Loose Ends Tied Up In Knots: 09.2008

28.9.08

when it rains

And to think that last week I was mourning my lack of work, thought I'd NEVER get into the subbing system, etc. etc. Friday was, well, it was a Friday at an elementary school, and I was a sub in a sixth grade classroom. I knew it wouldn't be the easiest of days.

And it wasn't, but it was not the worst, either.

There were two girls with attitude and a boy who would only type obscenities instead of his social studies project in the computer lab. I can deal with that. But the boredom of supervision--over assignments I'd NEVER give to my students! Not knowing names or what the rules are or where supplies can be found. Augh! Substitute teaching is often a cross between babysitting and herding cats.

Frankly, I'd prefer the cats.

I already have a job for Tuesday (5th grade), and really hope I don't get a call bright and early tomorrow morning. . . I do NOT want to be a full-time sub. It would drive me to drink, Germana! (OHMY: You may have forgotten that Nebraska's liquor laws allow for sales of alcohol in regular grocery stores--everything from wine coolers to vodka. Last night, whilst perusing the offerings at our neighborhood Hy-Vee, I discovered Domaine de Canton on sale @ 30% off! I've been drooling over it since I saw an ad in Imbibe Magazine and Bruce decided I needed it. We took it home and it is AMAZING.)

In more pleasant non-teaching news, I finished the third book from my last Persephone batch this afternoon, The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff (like Seinfeld, it is "about nothing" except day-to-day trivialities. Amusing, gentle, quiet, lovely, etc.), meaning I get to order another three. Now begins the delightful task of choosing.

No progress on the curtains this weekend, but here is a sneak peek at part of the creation process, when I was trying to get my leaves just right:

26.9.08

now I remember why I hate this

It wasn't AWFUL, but it was lots of other things.

I came home, had two gin and tonics and watched Netflix DVDs for hours and hours.

And now I am going to bed.

25.9.08

developments

Okay! I got the Substitute Teacher Machine up and running and I have a job tomorrow! This is good for the pocketbook; hopefully that won't be the only thing that gets me through the day. It's in a 6th grade classroom (pro) but on a FRIDAY (con). Fridays are often sucktastic for regular teachers. We'll see. Hopefully I won't have lunch or recess duty--those are difficult because I don't know the rules, so I just walk around looking stern.

I must pack a lunch!

The correct range was delivered today and I broke it in with a 4 lb. roasted pork loin with fig sauce.

Cross your fingers for me--

24.9.08

Really, Never!

These file folders are right up my alley. Except I'd also want one that said "Maybe/Not."

I had too many minor adventures today. The morning got off to a rollicking start with the appliance company delivering the wrong range. The right one, ah, they can't get it out until tomorrow. No problem, we'll just eat out for dinner. This evening: ring ring, it's the Substitute Teacher Machine! I declined the job because the range's scheduled delivery time was during school hours. I mourned the loss of $125 and, after a moment's thought berated myself: why not reschedule the delivery, dummy? Then the Substitute Teacher Machine called again and I was all set to take it! and! then! my stupid PIN number didn't work. SARAH FAIL.

Added to Thursday's To-Do List: Call school district and find out what's up with my PIN.

I applied for a job at the Air Force base today, many thanks to my sister for helping me tweak my resume's Objective and Misc. She also gave me an assignment to think of jobs/careers that interest me and list the pros & cons. I came up with a list but am open to suggestions. I CRAVE suggestions! Anything you think I might enjoy or be good at? Part-time, full-time, rarely working at all; throw 'em at me.

A reminder of some things I am NOT good at/around and could not acquire gainful employment doing:

working with dumb adults

singing (I can carry a tune, and I got rhythm, but voice is blah)

heavy lifting (nothing above say, 75 lbs.)

babies

smiling

hospitals

bodily fluids

seeing things without corrective lenses (no pilot or astronaut positions)

moderate semicolon use

texting on my phone (I am v e r y slow)

anything involving comic sans

And if you need ideas, here are a few things I AM good at/around that you might not have known:

hedge trimmers

untangling things

driving tractors

pulling pints

throwing a spiral

making lists (har har!)

