I'm going to try something a little different today. I know that you know that I love love love to complain. LOVE IT. Only love it when the news is bad, only happy when it rains, that song may as well be about me. I don't mean to be, but I get a delicious sense of satisfaction when I get to be upset and rant about something. So tasty.

TODAY, however, my faithful minions  readers, I'll give a treat- Huzzah!- things that are making my cold heart warm and snuggly.

Numero Uno: The weather is finally acceptable to support human life. The humidity of the past two months has gone, as well as the need for the a/c. My asthma and electric bill are happy. 

Secondly: A Very Potter Musical and A Very Potter Sequel.  Holy shit, why did no one tell me about this earlier? The video quality is shit- you can't hear about 25% of the dialogue. Even if you aren't a HP fan, it's completely worth it to watch just for Draco. And it's made in Michigan! By people who look vaguely familiar to me! (And some of them are really starting to irritate me. I know I know Brian Rosenthal. I just can't remember from where. I was in the theater program at U of M, too, but 800 thousand years ago and a different campus.nnnnnnnnnn)

Trois: The very thing that lead me to AVPM and AVPS, Mark Reads Harry Potter.  It's a chapter by chapter review of the Harry Potter series by a first time HP reader. That site devoured my life  when I was trying to get caught up to this weeks reviews, since I only found it...this week. 

Vier: My new favorite cookbook, "Incredibly Easy Gluten-Free Recipes". HolyShitILoveThisBook.

I love cooking, I do I do I do. I hate most cookbooks I run across, especially those geared towards my dietary restrictions (For the record, I'm allergic to: Dairy, Egg, Wheat, "sensitive" to corn, and won't eat animal products. And I'm not a big fan of coconut.). I have several "allergy free!" cookbooks whose main agenda is apparently getting you to eat large quantities of meat. (Which, even if I wanted to eat meat, I'd have to avoid beef and chicken, because guess what! The protein I'm allergic to in both dairy and egg is found in the meat of the parent animals! So FU, idiot nutritionist my allergist wanted me to see!) 

Ahem. I'm also not the biggest fan of vegetarian cookbooks- vegan, yes, vegetarian, no. Mainly because the main ingredients used in vegetarian foods tends to be cheese and eggs. YUM. 

Back to this cookbook to end my need for more cookbooks: yes, there are meat recipes in it, but used in a way that tofu or some other food substance can be easily substituted, and all the recipes are mouthwatering. We've made two in the week we've had it and I'm itching to make more. It even has me excited to try quinoa! And I tend to avoid foods whose names aren't pronounced phonetically! 

Vijf: New musics! I think I'm finally starting to accept that there shall be no more Flickerstick albums, and probably no more Great Lakes Myth Society albums, the two bands that make getting up in the morning bearable. I'm not a book snob by any means- I'll give just about anything a shot. I am, however, a music snob of epic proportions. I don't mind this, though it drives my husband nuts when I'm always asking him to turn off whatever vile noise he has coming out of the speakers (of course, he just refers to me as a withered husk of a soul because I don't like angry yelly sexist crap music. Hmph.). In an effort to give myself something else to listen to occasionally, I've allowed the following bands into rotation:

The Black Keys: I first discovered them last year watching "Hung" (which takes place in Michigan! And the exterior scenes really are Michigan! Michigan Michigan Michigan!), and I less then three them even if they are from Ohio. 

Band of Skulls: you know, from that car commercial. Filmed in Detroit. Featuring the only non-Chrysler car I would willingly buy. I think I'm noticing a pattern here. Hey people that want me to listen to their music: make it associated with Detroit somehow and I will listen! 

It helps that both bands are actually good. 

Six: I received a lovely package from my step-grandmother, full of nice smelly things from Backyard Soaps, a company in, you guessed it, Michigan. They're in my adopted hometown of Port Huron and I love their stuff, but any place out here that sells it overcharges like woah, so Carol was nice enough to send us a box of bathbombs and room sprays.  

Annnnd that's about all the happy I can handle right now.

I'm related to who?

I don't even know where to begin. I am feeling a renewed desire to blog, not just for my personal enrichment, but to save any offspring the headache of trying to figure shit out about their family.

