Dish Fetish

At this point I think there is no use denying that I am absolutely and completely obsessed with dishes. But it's not just me, guys. Oh no. I think a majority of humans have a special place in their heart and house for their dishes of choice. I mean. Why else would there be so many different dishes in existence, far more than we could ever use, ranging from bizarre to exquisite.

In the houses where I grew up, we used the same dishes for as long as I could remember until my brother purchased some more modern ones for the parents this last year. They had gone out in style and now they are somewhat back in style, though they were never my favorites. I guess they were fun and sturdy.

But even there, and all over, we have soup bowls and cereal bowls and nice china and casserole dishes and plates and salad plates and glasses and mugs and cups and ice cream bowls. You get the picture. Very easily one bowl could cut it for soup, salad, cereal, entrees, and dessert alike. One mug could serve as a cup a margarita glass a glass for wine etc.

Part of the obsession is from a culinary view certain foods and beverages are ideal in certain environments and not any one dish can provide all of those environments efficiently. Part of the obsession is tradition. And part of the obsession is that a dish is in fact a part of the culinary experience.

And about that. Further proof that we are obsessed with dishes. Dishes have seasons and fashions just as often as clothing. Go over to a store and there will be lots of standards that span over years and years, but there will also be seasonal fare.

Target gets me every time. Especially when they had the Orla Kiely collection, and now with their Liberty collection. But my favorite dishes of all are vintage. Vintage is a very wide range, granted, and I love almost every movement in that range. What I like the most is that these dishes are often rather on the cheap side. My poor little cupboards are stuffed, and yet I want more dishes.

It seems to me that each day, and especially each occasion, dictates a different set. Not to mention my idea of winter dishes is extremely different than my idea of summer dishes. I mean, I also eat very different foods from day to day, and from season to season. Also, dishes set the mood.

I know many people overlook dishes. The food really is very important too, and I love cooking. But a fine meal served on bland dishes just doesn't cut it for me.

So when I was at the Antique Store today, I had every intention of looking only for a footstool or something that could function as one. But instead, I found these darling custard dishes. I intend to learn how to create custard, just because of them.

I thought the beautiful red of the grapefruit would look nice in them, and I thought they matched up well with our Target Liberty set. This is the last in our most recently acquired batch of grapefruits, and they have been rather on the juicy side. So after these photos, I juiced this grapefruit into an ice tray. The juice pretty much filled the tray, so I added just a pinch of sugar and a trickle of water and put it in the freezer. I hope that they will be quite delicious in our cups of water this dinner.

What a grand day for me and my dish collection.

Addicted to being Addicted

This might be a good place to start for those of you who don't have much personal experience with AA: http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/penn-teller-bullshit-12-stepping/_R4YPBfLS7sXY1H_F8dmLA

My friend posted this on facebook. She is one of my personal heroes, having quit drinking without any of the AA bullshit.

If you think I am being a bit extreme here, please hear me out. I'm not even that interested in discussing the groups merits at large. I think Penn&Teller do a fine job of that in their manner. This is meant to be a personal testimony, so yeah... it's all about me. What follows may not be representative of most AA children, it might not even hold true for my siblings, but I have a hard time believing I am alone in this.

AA has a pervasive quality to it. Even when my parents were around the language they speak with, especially my mother who has bought into the program more thoroughly, is decidedly AA. If my mom ever gives me advice, then it comes from something she has learned at her meetings. But fine, if they want to be brainwashed or even feel like they need to be brainwashed fine. However, I think it severely stunted them at parents. In fact despite the fundamental problems of my early childhood, I think what came later was more damaging by far.

By making AA a cult, by taking away personal decision, I think AA falls short in one obvious and thorough way. I think they don't treat the problem, rather they focus strictly on wiping away the symptoms. Or rather they think they are treating the problem by turning it over to "a higher power" to treat it for them, which is again bullshit.

My mom, and to a certain degree myself, we get addicted to things. My mom has been addicted to lemons, bridge mix, alcohol, other people, movies, certain restaurants, you name it. If you have ever wondered where I get it... The point is, I think it would have helped her more to confront the reasons why she gets addicted, what she is trying to replace, and how to get the real thing rather than a replacement. What I think she is looking for, of course, is simple. Support and then Power. But that has more to do with me and my own beliefs.

