Wednesday, wherein we address the question, do retired people have Hump Days?

When I was a Working Woman, Wednesday was Hump Day (as in Over the ...) but as a Retired Person, it is just plain old Wednesday.  Well, that's not entirely true ... it is also the day I meet with my therapist. Maybe I should call it the Sacred Day for Seeking Sanity. The day will come when I no longer need to meet with my therapist, but that is also likely to be the day before my funeral, so you see how that works.

I am trying to gather myself together for our cruise on Sunday.  The important stuff: passports, boarding passes. comfortable shoes, one pair of pantyhose and a 2 pound bag of Hershey's milk chocolate nuggets. And books, library books that won't keep me awake like electronic books do when I read at night in bed.  So I visited the library today and damn near got lost in the stacks. I could spend hours checking out all the books.

There's been another shooting in San Bernadino, California. Twelve reported dead. Yes, the world has gone to hell one more time. That number has been increased to 14 dead and 17 wounded. The perpetrators are dead, and some questions will never be answered.

It is almost as if a mass insanity has gripped our country.  I realize that we all want to find somebody or something to blame, but damned if I can figure it out. All I know is that, anecdotally speaking, the events of September 11, 2001 did something to us that changed the US forever. Pushed us into an alternate dimension, perhaps.  I am certainly old enough to remember the civil disruptions that accompanied the Vietnam War, the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, the start of the Gulf Wars in 1990. Maybe our country has been going crazy for a very long time.  Total societal collapse.  Wasn't Armageddon supposed to occur around the turn of the century?  Maybe it already has.

My fibromyalgia has been attacking my sleep patterns these last few weeks. Insomnia, with pain followed by oversleeping, stealing most of my daylight hours. The only thing that is constant is the pain in my back. My cookie-baking, like my knitting and coloring, has been slowed down to a crawl.

I haven't even been good about getting you the recipes for the cookies I have managed to bake.  Here is the link for the Butter Cookies recipe, and let me reiterate that if you bake only one cookie in your entire lifetime, it should be this one.   The other recipes have been primarily from Camilla Saulsbury's cookie book, so at this point I am going to strongly recommend that you buy one or all of her cookie books.  They are well worth the small investment.

My plan for Thursday is to bake Pistachio Jam cookies, and that recipe comes from another wonderful book, named appropriately The Joy of Cookies, by Sharon Tyler Herbst. This appears to also be out-of-print, although available used on Amazon. Very well worth to hunt it down. Incidentally, I have purchased used cookbooks through Amazon on a number of occasions, and have never been disappointed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Tai Chi Tuesday

My head is not working real good this morning, and I am really hesitant to get out of bed because I sense the presence of Pain right there at arm's length. Fortunately my phone was close enough for me to call the oddly-named Decent Nails and make an appointment for a fill (acrylic, baby, acrylic) and a pedicure. Those acrylic nails are the only reason my arms are not more torn-up than they already look; when the insane itching attacks my scrambled nerve endings, I scratch with a vengeance which leaves me looking like the victim of a particularly ugly form of violence. Since I made the appointment, I have to get up and out. My nail tech doesn't make house calls, but then neither does my doctor.

I started taking Tai Chi class on November 14, which means, if I can count right, tonight will be my seventh class. Part of my study is to keep a diary of sorts regarding Tai Chi, and so far that has been the most difficult thing to do.  I have many thoughts about Tai Chi, but have not been able to commit them to writing. Perhaps it is because I am not yet familiar with the Chinese terms (having responded to Korean instructions for so many years) nor am I able to easily recall which exercises we have done because of my faulty memory. Right now everything is experiential, and I can at least describe how I feel during and after the exercises (which are not exercises at all): I can float. Not in the literal sense, of course, but through a feeling of lightness. I can't yet fully explain it, which is why it is proving difficult for me to keep the diary. I will tell you that it is relaxing, both in body and mind. Normally it is easy for me to write - and write and write - and as you probably guessed, writing is my preferred means of expression - but I am struggling with this.

Today is also the day Rob and I were supposed to see Emeril, but that got rescheduled till April.  The week is still going to be a good one - dinner with friends on Friday night (really good Mexican) and then with more friends on Saturday night (Morimoto's!) and then we sail on Sunday afternoon.

Today, though ... a fine pedicure, including a massage of my lower legs. Do other people feel pain? I do, although it is not unbearable and does help to relax them. My skin is impossibly thin on my arms and legs, so I bruise easily. Pain is everywhere, damn it.

I am thinking about checking out Fortuna Bakery and Cafe for lunch or snack or something, since it is a 30 second walk from the nail salon.

The Magic are playing the Timberwolves tonight. They have been playing so good, I'm afraid to say anything for fear of giving them a kinehora.

