Ain't no cure

H and I spent two glorious days in Corpus Christi last week and all I have to show for it are sunburned feet. And a big bag of shells. And a shirt; I did get a pretty awesome shirt while we were there. And a bit of a tan on the parts that aren't sunburned. But THAT'S ALL I HAVE NOW.

It was a very fun trip. H and I travel well together. We should do it again, like, next week. And every week thereafter. Yep.

But no, we can't, because it's almost time for back-to-school and I am really busy watching television, you guys. Rectify is back on and I love it but I'm kind of hoping Amantha gets killed off sometime real soon now because she's ALMOST ruining the show for me, I hates her so much. The Bridge is back too and I love that one and everything about it is perfect and my GIANT crush on Ted Levine continues unabated. (I. Love. Him. SOMUCH.) Falling Skies is back but it's terrible now (except for Pope -- I heart Pope), so boo. Face Off is back too but I haven't watched last night's season premier yet, so shhh on that for now. The Strain is stupid but I can't stop watching it, and I'd like to take this opportunity to implore Hollywood to stop putting terrible wigs on hot bald guys, because some of us like them JUST FINE the way they are, thankyouverymuch. And finally, Drunk History is rocking my world right now. Up, down and all around. LOVE it!

And also I've been reading stuff! I know! Look at me, with the culture and shit! I can't remember what I was reading when last we spoke about reading but I'm still loving Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer books and Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books. I read The Silkworm, the second Cormoran Strike book by Robert Galbraith, who as you probably know is actually J.K. Rowling, and I loved it so much that I didn't want it to end. I bought a paperback copy of Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists to read at the beach, and I didn't read ANY of it at the actual beach, but now that I've finished it my feelings are mixed. I liked it while I was reading it, but ultimately it was pretty depressing. Now I'm re-reading The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters, which is SUPER fantastic and highly recommended, because the third book in that series is just out and I hadn't even read the second one yet. So many books, y'all. So little time.

Aside from all the back-to-school stuff with H, my 30-year high school reunion is the next thing up for which I must gear. The tricksy organizers have totally thrown me off by declaring the event casual dress, like what does that even mean? What is casual?! WHAT ARE WORDS FOR WHEN NO ONE LISTENS ANYMORE??!! In Austin, "casual" could mean anything from that bikini up there to "you can totally wear cowboy boots and a bolo with that tux, bro," so I am stymied. Except I'm pretty sure I'm not wearing that bikini. Maybe a DIFFERENT bikini? Maybe a cocktail dress with flip-flops? Is that casual? Bermuda shorts with a ripped concert tee and heels? Cutoffs and pearls? Are the pearls too much? WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

Anyway, yeah. That's what's going on around here. And how has YOUR summer (or winter) been?

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

June loves:

• This garlic-maple salad dressing. I cannot stop eating this stuff on EVERYTHING. I am, in fact, thisclose to drinking it straight from the jar. (Be sure to use real maple syrup if you make it, not Log Cabin or some crap.)
• Fargo, the TV series. It finished last night here in the US and no spoilers, but I loved EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of this series (much as I LOVE LOVE LOVE the film). Rumor has it this might be a one-off, and that's all we're going to get. I respect that, because it was perfect, but if we DO get another season I will watch the HELL out of it.
• Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series of books. I'm reading the third one now and I don't know what it is about these books, you guys, but I sort of want to live inside them all the time. She is so good at making her characters fully realized non-stereotypes that you feel like you know and love ALL OF THEM, even the bad guys. I have got to get hold of the TV series on DVD because JASON ISAACS OMG YES.
• All these hours of June daylight. The sky brightens here at around 6 a.m. and it doesn't get dark again until around 9 p.m. and I love this so much, even though it's making me wake up early during the few months that I don't HAVE to wake up early, generally speaking.
• Summer fruit, there is so much of it now! Stone fruits and berries are my absolute favorites and I can't stop eating them. Fruits and starchy vegetables are pretty much where I get all my carbs now. I might be the only weirdo in the Northern Hemisphere who gains weight in the summer instead of in the winter.
• Non-alcoholic micheladas. I know. How pathetic. But I love a michelada and I've been making them with non-alcoholic beer and they're pretty good, you guys! Really! All they need is a little extra hot sauce to make you almost think you are drinking something fun and worthwhile. No, really. They're not bad. I swear.