You may notice at this point, if you know me well, that my points aren't coming out as clearly or passionately as I'd like. I should tell you this is probably among the 5 toughest blog posts I have ever written. Probably among the 5 toughest things I have ever tried to say in any form. There is a toad in my throat, and my eyes are stinging and wet. But I think this is important. I think it is important to admit to myself, and you, how deep this goes for me.

When I was young, I wet the bed. It was my mother who told me I was making the decision to wet my bed, and she wouldn't continue to support that decision by giving me attention of any kind when it happened. Fine. Okay. But then she would turn around and drive to her meeting the next morning and claim that she couldn't decide whether or not to drink certain substances.

We listened to her cult-speak all through childhood, and yet guess what we all three were doing last St.Pat's Day? That's right, drinking together.

After my mom got really into AA, we really didn't have a mother. We had a crying two year old brat who got addicted to anything that could replace alcohol and yet fall under the heading of "harmless". She got really overweight, so then she had to do OA as well. These meetings, the friends made there, and the people who she "sponsored" were her real children. Everything she said to me was rehearsed. She was literally gone most days and evenings, and when she was home she was on the phone.

Then she even forced us to start going to meetings while she went to meetings. We were the only children there who did not actually remember seeing their parents ever drink. My brother was young enough and imaginative enough that he made up stories about my mom, and my sister and I were regarded as "being in denial".

Again when I was older she would try to coax me into going to meetings with the incentive of lunch afterward. Because alcoholism is a hereditary disease, it was possible for me to have it even if I never touched a drop. When I slapped a girl in high school, part of my punishment was to go to a few meetings.

I do believe alcoholism is a "hereditary disease" if by "hereditary disease" you mean that certain harmful patterns of behavior are environmentally shoved into the next generation. I mean, I looked up to my mom as many children do. I learned from her how to deal with life and make friends and deal with my own mistakes and how to act when something went wrong.

What I am saying amounts to this: The same harmful family cycles that have been recorded in alcoholic families continued in my family despite the absence of any alcohol.

Oh. And meetings were so addictive to my mom that it was considered perfectly rational if she were a complete bitch because she missed a day.

Now my dad, who resisted for many years, has become a full-fledged underling of the cult. That's right, my never-alcoholic-dad who would hardly sip at wine is now an active member of AA. And you know what he says about it?

He says it is great when you are filled with so much guilt and uncertainty to go to a group and listen to stories and realize that everybody has made the same stupid mistakes and worse mistakes even. In other words, if you feel really guilty it feels good to know that lots of other people feel really guilty. Then you can all sit a room and feel guilty, and then you can write down everything you feel guilty for and to whom, and then you can go out and "make amends" and then you can come back the next day and have another guilt-fest. Guilt with a tasty side of guilt. Fuck that shit.

The ironic thing is that my parents' basic philosophies have always been and still are existentialist. And yet they don't recognize it as such, and don't see how everything they have professed to believing directly opposes the brainwashed AA jargon they spew. They don't take responsibility for their own behavior, though from a very young age they have expected us to take full responsibility for any and all of our actions.

So my mom may no longer be an alcoholic, though of course she still says she is, but everything she does she does as an alcoholic, an addict, a person who does not notice how destructive her approach to others and to activities really is. Because, AA is not about overcoming behavioral patterns, no matter how much my mom tries to convince me that they are.

They give some people, the few people who have success with them, exactly what their addict-addicted minds want. They give them something new to obsess over, to focus their lives around, to get addicted to. They tell them it's not their fault, and therefore not a part of their overall life patterns and choices, that they get addicted to things.

In fact, they even give them some of the things they were most trying to replace with their addictions. Social acceptance, attention, power within the group, a distraction, an attraction, a feeling like they aren't alone, something worth living for. All good things, no? I would say no, because all of these good things only exist within the group, they need to continue in the group to continue to have these things, once outside they are a nobody again. They don't have time, and aren't taught how, and are taught that it is in fact not necessary, to get what they really needed all along in their lives at large and in general.

