Holidays and family

I just returned from a weekend with my family in Florida. My immediate family moved to central Fla when I was 10, and my grandmother moved down about five years ago. My dad is in NC, and everyone else is in NJ. My mom's heart breaks every time she thinks of not spending her golden years with her sister and brother. Her concept of family is that chosen family is very very close, but the given and chosen families she has are all so far away. She misses everyone all the time. She and I and my brother went to a farmers market on Saturday morning, which was a very rare nice outing for the three of us. She was in heaven. My family, though, is mostly made up of people I'm not related to. I have a special bond with my cousins, that even though we didn't really grow up together, we love and respect each other a lot and we spend time together when we can. This weekend, our neighbors from across the street, their kids, our family friends from mom's work, and our family friends from Germany (former foreign exchange student who's now 40) all came for dinner. There were 17 adults and four babies, the oldest being my three-year-old nephew. Babies got passed from one person to another, whoever had a free arm taking one, passing them on as they got tired or needed food/water/potty. At one point, my mom was holding almost-one-year-old Suhana and my nephew accidentally ran smack into a sliding glass door that he hadn't realized was closed. My leaned down to get Austin, I scooped Suhana out of her arms, Suhana's mom went to feed her other kid who was screaming, and 20 minutes later everything was calm and babies were in different arms. That's my family. Some of them are people I was given, but most are people we chose and who chose us.

E was not with me, which felt less abnormal than I had expected. We didn't actually talk much, either, because I was so busy. Only once did I call for an escape from something offensive, which I think is an all-time low. Last week, E and I filled out our household census, which is probably the most official "yes, we're together" thing we've done yet. He's on my health insurance at work, but we've each had other partners with whom we did that. This was the first time we were counted as a unit for any legal reason. The thing is, we aren't being counted as who we are. I get that the census doesn't account for sexual orientation, and that's whatever. They figure out same-sex partners by the combination of people listed that they are the same sex and listing their relationship to each other as "unmarried partner." We aren't a same-sex couple, but we are unmarried partners who do not have the option to marry. If we wanted to be counted as "couple who cannot legally marry," he would have to list himself as female, which did not feel ok. I haven't seen mention of this issue anywhere in LGBT or queer writeups about the census.

In two weeks, I will be doing Easter dinner for myself. I'm looking forward to cooking a big meal, but I don't know quite how to do it. The fact that it's Easter will take the wind out of E's sails, but it's important to me, so I'm doing it and he's ok with that. More planning to come, I'm sure.

There are some things I want to say about my relationship to my body and my family's relationship to my body, but they aren't ready yet. I will be back when the elves get back in shape.

New Years Revolution

I spent most of January thinking about my New Years resolutions, and I've got my work cut out for me. I'm already working on some things with emotional stability, jealousy (as in, have less), and independence, but those are my constant life's work. Ditto with trying not to plan the future so much that I ignore the present. (If that were a marketable skill, I would have my pick of the job market.) Here are the things that are going to be my real things this year:

-Reduce/eliminate overdraft fees. This is embarrassing as hell, but in 2008 I lost about $3,000 to overdraft fees. Last year was less, but was still over $1,000. Some of this is bad bank practice, but if that was the only problem, I'd be under $100. I'm good at budgeting, but I get avoidant when I think my balance might be getting low. Time to keep to my budget instead of just having one, no matter how pretty the budget is.
-Keep up with birthday and special occasion cards. I have a slew of cards that I've gotten from work over the last few years, and it's time that I start keeping up with my cousins and good friends. Got the first two done -- my friend Brooke and my cousin Cheryl both had birthdays in January. I asked for addresses when I was doing holiday cards, and I've been putting birthdays in my calendar.
-Make more bread. I learned to make bread about a year ago, but I want to be able to do it regularly and with variation. I don't have a bread machine, but maybe I'll ask for one for my birthday. Ditto a standing mixer.
-Perfect a vegetarian version of Italian wedding soup. Chickpeas, fake meatballs, vegetable stock, fake-beef stock, fake-chicken stock, whatever. I got close a few years ago, but I really really want to figure it out. And when I do, I'll make it for the holidays this year!

sweet and sour sauce

I'm craving sweet and sour sauce, and this isn't a rare occurrence. I found several recipes that I plan to smoosh together. After much trial and addition (didn't scrap it at all), here's what I came up with:

2 tbs green onion (the white part), chopped
1/4 c white vinegar
3/4 of a green bell pepper, chopped
2 tbs tomato paste
1/2 c water
1 tbs garlic-ginger paste
3 tbs brown sugar (packed)
1 tsp granulated
1/2 c soy sauce
2 tbs lemon juice

This went far enough to cover chicken and faux abelone-seitan and rice for five people. It took a while of adding things for it to come out good and strong, so it ended up with a slightly smoky flavor. Ideally, I'd rather not overcook it, and I would use pineapple juice instead of lemon.

