Light and Momentary

Hail and blessed be

Today is the feast of St. Andrew. This means there is a saltire hanging in my dining room, and day 1 of the novena under my belt.

My husband served haggis for dinner, with neeps and tatties alongside. (Safari would like for him to have served "needs" and "tattoos," but those did not appear at the table.) I usually make vegetarian haggis for dinner on the feast of St. Andrew, but this year he served up the mail-order canned haggis.

Mail-order canned haggis is about as good as you'd expect it to be, apparently. One of the surprising things about living in Scotland was the discovery that haggis is actually delicious, but something about the cannery + the USPS appears to deflate that particular surprise.

I didn't eat any mail-order canned haggis (possibly Freudian that I first typed "gaggis"), because I met one of my college roommates for dinner instead. She is crushing me in the roommate fitness contest -- I haven't worked out since the mayonnaise incident on Saturday -- but I love her anyway.

Today is also the last day of November, and this is the thirtieth post I have written in the past thirty days. PHEW, I finished.

29

Today, my friends, I reviewed and ranked 30 grant applications. It's been a judgment-heavy week, actually, between the grading and the committee work. So tonight, instead of writing you a thoughtful blog post about a weighty topic, I am going to observe that is the 29th day of November and NaBloPoMo ends tomorrow.

The kingdom of this world is become a pain in my butt

I was thinking to myself, "What would I enjoy doing here in the dreary season? What is something fun I could look forward to?" An answer popped into my head immediately: I'd like to see the Messiah. It's been years.

Google told me about a Messiah performance not too far from Gladlyville, and I clicked on through with visions of melismas (melismata?) dancing in my head. You guys! I missed it! They sang the Messiah THE WEEKEND BEFORE LAST. That's practically the middle of November.

I had the itch in my brain to hear those beautiful words set to beautiful music -- the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever -- so I went looking for the flash mob version that I watch every year. And do you know when it was recorded? November 13, that's when. Pretty soon, you guys, we're going to have pumpkin spice lattes on sale in June, and Christmas lights the day after Labor Day.

Google tells me I can see the Messiah in December if I'm willing to go to Chicago. Hmm.

Civics

This is my seventh year in the classroom, and I think I mostly have a handle on what my students are likely to find difficult. But I have been grading a batch of assignments this evening that has taken me by surprise. 

It's a reboot of an assignment from the spring, in which students had to contact an elected official about a public policy question that would affect individuals with disabilities. The instructions say that they have a lot of latitude about what they do, but it has to make sense. Don't ask your US senator to take action on a state bill, or vice versa. Don't ask your legislator to vote on a bill that has already met its fate. There are a bunch of specific options: if you are interested in issue X, you may wish to contact your US senator about bill Y.

They had more than two months to do this assignment, and I let them resubmit if I spotted any problems with their work. I did this up until a week before the final due date. But you guys, there are a TON of submissions from those last seven days, and a surprising number of them disregarded the "must make sense" warning. What is the mayor of a Midwestern municipality going to do about a piece of pending federal legislation? Maybe he will call his U.S. senator on behalf of the confused student.

Wish me luck, my friends.

The little engine that didn't really want to

Today is a better day. My back is much improved, though still a bit cranky. I am no longer plotting any arson or any dramatic flounces. It was not what you'd call a restful break, though.

In fact, I think it's a bit of a mental misnomer for me to label it Thanksgiving break. It's true that I don't teach and I am free to do my work from home. But there's always a bunch of work to be done (grading, especially -- piles thereof), and the email continues unabated, and my ideas about what I will get done in the three days before or two days after I host a large and stressful family gathering are never very closely aligned to the unforgiving reality of the space-time continuum.

Anyway. I'll be back in the office tomorrow, finishing up some of the grading I didn't do over break in time for my morning class. There remain two weeks of class and one week of finals, and before I wrap things up for 2017 I also have to write a staggering number of letters of recommendation. And there are two committee tasks looming this week that will require considerable preparation. I like these committees. I will enjoy our discussions. I just have to get the work done in the next few days. This time of year there are always little responsibility bombs going off in my email inbox: an honors project that needs to be reviewed, a symposium proposal that needs my approval. 

