Embarrassing Confessions

When you gain and then lose 100 pounds, some of your skin starts looking like crepe paper. Neat trick? Pinch some of it and then watch how long it takes to settle back into its place. Still waiting here. FUNSIES!

This guy friend of mine is out of town for a while and I can’t shake the feeling that when he comes back it will be the time for him to tell me he doesn’t want to be seeing me any more and maybe we should just be friends. It’s that 90-Days: Shit-or-Get-Off-the-Pot stage.

When you think about it, in this context, neither shitting nor getting off the pot is a very appealing metaphor.

I have been listening to Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone non-stop for the past three months, and I love it so much that I am now afraid something will happen to taint my enjoyment of it.

I have been vegan for almost two years and in that time have avoided buying anything made of leather, but I desperately want new boots for fall. I can’t find any good non-leather ones. I am trying to make excuses.

I bought a $4 tee shirt with huge horizontal stripes today, mainly because it’s something I never would have worn when I was overweight and it’s something my mother would have told me never to wear — because it would “make me look wider.”

I am 32 years old and I still get enjoyment out of doing things my mother would hate, just because I can.

I cry during every single episode of Friday Night Lights.

I am trying to eat more calories for my “maintenance” level right now but I got so used to eating fewer calories that it is hard to get to the number I am trying to hit. Those folks out there on a weight-loss mission probably want to kick me right now and I SO UNDERSTAND. But it has been OVER A YEAR of operating on a calorie deficit. It’s hard to make a change. Confession? Tonight I am filling the gap with wine. Hence this list.

I don’t know whether a post like this is refreshingly honest or humiliatingly pathetic. It’s all ME ME ME, which seems bad, right? But at least I still have the sense not to be writing about anyone else.

Signs of Summer

Just in case we weren’t sure if it was summer, the following signs have appeared to put an end to all doubt. Let me show you:

5. Baking Hot Sidewalks

It is so hot out today that when I briefly stepped outside in my bare feet, I got a very rude awakening indeed. Spotted on the sidewalk on my way back into the house: two dead bugs, their many legs pointing skyward (yes, I did photograph that and no I won’t put it here because I realized that one was a giant cockroach and I don’t want to make it seem like my apartment is dirty) (it’s too late now isn’t it?).

4. Cats Drunk on Sunshine

Basically one of the only times my cat isn’t either crying for more food, trying to kill the dog, or thinking of ways to make sure I slip in the shower and die so she can feast upon my delicious remains is when she is basking happily in the sunshine that streams in through the window in my office. Another good reason to keep the blinds open.

3. Swimming Pool Nights

Yes, I go on and on about the swimming at night with the cocktails. Well, doesn’t this look perfectly, beautifully serene? Toldja. Now I suddenly feel the need for a Vodka and Fresca.

2. Watermelon

How happy am I to be enjoying the local, in-season produce from the farm? Very. I got a watermelon two weeks ago, three (!!!) more this past week, and might get still more at tomorrow’s pick-up. Don’t worry; it’s as delicious as it looks.

And finally, the number one sign it is summer:

1. Minor League Baseball

Yes, Thursday night was spent cheering on the Montgomery Biscuits (who came back from 7-0 to lose with a slightly more respectable score of 11-6), listening to the crowd around us heckle the hapless third-base coach (who kept stopping runners at third instead of letting them try to run home), drinking light beer and eating salty soft pretzels.

Summer? CHECK.

How to Make Easy Whole Wheat Pizza Crust at Home

As I believe I have mentioned oh, about a hundred times on here, I love making pizza at home. It all started when I found this great recipe for whole wheat crust here. I’ve been making it all the time, usually on the weekends after a long run when I want to eat a big dinner and relax at home.

I made some again tonight (after my 7-mile run and day of grading papers) and I decided to photo-document it for you. You can use this post as a recipe — I have tweaked a couple of things from the original recipe just through practice, so mine differs just a bit from the source I linked.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup regular white flour
1 packet yeast (quick rise or normal – doesn’t matter)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup hot water (as hot as your tap gets is fine)
1 tablespoon olive oil
a few pinches of your favorite herbs – I am using oregano, basil, red chili flakes, rosemary, and sage

Now, put all the dry ingredients in a bowl

and mix them together. No food processor needed here; just use a dang whisk!

