Dreaming of knocking up some logs.

A collection of random thoughts:

Crusading against psychiatric medications is dangerous for those who need them.  Unless you are an individual trained to determine if a person really needs them, don't ever suggest that a mentally ill person stop taking their meds.  Unless you are their therapist or the psychologist working with them, you have no authority to suggest that the meds are more dangerous than their mental state.  Mentally ill people do kill themselves sometimes when not being supported by meds.  Even if they might not kill themselves, many mentally ill people harm themselves in desperation and much of the time they do it where you can't see or help them. 

Sentimentality really irritates me.

Nostalgia is like sentimentality only worse because people who are always looking back to the past with longing often miss out on the good things that are happening right now.  As far as I can observe, the people I've known with a real flair for nostalgia didn't appreciate the things they're remembering until after it was already in the past.  That, to me, is like deliberate unhappiness and is as useful as opening your umbrella up after your clothes are already soaked.  I have no patience for it.

A train is passing through town and I love the sound of it.  I hope a day never comes when there are no more freight trains.  Every time I hear them I stop what I'm doing and listen.  Excuse me... (afterwords...) it's such a pretty sound.  I've always loved it.

Last year I made a plum dipping sauce from the yellow plums that hang over our fence from the neighbor's yard.  I added some jalapeno and ginger to it to make it savory.  I intended it to be used like a sweet and sour dipping sauce for pot stickers or egg rolls.  Neither of which I have ever made.  It took me a year but I finally made vegetarian pot stickers and they were good!!  I tried the plum sauce and I have to admit that you can't taste the pepper or the ginger but the slight tang of it with the sweet made a great dipping sauce just like I'd hoped!  I love it when that happens.  It makes me so excited that I have three plum trees planted.  (Elephant Heart, Santa Rosa, and Green Gage)  I really want a damson too but I think that might be plum overkill.

It always gives me a tiny shock to hear that people actually study the bible for pleasure, on their own time.  I did that for a while when I was eleven years old during my brief stint as a Born Again Christian*.  It had all the improbability of a fairytale and the convoluted over-wordy mind numbingly tortured passages of a William Faulkner novel.

It's been a year since I've mentioned how much I hate Halloween, right?  It used to be my second favorite holiday of the year but now I dread it.

There are a lot of super creepy crafts out there.  I don't mean creepy in a cool way.  Just creepy.  Like "Precious Moments" creepy.   

The idea of liquid pie disgusts me.  As in: pumpkin pie latte or apple pie shake...I'll have to eat liquid food when I loose all my teeth, until then I want pie to be pie and shakes to be shakes.

And for that matter I'm not interested in weird foods like lettuce flavored ice cream topped with aerated brie.  Yes, there is fancy food like that being made out there.  I can't tell you how I know or I'll have to be silenced with a chef's knife.  I don't like science to get into bed with my food.  I also don't want to turn potato chips into pudding to be served next to a tiny wedge of  the most expensive special fermented tempeh.    Food like that is to home cooking what bondage is to regular old sex.  Basically it's food fetishism.  Something for people who are always looking to up the ante on the thrill of food.  (And are never satisfied I think.) 

I can't believe there isn't a fad diet of eating flesh that's still alive.  I was going to build on this theme but that just made me kind of sick to my stomach.

I would like to put a few logs in my back yard and knock them up with some morel and shitake spores.  Maybe even some basic crimini spores.  Do you think they'll pop up all over my yard if I do that?  Wouldn't that be amazing?!  I have plenty of questionable mushrooms that live in my lawn- wouldn't it be so incredible if I had a lawn full of morels instead?!

My dreams of growing some of my own almonds have been dashed by those who refuse to lie to me.  They will not fruit here.  Dammit.   The only nut that will grow in our area that can be kept small is the hazelnut.  One of the very few nuts I dislike.  I love walnuts and I could grow one here but I don't have room in my yard.  They get big.  They're beautiful trees too.  I love them.  Not enough room.  I feel that for my little homestead to be complete I need to grow some form of plant based protein.  I have hens for some animal protein but one source of protein doesn't seem like enough.**  Enough for what? 

Oh you know, like if there was a civil war...or food stopped being available for shipping and we could only eat locally produced food...

So I'm off now because my kiddo was sent home from school with a fever, a headache, dizziness, and a slight cough.  Must take care of him and be ready for whatever this is which might be nothing but a little glitchy day with his body.  Sometimes this happens.  Wish us luck and may all of you stay healthy!




 




*Yeah, I know!

**As I was walking to Max's school to bring him home I realized how idiotic that is: beans!  Beans are a fantastic source of protein and are easy to grow and store too.  I'm so much happier now that I remembered about other plant based sources of protein.  Of course, there are no omega fatty acids in beans that I know of.  Must barter for nuts then.  Or eat a hazelnut every day in the hopes I will acquire a taste for them.  But they're so green and mean and thin flavored.  I kind of like pistachios.  I'll bet those only grow in Jamaica or somewhere like that.