Food & Cooking
Recipes, Food Experiments and Commentary, Etc.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Jay: Gout Attacks
I haven’t had trouble with gout to speak of, lately, until today, when it came on suddenly and at least as severely as ever.
As I may have mentioned, from peak weight to recent low weight I lost 55 lbs, 45 this year. The diet is a bit different, if not as much so as you might think, and more fully natural. Still, I’d expect if I ate pinto beans for a few days, I’d get an outbreak.
My first thought was limited fluid today, though I drank plenty yesterday, and stayed in AC a lot, and the weather in general. That’s likely a factor.
However, the cookout Sunday saw me sent home with a banana bread with cranberries, a bunch of sour cream bars, and most of a loaf of homemade bread. Deb and the kids ate the bread, though I had a slice or two at the event itself. However, I ate most of the banana bread and most of the squares in a binge of wanting them not to spoil and, hey, free food. Kind of weird, as I don’t eat much for sweets these days, and even carbs are only moderately from bread.
I’m intrigued by the possibility that the binge on that stuff was a factor. If anything, I’ve had less than usual that should contribute. Heck, I had salad two nights in a row, so I suppose I could speculate about that.
I just hope it goes fast. Now back to stuff I need to get done while I have the chance. I started replying to a job solicitation around 10 hours ago and it’s still on my screen, partly written. Figured I’d reply, even though I don’t think I have the qualifications they want.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Jay: Busy for Someone Lazy and Broke
Wanted to toss out a quick post before I hang out and vegetate for another day. Heh.
Cross your fingers that the car from my aunt works okay, since it’s registered and having a shakedown today when we go to Sharon to see friends, including one who is doing her lucky if it’s annual visit from Oregon. Can’t afford the gas, but we didn’t have to fly across the country. As such, we have to get the car seats in and so forth.
This morning at 10:30 there’s some kind of mortgage inspection the landlord has to have done, and they might need to come in here in the process. There’s the tail end of making the place look more respectable in anticipation of that. We’re curious what in the world it’s about, as that could mean a sale, which would suck. And be a silly time for it, in a down market. Then again, if you bought in the late seventies, down relative to peak, even by 30%, is still going to be a nice cashing out. More likely it’s a refinance or leveraging this property to buy another because, hey, it’s a down market so good time to buy. Or it’s a stealth excuse to inspect our apartment and find a reason to throw us out, but that’s just the paranoid outlook.
The baby isn’t going to let me type much more and I rilly rilly need to get to work on stuff, but…
In 1998 I went on a vacation to Canada, my first and last in forever. Well, 5 1/2 years, if you could California to meet Deb, while still monitoring work and directing someone designated to be my hands back at the office. But anyway, on the way back, I stopped at LL Bean in Maine and bought a T-shirt, among less memorable clothes. It was never my loosest shirt, smaller for its size than they should run.
That shirt is, I am pretty sure, looser on me than it has ever been, which is an interesting anecdote about where my weight was when, given the stretches of time when I didn’t monitor it. I peaked at 308 and had a stable high of 298. Yesterday I hit a not yet stable low of 253, and am solidly 255 wanting to be 254 this morning. Counting to the low yesterday, that’s 55 lost, 45 of it this year so far.
All apparently a metabolism thing by going off drugs that make you gain weight so you can get sneered at that you wouldn’t need the drugs if you’d just lose weight, because only fat slobs have high blood pressure. With a bit of atavistic eating thrown in for emphasis, since apparently eating like someone pre-industrial food, if not pre-agriculture, agrees with me.
Okay, time is flying by so I have to get another coffee (sugar, no artificial sweetener to confuse the body about calories consumed) and see about cleaning and organizing more.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Jay: Hey, Didn’t This Used to Be a Blog?
We’re kind of busy and distracted, so even with the modest availability things that I can still blog about without an oppressive sense of self-censorship, I just haven’t gotten to it lately. Lack of birthdays has thus meant lack of posts, and the birthday posts are meant to be spice, not meat. There are a couple others I may get to, one imperative and one landmark, despite over a week having passed since it came to mind.