Stir the olive oil into the hot water and pour this over the dry ingredients. Mix it up by hand. Look, you really don’t need a mixer or any type of equipment. Use the hands your momma gave you. The feel of the dough will guide you. It will be sticky at first, but when it is all smooth and elastic, you’ll know you have mixed it well. Depending on the humidity of your weather and the exactitude of your measurements, you may need to add a touch more flour or water. You be the judge.

Isn’t this fun? Remember, smooth and elastic are your goals here.

I like to divide the dough in half, bake one pizza with half the dough, and refrigerate the other half for later. I divide it and then roll each half into a ball. (For calorie counters out there, 1/2 of the dough has about 500 calories.)

Cover the balls with a bit of plastic wrap. You can spray the plastic wrap with non-stick cooking spray to avoid any problems with stickage. Wait 20-40 minutes for the balls to rise.

Heh. “For the balls to rise.” Balls.

Then punch down the dough. If you decided to use only half, wrap up the half you’re not using in the plastic wrap from before and refrigerate it. It can keep for maybe 3-5 days, but in my house it usually gets used in 1-2 days. I like pizza, I am saying.

Take the half you are using tonight and flatten it out by hand. If you like really thin crusts, you can use a rolling pin or wine bottle to help you get it reeeeally good and flat.

I don’t have a pizza stone, so I bake it on a regular old baking tray, covered in foil, and sprayed with just a teeny spray of non-stick stuff. Makes clean-up easy.

What will you top your pizza with? Whatever you please, please.

I’ve got orange bell peppers, fakeroni, olives, artichokes, and cremini mushrooms. Usually I also like some spinach leaves and/or broccoli florets for more green, but today I was just working with what I had available.

Top the pizza. I used a jarred sauce tonight (not great but fine) and the last of my almost-vegan shredded cheese. (This cheese uses a dairy by-product in it and I prefer not to use it, but I had bought this before I found the good vegan cheese at our new Earth Fare — this’ll be the last time I have to use the non-vegan soy cheese.) (And the world rejoiced! If by “rejoiced” I mean “did not care about my cheese situation.”)

Put it in a 500 degree oven for ten minutes. YES, 500 degrees. YES, ten minutes. Trust, people.

During these ten minutes, you could be conscientious and clean up your kitchen a bit, but I recommend prioritizing your time. Pour yourself a glass of wine first.

Mmm, wine.

Oh, hey, look, the pizza is done.

Top it with some fresh basil leaves from your favorite plant.

Dinner is served!

What are your favorite pizza toppings?

Windows and Walls

I think I identified with George Clooney’s character in Up In the Air a little too much. Have you seen that film? If you haven’t, I am about to spoil it for you. I’m sorry.

In the movie, George goes through life accumulating no serious relationships. He isn’t that close with his family and he seems to have no friends. Most importantly, he is never in a long-term romantic relationship. These things weigh you down, George says. Make sure you keep your metaphorical backpack empty.

While I do have a few very close friendships, I have been following this baggage-free model of romantic life for quite some time now. I enjoy the opportunity to be selfish, to do whatever I want whenever I want, never to have to worry about taking someone else’s life into consideration when I make a decision about my own. Life as a singleton is so easy. So I was right there with George as he brandished his empty backpack to audience applause and then went home briefly to his empty apartment before taking yet another work trip to a strange town.

But I found myself rooting for the success of George’s budding relationship with the Vera Farmiga character (look, I never remember movie characters’ names, so just go with it here). In one of the deleted scenes on the DVD, we see George settling in to a nicer apartment, setting it up to really live there, filling the place with the visual signifiers of his habitation: a washing machine, kitchen items, flowers and plants. While I had been a subscriber to the empty backpack scenario, I wanted all of this to work.

When what happens at the end of the movie happened, and George was left alone again, and when his voice-over in the final scene declared the character to have returned to his high-flying, solo-living, empty-backpacking days, I felt strangely empty and scared. I really don’t want to be that guy, I thought.

