Trapped

Well, not exactly, but it keeps snowing and I am dogsitting baby dog, who cannot be left alone.  Her BFF is working on her Flyball Master title while we shovel and cook up CSA veggies for the week.

The salad is an odd amalgam of veggies and crap I cleaned out of the fridge and cupboards, but it worked.  Chioggia beets, microwaved til tender and chopped, orange pieces halved, a few chopped walnuts and pepitas for protein, and lettuce. 

The dressing is tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, a touch each of cumin, turmeric, garlic powder, onion powder, and mustard, and palmfuls of parsley and arugula.  Goes with the potato, leek, carrot, arugula soup I made yesterday.  Fennel lemon peel bread is rising, using up some old buttermilk powder that was hardened into a ball. 

Slightly more hospitable in those dark corners of the kitchen...  Puppy helped by licking the floor.  Then we worked on the project of getting her to pick up a toy or ball and bring it back.  She will sometimes do this in the yard, but mostly if BFF the ball hog competes for it, growl growl. 

In the house, she's too shy and cautious, even with treats.  So far, she'll catch a soft cat toy but not a ball, but then spits it out.  Or nose a ball but not pick it up, with scorn and groaning about not just getting treats for offering downs and cute poses.  Shaking took a while, but now she offers the spotted paw almost every time, with only slight disdain.

I'm trying to finish Bad Feminist (Roxane Gay) before it's due.  It's very good, but better in chunks with breaks in between essays.  To think about them and because a lot of the subjects are heavy: racism, rape culture, Penn State, body image, eating and weight, even her pop culture analysis is not lite.  She almost has me convinced I should read the rest of The Hunger Games, which is a feat. 

Mostly I am nodding my head, glad *someone* can say all these things so well, in current terms, without making me groan or bite my tongue.  The dog is not impressed, but I will have to buy my own copy, as I suspected based on her columns, short stories, and tumblr posts.

Anyway, time to punch down dough and go shovel some walks for folks who need a hand.  We'll see how good her heel is, though she did great running yesterday, not pulling me over in slidy freshly falling snow.  Though if i'd had a sled or skis I think we would have been in business. 

She woofed at another (full) husky, very excited, which she has not done before then, before SIBERSKI SNEG!  (Even when the dude who has his Husky pull him on a scooter on the sidewalk goes by.)  Better than the Chewbacca yowl she sometimes does when she feels Treats Are Due for some feat of obedience.

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QOTD

"The heart is clearly not on a happy picnic in this novel." -review of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

It made *me* laugh...  The review is interesting, though.  As the one of In Cold Blood.  Kind of old fashioned, but insightful.  I was researching Norman Mailer, because my reading lately keeps mentioning him and his books (like his battles with Gore Vidal) and then a documentary about Provincetown had him in it.  (Apparently he lined his yard with lime to keep Roy Cohn cooties away from his sons.). Not sure I can go there, though.

I plowed through the bio of Edmonia Lewis last night.  The authors are odd and do a lot of grandstanding, but there is a solid recounting of the horrible events that happened at Oberlin College and how whitewashed the history of that has been (like much of the college's handwaving about its evangelistic and racially divided past).  The plates of her sculptures are also worth moving through all the words.

Doctor Sleep was awesome, except that it made me want to read The Shining again.  (Too scary.)

Now I'm starting a book about travels in Siberia and the history of the Cossacks as shock troops of the tsars, River of No Reprieve by Jeffrey Tayler.  So far it explains the origins of many place names and words in Sibir and gives a good recounting of Ivan the Terrible's reign.  Not far off from Game of Thrones...

Today I'm looking forward to more yard work and gutter cleaning to get ready for Snowmaggedon 2014.  (Ten inches!  Only in early November does this freak us out here in Nordilande, more change is hard than fear of snow.  The city thinks it will be street cleaning for fall leaves the next three weeks, ha.)  Hopefully I will get to running with Ms. Betty, the husky/border collie who barely has to move to pull at the leash at my pace.  Yesterday I made soup and enchiladas verde with the bounty from the final farmers market two weekends ago and my first CSA box.  That should get us through the adjustment to Winter Has Come...

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Necessary fripperies

(A commenter on a Guardian excerpt from the book called it a frippery. She read the frippiest part of the book.  I would not call even that a frippery, but I believe more in books as life's bread...)

I spent a fair amount of free time over the last year searching out essays and interviews by Roxane Gay, after stumbling on an essay and her tumblr.  Now there's a collection, and it's funny, biting, deep, and oh so jaded that it's fresh again.  She really is a pleasure to read, and not a guilty one, despite the "bad feminist" schtick.  We know what she's getting at with that, and she's right to strike that pose in this cultural moment.  It is demanded of a thinker.

I've been doing too much dog training to read the title as I should, but: Bad Feminist.  Worth checking out.  I may say more layer on it, but I have trouble getting around to virtual socializing these days.

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Ruska-aika

It is fall-to-winter again.  I'm not sure how that happened.  I was cold and snowed in and lazy, then just stayed lazy while it was briefly warm and darn hot.  Now I should be raking leaves but it's very windy.  That's my excuse, anyway.  Plus I'm warming my cat up.  He gets cold with all that long fur.

Instead I was watching a film about much-harder-working people, and working on my Finnish vocabulary:  Finns in the UP.  The 80s hair is cool too...

I was reading more Scandicrime books, but the Swedish thriller was very derivative and word heavy and the Finnish comedic noir was too crass and head hopping for me.  So I have nothing new to recommend in that vein.  The GF is hooked on Sigurdadottir's thrillers, and the latest ghost story is good: I Remember You.  Creepy.

I just started a biography of sculptor Edmonia Lewis that promises to be earth I shattering.  I'd like to learn more about her, anyway.  I know about the mysterious scandal at my alma mater but not enough about her art and later life.  Sounds like a lot of research went into the book, so we'll see...

Tomorrow the NY marathon is supposed to have massive headwinds.  The Lakefront marathon in Milwaukee was unreasonably cold when I spectated a couple weeks ago.  Good luck peoples.  I think I'm glad to be a lazy lump this season and only swimming, followed by the hot tub or sauna.  Did I mention it's cold? 

The trick-or-treaters last night were all bundled up or moving fast, and my fingers almost froze to the metal bowl.  Luckily, they did not snatch up all of the Pirate's Booty (cos you have to have a gluten free candy alternative these days, not just non-peanut).  That should keep me from raiding the leftover chocolate for a few days, time enough to dump it on my coworkers instead, that fine Halloween tradition.

The plan is to be less of a lump this winter despite ghost torn glute pain and the ice, frigid air, and snow they say is coming.  Skiing, running, writing, rah.  NaNoWrimo is here.  See, I'm throwing out words pell mell already...  Time to sit down and direct them a little more productively, then.

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