I don't even eat bananas

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Five for Friday

I rarely do “five for Friday” because usually I have too many words and thoughts burbling around in my head to limit it to five. But I’m having a hard time with posting lately, so I’m hoping the Five Things Only structure will be useful instead of restrictive. 

  • My daughter’s new alarm clock has had some unintended consequences. First of all, it has proven to be both an excellent purchase and a terrible purchase. Terrible because it does not work in the way it is intended to work. Its purpose is to wake up my child; it does not do that. She sleeps right through the sunshine and the birdsong. (You can set it to wake you up with different sounds, and Carla chose birds chirping.) It is excellent, however, because it gently wakes ME up, even though I am in the other room. I greatly prefer it to the blaring of her old alarm clock. The bird noises are cheerful and pleasant, and when I go in to awaken Carla, the room is already light enough that I can easily navigate the inevitable dinosaurs or stack of drawings or tangle of yesterday’s clothing on the floor. My only complaint is that the birdsong is a short snippet that repeats on an endless loop. I do wish that the manufacturers had recorded a longer excerpt. Maybe that’s what you get when you buy one of the more expensive versions. The other thing is that now I feel like I hear birdsong at odd moments of the day. Has the alarm lodged itself inside my brain, only to go off each day in the late afternoon? Are there birds outside our window that sound identical to the alarm clock, perhaps hoping that by mimicking the sounds of the birds trapped inside the house we will release them? Am I experiencing avian auditory hallucinations? I swear that I hear birds chirping merrily on a three-second loop, but then when I go still and silent to try to pinpoint where it is, I can’t find the source. 
  • Did you know that you can substitute wheat germ for flour? A friend taught me this wonderful secret a few months ago when she handed over her grandmother’s recipe for chocolate chip banana bread. Supposedly, wheat germ has a bunch of good things in it: thiamin, folate, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc. I think it also has a bit more protein than regular flour. What I really like about it is that it adds a different texture to baked goods. Over the long weekend, I made chocolate chip cookies and threw in some wheat germ (I think you can use 1/3 cup of wheat germ per cup of flour) and it gave the cookies a slightly nuttier flavor and a nubbly texture a bit like that of an oatmeal cookie. Yesterday, I made a second batch of banana muffins for Carla and I have been using wheat germ in those, too. I don’t know how much healthier a cookie or a muffin is, just because I’ve added wheat germ. But I like the phrase “wheat germ” and it gives me a very wholesome Laura Ingalls Wilder sort of feeling when I scoop it into the mixing bowl. 
I am sure it is the wheat germ that makes these so appealing and not all the sugar sprinkled on top.
  • I have had to make too many phone calls lately. Several of these calls are for work. Part of what I do as a freelance writer is interview subject matter experts. Technically, I quite LOVE this part of my work, because there is nothing cooler than chatting with someone who is an expert about something, or passionate about a subject, or loves what they do. It is inspiring and exhilarating. But I get so worked up in advance of our phone calls, and I get all tongue-tied (at least at first) and sweaty, and afterward I am completely spent. I made FOUR PHONE CALLS IN ONE MORNING this week, and it was awful. I mean, I got to chat with awesome people, but I also had to leave a couple of voicemails (HATE. Even if I carefully prepare what I’m going to say ahead of time, I bumble over my words and take WAY too long to leave a message and yet inevitably forget some important piece of information. Like I had to leave a message about a prescription recently and forgot to leave my phone number. Voicemail is almost worse than having someone ANSWER the phone! Although worse even than leaving a message is the long Schrödingerian moment when the phone is ringing and you have no idea whether someone will pick up or not.) And now I have two more phone calls to make: one to the gutter cleaning service that was supposed to clean our gutters in December and one to my dentist. I have to reschedule a dental appointment. I have known I needed to reschedule the appointment since I made the appointment, and didn’t call at all last week, so I put a reminder on my phone to call the dentist this past Tuesday. Instead of just calling, I have found very real and pressing reasons NOT to call the dentist every day this week. It’s so dumb and it will take five minutes, but I hate appointment-scheduling phone calls. Again, there’s the anxiety of being on the phone. But then you add that to trying to look at your stupid calendar at the same time, and going back and forth about possible days and times, and then – as I did last time, hence the need to reschedule – idiotically making your appointment at a time when you were already committed to something else. UGH. It is all the worst. But I guess I should just GO MAKE THE PHONE CALL ALREADY.
My husband surely has nothing better to do at work than respond to my complaints about making phone calls.
  • I am doing a new thing where I (try to) soak my feet every morning. The recommendation comes from my acupuncturist, whom I am seeing for my plantar fasciitis. (Would anyone be interested in a Swistle-style report about my acupuncture experience? With the understanding that I realize I am not, nor will I ever be, Swistle.) She gave me a specific list of things to include in the foot soak: Epsom salt, rosemary oil, and eucalyptus oil. She specified that the water should not be boiling, but should be more than warm. While I do find it difficult to set aside twenty minutes every morning to soak my feet, it is quite luxurious. (“Go soak your head” is a dismissive expression of annoyance; “Go soak your feet” is a gentle suggestion for self-care.) It gives me a chance to listen to my audiobook and sip my tea and feel like I am following doctors’ orders rather than wasting time. After I’m done, I slather my feet in lotion (I think Nicole – HI NICOLE – recommended this specific lotion awhile ago and I love it.) and put on some warm socks. The whole thing is rather lovely. Except for the part where the water is too hot and I overcompensate and make it too cold and then I have to heat it again.
  • Do you know about LibraryThing? I am sure the website is full of excellent resources for book lovers, but I have used it specifically to help me identify a book I cannot remember. I guess I’ve only used it successfully one time, but I recently posted a new query. The first time, I was looking for a book I remembered reading in fourth grade. It was a mystery, and the only things I could remember about it were as follows: The protagonist was a middle-school aged girl. The story took place at a ski resort. There was a tertiary character named Eunice (I remember this specifically because I can hear my fourth grade teacher saying, “Usually, this name is pronounced ‘yoo-NEESE,’ but in this book it is pronounced ‘YOO-niss.’” and I thought at the time, how could she possibly know that? and to this day I wonder. Did she have an in with the author? This was in the eighties, so there were no podcasts. Mysterious.). (Still, to this day, I have never encountered a real-life person named Eunice. So I still have no idea how to pronounce it. For all I know, it could be Gaelic and sound like “Chelsea” or “Bruce.”) The protagonist couldn’t ski well, and the climax of the book saw her being tricked into going down a black diamond run in a snowstorm. That was all I could dredge up from the depths of my memory. And yet I could not get the book out of my head – for YEARS – and was desperate to know what it was. So I posted my question in the Name That Book group and someone figured it out!!!! The book is called Mystery at Snowshoe Mountain Lodge by Lisa Eisenberg and I keep dithering on whether I need to buy it and read it again. Anyway, it is so amazing to have the answer, finally, to a question that’s been nagging you for years! I am hopeful that my most recent question will find similar success, although my memory of the book series in question is even fuzzier. (A middle grade/young adult series from the 1980s or early 1990s about kids solving mysteries, but maybe there’s a werewolf? Maybe the word “shadows” in the title? It’s really bugging me, but my brain isn’t helping.)
Extremely blurry image from LibraryThing.com

