Thoughts

Pennsic prep has consumed my last couple of weeks, especially in the online aspect. Previously when I had the job I only had to deal with emails and the occasional phone call. I had no idea that with the advent of social media every day was going to start with a conversation about the Pennsic Troll Booth even before I was out of bed and be garnished with more conversations throughout the day and into the after-midnight hours. I like helping those who have concerns. It feels good. I dislike dealing with my Pennsic boss and now have a mental litany, "three more weeks, just three more weeks and then you never have to deal with her again." A friend asked me about what I was struggling with regarding the woman and I gave a short explanation, and, trying to be compassionate and understanding, said, "She is an insecure needy person who doesn't value herself and can only remedy that by trying to make other people "less" than herself. She has no clue that her behaviour underlines the reasons other people do not respect her." To which my friend replied, "She's a bully." and that hit me between the eyes. She is exactly that and in trying to just deal with her effectively for my job, I never put the profile together. Bossman had said something like that last year when she insulted him in front of others but it hadn't registered when he was telling me about it. So I don't know if this is a passive-aggressive move or not, but I am printing up a few cards with this on them:

"Bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships
through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends
to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm. It can involve an
individual or a group misusing their power, or perceived power, over
one or more persons who feel unable to stop it from happening."
- National Centre Against Bullying

Because I know her nasty side will rise in the middle of the stressful Land Grab weekend and she will hurt and insult others while "doing her job" inside the troll booth (read: usurping mine). So I am prepared to monitor her and if I see/hear it happening, to pull her aside, tell her privately that what she is doing will not be tolerated, and give her the card with the definition on it since I know that her very first response would be to tell me that I am wrong and she's not being a bully. This way I can say, "this is what your behaviour presents as" and suggest that she takes a break or something. I'm pretty sure that she'll then try to turn it around by verbally attacking me. And if that scenario doesn't play out, if I can't get her to step aside with me or if she does but then continues the behaviour afterwards, I am going to contact the Mayor and ask him to remove her from my area. I will not allow my volunteers to be abused. Or, by Gawd, myself. The trained SCA mindset of "just work around them" has had me in thrall for too long but I am finally awake. It is too, too easy to "be understanding" or "forbearing" and step around the broken stair rather than calling them on their behaviour.

Weather and air quality has me concerned for the event. Especially weather. I am not acclimatized this year and am physically weaker than I'd been last year. Thank goodness our camp has electricity. We're bringing two or three fans and between that and the fans & shade down at the troll booth I should be okay. I won't be doing a lot of walking or visiting though we're bringing my little folding stool that I can sit on for a break whenever I get winded. Yeah, I probably should bite the bullet and get a powered scooter but good gravy, while they are not too expensive I am obese and need it at a campsite - heavy duty and with big wheels, in other words, and it'd require a trailer to get it to and from our home. I've only got one more Pennsic on my horizon. I can walk it.

I've been sewing when I haven't been dealing with social media or emails. Slowly, oh so slowly. I've made four lined hoods, two tunics, and have applied trim to a tunic I found in my work pile and have never worn. (and oy! Applying flat trim around an already completed tunic - what was I thinking?) I have only two sewing projects left to accomplish before we switch to packing the truck on Saturday. A pair of draw-string linen trous my spouse pulled the strings out of, and making a handful of "cooling bead neckerchiefs". I'm doing the cooling bead job first. While I've never made any before, those will be much less hassle than taking the waistband for the trous apart. They are well made modern pants with a duel-elastic waistband. The drawstrings are anchored in the middle of the back of waistband so I will have to use the seam ripper to access that area and then see if it will be a simple repair or if I will need to redo the entire thing. The anchor straddles the two channels of elastic. And he tells me that he "seems to be missing a lot of his SCA trous". I'm hoping they just got mixed in my mine since they were all the same sizes and colors because it is certainly too late for me to try to make any. He'd borrowed a pair of mine one long-ago event and liked them, and since I bought them in extra-long, they fit his long legs. Over time some shrank and became just mine but during post-event laundry it is easy to get them mixed up with each other's, even though we tagged them to avoid that.

