Distracted Mind

Falling

Tina — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:51:03 +0000

The past week and a half have been interesting, to say the least. My father, who had been admitted to the hospital at the beginning of March, went back into the hospital one day after his discharge with more heart problems. His defibrillator wouldn’t stop firing, leaving him exhausted and his body unable to cope with the stress.

He agreed to sedation and a ventilator in order to rest. He then developed pneumonia, which was leading to kidney failure. By last Thursday, things were looking bleak. My family drove to Columbus to see my dad, perhaps for the last time. We sat down (at least the part of my family that was stateside) and discussed options, what Dad would want, and how we needed to proceed. I watched my mother grieve for her husband while he lay in that hospital bed, getting weaker and weaker. I watched small glimmers of hope that seemed like poison, from doctors that gave seemingly conflicting information. I prayed, or at least tried to.

Then, on Saturday, things appeared to turn around. My father’s kidneys started acting like kidneys again. His blood pressure, which had been dangerously low while on two different types of medication to keep it raised, was starting to stabilize. His heart was pumping with a somewhat regular rhythm. Grief turned back into hope for my mother, who took each one of these events as a sign for the better. I, however, just didn’t know.

We’d prepared our minds for what we thought was the inevitable. My family was saying goodbye to our miracle man–the man that had died and come back to life a decade earlier. When he started responding to treatment, I didn’t know what to think. I had prepared myself so thoroughly for the possibility of his death that I refused to believe there was any alternative.

See, in situations like this, hope is a bitch. She reels you in with whispers that everything will be different this one time, that things are going to turn around. That everything will be even better than “Okay”. She hooks you and then she poisons you. Reality falls short of expectations. Hell, sometimes reality just takes one look at hope and laughs. These are the times I worry about–the times when hope lies. This is what I was afraid of with my father, so I refused to give in to the hope that he would recover.

Seeing my father in that bed, unconscious and frail, that man wasn’t the man that taught me how to fish, how to use a hammer, how to ride a bike. That man was a shell. I was furious with anyone who tried to say anything to the contrary. I told myself that my father wasn’t in that shell anymore, but now it seems he was. My father is being weaned off the ventilator today. Time will tell whether or not his body will tolerate being off the machine, but he is better enough to try it. The miracle man may just ride again.

Define “Average”, Johnny Boy

Tina — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:29:27 +0000

This isn’t an argument about semantics, or something I’m asking just to be tedius. I really want to know. What the fuck is an “Average” American? Is there a standard that we either adhere to or deviate from, some baseline that we’re all measured against? I’m asking because Senator John McCain seems to think that there is and I’d like to know where this definition is so that I can check to see how I measure up. I know about his idea of average from his campaign (and look how good that “Average Joe” is doing right now–he’s turned mediocrity into a marketable skill!).

For those of you that don’t know, the Senator has taken his Mavericky Maverickness to the land of twitter (gosh, he’s so cutting edge, we’re all bleeding), where he’s keeping us all up-to-date on the “Top 10 porkiest projects” each day. He assures all of us in twitterland that Thursday’s will be posted soon. I love how the things he thinks of as pork all have potential to create new jobs, and how many of these jobs don’t apply to the “average” American. If you’d like an example, check out this one, from February 27th. Just throw out the window that if we’re talking about “American”, we’re talking about the entire continent, not just U.S. citizens. Wait, scratch that: include the entire continent. I’d like to see what Sen. McCain uses as a definition for the whole damned continent.

As much as all politicians like to think they’re fighting for the “average” guy or gal (or at least like having that appearance), Washington D.C. is like a interrogation room with dirty windows. We can see in (mostly), and politicians can sort of hear what we’re saying but, as long as they’re in the room (D.C.), they can’t see us all standing outside. McCain’s petty jabs at projects are the result of his obscured vision of the U.S. He sees everything through his partisan lens, which obscures the potential help any of these projects offer. Take the example I linked to above: McCain comments that investing in astronomy isn’t going to help “average” Americans. How’s that? Americans need jobs. Some Americans (and by American, I mean those of us living in the United States) happen to work in the field of astronomy, or are studying in that field. How is investing in astronomy a bad thing? Or is it because this investment is going to Hawaii, which probably has the least obscured night sky in the country other than, perhaps, Alaska?