Not that everyone has a burning desire to know their family history. I always have, but I think that has to do with only having one parent growing up, so instead of focusing on the half that was missing, I threw myself into finding out as much as I could about my mom's side of the family. Being as close in age with my youngest uncle as I am, and being with my grandparents for a good chunk of my life, I tend to forget I even -have- another biological family.

I sealed my fate as family biographer when I was a preteen- my grandfather gave me a book that belonged to his grandmother, saying I'd be the only one to appreciate it's history. Then my grandmother did the same thing with her sister's books. And then, the pictures.

Oh. My. God. The pictures.

I come from a long line of shutter bugs. Which is awesome- I have a visual history of my family going back to the start of photography.Thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures. Actually seeing different features that we all have, and who had them them first is amazing. The problem? Well, problems? 1- my relatives didn't like to label pictures, so pinning down dates and names is...fun. 2- half of what's labeled is in Flemish, and in a beautiful but hard to read cursive handwriting. The Flemish I know isn't as helpful as I'd like.

This past weekend, my mom and her husband were in town- we spent the first two days in Boston, then he went to NYC, and my mom came back home with us. Sunday afternoon through Wednesday morning saw us  either pouring over pictures, trying to sort and label them, or trying to find evidence of my great-grandparents, from their gravesite to the houses they lived in while in Massachusetts.

We were able to label about 3,000 pictures. I have about 8 or 9 thousand to go. On top of figuring out who people are, I've been scanning them and putting them on Facebook for the rest of my family to see and enjoy.  As much as I may complain about it, I really love doing it. There's just a real sense of urgency since pretty much the only person who may know who some of the mystery people are is my grandmother, and she's several states away and recovering from back surgery so she isn't online that much at the moment. Mom took the Rosetta Stone of pictures home with her and is going to go visit Gram and see what she can find out. That just leaves the Belgian pictures. I'm not sure that any relatives are still around that may know who these people are (though, there has to be- my great grandfather was the youngest of 23. TWENTY-THREE. And he had a mess of nieces and nephews, so there has to be SOMEONE around who still knows these people. HAS TO.)

All our investigating left us with more questions instead of answering them. For starters- do you know how many of my forebears had children, then got married? Almost all of them. So much for this puritanical nonsense people are always going on about. One of my great-great grandmothers was 13 when she left Belgium for Argentina, and was 14 when she had my great-grandmother. Then moved back to Belgium and got married. Just. What. And I spent so much of my life feeling bad for being a bastard. Apparently we all are.

Hair hair hair update

Welp. That was interesting.

As far as my hair experiment, it's not going the greatest. Not that the baking soda wash/vinegar rinse doesn't work as advertised- it does. Anton tried too, and his hair was -amazing- afterwards. My problem seems to be I have too much frickin' hair. I tried doubling and tripling the recipe, but so far, no luck. The parts that do get cleaned are beautiful, but the parts I miss are noticeable. I think I'm going to put the experiment on hold until my next hair cut and get my hair thinned.

To give you an idea of what I'm working with, my hair hangs eleven inches past my shoulders, and when pulled into a ponytail it measures 4 inches around, not including the hair band. I wasn't allowed to grow my hair out until I was in JR high because my mom hated dealing with it, and kept making me get page boy hair cuts, and now it's hard for me to get it short because I have flash backs to this:

Yeah, it's cute on a 3 year old. Not so much on a 12 year old. Or a 28 year old.

This is from a few months ago (Now the line from my old dye job is to my chin. Again, I neeeedd aaa haaaiiirrr cuuutttt.) but gives you a pretty good idea on what my hair looks like as a grown up.

Not that I'm complaining about it- My gram and my mom both claimed to have hair just as thick that they lost as they had kids. My gram is almost completely bald* now and my mom's hair is thinning**. I just need to find way to manage- probably going to invest in some squirt bottles for better coverage and try again. 

*Okay, it chemically abusing her hair with dyes for 50+years and her blood pressure medication probably have more to do with hair loss then her five kids, but I'm not risking it!

