The ‘Dredge Report

Today I got home from work, went downstairs, and saw a line across the carpet. “Hmm, what’s that?” I thought.  Maybe slugs attacked, or the cat couldn’t make it to the litter box, or something equally gross.  Almost.  A half-inch wide trail of ants were making their way from a holl in one wall (which connects some pipes from inside to the hose outside, I assume) to the cat’s food bowl.  Say what you will about ants, but they’re diligent: they made their way from outside to inside, and 10 feet more, for some food.

At this point Splinter looked up at me as if to say, “The hell, woman. Can’t you even keep me in clean cat food?”

But I have four days of no work, starting now, and tomorrow I’m going camping here.  Me and RV (which is to say, Roommate V., not an actual Recreational Vehicle) camping will be a hilarious disaster of epic proportions, but it may also be fun. Wish me luck on driving two hours tomorrow morning with an overly-excitable Australian cattle dog.

(I know what you’re thinking: Her, camping? Listen peeps, I’ve got it all down: got my yoga mat packed for some asana-in-the-woods, and a couple of bottles of wine.  We should be fine.)

Let’s talk about Fun Things That Happen as You Age.  For example: adult-onset lactose intolerance!  Apparently it’s very common to develop this dread condition in your 20s and 30s, and yet this seems wholly unfair.  The universe gave me upwards of 25 years to develop an affection for the finest dairy-based goods in life: ice cream, milk, and cheeses ranging from the sharpest English cheddars to the runniest French Camemberts (True Story , until I went to college in Massachusetts, I never knew that cheddar cheese could be white instead of orange). And now, having developed that dairy-tooth, I’m coming to terms with giving up most of these beloved items.  I’m only slightly-heartened to find out that many others are in the same boat, with lactose intolerance rates being pretty high worldwide, depending on geography and race/ethnicity.

It’s a strange, lonely world, this one without lattés, milkshakes, pizza.  No more cereal with milk in the morning, which means no more cereal period, because I have a mental block about consuming cereal with soy or almond milk.  Actually, I have a mental block about consuming soy milk at all – I just can’t do it – though I do use almond milk in breakfast smoothies.  No more chocolate milk, a favorite childhood treat.  One of my favorite weekend breakfast treats is good cinnamon toast with a tall glass of milk: NO MORE!  No more provolone on my lunchtime sandwiches.  And have you noticed that at finer restaurants, virtually every dessert comes with a scoop of some fancily-flavored ice cream? WTFF is up with that?

Cheese is hit-or-miss, as you generally don’t sit down to consume a large pile of cheese all on its own.  Very small amounts seem to be okay, so I’m trying to limit myself to tiny quantities of the good stuff from Oregon and abroad.

Luckily, plain yogurt seems to be okay, since it’s low in lactose to begin with and comes with billions of delicious bacteria to counteract it.  [*Sidebar, you should all be taking probiotics. In a couple of years, government panels are going to be recommending that people pop these things like candy, as research is building that they’re good for you on a number of fronts].

So I’ve entered this new world of calcium supplements and actually thinking about the ingredients in things before I consume them. It’s weird and I don’t appreciate having to do it. But I do feel much better.  That said, if I ever find out I’m gluten-intolerant (I don’t think I am, happily), I expect to have a full-on nervous breakdown about having to give up bread.

I keep meaning to blog about things besides, say, the minor annoyances that plague my day-to-day existence.  For example, I finally got around to skim-reading the report released last week by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.  It is horrifically depressing and yet not at all surprising, and as others have noted, what’s striking about the Commission’s recommendations is how mind-bogglingly basic they are.  Things like: Do better background checks on prison guards.  Have clear-cut written zero-tolerance standards on sexual abuse in correctional facilities.  Things that should have been in place long ago.

Minimizing or eliminating sexual abuse in any “closed society,” whether it be a religious sect or a correctional system, is an immense legal and cultural challenge.  In the spirit of, “Wow, I can’t believe we still make jokes about this stuff,”  consider doing as I did and making a small donation to Just Detention International, which seems to be The Organization that is advocating for change on this issue.

