here's another reason to be paranoid

I stumbled across an older blog entry that contained some truly alarming information. The post was dated 2005, and I wonder if this is still on the books or not:

In an Ohio sting operation at a strip bar, a 22-year-old student intern with the United States Marshals Service was given a fake identity so she could work undercover at the club. But instead of giving her a fabricated identity, the police gave her the identity of another woman living in another Ohio city. And they didn't tell the other woman.

Oddly enough, this is legal. According to Ohio's identity theft law, the police are allowed to do it. More specifically, the crime cannot be prosecuted if:

The person or entity using the personal identifying information is a law enforcement agency, authorized fraud personnel, or a representative of or attorney for a law enforcement agency or authorized fraud personnel and is using the personal identifying information in a bona fide investigation, an information security evaluation, a pretext calling evaluation, or a similar matter.

Wow. Government-endorsed identity theft.

One of the main questions this brings to mind, at least for me...why is this necessary? Can they not create a convincing fake ID on their own? Apparently I have way more faith in these people than I should.

Another is...what does this do in regard to background checks? What if your license or SSN are used for some sort of child-porn sting? Everyone knows that oftentimes one government office doesn't know what the other is doing. Who is going to protect you if there are repercussions?

Is my identity floating around in use for some sting operation somewhere? Apparently they don't have to notify you when they take it. Not only does it possibly put the government medical assistance I receive at risk (and I assure you, I would be screwed without it), but isn't this potentially fairly dangerous? What if someone using my name, address and social security number tries to infiltrate some violent drug ring? It's possible.

I don't like this at all.

thoughts from the pain clinic

I'm not going to make a secret of it- I am hugely prejudiced against the idea of me going to a pain-management clinic. I think it has an appropriate context and I'm not part of that context. And coming, as I did, from ER and med-school environments, I've got this indelible link in my head between pain clinics and lost causes. I envision them as factories that eat up credibility and produce drug-seekers and doctor-shoppers.

I have fought tooth and nail for my credibility. Sometimes I think it's the only thing I have left, the one last link that causes one of my specialists to order a diagnostic instead of brushing me off. When I'm not believed, I tend to suffer for it bigtime. I won't forget anytime soon that the doctors told my mother that a 3 year old doesn't know her neck hurts and is just looking for attention. I was paralyzed by the whopping tumor in my spinal cord before anyone believed me or my mom.

Even when someone believes me, it's not foolproof. The very neurosurgeon who saved my life laughed at me when, sixteen years later, I told him that I had a constant bitter, metallic taste in my mouth. He said that it must come from "sucking on too many beer cans at college". (I've forgiven him, although I'm glad I persisted- it led to the discovery of the semi-cancerous lingual thyroid busily pumping hormone into my mouth).

Bottom line- I don't lie about those things and never would. I have too much to lose by crying wolf. I never seem to get that across, though. And with long-term pain, I've had a really rough time striking that delicate balance. If you complain and there's not an obvious culprit, or if you can reasonably expect to experience pain in your situation, you get tuned out. If you bear your pain stoically, the doctors don't have to deal with you but you end up missing an early clue that something might be very wrong.

It goes back to the cubbyhole theory from my earlier post...when you get in a clinical setting, they want to match you to a protocol and shuttle you through the motions and back out the door. The sooner they have you dealt with, the sooner they can deal with the teeming masses in the waiting room. Before we recognized my constant calf pain as cancer-related neuropathy, I was on medroxyprogesterone and was terrified of a blood clot. They measured my calves, gave me an ultrasound, and I was discharged. No one thought of a spinal MRI, even though unexplained pain in the extremities can indicate something amiss there, especially in a pre-existing spinal cord cancer patient.

I've gotten to the point where I can deal with most of my pain. I learned to simply shut up about the constant leg pain, other than mentioning from time to time that it's still there. No one seems willing or able to do anything about it and I've gotten used to it, even though it's fairly severe. I no longer wake up panicked with my leg throbbing and bolt for the ER, anyway. The muscle spasms- uncontrollable charlie-horses of radiated tissue in my neck and arms - took longer for me to come to terms with.

For a long time, I was on Baclofen, an MS drug that took the edge off but didn't really solve anything. My neurosurgeon, who is a wonderful guy, seems kind of at a loss with all of the long-term stuff that can't just be excised. First we tried electrostimulation therapy, which was sheer torture. It offered me some Pavlovian training- I pushed the button, and a small electrical shock induced an immediate and painful muscle spasm. It didn't take long before I found myself completely unwilling and unable to do that, and when we finally gave up the approach I was ready to kick the unit down the driveway to the mailbox and see it on its way.

Then he turfed me out to a neurologist, who turned out to be a very nice guy. He took me off the Baclofen and designed a neck brace for me to wear when my neck muscles got too tired to hold up my head. I still have the muscle spasms, but it's nice to be able to throw on the brace when my muscles feel like they just can't do any more. So we'll count things as "livable" on the muscle spasm front, too...livable in my own weird way, anyway.

The one thing that we can't seem to fix is the post-surgical arthritis. My vertebrae are in such a messed-up state after all of the surgeries and radiation that, to paraphrase Popeye, "They've had all they can stands and they cain't stands no more.". It's more or less constant background pain, and then when the weather changes it really amps up. It begins to feel as if my vertebrae have been smeared with white-hot library paste, and it's maddening. It's a stagnant feeling, as if I just can't move far enough to find relief. Of course, the situation in there is so delicate that I wouldn't want to try moving it too far. Even my orthopedic surgeon won't touch it unless it's a matter of life or death.

So...complaining to my neurosurgeon about this arthritic pain is what got me turfed out once more, this time to the pain clinic. Excedrin does well (Tylenol and Motrin don't touch it), but it's tearing apart my stomach. I'm not keen on the idea of blowing out my liver with it, either. Eight to twelve Excedrin every single day for most of your life can mean problems, and I wanted to see if I had any other options.

