The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Caroline:

I am either more irritable this year, or my family was more irritating this year, or both.

So it goes. I love my family, even if I had to get out of there after a while.

I am now busily wishing I had leftovers. Leftovers all went home with other people, which is probably for the best. But I would really like some pie.

DAMMIT I always forget to take the spam part out!

This year, Walmart is letting people into the stores early, but not starting the sales until midnight. I expect to see fistfights, if not shootings. But I'm feeling cynical tonight.

The doorbuster game is a dangerous one. You're right -- the rules encourage panic and aggression. It's sick.

Renatus, I'll be thinking of your mom's safety. Tell her if it looks like a bad situation, get away.

Big spam hit in the last several comments on various threads, this one included.

Paul Duncanson @ 296, I recommend split pea soup. All you really need to make it is water or broth and split peas. I like to add a bay leaf and a bit of salt and pepper. Combine all ingredients and cook until the peas fall apart when you stir. If they don't fall apart enough, puree (I've successfully pureed with a regular old hand mixer in the pot, but you can use a blender, food processor or immersion blender).

If you want to get fancy and a little more nourishing, saute some chopped onions and carrots in olive oil in the pot first, before adding the dry peas and broth/water. And simmer some potato chunks or rice in there. Then puree the lot when it's all soft.

Split pea soup is pretty much my comfort food in fall and winter. Savory, smooth and easy to eat.

I enjoyed the kitten even though I was not unsettled.

I agree with Clifton Royston @ 277.

Also -- I wonder if local food banks would take onion and carrot donations. Occasionally they'll take fresh-veg donations, I hear, but it depends on the food bank. (I thought of this yesterday when a guy called in to the Splendid Table show on NPR, complaining of too much butternut squash.)

LIla @ 177, I had exactly the same reaction to C. as you (and it is also the thing that works for an immediate relative). I do think your experience implies that talking to your doctor about trying L. might be a good idea.

It is, unfortunately, more expensive in the U.S. because there is no generic. Luckily I have access to health insurance that covers it, so it's not prohibitively expensive.

Rant rant universal health care rant single-payer rant inhuman, this is supposed to be a civilized country, rant.

D'oh, I used two Words of Power and my post is being held for review. In brief, I agreed strongly with Xopher @156 (brand names in that part of the comment were the Words of Power).

And most importantly I said to Scraps and Velma that I am sending good thoughts and lighting candles for you both.

Xopher @ 156, I agree strongly about Lexapro. (Though I think I'm going to have to step up in dose for the winter. But the two months where the dose was hitting the sweet spot felt like standing up from a cramped crouch.) I'm still not sure why one enantiomer is awesome and the other one (Celexa) makes me heavy-drugged-sleepy, but I'm glad I found the awesome one. I think trying antidepressants is the quickest way to show how individual everyone's brain is.

Scraps and Velma, I'm still thinking good thoughts and lighting candles for both of you.

Mez @ 215: I'm so sorry. It sounds like you are dealing with much too much. I hope that you can get a friend or two to help you sort through it all.

Paperwork and mail compose the biggest challenge to my organization as it is, and I have never had to deal with sorting out someone's estate.

Also, Make a Will, people! Unless you hate your family and want them to suffer for years, 'cos you think they'll wave goodbye and happily forget you otherwise. Make a bloody Will!

This, so much this. In my grandfather's last days, I saw how the family's grief did not need to be compounded by the stress of dealing with lawyers and bankers and insurance agents. It's a great kindness to your family to make sure your affairs are set in some kind of order.

It's on my to-do list to find a good family lawyer to help my fiancé and me draw up a will. Part of the wedding planning. (And as he's in a creative profession, we will have to deal with ownership of his works.)

albatross @ 194, I'm not actually in CS -- I'm in biomedical engineering (and all my coding skill has been picked up and patched together as I go). So I had not seen that. It looks fantastic. Thank you!

Thank you all for the amazing advice and conversation. Yesterday I didn't get much done, but today I was able to use Freedom to turn off the internet for 30 minutes and write. (Leechblock never really worked for me, particularly since I have Safari on this machine. Freedom just cuts off the internet entirely, on a timer. It's hard enough to get around it that it works for me. It stops me from veering off when things get hard or dull.)

Now I'm eating lunch, and will go back and do it again once lunch is done.

And I can add another piece of advice: Look at an example of the thing you are trying to write or project you are trying to do. It helped me today to look back at another student's prelim document and try to pattern mine after his. It is helping keep my argument on track, rather than bounding off into the weeds and getting lost, which is what usually happens.

Also, writing section headings helps in keeping the thread of the argument.

OtterB, I try to do that at times (I read and liked the ideas in Getting Things Done, which recommends breaking things down into actions that will take no more than 2 minutes).

The trouble is that some things -- like writing or coding (the main activities for my dissertation) -- aren't easily broken down into actions that small. For those I have to get into the flow. And if I can't get into the flow, I have to force myself to plug away at it for some continuous amount of time long enough to write at least a couple coherent lines.