Yeah, I’m moving again.  Blame my landlord.  Apparently, owning 3 properties in the greater Portland area precludes him from being able to refinance his own, $850K, negative amortization mortgage.  He’s one of those guys that we read about during the influx of articles about the housing bust and the morons who took on mortgages they couldn’t afford.  So, it’s sad.  He had pledged that we could “re-up the lease times infinity,” but now he needs to unload this house, fast, and it’s on the market.  It’s disconcerting to have folks coming through to look at it, because I’m torn.  Do I hope for the house to sell quickly, or do I hope for it to stay on the market and wither?  I hope for a quick sale at a reduced price, because it’s going to be written into the terms of sale that the new owners must buy the oil currently in our oil tank, and if that doesn’t happen, I’m out $200.

Sadly, I know that it will sell, purely for the neighborhood it’s in.  Alberta is 75% gentrified, and the last remaining Portland yuppies without equity are probably drooling at the prospect of a 4BR/2BA fixer-upper in the area.  Kinda sucks for us, though. Our third roommate, B., who is without question the best 23-year-old gay roommate I’ve ever had, has to move out this week.  He was going to stay and re-up the lease with us, but since we have to move by August 1, and he’s traveling most of July, he’s gotta jet.  This also means that RV and I will separate for different digs, which is even sadder.  We are consummate Platonic Life Partners, and it’s going to be extra-weird not sharing a household together.  For the past year we’ve split rent, utilities, expenses, wine-purchasing-duties, chores, errands, cooking-duties, bad-TV-watching-responsibilities, and more.  She’s my freaking medical power-of-attorney!  How we don’t get a tax break for this kind of relationship, I’ll never understand.

The good news is that I’ve found a new place, and it is a bit like the Holy Grail of Portland Apartments.  I’m moving into a 2BR/2BA where another girl currently lives, and it’s pretty great. Big place, beautiful light, DISHWASHER!!!!!!!!!!!, plenty of closet space, cat-friendly, and did I mention it’s in the most coveted location possible?  For me, anyway.  It’s smack-dab in the center of Portland on the east side, and it means that I’ll be within a block or two of approximately 800 great restaurants, bars, movie theaters, parks, etc. And all for a price that’s a few hundred dollars less than what I’m currently paying, when you include utilities. More on this later.  But again, let me plead for you (you!) reading this to come visit Portland.  There’s a place for you to stay, a good place, a place next to other good places.   I’m pretty psyched.

Tonight I finally ate at Le Pigeon, one of Portland’s best French restaurants, Restaurant.com coupon in tow.  It was good — really good.  My appetizer involved rabbit terrine, avocado, and miso, which was delicious, and reminded me to wonder again why we in America aren’t big on rabbit. Why not? People say it tastes like chicken, but I disagree, because think of how tasteless and flat and rubbery your median grocery-store torture chicken tastes.  Rabbit is richer, slightly gamier, and less prone to being raised and killed in massive antibiotics-strewn feedlots.  I’m not getting on my soapbox here, mind you. Just curious why rabbit is so scarce in the States.  In France, you could buy it in the average grocery store, and I remember throwing a rabbit-centric dinner party for my girlfriends when my host parents were out of town one weekend.  Lapin à la moutarde, délicieuse.

My entrée was blanquette de veau, a veal-based stew that is incomparably rich and homey.  Traditionally, it’s served over rice and in a pale-cream sauce; the plate is supposed to look white/grey, avoiding the typical sprigs of parsley or whatever to give it color.  My host mother in Paris was a terrible cook (triste, mais vrai), but blanquette de veau was one dish that she occasionally made (and reheated night after night), so I was ready to indulge in the hopes of recalling that memory.  This particular blanquette was draped in a slice of foie gras.  Right, send me to the guillotine, eh?  Except, goddamn.  I love foie gras.  It is so good.  I can’t help it — it just is.  People get up in arms about foie gras because it’s an easy target, but the more I think about it, the more I’m tempted to justify my own foie-gras consumption by pointing out that your average CAFO-raised beef or chicken is probably a much, much worse bet in terms of animal cruelty and impact to the environment.  Carafe, for example, is a great French bistro that’s located (happily) in the lower level of my office building.  On their website (click “community” and then “foie gras,” damn you Flash websites), the owner explains how he went to his foie gras purveyor first-hand to witness the treatment of the geese there.  And, it’s…not as bad as you’d think.  Granted, there’s an argument to be made that foie gras is inhumane, full stop.  I’m slightly sympathetic to that view.  But it’s worth weighing the daily environment that those geese experience, versus the daily environment that your average Purdue chicken experiences.