The pain clinic doctor was affable enough, but he didn't know what to do with me either. He suggested lidoderm patches for the sensitivity on the back of my neck, which we already tried with no success, and pressure-point injections, which I refused*. Finally he said that he was afraid to mess with things too much, as my situation is too delicate (the familiar refrain), and he was just going to write me a script for Tramadol for breakthrough pain.

Sigh.

Well, I was pretty vociferous about hating opioids of any kind. I've shredded vicodin scripts; I don't want anything to do with them. Not only is it an unpleasant sensation and masks important pain-clues; but you get hooked on that stuff and there goes your credibility. I don't intend to even get near that vicodin-soma or Oxycontin path, no matter how bad the pain gets.

So here I am with my Tramadol script, waiting for another bad episode so I can try it out. He told me it was ok to take it PRN.

It's fairly depressing having these legions of doctors tell you they can't or won't fix you. Then again...if someone approached the problem all cocky and confident, after those who have kept me alive for 30 years stand back, bewildered...should I trust that, or be afraid of it?

Not very fun to think about.



* I've refused spinal injections before, and I have several good reasons for that. First, my anatomy is fairly altered from all of the surgeries and radiation and it's very difficult to trust where the needle is going. When you're injecting around the spinal cord, which is bulging anyway, that's especially risky.

Also, no offense to the doctor, but I'd never laid eyes on him before. It's akin to a complete stranger barging in there, and I have no idea how good he is at it even on healthy patients. What am I to think when he shrugs helplessly about my problem in general and throws out the idea casually, as a not-well-trusted-in solution?

My other reasons were more on an instinctive level. No one weighed me or even asked how much I weighed. It's winter and I was wearing baggy jeans and a sweater. I know I left med school early, but it's always been my understanding that dosage is fairly reliant upon weight and size. It would have made me feel better if they'd taken note of my proper weight. Also, no one took my medical history or wrote down any dosages when they were doing my intake paperwork. My neurosurgeon had sent them my medical history, but I haven't seen him in a few months and verification would have been nice.

they can't all be interesting entries...

Sometime during the night, I woke up with the sensation that my stomach was filled with 5 lbs of wet aquarium gravel. I rummaged around for antacid and went back to bed. Then I got up a few hours later to get Justin's clothes ready for work, felt no better, and went back to bed, where I bolstered up some pillows and watched people insanely angry about Bhutto's assassination for an hour. I must have drifted off watching tv.

The next thing I know, Sammy's carrying my ringing cellphone to the bed and dropping it in front of me, like, "I know you're supposed to do something when it does this." I made it shut up, which is what he wanted, I think...only to find that people had been calling me all morning. Justin had an errand that needed to be run. Mom was calling me to let me know my neurosurgeon's office had called the pain clinic, unbeknownst to us, and the pain clinic was calling to see if we were showing up or what.

That's right- knew nothing about it till today.

I don't want to go. My stomach feels like a blocked-up garbage disposal and even bed doesn't feel good anymore. I don't know if I'm getting sick or if it's more of my stomach rebelling against Excedrin/aspirin, but it is not good. I was kind of looking forward to taking it easy today, but I guess that's not going to happen.

Here's some more whining: I hate going to new doctors. Hate the 10 pages of redundant paperwork, hate the new staff and the small talk and the repeating my history-of-horrors over and over and over. Hate when I've gone through it all and at the end there's one more blank-faced doctor who doesn't know what to do with me. On my carry-along medical card, I used the smallest legible font- 4 or 6 points, I think....and the list of my specialists and their phone numbers is still four inches long. Here's one more specialist for the list.

Since I started the Decadron, I hate being weighed. I'm constantly puffed up (steroids do that) and I know ten or fifteen pounds of it isn't mine. I'm fat, yeah, but not that fat. God, you should have seen me when I was getting megadoses of the stuff during my radiation. I presided over my hospital-bound 3rd birthday looking like Marlon Brando.

Nothing quite matches the startled, empty blink when the medical assistant asks for your history and you start in. Exposed to carcinogen, spinal cord cancer since birth, past paralysis, radiated to a crisp, neck broken, thyroid in tongue secreting into mouth. The reaction is always identical after she asks you how to spell astrocytoma and gives up scribbling with the big plastic Wellbutrin pen...."Uh...uh....we'll wait for the doctor."

Of course, this could be a very nice office and a very nice guy, which was the case in the last two new specialists I complained about (neurologist and ENT, respectively). The neurologist was a Telugu and we were able to yack in that and talk of our love for idlis (south-Indian steamed lentil cakes...they're so good). The ENT was a good friend of my endocrinologist and more or less his clone. I think the endo warned him I was a germophobe, so that all worked out.

I've had bad ones. That genetic-counseling clinic was absolutely ridiculous and I won't ever be going back. My old ENT never washed his hands, laid his instruments out on wadded kleenex and had a perpetual seeping cold sore. My old dermatologist, the ENT's ex-wife, had an office so dirty that the same dead ants were in the same place on the floor for my appointments four months apart.

So I guess we'll see, today, but chances are I won't be in the mood for much.

Oh, and the chocolate suffragists? When I was bringing them home, the plate flipped and they broke to pieces on the garage floor. Even if I could have reassembled them, there's no way I'd want to eat them. I guess that the next time I have five hours free, I'll have to make some new ones. Too bad I can't make a mold from them.

Ok, time to drag myself together, I guess.

The Chocolate Suffragists...finally finished!

Sara was speaking fondly of the chocolate maccabees of Chanukah past, wishing for further exciting ventures into chocolate likeness, when she suggested that a line of chocolate suffragists should be made.

I figured it could be done. It'd be a little difficult on the foil front (not impossible, as long as I have a roll of aluminum foil and some sharpies), but what really intrigured me was the whole rendering-a-suffragist-in-chocolate part. I was pretty sure it could be done.


Of course, I need to fortify myself with some hot chocolate first.


Phase I: DIY Tootsie Rolls
I have molds to make female figures. Trouble is, they're naked, and I don't think too many self-respecting suffragists would go marching in the buff for women's rights. (But then again...)