That said, it’s relatively easy and of some interest to post about the baby and where he stands on the food front. It seems these days the biggest problems are unidentified airborne or other environmental, with maybe a low grade effect from even some foods that are “safe.” To the degree we’re dealing with a salicylate sensitivity, almost everything is a source, and it’s difficult not to include a certain amount of high and moderate sources, even if you avoid the very high completely and the next ones down as much as possible. There are also ambiguities, whereby a given item can be higher or lower depending on growing conditions. At any rate, the chart we’ve found most useful notes that each level is ten times the prior. Thus very high is 10x high is 10x moderate is 10x low.
There are two things that have been clear. Three, if you count the big $2600 we can never afford to pay incident and the most probable cause. Two, if you count dairy as singular.
He can’t have milk. Period. He breaks out in a rash almost instantly. Not sure, but he may have gotten his hands on some during the Lactaid experiment, and reacted less badly, whatever that means - maybe ultrapasteurization breaking down proteins more being helpful.
The emergency room incident was almost certainly cheese. It was also topical, never a breathing issue, but more a matter of looking so bad because of where it swelled. The thing is, I seemed to react to that cheese, and as noted, cheddar particularly can apparently generate its own histamines.
Of the other candidates that night, well, he has put egg in his mouth and not reacted, and Deb’s test of eating eggs has shown she is free to have eggs and, by extension, mayonnaise again. He can eat corn. We’re skeptical of wheat being a problem, certainly not at that level. The only thing that leaves from that night might be ham, which would have been a bit player and would mean an awfully extreme reaction to my having handled it. Cheese is likely, especially given the milk thing and the histamine thing.
Of course, his own drool makes him rashy, and I believe he has a bit of a reflux problem, which may be recursion. That is, stuff affects sinuses, sinuses encourage reflux, reflux makes sinuses worse and makes drool acidic. Maybe stuff affects skin worse on contact due to the damage, for that matter.
Anyway, it’s not an item of concern for salicylates, but he had an extreme reaction to banana. Now, that may have been interaction with other stuff, and may not have been as bad as it seemed, but he can wait to try again.
What I was planning to cover mainly is what he can eat. With Valerie confirmed to be unable to have milk, even Lactaid, without losing bladder control, it’s made him less likely to have accidental drinks of it. It makes him so happy, but the result isn’t fun. We’ve been able to speed up trying new things. It’s challenging to be operating on the cheap, but hey.
Beef
Chicken
Pork
The only meat of concern might be cured, spiced kinds of things, so I haven’t given him hot dogs when we’ve had them. I thought he might be reacting mildly to pork at times, and when I did a series of “rub things on his skin” tests one day, grease that had primarily rendered from pork during frying was the only thing there might have been a reaction to, but it was ambiguous. My antiperspirant, Irish Spring, some stuff like that all passed. He gets plenty of meat.
Oats (oatmeal)
Rice (including puffs, cakes)
Some tastes of things that technically contained wheat.
Corn, as a vegetable.
Corn, in tortilla chips soaked in water or chicken broth to soften them.
Butternut
Carrots
Sweet potato
White potato in any form, though I’d avoid giving him skin even if he could chew it.
White sugar, avoid brown sugar as it charts and he may have reacted to it.
Green beans
Parsnip, probably - some ambiguity and small sample
Pinto beans
Chemicals that qualify to be called lemonade when mixed with water (seemed to react a little to the fruit punch mix).
Canned pears in heavy syrup. Light syrup is pear juice, which is processed in a way that involves the skin.
I swear I’m forgetting something.
Soy seems not to bother him. Usually that’s in the form of oil for cooking. He’s also had stuff fried in Crisco, which would mean exposure to cottonseed oil.
He’ll get to try peas soon. He had a too small to harm him taste of strawberry jello and seemed to be unaffected.
