire month to plan and/or try to commit to whatever is listed on those 12 slips of paper throughout it all when you start on day one, be it starting page one of that book, or collecting materials for a month long project. It would be a good idea to journal your progress, or monitor your interest while you do it. If you failing at it, or if your interest is waning, you get to ask yourself "Why?"

I rationalize things with this betterment/resolution "game" this way. The road to hell is usually paved with good intentions. Resolutions are usually broken because people pile up all their ambitions at the start of the year, which only serves to overwhelm them. Some then drop them within 12 hours of New Year's Day. It's not a good way to practice kaizen - that is small and continuous progressive steps toward improvement. The lesson, if any, that I'm drawing from doing physiotherapy, is that small and continuous steps eventually build up to some more powerful things. Committing to major resolutions, more likely than not, involves throwing one's life out of balance which one is rarely prepared for. I've had enough of life out of balance happening since August - thank you very much; yet I still seek structured improvement for my welfare. The novelty and excitement withers away quickly too when things are over-planned, and there is no chance for surprise and spontaneity.  I hope this strategy is one way to improve upon that. Twelve things per month, be they leisurely or ambitious, amounts to about three things a week with which to reward or better oneself. That's as many times per week as I do PT, and I'm getting results for the better. That sounds enriching and progressive enough for me.

This is also a very deliberate way to exploit stuff that I already have, it's just the element of pacing and time that really is the thing that needs to be adjusted. For example, lots of people have books on their shelves that they haven't touched yet, so list them and use them. The same goes with other stuff that they may be hoarding. This then becomes a practical measure to prevent thoughtless and impulsive spending. I hope calling this a game will perchance draw some kind of fun into the whole process, despite the fact that it does involve some discipline. The cards/dice aspect of it brings in a bit of a mysterious element of divination of sorts. I just like the math and probability calculation of it. It is making a personal lottery where you can (choose to) win every time. All in all, after dealing with the spells of bad luck I've had, my true ambition is just to be somehow happier. We'll see by the end of next December.

Since I have nothing else to reflect on, or share for the rest of this year, I'll only bid everyone happy holidays. I hope that I'll have better things to share for 2017.

*- Because I was playing a video game, and became too frustrated at being stuck at one level with monster robots constantly blowing my head off. A not so productive way to use my recovery time.

**- Unless you are already in a 12 step program with AA, disregard this idea.

***- If using a pair of six sided dice, the last slip of paper left of the 12 in the category automatically goes into the envelope designated as #1.

****- If you would rather devote your time, money, and energy for preparing for Christmas (or other primary holiday month), just simply play this game with 11 envelopes, 132 paper slips, and pull out the red and black queens (if using cards), disqualify the 12 roll if using a die/dice. The parameters are thus adjustable.

Two Weeks Gibbled

I don’t know why I’m troubling myself to write this. It’s not like this is a life event that I’d like to ever remember happening. Perhaps, it’s for the sake of reading it later in the future when I’m going through a rough period of real misery and suffering to remind myself that I have some ability to cope when I’m going through some sort of limbo when dealing with impairment. It’s now 4:51 AM, and I had nothing else to do. I’m sleepless because it’s been a full two weeks plus a couple days without being set in a regular rhythm of a typical workweek cycle. I’m also an insomniac due to being woken by either jolting surges of pain, or failing miserably to find an alternative resting position that has been relaxing enough to have a decently long stretch of recuperative nighttime sleep almost every night since the accident. The rest of my muscles in my neck, shoulders, and upper back are becoming loaded with tension with the exhaustion, and from hauling my defective arm around in a sling much of each day. Maybe the problems are also exacerbated from me being too stubborn and frugal, by not opting for a full and regular dosage of pain medication that I should perhaps be using. I’ve been reluctant to just cut loose to take the pills every time I feel pain and soreness. I’ve been trying to make three days worth of meds stretch out for a week. I’m not fond of how they make me dull-headed and absent-minded; taking away from my lucidity. They also seem to be harsh on my stomach; until recently, my appetite has been poor* because of that. Even though I know I don’t really have an additive personality, I’m not interested in approaching a place where I’d be constantly reliant, or hooked, on using opiates or codeine as a crutch to get me through an average day. The pain has finally at least become more tolerable: at least to a point where I don’t feel I need to bite on a leather belt to ride around in a lurching vehicle. It is tempting to gulp whatever hard liquor I have left around here to tranquilize me and knock me out for the count for some sleep, but I’m not curious as to what it would be like mixing poisons, especially while I’m trying to get my blood chemistry right again. Except for a brief tour of Beerfest last weekend for some small samples, I’ve had no alcohol since my accident.

Before I sat down to write this, I used the past half hour I’ve been awake to check and re-dress the wound site (looks OK), to hand wash my sling and hang dry it, and to piddle around with other light housework that wasn’t too noisy. Inadvertently, I’m also being a creepy security presence for the building. Having a light on behind me, and being this eerie-looking, black robe clad, shadowy figure in the window (as would be seen from the view from the parking lot) has made a couple of hooded sketchy-looking little bastards quicken their step to disappear out of the alley way as they walked past the building at this hour. I filled a glass of water, fitted on an ice pack, and stepped outside onto the balcony, with my housecoat draped sloppily around me. The sky had nothing interesting to display or reveal astronomically speaking, but the air was at least somewhat soothing and refreshing. It’s rich and saturated with the signature smells of early fall. I think about the one with whom I’d like to share this moment with: be it with this same silence, breathing this same air, or else for me to be simply absorbed in the pleasure of listening to her talk. It was she with her good heart and positive attitude, more than anyone, despite the distance between us, who has helped me to focus on better things and helped give me the mindset to endure all this by myself.

I’m trying not to get hung up on the hundred other things that put me in a peevish mindset that I’m encountering with losing full use of an arm while trying to manage everything alone. It’s frustrating not being able to do some things like: entering and driving my car**, flossing my teeth, opening containers, tying shoelaces, or even simply putting on and fastening a regular pair of jeans, or anything else requiring two arms and heavy lifting. I’m trying to think of the comparisons and differences between this spell of long-term recovery time, and the time when I came out of the hospital with impaired heart and lung issues. This ranks as only slightly better: in that my energy and capacity for activity is a lot more predictable, my brain isn’t being starved of oxygen, and it’s nothing from which I could potentially collapse if I strain too hard. If something does snap again, I can at least get myself to the hospital more conveniently.