So here's the day's recap: my nails and toes have been painted Big Apple Red, and I am feeling quite festive. Fortuna Bakery and Cafe should be on your list of Places To Go To Eat; I had a spinach and cheese pastry and a tres leche and if I had a good excuse to be in that part of Orlando today, I'd be trying a whole bunch of other stuff. Their pastry cases are gorgeous. The Magic won, that's four in a row, although they blew a 17 point lead in the fourth quarter proving that they like to live dangerously.

Tuesday's tai chi class was full of new and old stuff to learn, and I had a swell time, even if I was feeling a bit clumsy. As gentle as tai chi is, I still felt pain in my back, but that was likely from standing on my feet for too damn long while preparing and baking The Best Cookies In The World, also known as my mother-in-law's recipe for butter cookies.

And so it goes ...

Oh, Monday - Spoilers! (Rated PG-13 or maybe even R for strong language)

Monday, the traditional day of renewal. New opportunities, new weekly schedule, the day everyone starts their new diet. I always swear off excess chocolate on Monday morning.  Ha!

Even though I no longer slip into pantyhose and travel a great distance to court or the office, I still view Monday as the first day of my work week, and a chance to get things right. You know, to organize, to set tasks and apply myself to completing them. Ha! Again. But I did make a list last night, which affords me the pleasure of checking off some, if not all of the items.  Top of the list - well, not really on the list - is plugging in my iPhone. Or else I can't do some of the other stuff on the list. I don't always miss a land line, except when I forget to charge the iPhone. (Actually, we do have land lines in the office, but that would take away my excuse for avoiding the phone. My relationship with telephones is complicated. Sorry, Don Ameche.)

Monday, I start the day with hope. I get up at a very reasonable hour, I head downstairs to Do Stuff. I take care of a disability matter and off goes that fax. I headed outside and watered the vegetables on my porch. I sprayed my entire garden for insects, and I fed a number of the plants. When I got back inside, I started messing with the oysters.  Literally. I tried breading them with egg and panko and it was a disaster; I ended up rinsing off whatever panko had stuck to the oysters, and started over with a fresh egg and very fine cornmeal.  That worked quite nicely.  Single breading was more than enough. I was left with some egg and seasoned cornmeal. And then things got weird.

While I was waiting for the oysters to set up for frying, I took two lonely baking potatoes, left over from the German potato salad, stripped them of their dusty skins, boiled one and shredded the other.  I chopped up a couple of green onions that were quietly contemplating their own demise in my refrigerator drawer. At which point I realized I was in enormous pain, all the way down my back and one leg, the type of pain that makes your eyes water. And yes, I sat down for a bit, and I swallowed some Advil, but I was too far down the road to abandon this project, so I gritted my teeth and got back on my feet.

Follow me:  I mashed the boiled potato with a little butter.  I beat the remaining egg from the oysters with some sour cream.  I mixed the two potatoes together with the green onion. I mixed the egg into the potato, seasoned it and threw in some baking soda for good measure.  It was a trifle soggy, so I stirred in the remaining cornmeal with which I'd breaded the oysters. Fried the oysters, lowered the heat and fried the little potato pancakes I'd formed. By then, I really was in tears from the pain. What can I say except, and at the risk of sounding like Malcolm Tucker, fuckity fuck fuck!  I am in so much fucking pain! Even my good days always turn fucking bad! I can't call them latkes, because they taste suspiciously like oyster, which is one of those foods you just don't eat when celebrating a Jewish holiday like Hanukkah, plus you sure as hell can't eat these with apple sauce. I can't call them potato-oyster cakes, because there's really no oyster meat in there. They are simply Weird Fried Things with an interesting flavor, which is the culinary equivalent of saying your blind date has a great personality.

In case you are not familiar with Malcolm Tucker ... plug in your earphones if the kids are around

Well, that's enough of that. Excuse me while I scream.

Dear God, this pain is well above the limits of my tolerance, and imperviable to Advil. What the hell did I do to deserve this? (Insert another Malcolm Tucker rant here.) I have no recourse but to take the Methocarbamol and Meloxicam that I was given by the orthopedist for muscle spasms and pain. They offer a bit more relief for a short period of time, but I have to ask myself if the assault on my stomach is worth it. I have no answer. When the stomach pain cuts across my entire diaphragm, I take Zantac and spin my prayer wheel.

Speaking of Peter Capaldi, I watched "Heaven Sent" again, and although I found myself drifting off yet again, after paying better attention to details, I got it. About as subtle as a crutch, and I got it. Not as bad as I originally thought, just not as good as I had hoped. But after I spent my own painful day in Hell yesterday, I was cheered up by the news that the Doctor Who Christmas Special is going to feature one of my favorite characters. Hello, sweetie!

