I am my own yarn store.

Don't believe me? HA!

Isn't she glorious? Let's look from a different angle!

Not to mention:

I live with a sea of yarn. It is glorious. It's almost better than having a man. Yarn can never be an asshole.

I know, I have a bunch of photos and a report to do on my trip up to Portland. It will come; I just have to get the energy up to pick out the photos I want to edit to use, crop them and Photoshop them, and stick it all together. I have a keen cool Flash-skillz-using idea for the whole thing, but who knows if I'll be keen enough to pull that shit together.

Instead, some observations:

• The city smelled like unwashed hippy this morning. You know, that guy you pass in the bookstore who doesn't look homeless, but reeks of sweat and oil and a hint of stale piss between the legs? That's what the smell was; not overpowering, but lingering in the air. Ew.
• Why is it that people with the most expensive cars are the worst drivers ever? Think about it: when was the last time you saw a clunker in a single-car accident? When? This morning I passed a car that had run into a street lamp on the corner of California and Arguello. In front of the Starbucks. I mean, hello? Weren't you looking? Is coffee THAT important to you? It's not that hard to keep in your lane, dammit. There were NO OTHER CARS WITH DAMAGE ANYWHERE AROUND!! Assfuck. It was a Mercedes. I'm sure they deserved it. The front end was smashed up all to hell. The lamp post, not even a scratch.
• It is embarrassing to buy products intended to deal with feminine itchiness. Really. (But a secret: Vagisil is my new friend. Bet you really wanted to know that.)
• Also? Men suck. That's all.

If you had asked me five, ten years ago if I would ever be a decent cook, I would have laughed at you. Adventures in the kitchen was a scary thing to me. I knew a few things that my college roommate had taught me to make (baked BBQ-sauce chicken, for instance), but otherwise I pretty much stuck with take out and microwave meals.

How funny that it took a diet to change that, and allow me to be experimentive with my food.

The last few months I was in New York City — really, the last five or six months — I was pretty depressed. I dropped out of the grad school program that had taken me there. I was apathetic, and lazy. My sex life was a mess (or nonexistant, or confusing, or a lot of things), my social life sort of died out, and suddenly I had no plan for my life, and no real path to follow.

And then my dad made a comment about my weight, and it really hit home how deep my downward spiral had gone. I had never been waif-like, but for most of high school I was safely curvy. But then I gained 30 pounds in college, eating massive amounts in the dorm cafeteria, devouring late-night pizzas and sandwiches at work, and spending all my free time in front of the computer chatting on the internet. I gave myself a look in the mirror, and I looked terrible. I realized I had stopped looking at pictures of myself a few years back because they didn't show me the way I viewed myself. I hardly recognized the person standing where I should have been, and I really didn't want to recognize her.

I didn't want to be the me I had become.

It wasn't just the weight, either, though that was a large part of what was pulling me down (literally and emotionally). I cheated on my boyfriend (and not even with someone who was worth it, in the end), I said mean things about people, I was mostly selfish, was lazy, was everything a fat, ugly person could be. Or is thought to be. Perhaps all these things were tied together, bound up with a dissatisfaction at the wasted potential of my life. It was time to get out of that hole.

And so I started with the weight loss. My mom had dabbled in the Atkins diet enough to have had some success, and to think it would be a good diet for me (since I'm a raving carnivore, as many of my friends know). I did my research, read the website, read some other websites, and figured, "what the heck." I could give up bread and rice and pasta and sugar if it meant I could keep my meat. (Mmm ... glorious, glorious meat.) I also am one of those strange people who like their healthy green veggies, so the limited list of allowed vegetables in the beginning "induction" stage of the diet was perfect, since it was mostly stuff I liked to eat (or was willing to try, at least; never had kale or turnips before this diet, and now I love them).

Of course, I've never been great with timing. The second week I was on the diet, I flew out west to Arizona to visit my friend Jes, and go to Coachella. For the entire weekend I ate only burgers patties, bunless Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers (they had vegetables on them ... score!), and shrimp salad. And a lot of diet Coke and water. I mean, a lot. Perhaps I was lucky in how I kicked off my diet, because by the end of the first month I had lost over 10 pounds. It was noticeable to people who hadn't seen me in a few months. It felt great. So I kept at it. By the end of the summer, I had lost the 30 pounds I gained in college, and looked better than I ever had before (the weight all went away from the bad places, staying only where it would make me look sexy).

