Across and Inside my Universe

Seeking British Food for our Olympic Opening Ceremonies Party

By party, I mean the three of us celebrate.  No one ever comes to anything we invite them to, except a scattering to birthday parties, except now those are held at the in-laws' houses.

So, we have made our own traditions for the three of us, and one of them is that whenever the Olympics come 'round, we either do a meal of just appetizers for the Opening Ceremonies, or we try to do native cuisine from that country.

We kind of put things off until the last minute this year, so tonight I did a search for British Import food shops, and found one surprisingly close to us!  It's actually South African, with some British stuff and several British or British-influenced menu items.

It's called Souties, and when I looked up the definition, I was a bit startled.  I'd never use the term, except of course as the title of this "hole in the wall" tiny menu'd charming, quaint restaurant/shop.

We actually didn't order any fish & chips; from the reviews in the Souties link above, apparently they are to die for!  We'll have to go back sometime.  The menu prices are also outstanding!

We did not get any spotted dick.  What we DID get:   Cadbury Flake, Nestle Aero, Nuttikrust Caramelised Oat Biscuits, Bakers Romany Creams - Crunchy Choc Coconut Biscuits, Fry's Turkish Delight, Bangers, two Cornish Pasty's and three Sausage Rolls.

We'll be having Bangers & Mash tomorrow, and Fish & Chips too (well, Opening Ceremonies are long!).  It won't be the healthiest supper and dinner ever, but it's a party!

We tried a Flake at the store while waiting for our freshly prepared scones.  It was good, and a texture like no other chocolate treat in the USA.  When our scones were ready, ooooh so luscious looking!   We took them out to the car and ate them.  My first bite:  Heaven!  Melt in your mouth, somewhere between a tender tender american biscuit and an american scone in texture; it was fantastic!  Halved, buttered, jammed, and topped with cream (possibly lightly sweetened, much lighter than Americans do).  Oh these were heavenly!  We had to wait while they whipped us up some cream, fresh!  We'll definitely be going back for these, from time to time!  There's only one halved scone pictured because my husband was driving and couldn't eat them until we got home.

If you haven't had a real, fresh English scone topped with fresh cream, you need to try it!

We'll also be drinking warm soda (the British do not put ice in their soda, it's served from the tap or a non-refrigerated bottle etc.) and putting malt vinegar on our fish & chips.  I've read that the British don't do tartar sauce, although apparently Souties offers it (a nice version with no pickle relish, perhaps the South Africans do tarter sauce).

However, I don't know which Bangers & Mash recipe to try, there's endless versions!  Guess I'll just pick one.

I may try a Yorkshire pudding recipe from scratch, before the Olympics are over.  Now to eat our Cornish pasties and sausage rolls tonight, with some fresh steamed broccoli on the side!  Hail, Brittania!

This n' That 6/30/12

Upon looking through a family Scottish cookbook, my daughter was reading out loud about Haggis.  I asked her, what does it say about it?  She said, "Haggis is a mixture of . . .EWWWWW!" and she backed away, as we all cracked up laughing for the next 5 minutes.

Apparently Haggis is a mixture of ewww.  I'd agree with that!

******

After more than a week of no progress on the bedroom cleanout/organize project, I've made a leap or two forward by getting the area in front of the closet cleaned out.  SIX bags of stuff to go to the thrift store (toys, clothes, fabric) and four bags of garbage.  How did all that stuff fit there?  There'll actually be another bag for the thrift store after we finish washing the rest of the clothes to donate.

Progress is great!  Makes me feel good.

*****

We're trying to plan our Olympic meal/party for the opening ceremonies coming up.  We usually do a meal of a variety of appetizers, but this time we want British stuff, for at least part of it.  Fish and chips are the first thing on my daughter's list, and that sounds great to me too.

When I mention "spotted dick" to her, she screws up her face, says "ewww", and swiftly goes elsewhere.  I think she thinks I'm saying something different than what I think I'm saying.  It's a spongy sort of cake fingerish sort of thing, with currants in it I think for the spots.  So it's a wierd variation of a Twinkie, basically.