I briefly considered rigging up an elaborate set of molds to make dresses from plain chocolate, but that would have taken forever. Far easier was to whip up a batch of "modeling chocolate", which is essentially a giant wad of homemade tootsie roll. This stuff is very handy and fairly simple to make. Once it's done, I can work it just like modeling clay to make clothes. It's still chocolate and, as far as I'm concerned, still legal. So here we go.


First off, I melted half a bag of melting-chocolate in a double-boiler. Once it was smooth, I removed it from the heat and stirred in the magical secret ingredient- 3 tablespoons of light corn syrup.


As soon as that corn syrup goes in, you've got to start stirring like crazy because the stuff will set up like cement. Don't worry about it sticking to the sides, because the mass separates and coats the pan with smears of watery chocolate. The rest is in an easily managable lump.



Once you've got the lump of chocolate, which looks remarkably like novelty dog poop, spoon it into a bag. It's got to chill in the fridge for two hours. Once it sets up, you can grease your hands and work it just like play-doh.

So into the fridge the baggie of dog poop goes, and although I'll stop in to knead it from time to time, it's pretty much a waiting game on that front. In the meantime, I can get working on the suffragists.

Phase II: Parts is Parts
I began by melting up another big batch of chocolate and setting out two cleaned (and THOROUGHLY dried) molds: candy bar and female figure. The candy bar is going to be my sign. What good is a suffragist without a sign?

I filled the mold partway, tapped for bubbles, then filled it the rest of the way. She'll need a stick to hold it up, so I gently laid a lollipop stick on top of that and held it in place with more chocolate. Then the whole works went into the freezer.

Then I was able to concentrate on the female figure mold, which was going to take more thought because it had lots of places for little bubbles to lurk. I filled it up, tapped it out, checked for bubbles and tapped again, then filled it the rest of the way and scraped it with a large offset spatula. It doesn't matter if it's perfectly filled- I have to stick the ladies' parts together with melted chocolate, so I could use the room.

Both molds went in the freezer, then I had to duplicate some parts because I wanted to make two suffragists (never know when one will break or melt). I checked on the DIY tootsie roll and found, to my horror, that it had set up way too hard. I yanked it out of the fridge and transferred it to a bag with some oil, kneading to try and soften it up. No more fridge for you, tootsie.

Soon it was time to get the molds out of the fridge and transfer them to foil. I did...and both times, the leg of one of the suffragists snapped off in the exact same place, right above where her knee would be. This is a sign, I'm sure, that these suffragists are indeed meant for Sara.

Then came the pain-in-the-ass part, sticking all of the little pieces together. I'm still not finished with that. However, I took a break to get in some minor painting and detail work, which is more fun (in spite of the kitten who got jealous and tried to get the attention back on herself by systematically trashing the kitchen around me).

The chocolate started to harden early, which is why the sign isn't prettier. I also forgot my nice cake-decorating brushes at home, so this is a makeshift job.

I gave the first suffragist some hair and a high collar, which gives her a little personality and makes my job easier later on. I'll repeat this with the other.

It's a little frustrating trying to work closely on these, because body heat melts the chocolate, and the slightest slip-up when trimming can break off a big chunk. Chocolate has an annoying tendency to set up when you're painting on something cold, which means you have to work fast. But I'm getting there.

Phase III- Putting it All Together

So a few freezer-cycles and bag-kneads (with the associated muscle spasms) later, everything's more or less ready to come together.

The tootsie roll dough, now looking more like dog poop than ever, got turned out onto the marble slab and worked just like piecrust. Nonstick cooking spray kept it moist and shiny and, since I used the same melting chocolate as the bodies of the suffragists, it matched them exactly.

I rolled it out and left it for a few minutes to rest, as I get to work on more face-detail on the ladies:

It's a long process. Paint, let harden. Paint, let harden. In the meantime, they had to go facedown on a plate cold enough to keep their noses and chests from melting flat.

Soon the dough was ready, and that meant I could roll out the skirts and wrap those onto the bodies. I melded the seam into a bustle, which worked out really well.

So with the ladies side by side on the marble, I was able to press together outfits for them. So that I had more freedom for positioning the arms, I didn't attach them with melted chocolate; instead, I made those big leg o' mutton sleeves and glued them on that way. The dough worked out very well...made some really nice folds.

So here we go! I think they turned out pretty well, given all the hassle the chocolate gave me. Whaddaya think?

The Ham & I (Title credit goes to Jeanne)

Because my family has never had a single normal holiday ever (usually sick, traveling, or both), we end up picking out a day in December where we can assemble a majority of family members to eat and open gifts. Yesterday was that day.

Justin was holding out for a ham, and after some searching my mom found a precooked honey-free version I could heat at her house. I approached it with caution. Ham is a completely alien object to me, as is any pork object thicker than the deli-sliced shavings I throw on someone else's sandwich. I released it from its plastic casing and slid it into a pan, where it sat in a puddle of ham juice and dripped brown-sugar goo.

Once it was there, I frowned at it a moment before remembering that I'd seen Alton Brown spray a ham with bourbon once. I rummaged through the cabinets and found some cheap whiskey, doused the ham and wrapped it in foil. I figured that I'd give the ham a drink first, then if that didn't work there'd be some left for myself. I'm the only living member of the family who can drink whiskey straight, and the only one who knows the difference between the lip-smacking stuff you relish in a glass and the stuff that's best used to moisten a grocery-store ham. Of course, beggars can't be choosers.

When the ham was finished heating, I slid it over on its side so I could carve. Wait...what's this white disc plugged into the marrow? "Remove before cooking". Ah, well, goes to show you how much experience I have with this stuff. I can cook the hell out of any bird you hand me, but I'm hopeless with the ham.

Everyone said it was very good, although I wouldn't know. It wasn't appetizing to me in the least, and when I tried to cook up some stock from the bones later, the smell just about drove me from the kitchen entirely.

Now I've got a pleasant weekend ahead, plenty of new books to read, new movies to watch, and a new toy to play with (a USB microscope). Justin also gave me a personalized hockey jersey, which I enjoy immensely and wore all over town lest someone forget what my name or favorite team would be.