The issue with my circulation after having the hematoma removed is still a little finicky. My coagulation (INR) numbers aren’t quite right yet; my blood chemistry still needs work on being normalized (normal for me). I’ve been given some extra doses of Tinzaparin injections for the next few days for the time being to treat that. My stomach is going to look like a dart board, with my bellybutton as the bull’s eye. That’s where the injections go, and there is usually pronounced bruising around the injection sites. The palm of my left is still a sickly shade of bluish purple and tender, but the rest of the swelling and bruising along my arm has gone down substantially. There is still feeling and (stiff) movement in my fingers, but I can’t yet pivot my wrist at all. I haven’t dared to try flex arm yet without the doctor’s say so. Thinking about all the bloody craziness I had to go through just to get treated, I’m very disinclined to do anything that would put my progress in jeopardy, and going through the hell of waiting to readjust my blood again, and repeating another risk of a dangerous bout of internal bleeding, all for the sake of preparing to get cut open again because of trying to do some unnecessary and foolish movement.

I realize that my birthday is soon approaching. I hardly think that I’ll be in a celebratory mood for it. I don’t really care to enter and note the beginning a new year of life being at a state where I’m far from the better version of myself. I’m scheduled to have my dermal stitches removed next Thursday, and then getting an assessment and fuller picture of what to plan and adapt for thence.

*- Since the day of my surgery, it wasn’t until yesterday that I’ve really put some effort into doing some food prep. Operating a knife one-handed is a test of my patience for sure. Handling a vegetable peeler and food shredder isn’t much easier either. I managed to make some homemade soup, and dabbled with East Indian food for my supper prep. I was just trying to use up the stuff in my fridge and freezer, but maybe I subconsciously chose to make Indian food to draw some lesson from it, because of the cultural etiquette of handling and serving food with just the right hand. Offering or passing food with the left hand is considered a major no-no. Some street vendors in India, cooking for all the public to see, go so far as not handle or touch any food at all with the left hand while preparing it. It would be bad for business if one is witnessed them touching food with the hand, in their no toilet paper culture, that’s reserved for such personally hygiene ablutions.   

**- I just think that driving with half the physical capacity, while one’s brain is doubly fogged with analgesics, isn’t a very bright idea, even if I could successfully squirm into my vehicle without feeling tortured.

5Q5A: Recuperating

This is for the rest of you who were wondering what happened 11 days ago, so I can settle rumours and not be troubled with having to explain it a thousand times over. Seeing that I’m limited to only typing with one hand, I’m keeping it as a shortened summary in 5Q5A format. It’s also early Sunday morning, at around 3:00 AM. I’ve taken to taken to writing at this hour because I am short of pain-killers to deal with the consequences of the subject in the lines below, and I’m trying to distract myself, and to to divert my energy somewhere else besides attending to pain.

Q1. So what the <bleep> happened anyway?!

A1. While doing a task at work involving moving a load of stuff somehow my bicep tendon became detached, and tore away completely, from the bone in my left arm. I can’t surmise how the interplay between the physical motion I made and the anatomical malfunction worked out for such a freakish thing to happen; it just did.

Q2. How was it all going in terms of pain when it happened?

A2. Surprisingly, when the incident initially happened, considering the nature of the injury, pain wasn’t a real issue. I felt a sharp snap in the crook of my arm, but whatever I sensed immediately after that didn’t register instantly as what I’d recognize as “pain”. I was probably going into shock as I was doing some self-assessing, and realizing what probably happened within the minutes after it occurred. I managed to drive myself to the hospital alone. It occurred at some time between 8:30 and 9:00 AM, and I didn’t get out of the hospital until sometime after 5:00 PM. The idiots back then gave me neither pain killers, nor a sling for my injured arm. Throughout the rest of that day, my pain rating on a scale from 1 to 10 ranked about a three. The morning after though, it was a different story.  

Q3. What course of treatment did you have?

A3. The treatment itself is a matter of simply reattaching the tendon with orthopaedic surgery, but the process was made complicated by the fact that: a.) I had to get a medication out of my system first before they could operate on me, and b.) I was fraught with several delays to get into an operation room, because I became a lower priority in terms of urgency status, and bumped a few times because the timing was such that I was put in triage with a mix of more serious accidents that required more immediate attention. During that time, a hematoma was forming in my arm, putting me in more risk and danger of serious things associated with clotting disorders, like more embolisms, heart attack/stroke, nerve damage, necrosis of tissues/gangrene, and death. Apparently, by the time I had surgery, after nearly a week since the incident, the hematoma that was taken out of me prior to the tendon reattachment was the size of a grapefruit. The procedure itself went well, according to the attending surgeon. I waited just a little over a week to get into surgery, and my recovery started really only four days ago.

Q4. Greatest impediments thus far?

A4. I lost even more range of motion since the surgery. I am not supposed to risk flexing my arm at all for a long time. My greatest challenges are washing and dressing. Amazingly, I’ve managed to find a trick to put in my contact lens. I can’t tie my shoe laces. I tried one afternoon; it took me twenty minutes for tying laces of just one shoe with one hand. The knots were too loose though, and they fell apart soon after. So, I’m dependant on sandals and slip-ons for a while. I’m lucky that I’ve cached away a lot of my leftovers as frozen food: that will make kitchen work easier and economical. It’s too much of a hassle to fumble around cooking right now. Walking the dog when I’m rendered this way is like trying to control a wild bull, but we’re figuring out ways to deal with it. I also can’t drive for the time being. It was a challenge to enter, exit, and steer my vehicle when I had a fuller range of motion just before surgery. Now, I need at least couple weeks of healing before I can do it safely. The rest of the time I’m sure will be a learning experience about new ways of dealing with pain, and trying not to be a victim of my own frustration and boredom with all these new limits placed upon me.

Q5. What are you thankful for?

A5. If I was destined to have such an injury, I’m thankful it was at the end of summer, and maybe I’ll get to heal up before the more severe part of winter arrives. I’m grateful it didn’t occur on my right arm, or else I’d be seriously screwed. I’m thankful for my brothers and mother for availing themselves to help me get some things tidied up, put in order, and made more accessable, and for giving me rides to appointments and doing errands while I’m forced to convalesce. Thanks to the people who helped out to walk the dog. Thanks for the get well wishes from all my other friends and family.