Right now I am a little stressed about the possibility that students who have asked me for letters of recommendation will have academic integrity concerns in the paper they're submitting to me tomorrow. About 10% of undergrad submissions have some degree of plagiarism, and I have agreed to write letters for so many students that some overlap is entirely possible. From where you are sitting, I know, it seems absurd that a student would do such a thing. Let us hope the students all agree. From where you are sitting, I know, it seems obvious that in that situation an instructor would simply say, "I can no longer recommend you for graduate study." And I will, if necessary, but OH MAN I would prefer not to have that conversation.

Okay. So. I am not going to borrow trouble. I am going to shovel some figurative coal on the figurative fire under my figurative boiler and I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can my way to the top of the figurative hill. It always gets done.

Sitting very still

So you guys, it hasn't been the happiest few days here. I could write a really juicy blog post about the reasons why, but I would probably regret that blog post in pretty short order. 

Here is the part I can tell you about without causing unhappiness to anybody else: for most of the day I have been limping around as the result of a mayonnaise injury. It is the stupidest thing. In the late morning I was helping Stella make tuna salad. The squeezy bottle of mayonnaise was almost empty, but I was confident that enough remained for tuna salad. I gave it a vigorous shake...and my back has not been the same since.

Who ever heard of a mayonnaise injury? I might need my own ICD-10 code. It hurts a lot to move laterally or twist. It hurts a medium amount to round or arch my back. It hurts a little to breathe deeply. 

Mayonnaise! I can't even think of a good patron saint for the mayonnaise-injured. Sebastian, maybe, who knew a thing or two about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. (St. Sebastian rolls his eyes at the comparison.)

Huh, even the grinchy people are thinking about shopping on Black Friday

I would probably rather remove one of my limbs with a spork than go shopping on Black Friday. I actively deterred my husband from making a Best Buy run today when he was having a computer problem. "It's going to be so bad," I told him, in tones more suited to an impending assault by syphilitic zombies than to a retail event beloved by many. And yet here I sit, preparing to tell you to buy something. 

Oh, man, consumer culture is eating my brain. Kind of like a syphilitic zombie, now that I think about it.

Anyway. The thing that made me think about shopping is that Joe is sitting next to me playing with the Perplexus. I spent a fair amount of time today goofing around with Perplexus myself. It's a fun puzzle -- little kids can get parts of it easily, but big kids can spend a long time trying to get the tricky bits. It's been a very pleasant level of challenging for most of the people in my family, and I just took a long break from writing this post to argue (happily) with Joe about which parts of it are hardest, and to reminisce about the 2013 trip during which it was a welcome car diversion. So if you are looking for something that will induce school-aged kids to sit quietly while also engaging with a physical object rather than a screen, the Perplexus might be a good purchase. (It's not silent, because the ball rattles a bit when it moves around and especially when it falls off the track. But it's quiet.)

And for all y'all who have been thinking grumpily about how it's not even the feast of Christ the King yet-- here's a fist bump from me to you.

All she wrote

This was a long day. How's by you?

In which I wonder about Wonder

Hollywood is hoping that many of us will see Wonder this weekend, its adaptation of a YA novel about a kid with a severe cranofacial anomaly. R.J. Palacio has said that her inspiration for the novel was her own clumsy response to a child with a craniofacial anomaly, and in the novel her main character, Auggie, seems to have something like a severe form of Treacher Collins syndrome. (Go look. Scroll down. I'll wait.)

Predictably but also vexingly, the makers of the movie version of Wonder have buffed up their hero, choosing to use an actor wearing a mask that creates the appearance of mild facial differences. Be kind, they exhort us. And hey, I'm all for kindness. I was just blogging about how kindness would be front and center in my life motto if I had one. But this, my friends, strikes me as cheap kindness.

Hollywood has long made movies that reflect distorted ideas about the range of normal in the human form. Remember The Truth About Cats and Dogs, in which Janeane Garofalo was the plain one? Remember Frankie and Johnny, in which the woman who defined herself by her unattractiveness was played by...Michelle Freaking Pfeiffer? The Hollywood range of normal bottoms out at approximately the 90th percentile for attractiveness. This means that 90 percent of the women in America are carrying around baggage about having sub-normal looks, because women who look them don't appear on the big screen. But oooooh, it makes me sad that the people behind this movie had the opportunity to allow kids with facial disfigurements to see themselves represented, and they opted not to do so.