Other than the ham, it was a good day.

the coveted oreo ball recipe

I sent a batch of these to work with Justin and people started asking for the recipe minutes after he set them out. I think that it's because you taste one and you just almost feel you can detect the components, but not quite.

Also, they're like chocolate crack. You just can't keep them around. Justin literally blew through 11 of them last night in 30-45 seconds. He didn't even realize he'd done it. They're sneaky like that.

The recipe is really simple; so simple that the foodie in me feels a little guilty making them. There are only three ingredients: oreos, cream cheese and melting chocolate. If you've got to bring something to a party...something reliable, where you don't have to worry about a fallen soufflé or a pie that didn't set...this is definitely a go-to dessert.

Five steps:

1) Dump an entire package of oreos into a food processor and pulverize to a fine powder. The finer the powder, the silkier the ganache-y substance will be.

2)Combine in a mixing bowl with one entire block of Philadelphia cream cheese- the real stuff, not neufchâtel or any other low-fat version. Mix on medium-low until the mixture is a thick, consistent paste.

3) Roll into balls the size of shooter-marbles. You won't have to grease your hands- thank Oreos for being so unhealthy. I line them up in rows on a parchment-lined cookie sheet to await dunking.

4) Dunk into melted chocolate (your choice- I use Ghirardelli milk chocolate, my mom uses the melting-pellets) using whatever method works for you. Melt a small dish of contrasting color for drizzling.

5) Line up dunked balls on another parchment-lined cookie sheet and let them set up in the fridge for a few minutes. Don't put them in the freezer; they'll crack.

That's really all there is to it. One package of oreos and one block of cream cheese will make about 60 balls. For the presentation in the photo above, I lined a small serving bowl with tissue paper and stacked the balls in mini-muffin cups. I drizzled with white and blue to complement the paper.

Simple, but effort-intensive. This last batch we cranked out took a while, and that was with 2 people working on it...me rolling, Mom dipping.

Good stuff, though.

when everyone around you is on auto-pilot

A little over a month ago, I had an appointment with a "genetic counselor" that didn't go well. The counselor herself seemed like a nice enough lady, but the physician I met with after her...well, let's just say he and I didn't get along. The counselor told me she'd call or email me in a few days, nice meeting you, and I walked out vowing never to set foot in the place again.

Today I got a fat envelope from the clinic and feared the worst. Fat envelopes contain things like "Your Newest Cancer and You" brochures and paperwork for scheduling biopsies. I pulled out a thick sheaf of papers and began to read, wondering what they'd found lurking inside me this time.

The letter was five pages long, essentially a regurgitation of all the medical history I'd given them with the prefix "we found" at the beginning of every paragraph. I also learned that astrocytes were so-named because of their star shape, that nerve cells support and protect nerves, and that the carcinogen I was exposed to could possibly cause cancer. It was the most inane piece of cover-their-ass nonsense garbage I'd read in a long time. The real kicker, though, came on the last page, under "recommendations". "Consider neurology consultation regarding care of head, neck, spine and brain". You know, what with the spinal cord cancer and all.

Really? I should get right on that, should I?

I want to just put my foot through a wall.

They also recommended that I begin taking folic acid. If they bothered to read my chart, they'd find out that I've been taking massive doses of it for years.

This is the latest in a chain of very frustrating healthcare experiences with near-total indifference. No one seems to be thinking, no one is actually reading the charts. I feel as if people are just scanning my chart enough to figure out what cubbyhole to shove me into so they can go on about their business. I feel like snapping my fingers in front of their faces to startle them out of their daze. I recognize the need to document, document, document and cover yourself, but...how much good is this really doing anyone?

It's very discouraging sometimes.


A side note to Sara- your chocolate suffragist is in the planning stages. Give me a week or so. :)

tagged?

Thanks (I think) to Alicia of I'd Like to Buy a Bowel, who has tagged me for a "seven random things" meme. This puts horrible pressure on me, since I now have to pick through the gum wrappers and lint of my past to come up with some sort of tidbit that could pass as interesting.

Well, here goes.

1) I played a street reporter in the movie "The Negotiator". I was a registered extra with Karen Peake Casting, which is now defunct. I had previously turned down the part of a wedding guest in "My Best Friend's Wedding", which reveals my stupidity- I could have sat on my arse in a frothy dress-up costume and eaten prop-cake all day. They didn't tell me anything about this job other than bring a jacket, and I figured I'd better get in on it for the life experience.

It was the longest, most miserable night of my life. I had to report late in the evening to the food court of a downtown Chicago mall, where hundreds of extras were herded around like cattle by Production Assistant overlords. It was a lot of waiting and being herded from holding pen to street and back. Somewhere in there, I was picked out of the "crowd scene" by someone who called, "You, the redhead," and taken to a van where I was told I was now a reporter. By virtue of my having soggy red hair (the freezing rain was coming down by then), I was now elevated to a speaking part. What I spoke would be up to me; I was told that I'd be trying to scale a police barrier with my cameraman (another elevated extra, named Jim) and harass the police guards for information.

What information?

Something going on in the building, they said. You don't know what. Just demand information.

Which building? Where do I look?

An impatient wave toward ten or fifty skyscrapers. That one. Just demand information.

Jim and I headed back toward the barricade, where all of our fellow extras fell back silently with newfound respect. An actor playing a cop was stationed in front of me; I thrust a tape recorder in his face and demanded information. For 14 hours, from 5pm to 7am, Jim and I scaled the barrier and demanded information as sleet pounded down on us. I didn't know what a marijuana blunt was until that night, when an extra playing a cop took one look at my drenched wool suit and bloodshot eyes and told me I needed one.

It bears mention that our filming-area was set up very near Samuel L Jackson's trailer. We stood aside solemnly and hungrily as a production assistant walked past us to his door, with a tray of warm brownies steaming brown chocolatey curls up our nostrils. On her way back, she snarled at us that if anyone tried to seek shelter in the nearby parking garage, they'd be sent home without pay; it wasn't raining in the movie, therefore it wasn't raining here. I never felt the same about Samuel L Jackson after that.

