The Ramblings of a Mental Meanderthal

I've had ramen since my first post, but it wasn't any of the new stuff I've bought in the last week or two. I do want to say this, however: I purchased two bags of Ramen Bae dried toppings a few months ago. The seafood mix goes beautifully with the shrimp flavor of Maruchan or Nissin's ramen/cup of noodles. It smells potently fishy when you open the bag, but when you eat the re-hydrated toppings in your soup, it's heaven. I also bought the veggie mix, which complements every flavor of Maruchan and Nissin ramen I've had. Two heaping tablespoons added at the same time as the noodles, and it's delicious. Ramen Bae: 10/10! If you like the speed and flavor of ramen but don't want to dirty more pots or pans prepping stuff to go with it, get Ramen Bae. I paid about $36 per bag, and it's worth it to me. Today's ramen was Momofuku's Soy and Scallion flavor. This is my first time eating this ramen, so I followed the instructions and didn't add or d...

I've been chowing down on Nissin and Maruchan brands of ramen since I was a kid, but it's really bad for you, so I'm trying to find ramen that has a modicum of nutrition. So I'm trying different brands, different toppings, adding some stuff, and letting you know how it turns out. (Really, it's so I remember not to buy the stuff I don't like when I shop again.) I'm a wuss when it comes to heat (picante), so I'm not trying flavors I obviously won't like. This is 50-year-old white lady ramen. First up! Mike's Mighty Good Craft Ramen, Vegetarian Vegetable Ramen Soup! This is a cup of noodles, and the ball of noodles inside is very small. Like, fold a pair of socks that fit a four-year-old kid into a ball, and that's the size of this ball of noodles. It comes with a spice packet and an oil packet that I add after the noodles cook for six minutes. It has a lot of taste. People who like peppers will probably enjoy the flavor, but it didn't suit ...

So I started working at the bank when I was 21. Several months later, they sent a kid from another branch to substitute for someone going on vacation. He was younger than me, and I didn’t fancy him, but he was handsome and personable. Turns out he’d started working for the bank a couple weeks after I did. He rocketed up the ladder and ended up a branch president five minutes after he earned his bachelor’s while I was still struggling to prove I was good enough to be a new accounts rep. He was sweet, and he had good taste in clothes. He had a pair of shoes that, on two occasions years apart, I complimented him on … and he wore them for the rest of that week. Ah, the power I have over men. (The only power.) I haven’t seen him since 2005, when I quit to work at the library. Like I said, I never had a crush on him, but every time I heard Sixpence None the Richer’s song “Kiss Me,” with its line You’ll wear those shoes, and I will wear that dress , it reminded me of him. The s...

"I wish I had a river I could skate away on." Joni Mitchell

Back in September, I said was not looking forward to Christmas. For the most part, everything I said would happen happened. Social media is tough, because you see presents, trees, matching pajamas, and actual families getting together. The best things I experienced today were Chinese food and two naps.  Dad talks a good fight in an attempt to make December 25 about my birthday. I appreciate his intentions. I cannot separate my birthday from Christmas in my mind, so a refusal to observe the latter just leaves me with an unprecedented sense of loss and loneliness. I managed to escape some of it yesterday by watching Man of Steel , which I think is a pretty good film, and Batman vs. Superman , which has its moments but is just weird. Even as I was thinking "This movie is so bad," at least I wasn't wallowing in my grief. I was eating junk food and disintegrating in front of the computer, but at least I haven't succumbed to getting drunk. If I ever started drinking alcohol...

I have a Christmas birthday. This year is a ends-in-zero year, so it's a milestone of sorts. It'll be the first birthday and the first Christmas since Mom died. Dad doesn't celebrate Christmas, won't wish me a merry Christmas, and sneers when I wish him a merry Christmas. I get a "Happy birthday," though he hasn't done presents in ages, and Chinese food delivered. Last Christmas, Dad and I went to church and then went to the rehab center where Mom was. Dad saw her unconscious and struggling to breathe and demanded a ride to 7-11 so he could get a lot of beer and get drunk. The next day, I got an earful of complaints about how awful it was for him to see her like that. I got to see her like that at least once a week. Yes, Dad. It's awful. When he was well enough to drive himself 250 miles each way to visit my brother in prison, Mom and I encouraged him to go and visit his son. Partly, it was to encourage him to do something he really wanted, but mostly,...