Our struggles with the downed willow tree continue. While the city does pick up yard waste, including tree branches, they are haphazard about it. Today was trash day and none of the piles of carefully cut wood were removed. Then again, our regular trash and recycling wasn't removed either. It makes me want to shake my head. Why does it have to be the last trash day before we go on vacation? And we found a steady line of wood ants climbing our porch pillars when we went out to check the status of the wood piles. It is too late before we leave to get a service call to take care of that so it'll be the first thing I get done once we're home again.

[Update] The cooling beads were a bust. They were very tiny and I thought they'd swell up a lot but they didn't. This is what I get for mail ordering them without getting a referral from a previously happy customer. I just bought the wrong brand, it looks like.

I'm typing this while it isn't taken care of yet, but the HVAC repair guy tells me that the capacitor on our unit failed and that is why our house has had bad air delivery since Christmas. Once the temps dropped below 40f the heating unit didn't raise the temp in the house above 65f. No matter what we set the thermostat at, it stayed low. We ended up buying a new thermostat, twice, and that wasn't addressing the problem - not that we knew that because by the second thermostat the outside temperature had risen high enough that the air conditions in the house were back to comfortable. But then the heat hit here last week and suddenly our house was at 85/86f during the sunny part of the day. This time I specified that I wanted a senior technician. He came out, heard my story, and diagnosed the problem right off the bat. Unfortunately it is about as expensive to address as adding new tires to our trunk. Which we just did and now there is even less money for us to think about spending at Pennsic. Can't call it "being nickled and dimed to death" when the "dime" is in the multiple hundreds.

I didn't do a darned thing with my sewing pile yesterday. It was too hot in the house to think about moving much. We didn't even cook dinner, just ate out of the fridge. But I got a lot done for my Pennsic job. My desk is just below two air vents so what minimal cooling was going on was doubled in that spot. I got a lot of computer work done! After the repairman leaves I will start cutting out the four hoods and their linings. I need to check my trim stash and see if there is anything that would go well on the hoods. I'm trying to de-stash trim so right now I have a box with "stuff that insults the authenticity lover in me" mixed with "woven stuff that is too, too nice to use on just any old thing". I have hopes that between them I can find something to edge the hoods with and lower my stash level a bit.

I have a request in with our lawn service to get the big tree trunk chopped up and its stump ground down. Haven't heard from them yet but I did hear from someone who wants to pick up the pile of wood (roughly half of a cord) so they can use it for firewood. That'll take a worry off of my mind.

We waited until the last minute to file our taxes. I always dread it because we always seem to owe a couple of thousand dollars. We didn't! We're getting a refund! I have no idea how that worked out, even when the tax preparer explained all of it to us. What a relief.

We went next to an old farmhouse in our area that has been converted to a micro-brewery and small event venue. I had promised to buy a particular can of beer packaged in a one-of-a-kind label for the 2023 Norfolk Tattoo. It's for a friend who lives in another country. The brewery had had a contest to design the label and he'd taken part in it. He didn't win but he wants a couple of cans to display on a shelf behind his home "bar". Our timing was unfortunate. The organisers of the Tattoo beat us to the brewery and took off with all of the cans. The only way to get any would be to attend the event - and I am not such a fan of pipes and drums that I'm willing to pay fifty dollars just to buy a can of beer. But the day manager at the brewery recruited the barman to join her in the brew house and lo and behold, they found a four-pack that had been hidden behind the main dock. So now I can give our friend his beer. After I figure out how to ship it to Australia. I think I may have to hold on to it until Pennsic 51 (2024) and hand it off in person.