As far as seasonings or veggies used mainly for that purpose, he seems fine with onion and garlic. Black pepper I avoid especially for him. Red pepper and the like, and some of the other things I use routinely, all high, but the quantities in food can be minute. We use caution, but he has or might have eaten food with red pepper, cumin, oregano, garlic, onion, ginger, celery, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, sage, savory, rosemary, or whatever having participated in the making. Not sure exactly which. If it’s, say, chicken, it’s in the oil and on the outside of the meat, but I’ll emphasize giving him bits from the inside with minimal outer layer.
Cauliflower. He tried cauliflower and that went fine. We love that when it’s on sale.
Fruit is the biggest problem. Especially in juice or uncooked. Pear is the lowest of the fruits and he clearly reacted to pear juice. Essentially he needs a caveman diet.
Overall he’s doing well. A lot of the itching he does is emotional, a reaction of habit. Getting sleepy equals uncomfortable. Discomfort equals itchy. Ithchy equals scratch yourself bloody. He is helped a lot by pre-emptive doses of gas drops and Tylenol, assuming he doesn’t decide he does not need one or both, as he did today. Absolutely refused gas drops, period. Refused Tylenol one time, accepted it later. As I always say, he’s little, not stupid. In fact, he’s scary.
Now if he wants to eat he starts dragging his high chair across the kitchen. He also seems to have learned that if food is left in the seat, he can shake the chair to get it where he can reach it. He was mad at me for cleaning up right after he pigged out for supper, because after his bath he was foraging for more. For supper he had chicken, a tiny bit of beef, potato, about 2/3 of a good sized sweet potato, corn, and plain pinto beans. When I found him foraging, I gave him part of a rice cake, but that just wasn’t the same.
Looking at this decent food list, which I need to review in detail again to figure where we are going with trying other things, I was reminded that he seemed to react heavily to sucking on raisins the girls left on the floor for his benefit. Ditto for a couple of the cranberry whatever juice combos. We’ve gone almost exclusively into powdered drink mixes, mainly lemonade, but also fruit punch and - though the girls haven’t warmed to it - iced tea. Lack of juice may also be helping Valerie, though if that was a factor, it was still at least 90% the milk.
I’m barely staying awake, so this is probably rambling and incoherent, and likely incomplete. Oh well. I had some pictures to post, and will have some stunning ones after the camera is next downloaded. He really put on a show today.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Jay: Postpourri
Gloria Constance Irving would have been 75 today. She was the second child of seven and first daughter of three of my mother’s parents. She died February 12, 1934.
Nine months isn’t as young as I grew up thinking it was. There’s a lot of distinctive person there, and a lot of intensive time spent. With that sharpened appreciation of just how traumatic it had to be, I’ve always sort of kept my fingers mentally crossed and noted the passing of the nine month point as significant.
Which in our observation it is regardless. We have a theory of nine months inside and nine months outside before baby is done cooking, after observing how dramatically they leap into clearer personhood at nine months.
Henry will be nine months old tomorrow.
Henry is on the verge of taking steps, having become talented at standing and even doing stuff like drinking while he stands.
Henry appears to have survived trying green beans last night, and enjoyed them, so that’s good. The other day, Deb rubbed his belly with wool yarn to test his reaction, of which one had been apparent. Nothing. Later, I tested Suave shampoo, Irish Spring, soy oil, pork grease (which would also have contained traces of soy oil used in the pan originally), my antiperspirant, our current bar of hand soap, and Equate liquid hand soap, all rubbed on his skin. That might not say anything about reaction to ingesting the edible ones. Nothing. Well, except maybe a tiny little reaction, small enough not to be certain, to the pork grease of all things, and which I only tried because he’d eaten pork as part of a meal he seemed to and shouldn’t possibly have been able to get itchy from. But he may also have eaten found food and reacted to that.
In general, he’s been good and we’ve been managing it pretty well, but against food boredom for him we vainly struggle.
I survived the Easter egg hunt gathering yesterday. Which was made interesting by an inexplicable flareup of knee pain, which had been kind of in check until I went down the stairs, and by Valerie gluing herself to me almost the entire time. Sadie seemed like she’d be standoffish forever, but she’s totally confident, self-directed, and interactive with other people. She had a blast, flying a kite, and is excited that the wind she so loathes is actually good for something.