June indifferences:

• I've given up on Halt and Catch Fire because it's boring and stupid and I just can't with that female character who is supposed to be punk. Bitch, please. Some of us were actually alive in the '80s. We remember what it was like. You wouldn't have lasted A DAY.
• I've also given up on Wil Wheaton's new show. I really wanted to like it, but it makes me uncomfortable in a way I can't quite define. Wil Wheaton is kind of the male Felicia Day, isn't he? I feel like he's a genuinely nice/fun person but I do not enjoy him in front of the camera, and I feel bad about it. A little bit.
• Flies. My God. There are flies ALL OVER INSIDE MY HOUSE, I guess because it's been so humid and damp as well as hot. Flies are my least-favorite thing about summer. Along with ...
• Sunburn. I haven't been sunburned in ages but boy howdy, I sure am right now, and it's my own damn fault for putting my hair up and not wearing sunscreen on my neck while we walked around a car show on Father's Day at P's request. I'm not even going to talk about how he found this bright orange '65 Mustang that he wants to buy, because I can't drink anymore, and thinking about it makes me NEED TO.
• Dental appointments. This probably goes without saying, but I had one this morning and that was an awful lot of scraping that happened right then. Apparently I am clenching my teeth at night and grinding my sealants right off my molars and making my gums recede and I need a night guard to prevent it and I'm just saying, this shit never happened back when I was drinking. Oy.

Go home mp3 player, you are drunk

This is my new favorite cocktail for summer: English cucumber muddled with grapefruit white balsamic vinegar + gin + sparkling water + ice. So much yum. And so refreshing when it's 100 degrees out. Which it has been here A LOT. Oy.

We are mostly staying indoors and trying to remain cool, which means I have been reading a whole heck of a bunch of stuff. I liked Jenny Lawson's memoir very much, along with the fourth Armand Gamache novel by Louise Penny and Johnathan Tropper's One Last Thing Before I Go. Right now I am reading and loving Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, which is about a drug-addicted back-alley abortionist in 1960s San Antonio who is haunted by the ghost of Hank Williams. I know, right? That right there should tell you everything you need to know about whether or not you might want to read this book. I recommend it, if you like that sort of thing.

I bought one of these ridiculous contraptions after a months-long internal debate and I'm here to tell you, it has changed my life. I am spiralizing the hell out of EVERYTHING now, mostly zucchini and cucumbers but it works for other stuff, too. All those cold pasta salads I used to make are now made with cucumber "noodles" instead of pasta. All the hot pasta dishes I used to make are now made with zucchini "noodles" instead of pasta. I'm sure I'll get bored with it eventually, but today is not that day. I should note that when I bought it the price was about 10 bucks cheaper than the price that's showing as I write this; I'm not sure I would have paid that much for it. But I do love it, ridiculous as it is.

We are all kind of bored with summer, I think. P is finding it no fun to cut the grass in triple-digit temperatures, C has no idea what to do with himself given that college classes don't start until late August, H is spending her summer learning to drive (fun!) and having her wisdom teeth out (not!), and I am annoyed that it's too hot at dinnertime to sit out on the patio while the food grills.

The gin helps, though. A bit.