Humans are wired to notice subtle differences in facial structure. When you first learn about the features that define dysmorphia, you feel a little skeptical-- like, come on, is it a big deal to have the spacing between your eyes be outside the normal range by an eighth of an inch? And yet even minor differences leave kids more vulnerable to bullying. Earlier this week I was reminded of how forceful an instinctive response can be when a child with a particularly severe facial disfigurement popped up in my Twitter feed. I've served on a cleft lip and palate team; I've taught units on craniofacial anomalies ten times now. I know better than to flinch and look away, and still I flinched and looked away. If Auggie's problems were mild, we could chalk up his difficulties to the mean people around him. Isn't it awesome that we in the audience are better than that? Hurray for kindness! Kindness all around! The decision to feature a child actor who can remove his mask at will obscures the enduring complexity of the issues faced by people with severe disfigurements. I would like to register my objections.

It shouldn't surprise me that they went this route, I suppose. Movies are notorious for slapping quick and easy solutions on top of complex and enduring problems. Substance abuse? Have yourself a quick epiphany and visit a few AA meetings. Past trauma? Good thing your new love interest is such a good listener -- you'll be fixed by the time the credits roll. Reality is inevitably more difficult and complicated.

My biggest criticism of Hollywood is not that all of the women my age have preternaturally smooth foreheads, while mine carries the marks of 47 years' worth of worry and surprise. My biggest criticism is that Hollywood does goodness badly. Remember the creepiness of movie-Galadriel contemplating Frodo's offer of the ring? Or movie-Prince Caspian's willingness to contemplate a deal with the villains? True goodness is thin on the ground in Hollywood movies, as if might be too sappy or predictable. In reality, true goodness is an unexpected and hopeful beacon. Every flavor of true goodness arises from God who is truth and goodness, who looks at us with tender love despite our flaws.

--Oh, man, it's after 11, and I have so many things to cook tomorrow, and this post could use some editing but NaBloPoMo stands nearby tapping its watch. Here's what it boils down to. A buffed and polished movie-Auggie undercuts the gravity of the difficulties faced by kids like novel-Auggie. In doing so it denies us an opportunity to see the truth that matters most: love is still bigger than those difficulties.

Countdown

8: weight in kilos of the turkey sitting in my fridge, awaiting its destiny. (I am very fond of y'all but I'm not counting down from 17. Or maybe I'm not counting down from 17 because I'm very fond of y'all.)

7: number of people who will be at my dinner table tomorrow night, hurray! Joe's home now; Alex arrives tomorrow.

6: quarts of chicken stock in need of fridge space. Whoops! Turns out that filling your mega-Instant Pot to the brim will supply your chicken stock needs for the foreseeable future.

5: number of additional guests we'll be feeding on Thursday. I have not made much headway on food prep, but I have finished the Penitential Cranberry Sauce. And the chicken stock. Consommé is an elegant thing that they will be happy to eat if I don't feel like cooking, right? With a little dollop of Penitential Cranberry Sauce on top?

4: number of Advent candles I declined to purchase from the local religious bookstore selling toddler-sized "smALL LIVES MATTER" T-shirts. I should probably write them a letter that says, "Hey, in some circles this might seem like an attempt at a pro-life statement, but outside that bubble it reads as a racist dog-whistle striving to erase the immense and unjust suffering of a marginalized community. Please don't." (I'm just not very optimistic about the outcome of such a letter. Did I ever tell you the story of my last earnest letter to a bookstore owner?)

3: months ahead of schedule that my most recently published study appeared online. I wasn't expecting to see it until February but they sent me the link tonight.

2: oh, dernit, I had a 2 in mind and then I got distracted. 2 is the number between 3 and 1, just like la is a note to follow sol.

1: my position in the roommate fitness challenge as of yesterday. Although today I was too sore to work out so it's possible, just possible, that my crown has been temporarily awarded to someone else. I will reclaim it just as soon as I can walk comfortably again. In my quest for GLORY I briefly forgot to play the long game.

0: number of remaining CSA pickups. Tonight's installment was the last one. The kids will be relieved to return to plain broccoli followed by plain cauliflower followed by plain green beans.

Books, the early years

Nicole asked if I would write about my current thoughts on books that influenced me when I was a kid. I would love to write that post. 

