charlotteann

I went to pick up sea shells for a new project I’m working on and ended up going home close to tears. As I was walking, scaring sea gulls away so I could photograph the crabs they were picking at, I started noticing these multi-colored bits of sea foam. The tide was going out rapidly and leaving behind tiny crab bodies, sand dollars, and these oily bubbles. I assumed it was oil or gasoline, and out in the distance to the North I could see an enormous, anchored ship. Again, not sure the two were related directly, but they’re certainly related in some way and it makes me really, really sad.

Someone posted a comment a long time ago asking me for my thoughts on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I apologize for not addressing it sooner, but like my experience at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach it makes me incredibly upset. I avoided all photographs of the situation because they made me cry. Stupid reason perhaps to not spend time learning about one of the worst environmental disasters in human history, although I have spent many an hour reading critical texts on environmentalism for a class. A class that eventually led me to believe that we are literally destroying the Earth. If our political leaders don’t blow us up first, nature will reset the balance and most of us will die.

Climate change, pollution, unsafe drinking water, drought, famine, disease, hurricanes, fires, and everything else are getting worse. There are simply too many of us and we’re still making babies, especially in places where women have no political power or financial autonomy. While placing blame is pointless - we’re all in this together, this planet belongs to all of us and we all have to be environmentalists - I find myself taking up Valerie Solanas’ viewpoint to some extent. Patriarchy sucks. I don’t think men are inherently disposed to wrecking stuff, but the societies and cultures they dominate have been structured around promoting ideals of dominance, brute strength, and superiority over women and other species. So let’s go back to school yard rules: share. Only we’d be sharing wealth, resources, healthcare, nutritious food and clean water, education, and habitat instead of toys and the swings.

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Exposing your life to the internet is commonplace these days. I barely remember the years before my mom brought home our first dial-up modem, which I used to play some online game for the movie Casper starring Bill Pullman (<3) and Christina Ricci in 1995. I remember watching the images load line by line, the "secret" buttons revealed by their alt tags. A few years later I gave up on HyperCard in favor of HTML and well, here I am. And here’s my cat!

Her name is Ellie, short for Eleanor, and I got her almost exactly two years ago. It’s very possible it was this very Caturday in 2008 that I brought home that soft, cuddly 5 month-old kitten. I knew she was mine when she fell asleep in my arms at the shelter. Well, this place wasn’t exactly a shelter. It was kind of like a pet supply store that had rescue animals running amok and barking and defecating all over the place and all over each other. Luckily they closed after I found Ellie. Who, as you may have noticed, has unusual coloring. She is a dilute tortoiseshell, which means she is a softer version of the real thing. Not just in terms of coloring apparently, because this cat is softer than a chinchilla.

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I used to think that old saying “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was a load of you-know-what. Unashamedly I admit I held this opinion because most breakfast menus in America feature and expound upon the disgusting egg. I find eggs inedible and anything but incredible. This leaves me ordering a bunch of sides (bacon, hashbrowns, home fries, toast, etc.) with a side of longing for the ability to ask the chef to make a sausage, onion, mushroom, and cheese omelet without the omelet. Omelet ingredients are often inventive, enticing, and seemingly delicious. Oh, if only they weren’t wrapped up in floppy egg blanket! San Francisco restaurants have come through for me on this issue, however, as they often offer scrambled tofu as an egg substitute, if only with an unfair surcharge. But whatever – I don’t go out for breakfast all that often and recently I have been experimenting in my morning kitchen.

Home fries, cat

Ellie, my cat, is sometimes the one who wakes me up. Usually it’s the glorious morning summertime light beaming in through my gossamer curtains, but sometimes the cat decides that 8:00 AM is the perfect time for a litter box party and I wake to sounds of litter being scratched around and tossed over the sides of the box onto my floor. Cute, sort of.

Eggs are cheap but I am pretty sure potatoes are cheaper. I really like home fries and hashbrown scrambles so I’ve been merging the two in my cast iron skillet and scrilleting up some potatoes, mushrooms, onions, and herbs with butter or oil. Lately I’ve been going through sticks of butter like I was saving for hibernation or something, but so far no weight gain. I’ll get to that part later (hint: the litter box story was foreshadowing).

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I go back and forth with coffee, and by that I mean I lie about whether or not I drink it. I drink coffee like any respectable student should, but I’m not into lattés or macchiatos. When I fib about my coffee consumption it’s because I don’t want to drink your coffee. Illy is my favorite and I’m sticking to it, $15 a can be damned!

Since I’m spending so much cash on coffee I drink about three times a week (other mornings are started with PG Tips tea), it’s time to start being a little thriftier on other things. Okay, that was a lie, too: I need to be thriftier in general. But I’m also trying to cut meat out of my diet unless it’s sustainably fished from the sea. Thus my breakfast this morning consisted of yellow potatoes, yellow onion, and Smart brand sausages “chorizo style.” For the record, they taste nothing like chorizo. Nor do they imitate its texture in any way. The closest it came to resembling the real thing was in the color of the stain it left on my cutting board.

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Someone reminded me last night that I have a blog. Who knew? Not me! That was a lie, I totally knew I had a blog. Yeah!

Last week I completed a 9 day camping trip that took place in the Sierra Nevada mountains and Death Valley. It was the coolest 9 days ever and I wish I could be camping all the time! When’s the last time you didn’t wash your hair for that long? We ate (and drank) surprisingly well each night, while lunch often consisted of slimy deli meats and bread heels because I was too polite and let everyone go ahead of me. Beautiful things were seen and photographed, and I have lots of stories and memories to keep me happy for a long time. Which is good because it has been completely depressing to be back in the city and living in my dark, expensive, dirty apartment. Feeling so fed up I completely rearranged and cleaned my room today. Fortunately it feels much more spacious but I can’t do anything about the neighboring building that blocks sunlight for most of the day. Maybe the earthquake will happen and shake it down, leaving my building perfectly intact and sunny.

Returning to the city meant returning to school and responsibilities in the form of midterm papers, exams, and astronomical medical bills despite having insurance. Can someone explain the logic behind a hospital charging an “after hours fee” for a visit to the emergency room? If my emergency occurred between 9 AM and 5 PM I would have certainly gone to a doctor, but it didn’t so I went to the hospital. That’s how they get you. Financial woes aside, I am writing a paper on Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” and studying for an art history exam. Well, obviously I’m not really because I have procrastinated to the point of blogging. Oh, this life.

Some photographs from the trip:

I’m going to Las Vegas tomorrow! No, not for gamblin’ or collectin’ hooker fliers (although I’ll definitely bring home a few, those are great), I’m going to PSW and it’s going to rule. Well, I hope so. Again I feel a little badly for neglecting le blog here, but school is time consuming. I also had a horrible infection in my gastro-intestinal system. I won’t elaborate, as this blog is supposedly about tasty things. I didn’t cook much besides vegetable broth in those days, anyway. Imagine my excitement two days into the treatment when I was able to eat a banana! Awesome.

My packed lunches have been a bore like me. Salad greens from a bag with carrot sticks and ranch dressing, all courtesy of Trader Joe’s. Once I threw a little tofu in there – it didn’t taste very good. Hopefully I will encounter more exciting foods in Las Vegas this weekend. If I do, you will be one of many to hear about it.