**Same thing. Perms and hair dye since the 80's. 

I swear I'm not a dirty hippie

Being as independent as possible has always appealed to me- case in point, growing my own veggies. Screw you, corporate farms! And, also, screw you to the farm stands around here that claim to have farm fresh veggies, yet somehow all the vegetables have stickers on them showing they are from the other side of the country or South America. 

I'm also not a fan of chemicals or synthetics at.all. I haven't used your standard household cleaners since I moved out from my mom's. I get horrible rashes whenever I'm close enough to -smell- your basic bleaches and Lysol's and what have you, let alone if they actually make contact with my skin. I haven't used toothpaste in almost two years, and before that I didn't use fluoride toothpaste for probably 4-5 years. (But, unlike Jessica Simpson, I still do -brush- my teeth several times a day.) I haven't used tampons or pads in over two years (I use this thing instead, and I less then three it) I have to use organic (read: expensive) lotions and body care products because, again, conventional ones make me break out and whatnot, but I'm trying to get away from those as well. Christ. Typing this all out, I sound like a frickin' hippie, minus the patchouli.

So, one of the things I've been meaning to do for awhile is getting rid of my shampoo and conditioner. I was blessed (or cursed) with thick, thick, thick hair, and there has yet to be a shampoo and conditioner combination that was kind to it. I don't wash my hair that much- three times a week, unless I've been rolling in mud or something, and it always air dries (using a blow dryer every time would become way too expensive- not just the 1/2 hour + I'd spend drying it, but I have a tendency to blow out hair dryers) but it's still so. friggin. unhappy. 

Working a short week last week, I didn't really feel compelled to wash my hair on my normal 3rd day (Thursdays), and then I didn't feel like washing it Friday...or Saturday...and now I'm pretty sure I should wash it tonight before I go back to work tomorrow. Despite not washing it in five days, it's not greasy like I feared. Just soft, softer then it was when I washed it last. Weird. During tonight's shower, I'm going to try the baking soda wash/vinegar rinse method and see what happens. 

If it works, and works well, I'll probably see about talking Anton into trying it as well. Since he's been so keen on cutting back on things to save money, I can't see how this would be any different. We don't spend that much on hair care products a year, but still, 180 bucks on shampoos and conditioners yearly is still more then 50-60 bucks yearly on estimated baking soda and vinegar use.

ALSO- plastic. I hate plastic. And if don't have to bring any more in the house, then yays!

Gardening update number something or other

Sometimes I wish I had a big straw hat and overalls for my urban garden. Though- Gram used to garden in jean shorts and tube tops, so I guess there really isn't one set dress code...

It's still early in the growing season, I suppose- even though we did start in March- but we've learned lots of valuable lessons. Aside from "don't start in March."

For one- some things can be grown closer to their mates then others. Peas? Separate those fuckers. We ended up with only 3 pods before ripping them all out. We'll try again this fall once it gets cooler again. 

For twosies- do not start leafy things in the mini-greenhouse. Start them right in their pots or they get all sad and die when you transfer them. Wimps.

For three- Don't try bok choy again until you have a proper garden. Stupid bok choy.

For four- Don't worry about spending money on containers. The window boxes for our green leafy things are great, and we only spent about 25-30 bucks all together on planters, but the majority of our plants are in re-purposed juice and soda bottles, and they are happy and big and lovely. 

For five- Research your broccoli! Ours is so so so dumb. It's tasty! but dumb. The florets of ours don't get very big, and aren't really useful for cooking. Unless all you're looking for a nibble of broccoli.

For sixes- Kentucky Climbers are obnoxious. They are on notice until they produce me a crazy crop of beans 

There are few things as sublime as walking out into my garden after work, though. Everything right now is so green and lush, and watching wee little flowers turn into something edible is awesome. If you've thought about growing something but don't know what to try first, do cucumbers. They are prolific. We've already had two off the vine, there are about 26 more in various stages of growth, and 50 some odd flowers. All that from 12 plants. We definitely we'll be cutting back on how many cucumber plants we have next year. 

Now exclusive to you, until I get around to posting them on Facebook, pictures:

One of the few flower plants I have. It's a mandevilla (we call her Judy*), expressing her desire for light. 

Judy, repotted and moved outside. This was last weekend, and now she's doubled in size. 