Pre-Surgery

I’m just barely awake this morning: pain, anxiety, and frustration kept me from getting any rest. I'm writing to distract myself from my thirst and hunger. I can’t just take the route of just eating breakfast and drinking coffee to make an effort to liven me up for the day. I’m supposed to be fasting, as I wait for a call to go back to the hospital. A complicated series of events that transpired since last Wednesday have left me in a less than an upbeat mood. I’ve been injured at work, the result being that my bicep tendon has been torn away completely, it least that’s the initial assessment that was made by an orthopedic surgeon. I waited eight hours there before I was sent back home, without even anything practical to use, like a sling, or pain-killers. I could have been in surgery the very day I arrived in the hospital on Wednesday, but things, of course, can never flow that easily. I have to be taken off other medications I use first before they can cut me open, or else I’d just bleed to death. I’ve been made to endure four days of pain, to allow for my blood chemistry to be readjusted, before they can admit me to reattach the connective tissue. In the meanwhile, I’ve been watching my arm swell up, and the skin around the injured area and the forearm sort of chameleonize to weird mottled shades of vermillion, blue, and purple. I was called on Sunday, told to get there for to prepare for surgery that morning. What ended up happening was an almost 10 hour wait in the emergency waiting room, only to be sent home again. It ended up that a couple of other accidents occurred while I was on my way to the hospital, and then as I waited there. The operating theatres became used for these emergencies, and my procedure got deprioritized, and eventually cancelled for the day. I ranted about it on a Facebook post, but I realize how senseless doing that all is. It’s mostly the pain talking. A friend commented that a silver lining has to be found here somewhere. I’m trying to find it.

I arrived home to find Ella very anxious, squeaky, and whiny. She either sensed how irritated and upset I was, or she was triggered by the tell-tale hospital stench that clung to my clothing after nearly 10 hours of waiting there. She has learned to associate that hospital smell with something bad. When my clothes were brought home, without me in them, from the last long stay at the hospital I had nearly two years ago, she went into melt-down panic mode. It was the longest that we’ve ever been separated from each other, and along with the hospital stench the clothes no doubt smelled with, they also stank with my own fear and angst tainted sweat, which made her upset. It has also been disappointing her for the past few days that I’m not allowing her to eagerly charge at me like a bullet to jump into my arms, and to sniff and kiss my face to greet me when I arrive home. She probably feels rejected. As much as I appreciate the welcome, I wouldn’t be able to stand the pain of the impact.

This morning, since 5:00 AM, still aggravated, all I could think of doing was tidying up the place as best as I could with only my right hand and arm, and a semi-useful left hand on an arm I can’t flex without pain. It wasn’t like I was doing anything too delicate or complicated: like threading needles or tinkering with engines. Tasks like changing razors, stocking my shelves, filling the fridge with frozen leftovers, throwing out garbage, folding laundry, and changing fitted bedsheets was enough of a challenge with just one hand and a quarter hand/arm capacity to use. I thought silly things like this stuff should be done before my arm gets put in some cast, and rendered even more immobile and useless.

So, where is the silver lining in all of this? I suppose if I was ignorant about how useful my left hand really was, I’m certainly not anymore. I’ve had a lot of time given to me watching people getting carted in the emergency ward who are in worse shape than I’m in. Something to remind me that my days could be a lot worse. I have that going on everyday for me at work really, but somehow one has to tune it out to keep oneself functional and sane. It sounds selfish, but it’s really a defense mechanism, especially now for the last while as my duties changed over to doing something more analytical. It struck me two entries ago, about how I said how important it was to keep strong and fit if one wants to do well with living in singlehood. I don’t exactly have that going on anymore; having a fraction of my physical capacity now. I’ve been forced to reach out to people I like and trust to ask for help with things: I’m terrible at doing that sort of thing.

I’m not posting this to any of the social media links I’m on. If people really care to know this personal stuff, they’ll trouble themselves to find this entry themselves. I was told that there is a regularly small risk of heart attack, stroke, or death during an operation. Given that I have some precursors that elevate my risks for those things somewhat, I’ll just say that to those who are dear to me, I’ll be thinking of all of you before they put me under. Thank you for being part of my life. I hope things don’t be going from bad to worse, but if they do, I’m going to be taking my memories of you with me.

They'll hopefully calling me soon, time to wrap up and get ready to go. I hope the next few weeks of healing from all this won’t be too hassle-laden and turbulent.

Fermented Spicy Corn Relish

I was just busy trying to be dutiful: clearing some stuff out of the fridge and processing it as best as I can, since I probably wouldn’t be able to do so later in the week ahead, due to some period of infirmity after a surgery. It’s a long story I’d rather not relate here, but currently, I’m impaired with only being able to use one arm soundly, so household chores have been light. I’m just doing half the prep work, and letting microbes do the rest. I’m letting them be my replacement left hand.

I spotted an interesting recipe for corn relish: totally weird and kind of exotic sounding stuff - I like that! However, as pain is already fatiguing me enough to dissuade me from running out for shopping trips, I restricted myself to just using stuff that is already here, thus inventing my own version of it. Perhaps it is a crazily contrived medley: being spawned from the product of both a lack of sleep, and the influence of pain medication. I tried to keep it simple. Be thankful though if you do want to copy and try it for yourself, as it is very rare that I record quantities and proportions when I improvise in the kitchen.

Ingredients

4             Large cobs of Fresh Corn (Maize)

1             Small Onion, finely chopped

½             Cup of Celery, finely minced (include the leaf bits if you want)

1              Teaspoon of Cumin Seeds

2              Tablespoons of Chili Pepper Flakes

2             Tablespoons of Course Kosher Salt

1             Tablespoon of White Sugar

Procedure

1. Use a quart or litre size canning jar that can be fitted with a lid with an airlock fixture. Scald the jar to sterilize it by filling it with boiling water. If possible, turn the airlock fixture upside down, and immerse it in the water of the jar. Leave it this way until you are ready to fill it with the relish mix.

2. Cut away the corn from the cobs into a mixing bowl, add in the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly.

3. Using a heavy clean implement to crush the mixture to release the liquids in the kernels. Crush it enough to make the consistency look like kind of a very thick mushy porridge. I used a large wooden pestle, but I assume the top part of a meat tenderizer hammer could be used, or else a clean, unopened, tin of soup would work too. Don’t be tempted to use a spoon to taste the mix, and then putting the same spoon back in the bowl of contents. Not only is that just plain gross; you risk contaminating your batch and end up getting something quite different as a result, perhaps like something brewing closer to chicha*.

4. Empty the water from the jar, and begin spooning in the corn mixture and packing it in the jar, tamping it down often to get rid of any air spaces. Fill the jar tightly until the contents are level and are at about 2 cm below the jar opening.

5. Cover the compressed level surface of with 1 cm of boiled water; pour it in slowly. Made sure the sealing surface edge of the jar is absolutely clean and free of residue and debris, place the airlock fitted lid on the jar, and screw it on tightly. Fill the airlock to the halfway level with boiled water.

6. Put the jar in a warm place in the kitchen and allow it ferment for 2 to 3 days. After that, replace the airlock with a fitted lid and store it in the fridge, or divide it into smaller jars and can it via boiling water immersion, or using a pressure cooker.

I would guess that this would be the kind of condiment to be used with burgers, or a grilled chorizo sausage on a bun, or for Tex-Mex cooking, or as something to roll into a burrito, or to blend into a dip. Maybe going into a trance involving more pain-killers will lead to more ideas for uses for it.