It's Mother's Day. Mom has been on my mind every minute today. She is most days, except when work keeps me too busy to think, or I've been able to lose myself while reading or watching something. I just went to the kitchen to consider dinner options. I opened the fridge and started sobbing. No clue where it came from; it just hit me like a train. I have a friend Ellie, who also works with the kids at church. Her mother died two weeks before mine. Their relationship was tough, due to her mom's abuse and undiagnosed mental illnesses. Ellie is the oldest daughter, so she did a lot of the work of raising her siblings. So her experience as a daughter was very dissimilar to mine. But she still has grief today, too. The men took over the kids' Sunday School hour today. No classes, just playing a version of baseball with the kids' singing determining their team's progress around the bases. Neither Ellie nor I wanted to be with the women being celebrated in the churc...

Mom died three days ago. Every minute feels like nails on a chalkboard. I deleted her profiles at Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+ earlier this evening. I just went back to one of them and lost my breath when I didn't see her name. I guess it's going to be a lot of contradictions now. I want Dad to feel like he has more space and presence here, but everything I create for him takes away from Mom. Someone is coming to pick up her oxygen condensers tomorrow. I don't have a problem with that, but packing up all her medications for safe disposal? I wept. Oh, G-d. My mother, my wonderful, patient, sweet mother is dead. I couldn't stay long after all the monitors in the hospital went flat/zero. She looked less like Mom and more like something -- instead of someone -- every minute. The first time she was in a hospital and then a nursing facility was seven years ago. I felt like she should be smiled at by at least one person who wasn't getting paid to do it. It was almost alwa...

Whatever I'm doing when I'm at home, it feels like I'm carrying a box of rocks around. Each rock is something for me to remember: a task to do, an appointment to write down, a medication to take, a timer to set. I walk around worried I'm going to forget something before I get the chance to accomplish it, or at least write it down. I am very easily distracted, and I forget stuff a lot. I walk into my parents' view, and it's like they think I blinked into existence just to do things for them. Don't forget to do my laundry. Since you're up, get me an ice cream sandwich. Have you emptied the bins yet? Go look in my bottom drawer for [thing] so you can clean it; I need it on Friday. The reason I emerged from my room was to do something that would lighten my own load a little. I finish a task so one of my own rocks will vanish, but every task they unload on me is another rock. I ask them not to unload it all on me at once because I will forget not only their s...

This is not a dissertation or even a proper essay, just getting some thoughts out. Babbling, really. The women's chorus I sing in is working on a song with lyrics penned by Anne Frank. (Edited, I think, but pretty close to her original words.) The piece we're singing includes the words, "I lie in bed at night after ending my prayers with the words, Thank you, God, for all that is good and dear and beautiful , and I'm filled with joy." I've had that part of the song stuck in my mind most of the evening. (I've had possible good news, but other factors have still coaxed me into anxiety. I'm still trying to look on the bright side until I know more.) I've also thought about a book by Rabbi Naomi Levy. She has written (possibly also edited) prayers for people to utter in certain situations, like success on a job hunt, the death of a child or spouse or parent, a difficult diagnosis, the birth of a baby, or success in a specific endeavor. I was raised to ...

 ... but mine is not one of them. I tried to head off a potential argument between my parents and ended up hurting Mom's feelings instead. I apologized for saying what I did and for hurting her feelings, and then I retreated to cry because she feels bad enough already without me piling more on. Yay guilt. Aside: I really need to cry more. When I finally do get upset enough to cry, I lose all composure and brood for an hour, minimum. If I find a way to cry more often, each weepy session might be less debilitating. Dad came in and tried to comfort me by saying he and Mom will be dead soon and no longer a burden to me. Two things: 1. I am not comforted by the idea of being alone in this world, with a horrible brother in prison to support (and the constant terror that he will be released before he dies), no partner, no kids, and no close friends nearby. 2. I have had that exact thought many times, and I feel guilty enough when I think it. To hear one of my parents voice it is horrifyin...