The kids got in last straw trouble last night, though, after Sadie was caught puring water out of the tub, onto the floor, which required two additional bath mats to get mostly dry. No more bath toys, and that’s one of the reasons I’m in a clean and organize the place mood today, trying to get them reordered.
Also on the agenda, I have to pick up a couple groceries, and Deb needs to get material for a custom order.
And on that note, and seeing other people start to get up, off I go.
Well, except to note that I appear to be down another pound this morning, which makes 46 from my peak and 36 this year. Yay!
Well, and except to note that I was able to solve an RSS problem for Ith that had been longstanding. Go me! (It was actually easy to diagnose.)
Friday, May 16, 2008
Jay: Speaking of Milk
Since eliminating milk - just milk, not All Things Containing Dairy - Valerie has regained bladder control to an apparently normal degree. That means instead of just spontaneously leaking everywhere, maybe leaving a trail even if she heads to the bathroom, she only wets on the floor, toys, furniture or whatever when she intends to express her disapproval with the Gross Favoritism we show her brother, or that sort of thing.
Juice might also be a factor, as they’ve been drinking lemonade and even Sadie hasn’t had juice lately. Lemonade has the benefit of being apparently safe for the baby, or at least not terribly overt. They’ve had some fruit, but not a lot, and mainly bananas.
Since Sadie is the only milk drinker remaining, besides my sometimes having a glass of it, we’re probably going to let it run out. I’ll make Sadie’s “coffee” the same way I make Valerie’s, which is how we always did it if the milk ran out. Instead of coffee, sugar, a bunch of milk, it’s coffee, sugar, a bunch of dry creamer, stir and dissolve, fill with cold water.
Kid invasion and that’s about it anyway.
Jay: Cauliflower
The baby appears not to be allergic to cauliflower, and seemed enthusiastic about the sample of it he had last night. Not what I was intending to feed him next, but I’d gotten some cheap, we happened to be having it, I had reason to expect it to be okay, and he’d been just long enough since Yet Another Milk Incident. Sadie has an almost impossible time keeping her milk where he can’t get it.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Jay: Like Flipping a Switch
Just a quick update before the baby finishes waking after going on a three hour nap.
Valerie had no milk this morning.
It’s been like flipping a switch and turning the bladder control issue off.
She still had less coffee in it that had been the case, but I gave her coffee the way we would if we were out of milk, using a bunch of dry creamer and then diluting most of the glass with cold water.
Its possible it’s also other food factors, which yesterday saw the beginning of reducing for her (I created a dish for supper that even the baby could eat, which was so delicious it needs a write-up… if only I had a food blog- oh wait!), but milk would seem to be the big thing.
Update:
Of course, the peetastic one having greater control means she can be far more spectacular at the angry house cat thing that she’d been exhibiting as well, from before she completely lost it. In this case I suspect she was mad at Sadie for hogging my computer, but they’re both banished from sitting in my desk chair again. I might be able to sit in it with the giant bath towel folded on it, after having used two other towels to sop it up first. I’ve never seen her produce that kind of output other than in the potty. She was clearly holding it and released on demand, which her smirk seemed to confirm.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Jay: Food Sensitivities
You all know that Henry has food sensitivities. Those see to be multifaceted, depending how observationally off some of it may have been.
Milk is in a class of its own. He appeared to get an immediate rash where milk touched his skin, and if he drinks milk - but it’s always in the form of coffee or strawberry milk his sisters have left where he can reach - he gets itchy and miserable to the point of needing Benadryl shortly after.
Bananas are in a class of their own, potentially related to latex allergies.
Everything else seems to relate to salicylates. If you search for salicylate sensitivity, you can get an idea the foods involved, which can vary by person, variety, location where grown, and manner of processing. Pears are about as safe as it gets, and he can demonstrably eat canned pear halves in heavy syrup without issue. However, he just as demonstrably can’t drink pear juice, which is concentrated and isn’t carefully segregated from the peel in processing. Pear was an expensive substitute for apple, which we’d been giving him as a safe food and juice nobody could ever be allergic to, and the absence of which for two days unintentionally made him heal as fully as he’s done since he started eating food. Grape juice was a clear reaction. Consume it, wait briefly, go crazed with rash and itching.