Is it enough to have close friendships in my life? To have an apartment full of clothes and books and a dog? These are all items in the metaphorical backpack of life, surely. Mine is not empty. But I do still manage to live, for the most part, selfishly. Within reason, I do what I want when I want and I worry in no way about how this affects anyone else.

I don’t go looking for new friendships or relationships; I don’t try to establish new connections with others. I am happy, usually, to nurture the friendships I already have and otherwise to stay home enjoying the bliss of solitude, comfortably ensconced in my bubble-like apartment with the blinds down and no one but the dog and cat to require my attention. But I suppose that is changing.

Last semester, I had one of the best groups of literature students I have ever had. They were smart and thoughtful and interesting, and I was constantly being surprised by them. At the end of the year, so many of my students wrote about these kinds of ideas in their final papers: the importance of relationships and connections and community; the necessity to open ourselves up to other people, to lift others up and allow them to lift us up when we need it; the way other people can make us better.

It wasn’t an idea we ever really spent time on in class, but somehow it struck so many of them as worth writing about. I thought about what they’d written for a while — how easy it was for them to see, in both their own lives and in the texts we had been studying. How hard it can be for me to see myself.

I had been dithering about liking a guy, wondering how to make something happen, ready to try putting my hand out into the metaphorical void to see if it caught hold of anything out there. “Just do it, ” said my friend C., “run into him on purpose and ask him out.” “Grab him by the shirt collar and attack him,” said my friend B. I have wise friends.

The first time I went over to this dude’s house I saw his gorgeous collection of house plants, sprawling out in front of his huge, open, sunny front window. The way the light came in, the green, the old bookshelves and huge desk and orange cat immediately winding around my ankles — the whole place struck me as being one of the most warm and welcoming places I had ever stepped into. When he gave me my basil plant, he said it would need plenty of sunlight. “You’ll have to open your blinds, you know. Let some light in.” A few weeks later he came back from a work trip with a beautiful glass sun-catcher meant to be hung in the window.

The guy is good, I tell you what. He even got me to play a board game the other night. If you know me you know my deep aversion to board games (and really, games of all kinds). I don’t even know how it happened, me playing board games, but it happened. And, like, I think I actually had a good time. As I did with the Frisbee throwing a couple of weeks ago. Next thing you know I will be attending a college football game or going bowling or something equally improbable, all while having fun. It’s crazy; I know.

A couple of weeks ago I made some stupid comment about how I had to make a business-related call and I was hoping that the person I was calling wouldn’t answer — hoping, basically, to avoid having to speak on the phone and instead to be able to just leave a voice message. The guy friend found this, of course, ridiculous.

[Sidebar: Look, I can see that it is a bit ridiculous, maybe, but don't you ever have this hope? I don't think I'm really alone on this phone avoidance, am I?]

Anyway, he said it was like creating a wall between myself and others. Preventing myself from connecting with other human beings. He got all, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” with me.

I’m not sure how much of my own solitary personality I will ever really change, but I certainly have been opening up to the possibility of connecting with other people in ways I usually wouldn’t. I have been trying to engage. I have been keeping my blinds open, letting the light in.

I Seem to be Obsessed with These Tomatoes.

How is it already/only Wednesday? I feel like either the week (and the remainder of the class I am teaching) is crawling by at a snail’s pace, but at the same time I don’t have enough time to get anything done. It’s a tale as old as time, I tell you.

The highlight of my week so far has been the wealth of tomatoes I got from the CSA — it’s funny how something as small as that can infect your life with sheer pleasure.  Salads, sandwiches, snacking straight out of the bag, it matters not. These are to die for.

I will say that my favorite thing so far was the Caprese salad bento lunch I had today, complete with basil from my plant (the gift from my guy friend, still going strong) and some mozzarella-style non-dairy vegan cheese-like product. (Got all that? Good.)

I have been ignoring the blog for a few days just trying to get things done at school, so I am off now to add all the new movie suggestions to my Netflix.

How is your week going so far, friends? What’s the best thing you have eaten?