In other news, I think there's a ghost in my machine because there's been a whole lot of this happening lately:

My mp3 player: "Ramones followed by Simon and Garfunkel followed by Misfits followed by Johnny Cash, yaaaaay!"
Me: "What? No."
My mp3 player: "John Denver, Nine Inch Nails, Cat Stevens! Wheee!"
Me: "NO."
My mp3 player: "Metallica, Louis Armstrong, Beastie Boys!"
Me: "Argh!"
My mp3 player: "Helen Reddy! Black Flag! Patsy Cline! Judas Priest!"
Me: "QUIT IT."
My mp3 player: "Captain and Tennille, lol!"
Me: "HOW DRUNK WAS I WHEN I PUT SONGS ON YOU?!"

Yeah. I don't know. Hope your summer is going well. Or winter, for you antipodean types.

It's almost July

It's almost July and I have nothing exciting to tell you, unless your idea of excitement involves endometrial ablations and corneal debridements, both of which I'm likely to have in the next couple of months. And now I've told you way more than you ever wanted to know. I'm glad we could have this talk.

It is very hot here now, 80s when I wake up around 8-ish a.m. and triple digits by lunchtime, but the weird thing is that I kind of like it. I don't know if it's the losing 20 pounds thing or if I've just lost my mutha-effin' mind, but ... yes. I do not hate the hot weather anymore. I don't even know what to tell you about that. This time last year I was looking for retirement homes in North Carolina, and now I'm thinking Texas is awesome, except for our politics, and let's not even go there, okay? I am happy to tell you how my uterus is trying to kill me during menopause and how I am sort of going blind a little bit, but let's not get into politics. God forbid. Assuming you believe in God. Let's not go there, either. Would you like a martini? Is it okay if I have one? Awesome. Slainte!

Here are some things I've been doing:

1. Playing World of Warcraft with C and also taking him to the UT campus so he can look at his future home away from home.
2. Taking H driving because she has her learner's permit now, OMG.
3. Cooking. Lots of stuff.
4. Drinking. Lots of stuff.
5. Watching a bunch of horrible television.
6. Reading Jonathan Tropper again and downloading more books to my Kindle than I will ever be able to read in a lifetime.
7. Taking myself out to lunch. Because I deserve it, goddammit.
8. Still eating modified paleo. And still keeping my weight off.
9. NOT EXERCISING AT ALL.
10. Enjoying the heat. Did I mention?

Yeah. It's summer. I don't know.

Summer continues apace

I seriously can't believe June is almost over. What the heck, you guys? I don't even really remember June STARTING. Where was I when that was happening? Jeez.

I don't have much to tell you, really. We have been busy but we haven't been doing anything fun, if you know what I mean. C is finishing up his summer Communication Applications course this week and I find myself wondering how it would be if EVERY school semester was only 12 half-days long, with the kids only taking one class per semester. Judging by how things went this year, C would be getting WAY better grades if that were the case. Oh well.

H still is busy with community theater rehearsals. Opening night is in just a few weeks! Wow! I absolutely cannot wait to see my kid perform someplace other than a school cafeteria or rec center or library meeting room. Not that those aren't fun, too, just ... this is a real theater! People are paying like $20 to see this thing! I am just so excited for her. Acting is her absolute favorite thing in the world and I love to watch her play to an audience.

Now that it's officially summer, howsabout a quick check in with those summer goals, eh?

1. Lose 17 pounds. I am more than halfway there! Yes! No one is more surprised than me about that, trust me. Here are my weight-loss secrets: 1) smaller cocktails; 2) fewer junky snacks in front of the TV; 3) Jillian Michaels workout DVDs (specifically the 30 Day Shred, Ripped in 30 and Six Week 6-Pack DVDs). I know. I kind of want to punch MYSELF right now, but that's what has worked for me.