Foods he reacts to also seem not to digest well.
At this point, he can eat meat, rice, oatmeal, white sugar, water, butternut, potatoes, carrots and sweet potatoes, but those last two are relatively high and we may be setting him off if we give him too much at once. Probably forgot something there.
He has no overt allergy, apparently, to peanut butter, eggs, corn, or wheat. He did get especially itchy the other day after eating Play-Doh, but not sure it was that, and obviously that’s a big exception.
All of this is confused by the fact he scratches as if he’s itchy when he gets sleepy, and apparently when he’s in pain. He also gets worst drool rash ever.
A lot of dried herbs/spices are a problem. We noticed a possible correlation for the first time the other day when he got some of the outside of chicken that was heavy on black pepper, as well as having some other things on it.
So that’s him. What was interesting is researching and realizing I may have the same sensitivity to some degree, and that it could be the answer to a range of symptoms over my life that include the mystery skin pigmentation and bladder urgency and, when I was little, bed wetting. It’s made me curious about details of my diet when I was a kid in the bed wetting stage.
Which Valerie is in, and we might have chalked up to her age, except it’s gotten to be total loss of control at random. In the last couple days, we seem to have proven a correlation between stuff that’s part of the same sensitivity, and Valerie’s issues. She gets mysterious headaches, perhaps more of them than we realize, as well as having the bladder issues. She also went from being the happiest baby to being rather somber, which made me wonder about the extent of the headaches or if there’s other pain. It’s painful to hear here declare “I’m a happy girl” in a tone that sounds the opposite, like she’s trying to convince us and herself it’s not the end of the world.
This could also be completely unrelated, but I had her doing well for several hours the other day, with the change seemingly triggered by consumption of pear juice and Cran-Apple. Ironically, in an effort to keep her more hydrated, to reduce the problems.
As far as we can tell, the closest Sadie has come to any of this is developing contact rashes from tomato-based products touching her face. She seems to be able to eat or drink anything with impunity.
So. We’re not necessarily going on a crash elimination diet for three of us, but we are going to start changing what Valerie in particular gets, monitoring specifically what happens.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Jay: Farming
We have the option of planting stuff on a small patch out back. We’re talking maybe 3 tomato plants of decent size and maybe a couple other odds and ends, depending how much of the false bamboo I want to try to eradicate. I was thinking that we could throw some stuff in containers on top of where the bamboo grows, effectively quashing it, but that begs the question of what for containers.
So I’m trying to decide whether to buy seeds and such and start tomatoes inside, or if I should just buy some. Trouble is, a flat typically has more plants than I think I can fit, so I’d probably want to share with someone. That and trying to decide what else. Tomatoes are obvious, and reasonably compact. The neighbor has promoted the idea of cucumbers, but those take more space. Though it could be fun to plant something that roams and encourage it to encroach on the bamboo. Peppers are fussy, in my experience. I don’t care for leaf lettuce.
Anyway, half the reason for this is the kids - teaching them how stuff is raised, and where things like tomatoes come from. Sadie will think it’s cool.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Jay: Blargh
I feel lousy this morning. Got enough sleep, even if much of it was in Sadie’s bed because she apparently decided our bed would be better and warmer. Well, “even if” makes her bed sound bad, and actually it’s awesome. I may have gotten deeper sleep there. I noticed Valerie eventually abandoned her bed too, presumably joining the crowd in ours.
I woke up from one of those crazy mashed up dreams. It involved starting a job, and the place or aspects brought in elements of multiple past employers and situations. The place was named Halliday, which is one job. The lobby was right out of Corporate Software, which later became Stream. I was supposed to start at $8.00 an hour, which happens to be minimum wage in Massachusetts currently. I speculated they might start at slightly higher, which Flatley Company did when I worked at Waterford Village. Minimum wage then was $2.90 and they paid $3.00. Then minimum wage went to $3.10 and they paid… $3.10, which completely destroyed some notions I had.