And on a related note, my mom sent me a necklace from my great-aunt, made of ivory. Granted, vintage ivory is grandfathered into being legal, but the question is whether to wear it or not.  One the one hand, it reminds me of my mom and my great-aunt, both of whom wore it.  On the other hand…dead elephants.  Elephants killed for their tusks.  I also have a closetful of beautiful fur coats and accessories that belonged to a variety of grandmothers, great-grandmothers, etc.  The one with the fur collar, I used to wear around town for nights out on the town in Boston.  The full-fur ones are relegated to my closet, which is sad, because they’re really nice, and beautiful, and they connect me to generations of women in my family.  And those animals died long, long ago, and sticking them in a closet seems cruel (they died, and for nothing? If I wear them once in awhile, at least they’re not as good as trash-binned).  It’s lame, I know. I’m not looking for any sympathy here on what to do with my stash of fur and ivory.  But, still.  Vintage “bad-things” — what to do? What should I do?

I’m supportive of the entrepreneurial spirit, but this is more than a little bit annoying. The idea behind Unithrive is that current Harvard students ask for no-interest, $2,000-max loans from Harvard alumni, to help them make ends meet during the school year, or for special projects or trips over the summer. Since Harvard already has a terrifically generous financial aid policy for its undergraduates (basically, if your parents make less than $60,000, Harvard meets your entire demonstrated need with grants, not loans), this is more about these financial aid students asking for help paying the $2,000 a year that the school currently asks them to contribute through some sort of work-study program. From one of the program’s founders:

Mr. Kushner noted that the college still asks scholarship students to contribute a few thousand dollars a year from summer and school-term jobs.

“I have friends who would spend 10 hours a week when they are not in class working at a coffee shop or in the dorms,” said Mr. Kushner, 24, referring to time that he considered wasteful. “I think the most special thing about college is not just what you do in class, but what you do out of class.”

Something about this rubs me the wrong way. Having to work 10 hours a week to help contribute a token amount to your free ride at Harvard isn’t asking a lot. 10 hours is not a lot. Like, seriously – not a lot. It allows for plenty of time to go to class and do homework and take on all sorts of resume-enhancing Harvard-approved extracurricular activities. The point seems to be that working in a dining hall or a coffee shop is a waste of time, contributing nothing to one’s higher education experience. As someone who worked 10-15 hours a week all throughout my undergraduate education (except for my year abroad), this grates. You learn things when you wash dishes, or clean bathrooms, or work at the campus computer center (all of which I did – true!) Things like: how to be on time, how to interact with a wide variety of people, some of whom are snotty and/or unhelpful, how to do things efficiently, how to think on your feet.

I’m all for this innovative model of peer-to-peer lending, but Christ, more money for Harvard students to get a leg up in life?

Or maybe I’m just cranky because Harvard keeps asking its alums for more money, despite clear evidence that overambitious and poorly-diversified investment choices were largely responsible for the university’s huge endowment drop.

So, first there was the knee.  Then I got a great annual review at work and the promise of a pretty good-sized raise exactly one day before the CEO announced across the board salary freezes.

Then, this week, our landlord decided that instead of lowering our rent like he’d promised a month or two ago, he was going to maintain or raise it, and perhaps even throw us out on the street when our lease was up. In the beginning, this landlord, who I’ll call “Joe,” convinced us that he was this really cool guy, who didn’t need credit checks or a huge deposit, and he had no qualms about pets in the house — as long as we didn’t burn down the porch last his last tenants, we would be cool. “Yeah, Joe!” we thought. “A self-made man in an age of unkindness — the kind of guy who didn’t even go to college but has a gorgeous wife, three perfect kids, and a billion entrepreneurial ventures.”