So this is weird. There are two PC-type computers here at home: my desktop and Mom's laptop. They are not connected, but both use the same modem. I do not know why this happens, but when I change the desktop background image on my computer, Mom's computer desktop background changes, too. Though not always right away. Sometimes there's a lag. Yes, I mentioned trolling Dad. Mom doesn't use her computer much. (She hasn't even been home for like five weeks; she's been in hospital and doing inpatient physical therapy.) Dad uses her laptop more than she does. So he's the one who notices when the laptop's desktop background magically decides to change without either of us touching it. Twelve hours ago, it was a picture of that walrus that made its way across the Atlantic and is bugging people in Wales, Ireland, and France. A 2500 pound pinniped who wants to climb into little rowboats and ends up sinking them. Last night, someone asked a question at Twitter abou...

Not really, but a tiny bit. Am I gay? Not that I know of. Am I straight? Nope. Despite some initial misgivings, I accepted the calling of Primary Music Leader a couple of months ago. Mom, who had the same calling some thirty years ago, suggested a game where the kids choose leaves off a tree, and the back side of each leaf names a song we then sing. I drew a tree and put Valentines on the tree. This rainbow was one of them. (Others included zig-zags, dots, hearts, and a sun.) For the record (and that isn't saying much because one cannot be sure without a lot of experimentation that the LDS Church doesn't approve of), I'm ace. Or ace-ish. Perhaps demi, because I did feel that for someone once ... I think. It's been a while. I enjoy beauty on an aesthetic level, I long for a partner in life, and I am attracted to personalities, but sex is something I'm content to bypass. Okay, so the colors for an asexual/demisexual person are white, black, grey, and purple. But I lik...

Lemme start by saying that Mormons don't do Lent. It is something Christians picked up in the first few centuries after the New Testament, but it isn't in the Bible itself, except for the actual deed Lent is based on: Christ fasting for forty days in the wilderness before His death and resurrection. But some Mormons observe it anyway. I have started a number of times, but the first time I decided to observe Lent was the only time I was even remotely successful. I went meatless from Ash Wednesday to Easter Morning, except for five or six occasions when I chose to eat meat or had no other option at someone else's house. It was an interesting exercise, mostly living on cold cereal, salads, pasta, cheese, and beans. For once, I thought of Lent before Fat Tuesday and decided to remind myself what it's about. I started by listing the dates of Lent on my whiteboard and then a lot of goals I could set for myself. Then I Googled "Mormon Lent" and just "Lent."...

While I managed to surpass my quota of reading 52 books in 2020, I did not finish either the Reading Glasses Challenge or the Professional Book Nerds Challenge for last year. It bugs me a little because I don't like to leave reading challenges undone -- if I can't succeed at reading , I won't succeed at anything! -- but it was a hell of a year. (Like this one hasn't been, but that's another story.) I made a spreadsheet for the 2021 reading challenges from Reading Glasses, the Professional Book Nerds, and PopSugar. I may finish the first two, but I highly doubt I will do all fifty of the last one. But I'm keeping track anyway. I also set a quota of fifty-two books at Goodreads. GR doesn't discriminate between new-to-me books and rereads; if it's in their database and I've read it this year, it counts. (I went back and checked my 2020 books on GR; At least sixty were new to me. I'm not sure about the Lumberjanes comic book series, because I'd r...