My earliest memory of a book comes from reading A Wrinkle in Time at a ridiculously early age. A lot of it went over my head but I loved it anyway, and I went back to it again and again along with the other books from the Murry-Austin universe. (Team Austin all the way, baby. I wanted to slip inside that family and stay there -- a family where grownups re-read Anna Karenina for fun (Vicky's mom, a fellow homebirther) and didn't mind living in unorthodox quarters as long as they had room for their books (Vicky's grandfather).) As an adult I read an article critical of Madeleine L'Engle -- New Yorker, maybe? -- and it did dampen my enthusiasm for her books. But the idea that the geeky girl can find understanding despite her glasses grabbed my attention early on, and the image of Earth struggling under a palpable shadow dispelled by the likes of Jesus and Copernicus is one that continues to resonate.

When I was a little bit bigger I started reading the Little House books, and I spent the next five years or so reading and re-reading them. Oh my, did those books capture my imagination. I had my own sunbonnet. I yearned to be named Mary. I even read the parts about the workings of homemade hinges and latches over and over, because I wanted to understand them. Things I still love about LIW: fictional-Laura's absolute trust in her parents, the persistent idea of happiness that transcends circumstances, the theme of small-but-mighty girl doing her duty even when she doesn't super-want to. Things I don't love about LIW: racism, un-subtle political messages, and 19th-century parenting. Like, come on, Pa, why does Mary get off scot-free when she insults Laura? The sting of Laura's slap was sure to fade quickly; the smart of Mary's words lingered for years. Even years later, after Mary was dead, Laura was able to write compellingly about how they hurt her. I shake my head at Pa for a number of reasons (don't borrow money to build that house on Plum Creek, Pa! don't do it!), but that one looms large.

And then came junior high! Junior high was dismal in many ways, but I had the run of the library. My locker, which I shared with occasional commenter Angela, was right across from the library entrance and I think I must have been in there all the time. In my mind's eye the Hogwarts library is in just the same spot: at the top of a staircase, watched over by someone who looks a lot like Mrs. Swecker. That's where I discovered Watership Down and To Kill A Mockingbird. Junior high is when my dad got me started reading Mark Twain; he also gave me the Chronicles of Narnia when I was in sixth or seventh grade. And! Oh! In sixth grade a friend of mine told me about Anne Shirley. If I start talking about those books I'll be writing for a long time. I'll have to write another installment.

I am off to bed but tell me about you-- what are THE books of your childhood? How have they held up across the years?

Better living through garlic and saffron

Earlier this evening I tweeted pitifully: 

Me: Hi, Google, what can I do with chicken breasts before the fam gets back from Mass that isn't awful even though boneless skinless breasts are stupid and cottony and the GLOOM, Google, I can't deal with the GLOOM and

Google: You might need some nice SSRI chicken, Jamie.

— Jamie (@mostgladly) November 19, 2017

And then I stiffened my socks and pulled up my upper lip (or something along those lines) and got to work. I heated about two glasses of wine to boiling, and pinched in saffron so it could steep. (I have almost emptied the little box of saffron I bought at the Indian grocery store two or three years ago. It's a much less pricy way to buy saffron.) I cranked the heat under a skillet in which I had put generous quantities of fat, a mix of butter and olive oil. When it was sizzling hot I threw in three fat chicken breasts, seasoned them with salt, pepper, and paprika, and let them get nicely seared on both sides. (Bonus points if you set off the smoke alarm. Our smoke alarm goes off if someone dreams of cooking bacon, I'm telling you.) When the second side was almost done I tipped eight cloves' worth of slivered garlic into the chicken-free spaces, and shortly afterward I poured in the wine and saffron.

Once it boiled I covered the pan and turned the heat way down, in hopes that nice gentle poaching would ward off dryness. After 10 minutes or so I added the juice of one lemon. When the chicken was done I pulled it out to scrape up the fond and reduce the sauce. After I sliced up the meat I plopped it back into the sauce and kept it warm. Later Pete mentioned that artichoke hearts would have been a great addition. He is not wrong.

Usually the evening Mass is quicker than average, but this weekend's homily was a long one. I wasn't sure when the gang would be home, so I decided to keep cooking until they arrived. I made a root vegetable puree that was not a success and a carrot-radish slaw that was. I boiled up a pot of edamame to serve with the Smitten Kitchen carrot-ginger dressing, and cooked up some orzo to soak up the chicken sauce.