I was talking with someone, speculating that the company might pay me a little above the minimum. Sure enough, it was going to be $8.02, which somehow morphed into the exact same thing as the $12.02 I started at with Corporate Software. Anyway, even the reference to pay rate is a reference back to prior jobs.
The exterior of the building was some kind of generic cross between places, hard to say one more than another, but there might have been elements of a Christy’s Market, adding another old job.
Later, when I was on the job, there was a scene in an apartment. Apparently apartments were part of what the place did, which goes back to Waterford Village. It was vacant, had been mine, still had some of my stuff in it, and was not going to be rented any time soon. This was like the office I had in Easton, which took me a month extra to move out of after the last official month, with them in no hurry for it. A guy named Matthew showed up in the dream. We once shared an apartment in Greenfield, and I was telling him he might soon want to get his stuff out of this one that he’d left it in with me. He hadn’t even realized I’d moved. Shades of former partners having left stuff in the office in Easton, which had to go to them, be disposed of, be adopted, or be stored.
Confusingly, in a related sequence, I was showing someone how many bookcases I was going to be able to fit, in a ridiculous arrangement, in just the entryway/kitchen area alone. The someone was an amalgamation of a former partner and someone I didn’t work closely with at Stream, but who was similarly brilliant.
Very strange. I also remember thinking that I could crash in the apartment if needed, like if I needed to stay over at work since the place was vacant, I had access to it, and they’d made me welcome to use it, short of actually moving in.
Lots of stuff to do today. Hope I can remember what it is! I have some e-mailing and calling and going and researching and writing and food storing and cleaning and organizing and so forth to be done.
We received a book yesterday that we’d order super cheap from Half.com, a used copy of Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. I need to do more than skim the intro, but it should be interesting. Sadie is beyond ready. She fell asleep last night with a book named “Ted” open, pages down on her chest. She studies and recites books from memory. She knows the letters. She has an idea of some words, like the Q thing she identifies with closing a program (Quit), that made he so excited to learn about how q and u go together.
This morning she spent some time on my lap while I didn’t write and I did an impromptu tiny lesson on m and s, which are the first ones covered in the book. She can point them out on the keyboard (and sound like I’m stupid to ask her) and I had her say the sounds. The actual lessons take about 15 minutes. Not a bad amount of time to devote, once or twice a day. I doubt she’ll need the whole thing or want to be held back to that speed once we’re rolling.
Anyway, I need to go take care of stuff in the kitchen. And post the birthday I didn’t know about before I started this. Sooner or later I’ll have no birthday-free days.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Jay: Poor Henry
He had one of his worst breakouts last night. What changed? We gave him pear juice as a replacement for apple and grape. It should be safer. What I gave him wasn’t watered down as much as we usually do. Traditionally the purpose of juice for us has been to make water taste better for the kids. Luckily, he has always liked plain cold water.
The thing is, after deciding it had been the pear juice, with a chance it could have been beef, pork, or some random thing (caught him sucking on a raisin at one point, snagged from where it had fallen from the table to Sadie’s chair), it turned out Sadie had left a cup of strawberry milk on the floor where we wouldn’t see it readily, but Henry might easily have gotten into it. That’s candle to moth. I took Valerie’s cup away before he could drink any coffee milk from it, disappointing him at one point. If he finds them he will drink from them. It’s time to make the girls drink at the table, period. They’ve already gotten used to eating only at the table with few exceptions.
None of which explains why during the night I started itching like crazy, and haven’t entirely stopped. That could mean something that bothers me is bothering him, so is it food we both ate, soap I used, or what? Or is it coincidence?
On another note, Deb found dairy-free margarine, the trick to which was getting the “light” variety, completely soy based. It’s not very good, and expressly says not to use it in cooking, but at least it’s something.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Jay: Preoccupied
I was working on a post about recent work experiences, but decided I’d cut to a this and that post and save the other for later.
Things got more interesting again with the baby. Henry is apparently allergic to milk. He got into a sippy cup one of the girls had, got a meaningful amount, and where it dribbled down his front, he got contact hives.
