If You’ll Indulge Me

Urine? You’re Out!

I have a few complaints that I would like to lodge with my body today, most of which have been plaguing me for the better part of the week. The foremost of these being peeing.

I don’t drink ‘enough’ water*. ‘Enough’ being the required 8 cups as recommended by water experts the world over. There are a few reasons (none of them good) for my lack of water drinking, one of them being frequent bathroom visits that are just really, really inconvenient. I’ve found that the more water I drink, the more I have to pee. Makes sense, right? Volume in equals volume out. What doesn’t make sense to me is the intensity and immediacy of need to pass water (as my grandmother would say). Excess water pees (or EWP) are sneaky, sadistic pees that will demand attention the minute they make themselves known, and I’ll go from not needing the loo to going to burst in roughly 12 seconds.

What I am finding unsettling for the last couple of days is that my number of bathroom visits has increased by quite a few more trips per day. But get this…My fluid intake has not been increased. What the eff, bladder, what the eff? Perhaps I am sleep drinking, like I sometimes do with chocolate, drinking litres of water while I am comatose. Very interesting. I will have to investigate this phenomenon.**

Crickles and the Back Spasm

I think that will be my new band name, if I ever start a band. Mmm, maybe RockBand name would be more accurate as my musical (dis)ability should only be forced on those that love me and not the public at large. My back has been aching for the better part of the week. Mostly in between my shoulder blades and, well, it’s just uncomfortable.

I suspect it has something to do with ‘Iron Hands’ Hug giving me a back rub over the weekend, during which he attempted to crush my breasts into the floor. I think that he’s had more experience massaging men, than women, so I’ll forgive him this time. But, honestly, if I had implants, I think they would have burst their saline seams.

The crickles are another (probably) after effect of the massage treatment. That or osteoporosis, but being an eternal optimist (HA!), I choose the back rub, ‘cause having brittle bones sucks hairy balls. The crickles aren’t too bad, actually. They just surprise when, for instance, I sit down heavily and feel that pop in my spine, which isn’t un-satisfying as such.

Kitchen Wonders

A couple of years ago, when I was a stay at home girlfriend, I was really, really bored and thought that I would try my hand at making pasta because I was hearing everywhere that it was SO!EASY! Despite my limited kitchen supplies, one crisp day when I was energised by possibilities, I made pasta. Or rather, tried to. Making the dough was pretty easy, if messy, but I ran into problems with the rolling. What I lacked in rolling pins, I more than made up in wine bottles and figured that a clean skin should do the job just fine (Resourceful!)! Except that I was afraid of pressing too hard on the bottle, in case it should shatter and turn a pasta experiment into a pasta nightmare***. So I rolled, and rolled (and rolled) for about an hour until I estimated that it was thin enough, cut it into strips and boiled it. Verdict: Pasta FAIL! It was so thick and doughy and chewy and weird that I wasn’t really interested in ever attempting homemade pasta again.

Until Sunday. I bought a pasta roller a million years ago, before I went traipsing around the world, and it's been with the mothership for roughly 5 years until I moved to Vancouver and the minx packed it in my belongings. Since then, it’s been sitting in the back of my cupboard, ever neglected and unused.

It was a joint effort between Hodge and myself, and after one false start, we made fresh, homemade linguini (or whatever). You know what? It was SO! EASY! I can’t wait to make it again, it was so delicious and EASY!

In fact, I shall bid you adieu and try again.

-Anna

*Just doing my part to save the world again!

**I have just foolishly googled urination, and there are 36 - 148 causes for frequent urination, up to and including diabetes and cancer. Fun.

***Blood in lieu of tomato sauce. How macabre and dinner of terror like! PS. Don’t drink the red wine!

Kitchenland Nightmares

I am, for the most part, completely useless in the kitchen.

Last week, I attempted a vegetarian stroganoff with tofu, and it was hideous. Disgusting, even. To be fair (to me) the recipes were ‘healthy’, which stroganoff isn’t, so much. So, what I created wasn’t really stroganoff, but it wasn’t really edible, either. Instead, it was a congealed mass of egg noodles, low fat yogurt and tofu with spices.

Again, to be fair (to me), it was the day of the flaming, intolerable tooth pain and, potentially, I suppose, could have coloured the dining experience. In any case, that recipe has been exiled to the never, ever again pile.

One area where I do tend to be proficient in the kitchen, however unlikely that might be, is baking things. I can usually turn out a decent cake or batch of cookies.

I typed a really self-righteous post glorifying my baking skills over the weekend, while I had a cake baking, and it turns out that it was slightly premature. The cake in question, a moist yellow cake, was fucking atrocious. Not due to the recipe, but the supposed baker.

Steps to baking fail:

1.Not having a mixer, stand or otherwise, of the electric variety, I had to use my body as such

2.Being lazy and not being bothered about actually spending 70 minutes creaming the butter and sugar

3.Not understanding the significance of having the rack in the right spot in the oven

4.Using the timer on the stove to time the baking properly.

The recipe called to cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes, then wrap it in cling film for the rest of the cooling time. Trying to wrap a still very warm and very crumbly cake is an impossible feat, as I found out. This is he area where I excelled: throwing mostly inedible cake all over the kitchen during cling film wrapping theatrics.

After giving a slice to my neighbor, the new official taster, we determined that the cake was really, really unusable and that I should, perhaps, destroy what was left of it. So I did, but with a tear in my eye, from the concrete-like shards that pierced my skin as it shattered in the bin.

This left the dilemma of needing to make another of the super moist (ha!) yellow cake for the birthday Hodge for tomorrow (now today - lazy posting).

I would like to state, for posterity, that creaming butter and sugar with a dinner fork is a wonderful way to ruin perfectly good shoulders. And fore arms. And wrists. But, it is done. I baked a perfectly edible cake that is very, very moist, though still quite crumbly - which seems unlikely, but is true none the less. And it is delicious, particularly when paired with the chocolate cake that turned out perfectly (the first time)!

However, because there certainly wasn’t enough cake failure in my recent past, I had to do a quick cover up when Hodge stopped by unexpectedly. The tea towel disguise bonded to the cake and they stuck together like glue. Only a minor disaster this time, and I’m still using the cake, cloth fibers be damned.

Beating well after each addition, AM