2) I can't stand the feel of dry paper towels or peach fuzz. I get cold chills.

3) I'm allergic to honey. I found this out one morning as I was preparing for a final in one of my college Music Theory classes. Somewhere I'd read that a spoonful of honey taken the morning of a test was supposed to sharpen mental acuity, and I wanted to give it a try. I'd never eaten much honey in my life and I thought that the tingling/itching sensation was just part of the flavor. Like I was tasting the bees, you know?

By the time I got to school, the inside of my mouth felt like it was wall-to-wall mosquito bites. I was going crazy trying to scratch my gums. Not long after that, my throat started closing up and then it was doctor time. I carry allergy meds with me now.

(Something borderline ironic and, I thought, funny: in the same school hallway where my throat closed up, the very next week, a grad student I'd never met before approached me to audition for the big play she had to direct. The title? A Taste of Honey.)

Honey's one hell of a thing to be allergic to. I have to read labels very carefully; it shows up in everything from wheat bread to soap to lotion to bottled iced tea to just about any dessert you can think of and Panera Bread's entire selection. A lot of Mediterranean food is out, because in addition to my stupid honey allergy I also have stupid fish and shellfish allergies.

4) My dad has a history of strange run-ins with celebrities. He sat next to Michael Dukakis on a flight, almost got hit by Dolly Parton on a golf cart, and exchanged hellos with Beverly d'Angelo when they were seated across from each other in an airport terminal. He's been startled awake with a shout by Donny Osmond, who thought it was funny (that one wasn't so chance, we've got a long history with the Osmond clan).

5)Almost every art teacher I ever had absolutely hated me, particularly my elementary school art teachers. I've had projects thrown away in front of the class, and my project be the only one that wasn't part of the display on Parent-Teacher night (We were supposed to make papier-mache dinosaurs...I made a t-rex, painted it blue, tied a babushka around its head and made it push a strawberry-basket shopping cart. Dino baglady.). Of course, I never liked them much, either. School art classes were about way less freedom of expression than I thought they should be.

6)I've been an au pair, tutored Korean children in English, sold pianos, sung in musicals, taught college French, invented a successful cat toy, run a jewelry business, sold supplies at reptile shows, written a book at 13, was the only kid who worked for a small modeling agency and worked eight long years in an ER. I've also had more failures and disappointments than I know how to count.

7)As part of my medical training, I took an FBI course in forensic entomology. I was the only person there who wasn't a coroner or an FBI agent. I studied with Neal Haskell, gingerly picking maggots off dead pigs and dropping them into little jars of alcohol. I saw more dead pigs, maggot-bloated in the summer sun, than I ever care to see again. Dr. Haskell was not without a sense of humor and invited us to a roast-pork-and-rice feast at dinner. My diploma from the course has pictures of skulls and maggots on it. I'm on a list somewhere as being certified to pick bugs off corpses at crime scenes.

I was not excited about maggots and/or dead pigs, but got a big thrill out of seeing enormous stands of poison hemlock on Dr. Haskell's property. I was fascinated with the stuff from a chemical perspective and pummeled him with tidbits from Poisons and Poisoners that he didn't much care about, until I said that maggots wouldn't eat the flesh of an animal that had died of hemlock poisoning. He asked me to cite my sources and I was so excited to send him the article that I didn't think about the ramifications until later. Now I'm guilt-ridden, thinking of how many pigs he probably killed off with hemlock to check and see whether the maggots ate them or not.

Now comes the part where I conclude my having been tagged with being an efficient little virus and tagging seven more people. The problem is, I don't really know seven other bloggers, and most of the ones I do know would wave me off with a condescending "pfft". I know for sure Ruhlman is too busy exchanging love-taps with Anthony Bourdain. Get a room, you guys.

Um, let's see.

Chemorox? You're pretty interesting.

Jeanne, of course.

Sara? I'd like to know more about you. I like what I do know.

Berg?

And anyone else who'd like to join in.

the book...I'm getting nervous.

In the weirdo, incomprehensible, extraordinarily specific world of "making bentos that people want to write about for some reason", I've noticed that there's one thing I can count on. Well, two things, but let's call it a two-parter.

If people do ask me if they can use my bentos for a blog, newspaper, magazine, book, whatever...they usually end up not going through with it. The ones that do put the pictures in print never ask first.

I try to put it nicely on my flickr profile page, which is where a lot of them wind up going to dredge up some info. "Help me help you," I say (paraphrased). "If you ask me, I'd be happy to send a high-resolution image file that'll be better for print." I seriously fall all over myself to get people the files, supply the ingredient lists, whatever they want. And for some reason, whenever I do this, it always goes badly. Yet when people just right-click-save-as and get some crappy low-res thumbnail off flickr, that winds up in a newspaper somewhere and I'm none the wiser.

A few months ago, I was seriously burned by a reporter. Before we begin, here, let me get this clear: she contacted me. She liked my Canada Goose bento and wanted to use it for an article in a French-Canadian newspaper. I said sure, that'd be great, and sent her a high-res copy of the file right away. A few days later, she emailed me to ask for the ingredient list, which I completed and returned promptly. A few days after that she wrote to verify the spelling of my name and ask for some high-res of a few other bento pictures, which I sent.

She emailed me again, on a Wednesday, to let me know she'd done the article. It would be in a special on bento that was scheduled to appear that Friday. By happy coincidence, my dad was in Quebec on business and able to pick up a copy of the paper. He was excited about it, as parents are, and he told his business associates that he needed to get a copy of this paper because some of his daughter's work would be in it. Oh, it was a big parental pride thing, and that should have been my first clue that we'd be crashing hard.

That Friday, I checked the online version of the paper. There were three different bento articles by the lady, and nothing I did was in a single one of them. Instead there were some generalities on the history and use of bento in Japan, along with photos of a few simpler and more accessible bentos from others on Flickr. I can get over not being in the paper, but I wish she hadn't stayed right on me and built the whole thing up the way she did. I realize stories get cut at the last minute, but she could have told me, rather than giving me status updates on the release and asking for more and more info, up to and past the time she probably knew she wasn't going to use my stuff. It just seems unnecessarily cruel.