One of our first harvests, which turned into...

...a lovely salad. The radishes were store bought, but look how lovely it all is!

A few of my cuke plants, attempting to grow -off- the balcony.

This is the closest I could get to a full shot of the garden. There's more behind me and hidden at the other end as well. 

My jerk Kentucky Climbers. 

*When I was growing up, We went to church with a lady named Judy Madeville. All my gram's mandevilla plants were always known as Judy from then on, and it still seems to fit.

Not dead. Yet.

Ha! Bet you thought I was dead.

I am not. I just haven't had anything update worthy. The older I get the less I feel I can get away with stream of consciousness entries, but I can not focus when typing on a computer. (Computers are so counter-intuitive to how I work, especially when it comes to writing. When I write on paper, I turn the paper sideways and have my hand perpendicular to my body. It has never felt natural to type on a keyboard, which only adds to my lack of focus when trying to write something.)

Anyway. So I've been trying to reduce my stress lately to keep myself from imploding, but it's not working out that great. My work days have gotten insane, with overtime every. friggin. day. And yet my paycheck is sad and pitiful. Spending 10+ hours, five days a week at work is killing me.

My family isn't helping keep stress levels low, either. Last Friday, my gram had back surgery- a surgery that was postponed for two years because her doctor wanted her hips replaced first to avoid any other complications. And she spent several additional days in the hospital because, surprise, she had complications. It's so, so hard to be away from her when she's going through these things. If she had asked, I would have gladly quit my job and moved in with her to take care of her.

Then, Sunday, Anton was staying late after work,and when he was about, oh, 528 feet from home, was rear-ended by a ditz from the next town over...who had her mommy call to see if she could talk Anton out of reporting the accident to the insurance company. Apparently, her little princess was going to lose her insurance if she was in any more accidents. I just...What the fuck? He's fine, the car should be back next week since it was mostly superficial damage, but...I mean, really? She called 5 times before giving up. Get your fucktard daughter some driving lessons or keep that idjit of the road.

THEN! One of my younger cousins was turning into his driveway Thursday on his motorcycle  and was hit by some moron. Now, I hate motorcycles because I see them as death traps on two wheels, and I think I've seen maybe 2 motorcyclists in my adult life that obeyed any traffic laws. However. My cousin is a safe driver, and he babies that bike. Babied. The bike is destroyed. At least there was no major damage to him but he's got a pretty bad case of whiplash and is all  bruised up.

I should say both accidents happened in broad daylight, and both driver's said that they didn't see the person they hit. Then maybe you need glasses and no license.

So. It's hard to relax when I want to cause severe bodily harm to people who insist on hurting my family. And to the people I have to spend my days on the phone with.  Sigh. This past week and the next two I have four day work weeks. Maybe the will help kick start some zen like atmosphere in my life.

Probably not.

At least I'm missing all the drama back home

Holy crap is stress a learned reaction with me. I gave myself a four day weekend this weekend, and Friday/Saturday? Great! Tonight? STRESSBALL, just like I am every Sunday night, despite the fact I still don't have to work tomorrow.

Anyway.

A few weekends ago, Anton and I went to the New Hampshire Renaissance Faire, about 25 minutes north of where we live. It was tiny, but still bigger then what I expected for what is a charity event. We caught a few shows, including the Corr Thieves Merchants, and a fighting demonstration by The Neville Companye. After the fighting demonstration we met Jeremy of Knightly Arts based here in Mass. Barring anything crazy, Anton and I are going to start taking sword classes this summer, then move on to medieval weapons. Both research and fun!

In an effort to be ready, I've stepped up my workouts. I'm not having an easy time of it, my stress levels have only gotten worse since changing my schedule. And I'm one of those people who instead of losing weight when they're stressed, I gain it. I've been tracking my calories, trying to get them around 1600 a day. Problem  is? I'm usually averaging about 6-800. So, my body thinks it's starving but between the pain I have from my maybe ulcer and my myriad of food allergies, there just aren't enough foods out there for me. And, I'd have to be eating from the time I got up till I went to bed, which. No. So.

I've started adding in some protein powder to my drinks to help give me an added boost in the morning. Vegetables need more frickin' calories.