~~pointing out what's wrong with things/people/ideas~~ suggesting improvements

Here's to a quiet Thursday.

23.9.08

a discovery

I forgot to tell you the other day, that I discovered my NEW favorite pasta shape is orecchiette. Excellent mouthfeel, if you can stop thinking about what the word means in Italian, and stop considering what those would taste like.

Farewell, penne! You aren't #1 anymore.

It's good to stay up-to-date on these sort of things; I like to keep you informed. Do you have a favorite pasta shape?

22.9.08

title?

Remember when I worked at that paint-your-own-pottery place in San Antonio? The place where this:

was my ticket to employment? (not really, although I DID bring it to my interview.)

I am updating my resume and can't think of a good job title for that position.

You may remember that job from such blog excerpts as:

Argh. I resent my job. I resent the people who come into the studio. I have no problem helping people or answering questions. I do have issues with those who do not listen and those who are rude. They issue commands about what they need and want. I often feel like a waitress--only there's no tipping when the customer leaves. I'm more like a busboy.

There is one advantage that my old crappy big-box bookstore job had over life at the happy painty fun ceramics studio: interactions with even the worst bookstore customers were limited to a few minutes, max. At my present job, people are quite happy to park their not-even-remotely-artistically-inclined selves at a table for hours (1 & 1/2 to 6 hours, really) on end, needing constant:

1) suggestions about what to paint
2) suggestions about which colors to use
3) suggestions about what to do with the (finally) chosen colors of glaze and how to paint those designs
4) suggestions about which brushes to use
5) even more suggestions for design ideas because they decided they didn't like your first batch (OR they demand you find a picture/object/symbol online and print it out so they can copy/trace it)
6) help correcting the massive mistakes they made because they didn't follow your instructions about how to paint with glaze
7) supervision so that they don't throw brushes away, eat paint, glue their unfired ceramic piece to a (flammable) wooden something or other or vice versa, or leave without paying
8) reassurance that their artwork is cute and/or nice or that it will look cute and/or nice after it is fired
9) help (again) correcting mistakes
10) telling that NO, you will not paint it for them

Oh my. And these people are coming here for FUN?

I guess Clerk would work. In-House Artistic Assistant? Ceramics Specialist? Glazer & Kiln-Loader? Annoyed Renaissance Woman would be PERFECT, but would not help me get a job.

Any ideas?

21.9.08

first hints of fall

Jonathans before peeling & coring & slicing & applesaucing

Apples at the farmers market! I was tempted to bring pumpkins and eggplant home but had no extra arms for squash and Bruce is not an eggplant fan--and I spent my last monies on local pork products. Bacon or eggplant? Hmmm. Not a question that needs much thought.

I spent almost ALL of yesterday in the kitchen. Fried rice was on the dinner menu, but that requires COLD rice. Usually I use leftover rice from the day before, but our household rice consumption is not up to the eight cups of leftover rice the recipe called for. So steps were taken! Cook the rice (a handful of black rice will tinge all your rice purple, by the way), cool the rice down, slowly, de-clump the rice, then refrigerate the rice. A pain in the ass, but it was SO worth it. (You fry eight diced slices of bacon nice and crisp and then fry the RICE in all that lovely bacon grease.)

Before all that could start, there was the applesauce, which took forever but is tasty and I have to freeze at least half to enjoy later.

Then the pork chops and frying the fried rice and THEN the eating and the dishes and whoosh.

And this morning I made blueberry coffeecake.

But the fridge and freezer are full and I don't have to cook tonight and will instead direct my energies to completing the detail work on the lino block. I did a test print and it's looking good so far. I am taking photos as I go and will post the series when it's all done. Hopefully BEFORE 2008 rolls around.

What with all this edible whatnot, I did want to direct your cursors to J.Liz's new food blog, Food Epiphany, if you didn't know. I've had CSA membership in my sights for several years, but all the moving made me shy from commitment; J.Liz chronicles her food adventures! (sorry--that sounds corny (ha ha: corn!))

15.9.08

things that depress me

-- Band-Aids on old people's faces; the older the person, the worse it is.

--the word "caper"

Am now reading two short story collections--short short stories by Saki and a novella + short stories by Thomas Mann. Both are distinctly un-Middlemarchian.