So then I had to explain to my dad, who was still enthusiastically spouting my bento-virtues in Montreal, that the paper was a no-go. Still have no idea why. In an effort to save face, I sent the lady an email to ask if I could buy a back issue just to have the article about bento, even though she had decided not to use me in it. I was very polite about it, but she never responded.

I told you that story so that you could get a feel for my reluctance to trust media outlets. For several months now I've been working with a publisher who tracked me down and asked for a few of my photos to use in a compilation book. Same deal...high-res photos, specific questions about specific bentos, submit the ingredient lists, etc. He was going to send me a release that I could fill out before publication. He asked for an address to send the release. That was back in the early fall, and I haven't seen one yet. The book's due out next month.

Is this going to be the same deal? I sent an email asking him about the ballpark publication date...no response, for the first time ever. I'm beginning to have flashbacks to the email blackout I experienced after I was cut from the French-Canadian paper. No release, no response to email...this feels bad. I've been here before.

My mother, whom I told in a moment of weakness, has already pre-ordered a copy. Will I need to have it bronzed as a monument to my gullibility?

It leaves me with that familiar, very unpleasant feeling of having no perspective re: how well-received these bentos really are. I do them to entertain myself, but I like the thought of pleasing others with them too. When the publishing falls through, I feel as if it must have been a pity-print. I start second-guessing myself, as to how deserved any of this is. It doesn't do much for my creativity...I haven't felt inspired for weeks. I'm even getting kind of slipshod with Iron Bento, which used to be a pretty tight ship.

I don't know why they can't just say "You know, I was working up this story and hoping we could use it, but the editor decided at the last minute that we weren't going in that direction. He decided to use another story instead. I'm sorry, and I'll keep your info around if something comes up in the future." Even if it isn't true.

Instead, I feel like I've been dumped. My instinct is to head for the sweats, the couch, and a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cinnamon Buns ice cream.

The Gingerbread Litterbox and Creepy Santa Museum

So my gingerbread project is complete, made from scratch start to finish. When you mix up that batch of royal icing, you're on borrowed time, so I was up late trying to slap pieces together and glue on the broken bits of candy I'd bought. So here it is, a gingerbread litterbox, and I think as far as my opinion of the holidays, it says it all.

I used Nerds candy for the litter, and tracked some outside the box for added realism. My last decorating bag exploded on me when I was piping the side, and I had to make do with a small Ziploc. As a result, this is a little sloppier than I'd like, but it gets the point across.

The other night I went with my parents to Clifton Mill. For non-locals, Clifton Mill is an old mill that's covered in Christmas lights and has a miniature village, antique toy collection, that kind of thing. It's tradition every year to pay $8 a head to stomp through cold mud, take the lights in at a glance, get shoved around by the crowd and remember why you said you'd never go back.

Dear god, never get in the way of a parent trying to create an "experience" for their child.

We paid $24 and entered this soggy realm only to find that everything was pitch-black...they were having an electrical problem. The turning-on of the lights, sloppily timed to a clip of the "Hallelujah Chorus", was slightly delayed, then came on with a loud and rather frightening pop.

So there we were, in the midst of a hundred-some parents and grandparents oohing and aahing loudly for the benefit of their kids, getting pushed around as they crowded the banks and railings for the best view. It's a pretty sight, but once you've seen it, you've seen it. Besides, they were laying into some Trans-Siberian Orchestra and it was all I could do not to drop to the ground, rocking and sucking my thumb with the flashbacks. ( I had a bad experience at a TSO concert recently.)

Off to one side of the mill, there's a musty little building that houses a collection of Santa Claus stuff. They proclaim it the biggest, somehow (state, country, world, no idea). It's dusty, dirty and downright dangerous (the only exit opened onto a water puddle that held a shorted-out Christmas strand, which was smoking and steaming away). I'm sure they mean for the museum to inspire some sort of warm, fuzzy nostalgia but it scares the hell out of me. I call it the Museum of Creepy Santas.

Let's tour it, shall we?

As you can see, there are a powerful lot of Santas. They cover every surface. White ones, black ones, ones that don't look like Santa at all but have the requisite fur-trimmed coat. And every one of them is 100% evil.

One of the first things you see is this horrid disembodied head. I saw a Japanese horror movie once, where a woman was praying at her butsudan and this giant-head god came and ate her. You could just see her legs sticking out of his mouth. He looked exactly like this Santa.

Remember in Texas Chainsaw Massacre when Leatherface wore that mask made of his victims' faces? I'm just sayin'.

Seriously, is it any surprise that kids start screaming when we put them on Santa's lap?

It's like something out of a horror movie. ITS EYES MOVE. It watches you.

It's like being in an insane asylum where all the patients are dressed as Santa. Look at the cocked head and fixed gaze. He's memorizing your features.

This isn't Santa. This is some sort of hideous, hairy demon-child.

A freaky decapitated Santa-head. I think it looks like this (don't click that link if you're faint of heart)

Doesn't it look like there should be a knife in his hand, just out of frame?

He sees you when you're sleeping...he knows when you're awake...AND HE'S COMING FOR YOU.

Just doing my part to get you all in the mood for the holiday season.

Is it any wonder I don't sleep well?

Chanukah Whoops

NYC Grocery Store Goofs, Advertises Hams for Hanukkah

Associated Press 12/6/07

NEW YORK — This was REALLY not kosher. A grocery store in Manhattan made a food faux pas, advertising hams as "Delicious for Chanukah."

Chanukah -- an alternate spelling for Hanukkah -- is the eight-day Jewish holiday that began Tuesday evening, and hams -- as well as pork and other products from pigs -- can't be eaten under Jewish dietary laws.

A woman who saw the mistake over the weekend at the Balducci's store in Greenwich Village took pictures of the signs and posted them on her blog.

