December 4th

It's about time for another haircut. I just noticed my picture in the sidebar here and I'm wearing my hair shorter than that now. If it's long enough to need a brush, it's too long.  Right now it's too long.

Happy National Cookie Day. I baked cookies. If I wasn't so lazy I'd go take a picture of them for you. Transferring a photo from my phone to the computer... I'm not exactly sure how to do that. Anyway, I modified a recipe for Hermit cookies to make them fortified with extra protein and other healthy stuff. Want the recipe? Here it is!

Fortified Hermit Cookies

Ingredients:

·         ½ cup butter, room temperature

·         ¼ - ½ cup brown sugar, packed

·         ¼ cup un-sulfured molasses

·         2 large eggs

·         1 tsp. vanilla extract (or more, to taste)

·         1 cup all-purpose flour*

·         2 cups uncooked rolled oats (old fashioned)

·         ½ - 1 cup non-fat dry milk powder

·         1 tsp. baking soda

·         ½ tsp. salt

·         1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon

·         1 tsp. allspice

·         1 tsp. nutmeg

·         1 cup raisins (golden raisins, sultanas)

·         1 cup chopped dates

·         1 cup chopped pecans (or nut of your choice)

·         1 Tablespoon flour

Directions:       Preheat oven to 350°F

With electric mixer at medium speed, cream together butter, brown sugar, and molasses. Add eggs and beat until thoroughly mixed. Beat in vanilla extract.

In separate bowl combine dry ingredients: flour, oats, milk powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. At low speed, gradually mix dry ingredients into wet mixture until they are thoroughly mixed. In a small bowl combine the fruit and nuts, stirring in 1 Tablespoon flour to coat. Then stir the nuts and dried fruits into the dough.

Drop cookies by tablespoonful onto a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, about two inches apart. Bake 10-12 minutes until edges are set but centers appear moist. Cool on baking sheet two minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Store in an airtight container.

*If using self-rising flour, omit the baking soda. 

This might work pretty well. I've made some adjustments on the amounts of powdered milk, flour, sugar, and oats. Quick cooking oats (but not instant) will work fine, I think. Leaving out the powdered milk entirely will also probably work. I keep powdered milk in the house all the time, as I like to drink it. No one else around here does, and I suspect many people don't have it on hand. But it does add nutritional value to these cookies. Also, probably any dried fruit will do. 

But that's not really what I came to talk about. Today is Diva's 19th birthday. I haven't communicated with her at all today, or for the last several months. I'm not entirely sure where she is. Last I heard she lived in Greenville, about 50 miles or so north of our town. But I don't know where in Greenville she lives, or even for sure if she lives there. I think she's still in South Carolina. 

Here's the thing: she's crazy. I gave her the nickname "Diva" for the blog many years ago, and she has continued to exhibit these dramatic qualities, more so every year it seems. Our relationship is toxic. Or was, since we don't seem to have a relationship now. She's not good for me, and as much as I wish things were different, I'm not really good for her either. So here we are. 

We adopted her because we wanted another child. We wanted her. She was only 14 months old when she came to live with us. As she grew, and especially into adolescence, she was more and more difficult. Not normal "difficult adolescent" difficult, but crazy difficult. Violent, uncontrollable. Perhaps we could have handled things differently, but we did the best we could with the knowledge and abilities we had. Things didn't go well. The older she got the worse it got. She lied all the time, stole from us... there are a lot of details in the archives of this blog. I don't want to think about the details because it stresses and depresses me. 

And here it is, her 19th birthday. I want for her to be a pleasant person and for us to have a loving relationship. I'd love to call her up and have a lovely chat and wish her a happy birthday. The reality is that if I contact her at all, I'll be caught up in the Diva Drama Tornado. Superman is over it. Sooo over it! I've contemplated this for a few weeks and decided that the best course of action at this time is inaction. So I haven't looked for her on Facebork (she unfriended me years ago) or posted anything there about her. She doesn't know where this blog is, I think. 

I mourn for the loss of the ideal. And I wish her well. I hope she's doing well, hope she is successful, staying out of trouble, learning good lessons about the world. 

Happy Birthday, Angel. 

Happy October

Man, time flies when I'm ignoring the internet. Didn't realize it had been so long since my last post.

I have a new floater in my eye. Left eye. Actually, this might be the first floater in my eye. No, I have a few tiny dust mote looking things in my eyes that I see occasionally. This one looks like a long fine cat hair, the kind of cat hair I find all over my house anyway, thanks to Smudge. Can cat hair be so ubiquitous it gets into one's eyeball? It's slightly left of center of my vision in my left eye. It wiggles occasionally, sometimes looking like a long legged spider, sometimes like a knot. It's very distracting. I called the eye doctor's office today, asked the nice lady on the phone if this was something I should be concerned about. She said "I'm not a doctor, but if it was me, I'd get it checked out." It's time for my complete checkup anyway, and she was able to get me in to see my doctor tomorrow morning, so there you have it. If it's anything critical, I'll be sure to post an update. If it's nothing to worry about, you probably won't hear from me about it.