This year I am having more trouble than usual with the November blues-- so much so that I was thinking about requesting an SSRI prescription when I go in tomorrow to get my beta blocker prescription updated. But at this point I don't think the advantages outweigh the side effects, so I'll probably just keep plugging for a while longer. Sunshine helps. Sunshine-colored food helps too. It's only four months until spring, right?

House of Geeks, part 3,762,598

I am feeling quiet this morning, after an earlier-than-usual start to the day and a tiring workout, so I am just listening while the CRAUVAS twins* chat.

My 18yo is feeling unusually chatty this morning. He starts off telling his sister about the development of color terms in other languages. (He's firmly on the side of Berlin and Kay.) They look up the Arabic word for "blue"; he struggles to pronounce it. "Their grammar is different from ours," Stella opines. "That's true," her older brother says kindly, "but what's relevant here is their phonotactics."

The topic shifts and they pull the Molymod set down. In this picture he is saying "And your body builds its own proteins! And do you know about DNA yet?" -- followed shortly by "Let me show you where we keep our polysaccharides," and a quick trip to the flour canister.

*One morning I woke up my now-18yo, but I called him by his sister's name. "Mom," he groaned, "wrong name." On the face of it this was a ridiculous mistake to make -- he was six feet tall with a big baritone voice and she was not -- but I thought about it for a minute. "I know!" I exclaimed. "It's because both of your names start with anterior unchecked vowels followed by alveolar sonorants!" "Mom," he groaned again, "it's too early for that stuff." We have another child whose name starts with an anterior unchecked vowel followed by an alveolar sonorant, but he isn't living here now. So the CRAUVAS twins are the Currently Resident Anterior Unchecked Vowels-Alveolar Sonorants kids. Just in case you wondered.

Slowly and limpingly

I haven't wanted to knit since the election. Isn't that weird? A year ago I was afraid that Donald Trump was going to steal a lot of things* from the people of this country, but I didn't expect my knitting mojo to be among them. It's been weird: I don't want to knit, don't want to run. What's that depression screener question about loss of pleasure in things you used to enjoy?

*Can you even believe this tax bill? Also, did all of us just sort of throw up our hands about the Emoluments Clause? 

Last month I decided I'd make a baby sweater for a colleague expecting her first. It's that same raglan pattern I've made a zillion times before, in cozy red superwash yarn. This is the smallest size, and I can tell you from experience that it's entirely possible to crank one out in a weekend. Instead I did a little bit here and a little bit there and whoops! -- my colleague went and had her baby while I was nibbling away at her gift. It's almost done. It needs its ends woven in and its underarm gaps closed up. I think I probably have buttons that will work for it, but I might also need to make a fabric store run. I'm taking them dinner a week from Monday. Even a slow and limping knitter can do that amount of finishing in ten days.

I am also knitting a gift for a person who occasionally reads this blog. It's one of my favorite patterns. I like my knitting to be a mix of complicated and brainless, and that pattern fits the bill perfectly. It's snappy twisted rib in which yarnovers and decreases create an unexpectedly cool effect. (I also love the pattern page, which reminds me of the years in which I waited eagerly for the new Knitty to come out and read through every single page of each issue. I'm still not sure what that disembodied leg is doing at the beach or why Cookie is wearing a wedding-ish dress, but I'm a fan regardless.) I cast on 84 stitches, and only realized after eleven rounds of the leg that I should have done six repeats of fourteen stitches each, rather than seven repeats of twelve. I'm trying to decide how crazy it would be to rip those eleven rounds. Pretty crazy, I'm thinking at this point.

My brain is doing that November thing where it says "And! We could knit a ____ for ____ in time for Christmas! S/he would like a _____! And there's plenty of time left!" I have a difficult extended family member who has made some pointed comments about my knitting in the past. As in "Oh, that's...different" about a lovely stripey cowl and "I don't understand why he never wears your gift" in a situation where I would not have known that was the case (and would have been happier not knowing). Today I caught the Delusional Knitter part of my brain making a case for knitting this person a gift. Mittens with a cool construction! Made of bulky yarn leftovers! You never know what to give this person!

Probably not, Delusional Knitter brain. Probably not.

53.333%

You guys, there's still 46.667% of NaBloPoMo to go and I'm low on ideas. It used to be that you could raid other people's blogs for ideas during November, but I am the last lonely NaBloPoMo-er I know. I have a couple of posts in my drafts folder-- one on volatility in bigger kids and one on the failures of 21st-century evangelization. What else do you want to hear about?