*- Here is some interesting, yet useless, fermentation information for you . . . Chicha is a type of maize beer that was made by the ancient Incans, and other Meso-American indigenous cultures. An integral step of the mashing process to make it involved the kernels of raw corn being chewed, spat out, and then collected, as enzymes in human saliva help break down the complex starches in corn into simpler sugars to enable it to be fermented into an alcoholic beverage. I shared this fact once at that right moment while someone was sipping their beer, only to watch it spew out their mouth and nose as they gagged at the thought of this. That alone was pure entertainment right there. Who says history and science can’t be fun?

Hacking Pickling

As I mentioned in my last entry, this weekend was going to be the one where I’d be experimenting

I made pickled eggs too.

Can't waste the lovely dill.

with making my own lacto-fermented pickles. Before I get into explaining the crazy ideas I’ve had to accommodate for this endeavor, I should speak about how my first trial at it last year. It was the trial where I was stifled from a few errors, but I was still able to salvage some good results. The problem wasn’t in the recipe I fashioned for the experiment; it was a problem with the structural form of my pickling vessel. It all amounted to the ability to keep things submerged: any matter that you are trying to pickle and preserve by fermenting absolutely has to stay below the surface of the liquid brine. Otherwise, the risk of contamination by mold is very certain, which will turn the exposed cucumbers into a gross gooey gray mush. This happened to me last year with a few of them. Those that were inflicted by this problem had to be carefully removed and discarded immediately. The ones in the middle of the solution were still green and kept their form, but lacking in crispiness. According to my research sources, they were still edible. To be resourceful, I took these soft ones and ran them through a meat grinder to simply make a tasty relish* (waste not, want not). The ones on the bottom of the fermenter were solid and of good quality. I made another batch of sterile brine though for keeping them preserved in the jars, to avoid another risk of mold contamination by using their native solution.

If the walls of the vessel were straight, like that of a traditional European or North American ceramic crock, the matter could be easily solved by just fitting a weighted ceramic plate over the mass to keep everything below liquid level. Although there is a useful airlock system in my particular crock’s traditional Asian design, it was still not enough to prevent spoilage. The curved sides coming to a narrowed opening on top of it make it difficult to insert anything inside to keep the cucumbers (which really like to float) under the brine. Trying to tightly pack and layer the contents, and interweaving sprigs of dill to sort of bind stuff together didn’t help at all either. Solving this problem needed an innovative solution. Time to doing some hacking for this year’s pickle project . . .


Objective: With using just the minimal of materials around my home, to somehow make a liquid permeable barrier, that can be flexible enough to be inserted through the narrow opening of my crock jar, but yet can be rigid enough, and can adjust and expand across the surface, to hold down contents, and to prevent stuff from floating up and breaking the surface of the brine. The materials cannot include, or contain, reactive metals that can oxidize: which might impart rust/metallic flavours in the batch, or might even make it toxic. I’m restricted to using ceramics, glass, non-metallic earthenware, wood, or food-grade plastic. Taking a coffee break to think on it now . . .

Eureka! After dreaming and digging around, I found my tools and materials. They are:

• A bamboo sushi rolling mat (a bit of a sacrifice, but they are cheap, and I could use a new one anyway)
• Chopsticks (natural wood; no paint, varnishes, or other finishes)
• A round Pyrex casserole dish lid
• A marker
• Pruning shears (with flat jaw)
• Glass beads (at least a kilogram in weight)
• A food grade plastic Ziploc bag

My Hack for Making a Liquid Permeable Fermenter Barrier

The bamboo sushi mat is flexible enough to be inserted inside the jar, but for it to lie flat in there, and to prevent one’s pickles from probing through gaps, it must be made circular. The procedure to do this is as thus:

1. Roll out the sushi mat flat, and place an edged form that occupies the greatest circular areas positioned from the centre of the mat. I found a casserole dish lid, which worked well because it didn’t stain with marker ink.

2. Trace the marker around the edge of the circle to mark where to trim off the superfluous lengths of the bamboo rods of the mat.

3. Use the pruning shears to cut away the corners of the bamboo mat. Be sure not to cut through the binding chord/string running along the middle of the mat. Keep the extra string trimmed from the mat when cutting away the corners.

4. Take pieces of the trimmed string, and poke them through the spaces between the bamboo rods, making certain that they wrap around the middle binding chord on both distal ends of the mat, and one in the centre along the same axis.

5. Trim the chopstick such that it extends across the full length across the middle of the mat, perpendicular to the bamboo rods, leaving enough length for it to extend slightly at each end. Tie the chopstick to the mat with the pieces of trimmed string inserted through the points in the mat mentioned previously. This will make the surface rigid once it is put in the fermenting jar.

6. Sterilize the glass beads by boiling them in water. Drain them, and then place them in the food grade plastic bag. This will be used as weight to place and distribute across the bamboo barrier once it covers the contents. Just before placing this bag of glass beads on top of the modified sushi mat in the fermenter, set it in a colander in a sink and pour boiling water around it to get it as sterile as possible.

There are a few recipes out there for making one’s own homemade fermented pickles. I’m not sharing mine, as I don’t know if mine will turn out yet to be worth sharing. But from all that I read and accumulated in knowledge, I will add a few tips as to what I did with mine, which is supposed to make (at least in theory) nice firm pickles (and no . . . adding Viagra in the fermenter is not one of them!).

1. Begin pickling the cucumbers as soon as possible after they’ve been picked (easier said than done) – I made a mad rush to get to the Farmers' Market as early as I could to get my produce while it was still fresh.

2. Plunge them in ice water before processing them – allegedly this is somehow beneficial to get crisper pickles. I presume it slows down the effect of the enzyme activity in them that can possibly soften them, see next point.

3. Get rid of the blossom end of the cucumbers – while scrubbing and inspecting each of the cukes for defects (don’t use any blemished ones), I take and pare away the blossom end of the cucumbers. Not only does it facilitate the brine to permeate the cucumbers more easily, but the blossom end is full of enzymes that soften the fruit body of the cucumber once it’s taken off the vine. Just lightly paring away the skin from the tip should work; you don’t have to get crazy and peel away so much that it looks like you are giving the thing a circumcision. If you aren’t sure which end is the blossom and which is the stem end, just be safe and trim both ends the same way.

4. Cherry leaves – I “borrowed” mine from a neighbour’s tree, whose branches were sticking out into the alley. Cherry leaves are full of botanical tannins that work like a more natural form of alum, a more refined chemical used in pickling used for making crisper pickles. Leaves of other plants, like grape, oak, and horseradish, apparently work too.

My spices and salt mixed together, plus garlic, cherry leaves,

and most importantly, lots and lots of dill . . .

