Lair of the Lost Girl

I haven't talked much about silks here lately (okay, I haven't talked about much of anything here lately), but I'm still taking classes, and I'm still madly in love with it.

I'm still with the same instructor for the most part, but she and I have finally figured out how to communicate, and the occasional class with another teacher means that if there's something I'm having a hard time understanding, I can usually get it explained to me in a different way or taught with different techniques until I can understand it.

It's boggling to me sometimes to realize just how much I've learned, and how much stronger I've gotten.  I can do pull-ups now.  I can support myself by my grip alone in midair.  When I started class I couldn't invert (flip upside down) from the ground; I remember struggling to invert in the air even once and feeling like I'd never be strong enough.  At last night's class, we spent nearly an hour and a half being told 'climb up, invert, and then do X,' and it wasn't until the drive home that I realized I hadn't missed a single move.  Things that had been impossible six months ago don't faze me now.

That doesn't mean it's easy - there are always new things to learn, new struggles to push through - right now I'm having trouble figuring out how to stall out in the middle of a move, which is apparently essential for learning to do multiple drops in a row.  And I'm working on learning how to make things look good - while it's one thing to know how to, say, climb up or do a split or hang by your ankles, there's an art to actually making it look like dance and performance instead of just flopping through it.

Most of all, I think working on aerials has taught me how to not be good at something.  I'm terrible about wanting to do everything right the first time, and I get painfully frustrated, depressed, miserable, and self-critical when I can't master a new skill on the first try.  And that's just not possible here.  No matter how strong or talented or dextrous you are, these are things that human bodies just don't figure out without practice and experience.  You're using muscles you can't use elsewhere in ways they don't get used normally, and trying to do it upside down and backwards.

And still, at first I got frustrated.  But I saw teachers try things and fall and fail and laugh, and I had instructors who told me to literally hand them my frustration, and then wadded it up and threw it away.  I've had other students point out to me that this is a matter of stacking skills slowly over time.  And I've seen how much progress I've made.  Being able to go to practice time and do the same thing over and over and over until it goes from 'gah, where the hell does the fabric go?' to 'flip, twist, push, there!' feels like accomplishing something.  And realizing that I'm doing things now that, six months ago, I was watching other people do with envy and a bitter certainty that I'd never master.... it's a reminder whenever I get tangled up or lose my balance or whap myself in the face with my fabrics that in a month or two I'll get this too.

Next semester I move up to Level 3, and then I can start taking performance prep classes.  This is crazy.....

"Lodge Best One Dish Recipes"

Holy cow, it's been way too long since I posted here.  Apologies; life has been a bit hectic lately.

Anyway.  This is somewhere between a magazine and a cookbook.  I picked it up mostly because I adore my cast-iron cookware, and will gladly take any excuse to find more reasons to use it.  I'd been meaning to use it for a while - in particular, there was a recipe for mussels and chorizo that looked delicious.  Unfortunately, food and I have been having a bit of a rocky relationship lately.

So I wound up making Luscious Squares instead, partly because I've never used a cast-iron skillet to make dessert before.  These were a bar cookie that bore a strong resemblance to pecan pie - shortbready crust, topping of nuts, butter and brown sugar, baked until gooey and awesome.  The recipe originally called for a powdered sugar glaze, but I decided against it - these things were sweet enough on their own; anything more would have taken them into 'cloying.'

Unsurprisingly, they were excellent, and a lot easier than actual pecan pie.  And I'm hoping that I feel well enough soon enough to try the other recipe.  And once our garden starts producing, there's a recipe for chilaquiles with tomatillo salsa that sounds delicious too.....

Apologies to those of you seeing this plastered across multiple social media sites; sometimes you just gotta crow....

About a year ago, maybe a little more, I read an article about an emerging field in veterinary medicine, and how hospice care for animals was becoming A Thing.  And I thought to myself that if I could do anything in the world - if I had a million dollars and all the time and no obligations - that THAT was what I wanted to do with my life.  That it was the dream I never realized I had.  That, in my perfect world, I would open a hospice practice.