I just say it to tease her, though! 

I need some ideas for London food!  Welsh Rarebit is cheese on toast/bread.  I think.  I always thought it was a roasted rabbit when I was little.

See, I have Scottish, Britsh, Welsh, and maybe some Irish heritage too.  My maiden name is from a Welsh ancestor; means stone mason.  Which, funnily enough, my ancestors were, all the way down to my grandfather.

Oh, my married name, tradition has it, came from Ireland with a Mc in front of it.  Still not the easiest name to have, but I guess it makes sense.  So there's me some Irish (and Dutch Royalty too; if you go to St. Thomas or St. Croix, there's a Rum/sugar plantation and castle that's ours.  I mean, our Dutch Royal ancestors.)

*****

My therapist is back!  It was hard to prioritize what to talk about, and in fact it wasn't until a day after therapy this week that I remembered some of the important stuff I'd been going to talk about, and forgot.  I did pretty well though with what I did remember.

I'd been getting rather piled on by a variety of stuff, including one SIL who says I have a heart of gold but she doesn't want to be friends with me.  That was painful, but we're hammering out how we're going to relate to each other in the future. 

Part of me wonders, however, if I have a heart of gold, what's so bad about me that it drowns out the heart of gold?  But that's personalising; her choice is about her and what she wants in her life, and doesn't want.  It's hard to not take that personally, though.  It's sort of freeing to not be stuck in hurt at why she seemed to not give a fig about me; I can move on, now.

****

A pet peeve of mine about blogs with alot of pictures, especially food and craft blogs; don't take 6 pictures from a zillion angles of your dish, cookie, necklace, scarf, whatever and post them ALL.  Really, one (or at most, 2, if one is a closeup or something) will do.  I know you're in love with how it turned out, and how well it photographed, but get over it.  Please.

*****

I tried a macaroni and cheese in a mug recipe that's popular on Pinterest.

Don't do it.  It sucks.

However, an Eggnog Pound Cake recipe I tried from Pinterest last Christmas, is now my preferred way to consume egg nog.  8^D 

Man, now I want egg nog, and it'll be months and months before it's available!

*****

Quote from Utah Governor yesterday, in regards to all the people rubber-necking the wildfires up by Herriman (and elsewhere in the state, like, 360,000 acres) and who are getting in the way of fire people getting to the fires:  "You can't outlaw stupid!"

You can possibly try, but you'll never get rid of it.

Bedroom Progress - Ribbons, Heroclix, Pandemic, & Neopets

Well isn't that an eclectic title!

One of my craft materials that needs much better organization are my ribbons.

So, I spent a few minutes pinning a whole variety of ideas to a pinboard for these ideas, on Pinterest.  Some are similar to each other, but there's some quite clever ideas in there.

See, I've realized that it's difficult or impossible to fully clean up the floor, without having somewhere in, on, amongst the cubes, shelves, and other parts of my craft organization "system", to put things that go there. 

Of course, if I don't have a place to put stuff after weeding, it's hard to settle on exactly what storage will work best, because I'm not sure what "space" it will "live in" once it's weeded and sorted . . . this is part of the problem in tackling this project, it feels like everything I do depends on doing something else that needs to be done, etcetera.

I'm not going to spend any $$ on anything organizational-wise until I have a better idea of what might go where.

AHHHhhhhh.  It feels like I'm stuck in a black hole, a vortex of doom.  What I need to remember is that's magnifying, that's catastrophizing, and if I take small moves, I can get this done.  No, thinking of getting it "done" is too much for me; I can make PROGRESS.  That is all I can think of.  Small moves = progress.

On the getting rid of my old Heroclix game figures front, I traded 2/3 of them with a fellow on Boardgamegeek.com for $80 worth of games that we wanted, and two that I wanted to try that take up no more space than a couple of envelopes (if I don't like them, they can be traded off just like the Heroclix): Pandemic, it's expansion On The Brink, and Alamo & Battle of 4 Armies.  These take up 1/4 of the space the Heroclix did.  If I can't find a trader for the balance of my Heroclix, then out they go, in the trash.

