maison du sud
going for the third entry in the month before the ~2016 Annual Survey~ lands on my front page again.
almost a year ago to the day, i found myself in this very same situation that i am in today: it is the holiday slump at my office, there's jack shit to do, and the boss is on vacation so no one cares whether anyone is perusing the internet for shiggles. we're all just kiki-ing and looking at internet stuff, watching time pass like molasses.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
so what's your ol' girl been up to lately? not terribly much, tbh. this here is my thirties, hm? this is my thirties without children -- just livin' life as i can afford it, occasionally making my way to ~da clurb~ (either to work or to werk) but mostly longingly gazing at instagram posts from/about events and places that i can't seem to find the time or money to attend.
actually, i've been cooking a lot. i mean, i always did like cooking, and i really ramped it up in the few years before moving into the apartment, but shit's gotten real this year especially. as far as self-taught home cooking goes, i've certainly aced the 101 stuff, maybe even the whole 100-level skill set. i've gotten pretty damn good at putting a meal together. as lester young might put it, "madame can burn." and with bravado!
♥cam -- also an excellent cook in his own right -- has invested a lot into kitchen hardware this year. piece by piece, we have been replacing the hand-me-down cookware we started with, and we've embellished with a few nice pieces as well. a large part of what we "inherited" is the kind of garbage that says "if i felt like doing the work, i'd probably sell this at a yard sale for a dollar" -- but i'm very thankful for two of the hand-me-down pans.
the best shit we have picked up this year:
- the set of cast-iron skillets -- ♥cam makes killer biscuits in these! i even made a pie in the big one and a tart in the little one
- the knife block. wait, was the knife block from this year or last? i can't even remember! it feels like i've had it forever
- a big-ass wok for all your stir-fry fantasies
- a little stainless steel saucepan, which was a special request from me due to my proclivity for whipping up groovy glazes and gravies
- a bona fide roasting pan, because i am an animal and a cobbly-witch and i need to learn how to roast things not with a cookie sheet
- the KITCHENAID STAND MIXER!!! the gift that keeps on giving! it is truly the best thing ever and i legit blow kisses to it sometimes
hanks much to the latter-most item, i think 2017 will be a big year for me to really grapple with my long-standing fear of baking. the hardest part of baking for me has been figuring out where precision is important, and what qualities are controlled by which ingredients/factors. when you have access to the conveniences and refinement capabilities of modern technology, sometimes it is easy to forget that baking is a cooking method as old as methuselah's nipples. go figure, it's an ancient culinary technique, but it's also a science experiment with a dizzying number of variables.
that's real magic, tbh.
i can bake cookies pretty easily now, and whenever we are in excess of overripe bananas i've been wont to whip up a loaf of foolproof banana bread. but what i'm really looking forward to, as far as 2017 kitchen shit, is learning how to make bread -- specifically, learning how to use yeast. and no i don't fux with a bread machine! my bread goals are (1) to make pretty braided breads in the eastern european style -- i mean really, just google image search for "eastern european bread" -- and (2) to master the tangzhong method for fluffety-puff bread. i guess at some point i should also get pretty good at dark and/or grainy breads, too. pumpernickel, rye, a good whole-wheat or multi-grain whatever-de-evers.
i'd love to be able to whip up a loaf of that brown bread from the outback, with some lovely triple-cream brie and sliced cornichons. homemade bread would be such a bitchin' addition to a cheese and charcuterie board, especially if i'm also making my own jam and pickles. i mean, let's be real, i should probably be learning about jarring/canning food because it sounds like 2017-2021 could be a big ol' dumpster fire for the you-ess-ay. who's a good gardener outchea? let's team up, barter skills.
*googles "reclaimed wood cheese board" because for survival reasons i may need to infiltrate the Whites™ someday*
i actually very honestly and seriously want a cheese and charcuterie board. a nice big one, dark and genuine wood, unvarnished, the kind i have to massage with oil sometimes. i like the paddle ones, with the handle and the crumb reservoir along the edge, but i also really like the ones that still look like a slab of wood. and a set of little spreaders and tiny forks and tongs, too! hey santa! (nah, i know i'll be the one buying this for meself, and i don't entertain so i will probably just use it for feasting fabulously in bed.)
so since this lj has been around for over 15 years, for this entry's little flashback i decided it'd be fun to take a glimpse into my life at 16 years old. holy fucking shit. when i go back and read entries that old it truly genuinely totally blows my mind how it is an entire lifetime away but i can still remember so much of it as clearly as if it were only last year.
Fifteen years ago, I was 16 and a (paradoxically over/under-achieving) junior in high school. I was the newly anointed features editor of the award-winning school paper, on top of taking a metric shit-ton of AP classes. My best friend at school was Janina, who graduated valedictorian and now has a PhD in something ridiculous like biochemistry. I still adore her. She's a precious cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure.