Losing the weight didn't solve the problems in my life immediately; I still had to face having to come back to California, the fight to find a job in a slow market, the downspiral and eventual end of my relationship with my boyfriend (I still regret everything I did to ruin that, but since things for me now are better than they ever were with him — aside from the bouts of loneliness, and aside from my mother's stroke — perhaps it really was for the best thing that could have happened to me). But it (losing the weight) made it so much easier to deal with them, and slowly, surely, crawl out of that hell that was my life last year. And the year before, and the one before that, and ...

I've kind of rambled more than I intended to. Sorry. What I intended was to prelude into one of the better things to come out of my two-year climb (other than the job I like that I celebrate the one-year anniversary of starting today, and the financial independence, and the having enough emotional turmoil going on to encourage me to start writing again): the recipes. Because when I started cooking for my new diet, I went out and looked up as many low-carb recipes as I could find.

Today, I made one of my favorite of these recipes. Well, two, really; a couple I've developed just in the past year that I really like and could almost probably convince other people to try, too. Unfortunately, my digicam died a few weeks ago, so I don't have pictures to show, but I'm sure you can get the picture in your powerful mind, no?

Sarah's Lemon Jell-O Chicken (Inspired by this recipe)

Ingredients:


• 3 chicken breasts (or about 1.5 lbs of white meat) chopped into bite-sized pieces
• 1 large red bell pepper, chopped into bite-sized pieces
• olive oil

  For the sauce:
  

• 4 Tbs butter (half a stick)
• 2 - 3 Tbs Dijon Mustard
• 1 package sugar-free lemon flavored gelatin
• garlic powder, to taste (less than 1/4 tsp)
• water

  Heat up some olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan, over medium-high heat. Brown the chicken in batches, cooking it on all sides until it's golden-brown, putting it aside on a plate or in a bowl until all the chicken is cooked.

  Turn the heat down to low, let the saucepan cool down for a few minutes, then put the butter in it, letting it melt (watch so it doesn't burn!) completely to liquid. Remove briefly from the heat, adding the mustard, the gelatin, and the garlic powder, beating it together with a fork. The consistency will probably be lumpy; add the water, a little at a time, until it mixes up smooth. Return the saucepan to the heat, add the chicken and the pieces of bell pepper, stir, cover, and simmer for a few minutes, while you cook your side dishes, rice, whatever. The sauce should thicken up and "grow" during this time, because of the gelatin. Keep the dish warm over very low heat, and covered, until ready to serve.

  Serve over rice, or on its own. However you prefer.

That wasn't so hard, was it? Despite the use of Jell-O, which is so 1970s. Dude. Note that you don't have to use sugar-free gelatin; that's the influence of my low-carb dieting days talking. I don't really follow a low-carb lifestyle anymore (I ate this over rice today, for instance), but I'm still reluctant to add sugar when I can have sugar-substitute, and I still only very rarely buy carbs like rice and bread and pasta.

March 5, 2006

Special kind of stupid? Yep, that's me.

Nothing like trying to ignore the squicky smell of day-old undies when you're doing the Drive of Shame, ne?

Though besides that, I have very little to complain about. Save for the fact that all my intimate relationships seem to be ending up the same — benefits, no commitment.

Trying to decide if I like that or no. I'm starting to miss a little love in my life.

March 2, 2006

There are many indignities a woman has to face in her life.

Being the loser in a fight with World of Warcraft over a man's affections should not be one of them.

Why do I even bother? I must be a special sort of stupid.

In other news, I have great coworkers. Two of us have birthdays within two weeks of each other (myself and the newest graveyard hiree), and they threw us a joint surprise party at work last night. I got fed and Chip bought me Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks, which I've been eyeing for a while and which happened to have a pattern for men's socks that I liked, just in time for me to start knitting a pair of socks for Dad's birthday. Squee.