You can have BGG.com search for people who want in trade the games you have up for trade, while it also considers if they have up for trade games that you want in trade.  It's quite nifty, really.

On the Neopets front, we have some fond memories of the couple years my daughter spent on their site; we participated fully with her, as at that age we did not want her involved in anything on the internet without us.  We collected quite a few stuffed Neopets during that time, the bulk of which have been sitting in our bedroom in large bags for a couple years now.  All three of us collected; we each had our favorites.

Here are all the neopets we had, on my messy bed:

 

There are several PILES of neopets, 3 deep on there, so there's more than what you see.  On a queen-size bed. 

We weeded through our collection, with my husband keeping only a couple of Bruces; I kept the Shoyrus, the Flotsams, and one or two misc. others.  My daughter got rid of about 40% of her collection; not as much as I'd hoped, but enough.  Most of these Neopets, aside from my daughters, had been kept in a bag for their stay at our apartment; even out of hers, only two need cleaned.   Off to the thrift store with them.

What my spouse and I kept:

 

While it's embarassing to admit that we like Neopets; we're adults, after all, but they represent an age and time in my daughter's life that we all have fond memories of.  The ones we chose to keep also reflect our personalities; I like dolphins & strawberries, and the Shoyrus seem to be pleading to be loved.

What all three of us got rid of: 

 

Bedroom Progress - Small Moves, Ellie

I started in this corner of the room. Floor only, as I'm doing a mostly garbage pass, although if something's on the floor we'll put it to donate, chuck, or find a home or temporary home for it until I can tackle everything on top of everything, which is pretty much taking up the space that needs to be homes for (organized) things. These pics are the same as the previous post, pre-cleaning, but they're a visual aid.

I cleaned just about up to the small child's chair you see in the corner of the room in this picture; a bit over a quarter of the room's circumference. That small chair, by the way, was made by my dad for my daughter when she was THREE. She's in Junior Highschool now.

That may not sound like much to some, especially since it was just the floor, but I was dripping sweat after 20 minutes, and had filled a kitchen-size garbage bag.

As well, I've been struggling with just doing dishes and laundry (not even folding) on a regular basis, let alone most other chores; that's kinda one reason the place has gotten to this point. Yes, doing things consistently, or at all, is a struggle when I'm depressed, anxious, trying to distract myself from mania (although mania does sometimes result in a burst of productivity, which I'm afraid may be the impetus behind this project). Most of the time though I'm fighting the things mania urges me to do that aren't good; that means there's not alot of me left over for ADL's (activities of daily life, as they say).

Regardless of the reason for doing this, I'm hoping blogging about it will A) help me stay somewhat organized about it, B) help my sense of efficacy and build upon it as I can look at the blog and see the progress I've made, C) help keep me motivated and carrying on with this even if the urge of productivity should desert me, and D) maybe keep alive some unreal notion that my non-existent blog readers might be sending me thoughts of support.

Yeah, that last one, not gonna happen. I need to do this for me, anyway, and I recognize that. Support doesn't hurt, though!

So . . . small moves.

I've been feeling overwhelmed over the last 24 hours, just looking at the whole room. As Adam Savage of Mythbusters would say (and that's how I hear it in my head), "There's your problem!" I have problems with looking too far into the future, looking at problems upon problems (it's turtles all the way down), as if I was looking at the humongous pile of food you need to eat over the next month or year, and feeling overwhelmed by it all.

We don't eat all that at once. It's made up of smaller meals, and those are further broken down into food groups, or various ingredients, or various steps of the recipe.

You can make your moves as small as you like; moving forward, even if it feels equivalent to maybe one frog hop, is the important thing. Just because it feels like a frog hop, doesn't mean it IS one.