The Process

1. Boil a large pot of water and then allow it to cool to a temperature that won’t scald anything, but remains warm enough that will allow it to dissolve course salt, and can allow infusion and release the aromatics of the pickling spice blend, garlic, dill, and also releases the tannins from the cherry leaves. It will also purify the water, boiling off any residual chlorine, which makes for better brewing project results.

2. Weigh out the salt** and blend pickling spice mix. I like salty and sour pickles, so a 9 - 10% weight of course salt of the total mass of cucumbers should work.

3. Soak cucumbers in ice water, scrub them and remove the blossom ends (as mentioned above), throw aside any with any blemishes, mushiness, or signs of insect activity.

4. Place the cucumbers in the fermenter in layers, alternating with dill, garlic and sprinkling salt and spices between each layer. Don’t allow the contents to pile up! Make sure that the surface is spread level. The final layer of cucumbers should have no pieces of stems from the dill or cucumbers poking above the even surface. Top the last layer with any remaining salt and spices.

5. Place permeable barrier on top of the contents, and secure the crossing piece of chopstick to secure the barrier in a rigid form. Place the sterilized bag of glass beads on top of the barrier, and spread the glass beads evenly on the top of the surface.

Seems to fit very nicely . . .

6. Slowly pour in the warm water from the pot into the fermenter until it reaches above the bag of glass beads***. No cucumbers should be exposed at all.

7. Put the cover on the fermenter, and add water around the lid, creating an airlock. Gases from the lactobacillus bacteria that are metabolizing sugars and fibre can then escape, while (hopefully) no foreign and harmful strains of microbes will be able to enter and contaminate the batch.

I expect some burbling and burping

sometime tonight.

From there onward, it is just a waiting game involving monitoring, assuring that things haven’t shifted, and the removing any weird looking scum that looks like it doesn’t belong there.

*- This relish + mayonnaise + minced onion + ground black pepper + salt to taste = Awesome homemade Tartar Sauce.

**- Shame on you if you don’t have a kitchen scale, and yet still want to brew things! What the hell kind of chef/brewer/fermento are you?! If your kitchen doesn’t have a scale, I guess you don’t want to be a good one. OK, I’ll be kind this one time and give you a hint: 1 cup of course salt weighs about 250 grams. Shame on you again if you’re still stuck in the Stone Age, and not using the metric system like a scientific mind should, and 98% of the globe already does. I draw the line here, and I’ll just let you figure out the conversions yourself.

***- I suppose you are wondering why I have a bunch of glass beads in my kitchen. Remember Aesop’s fable about the crow that was dying of thirst, who found a pitcher, but the water in it was too low for him to be able to drink from it? So he added pebbles in it bit by bit to raise the water level. Same principle applies here: fluid displacement. In brewing, some recipes leave behind a lot of sediment, which cuts down the volume when the beer is transferred to a carboy. The air space and extra surface area from the diminished volume can risk spoilage of the beer. One can top up the volume with water, but that of course dilutes it, and no one wants that! So instead, dropping in sterilized glass beads into the carboy raises the level and shrinks surface area and space between the airlock without diluting it. That’s what this old crow has learned anyway.

B.Y.O.B. Week

I’ve been slopping down this entry in a piecemeal fashion, during each little break I’ve had between all my other busywork, and while I try to get some sun to transition my skin over to something else than a Siamese cat appearence¹. My August stretch of summer holidays, once again, is pretty much dedicated to home economics projects. The original “Bring Your Own Bottle” meaning is a suitable and appropriate definition for the use of the acronym around here during my free time in the afternoons², but I’ve extended it to also mean “Be Your Own Baba”: to be resourcefully frugal and efficient; to be focused with making the most with the least in the kitchen, and other areas of my dwelling, like some old Ukrainian grandmother would, as I’m sure mine did. It all started off during the month of August, in the year that I took possession of this property. Ever since then, either by strange coincidence or by some natural cycle, when early or mid August comes, it has sort of turned into an annual tradition for me to take a more serious interest of learning to do the best I can with improving my home life, and involve myself with fix-ups and various DIY projects, as I did when I first claimed this place, flipping it around to suit my standards of comfort. It also coincides and flows into garden harvest and canning season. So, I capitalize on using my time for that too. Whatever is done around here, I try to make all these little projects synergistic and interconnected: elements of one flowing into the form or function of another, to make something greater, like some sort of private little ecosystem. I’ve been happily and consciously getting reacquainted with my music collection again, playing it loudly and liberally as I get into the flow of doing my stuff around here: something else I don’t get to do at work. Included in this write up are samples from my playlists. Here are a few other ways B.Y.O.B. can be termed and used around here during this time of the year. Some things here are old tricks and hacks I often deploy; others are new little twists that I’m experimenting with that I thought were worth sharing:

1.       Be Your Own Bourne – Like Jason Bourne in the movies (I just saw the latest sequel in the theatre . . . so awesome!), the thing I’ll be doing is casting off my work identity; to be the independent loner who is an apt evader of malicious forces, and an on-the-spot improviser, who is on a mission to reclaim something that belongs to him: his own true self. Except when I do it, I’ll hopefully have none of the gunfire, car chases, or explosions. The thing I have to keep bringing to mind is that I’m not at work. For at least a little while, I’m not on some drive for using at least a full third of each of my days to solve other people’s problems. I get to devote my energy to working on my own. Thus, I have eliminated a lot of things that put me in a more negative mindset for complaint, which serves to do nothing for betterment. I don’t have to listen to it from others; I don’t have a reason to do it myself. Belay Your Obnoxious Bitching is perhaps another element that can be a part of all this. This is an important thing to do in freeing one’s mind to exercise any creativity, or to move toward improvements. When there is no one around to judge or criticize, and if failures happen during any of my experiments, or disappointments from my expenditures and exploits, I’ve only then set up a new platform for learning. Be Your Own Boss is suitable to use here too. (Best Activity Song {as I write this}: Find (Andy Moor Remix), by Ridgewalkers, mixed by Armin Van Buuren).