For the chicken and seitan, I chopped them into bite-size pieces and dipped them in beaten egg and then in flour, then fried them in just enough oil to cover the bottom of the cast-iron pan.

Soap!

We decided to make soap for some holiday gifts. I have The Soapmaker's Companion but we needed to change it to work with the 196g of sodium hydroxide E had and the oils we had on hand -- olive oil, coconut oil, and palm and sunflower oils that we bought for the occasion. It took some math, so here's how it turned out.

196g sodium hydroxide
1 lb 3 oz water
22.4 oz sunflower oil
8.7 oz olive oil
5.1 oz. coconut oil
14.8 oz. palm oil

This recipe kept the something-or-other level at 218, which was the same as the original recipe and still called for the same amount of lye. This included a 12.5% discount.

After the whole process, we added rosemary and lemon essential oil to one batch and cardamom and vanilla to the other.

Slippers for mom

I decided to make some slippers for my mom for xmas this year, along with some homemade soap. I found a pattern I liked (http://kaitysfreepatterns.wordpress.com/2006/01/02/homespun-slippers/), but it came out too low on the sides and back, and I used different yarn than recommended. I edited the pattern like so:

CO28
Knit in stockinette for 31 rows
Transfer to equal size double-points
Knit 12 rows, and decrease roughly as recommended in the original pattern
I'm about to do the crocheted edge, and I think I'll do an extra row or two of it.

How do you know they aren't "illegals"?

One of the things I do is run an ESL program with my partner here in Athens. The program is part of a larger group, the Economic Justice Coalition, and several months ago they applied for a grant to help fund the program. Tomorrow is a meeting with the granting organization, and the head of EJC told me to expect to be asked how we know we aren't teaching undocumented immigrants. The answer to give is "We don't ask to see proof of citizenship, and we are all better off if they and their families speak English." Thing is, that's just way to kind. If someone asks me such an asinine question, I want to ask how their families got here, which part of this land-we-stole-from-Native-Americans they now live on...anything to make them stop drawing some phantom line between "illegal" and "worthy." But we want their money, so I will say "We don't ask to see proof of citizenship, and we are all better off if they and their families speak English." But I will be thinking:

We don't ask for proof of citizenship for any of EJC's programs, including this one.
I've never been asked for proof of citizenship, and I'm not going to ask people for "proof" just because they speak Spanish.
We do not consider ethnicity to be an indication of illegal activity.
I'll answer your question if you please show your papers first.
I work for an organization that gets more than $1 million from public agencies, and we don't ask for proof of citizenship in any context.

City of Atlanta cuts 100% of senior citizen funding

One week ago, I got news that no grant writer wants to hear: Funding will be cut for two life-sustaining programs for senior citizens. The City of Atlanta has long focused their granting efforts on fighting homelessness, and our senior programs were grandfathered in. This year, which is the last granting year of the mayor's last term (and thus the funding year doesn't begin until after her term ends), they have decided to put every penny into direct homelessness services. While I support campaigns to end homeless and I appreciate the need for following priorities, it doesn't do much to fight homelessness if you then push more families into homelessness.


My first job out of college was managing Meals On Wheels Atlanta, one of the programs to lose the $30,000 it was granted last year. (We requested $54,000 this year.) Our Adult Day Care Center lost just as much.
I have walked up pathways to two-room homes housing eight people, wondering how the rundown shack was still considered safe to live in. I have delivered to apartment buildings where half of the roof had fallen in, resulting in an official condemnation. A few seniors were still living in the apartments that had most of their ceilings, because they had nowhere else to go. "You probably just passed it by," said the woman whose meal I was delivering. "It doesn't look like anyone lives here, but we do." Nearly 45 years ago, Mrs. S helped to found Senior Citizen Services. She has been coming to Adult Day Care every day for many years.


Our seniors have been good stewards of our communities, from raising families to building skyscrapers, and now is not the time to let them go. If the requested funding cut is approved

54 seniors will not receive Meals On Wheels Atlanta services next year

More than 9,300 meals will have to be cut from the program next year

28 seniors who receive critical Alzheimer’s support will be affected by the cuts

Seniors will lose more than 3,100 individual hours of support

20 memory-challenged seniors will lose financial assistance for their daily care

The cost burden will force many families to leave the program and deal with Alzheimer’s alone; families will be unable to maintain steady employment due to the added time required for elder care

Both programs serve seniors who are very low income and without adequate support systems to remain in their living situations without services. This will force these senior clients and their families into homelessness and/or institutionalization.