On that note, happy March 1st?
It's been... I can't say that I'm sad this week is done, since as I mentioned earlier, it's been a Week. Not awful — I've definitely had worse weeks, all things told — but very draining, for some reason. But, you know, they do say that adversity builds character and teaches you lessons and all that good stuff, so. Here are some lessons I believe I have learned from this week:
1. When my mother tells me to get stitches, I should listen to her.
2. No, really. I really should.
3. I would prefer to never again hear a medical professional say the words, "Well, we're going to ____, and then we'll _____, and then we'll have to hope for the best."
4. Particularly as they're exiting the room.
5. I CANNOT STATE THIS ENOUGH.
6. I am so glad for modern medicine. Seriously. So glad. This afternoon I got shot up with novocaine and then jabbed with a series of incredibly sharp objects and I couldn't feel a thing. Imagine how much worse getting stitches was when your numbing agents were a shot of whiskey and a rag held between your teeth to muffle the screaming.
7. When the doctor told me it would only take half an hour? He meant it. I was supposed to be finished at 12:30 and I walked out the front doors at 12:28, leaving me with plenty of time to get to taiko class.
8. Speaking of which: if you are taking classes which have some writing component but are primarily physical, you will probably forget that midterms are actually happening around you. Try not to laugh at your suffering friends. They will not be amused.
9. Even if you remind them that you are currently banging your head against the wall in order to write your thesis, they will still not be amused.
10. A very unhappy lesson: I am very very bad at sticking to schedules. Specifically the ones that involve me having more work completed at an earlier date.
11. I complain a lot. (I'm working on it. Sort of. Maybe I can save that until after April 12th.)
12. Taiko was invented by masochistic people and should not be attempted unless one is equally masochistic. If your range falls somewhere between "kneeling out in the rain without moving a muscle for at least 36 hours" and "living in a house where all the surfaces are covered in broken glass," you should be okay.
Wesleyan Taiko from a year ago, playing Miyake
13. Relatedly, I'm not entirely sure I can move my legs right now.
14. Also relatedly, my masochistic tendencies seem not to have diminished. Now all I need to do is keep working on my ability to hold position for long periods of time, and then I'll be able to take over the world.
15. This is less related, but I find it kind of interesting that last semester in Beginner's Taiko, I feel like we focused a lot on the upper body and arms, and now there's a definite focus on the legs.
16. Every class, not just dance class, should start with fifteen minutes of meditation while lying down.
17. Today is March 1st. Yes, that is a lesson. That is a lesson I learned today, on March 1st.
18. Beets really need to be roasted for at least an hour before they're ready. An hour and a half is probably better.
19. Knowing that my housemates will kill me if I sneak beets into a chocolate cake without warning them beforehand has not stopped me from strongly considering it.
20. Apparently multi-tasking is not good for your brain? This concerns me. It concerns me greatly.
21. Beets taste surprisingly excellent in omelets with goat cheese, lox, and dill.
22. I am capable of making a beautiful omelet. Seriously, this shit was magazine-worthy. But I didn't take a picture because I am lazy and hey, it was just an omelet.
23. When making hamantaschen, don't use jam. Even if some of the recipes you have suggested it. Especially not with a dough that is very prone to losing its shape. You will end up with a flat disk of dough with a puddle of melted jam on top.
24. Even though it is sacrilege, Nutella makes a surprisingly good hamantaschen filling.
25. Only one of my housemates knew what hamantaschen were before this week. One. And she'd only read about them in a book.
(Here is a bonus lesson for you, if you too are ignorant of the deliciousness that is Hamantaschen: basically there's this Jewish holiday called Purim which is about celebrating that this really attractive Jewish lady named Esther was persuaded by her uncle to marry the king (who was kind of a dick, but whatever, the real bad guy in this story is his advisor Haman, boo hiss) in order to get better treatment for the Jews in the kingdom. And she did! And she and her uncle exposed the machinations of the evil Haman, boo hiss, and so now not only do you get to boo/make noise whenever his name comes up during the story, you also get to eat cookies that look like his hat. Yeah. They're three-cornered and have fruit filling or poppy seed filling (which is THE BEST filling) or chocolate filling or whatever, and can be made with regular dough or cream cheese dough, and they're delicious. Obviously the best ones are regular dough with poppy seed and cream cheese dough with sour cherry, but I will accept others as well. I was making my own filling this year, and because we had a ton of apples I made apple-ginger filling. Also, as I mentioned, Nutella wasn't bad. Went nicely with the cream-cheese dough.
On the other hand, if you try to convince me that that anything made with that canned strawberry filling counts as real hamantaschen, I will hit you. I have very strong feelings about pastry.
Another bonus lesson: of the very tricky things that Jewish bakers have to learn how to do, making hamantaschen that keep their shape isn't at the very top but is reasonably high up.)
25. I am still very bad at going out and actually doing things.
26. On the other hand, my housemates are not only excellent people but also interesting conversationalists, very good company, and completely crazy. Completely.
27. They're also very supportive of my "haha I can't do work right now IT'S BAKING TIME" lapses in productivity.
28. My master plan of bribing people to tolerate my company via baked goods is working.
29. The longer I continue writing this post the more distracted I'm getting, which means I should probably wrap things up. So, the most important one:
30. You can never have too much ice cream.
That's all for this Week, ducklings. Hopefully next week will be... less edifying. Take care, ducklings.
[Original tags for this post: baking, boring tags today because I am tired (sorry), Food, I really like lists,medical nonsense,taiko, TAIKO BADASSERY, taiko masochism]
No comments:
Post a Comment