14.9.08

we are at 70%

Another small step taken on my 2008 Required Reading:

1. The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher
2. ~~Frost in May by Antonia White~~
3. ~~Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon~~
4. Letty Fox: Her Luck by Christina Stead
5. ~~Middlemarch by George Eliot~~
6. ~~On Photography by Susan Sontag~~
7. ~~The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon by Sei Shonagon~~
8. ~~The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith~~
9. ~~The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte~~
10. ~~Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell~~

Tonight I turned the last of the 800+ pages of Middlemarch and t'was good. There was too much political whatnot for my tastes, but I'm glad I read it.

Now, it is time to pick up something a tad more modern and less overwrought. Perhaps even something from the 20th century, or, dare I posit, the 21st? [gasp!]

take pause

Today we watched the film version of Persepolis. It was excellent.
I made blondies with filberts and chocolate chunks in the Edge pan Germana sent me. They are also excellent.
I am 100 pages from finishing Middlemarch. Not that I'm in a rush--it is good stuff--but I will be happy to finish it.
The lino block for my curtains will be finished episode of This American Life by episode of This American Life; thank you streaming website! I listened to four or five this weekend. The curtains better be worth it.

7.9.08

focus, focus . . . focus!

(ooh, love that Crater Lake blue)

I am a putz. The only questions and situations I am dealing with right now are the immediate, day-to-day ones, such as do I have clean socks? and what to make for dinner. Warm feet and eating well ARE well and good, yes, but I need to make some decisions about longer-term issues. Like employment. Like changing my health insurance to the correct STATE.

But, living in the moment! That's not a bad thing (Oprah would support me, right?). (No, I don't watch Oprah.) (Anymore.) Except I feel like I'm running in neutral, just doing what is necessary without Major Goals or Plans. I am embarrassed and scared. I'm avoiding.

On the action side of things, today I did read 200 pages of Middlemarch, more than I've done in the last three weeks of "reading" it. George Eliot is wordy and long-winded and verbose. Quite erudite at times, also. There are amusing passages I don't know if I am supposed to laugh at-

". . . and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina."

Those retinal diseases, one doesn't often run into them in works of Literature, much less in reference to the decor of a church. Is it just a complex way of saying the place was gaudy? Am I to be struck by the odd-but-apt simile? Or is the author making fun? This is my first exposure to Eliot; I know Austen is witty and humorous, but don't know of adjectives attributed to Eliot besides . . . serious.

One more-

". . . for no man was more incapable of flashy make-believe than Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal . . . "

Among your options: cattle, giraffes, sheep, goats, wildebeest, yaks, llamas, etc. Being that it IS Mr. Casaubon, I'm going with cattle.

The use of "ruminant" also plays off well with "ruminate" the verb, which solitary Casaubon loves to do. (Ooh, English teacher moment, there!)

If I was a ruminant, I'd be one of those shy, panicky antelope who start at every sound and flee! flee! flee! Perhaps I shall try to cultivate a more giraffe-oriented persona and just "be above it all." (sorry) Maybe a wild water buffalo would be better; they seem more inclined to stick to their guns about things.

"Fuck, yeah, I'm sitting in this river. What are you gonna do about it?"

1.9.08

Labor(ing in the kitchen) Day

Bought beautiful peaches at the farmers market on Saturday, made unlovely tarte aux pêches today. Julia came off the shelf last night as I prepared myself for the forbidding pâte sucrée!!! July's birthday pie action gave me some confidence, but tarts don't give you as much space to cover up mistakes. And I made several, such as not partially-baking the pastry shell enough, not sealing it in the pan perfectly (leading to shrinkage of the pastry shell), and THAT caused pastry shell leakage. Leakage!

Such problems sound awfully unsanitary.

I used a tart pan with a removable base but, because of leakage, the rim lost some of its removability and became stuck to the tart in places. I had to pry the (removable) rim from the tarte aux pêches. Fortunately, such trauma did not affect the flavor and I was happy to find that the ugly beast came out more than palatable.

We spotted the first apples at the market, too. Maybe next time?

Peaches smell like sunshine.