2. Read more. Eh, let's see ... I finished Travels With Charley and it was okay. I'm glad I read it, but it's not something I'd go back and re-read. Also finished Marion Nestle's Why Calories Count, which was fascinating. Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating was equally fascinating, but while the Nestle book was more food-sciencey, the Wansink was more human psychology-y. On the fiction side of things, I really enjoyed Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back, a Scandinavian mystery, and now I'm reading the next book in the series, He Who Fears the Wolf, which is very good but a bit confusing at the beginning. And continuing my non-fiction jag, I'm also reading and very much enjoying Terra Brockman's The Seasons on Henry's Farm. So yes, I guess I have been reading kind of a lot. Just not very quickly. As usual.

3. Make peace with the whole shorts thing. Er, well kind of. Thanks to the aforementioned Jillian Michaels DVDs, I am pretty much okay with the way my legs are SHAPED now. But the pasty white skin and plethora of spider veins still give me pause. (Although my mom told me the other day that one cluster of spider veins on the back of my right knee looks like a flower tattoo! So that's fun, right? MOMS ARE JUST THE BEST.)

4. Quit buying coffee mugs already (also cute drinking glasses). FAIL. My new drinkware obsession is BPA-free reusable plastic cups with lids and straws. Cold-brew iced coffee to go, baby! I had to get rid of some stuff to fit them into the cabinet. (But NOT any of my cute mugs or glasses, dammit.)

5. Hit the farmers market every week. Does every other week count? Sigh.

6. Kill all the hornworms in the world. Well, no. But the ones that ate my tomatoes back in the spring are dead, and that's good enough for me.

It's already in the 100s here but we're not going to talk about that. Let's talk about how lovely the morning and evening light looks streaming into my north-facing back windows, shall we? SO LOVELY. And how I can't get enough raspberries right now. And how limiting myself to 5 oz. of wine in the evening doesn't really do it for me, but I'm trying to adapt. And how there are officially LESS THAN TWO MONTHS until high school football/marching season, which will be the beginning of the end of my backwards seasonal affective disorder.

Yep. So. What's new with you?

'Twas brillig

Summer is humming right along here. It's hot, though. LORD is it hot. And busy. And hot.

Our week started off with a bang when, in the space of a single hour on Monday, H burned her right hand and wrist really badly with the aid of some boiling-hot soup and, when I tried to get her something cold to put on it, the kitchen tap just fell right off in my hand. FELL OFF. IN MY HAND. There's a plumber in my kitchen as we speak (not a euphemism) installing a whole new faucet assembly (also not a euphemism).

H is okay though she's probably going to have a whopper of a scar. The timing was unfortunate because she was a couple of hours away from a Very Important Audition at our local community theater. Thankfully it was an open audition taking place over the course of two days, so she rallied the day after and went in for a cold reading and now she will be uttering the opening lines of the play on opening night, huzzah! (It's an adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. She's part of the narrator chorus. They're doing "Jabberwocky" just at the beginning there, for some reason. THEATRE! We are not meant to understand. Only to appreciate. And clap politely. And not mention The Scottish Play EVER, no matter how badly knowing you can't makes you want to. Shhh.)

Anyhoodles, so she has rehearsals now 3 or 4 nights a week for pretty much the rest of our summer. C starts three weeks of summer school for "credit acceleration" on Monday (read: getting some required courses out of the way so he can free up room in his actual school-year schedule, which is packed sardine-tight because band is double-blocked, blah blah blah you don't care and I don't blame you) and then he has a few weeks off during which he'll likely have his wisdom teeth extracted (fun!) and then he has summer band until school starts, at which point ACTUAL band takes over (this all in addition to the usual 2x/week neurotherapy for his misophonia) and OMG, it's a good thing we didn't plan to travel at all this summer, eh? Right.

I don't mind so much being busy. I like routines. If I go without them for too long, I get weird(er).

I have been reading books: Marion Nestle's Why Calories Count, which was fascinating; Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back, which I enjoyed very much; and now I'm trying to finish Steinbeck's Travels With Charley which is (finally) picking up a bit now that our author and his standard poodle have reached the west coast of the U.S., although I'm not liking this one as much as I'd hoped and that makes me sad.