But I also figured that doing something like that would be impossible.  I'd need more money than I could pull together; I'd need to learn so much; I'd need so many resources that I could never manage to get; I'd never be able to afford to try.

Seven or eight months ago, I decided that I had to at least try.  I'd spent so much time daydreaming about it and joking about it and wishing for it, that if I didn't give it a go I'd never forgive myself.  So I started talking to other hospice vets, and to friends with MBAs and law degrees, and finding out exactly what would be involved.

About 3 months ago I opened my doors, metaphorically speaking, and started taking clients.

As of Close of Business today (so formal for 'when I finally drove home from my last house call of the day and opened Quickbooks to record my invoices) I have officially earned back my entire investment in Autumn Care & Crossings.  Every nickel I spent on incorporation and graphic artists and continuing education and web hosting and new work computer and medical equipment.  All earned back.  I have broken even.

I still have ongoing expenses - my therapy laser is lease-to-own; I need to replenish my drug supplies; I pay my crematory and lab monthly.  But from here on out, anything on top of that is profit instead of recovering losses.

In three months.

I have no idea how this happened, but damn is it awesome.....

You know how sometimes you're driving on the highway, and you need to exit, but there's a ton of traffic and the exit lane is backed up for almost a mile?  And you're tempted to be a jerk and cruise along a lane or two over, until you're about a tenth of a mile from the exit and then brake and cut over to the exit lane all sudden-like, cutting off a bunch of people and saving yourself a few minutes?

Don't do that.  It's not just rude - it's also freaking dangerous.  And odds are you won't be the person hurt.  You'll probably never even know that your idiot moves led to, say, a massive accident behind you.

Yesterday I was driving to work, and that's exactly what happened.  I was in the second lane over, and the jerk in front of me decided to wait until the last minute and then suddenly brake and duck into the exit lane.  I had enough time and space to slow down and avoid hitting him.  The guy driving the giant commercial truck behind me wasn't so lucky.

He tried to swerve to avoid hitting me, but on the highway at rush hour that just meant that he clipped another car before swinging back to rear-end me.  All three of us spent the next hour on the side of the road, dealing with police and insurance, while the asshat in the black sedan that triggered all of this cruised on down I-95, oblivious to what happened.

It could have been worse.  I strained my trapezius, and my car needs a new tail light and bumper, plus repairs to the hood and the....other metally bits in back.  But we're both mostly functional, and the other two vehicles (and people) involved were better off than me.  Still, it was a pretty damn serious situation.

So.  Don't drive like a dick.  Seriously, suck up those five minutes and get in the lane you need at the end of the line.  Don't be the reason someone else gets mashed by a freight truck.

In the middle of everything else, I'm still, y'know, starting a practice.  Appointments have calmed down a little after the initial flurry, but that just means I have more time to keep up with continuing education and to write for my hospice blog.

In particular, my most recent thoughts are about aging in animals, and how a lot of problems that are attributed to aging are often treatable conditions - check it out, if you want....

http://autumnvet.com/category/blog/

It kills me to have to do this, but....

For Sale:  Honda Rebel 250 motorcycle.  2009; approximately 4000 miles on it, mostly from previous owner.
I paid about $5000 for it; I'd like to recoup as much of that as possible, but I'm flexible.

The gas company just came with the police and shut off our gas - apparently there was an error processing our payment plan (they have record of us calling, but the payments never went through), and now they won't turn our gas back on until we pay up front in full.

No gas means no heat, no hot water, and (since we have a gas stove) no cooking.  And with my husband unemployed and me trying to start a new business, and having just paid $2000 in taxes, I don't have another few thousand just lying around unused.

So.  Here we are.

"Starbucks Passion for Coffee," Dave Olsen, John Phillip Carroll, and Lora Brody

Okay - I don't drink coffee, so this is kind of weird.  Except it's not a book of coffee recipes, thankfully.  It's about 40 pages about what coffee is and how to brew it and how apparently espresso is better than all other coffee, and then a whole lot of recipes for things that you can eat while drinking coffee.  Because apparently there are restrictions, or something.  I'm not sure whether the idea is that you can't, say, eat grilled cheese with coffee, or that pear-ginger muffins are only to be eaten with coffee; the book is unclear on that.  (Though I will say that I had my recipe from this book with a mug of tea; hopefully the Starbucks police won't come down on me and revoke my License to Beverage.)