I tried another youtube recipe and it turned out great. It was for slow-cooker potato & ham soup. The recipe made enough to feed five people and still have enough left over for tomorrow's dinner. It is a little lighter on potatoes than we'd like but it sure didn't look like it would be when we were loading up the slow cooker. My only regret was that I thought 1 tsp. of salt was insufficient so added more. I'd forgotten that ham is salt-cured and that it was going to leech into the soup. Wowsers, was it salty. Not so much that we couldn't eat it, but enough that I made a note on my recipe to warn against that mistake again. And friends on Facebook wanted the recipe - one made some for her and her man yesterday and they both liked the ease and the flavor of their dish. That brightened my day. Oh wait - that friend is a Dreamwidth buddy! Hi Dru!

I am on my computer right now to hide from the three-foot-tall stack of paper I took off of my desk and plopped onto the kitchen table. I have got to sort it. But I am procrastinating..

We went to Jamestown Settlement on Friday and did volunteer stuff until closing, then came back early, early Saturday morning to do the same. Once again I didn't make it outside of the registration room to actually see the reenactor's camps. It was crazy-populated. We had nearly 700 volunteer reenactors, spanning the timeline from Early Greek (Spartans, mostly) to Modern (Virginia National Guard). There were a bunch of new groups, too, mostly in the post 1800s category. I was impressed with one group, which was some Afro-American men who travelled here from a southern state I didn't catch the name of, to portray a "coloured Troop of the Civil War". More power to them. I would have a very hard time tamping down my anger to do what they are doing, educating visitors about the military role of Blacks in the American Civil War. We also had a not-Jamestown-employees band of Native reenactors onsite too, who had a lot of fun interacting with our professional Powhatan interpreters. And two airplanes! Two sets of camps brought in their own airplanes - in pieces! because vehicles were not allowed onsite yet - and put them back together again for display. One of them is actually flyable.

I spent most of the rest of the week asleep or wanting to sleep thanks to (I think) a sinus infection. Tossed a fever for a couple of days but kicked it back again. My face still hurts and I'm sick of Sudafed but I avoided going to the doctor's about it. Thanks to my slothfulness I got a lot of reading done. Mostly cozy mysteries, but a biography of the artist Raphael was nice. It was written in the first person, which I don't generally like, and the personality certainly showed through - I didn't care for the guy much. I have no idea if the actual man was that self-absorbed.

My spouse went in for dental surgery on Friday morning. I spent five hours in the waiting room so I could drive him back home. Poor guy! Thanks to the opioid thing his dentist didn't prescribe anything stronger than 600mg of Motrin for him. Considering that the man drilled four holes into the bones of my husband's jaws (one of each side), I think that is ridiculous. Bossman has been tossing back Motrin alternating with Tylenol and I swear to gawd, I am seriously considering sneaking one of my not-used hydrocodine pills into his nightly meds so he can sleep tonight. The good thing is that the first few days are the worst and then he should be able to be comfortable with just the Motrin. Once his jaws grow bone around the inserts he'll get dentures that lock into place. I am really, really hoping that he grows bone quickly enough that he has his permanent dentures by Pennsic. We paid an arm and a leg for these - over $16,000 out of pocket. Tell me again that the US has good dental/health systems, eh?

Today we went shopping for flatware to replace our drawer full of pieces from two or three incomplete and different sets. 47 years of living, especially while raising children, can destroy the integrity of a silverware drawer, that is for sure. My gawd, what a grind today has been. What a struggle. Worse, there was nothing that resembled the 4-place set we'd bought for camping but ended up keeping for daily dining. Four places is not enough... and the flatware has no identifying mark whatsoever for me to try to reference. I don't even know what brand it was, just that it came as a boxed set at Target (or Penny's) years and years ago.

We stopped walking through stores in the mall and came home where I searched through website after website for something I'd like. I am sick of looking at silverware. And disappointed that I couldn't find what we wanted.

