Nightmares and anxiety dreams are messing with my sleep. On call is... never a dull moment. I'm so looking forward to tomorrow night with Dancer at the Catwalk reunion. And no, it won't be NC-17. Or at least if it is, I'll be surprised and delighted.

I made my first ever meatloaf on Tuesday, using the recipe from How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. It was pretty good, but I think my oven runs cool. That'll just give me an excuse to make it again until I get it right. The Wendling is OK with it, which is important.

Of the embarrassingly few recipes that I make for my son, one of his favorites is chicken in a white wine reduction from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. After the less-than-total success of his previous cooking effort, I urged him to try a recipe that was a) more nutritious and b) less likely to result in twenty-five minutes of pot scrubbing.

He used a little too much oil, which I expected. But what I didn't expect was how unwilling he'd be to fill up a half-cup measure with wine. He didn't want to spill it, he said: his ADHD meds have made his hands shake since he started taking them many years ago. He was also scared to add the wine to the hot pan.

He doesn't quite have the hang of lighting a double-ring gas burner, but it's a little tricky even for me.

Did he make more mess than he needed to? Yes, but that too is entirely expected, and it wasn't too bad. Did the chicken turn out well? Shyeah!

Oh, and one day after my bike accident, my hip feels a little better, and my right shoulder — yeah, the same one I had physical therapy for in the spring — feels worse. And I think I know what happened to my left ring finger: after I hit the concrete I noticed I was right next to a street sign. I may have punched the post on the way down.

Friday night: I made it to the monthly north end munch, i.e. gathering of kinky folk in civvies for dinner. That kind of thing is usually pleasant even though an awful lot of the regulars are coupled-up boomers. And it was, except for one thing: a boomer who's in the know about goings on at the Center for Sex Positive Culture* says that the board blew what's probably its last chance to get a new space by dithering. You just can't do that in a real estate market that's (still) as bananas as Seattle's. My source ascribed it to the inexperience of the board and a misplaced desire to obtain a consensus of many members, the latter of which is so Seattle it hurts. He speculates that without its own space, the CSPC could be gone in a few years. The community's elder, richer angels are one by one losing patience with them.

Saturday morning: brunch at Lost Lake with trystbat! I consumed an awful lot of mimosa and caffeine, and had the best time I've had during the daytime in for-damn-ever. As I told her, it kills me a little that I don't live in the Bay Area, because then I could see her more often. I played tour guide around the Pike/Pine corridor and then leaned heavily on my transit luck, which was nothing short of miraculous yesterday.

Saturday afternoon: I got sugared. Sadly, the season of showing off bare legs has just ended.

Later on Saturday afternoon: Uwajimaya with Tacoma Girl. I think I have enough beer for my Halloween party, plus Asian munchies for those who unfathomably don't want sushi. Oh, and I learned something from Tacoma Girl: breaded & fried enoki mushrooms are a pretty good substitute for chicken. That's the kind of thing I would try.

One more thing: I am now among the legions of Chappell Roan's fans. Even if you're (ahem) more than double her age, her songs are highly relatable if you're any flavor of dyke. Imagine a young, queer, country-fried Kate Bush with a thing for New Wave.



*For those of you outside the Seattle area, that's Seattle's oldest and largest non-profit kink organization. They had a space of their own from 1999 to 2015, and they used it well: many educational events, and of course a whole lot of ahem. Most of those who regularly used that space miss it terribly.

Dear Sister Wendy,

The next time you make couscous with fish stock, keep a closer eye on it so you don't burn it. And if you're going to use old, mysterious spice packets whose contents aren't listed, taste them first. They may contain an awful lot of salt, especially if they've absorbed enough moisture to stick together.

Love,
Nun

P.S.: Surely you won't screw up the salad. Surely.

Edited to add: I did not screw up the salad.

Over the weekend I got Ex's recipe for chicken tagine, or as we used to call it, yellow chicken. I made it for my son and myself last night. It's involved enough that I set a new record for kitchen mess. It didn't turn out perfectly, but it wasn't bad, and the Wendling loved it. Mental note: don't use the thermonuclear two-ring burner for browning chicken on any setting above medium-low.

And in zappy news, the average number of hairs per day that I yank out on my face south of my eyebrows seems to be decreasing from about two to about one. This is most gratifying, especially when you recall that I stopped using Ms. Zappy's services for less than happy reasons. She may not have killed them all completely, but she apparently came close enough that I can finish the job with a Tweezerman.