Jennifer Barton, director of marketing, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the signs were changed as soon as the error was noted.

She issued an apology on the company Web site, saying the company would be reviewing its employee training.

____________________________________________________

"as soon as the error was noted"....I bet some people were mighty pissed!

...in unrelated news, I was unable to find the tiny candles that go in my antique menorah and so I'm just sitting it out by itself this year. It takes the really slender birthday candles without the wax swirlies, and the cats would probably knock it over anyway.

The Christmas Song post.

In no particular order (I'm in extra pain today and if you think I can formulate a well-written countdown, you give me way too much credit), the ones I hate:

Baby, It's Cold Outside: What the hell? Is this song about date rape? "Say, what's in this drink?" ...run, lady, run!

The Hippopotamus Song: I can't stand songs where adults pretend to be kids by using cutesy voices. It makes me feel better to know that hippos are fairly vicious and would probably make short work of her. She should have asked for those rhi-noss-er-usses after all.

The Pretty Little Dolly: "The pretty little dolly can scream. The pretty little dolly can beg. And she cries in realistic pain when you break her leg." Bonus points for the kid being completely sadistic, which I like to see in my Christmas music. However, it has way too many verses and they all sound alike. Also, you have that annoying "adult pretending to be a kid" thing happening again. Fanny Brice pulled it off, but her jersey is retired.

My Favorite Things: How did this song get to be about Christmas? Last I knew, it was in The Sound of Music, which was about nuns and singing kids. Is it because they talk about mittens and packages? I'm going to declare Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald a Thanksgiving classic under this precedent, because they use the word "November". You can't stop me.

Linus and Lucy: I hear the intro and I swear my fillings start hurting. My years working in a piano store made me utterly hate five songs, and this is one of them. (The others are Fur Elise, Chopsticks, The Entertainer and The Rose.) I have heard this song hundreds upon hundreds of times, at all skill levels. Everyone who came in for lessons seemed to want to play this song, and I'd hear the first two measures, then a mistake, then back to the beginning, and so on. It wears on you. I do like Peanuts, though. It's sorta sweet.

Christmas Shoes: This is one I truly can't stand. It's a blatant attempt to yank on the heartstrings, yet it has absolutely no real thought put into it whatsoever. Let me get this straight: we're supposed to believe that a guy actually overheard this kid's ridiculous monologue?

" Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please. It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size. Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time. You see she's been sick for quite a while, and I know these shoes would make her smile. And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight."

First of all, what kid talks like that? Seriously.

Second, ok...this kid's mom is dying, apparently, and the first thing anyone thinks of is shoes? The kid just stuffs his pockets with pennies and takes off by himself for some mall? Somehow he grabs a pair of shoes that are "just her size". I don't even know what MY size is without trying them on; this kid must be a shoe prodigy. Of course, the pennies aren't enough, and what does the kid do but turn an appealing, doe-eyed gaze toward the narrator. "Mama made Christmas good at our house, though most years she just did without. Tell me Sir, what am I going to do? Somehow I've got to buy her these Christmas shoes."

It sounds to me like this kid has quite a scam going. And it must work, because the narrator puffs up and sings, "I laid the money down, I just had to help him out. I'll never forget the look on his face when he said 'Mama's gonna look so great'." Sucker! Kid probably goes out and sells them on a streetcorner.

(Coincidentally, if shoes are what impress Jesus, I'm screwed. Unless he's into beat-up old Converse All-Stars.)

Any Carol Sung by Barbra Streisand or Barry Manilow: Christmas songs? When people who aren't even Christian are throbbing with emotion about Jesus or Mary, it causes some unease about everyone's motivation, doesn't it?

That Really, Really Irritating Version of Jingle Bells: At first I thought it was the 1945 Bing Crosby/Andrews Sisters one, but that's not it. It sounds similar, but the female singers go sloooooooooooooooooowwwww and then allthesuddenfast. Then sloooooooooooow again, thenfast. It drives me nuts. I haven't heard it in a few years and I hope I don't hear it for at least a few more.

Do They Know it's Christmas: Bob Geldof was the Bono of the 80s, I swear. Ok, ok, they lucked out. I could go for the obvious "No, they don't know or care if it's Christmas, they're not even Christian, you ethnocentric bastard", but....Ethiopia is predominantly Christian. So I have to alter my argument slightly. "They possibly know and probably care if it's Christmas, but that really doesn't matter because they would probably just like some self-sufficiency, or, failing that, one of those plastic bowls of porridge, Bob."

Christmas in Killarney: What the hell do you call this? It's like a trip down the holiday-decor aisle of Jo-Ann Fabrics the first week of March, everything's bright and plastic and green and fake. More of that notion that Ireland's like one big, quaint Disney World with leprechauns and beer.
Me arse. "We're beat in school, we have no fuel. We're starvin' and freezin' again this Yule,
It's Christmas in Killarney, with all of the folks at home."

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Andy Williams version): For no other reason than the fact that I can picture an overpriced, out-of-season Branson Spectacular too clearly, right down to the rouged cheeks and the turtleneck sweater.

And now, in a rare moment of positivity, here are a few I like:

O Holy Night: If you're a vocal showoff by nature and try to use this song as an avenue for all sorts of obnoxious Mariah Carey shit, this song goes on the hate list. But if you're subtle, go with the music and don't make a spectacle of yourself, it's beautiful.

The Christmas Waltz: By all counts, I should hate this song. It showed up in every Christmas concert I ever had to do, in colleges, for nursing homes, etc...from about 1993 to 1998. More often than not, I had to do it in an ugly holiday sweater-vest. I think I actually had to do it for a PBS telethon once. But I really do like it. It's different. I think Karen Carpenter did it a sight better than I did.

Greensleeves: Henry VIII wrote this, and he was cool as hell. What's not to like? Doesn't have much to do with Christmas, though. (I think some people assume Mary had green sleeves or something, but the song was probably just to help Henry get some.)

The Chipmunk Song: I don't know why. I just do.

Why you don't make caramel when you're half-asleep.