2.       Balance Your Own Budget – it seems like a contrary maneuver to satisfy the part about avoiding complaining and conflict, but it’s a necessary evil/challenge. Taking a good hard glimpse at what’s working well, and the reality of where one could be doing better with managing expenses, is crucial if one wants to make the necessary corrections to change things for the better. A holiday meant to relax, yet spent plunging into the red, ultimately isn’t a relaxing holiday. Be smart, and set things up to work within your means. It’s another reason why I opted for home economics projects. (Best Activity Song: Money, by Pink Floyd)

3.       Barter Your Old Books – I’ve been liberating my old stock of literature for someone else to enjoy, and trading these books at the city’s best used book store, Westgate Books, to get store credit to put something new and interesting on my shelves. As tempting as it was to collect silly, but fitting, ones with titles like I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, I took home something a little more poignant. The one I selected that I heard good things about is The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion. From the first page onward, I’ve been sort of freaked out about how much the story’s scientist narrator tends to think like I do, like I could have written much of what he said, thus it has been hard for me to put it down. Reducing clutter, freeing space, and welcoming new ideas all at the same time was the result. However, I couldn’t find any instruction manuals that I would find beneficial for my other chosen activities (see point 13). (Best Activity Song: nothing, I prefer to read in peace without distractions, but Lonely Boy, by The Black Keys would seem appropriate for this book I’m reading, either that or The Scientist, by Coldplay)

4.       Bench Your Own Bodyweight – that is, I need to start reclaiming some of the former magnitude of strength that I used to have. At least doing more things like more push ups. It’s not a vanity thing. Being alone and single necessitates one to be physically strong and fit for all kinds of motion, i.e. keeping your strength and flexibility means keeping your independence. No one is around to help pick me up when I fall down, no one else is there to help me move furniture, or other junk. It’s simply a fact that I have to be strong enough to do these things myself, and I can’t let myself weaken anymore. If I’m walking alone at night through a dodgy place or instance of time³, like I often have to, I’d want to be strong enough to be able to throw off an aggressor who is as big as I am should there be a time if I ever get attacked. That last example is a little extreme, but that kind of power is always something good thing to have in the toolbox that is one’s own body strength. It’s a shame to notice though that I have to dream up of negative scenarios to motivate me to exercise more. (Best Activity Song: B.Y.O.B., by System of a Down)

5.       Befriend Your Old Bicycle – To get active and sort of explore at the same time. Twenty to thirty clicks in a day a few times this week should be sufficient enough exercise that won’t ruin me for the rest of each day after. Depending on the terrain, that equates to about six to eight kilometres of running, except with a lot less stress on my joints.  I notice that there are many new trails that I haven’t tried yet through and around this town. My plan is to explore more territory along the unknown sections of trails that I’ve somehow ignored. (Best Activity Song: Ride (Tiësto Remix), Cary Brothers)

6.       Break Your Old Barriers – New places, new activities, new roles, maybe a chance to meet new people: all necessary to see and try. I’m ashamed to say that given all the time that I’ve lived here, there is still a lot I haven’t done or places that I’ve bothered to check out here locally. (Best Activity Song: This Must Be the Place, by The Talking Heads)

7.       Bacteria, Yeast, and Other Botanicals – As previous entries of other years can attest, the only real cultural events that are happening here that I’m involved with throughout this week of August are the ferments taking place in my crockpot and carboys. Added to whatever I’ll be brewing in them will be fresh living herbs and botanicals for unique flavourings. I’ve also been thinking about experimenting with infusions and flavouring my own gin. The fermentation cycles will be exploited thusly like last year’s experiment: once the primary fermentation of the beer is done, the remaining living yeast in the trub is used to make bread dough, the extra bread goes to making kvass, the kvass culture goes to priming the brine to make fermented pickles. Therein is the synergy. (Best Activity Song: I don’t know what microbes like to hear, but if it helps them reproduce better, I should play them some Barry White to help get them in the mood. Kind of a ridiculous notion though, since in truth they multiply by asexual reproduction (cloning themselves). For them clubbing it though, I’d recommend Piledriver (Grayed Out Summer Mix), by Ameobassassin).

8.       Build Your Own Brewery – Along with Brewing Your Own Beer. I thought I could improve on the technical aspect of things regarding brewing ale (the easier option, since making true lager or pilsner requires a converted refrigerator), and to try to re-experiment with all-grain mash brewing. To stage things for all-grain brewing in this place, I’ll need some modifications for the different space constraints and environment here. The last time I did all-mash, many years ago, it took almost a full 18 hours straight from the mashing process, to sparging, to boiling/hopping, to cooling the wort, to pitching the yeast, and the long messy clean up with the jury-rigged system I had back then. But, it was honestly the best damn beer I ever made, and the fact that I reduced the cost of producing it to around seven cents per 341 mL bottle was a feather in my hat too. I doubt if I’ll ever get to make it that cheap ever again: considering inflation, and a big investment needed for the proper doodads, and gizmos. Trips to places like Peavey Mart, Princess Auto, Canadian Tire, Cabella’s, and Co-op Do It Centre were made to hunt for parts for engineering and crafting something for better thermostatic control, a counter flow chilling unit, creative moulding of food grade plastics for some sort of sparging appliance, and outfitting a propane burner unit that won’t torch the balcony area of my place, since my little stove would be quite inadequate for the volumes that I need to work with. That, plus there is no flippin’ way I’m going to be adding the heat of 18 hours of steam and stove use in my place when it’s going to hover around 30 degrees with the humidex outside for the week I’m off. However, I had no luck at all in finding the right stuff. It was fruitless; an exercise in futility. The time I wasted had to be regained with finding a kit that’s even more simplified than my regular brewing methods. It just seems wrong that the only input of preparation energy and ingredients for this time around was about 4 litres boiling water, plus the addition of whatever volume of cool water to reach my target gravity; but I hope the results will be within the same parameters, or possibly even better. That’s for the treatment of the Y(east) part in point 7. (Best activity song: Y Control, by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

9.       Blend Your Own Butter(s) – More uses with the botanicals part mentioned in point 7.  Crafting my own herbed and seasoned butters is a trick I learned to amp up the game in the kitchen. Locking in the botanical flavours in butter fat, and then freezing it, is a way to conserve that “fresh” flavour of them longer; as opposed to just being limited to using them in their dried state as the other alternative. It’s damn easy to do: just mix them in room temperature butter, form it, wrap it, and then refrigerate/freeze it. It makes it speedy to transform something from ordinary to something decadent, and adds other interesting dimensions of flavour to meat, vegetables and sauces. When I get a couple of extra pounds of butter (when it’s on special), I also get my hands on some fresh herbs, usually at this time of the year when the Farmers Market has a good, locally-sourced, seasonal variety in stock. (Best Activity Song: Spread The Love – Chuck Love) This time, I made five kinds of herbal butter, yielding about 230 grams for each one. They are:

a.       Sorrel and Crushed White Peppercorn – The lemony flavour of the sorrel is good with chicken, fish, grilled seafood, and vegetables like asparagus. I made an alternative sauce for Hollandaise, using this instead, when I didn’t quite have the right stuff when I was craving Eggs Benedict. It turned out OK.

b.       Dill – For putting on salmon fillets in a pinch, or shrimp, or lighter meats like chicken, or stirred into cooked carrots or beets, or a nice generous knob of it goes well with on top of mashed/baked potatoes when I’m in the mood for them. It can also be spread on hot toast to make an amazing tuna sandwich.