The first day, I made a list (a HUGE one), took and posted the photos, and blogged about this. The next day, I took one of the categories of items I needed to research selling/trading, and started that process. (I'll be trading some old collectable gaming figures for a game I want, that takes up less than 1/4 of the space the figures did; a win/win, there. Boardgamegeek.com is great for exchanging, occasionally selling, old or new games and related items.) So, a small move.

I did not beat myself up inside about how little that seemed to accomplish in relation to the whole; the urge to do that came to me as it so easily does, but I countered those thoughts with, "No, it's not too little. You are no longer stuck and you are moving forward. FEEL how good that feels after being stagnant for so long!"

And I did. Feel good, that is. I transformed my negative thoughts and feelings not just into banishing the negative, but I created positive thoughts and feelings to replace them.

My mantra going forward will be, as you may guess, "Small moves, Sara. Small moves."

(P.S. Who wants to watch that movie now? Me . . .)

Pop Culture References in Psychotherapy

Some pop culture items are so . . . pervasive, they've permeated our society to a depth that one could reasonably expect someone else to understand a general reference to it; ie, Mickey Mouse, "Here's looking at you, kid!" and others.

It's not guaranteed, but most people have a frame of reference.

There's others that are so widely popular and have been mass-marketed so much (Star Wars) that it's pretty rare, though not unheard of, for people to not understand the, "Luke, I'm your Father" reference. Although when it comes to the geekier references (Dungeons & Dragons, sci-fi, fantasy, computer nerd stuff like Tron) it really depends on the "audience".

Still, sometimes in therapy the best analogy you can think of to help illustrate something you are trying to convey, involves a pop culture reference. More often on my, the patient's, part, but occasionally, though not often, my psychologist will do this as well.

For example, when Kung Fu Panda (the first movie) was out in theaters, and had been out for a couple months, I finally saw it, and the moment at the top of the stairs when Master Shifu asks him why he stayed through all the abusive treatment Shifu had dealt out to him, well, Po's (the panda) answer deeply connected with me and I almost started crying (yes, this IS Kung Fu Panda I'm talking about). I thought, someone in Hollywood understands ME.

Now, it's not that important that ANYONE in Hollywood understand me; anyone understanding me at all is excellent! Or, AWESOME as Po would say. Still, you see all sorts of people portrayed in various shows, movies, etc., and if you never see yourself there, you feel like maybe your are too odd, wierd, defective, etc. to ever have a person with any traits similar to you be portrayed.

Now, do I define myself by what's seen in the media? HELL NO! It's just, that moment of connection with Po was a sincerely touching moment for me, and while Po may not necessarily be the personality that many people would want to identify with, well, there it is, I do. My therapist had, actually, seen the movie, and so we spent about half the session talking about the movie and the things I related to in it, silly as that might sound to some, it felt productive, helpful, and validating to me.

On the other hand, if your psychotherapist is relating a pop culture analogy to you, about something you've just told him that prompted him to think of this analogy, and the reference is the movie Fatal Attraction . . . well then maybe you're in trouble. Not with him, mind you, but if your behavior, feelings, thoughts, anything you report brings up a Fatal Attraction reference to his mind . . . well, it seems like a scary thing!

Of course, since I've never SEEN Fatal Attraction, I didn't really get it; he seemed quite surprised that I hadn't seen it. I've heard certain types of references to it so many times I know a little about it just through those; enough to know having what one just told him in therapy being related back to me as a Fatal Attraction reference, is not . . . a positive reflection on me.

Now, he's objective, and I don't believe he was using the references to JUDGE me or anything like that; rather to point out the extremes that certain thought patterns can take you to (not that I think I had done or said anything Fatal Attraction-like, but then, how would I know, since I've never seen it?)

So, he took several risks in using those references, and the fact that I hadn't seen the movie meant his analogies fell kinda flat. Then again, some of mine have as well.

I just know that one probably really needs to look at ones' self and alter ones' course of thought or behavior, if said courses of thought or behavior are inspiring Fatal Attraction references in ones' therapist.