Like many kids my age, and kids-my-age for generations to come, I spent a lot of fucking time online. Only ~back in our day~ it was at an honest-to-God computer, and it was in a communal space in the house. Lucky (read: spoiled) kids had their own computers in their rooms. Only rich kids and Very Important Adults had laptops, and smart phones were still just a futuristic daydream in the minds of tech devs. I managed to update LJ 10x/day on thoughts as minor as "my sister has pinkeye" or as major as "I think my father is having a nervous breakdown." I designed and coded some excellent layouts for my personal website as well as my LJ. At the time I was "hosted!" by a lovely goth girl named Anjanette. I miss her. I wonder where she is, how she is doing. I stayed at her domain for nearly three years. I wish I still had those layouts in archive. Frankly, I wish I'd kept up with web development. It's so different now!!
At 16, favorite band was still Weezer -- with a lot of love for the Aquabats -- though I also listened to a lot of gothy electro and '40s-'50s jazz. My big non-music obsession was Jhonen Vasquez, creator of Invader Zim and the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac comic series. I submitted my critical-review article of Invader Zim for a Los Angeles Times writing competition and won $1000! I spent my pocket change on candy, coffee, comics -- and music. Lots and lots of music.
My boyfriend at the time was Ryan the Boy Scout, the hopeless romantic, the artist. We were serious, as in we used the L word often, but we were not physically serious. We'd often do obnoxiously cute shit together like picnicking on the beach or visiting tiny art galleries. Through our many antiquing/thrifting/rummage-sale trips we assembled a pretty good collection of vinyl -- Oingo Boingo and a bunch of crooner-era records, all his to keep in the end. Occasionally we'd double-date with his grandparents to big-band jazz concerts. I'd break up with him the following summer, an unfortunate part of a highly emotional self-evolution period that took place that year.
None of my friends drove (except maybe Ariel) and my parents generally disliked shuttling us kids around so I often spent weekends at home or out with family. With that said . . .
On this particular day fifteen years ago, I had a fairly typical Saturday. One of my dozens of kid cousins had his 7th birthday party and, in true Filipinx fashion, family of all ages came together to eat and drink and gamble/hang out. Lots of beer and talking shit at kids' parties, y'know. My sister and I bailed on the party with my cousin Tracy (and my mom, apparently? I don't remember that part) in favor of some gallivanting and some DDR.
At the time, our go-to was the DDR USA machine at the Cal Bowl arcade -- at 75¢ a game it was half the price of most other machines, and of course very close to our other usual haunts. There was a total creep who worked at the counter and had eyes for Tracy. He did not know how to accept rejection or respect boundaries, which we as a culture will eventually come to understand is NOT FUCKING OKAY EVER, so after our first few bad encounters with him, whenever we wanted to play DDR we'd first cruise past the arcade and peek through the front to see if he was working.
Said creep was, in fact, working that night, so we went to Powerstation in Cerritos instead. We'd go an extra distance away and use a more expensive machine (albeit better condition and with way more songs) just to play DDR without some thirsty-ass scrub hanging around to ogle bouncing titties and not take "no" for an answer. Tracy is conventionally pretty, petite and slim and somewhat busty. In our 2002 outings, I'd come to learn that such a body is not such an easy, safe, or comfortable thing to have -- not in terms of clothes-shopping, but in terms of simply being outside. Tracy couldn't BE a bigger bitch in response to unwanted advances and yet some motherfucks would not relent.
Also according to this entry my mom took us impulse shopping at Clothestime and bought me a "leather jacket." First of all, Clothestime?? I don't think I've heard that store name in . . . well . . . fifteen years. Second, I remember that jacket. It was not leather. It was fake-as-fuck sweaty-hot pleather. And it was not shaped like a "leather jacket" -- y'know, a bomber cut or a moto jacket -- but more like a blazer. It had lapels. And I also remember that it was maybe a half-size too small. Perhaps I begged for it, perhaps it was the biggest size they had and I still wanted it. Perhaps my mom saw us playing DDR and thought that maybe, just maybe, I'd Dance Dance myself into a smaller size soon enough. I did not.
Later that night my sister and I slept over Tracy's house and stayed up until the wee hours watching late-night cheese, likely also drinking orange soda and playing board/card/charade-type games. We watched SNL and Showtime at the Apollo every weekend, and usually switched to Cheaters -- which it sounds like we did at some point that night -- but that particular Saturday we caught a VH1 program about groupie culture and we found out about No Doubt bassist (and, famously Gwen's former long-term beau) Tony Kanal and his rumored 10-inch penis!
wow, wow, wow. sixteen.
or as i spelled it then, sicksteen.
because i am vain(?) it is a very special treat to be so truly impressed and entertained by the writ of Teen Me. what a cool teenager! like really! people who have known me that long (and even longer, a short and exclusive list of VIP) were really in for a treat tbqh. i feel that way about some of the people i remember from my youth.
i'm proud of myself, and even prouder that i'm no longer so ignorant. open though my eyes might have been, my mouth was open wider and i needed to learn to balance those out.
we're getting pretty close to the end of the year. will i make the time for another? i certainly have plenty of it at the office. i mean look at this writing, this researched and meandering writing. all this while honest-to-glob sitting at my work desk, on my work computer. ain't shit going on but the rent! i could do these all week!
but i won't!