On the feast of St. Albert the Great

One of the trends that troubles me about the current iteration of the GOP is its anti-intellectualism. I've been particularly chagrined about the shenanigans at the EPA under the current administration, where the new mission seems to be "prepare ye the way of the...industry goons." Science? What science?

One strain of anti-intellectualism arises from greed, I'd argue, but another weaves itself through evangelical thought. I used to think of Adventures in Odyssey as a harmless show for kids, but Elwood was taken aback by anti-intellectualism aimed at the Eugene character. (This was a long time ago, in Eugene's pre-conversion grad student days.) In evangelical circles there's a lot of emphasis on the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom -- with the implication, sometimes, that someone who doesn't know God can't possess any wisdom.

This is your periodic reminder that in the Catholic tradition we believe God calls us out of double darkness: out of sin and into holiness, of course, but also out of ignorance and into knowledge. St. Albert the Great is venerated these days as a doctor of the Church, but he did not restrict himself to theology. He was quite a polymath, actually, with expertise in many branches of science. St. Albert the Great was a living embodiment of the truth that we can honor God by developing our minds, that we can learn more about God by learning more about creation. Growth in truth leads us to God who is Truth.

There are a lot of reasons to oppose the tax bill that's currently under consideration. Many of them have to do with the just distribution of resources. The ones on my mind tonight, though, have to do with the anti-education stipulations of the bill. It's hard enough to be a grad student without having your tuition waiver taxed. Student loan debt can no longer be deducted under the proposed bill, augmenting the costs of education for students who don't have the means to pay it all up front (i.e., most of them). Education becomes less affordable for families if they can't take the Lifetime Learning Credit. Every one of these ideas is a bad idea. Every one makes education less affordable.

I feel confident that St. Albert the Great would disapprove. Tell your elected officials all about it.

PS I went in search of a half-remembered story in which Albert the Great was so distracted by his studies that he burned the cakes he was supposed to be watching while traveling incognito. Turns out that story is actually about Alfred the Great, 400 years earlier. As far as I know Albert the Great never had his ears boxed by any irate peasants for his failures at the hearth.

On my Kindle

Recently I was scrolling back through my Kindle purchases when I discovered that at some point I'd purchased a pair of L.M. Montgomery novels in a single volume. I'm reading The Story Girl at the moment and it is...not my favorite. Did she write anything else with a male narrator? I'm not sure his voice works very well.

I am also reading Beyond Addiction. Do you have any substance abusers in your life, whose follies reduce you to despairing facepalms? This book is about responding with kindness and science. And really, if I had a life motto it would be "Kindness + science for the greater glory of God." It's so hopeful. I've read a bunch of books on substance abuse and this one is especially good.

I finished Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles recently and immediately bought the 99-cent version of The Way We Live Now. (At the same time I bought Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and read it in about a day. It will take me a fairly large number of days to read TWWLN.) (Did anybody else read Eleanor O? I have some thoughts about Eleanor O.)

Also in my current-ish reading stack: The Signature of All Things. I bought it back in February, when it was on sale and Lissa Wiley recommended it, but I keep bogging down. I've read the first chapter about five times. It's unusual for me to bog down in a Lissa Wiley recommendation, though, so I keep thinking I should keep plugging.

Almost all of my reading is e-books these days, but I am also reading a physical book, another Lissa recommendation. Her mention of 84 Charing Cross Road spurred me to read that one, and now I'm in the middle of Q's Legacy. Hanff's voice is a delight.

NaBloPoMo plus the roommate fitness challenge = too many late nights for me. (And! I was third in the challenge at the last reckoning. What is up with that, I ask you?! Let's hope my evening Zumba class restored me to my rightful place at the top of the heap.) I'll see you tomorrow, friends.

Dear Advertising Algorithm Coders:

I will never wear a full-skirted dress with a giant Santa Claus on it. I would sooner go out wearing a frock fashioned from aluminum foil. That site also suggests that I might like a "Christmas elk" dress. I am more likely to shoot a Christmas elk. (N.B. I have never been hunting.)