Another stigmatizing board game

DeathMatch Asylum

Description of the game:

You’re a patient in a mental hospital. You awaken one morning to discover that all of the doctors and nurses are missing! This means that A) your control mechanisms are missing, and B) you’re low on medication. You do the obvious thing of course, you grab the nearest high-powered weapon and lay into your fellow inmates with a passion!

DeathMatch Asylum(tm) is a miniatures game / board game that simulates the multi-player first person shooter computer games. Play is fast-paced and humorous, and it’s a snap to learn!

I know this appeals to a juvenile male mentality, and setting seems to matter little to that demographic quite often, but this is really quite awful. This is a GAME?

Of course, I'm sure there's been bloody video games set in sanitariums and the like, but I don't think that makes it socially acceptable. The stigma associated with mental illness, especially with anything perceived to be related to "insanity", including hallucinations, etc., seems to make this seem even like a FUN setting for such a game, to some people.

If mental illness were truly seen as equal to other illnesses, well, then we'd either have people setting first person shooter games in cancer wards, or they'd set nothing violent against or by the patients there in either case.

The fact that people would be horrified if they made a game like the above, if it'd be set in a cancer ward, but not for a "mental" ward, well, it shows that we've got a long way to go in reducing and eliminating stigma for mental illnesses.

I could go on and on but here is a Geeklist on Board Game Geek.com of "insane" games; ie, they involve mental illness in some way. Some are rather offensive. Others seem to be "mad" because they are based on Mad Magazine. I haven't checked any out, just scrolled through and saw some horribly offensive ones.

http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/1230/item/19573#item19573

 

 

"Take the Money and Run"

This newish TV show is interesting . . . I'm finding tonight's episode much more interesting than that parts of the premier episode, but maybe it's because the two gay mens' reactions to lockup (cement block walls, no windows etc.) is so different. I'm not enjoying watching distress, but they DId know what they were signing up for. What I find interesting is what's going on with them, psychologically.

During the first hour they had to hide the briefcase full of $100k, the stuff they did to decoy the cops' later investigations, some of it was quite clever, one thing I thought, oh there's no way that's going to fool the cops, but it is! And stuff.

The one gay partner thought his partner, the opera singer, wouldn't handle lockup very well, being claustrophobic and all. Part of me wonders if they put that on their application for the show, to make him seem more vulnerable to the cops . . . because this opera singer guy is making ME think sometimes that he's not doing so good, and then later, when he reveals to the camera for the show that won't get shown to the cops, that he's playing them, well, he's an awfully good actor! Then again, opera singers act . . . have the cops forgotten this? One is on to him a little the other isn't, but during one bold-faced lie to the male interrogator the cop responds with, "That's the most honest answer I've heard in 20 hours! If it's a lie, it's a damn good one!"

That's the first point I thought, either the cop is an idiot, the guy is a superb actor, OR the cop thinks it's a lie but doesn't want the "perp" to know he knows it . . . Plus, nothing like a little flattery to make the guy think he's getting away with it, hoping he'll get overconfident. . .

I still have the last 5-10 mins of the show to go, so I don't know who's going to win the $100k, cops or the gay couple, but I suspect it's the latter. Just not enough time for the cops to suss out what happened, with the dodges and decoys the two men put in place.

The show also has the men describe what's going on with them psychologically/emotionally as it shows them pacing their cells, and it's very interesting. I imagine for some people, there comes a point where they want out so bad they give up the money's location in order to get out a day or half a day sooner.

I don't know if it's psychologically such a good idea to put yourself through the traumatizing experience of arrest, detention, interrogation, but then they don't have to sign up for the show, either. And of course, it's not an arrest that will be on your record because it's not a real arrest. It just feels all TOO real once they're in there, though, much more so than they could have imagined.

It's also interesting to see the psychological/manipulation techniques the cops use as they interrogate the "perps". The female interrogator actually got to feeling really guilty after her first interview with the opera singer.