Many years ago, at Pennsic 20, I volunteered at the troll booth during the event. Within three years I was so emmeshed that I was deputy to the head troll and then started a run of years as the Head Troll. I stepped down to support a new Head Troll at Pennsic 31. It didn't seem fair to hog the job when my deputies, well trained and chomping at the bit, were quite capable of running the booth. Took a year off from doing anything much but manning the desk at "security"/the Watch, then founded a new department at Pennsic 33, the Quartermaster (supply) department. Worked that for five years and then stepped aside, again, so my deputies could step up. I've stayed on staff since then but have bounced from job to job, even doing three stints as a Deputy Mayor for Cultural Affairs.

All of that means that I haven't worked inside the troll booth for eighteen years. But this year I get to go back to my "roots" and will be helping out at troll again. I am strangely excited about that. I'm not in charge, just a backup person, which is good because our intake processes have changed drastically. And I'm still down for manning the desk at The Watch, as one of the more senior captains.

I was thinking about bringing our camp oven/stove to the event but now I hesitate. I don't know how much cooking time I am going to have and that is a bulky item to pack if we're barely going to use it.

We finally got out holiday tree and wreath up. I like the door wreath. I designed it many years ago but it still looks fresh and welcoming so I haven't been inspired to change out the decorations on it. It's simple, just red ribbons and a string of red wooden beads wrapped around the wreath with three largish gold stars hanging off of it and a few bells descending from ribbons at the bottom. I'll probably get tired of it before we change locales. Maybe.

The tree is an artificial one, six feet tall. We don't like killing a live tree just for our decorating purposes, even when they are farmed specifically for that purpose. It's currently bare of everything but multicolored lights (those came already installed on the tree). Tomorrow will be decorating day. I bought five new ornaments for it this year, four of which are from Lego company. The fifth is a delicate little bronze colored glass bird holding on to a small tree branch. I like it and hope it will be something one of our sons will want to keep when we are gone.

I'm typing this on my new computer's keyboard. I love this keyboard! It is so much smaller than the one on my laptop and it is close to the edge of the desk so my wrists aren't stretched across a wide case in order to reach the keys. And it is ridiculously thin. No wrist support is needed since it is so close to the level of the desk's top. I watched a bit of a movie online so now I have an idea of what the sound system is like. I'll have to turn the thing around to find where I can plug in my headset for when I don't want to disturb the rest of the house.

You may have read part of this (below) on Facebook. I'm mostly posting it here to have a record of it for myself.

I scared myself last night. Woke up after being asleep for a couple of hours and felt like I wanted to eat something. This isn't unusual for me. I often crave a snack in the middle of the night, especially if I can't get back to sleep. Eating seems to make me sleepy so it is a habit. But I laid there reminding myself that midnight munching is a bad, bad habit, and I shouldn't give in just because the idea seems appealing. I should roll over and try to go back to sleep. While thinking that I started to feel a little weird, kinda weak & trembly. I thought "I just ate a while ago. Beef hot dogs. Protein. What the heck?" So I decided to get up and go into the kitchen where my glucose meter is stored to use it and show myself that I didn't really need anything. In the twenty seconds or so that it took for that walk, I began to tremble in earnest, shaking so badly that I had trouble staying upright or controlling my hand motion enough to turn on the kitchen light and then use the glucometer. My blood glucose level was 43. It has been that low before. In fact, it had been that low just the night before. This time, though, I was sure I was going to shake myself out of the chair I'd collapsed onto, I was so weak and the shaking so strong. I couldn't keep myself upright and so laid my chest across the table as far as I could. Weeping, shaking, confused... it felt as if my backbone was knocking against the table's edge. I couldn't stop the tears from coursing down my face. I couldn't think. I yelled for my husband but wasn't able to form his name, just sort of loudly gurgled it. Screamed it as best I could.