Where McCain finds pork, I find jobs to be an avenue toward progress. Guess I’m just not average according to John and I think that’s a good thing.

Improvised Imjaddarah

Tina — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:00:02 +0000

So my new years resolution was to take my lunch to work more often than I buy lunch. So far, I’ve been pretty good about it, some weeks I bring lunch every day, some weeks it’s once or twice, but let’s just say that the average is on my side. Since making this resolution, I’ve had to add more recipes to my arsenal–cheap, flavorful and healthy recipes that allow me to make a few meals over the weekend, package them up and put them in the fridge to pull out on my way out the door in the morning.

Imjaddarah is a Lebanese recipe, often made for Friday Lenten dinners. The recipe I’m writing won’t be used for any Friday night though, since it calls for a cup and a half of chicken broth. Sure, you can use veggie broth for a Friday night or a vegetarian meal, but all I had in my pantry was chicken, so there you are. This has a few extra ingredients from your basic Imjaddarah, which you can find here: Imaddarah Lentils and Rice.
Recipe after the fold.

Ingredients:

* 1 C dry brown or green lentils
* 1 C brown rice (The basic recipe calls for the rice to be washed and soaked… I play things a little more fast and loose and just washed the rice)
* 2 C water
* 1 1/2 C chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
* 1 medium yellow onion, chopped fine
* 1 medium yellow onion, sliced lengthwise.
* 1/4 C olive oil (you can use canola instead, but know that this is sacrilege)
* 1 1/2 t salt and pepper (if you can, use sea salt–trust me, it tastes better)
* 1 t ground coriander
* 1 T minced garlic
* 1 t dry garlic
* 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped coarse

Wash your lentils. Look for any rejects (there will be a few), pick them out and wash again. This will remove any remaining “grit” from your dried lentils. Wash them a final time, drain out most of the water, then let the lentils sit in the bowl. Wash and drain the brown rice and add it to the bowl with the lentils.

Get a pot ready with the water and chicken broth and put it on the stove (on high) to start warming up. Add the lentils and brown rice, a pinch of salt, and stir.

Heat up the oil in a saute pan. Once the oil is hot (it will slide around the pan readily, like water), add the onions. When the onions are translucent, add the chopped carrots and minced garlic. Saute the vegetables until the onions are caramelized (golden brown, fairly see-through), then add the whole thing to the pot of lentils and rice. Stir that pot again.

Once the pot of lentils and rice is simmering, reduce the heat to medium-low and stir whenever you think of it. This is a fairly low maintenance recipe–about every ten minutes or so, give the pot some love and go on about your business. When the liquid in the pot is reduced to look like a gravy, add in the dried garlic, some more salt and some pepper to taste, and the ground coriander. Let the whole thing simmer until the lentils and the rice are soft, then take it off the heat entirely.

Since I cook this recipe as a “make-ahead”, I let it cool down a little bit and then put it into separate takeaway containers and pop those in the fridge. If you’re cooking this for a meal, let it cool a bit before you put it on the plates–it will be hot! If you like, you can get adventurous and try a little lemon juice on top of your serving, add a little parsley, or even a little cheese. Whatever you do, enjoy it–this is a hearty dish and will keep you warm with the blanket of snow we have on top of us at the moment.

Links du Jour

Tina — Sat, 24 May 2008 06:59:54 +0000

Pillow Box Tutorial

Give greeting cards new life as elegant little pillow boxes for gift cards, jewelry, or any other smallish type thingies.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Tags: tutorial, craft, recycle, gifts

Distracted Mind

Falling

Define “Average”, Johnny Boy

Improvised Imjaddarah

Links du Jour

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Chickens Roosting.

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