c.       Thyme – If there is no barbeque sauce (as I rarely buy it because steak eating occasions are becoming seldom), I simply grill a steak to my preferred doneness with just some salt and pepper, and then add some of this with some crushed and chopped garlic in it immediately once the steak is taken off the flame. Nothing more elemental or complicated than that; yet it’s so delicious. You actually get to appreciate good beef this way. It can be used a little more sparingly with lean pork or chicken, or for making a brown sauce. I couldn’t guess as to what sort of vegetables it might go well with, but I’m going to stir-fry matchstick cut parsnips and celery, and adding a little fresh garlic, and salt and pepper with it to see what happens.

d.       Basil – This stuff makes a cob of corn super yummy when you tuck some under the ears of a soaked cob, and then throw it on the barbeque grill. Also good with stirring into finished pasta, or making a white sauce for it.

e.       Mint – This one is new for me. I dared myself to make this specifically to use

with all this lamb meat I have left in my freezer, using it the same way I use thyme butter for steak. It wasn’t too bad!⁴ I’m guessing that it would mix in well with cooked green peas too, or other vegetables with a higher sugar content, like carrots or beets, or sauté zucchini in it. If you were wondering what I did with the rest of the big bunch of mint I had left, you’d be right if you guessed that I made a few Mojitos. Waste not, want not.

10.   Brew Your Own Batches – of sauerkraut and pickles. It involves the first B of

point 7: bacteria. May they find their jubilation and celebration with their procreation and propagation in the new creation of my fermentation station (Yep . . . I think those Mojitos are kicking in right now). This season’s attempt at brewing my lovely, five-kilogram, mass of smelly cabbage involves a 7% weight of course salt to shredded cabbage ratio, plus an addition of about a teaspoon of caraway seeds for an extra little zing. Making lacto-fermented pickles comes next week after this experiment after the series of other steps I mentioned above. (Best Activity Song: Strange Brew, by Cream)

11.   Boil Your Own Broth – I was blessed with enough time to devote to making authentic Vietnamese Phở Broth with my extra botanicals. I needed six hours to make it, but it was well worth the effort. Homemade Chicken Stock was made too. Getting all the flavours out of marrow and bone is waste reduction and frugality at its best. (Best Activity Song: Feel It in My Bones (featuring Tegan and Sara) – DJ Tiësto)

12.   Better Your Own Bullshit – I mean reframing your mistakes, and making an effort to correct them, or to do something better with them. I don’t mean being a better liar; I’m not a proponent of that. Mistakes can, and will, happen in my kitchen all the time; especially if I’m trying to do a hundred things at once. The only real mistake I find unforgivable in a kitchen is needless wastage, all other mishaps are fertile ground for experimentation. For example, I had the noble ambition to make some jam out of the gift of some raspberries that were given to me by my Mom. (Best Activity Song: Jammin’, by Bob Marley) However, I misread a recipe and underused the quantity of pectin I needed, but it was too late to add more, as I already canned it.

My Blueberry Jam.

No mistakes there. 

It's an obviously possible botch up if it doesn’t set right. If that happens, I instead will have made raspberry sauce, or raspberry syrup. Better yet, let’s call it raspberry coulis: because if you have something called coulis on a plate served in an upscale restaurant, it automatically seems to make that dish at least twenty percent more expensive than something with just plain old sauce on it. Redefining and repurposing a fouled result is redemption, and thus isn’t a mistake anymore. It leads one to really wonder about these so-called upcoming innovative and genius chefs. Are they really so, or were they just really incompetent at fixing up a dish according to orthodox methods and recipes, and to avoid being fired, they did something radical with food to hide or distract from their blunders, and then give it some pretentious name to feign ingenuity? Most mistakes in the kitchen are bullshit, and you can easily recover and make even better with them if you are cagey enough. Bob Ross, that instructional artist with the crazy big permed afro on the PBS stations, with his Zen-like calm and stoned-to-the-bones-sounding voice, said of painting, “There are no mistakes; just happy accidents.” The same also applies in kitchen work, although the likes of Gordon Ramsey would have you thinking otherwise. Speaking of Bob Ross, and his effed-up afro, I now shift to the subject of indulging in visual arts . . .

Trial started.

The base form is laid out,

I need to let the first layer

dry before I can add

details to her face.

My model is rather

uncooperative.    