But the book was a gift from <lj user="hungrytiger">, whose family was debulking their own cookbook stock, and it is full of tasty-looking baked goods, and pretty pictures, and the recipes are actually pretty well written, so I figured I'd give it a try.  There were a bunch of things that looked tasty enough, for generic muffins and coffee cakes, but the recipe that caught my eye was for Cinnamon Swirl Biscuits.

These looked like a cross between biscuits and cinnamon buns - take a super-rich buttermilk biscuit dough, roll it around a cinnamon filling, slice it, and bake it.  Best of both worlds, right?

Sadly not.  The biscuit dough was dry, and the cinnamon filling didn't have any butter or fat to hold it together so it just spilled out, and didn't integrate into the dough at all or melt and get gooey.  They weren't *bad* - it's hard to be actively bad with baked goods and cinnamon and brown sugar - but they weren't particularly good, either.  I kind of want to remake this, but with a richer biscuit dough and a better filling.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure whether this book will get another try.  This was more of a recipe failure than an execution failure, and it makes me question the quality of the other recipes.

I'm really hoping that my next book here will be a winner; I seem to be having rather a streak of mediocrity.....

Apologies if I left folks worrying.  I haven't died; I'm actually on the mend.

I had to go back to work Thursday of last week, mostly because with <lj user="umbran"> still out of work and my meds costing an arm and a leg, we couldn't afford for me to miss any more shifts.  Luckily, the clinics I was working at were patient and understanding, and willing to let me bring a chair into the exam rooms to sit down when standing and talking at the same time got too challenging.

And meds eventually kicked in, and I got some more rest over the weekend, and at this point... I'm mostly better.  I have no strength and no stamina - I get winded just walking around - but I'm breathing without any pain, and I'm completely off meds.  Now it's just a matter of taking my recovery slowly, and not pushing to get back to full activity too quickly.

Other than that... I'm hanging in there.  Hospice work is slowly taking off; I had three house calls today.  I'm not seeing enough patients yet to support myself with hospice care, but I'm at least able to support the business itself with its own income - I can pay my lab fees and buy the equipment I need with the money I get from house calls.  It's more than I could have hoped for from my first month in practice.

And in the meantime, as I continue ramping up, I've started writing a blog about hospice and palliative care.  One of the biggest challenges I'm facing, I've realized, is that most people don't really know what hospice *is,* and this is a chance to help remedy this.  Y'all are welcome to take a peek, if you want....

http://autumnvet.com/category/blog/

Slowly, days get longer, I get healthier, and I inch closer to my dreams coming true....

For the record?  I am a terrible Sick Person.

There are some people out there who can handle being sick with grace and aplomb.  They just... I don't know.  Sleep through it, or curl into a ball and withdraw from the world and watch TV until it's all over, or take their medicine and patiently rest while catching up on books they've been meaning to read.  I can't do that.

I whimper like a sad puppy.  I take my temperature about half a dozen times a day (a holdover from when I was a kid and you were only *really* sick if you had a fever) in an attempt to prove to myself that I have a right to feel miserable.  I can't keep track of what meds I've taken when, and wind up skipping doses in order to avoid accidentally doubling up, and then whine about feeling lousy.

I get caught in a three-way war between lethargy, guilt over not being more productive, and extraordinary boredom at spending more than an hour at a time sitting still.  I'm too hot and too cold, so I make blanket nests and then fretfully kick my way out of them.  I keep an almost gleeful log of every symptom, out of the same warped need to prove that I really am sick and not just being a whiny baby or something.

And then I decide way too soon that I'm better, and try to go running or dancing or work a 12-hour shift, and end up paradoxically arguing that I'm FINE DAMNIT as I cough until I black  out.  And the whole cycle starts again.

So. My apologies to anyone who has to deal with me when I'm like this, because I have yet to master the art of illness-with-panache.....