So we are up to milk and presumably milk products, with it all the clearer the big incident was cheese-related, bananas, apples, grapes, juice of the above, apparently broccoli, and I could swear I’m forgetting something else. The seems to be able to eat/touch column includes rice, oatmeal, potatoes, chicken, beef, pork, butternut, carrots, and sweet potatoes. We’re reasonably confident about pear. He tasted Valerie’s cranberry strawberry juice today with no obvious or immediate consequences, but hard to say. The girls aren’t going to be easy to train. I got cranberry specifically because we know apple and grape juices are bad, and in case it’s good for Val’s urinary system. At the same time, wanting it so tasty she drinks plenty and stays hydrated.
Good thing he loves rice cakes.
This means Deb is back off dairy again, and I’ll avoid it for cooking anything we’ll all eat. We really need to find margarine that contains no dairy products.
I have so much on my plate, I’m lucky to slip in a post. I had a crazy, way underpaid bit of work Sunday and Monday. I helped someone with a computer speedup and de-infestation yesterday. Apparently I have some big fans at the old stomping grounds. The bit of work yesterday might lead to more. I have some work we’re calling tech-marketing that I need to ramp up and spend some real time on, getting a handle on it. The cool thing is it reminds me of my favorite college class, which was named management seminar, and was a graduate-style case course on strategic management and, by extension, business development. It’s like being handed a case to work on for real. There’s some writing work still pending, which I need to check on, status-wise.
There’s everything being made interesting due to the baby’s medical/diet issues.
There’s an ongoing, fits and starts reorganization and cleanup of the office and the house generally, purging stuff we don’t need, traveling a bit lighter.
There’s the project of thanking all the awesome people who donated to us recently, which is up near the top of the priority list for today.
There’s marketing. It looks increasingly like I may be able to piece together a living from this and that, and may be able to do that and spend a lot of time on the home front, while Deb has the potential of some supplemental outside work. However, the marketing includes of her, on the idea we can both do this and that without more than part time or hit and run outside the house work.
So that’s the stuff I’m working on or concerned with, that may mean a post is slow to appear if it’s somewhat extraneous.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Jay: How About Them Apples
Real quick, as we’re busy with stuff this morning, a Henry update.
It seems apples are also a problem, at least if not cooked to death, even if not as bad as bananas. And we’d fed them as one of the likely “safe” foods.
On the 15th he started full fledged, go anywhere in the house crawling, which made him much happier.
Yesterday he managed to use an upside-down plastic bin as if it were one of those push walkers, getting on his feet and walking while pushing it.
When asked if he wanted to go on an outing today, he said ‘I go,” which is how we decided we would all go.
A shame he seems affected by pollen and dust and such, with the food just part of it.
I pointedly bought him two sweet potatoes the other day, as both a safe food and his favorite of all time. Also got a small amount of broccoli, so maybe we’ll make that the next reintroduction. He adored it, and any green veggie, when he had it before.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Jay: Interview With Carly (No, Not the Irish Singer from AI)
Sean Hackbarth interviewed Carly Fiorona, with economic policy questions for John McCain. It’s interesting and not all that long, so you might like to check it out. It includes a question from me, which I gave to Sean phrased as:
Maybe ask if he’d do anything to stop the ethanol-from-food madness, encourage waste biomass or alternatives instead.
It is worth noting that, like me, Sean is looking for work. I’ve known him since 2003, when I started blogging. He’s been blogging longer than most of us, and has some cool experience.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Jay: Crunch Time
This is going to be a different post from the one I started the night before last, with the same title. That one started out on the topic of needing to locate the taxes I’d done, for the partnership and personal federal, and to do the state ones and get them mailed. I since located the partnership ones and mailed them, along with two books from Deb’s book shop. One was an advanced computer book from my collection, so went for $17.50 at about the cheapest price available. For us that’s real money. When it arrives in the twice a month payout. I also rewrote the federal to be neater, and did the state, cursing Romney over RomneyCare. There’s now a form HC, which at 3 pages if you need the whole thing is longer than the main Form 1 at 2 pages. I had the urge to ignore it, but you are supposed to use it to determine your personal exemption. By running too low on money to pay the last $1300 of insurance for Deb and the kids to cover October through December, and failing to apply for subsidized coverage, we paid a penalty of $220 in extra taxes.