As it turns out, Joe is a dick. Negotiating with him over phone and e-mail this past week was like tending to a small, cranky child. The end result is that because my two roommates want to stay, they’re going to resign the lease and find new roommates. I’m moving out to find a cheaper place, which is perfectly possible in Portland. I’m actually a little excited about how much less I’ll be potentially paying in rent, and hopefully that’ll include a month-to-month lease in case I get, uh, laid off. Not that that’s going to happen. Right? Right.

Finally, last night I was in a minor car accident. Totes my fault. Ideally, it happened right in front of my house; I had been driving back from La Sirenita with my dinner, and, well, instead of explaining it, let’s just go with, it was minor, both cars were moving slowly, and the damage wasn’t that bad to either car. Hello, insurance deductible! Nice to meet you. Also, hello insurance rate increase. Also pleased to make your acquaintance.

So, what is this? Sometimes I hear about sports teams that are in a “rebuilding” year, which basically means — as far as I can tell — that their players are really shitty and they lose all their games, but the prospects for the future are still okay. Am I in a rebuilding year?

It appears that more than posting things on my blog, I like ignoring it for weeks at a time and then posting a massive disjointed round-up. It also appears that I enjoy Twittering much, much more than a) blogging and b) I originally expected. My Twitter name, fyi, is the same as that of this blog. Unfortunately for a few of you, I’ve instituted a no-family policy on Twitter. Because, we all need a little space.

So! Apparently in Portland, Oregon, spring arrives on May 28th or so. For the handful of days per year that it gets above 80 degrees, I cherish my basement-level living situation, because it stays niiiiiice….and….coooool down here. The other 329 days per year kind of suck, and I’m always cold. But what can you do?

• Knee update: kind of better! I did physical therapy for something like 5 weeks, once or twice a week, and after the first few I was able to slowly get back into yoga and other activities without too much drama. Honestly, I was of the opinion that physical therapy is glorified personal training, which it kind of is, except that my physical therapist went to graduate school for 3 years, while the trainers at 24 Hour Fitness are generally qualified by virtue of being thin and tan. My guy was pretty good, and despite paying for hour-long sessions of what was essentially really intense lower-body strength training workouts and balance exercises, I think it did the trick. I’ve even gone on a few hikes, nothing too crazy. I doubt it’ll ever be back to 100%, but 95% might be good enough.
• Most of us need more electropop like we need a hole in our head, but Passion Pit is really as good as everyone had been saying. It spurred pathetic “alone in my room” white girl dancing on the first listen. Now that’s credibility. Hat tip to Jordan for the rec.
• Blog posts that I’ve enjoyed recently: Sanchez on Sotormayor, Jezebel and Feministe on patients’ experiences with George Tiller, and, well, not a blog, but Kaiser Health News is long-anticipated. Although I guess KHN does have a blog (hi Kate).
• RV and I went to see Pee Wee’s Big Adventure last weekend at the Baghdad. Similar to Return to Oz, I had no idea that my childhood was spent watching these nonsensical (and oft-scary!) movies. Finally understood, though, that Pee Wee’s Playhouse was all about inculcating America’s youth with notions of gay camp culture, which is awesome.
• Economy? Still not so great!
• In the past two weeks, I missed 2 weddings and my 5-year college reunion owing to harsh fiscal realities, and as much as I would have liked to be there…not flying places is kind of nice, I must say.
• Dealspl.us will be the end of me. Or at least my pocketbook.
• I bought a new computer! Now, if you’re confused by the item two bullets above this one, rest assured that it was super-cheap, almost insultingly cheap. Guess what else? It’s a PC. Guess what else? It’s a desktop! I am Technological Regression. But I have a handful of extremely compelling reasons for going this route, which I won’t bore you with here. It’ll sure be nice to have a hard drive more than 60G again, eh? Imagine, almost 3 years ago, that seemed like Infinity + 1 in terms of space.
• I’m not one to post on yoga progress a la Catherine, because I don’t generally make that much progress in terms of cool tricks, but I can do a headstand, almost without using the wall! I just need the wall for getting up there, but after that it’s just me, on my head, supported by my forearms. Apparently this is the pose that keeps gurus living until they’re 150, so I’m hopeful. Pretty much all of the coolest yoga poses are trickier for us heavier girls to get, but contra this post, I’ve almost never felt uncomfortable in yoga classes with legions of skinny yoga girls. You’re there for you, they’re there for them, and unlike in an aerobics class, I find looking around not just pointless but distracting.
• BTW, yoga rules. I know there’s a few of you who continue to resist the Borg, but in a few years it’ll be as mandatory as public calisthenics classes in a totalitarian country, so I’d save yourself the trouble and get going now.