Well, that’s the long and the short it, my dear Internet. I hope you are having a lovely Friday. 

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Five for Friday

I am in a mood to write, but can’t think of anything particularly worthwhile to write about. So I am taking a page out of Stephany’s book and doing five bullets for this sunny Friday.

1. Our housecleaner came back! I am so delighted. But man alive was I ever awkward about the whole thing. I kept finding myself cleaning in the days leading up to her arrival. I didn’t want her to think that our house had devolved into TOTAL disarray in her absence. I am can be a decent housecleaner when I want to (i.e. when guests are imminent), and I did a pretty good job of keeping the house neat and tidy, for the most part, for the past year and change. But then I’d say to myself, maybe that will make her feel GOOD and NEEDED, to see a layer of dust on the bookshelves and a layer of soap scum on the shower door. And then I would feel ridiculous because perhaps she has no thoughts at all about the state of my house beyond, “Wow, this is really dirty and will require more time” or “Okay, this doesn’t need much attention today.” So I finally talked myself into simply tidying things – moving piles and encouraging Carla to pick up her toys and crafting spreads. It was SO NICE to have her back, but I was super awkward in person – we never hugged in the past, so I wasn’t going to hug her NOW, especially because of a pandemic. And I was really sweaty for some reason (perimenopause, or some sort of pre-housecleaner-return panic attack) so I was uncomfortable and my mask was sticking to my face. And I didn’t want to be TOO gushy about having her back because, after all, this is WORK for her. But I did want to be appropriately gushy because I missed her, both as a housecleaner and as a person. We exchanged a little bit of small talk and then she got right to work and I flapped about the house, not really knowing where to be or what to do. I kept remembering things to tell her – let me know if we are out of some cleaning supply you need; make sure you take as many mask breaks as you need; open the windows if you feel more comfortable – and then I went outside and sat on the porch and failed to concentrate on anything because Someone Was In My House.

2. Carla’s birthday is coming up. We are contemplating an Actual Party this time (outdoors), which makes me pre-exhausted. I don’t want to find a venue or buy decorations or come up with an activity or figure out how to do everything in a way that provides everyone with the least exposure to Covid. I want someone to plan her party FOR ME. Is there someone I can call and pay to do this? Why yes, Suzanne, this is called a Party Planner and they exist and cost way more than what you want to spend on an eight-year-old’s birthday bash, get it together.

3. We, once again, had too many overripe bananas in the house. Not a SINGLE ONE of my many cookbooks had a recipe for chocolate banana snack cake. Only the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook even had any banana snack cake recipes at all. It’s like Martha Stewart and Maida Heatter have never even HEARD of bananas, although I think their books had entries for how to store overripe bananas. But then what to DO with them, Martha and Maida????? Anyway, I found this Betty Crocker recipe online – chosen primarily because I didn’t have to soften any butter, and secondarily because it didn’t call for buttermilk, and tertiarily because I could mix the entire thing in the baking pan itself – and it turned out very well. EVEN THOUGH I didn’t have the right pan size and therefore had to increase the recipe by 50%, which required a LOT of math. My husband had three pieces last night alone, so I know it was a hit. (If you recall, I do not eat bananas.)

4. My skin has pretty much returned to normal, after its prolonged temper tantrum the other week. I have no idea what to do with the FIVE BOTTLES of skincare product I used literally once or twice. My husband suggested that I try them out, one at a time, to see which one is the culprit… but a) if I were a betting man, I would guess all three of the products with retinol were responsible and b) they were meant to be used together, not separately, and c) I don’t wanna.

5. I have absolutely no plans this weekend. Normally, this would be fine – especially seeing as one of the days would be designated Cleaning Day, and dusting, floor scrubbing, and vacuuming would take up a good portion of the day. But now that I have my beloved housecleaner to take over the heavy lifting, I have an entire day back! Obviously, I could curl up in a chair and read all weekend, which is always delightful. But I’m in an activity kind of mood (subject to change). Let’s see. I still have no desire to go to a restaurant. But it would be nice to Do Something this weekend. Perhaps the zoo? The botanical garden? Maybe we could scope out a few potential birthday party venues? Gah. What are YOU doing this weekend, that I could potentially copy?