I'm not in much of a reading mood, to tell you the truth. Nor a watching mood since there's nothing on TV. Nor a music-listening mood, which is unusual for me. I suspect this is my Summer SAD rearing its ugly head, oh dear.

Thank goodness Breaking Bad is coming back soon. I could use a good meth lab explosion right about now.

Triskaideka

I'm still having way too much fun with Instagram, obviously.

This is a super busy week here at the saltycrunchy house. P's birthday was yesterday and C's birthday is this coming Tuesday and we are celebrating both of them on Sunday, because we can't do it on Saturday because C will just be coming home from an overnight band thing and H has to volunteer at a charity function. Whew! I am tired. And I still have to make two birthday cakes, zut alors!

I'm typing this with Blogger's new interface and I super duper hate it. I'm also still hating DirecTV, in case anyone was wondering (it's like 4,000 home shopping/infomercial channels and maybe 100 sports channels and like 50 actual for real channels, ugh).

But I have lots of love to throw around this Friday the 13th, oh yes. To whit:

• I have tiny green tomatoes! On my tomato plants! A slug ate one of them but I killed it. DO NOT EVEN MESS WITH MY TOMATOES, SLUG(S).
• Also, plums! On my plum tree! Which has not given us plums in the whole 8 years we've had it!
• My roses have been going nuts. This time of year, before it's too hot, the blooms are bigger than my fist. It's insane.
• My cooking mojo has returned. This week I made kale chips, coconut-almond granola (sweetened with agave this time, which worked better) and chai tea concentrate (I am STILL eating that salad) in addition to P's birthday dinner of bone-in ribeyes, baked potatoes and grilled artichokes. BRING IT.
• They did a controlled burn near my neighborhood yesterday and I guess there were mesquite trees involved because my whole end of town smelled like barbecue all day.
• Six more weeks until summer vacation. We aren't going anywhere, but still.

Alrighty! Gotta go make a cake or something.

Purple haze

The weather here in central Texas this week has taken a turn for the passive-aggressive.

On the one hand, it has been GORGEOUS. Cloudless skies, extremely low humidity, breezes ranging from stiff to gentle, with highs only in the 90s and morning lows around 60. And I'm here to tell you, that "dry heat" thing is not a lie. There's a world of difference between 97 degrees at 15% humidity and 97 degrees at 85% humidity, boy howdy. It's been cool enough in the morning when I drive the kids to school that I've been running the heater in my car. I know! This break from the relentless heat we've experienced since May feels like an absolute gift, and one that we have damn sure earned.

On the other hand, as you may have heard, pretty much all of Texas is literally on fire right now. We've been lucky here in our neighborhood so far, but there have been fires in every direction from where I live, some of them within 10 miles of my house and less than 2 miles from my parents' house. Like many suburbs in Texas, the neighborhoods on our end of town are surrounded by open ranch land for the most part, all of it fried a crispy brown from the heat and lack of rain (have I mentioned LESS THAN THREE INCHES ALL YEAR? and pretty much no rain at all since April?). Our recent winds and low humidity have made things so much worse, and the situation has become somewhat terrifying, if by "somewhat" you mean "a lot". It's getting so I have to talk myself through driving past these open, dessicated spaces the same way I have to talk myself through driving over really high bridges and overpasses. (I have phobias. Don't judge me.)

Today we're experiencing some sort of weather inversion thing as the result of all the cooler, drier air and apparently the smoke from all these fires is trapped at the surface in a nice little bubble over central Texas. Walking out of your house and seeing/smelling smoke when it's this dry? Terrifying. And ironically, all the smoky haze on the horizon looks just like a wall of rain coming in -- the kind of rain that falls out of a uniformly grey sky and gently soaks the earth for hours at a time. The kind of rain that we desperately need here, but there's none to be had in our forecast.

No triple-digit temperatures either, though it's a near thing.

I'm honestly not sure how to feel right now.