That’s all.

Apologies for the light posting; I’ve been put in charge of another creature’s life, and I’m not yet convinced I’m capable of holding that kind of responsibility. Anyway, this is Splinter. He’s named after the rat in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. For the longest time my brothers and I wanted to name a dog after one of the two bad guys in the Ninja Turtles — Bebop and Rocksteady. This is in tribute to that.

He’s young (18 months?), much younger than I originally wanted when I walked into the Humane Society. I’d set my heart on an old, fat, lazy, shy cat who just wanted to live out her remaining years in a safe, comfortable place, namely my lap. This guy is painfully shy yet extremely frisky and energetic once he’s convinced you’re not out to neuter him. He’s already addicted to the ‘nip. He needs to grow into his feet. He’s pretty cute, though.

Hey, remember this? Yeah. As it turns out, it wasn’t all harmless fun. When the mentally unstable drunk homeless guy cornered me in the bus shelter and said something inappropriate and made me escape to the tune of slamming my knee against the metal bus bench, something happened. My knee was injured! Strangely enough, the knee didn’t bother me for the first few weeks afterward, save for the usual bruising and swelling. But at one point I began to feel weird. I began to feel as though my knee would POP or SNAP or TEAR or do some similarly bad thing if I stood on it the wrong way, or put too much pressure on it. After one particularly long hike, I realized that whatever this strange pain was, it wasn’t going away.

After some X-rays and an appointment at the fancy orthopedics wing of the fancy academic medical center, the verdict is that I have a slight meniscal tear. And perhaps some cartilage chipped off. And some ligament strain. Any more detail than that, and I’d have to refer you to WebMD, because I certainly do not speak the Sports Medicine Language. It’s not the worst case scenario, but it’s not great. The doc prescribed some (non-fun) drugs and 6 weeks of physical therapy, at which point she’ll re-assess and tell me exactly how screwed I am and whether surgery is in the distant future.

This also means, no normal physical activities. No running. No strenuous activity at the gym, like Spinning or the treadmill. Certainly no hiking. And while yoga isn’t out, the brand of power yoga I prefer is clearly off limits for now, so I’ve tabled it all until I can figure out which classes I might be able to handle. My options include…physical therapy exercises, and swimming. I bought some goggles online.

This fucking sucks.

Rationally, I know that these kinds of things just happen sometimes. And for awhile I felt angry at the homeless guy, because it’s not even like this was an accident — he went out of his way to be ugly to me, and I’m forced to take on the time, cost, and inconvenience of the consequences. And then someone said to me, “Yeah, but he’s still out there on the street, drunk and mentally ill.” True, very true. But I think we all have limits to our compassion and our “Oh, the humanity!” sense when someone does something so clearly wrong and mean and threatening.

The point of this all is that I’m still in that whiny feeling-sorry-for-myself phase that is so unattractive. To have cultivated this little cupboard of activities that I really enjoy and that make me happy, and then to have them just yanked away — and replaced by hours of stupid physical therapy and expense and having to be around the creepy dudes at the 24 Hour Fitness pool — it just sucks.