The Bee's Knees

I am still trying to figure out what the hell happened on Doctor Who last night. Two billion years? All those skulls were the Doctor's? I felt like he got caught in a very unfunny version of "Groundhog Day" and I wasn't liking it at all. Why does Gallifrey remind me of Argo City? The only good moment in the whole damn hour was when Clara briefly appeared to tell him to get off his ass.

I've read a bunch of online reviews, and they all seem to be rhapsodizing about this episode. Look, I like Peter Capaldi as the Doctor - he is giving Chris Eccleston a run for his money as my reboot favorite, and as an actor, he outdistances all of the previous Doctors (if you have never seen the Torchwood mini-series The Children of Earth, you should. Why that face? Watch.) - but even a true fan like myself cannot take 47 minutes of unrelenting Twelfth Doctor hubris.  I think I fell asleep; whether that was the combination of the Methocarbamol and Meloxicam I'd been forced to take, or the mind-numbing repetition of the same 3 scenes over and over and over and fucking OVER again, well, take a guess.

I probably have to watch it a few more times. I had to watch "Blink" a half dozen times before I "got" it. Although every time I watch it, I end up wanting to slap that insufferable fishwife Martha right into next week.

Oh and by the way, I hate Gallifrey; if I was the Doctor, I would have run away from there as well.

The new companion? Well, next week is the series finale, and is Clara really dead? Stay tuned. Personally, I think it's time to bring back Captain Jack and River Song.

My fibromyalgia seems to be taking an new approach. Beside the heart palpitations, I've been having really bad pains in my knees. Both knees. One of the reasons I had gastric bypass surgery was because I was afraid those 150 extra pounds would wear out my poor knees a lot faster than God intended. I did not want to end up having to use a motorized cart in Publix or Walmart. Well, Walmart might have been fun, scooting through the frozen foods section, bumping into Walmartians, being at exactly the right level to scoop up all the Hershey's milk chocolate nuggets. All kidding aside I am not happy about this latest development. One cannot do tai chi Bird's Extensions when one's knees are for shit.  I have spent the last three days basically on my back.  No cheesy jokes please.

Now my left shoulder and arm hurt. And my back, but my back usually hurts.  I am so tired of this.

Alrighty then, I couldn't sleep, so I played around with the Bright House Wi Fi app that allegedly lets you watch television shows on your internet devices (so I could rewatch Satirday's episode of Doctor Who) and let me just say that the system sucks. Not sure why I am locked out of BBC America and Cooking Channel and trust me, this thing does not "stream like a dream." There's more wrong than right with how this works, and that necessitates a phone call to Bright House and you know how I hate to make phone calls, especially at 3:00 in the morning. With all that to bitch about, I did get to watch Men in Black 3. I thought it was going to be as godawful as Men in Black 2, but it was actually good, and I didn't see that ending coming; I thought something else was going to happen, on the order of Quantum Leap. Never mind, spoilers.

Over on my Facebook page, there is a lively discussion going on about the "new" methadology being used by protective investigators and case managers in assessing family safety. I politely declined "transformation" (meaning I skipped classes due to trials and just never rescheduled and hey, nobody caught it or if they did, they shrugged their shoulders and said, "she's passive-aggressive, let it go.") The whole thing came up because I posted an article about how the number of children in foster care has risen, which is exactly the result the new methadology was designed to prevent. Never should have hauled out that soapbox.

Just Wanted To Say Hello

Although I am trying really hard not to think about cooking, my brain strayed to Hanukkah and latkes (potato and cheese) and other fried things (okra fritters, anyone?), so I checked on the actual starting date, and guess what?

We are not going to be home for the holiday!  Instead, Robert and I are going to be sailing around the Bahamas, taking a well-deserved break from our daily routine.  You can't get FOX News on the Carnival Sensation, and even CNN is spotty.

We are into Pre-Tax Season, and with that comes the Pre-Tax Season Cruise, which we broke into two pieces.  First comes 4 days on the Sensation, which literally means 4 days on the Sensation. Heading to the Bahamas, and we don't get off the ship. Don't need to.

As much as I am thinking about cooking, I haven't done a damn thing because the fibro has landed me practically flat on my back.  Since Friday I have been practically useless. Maybe totally useless. Except Saturday morning I did go to my tai chi class. When I'm in tai chi class, I feel good. I can stand up, even on one foot, and my heart slows down to a more normal rate. Pretty cool. 

I have so much to do, but I have to be patient and wait until I feel well enough to do them.  The heart palpitations are a totally new twist, as the Inderal has kept them under control for the past 35 years. These knock the hell out of me, not that I had much hell left to knock around. I really want to get back on track with my cookie baking, and I simply can't. I have oysters to fry, damn it. Hell, I want to get up to make another cup of coffee and I can't do that, either.

If anyone wants to join me for Words with Friends, c'mon down.