Guess what!? Twitch got two jobs today! Both in food service. I don't know what he'll be doing. Working at Five Guys I guess he'll probably make sandwiches or whatever it is they serve there. The other place, and I can't remember the name of it, is a nice full service restaurant. Perhaps he's cooking or washing dishes. Personally I think it would be a bad idea for him to start out as a server. He's not much of a people person. I could be wrong, though. I hope he finds much success and makes a bunch of money.

Speaking of not being a people person, me. I was able to stay home four out of five days last week. Stayed home yesterday... wait, no I didn't. Went to Waffle House with Superman for breakfast then did a quick shopping trip to the grocery store. Was home shortly after 9, and stayed home the rest of the day. I was supposed to see my therapist this noon, but took a morning nap and overslept. OK, to be honest, I sort of did that on purpose. Not that I don't like seeing my therapist. I really really didn't want to go out in public today. Yeah, the agoraphobia is acting up again. I'll go to the eye doctor tomorrow morning, and pick Sproing up after school to take him to his therapy appointment. Perhaps I'll shop for groceries if I feel particularly brave. At Aldi, which is small, and during the workday/workweek is likely to be empty-ish. I hope. I should also get a haircut, but not sure about that. We'll see.

That's about all I got this time.

Here's the thing

I dread spending time with my children. Well, with some of my children. One in particular. The young boy is being a pain in the ass, and has been all summer. Although to my surprise and delight, Diva is doing very well. Though I'm not eagerly looking for opportunities to spend time with her, when these opportunities occur they can be almost pleasant. It's a process for both of us, Diva and me, learning to get along in each other's company. Sproing, though, isn't attempting to make things better. He's just obnoxious and rude and inconsiderate, etc. School starts in 15 days. Yes, I'm counting them, the days.

Today has been difficult for me, and it's a "me" thing. I slept in, which isn't a bad thing necessarily. I got up and showered, which is good, since some days I forego the shower. (That's one of the signs that I'm depressed, the skipping of the shower. Also the sleeping in.) I spent a few moments in the same room with Sproing. That was stressful, so I left. I was finishing my morning grooming routine in the bathroom but the cat's litter box made the experience odiferously unpleasant. Well, what to do except clean it out, right? Superman usually does that job, but he's at work and I'm uncomfortable with the stench, so here I go. And make a mess of it. Dumped half the cat poop on the bathroom floor. I cleaned it up effectively. (Sometimes when I try to clean up my messes, I end up making bigger messes.) But in the process I stepped in dirty cat litter (no icky solids, but nasty nonetheless). And I'd just had a shower. So I washed my feet in the sink. One at a time; I didn't levitate over the lavatory to wash both feet simultaneously. Now, on a good day I'd have a laugh at my clumsiness and go about my business. Today is not a good day. I very nearly cried. And I've been anxious and on edge ever since. I have some pills to help that, but I'm going to try eating a healthy lunch (I had a healthy breakfast, though it was small) and see if that doesn't help soothe my nerves somewhat. I have to go through the living room where the Sproing is lying in wait to be ugly to me, and that increases my resistance to leaving the relative safety of my bedroom.

As you may have noticed, I'm not writing much here these days. Actually, I went all week last week without turning on my computer at all. I think it was yesterday, Sunday, that I finally logged on and checked my email. I deleted most of that without reading it. Just too depressed. Facebook depresses me these days, too, though I did peruse the 'book for a while yesterday. Probably won't mess with it today.

I watched the Braves win all three games against the Phillies this weekend. That was about the only "fun" thing I could do all weekend. I was strong enough one day last week to get my hair cut. That's a stressful activity for me, as I've mentioned in the past. But it was OK. And I spent the time with Twitch, too, which was pleasant. I picked him up from work (he has a small part-part-time job doing warehouse stuff at a department store), we went to the cheap haircut place and waited a long time for my haircut, then he helped me buy $300+ worth of groceries at Aldi. Aldi is the place where you bag your own groceries in your own bags/boxes. I have a few market bags and miscellaneous small containers for that sort of thing, but not for $300+ worth of groceries. I had an old medium sized dog crate rattling around in the back seat of my truck, though, and we assembled that to hold lots of groceries. Used bungee cords to secure it in the bed of the truck. Thankfully it was a rare sunny day here in the 'wood. The whole thing was kinda funny. Perhaps I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn't. Anyway, that was a busy day. Buying, bagging, transporting, unloading, and putting away that much stuff takes a long time and lots of energy. Way more energy than I have today, for sure.

These paragraphs are too long. I reread them, looking for a good place to divide them into smaller chunks, but find no good breaking point. So there you have it; long, rambling paragraphs. It's the best I can do today, and I'm OK with that.

Let's go find some healthy lunch. Maybe that will help. (It won't help the paragraphs, but will hopefully help my emotional condition.)