By the time he woke up and made it into the kitchen I'd lost the ability to form words even in my thoughts. He was asking me what was wrong, and I couldn't answer. I couldn't really even think but knew I needed to respond if he was going to be able to help me. I finally thought of my logbook & pounded on the new entry showing the glucose level. He saw out that my sugar level was low but wasn't sure what to do, which panicked me even more, and at last I remembered we had orange juice in the fridge. I was able to make noises that sounded enough like "orange juice" that he figured it out and poured a glass for me, so I drank that with both hands holding the glass while he steadied the bottom of it so I could get it to my mouth. I had trouble realising that I needed to tilt my head back in order to get the liquid in my mouth. It helped enough that I could articulate a bit and told him I had raisins by the bed, which he fetched (thank goodness for lunch pack boxes!). I ate an ounce of raisins, then one of cheddar cheese, and finally started to calm down and find my brain again. Finally the violent shaking subsided into trembling and then a mild tremor. After a while I felt strong enough to walk back to bed and safe enough to be able to try to sleep. I'd taken in 76g of carbohydrates, almost half of what I should have in a single day, so my mind said it had to be enough to ensure that I wouldn't have a problem with low readings again until morning. Throughout today I've binged carbs. I should not - it isn't the best way to handle this - but the drive to guarantee that I won't lose consciousness is overwhelming.

Adjusting one's levels of insulin is a balancing act and times like these will happen now that I am using injected insulin, but what was so frightening was how fast it went down. One minute I was thinking I felt a little "off" like one might expect to after taking pain drugs (I had taken hydrocodone for my toothache) and almost the next minute I had lost control of my body and my functioning mind. I had always thought a drop in glucose levels would be a somewhat gradual thing over a period of time; ten or fifteen minutes, maybe longer. Having it happen within seconds was terrifying. What if I had been driving? A friend who is a Paramedic and healthcare navigator for her remote rural community pm'd me today and explained it this way, "You describe textbook symptoms of critical hypoglycemia. Your brain was literally starving. One of the reasons your status changed so quickly is because you had to get up and go to the kitchen. Walking, thinking, breathing require you to burn up the glucose in your system for energy to do those things and you depleted what was available when you left your bed." I appreciated her explanation. Nothing about situations like that was said to me in my diabetic care classes or by the endocrinologist.

I'm taking steps on my own to try to forgo a revisiting of this. I am reducing the amount of long-term insulin I use each night, at least until my endocrinologist replies to the message I sent him. Thank goodness for our healthcare system which allows me to contact the doctors in the system via direct message. And I am going to order the (probably sickly sweet) glucose pack called "Transend", which will deliver 15g of glucose almost instantaneously. And later today when offices are open I will contact the Dexcom (a glucose meter you wear on your body) dealer who has my prescription and see if they can fill it once I give them my Medicare information. They could not when I was on the military's Tricare insurance, which is why I had to go fetch my glucometer. So hopefully that will get straightened out and I will have instant readings... had I had that, I would not have left my bed but would have reached for the raisins instead.

Day four of the caging snow. It is actually more dangerous on the roads right now than it was yesterday. Most of the roads are coated with snow packed down to ice, with high-edged ruts or piled snow along the edges blocking access to the drains. We ventured out to make a grocery run and saw quite a few accidents during our 12-mile round trip. Most dangerous are the drivers in trucks with empty beds or lightweight top-heavy SUVs who were travelling on partially-cleared 4-laned roads while driving in excess of 50mph - those were city roads with random stop lights and lanes suddenly covered in white ice. Idiots.

Also idiotic is the mindset which causes men (it seems to always be men) to insist on backing into a clear driveway from an ice-packed road with three cars parked at the curb across the street... luckily one of the neighbors my husband blocked from reaching his home had about ten pounds of road salt in the back of his SUV, which he shared with Bossman so between that and the backing/forwarding rocking of the truck the hubster finally got our extra long truck away from being a total roadblock. I was scared to death he was going to hit one of our neighbor's cars - the truck was skewing (!) sideways in the road and getting its self more horizontal to the road than before. I have never seen my man take such a risk just to have the nose of the truck pointed toward the street in our driveway. We rarely put the truck in the driveway as it requires our across-the-street neighbor to have an empty curb in order for us to even pull out. Having his vehicle stuck at the curb and all that rutted icepack on the road - - I have no idea what my guy was thinking. We have a Ford 250 with a six foot bed. It isn't short from bumper to bumper, nearly as long as the road is wide.. Neither is it lightweight. There was burning rubber involved and a lot of adrenaline as he spun the tires, burning through the ice to the bare pavement. I jumped back about five feet (and nearly landed on my hinny) when the truck slid sideways towards me the first time - and then he did it repeatedly afterwards until he got traction. Good gravy that was alarming.