It is, however, a fantastic method for dealing with lots of other things.

TexAnne, I'm ridiculously relieved to hear that your focus came back when it was over. Ridiculously. I had been starting to wonder if I'd ever be good for anything again.

TexAnne, aww, thanks. I like the Mule Puke Rule. I may vary the Hot Chocolate Rule to a Tea Rule -- tea is comforting and gets me through things (and herbal tea has no caffeine impact). And there is a coffeemaker in the office that can be used to make hot water quickly and easily. (The first time I did that, one of our research scientists walked by as it was dripping, then stopped, threw himself into reverse and stared at it. I said "I'm making hot water." "I thought you forgot to put in the coffee," he said. Admittedly, forgetting to put in the coffee is something I might do. In the lab I write and follow checklists to prevent this sort of thing.)

Emma, I also like that 90-minute arse-glue rule. I think I could do that.

In the crunch, I used to be able to snap myself together and just focus. My ability to do that has disappeared over the past couple of years.

SylvieG, I am so sorry for the loss of your beloved dog. The only comfort I know how to offer is this: You loved him and gave him a happy life. That's worth a lot.

On SAD: Light therapy is helping me somewhat, but not enough. Going to talk to the doctor next week about other options.

I also think that a large part of my inability to get up and work is that I'm avoiding my research project because I am frankly very bored with it. This scares me because well, I'm committed to it now. I have to finish my Ph.D.

I wonder if picking up a personal project or two, of things I really am interested in, would cause a spillover of motivation to the thing I really should be working on.

Has anyone experienced this kind of boredom with a long-term project that had to be finished? How did you motivate yourself to keep working on it? Or did you do something else?

Dear Whoever is in charge of anything:

Please let Scraps be okay. And while you're at it, please let Velma be okay too.

Amen.

Very sincerely yours,
Caroline

I've nothing to toast with at present, but I'll raise a spiritual toast with you.

I'm just barely old enough to remember; I have vague memories of watching the Wall come down, but extremely vivid memories of the existence of West and East Germany.

Talk of the Nation is at present doing a huge retrospective show about it, interviewing everyone they can get a hold of. Very interesting.

Jo Walton @ 32, or a spot of massage?

and @ 39, I agree about intentionality. I've likened writing, when I'm in the flow, to falling in love -- because of the way the world shapes itself for you when you're falling in love, the synchronicities and coincidences that all come together to create resonances and surprises, when you didn't think you meant to go that way. Good writing is always like that for me. (So is reading good writing -- then I get to enjoy the feeling without the work!)

It's the same as much contemporary Christian music, or Left Behind: creating a piece of art with the aim of Making A Point causes one to lose the integrity, honesty, and quality of the art. Insights, emotions, and truths can come out in the creative process which don't fit with the point you thought you wanted to make, or the story you thought you wanted to tell. Ignoring and denying those things creates a false, forced product. Owning and engaging with those things creates something much more interesting -- and something with a much better point.

We had zero trick-or-treaters, as usual in this neighborhood. (No one decorates either. I was nervous about putting three styrofoam tombstones in my front yard because I wondered if there was some Unspoken Rule about not decorating for Halloween.)

But we had a party and decorated the interior of the house majorly. Dramatic colored lighting, lots of spiderwebs, corn-syrup blood handprints on the bathroom mirror and in the shower, even a strobe and fog machine. Lots of gross, scary-looking (but delicious) food. Too bad only 4 people came, making a total of 7. But I don't really care; I just enjoyed marking the holiday properly.

Then I got a full set of skull-themed table linens half-off at Target the next day. My table is still dressed in creepy Halloween finery today.

And I have most of a brain-shaped, gray-green vegetable paté still in the fridge. Brain- and heart-shaped jello molds are fantastic. (And the vegetable paté is very good -- it's this recipe, and I recommend it for all your party spread needs. It contains gelatin and so is not vegetarian, but you could presumably use some vegetarian thickening/setting agent to replace the gelatin if you wanted.)

I re-read my Halloween 2007 issue of MAKE magazine, too, and daydreamed about doing all of it. I ought to give project ideas and assistance for my old college dorm, which transforms three of its four floors into a haunted house every year.

Hmmm....if nothing else, I should donate a copy to the dorm library.

I tried NaNo last year and gave up in frustration by the second day, when it took me three hours of teeth-pulling to produce 1000 words of the most terrible, stupid, boring, banal crap ever set to paper. What I should've done was get back on the horse even if I had to write "I suck, this sucks, I can't write, I am a total and complete epic failure at life, the universe, and everything" for 1667 words, but instead I switched to other things.

This year it's going to be NaPreWriMo, because I have to finish my prelim yesterday. In fact I had best email the one section I have drafted to my advisor now.

Comment statistics for Caroline on the Making Light blog

Total: 532 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take some time to load.)