Most damning of all they suggest a new addiction to a "Higher Power". A higher power that at the same time as obviously being equated with God, is brought to the people through "the big book" which replaces or grows equal with the Bible. Such that even when I was a Christian I believed the whole practice to be actually a form of idol-worship.

Oh. And then the money and resources in addition to the time they have wasted on this program are astounding. It isn't okay to go on family vacations, money is an object the whole time if we do, but it's okay to spend money on "retreats". To pay money to go out into a beautiful wilderness and get brainwashed some more, when going out with the family to the wilderness would be essentially free.

So no. I am not going to admit to being an addict of any sort, but I will admit freely that I participate in some obsessively recurring behaviors. These unhealthy behaviors, it is my first goal to figure out where I am participating in them and my second goal to stop these behaviors or more specifically replace them with healthy behaviors.

I know my grammar was worse in this post than most. And I know I did not even succeed in my usual lyricism or passion. But this post was like therapy for me, a really rigorous therapy resonating deep into my wounds.

Nightmareland

I am not one who frequently has nightmares, or really any sleep problems of any sort. In this, as in so many other areas of life, I count myself among the lucky few.

The frequency of nightmares has increased in adulthood, and throughout my life I have tended to have a series of nightmares if one did occur. However, still, I find it strange that every night for the past few weeks I have a wide array of nightmares.

Once a man came up behind me and yelled in my ear at the top of his lungs, "Fuck!" And I practically jumped out of bed, in reality. One time a weird creepy stalker was babbling on incoherently between legalese and english trying to convince me I needed him. I had finally figured out he was completely harmless and sort of chuckling about him when my Grandma walked up behind me and started following us up some stairs. She fell backwards, almost gained her balance at the landing, but then fell into the wall and cracked her head open. The stalker-guy called the ambulance while I held her.

This one was so terrible I wasn't even able to tell it to my husband. Somehow saying it out loud seems like bad luck or like at the very least it would make it more real to me.

I've been shot several times, and then there have been milder more along the lines of going to class in my underwear or an unspoken terror waking me up.

Last night a head, very obviously recently severed from a body of an old pale man, with huge fangs and small white angel wings sprouting from the wound, swept down and feasted on somebody next to me and then swooped at my head gnashing his teeth. Unfortunately for him I had some kind of invisible force shield around me, but I realized it wouldn't last for long. I purposely woke myself up from this one. I can't make this shit up.

I don't know whether reading several Lovecraft stories yesterday brought on this nightmare, or whether I was drawn to read the Lovecraft stories because I have been having so many nightmares, or whether the same subconscious nightmare-makers compelled me to read the stories.

I don't necessarily regret having done so. I am a very fearful person, full of cowardice. I think I have been facing some of my demons lately, and this I see as a good thing.

For Hans

http://goscandinavia.about.com/b/2008/06/11/photo-of-the-week-the-little-mermaid.htm

In honor of Hans' birthday, I am going to do something I rarely do. I am going to post a poem as a humble offering to a great man. So here goes, and here's to you ol' fella:

Moi, My Great Aunt

There were lots of naked pictures

in the travel books from Rome and

Greece. And out of the box of red, green,

and blue plastic beads, there was one tiny

naked woman. She looked bronze, and she

was sitting on her rock. Her feet were funny,

but I thought she was beautiful. I chose her.

Years later I saw pictures from Copenhagen.

Square little houses in primary colors.

On the shore a statue of the Little Mermaid.

I recognized my pendant.

It made sense. Hans’ Mermaid

before she walked on swords

for a man. Before she threw the

knife that could have saved her,

into the sea. A sad Mermaid,

soulless, tearless, and princeless.

It made sense that my Aunt had that

pendant.

My Aunt chainsmoked, even after she

was hooked up to an oxygen tank. My Aunt

played solitaire every day and every night, on

a brown card table. I heard she had

an interesting and full love life when she was

young. I heard she traveled, though I didn’t know

where. I like to think I’m like her, in the good

ways.