Schools are out tomorrow, still. And likely the next day. The city is basically paralyzed until the snow melts more, with the road crews unable to even plow our main roads much less the vast tracks of neighborhood ones.

There is going to be a heck of a lot of potholes to repair this spring. But we've four days of daytime temps being above freezing and rain coming on the warmest days so hopefully by the end of the week we'll see mostly-clear roads.

The end of the week is when our local area is hosting Kingdom 12thNight. The organizer has pulled out all stops in getting everyone she knows to do her a favor in running something for the event. We are filling every available room in the convention areas, which take up two floors of the building. There is one restaurant on the bottom floor. We've just learned this is important, because she held back on the information that non-staying guests will not be allowed to bring in any foods, beverages, or alcohols, so luncheon cannot be a sideboard. We must eat in their restaurant or leave the hotel for a meal. Those of us who are on specialized diets (us diabetics are livid) are scrambling to find workable solutions. Mine is an age-old one. We'll bring a cooler to keep in the car and smuggle our munchies inside. Jerks. I sure as heck am not giving Pat Robinson's foundation $15-20 (or more) for a hotel lunch. And I've publically asked how this policy will affect those of us who are giving food items as gifts.

My Khanate (a small unit of members of the Dark Horde) is running a gaming room for the event. We'll offer period games - board, dice, and cards - during the day and open the room for both modern and period ones once court starts. I have no difficulties keeping the game room open during court as I, as are many Atlantians, are attempting to have the least amount of contact with Atlantia's current monarchs as we can. This way we will provide a comfortable space for those who would otherwise feel that they might as well leave the event at that point. We were going to keep the gaming open for the duration of the event since there is dancing after feast, but with the news about the food/drink situation, we'll likely fold up when feast begins.

And before that, I need to get a muslin cut out and tailored into a decent del and then make the del, or I'll be the only member of my Khanate who is not dressed in a Mongolian style. And I'm the Tarkhan, the head of the khanate! Dels have been a running sore spot for me since I joined the Horde years ago, as big bosoms and bathrobe-lapping tunics are not friendly. There is always some sort of gap to flash a bra at others no matter how I cut it in a period-correct manner. My co-sufferers just pin theirs to keep the gap closed but it looks like crud that way and I refuse to do it. I had one del that worked but it only did that because I sewed the flaps to each other from the inside and had to take it on and off by pulling it over my head. The side ties were just for show. I really need to experiment and get one draped correctly.

Yesterday I proved that I have absolutely no idea how to carve a bone-in ham except to just keep slicing off sides of the ham until it is mostly a bone with some tiny bits sticking to it. I now have enough of the off-cuts and bone to prepare for a big pot of ham & bean soup. And, I began thawing out a roast destined to be cubed and turned into beef noodle soup. Mostly to use up all the stock I froze each time I made a pot roast.

So what does my husband want for dinner tomorrow? Sauerkraut and Brats.

I spent 3 hours on the phone after a half-hour on their website wrangling with Nextel/Sprint and tentatively believe that our problems with our plan & bill may be resolved. Maybe. I'll know when I get next month's bill. If it is resolved, it is going to be better than what we've got now. We gave up unlimited data when we bought our new phones (and didn't know it) and ended up with four phone lines between the two of us (and didn't know it) and got locked into a 4G data plan that we had to pay extra for - about $80 above our previous monthly bills. Well sort of, in that extra charges were tacked on rather hit-or-miss so I could never be sure of what I'd be paying each month. That should all be over and the rep got us back on unlimited data and found a way to reduce the charges for the two extra phone lines which were apparently a requirement to get our two new phones and a tablet. Since we have to keep the tablet's phone line open until the payment plan is ended, my husband now has unlimited data on it. For that he is thrilled. Seven months from now we'll be done paying for the new equipment and our bill will go down by $75, finally reaching the level that the lying local sales rep told us was our 'new monthly charge'.