Over in my sidebar there are matching family pajamas: red and white striped bottoms, with tops that say "Believe!" The I in "Believe!" is a Christmas tree. I see them and I die a little inside. My family would like some nice matching pajamas that say "Take down that stinking Christmas tree -- it's not even Advent." Or perhaps "It's only the middle of November. Go contemplate your eventual death some more." I am sure those will be a hit.

Recently the sidebar ads have been trying to sell me plus-size dresses made of monarch butterfly print. I'm not talking about a scattering of tiny dainty butterflies; this is a monarch wing that stretches from waist to ankle like the butterfly version of Mothra. Is there really a market segment yearning to dress like Butterflyra, fount of nightmares? There must be, I suppose, but I am not that segment. (And also-- I guess this whole Rhapsody in Lepidoptera failure should tell me that you're not paying much attention to my browsing history, but here's a tip from me to you: if you tell women to buy larger sizes than they actually need, you will induce a state of low-grade irritation that makes impulsive internet purchases less likely.)

Oh! I just clicked refresh and the very next ad was for a capelet -- a wine-colored asymmetric capelet trimmed with fake fur. I scratch my head at this. Earlier this fall I was lured in by some sidebar ads. I blogged about the Brave dress; I also bought a clearance green and white dress from Boden ($24! free shipping!) and a sage green sweater dress from Buykud. Whoever was writing the algorithm in October was knocking it out of the park. Was that you, November coders? Did you say to yourselves, "Green dresses are too easy. I bet we can persuade Jamie Gladly to dress like the bag lady version of Maleficent!" Hard pass from me on the bag-lady Maleficent look. I'd prefer aluminum foil outerwear.

I keep refreshing, mystery coders, and new horrors continue to unfold. I am astonished by the array of Santa clothing available to grown women. I suppose it's an improvement over the summer ads, when you were trying to sell me incontinence products. No more of those, please, November coders; my bladder and I are fine. My wardrobe and I are also fine.

If this keeps up, though, I might need some more aluminum foil.

So much winning

Starting tomorrow, the roommates and I are doing a four-week fitness challenge. And I? Am going to win win WIN. There are never any prizes in the roommate challenges, but there is GLORY for the victor. I hope they are already preparing my laurel wreath.

It is a little weird that we get competitive about these challenges. We didn't compete with each other in college, really; we mostly had our own spheres. And if you had asked me to describe the roommate who is most likely to shout (metaphorically) "You are all going DOWN!" -- well, competitive wouldn't have appeared in my list of adjectives. But these days she's something else. When we did the Whole 30 together, she was in the kitchen making her own mayo. When she thought we were having a 7-day step challenge a couple of years ago, she logged something crazy like 150,000 steps that week. (It was actually a 30-day step challenge. She did not sustain that pace over the succeeding 23 days. You have to play the long game if you're going for the glory.)

For all of 2017 I have been reluctant to work out. This fall I signed up for a 10K training program, but I was really just doing the minimum. I found it much more difficult to get into 10K shape on 2-3 workouts per week, and it was discouraging to see how little progress I was making. 

This challenge is time-based, so I am hoping to try a couple of things to shake myself out of the workout funk. First off, I think I'll hit more group fitness classes, because it's easier to work out for an hour with a group. Also, I've accumulated enough loyalty points at our gym to use them for a free personal training package. I've been thinking about trying it out for a long time. For the first chunk of the long time I kept thinking, "I don't think I'm the kind of person who signs up for personal training packages." For the more recent chunk of the long time I've been trying without success to get someone in the personal training office to call me back. But I think I'll aim a little more energy in that direction: I'd like to do some strength training, and that sector of the gym feels like alien territory. 

So! Four weeks from now I will be a buffer svelter version of myself. You'll know me by my laurel wreath, friends.

Rites of Fall

Let Stravinsky keep spring: if I were a composer I would create a work in honor of fall and gumbo. Today Elwood and I made Crescent Dragonwagon's Gumbo Zeb together. We do this about once a year, because it's a hassle. But we do it every year, because it's delicious. Late fall, when we are awash in lovely CSA greens, is the natural time for it. The recipe I linked to is the one from Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread. She cut it in half when she put it into Passionate Vegetarian. We made an intermediate-sized batch today, with 4.5 bunches of greens, and it's a lot of gumbo. But if you're in the mood for a kitchen Project that will keep you happily fed all week long (and maybe longer), I can recommend this one enthusiastically.