It was 3 am and I was trying to wrap up a spur-of-the-moment pastry project (read: experiment) I'd been working on all evening. I was practically propping my eyelids open to get through piping a little army of profiteroles-to-be onto a chilled Silpat.

Mise en place was out the window after 7 pm. There was a whisk on the floor, and splatters of Chantilly cream all over the wall behind it where the weight of the handle had flipped it out of the mixing bowl (damn you, Kitchen Aid, and your ridiculously heavy-handled whisks). A softening stick of butter, denuded of 3 tablespoons' worth of neat cubes at a more optimistic hour, lay on the countertop like a time-lapse photography prop.

The profiteroles had gone in as little doughy kisses and come out as little tanned ping-pong balls. The cracks were pale, though, pointing to a slightly underdone interior. I lowered the oven temp and let them bake a little longer. Multiply that by three to get through the bowl of carefully-prepared dough (if you have to pipe it, does that make it batter?), then throw in some cooling time if you don't want the Chantilly to flow back out like magma.

The cream itself was a work of art...at just the right moment, I'd added a few drops of eggnog essence to give it just a hint of noggy flavor. It was so delicate that you smelled it, more than tasting it. You were just vaguely aware of a nog-cloud somewhere in your sinuses. I was very proud of it, but again...it had been whipped and chilled at a more optimistic hour.

I dug a cannoli tip out of my bag of parts and rigged it to a pastry bag. The gritty-eyed bleariness was starting to set in. In my head, a loose and very poor-taste association had formed between my cannoli tip and the Branch Davidian incident. I was Janet Reno, punching holes with my tank-bag into dozens of little Mount Carmels (Carmel, caramel, croquembouche, get it?) and filling them with nog-spiked Chantilly goo. Told you I was sleepy. It's nothing I'm proud of.

Croquembouche was where I intended to go with it, actually. By 3 am all of the profiteroles were filled and chilling, and I had an ice-bath at the ready. I had what I thought was caramel going in the saucepan...but no, actually I had made a series of dumb mistakes that my awake-self would have kicked my sleepy self's jammie-clad butt for. I was obliviously stirring the makings for the sort of thick, clear syrup that your grandmother might have dipped a popcorn ball in, to make it crunchy. And the worst part was, even though it was in the complete wrong direction, I didn't even realize it at the time. I just squinted into the pot and stirred and wondered why the sugar wasn't caramelizing. I'm an idiot.

Somewhere in there, I thought it would be a good idea to raise the temperature. The last thing that would do was fix things, but I did it anyway. The sugar boiled upwards of 240F - still clear as crystal, of course. We were now firmly in a Darwin zone, and I should have seen it coming. I raised my spoon and somehow a drop splattered on my finger. The pain was immediate and bad, made worse by the fact that I now had to blast cold water on it as I tried to pry off the semi-solid sugar mass that was still actively cooking my flesh.

I had it coming, and it snapped me out of my sleepy daze enough to realize that the syrup (and my ridiculously ambitious goal of making a croquembouche in the middle of the night) needed to be scrapped. As I was handling my burn, the syrup had recrystallized and was rapidly forming a saucepan-shaped tablet of solid sugar. I put it to soak and hoped for the best.

I melted a bag of Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips and dunked the profiteroles. Even half-asleep, I was confident I could do that much without incident. They turned out pretty tasty, if not 100% photogenic (if I'd planned to do the chocolate flat out, I'd have punched the holes in the top and used the chocolate as a seal). I like my nog-cream.

Learn from my example. Don't cook sleepy. The results are not pretty.

In Search Of....Benign Girl

And that's what we call a lousy-ass Photoshop job. I was in a rush to finish while I still found the reference funny, and no one under 30 is going to get it anyway, so it really doesn't matter.

Somewhere in China, land of unbridled piracy (I'm still bitter about the Weekend Weekly article), the Je Cheng toy company got the bright idea to yoink a picture of Barbie and make her the involuntary mascot for their cheap and potentially dangerous line of products. They wanted to convey the image of a happy, carefree young woman who was the epitome of all that was harmless and feminine. They ran some shoddy translation software and came up with the product name...Benign Girl.

Yes, Benign Girl. Elusive but very real, she surfaces periodically at dollar stores and flea markets to the delight of bloggers worldwide. Her cellphones are most common; her radios, calculators and cameras are less so, and the actual doll is rarely seen at all. As Jacqueline said in a Benign Girl discussion on assertivepatient: "I'm not convinced that 'Benign Girl' actually exists- only the stuff she would have if she did."

I first came across Benign Girl at a flea market earlier this year. It was in one of my much-loved "crappy Chinese imports in cardboard boxes" booths, which I typically hunt through for Engrish treasures (my "Strawberry: The Sweet Fruit in World" and "I Go To Eubore By Tree" bowls have a place of honor in my kitchen). I spotted her at the bottom of a box full of "DOLLA THE EXPROLER" merchandise and picked her up for closer examination. Typical Barbie knockoff, features that weren't quite "right", clothes and accessories that had that whole not-quite-nontoxic vibe. I had a chuckle over the Disney-ripoff font and the name (what cancer patient wouldn't?), put her back in the box, and walked off.

Later that day, I realized I should have picked her up, just to have as a conversation piece. I searched for her, but I couldn't remember which of the ten or twelve crappy-Chinese-imports-in-boxes booths I'd seen her in. There were plenty of Benign Girl toy cellphones, but I never did find the doll.

Then I found out that Jeanne was also intrigued by the name and was looking for one. I searched all of the local dollar stores, then the dollar stores further away. No dice. There were Beauty Girl, Glamor Girl, Pretty Girl, Fashion Girl, and any other girl you could think of, but no Benign Girl. Maddeningly, there were plenty of the same exact doll available, but not in the Benign Girl packaging.

I went back to the flea market yesterday and decided I'd grab any Benign Girl item I could find. I came up with eight toy cellphones:

two of which seem to be an old and rare pre-Barbie-ripoff Anime Version of Benign Girl:


I also found a few other things, which are a surprise.

Oh, China. What wacky ripoff product won't you make?