The guy on the phone suggested that the next time we need new equipment we should skip the local store (he indicated that while my complaint will be filed he doesn't know - nor should he tell me if he did - when the local manager and is used-car-dealer sales style will be changed. Meaning when the manager gets fired and the sales guys have to be retrained.)

Slowly I am reclaiming the home administrative tasks that have been in abeyance since I swung into depression. It feels good. I even finally got the checking account squared away with three month's worth of missing entries added in and the account balanced. And now without the looming mess over my head it is easy again to maintain it.

Shortly after kittenhood she changed into a standoffish loner. She didn't want any foods other than her dry kibble. Bribes were met with a withdrawn jerk of the head before she stalked off. She didn't want to be petted, groomed, or picked up. She didn't allow any new animals into our home. She couldn't be trained - even litter box etiquette became increasingly difficult to for her to maintain. She hated the outdoors. She hated visitors. Even our sons, who she grew up with, became 'visitors' once they moved out. She would hide from them under the couch and hiss if they came near.

We lived ten years with only her since she would not allow any other pet into the house and in that time, at best, we merely co-existed - ignored, for the most part, unless one of us happened to be eating a Cheese Nip or Cheetos. For that, she was willing to approach and stare at us until we gave her one small bit. No more than a small bit, mind you. Anything more was haughtily refused.

But her whole life she did seek out whichever one of us was alone in a room and lay on the ground somewhere nearby, purring. So each night she was my nearly-silent companion in the library, hiding somewhere with only her purr to let me know she was around.

Today she took her final rest.

And I cried like a baby the whole while. I don't know why.

I am so bad about reading LiveJournal that I'm only on June 16th right now. Because whenever I read my 'friend's list', things they write remind me of stuff I want to get done myself, and I pop up to run over and do that thing... and just don't seem to come back to the computer until my phone dings to tell me about a facebook post it thinks I need to read.

Ah, the Electronic Age.

A few days ago my husband cooked up one of those small microwave pizzas for himself. (We're madly trying to use up all the food in both freezers, which is resulting in consuming things we are not all that interested in eating but just can't throw away). The smell was, as normal, much better than the flavor, and I spent a few hours wistfully sniffing the air, wanting pizza for myself. A reduced carb/reduced calorie lifestyle usually means "no pizza for you". Or at least, as I finally figured out, "no ordered-in pizza for you". The breaking point had come and resulted in me attempting to make my own. At 290cal per slice, it was still 'expensive', but quite filling and very tasty. I mention this because I just licked off the sauce from the last slice before I started typing - the final two pieces were lunch today.

I must figure out a better sauce for them. I am content with store-bought Pillsbury Pizza dough and of course the toppings were all nice and home-made, but the sauce was not. I used a canned spaghetti sauce. It wasn't bad and will be very tasty with some meatballs later this week but it was a tad too runny for pizza on a regular crust. We'd used it for 'French bread pizzas' in the past so the runniness wasn't that apparent. I think that mixing a bit of it with tomato paste or puree would do the trick. I already know that the times I would be making myself a pizza will also be times when food must be prepared quickly and easily, else I'd just make up my own sauce. Although.... I should write that down on my to-do list for after our vacation, after the chest freezer is defrosted (why we are eating everything frozen). It would be very handy to have prepared sauces pre-measured for my own pizzas in the freezer.

Remember the Big Baronial Fundraiser Lumpia sale? There are 14 20-count packs of lumpia in our freezer still. One can only eat so much of it before the mind screams "NO MORE!". We're at that point. I almost had a home for some last week until I realized that all we have left has onions in it, which my friends could not eat. Darn.