13.   Better Yourself at Oils and Brushstrokes – I must say that this is the most challenging of all the exercises that I’ve done so far. When day 5 of staycation (Wednesday) came, I hit the wall with doing kitchen projects, and it was raining all day. I was so restless and irritated for some reason; feeling cheated out of a sunny day to enjoy on top of it. While cleaning out my office closet, I found an easel that was collecting dust. I bought it about five years ago, and used it maybe once. Being in DIY and home décor improvement mode, I was already probing through shops earlier in the week, looking at paintings and pictures to see what I could use to cover some of my naked wall space. So, then came the notion to trying to make some kind of art. I really do envy people who have such talent. I wish the people who I know who have it could just easily avail themselves to come here, so I can learn and feed off their creative energies while I watch them work on such projects. I don’t know what it was, but as I set up this easel, a cloud of hesitance came over me. Overthinking it, as I typically do. I’m sure there is a more complicated psychological term for it. The “happy accidents” idea just didn’t sink in. I somehow was getting an anxiety of putting myself in a spot of expressing myself visually, scared of facing the fact that this is something that I completely lack talent in. A performance anxiety when there was only me to perform for. It did help me realize exactly what kind of visual forms I find satisfying and impressive. I like things and forms with geometrical precision. Anyone who has tried to read my dreadful handwriting would agree that I certainly don’t have the ability to mimic that technical skill. I set up a blank white canvas, just staring at it for a long while, becoming more self-conscious that I would just sully this thing in some weird way. I thought that if I just projectile vomited on this thing it might be more aesthetically pleasing than anything my clumsy hands, driven by my undisciplined mind, could ever produce. Bob Ross made it look so bloody easy, and I could watch that bugger paint all day and be amazed, but it’s the complete opposite for myself once I have a brush in my hand. I freeze with indecision. I then went to the local Michaels art supply store, hoping to find either some sort of aid or inspiration. I found neither. I just found more stuff that overwhelmed and intimidated me from the idea of painting. I then had to ask myself, “What made me buy the easel in the first place, and what real pleasure did I really get from it before?” The answer was not in the easel, but rather the palette that came with it. What I really enjoyed was just mixing and matching the colours, curious to see what tones I’d get, and finding out what shades went well together. From there, I thought I’d take another step backwards to start with something a little more basic involving colour. I spotted one of those adult colouring books – thinking it would serve to guide me for what to put on canvas later. It was a book of mandalas: the circular symbols in eastern religions that have geometric precision, which I like. That’s when I went through what I would call a dreadful sense of embarrassing regression – knowing that days before this, I was doing this very mature and masculine thing of fervently hunting for fixtures, components, and chemicals for building something technically sophisticated and scientifically systematic for crafting stuff for adult enjoyment. Now, I’ve been reduced to practicing something that four-year old kids do. There was a whole lot of shattered ego crashing down there and then. But keeping precept number 6 on this list in mind, I forced myself to buy it anyway. I remember feeling so very weirdly sheepish as I brought this thing to the till: kind of trying not make eye contact with the cashier, like I was standing there trying to buy the most depraved and raunchiest form of pornography that can just barely be legally sold. I guess that’s how estranged I’ve become from my “inner child”. Using that book and some pencil crayons at home though really did make me a whole lot calmer. Actually, it was the most relaxed I’ve been since . . . well, I can’t remember when. It’s a good way to remind myself that I don’t always have to be purposeful or “productive”. I use and justify playing around with language learning apps, and I buy math and logic puzzle books of the Mensa standard for “edutainment”, rationalizing that these are to help keep my wiring for analytical and logic skills in shape, so I’m less likely to lose my marbles later in life from dementia as I get older. I forget that the other hemisphere of the stuff between my ears needs a good workout too with the right stimuli. That trip to Michaels that day was probably my salvation for keeping me away from the only sort of “addiction” that I probably do use impulsively for handling my restlessness and angst: buying technology. Kind of weird too, since I can’t seem to take that a sense of wonder and playful curiosity I have for figuring out technology, and apply it to using it artistically. Given the day that I was having, without that trip to Michaels to get an $8.00 colouring book, I could have easily walked a few steps further to Best Buy, dragging away another TV, or a computer, or whatever other kind of console, gizmo, or accessory that costs hundreds of dollars, kind of blowing point 2 up in smoke. Mixing my oils, and applying brush to canvas is coming up, but right now I’m happy to be involved in just being present with filling in colours in this book, as I enjoy a refreshment and listen to tunes. So . . . yay for me, I suppose I was successful at discovering a new hobby, even though it is seemingly “non-adult”. At least it doesn’t add to my current frustrations. More people should learn to be content in retreating into doing something so childishly simple⁵. (Best Activity Song: Any Colour You Like – Pink Floyd).

14.   Better Your Output on Blogger – So, to sum up, for this week off leisure-wise, I’ve been doing OK as an amateur chef, a bookkeeper, a brewer, a beer sampler(guzzler), a puzzle solver, a bookshelf reductionist, a recreational cyclist, a fermentation biochemist, a food preservationist, a kitchen ecologist, a Mojito mixologist, and most recently, a page colouration specialist (well, not so much a specialist, but a budding enthusiast). Now, I’m back to immersing myself in the role of humour essayist. Sure, it’s not exactly like being a true renaissance man, nor was this all as exciting as traveling somewhere new and special, but I haven’t been wasting time just parked in front of a TV frittering away these fine summer days either. As much as I’m flagellating myself for not having better artistic ability, I’m also grounding myself in the fact that not everyone out there is skilled or daring enough to write their own blog. Reading a lot will make you smarter; making an effort to express yourself better in writing will help keep you that way - or at least I hope that’s true. Being able to chronicle something or tell a story, be it frivolous or poignant, either with factual accuracy or for entertainment, doing so with a voice that’s truly all your own is an alright asset to have and improve upon too. These words are for those who I wish I could have had here to make all this going on more of a party during my time off. They are spread out all across the province, the country, and the continent. I miss them dearly. Putting all these BYOB exercises into words is my last exercise.

A Random List of Another Few Songs from My Collection I Enjoyed Chilling to as I Wrote All This (multiple decades; multiple genres):

·         Home – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

·         We Used to Be Friends – The Dandy Warhols

·         Juliette – Hollerado

·         Dirty Paws – Of Monsters and Men

·         Airscape – Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians

·         At First Sight – The Stems

·         Our Love – Editors

·         Dirt – Phish

·         No Never Mind Blues – David Deacon

·         Poor Boy Blues – Jazz Gillum

·         Mannish Boy – Muddy Waters

·         Hoochie Coochie­ Man – Eric Clapton

·         Wishing (If I Had A Photograph of You)­ – A Flock of Seagulls

·         Fine Without You – Armin Van Buuren

·         Prayer for Rain – The Cure

·         Pictures of You – The Cure

·         Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division

·         Four Play – Fred Wesley & the Horny Horns

·         Limelight – Rush

·         La Villa Strangiata - Rush

·         Red Rain ­– Peter Gabriel

·         Kashmir – Led Zeppelin

·         Bron-Y-Aur Stomp – Led Zeppelin

·         Spill The Wine – Eric Burdon & War

·         Just Like Honey – The Jesus & Mary Chain

·         More Than This – Roxy Music

·         7 Years – Lukas Graham

·         Bourée – Jethro Tull

·         A New Day Yesterday – Jethro Tull

·         The Only One I Know – The Charlatans

·         You Read - Eric Charles Band

·         Passenger – Iggy Pop

·         I’m Afraid of Americans – David Bowie

·         How Soon Is Now? – The Smiths

·         Tight Black Rubber – Black Francis

·         Hallucinations – The Raveonettes

·         Love In A Trashcan – The Raveonettes

·         Where Is My Mind? – The Pixies

·         I Wanna Be Adored – The Stone Roses

·         Fool’s Gold (Remastered) – The Stone Roses

·         Little Monster – Royal Blood

·         How to Disappear Completely - Radiohead

1 - Brianese to Canadian English translation: Siamese Cat complexion – when your face, lower legs, and forearms are quite darkly tanned, but the rest of your body is looking ghostly white in comparison.

2 - I have quite a few good, if not interesting, ideas that strike me while I’m in a mildly conspicuous, yet still lucid, state of inebriation.

3 - I specifically refer to the gang-scum festered traveling shit show that is the EX, and the plague of thefts, robberies, and assaults that spike in the surrounding neighbourhood when it’s here. It comes here next week . . . Blargh!!!

4 – Really meaning, it was rather awesome. My Canadian attitude shows itself in my writing a lot, including the sometimes annoying proclivity we have for being really understated.

5 – I know some of those who know me who may be reading this might be thinking I’m starting to slip some gears; the most critical of the ones I’m thinking of who are ready to jab a barbed opinion at me for doing this are themselves inked up in the most skank-ass tattoos you can think of. Oh, the hilarious irony . . . people turning themselves into colouring books ready to snicker and beak off at a guy who just had a moment of curiosity to pass the time with one. If you have a tattoo, you don’t get to judge.