Anyway, that’s all done. I have to mail those today.
Looks like the interview last week was a bust, which is fascinating in that it was a temporary gig. Which I suspect they planned to try to get someone permanent out of, and looked accordingly. The interview the week before was obviously a bust as well.
I have a possible something in the works with an internet marketing business. I have someone putting in my resume for a well-paid support job that just happens to be in Lowell, so it’d be on the $25 a day commuting plan. If I can stop worrying about money and the household long enough to chase an income just slightly harder and keep the household, something - even something great - should come pretty fast. It’s probably a matter of keeping the balls in the air a few more weeks.
Trouble is, we’re out of time, and while some awesome people have picked up distress, we haven’t been forthcoming on just where things stand. I’ve threatened to have a fundraising edition of Carnival of the Capitalists, even though I’m too busy trying to raise money to try to raise money. I’ve pointed out the resume, Deb’s Etsy shop and used book shop, and my availability for side work.
I haven’t asked for donations, apart from whatever is implicit in making the PayPal button available. And it feels wrong to do so, much as we get annoyed by unhelpful people who dwell on the fact history ought have been different, rather than acting on (or ignoring) what is. I could say and rue much about how we got here, but that doesn’t keep us from getting evicted.
Then again, I’d rather ask individuals for help than use public assistance paid for with stolen money. Or worse, stolen from the future, given the financing of so much of it through debt, creating a future need for inflation and/or higher taxes. But what do I know. I’m just a crackpot who saw the housing/credit bubble vividly starting years ago.
So yeah. Pretty much asking now, as I prepare to mail the tax returns and then throw ourselves on the mercy of the gas & electric department to avoid having those shut off tomorrow. When I gave them Henry’s birth certificate, which by itself should give us until August 20, they also wanted an income number. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I’d made last year. I would never have guessed it would be low enough for the EIC, or that rent, medical and health insurance technically took 2/3 of it. There was enough in residual, undrawn funds that it carried us a long time in the shutdown of the business (in which mailing the tax returns yesterday is the last major act, though I’ll have stuff to handle for a while).
If blogging is a bit slow, or you see as much on other blogs as here to keep them up enough to justify their value to advertisers, it’ll be because we’re scrambling. The ads, the selling things, the found money, the incredibly generous donations we already received, the Etsy sales - nothing to sneeze at but also in jeopardy because you have to have money for materials and shipping - and the bits of side work here and there only go so far. The fact I tend to stock the pantry as if I’m expecting to ride out the end of civilization - or something like this bad stretch - only helps stretch things so long before real money needs to be spent on groceries and sundries again.
Of course, if we lose power, that’s the end game. What money we do make is online. That would trigger a total meltdown of our situation. I don’t think that should be a problem, but we do have to start paying them Real Soon Now. We’ve been managing to get $250 or $300 a week to the landlord, staying basically half a month to a month or so behind. If we miss a week, game over, barring something like working with us because I just started a job and it’s all going to change. This week we’re sketchy but should manage it. Next week? No idea. I expect to do some small side work early in the week, but not likely enough.
Anyway, if you can hit the donate button, even in small amounts, that would be amazing. Alternatively, use the address deb at neatlytangled dot com for PayPal, as hers doesn’t have a transfer limit (to get it from there to the bank) and is useful that way. If we’ve ever entertained you through blogging, given you helpful advice, or even if you think I’m an idiot but want to keep the kids fed and off the street, perhaps it’s worth something.
Onward! Time to take care of business. Mail tax returns. Deal with utility crisis. Try to shake loose work. Planning to add Deb’s resume to the ones online and put a “hire us” box in the sidebar where “donate” is now, soon as I get a chance. So on. So forth.
Thanks for helping, or even just reading and quietly not saying or doing something unhelpful, no matter what you really think.
Update:
You guys are amazing. Not to replace individual thanks, but holy cow, we’re just blown away.
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