So I've been making this cake for over 35 years. Literally! I entered it in a baking contest through my city's parks and recreation when I was eleven. (It got the blue ribbon.) The recipe says to bake it in a 9x13 Pyrex and slap buttercream frosting on the top, but I wanted to increase the frosting-to-cake ratio by making it as a layer cake. I tried it tonight, and the result was delicious. INGREDIENTS 1 Duncan Hines spice cake mix 1 can Comstock apple pie filling 2 eggs 1/4 cup vegetable oil INSTRUCTIONS FOR A GLASS 9x13 PAN Preheat the oven to 350 F. Pour the oil into the pan and tilt to spread, covering the bottom and sides. pour pie filling, eggs, and cake mix directly into the pan and mix with a fork. The mix usually has lumps, so this may take a while. Bake for 40-50 minutes. The toothpick test works on this cake. Cool completely in the pan. Frost with buttercream or cinnamon buttercream frosting (see below). INSTRUCTIONS FOR A LAYER CAKE Preheat the oven to 350F (325 F i...

So if I get a calling (job) in Primary (kids' Sunday School), I can influence a few dozen kids to become feminists who do my bidding and use their limitless energy to take over a small country, yes? Awesome. I always wanted minions. Joking aside, I am not a child person. I am not a person who is thrilled at new interactions with an ex boyfriend who got a little creepy after the relationship ended. (I've been asked to be the music director, and he's the pianist.) But I am a music person. And I wouldn't get thrown into the deep end, because church will be via Zoom for at least another six months (probably), and I can learn the ropes in the interim. If I decide to do it. I can say no.

When I was 20, about to turn 21, I worked at a dry cleaners. The day before Thanksgiving, Dad drove me to work. I usually drove myself, but he needed the car that day. I walked in, and the boss put a frozen turkey in my arms. It had to weigh twenty pounds. I had no idea what to do with the damn thing. Dad had already left, and the turkey was bigger than our employee fridge. So it sat on the floor and defrosted, surrounded by an ever-increasing puddle of condensation. By the time Dad arrived, it had thawed through. Mom looked at it and decided we'd cook it instead of the smaller one she'd bought. (I don't remember what we did with the spare.) Because it was mine, she said I was going to cook it. I don't remember much beyond getting up early, being slightly freaked out by the innards inside the cavities, searching the exterior for feather remnants, and Mom looking satisfied that she wouldn't spend the whole day on her feet. She supervised and instructed, and she still...

This is a take on "funeral potatoes," which is a Mormon thing. Someone I follow at Twitter asked for the recipe. I had to call Auntie to get exact quantities and sizes, as Mom's old recipe card is not very precise. INGREDIENTS 1 cube (1/2 lb) salted butter 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup, 10 1/2 oz. 16 oz. sour cream (pint) bunch of green onions, chopped (use all of the white and most of the green) 3/4 lb. shredded cheddar cheese (a good brand that melts well, like Tillamook) 2 1/2 lbs. russet potatoes, peeled, boiled, and cooled INSTRUCTIONS Peel the potatoes and cut into pieces about half the size of your fist. Do your best to make the potato sizes uniform on at least one axis; it doesn't matter if they are rounds in two or six inches in diameter, so long as the thickness is the same. Put them in a large pot, cover entirely with cold water, and throw in a tablespoon of salt or a bouillon cube (I like Knorr's vegetable). Put the pot on the stove on high hea...

Warning: please don't expect me to be 100% coherent at 4 am. After four weeks of having a stationary bike and riding it most days, I finally sat down and Googled a few exercise terms to find out what kinds of cardio workouts there are and which ones I think would be best for me, how often I should do them, and all that. (The bike has an odometer to keep track of how many "miles" it's been ridden. I hit 75 miles tonight. 75 miles in less than a month; I am a boss . And then I Googled how many calories in a pound and in an ounce, and according to the bike's calorie counter, I lost a single ounce. That brought me back from any grandiose sense of pride.) My goal tonight was to maintain a speed of 10-11 mph in sixth gear (the bike has eight settings, with eight being the most difficult), and I probably managed it about half the time. The bike has pulse sensors in the handles, so if I grip it steadily for a full minute, I can get an idea of my pulse rate. (I hat...