Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Titular Thoughts... or, An Excuse to Use the Word "Titular"

The title of my blog comes from a sonnet I wrote in Speech class towards the end of my second year at ACT. I worked really hard on it and was proud of the way it represented where I was at that time.

It's funny how people change and grow- a little at a time, almost imperceptibly, until one day you look back at old photos or journals and say, "wow, that is so not me anymore." Each moment is like a snowflake falling on a roof. Individually they have little weight, but pile a whole lot of them on and suddenly, all those tiny snowflakes have the power to bring a roof to the ground.

So, I'm posting the sonnet anyway, because I like it, but with this preface saying that I don't think it's really who I am anymore. Maybe I'm more of a plexi-glass bird now. Or paper. Something with a little more weightlessness.

"The Glass Bird"

Once windy wings are fragile, firm and cold
As blinking eye and beating breast give way.
She cannot shake the hardness that takes hold-
A lonely fog turns brilliant blue to gray.

So only mind can fly past frosty pools,
Through icy summers, echoing with song;
Dead lemon groves and cobwebbed garden tools;
The soaring was short, the waiting now so long.

Heavy on earth with eyes turned towards the sky
The glass bird cannot make her body fly.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Apple-Flax Seed Muffins*


*Adapted from a recipe by Mark Bittman in How to Cook Everything

2 C flour
1/2 C sugar
1/2 t salt
3 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
~
3 T vegetable oil
1 egg
1 C milk (I use light soy)
~
1/2 C flax seeds
1 1/2 C diced apple (I like gala or fuji)

-Preheat oven to 400 and grease a 12-compartment muffin tin.
-Combine dry ingredients, in a bowl, with a spoon.
-Combine wet ingredients, in a different bowl, with a different spoon or the same spoon.
-Make a well in the center of the dry mixture and pour in the wet mixture,folding gently until everything is just barely combined.
-Add in the flax seeds and apples.
-Fill up the muffin tin and bake for about 22 minutes.

Really great with margarine and honey, peanut butter (obvs) or plain!

Friday, September 26, 2008

Mice don't like cheese

They like peanut butter. Just like me!

So there have been tiny black mouse poos in the under-sink cabinet since my roommate and I moved in, about three months ago. I bought the kind of trap where you don't have to see or touch the mouse, put a piece of cheddar in the space for bait, and waited. And waited. And cleaned up more mouse poo. Waited some more. Forgot all about it, until a few nights ago when I heard it scuttling around in the walls. I even heard it squeak once, I think. I told a friend that if I ever saw it, I would scream. "That will probably solve the problem," he retorted.

So I knew it was time to amp up the ammunition. I had read somewhere that mice sometimes prefer peanut butter to cheese. I also read that they can fit through spaces as small as 1/4 of an inch, but I prefer not to think about that (as I avert my eyes from the hole left by the previous tenants' coaxial cable... clocking in at about 1/3 of an inch). So as a test, I put a tiny blob of peanut butter on a paper towel in the cabinet last night. It was organic Whole Foods peanut butter, to be specific... clearly nothing but the best for my household pests. I like to spoil my vermin before I murder them. There's a life and/or relationship metaphor in there somewhere.

This morning, the peanut butter is completely gone, along with a hole chewed through the center of the paper towel. That's right, the little fucker even ate the greasy paper. In the hope that (s)he would come back for more, I replaced the (old, yet not at all smelly) cheese with another little bit of PB. Then I ate some myself with some popovers that I baked yesterday. It was delicious, and the irony was not lost on me.

Tonight, as I was pretending to watch the presidential debate but really just putzing around my apartment trying to shake off a funk, I check my trap. Success! In under 10 hours! Yet another reason to thank George Washington Carver in my nightly prayers. I double-plastic-bagged that guy and took him/her downstairs to the trash. Apparently, one can be an animal-loving vegetarian and still get immense satisfaction out of the murder and subsequent disposal of a mouse. In case you were wondering, I cleaned up the remaining poos and mopped the floor for good measure.

Kinda makes me want to go here to celebrate.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?

So, here goes.

Last time I was in San Francisco, my favorite urban eskimo said to me, "you should write a blog. I'd read it!" Yes, but will I write it? Am I willing to invest the time, make public my thoughts, fling open the doors to my life so that anyone can peek in? Oh, what the hell. Why not.

Tonight I put on red lipstick and curled my hair, and I'm going to see A Man for All Seasons at the Roundabout with my favorite play-going buddy. Skipping the Grey's Anatomy premiere in favor of Broadway, like a good little theater-nerd. Thank god for abc.com and the glory that is the full episode player...