It occurs to me that I may have things easier than some of my cis girlfriends my age. Sorry? I mean, I'm totally not sorry that I don't have more hair on my face, but if you're working harder than I am to remove yours, that's what I'm sorry for.

This week: perfect cornbrnead. I can't help but wonder if my unusual use of whole milk helped it out a little.

La Fashionista, her semi-cousin C, and I were supposed to have a girls' night in last night, but I was the only one who wasn't feeling horrible from the smoke. But C had planned a potluck at her place, so I had bought ingredients for a blueberry cobbler.

What to do? Bake the cobbler and eat some of it, of course. So far so mundane, you think, except for this: it may have been the first dessert I ever baked all by myself in my life. You see, I don't bake as a rule because, to quote my father, I'll just eat it.

But bake I did. Yes, there were minor screwups like frozen butter and baking soda instead of powder. But you know what? Cobbler is forgiving. It's hard to screw up too badly when butter, sugar, and blueberries are involved. Nom!

Bonus: I have dessert ready for the Wendling when he comes for dinner tomorrow night. He may like it better than the usual bowl-o'-berries, but he better not get used to it.

And speaking of smoke, my P100 respirator that, believe it or not, I didn't buy for Burning Man has let me carry on with riding my bike as ever. My 1980s windows and 1950s front door are keeping the smoke out of the Devil Girl Pad. My fourteen African violets are busy turning carbon dioxide from me into oxygen as I type; they continue to bloom more often than in previous years in what I can only assume is a show of appreciation. I think all sixteen of us — if you include my son — are going to be OK.

I have two kitchen knives that are, for better or worse, made of stainless steel. I've had at least one shop - was it out in the suburbs? - refuse to sharpen them because of what they were made of. The little knife shop up the hill from me would sharpen them, though, and did a fine job of it several times.

Note the verb tense in that previous sentence. The knife shop apparently wasn't deemed essential by the state of Washington, which wouldn't surprise me, let's face it. Its space is for rent. I'll miss the nice man who seemed to be the sole proprietor. I've ordered a whetstone that I think will do the job. We'll see.

I don't mind the expense and inconvenience. What I mind is nice men losing their businesses. What I mind is friends losing their jobs. What I mind is all of us cooped up away from each other until we go bananas. What I mind is one hundred sixty thousand people, and counting, dying needlessly.

For the third year in a row, I hosted Thanksgiving here in my little Devil Girl Pad - with more devil girls than last year! I did not mess up the turkey, and everyone else brought notably tasty things. Who'da thunk balsamic vinegar went so well on Brussels sprouts? And until last night I didn't know that kringle, from Denmark via Wisconsin, is the almond paste-filled food of the gods courtesy of bork.

Speaking of bork, he had a rough Thanksgiving, from an altercation on the bus on the way here to slicing his finger open while cutting up the turkey carcass badly enough to require stitches. I hope today is better than yesterday for him.

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And in completely unrelated news, Good Sister estimates that if she can get Mom's house back from the reverse mortgage vultures, because they've already sent $142K, she and I are going to have to chip in $50K apiece with the remainder coming from Mom's assets to essentially buy the house back. Yes, you read that right, fifty thousand dollars.I may be techie scum, but as I told GS, I don't exactly have that kind of cash lying around - that's five years of tax refunds for me - and I'd be surprised if she did. (GS is counting on zero help from our perennially broke Evil Sister.)

But this is all hypothetical: she hasn't even finished looking at the statements for all of Mom's assets, she still needs to talk to Mom's neurologist about just how long ago and in what way Mom started sliding into dementia, and without these two prerequisites there's no way the hotshot lawyer my sisters found can do his thing. Mom may yet succeed in screwing us all even harder than she has already.

I just threw random, lonely ingredients into a pot in the hopes that the results would be edible. They exceeded expectations, so it's recipe time:

Lonely Ingredient Black Beans
(All measurements are, uh, approximate.)

2 cups dried black beans
4 cups water
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp red miso
2 tbsp gochujang, i.e. Korean red chile paste

Soak the beans all day. Stir in the rest of the ingredients. (Miso & gochujang don't really want to dissolve.) Cook over medium heat until the beans aren't crunchy anymore. Snarf!

Don't tell J of J&R fame. Having grown up partly in Brazil, she has definite opinions about how black beans are properly done, namely feijoada, which I've never tried to make or even eaten.

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Special to trystbat: while the beans were cooking I finished a bum roll. I think I've committed to this year's Halloween costume.