Author: TadMack

It’s funny — and a bit alarming, when one first learns to play chess — how often one move from one’s opponent can put everything in jeopardy. A quick defensive move, castling, leaping in with one’s knight or bishop — and sometimes the danger is averted. Sometimes. But in the field of identical black-and-white squares, it’s hard to see where the danger is coming from, and one mistaken move can result in a checkmate – a disaster from which there is no recovery.

At the moment, that’s a bit of what our lives feel like. We haven’t posted on this much, because really, ailments are simply not that interesting, and whining isn’t good reading. However, we thought we’d provide a little update for the concerned.

A bit of background: through the extended winter of this year, D. has been ill off and on, first with a pneumonia, then with a terrible reaction to the antibiotic he was taking, and later, he had a build-up reaction to a different drug — and a little over a month ago, he decided to stop taking anything, and go with herbs (milk thistle is an amazing thing, and is used by doctors in Germany to heal the livers of those who have mistakenly eaten poisonous mushrooms). Unfortunately, some damage was done; it appears that he has had some liver toxicity from the drugs and after a lot of throwing up, we thought he’d be better. Not yet. Many blood tests and trips to the doctor later, we’re still exploring his baffling list of symptoms (which include no appetite, sudden low blood pressure and fainting, and the ability to fall into a horribly deep sleep for two-three days straight) and have narrowed his problems down to various disorders, including Hepatitis A (the aforementioned inflamed liver), Epstein-Barr’s disease, or mononucleosis.

Right now, our American audience is wondering why we don’t know yet for sure. Well, that’s because labwork can take up to two weeks here. The cuts that have been made for the good (debatable good, some say) of the financial big picture here have been to the NHS, and so lab tech jobs have been cut. A lab procedure that might take thirty-five minutes is delayed because there aren’t enough hands on deck at present to deal with it. (This was explained to T. by someone who works for the system.) We are having to have patience, D. is working when he can, and we’re balanced on the keen edge of faith and frustration, learning to change our expectations of what we can do and where we can go, setting aside all but the most crucial appointments (we’re SO grateful D. was able to turn in his dissertation draft, and he’s writing out his oral presentation for the 26th, in case someone else has to read it for him). We are learning to breathe through the panic, to celebrate the moments of normalcy, to restructure expectations, and to cope. (For all our friends to whom we owe notes or packages [Jac, G, & C, your little packet of odd bobs is still sitting by the door, and Tony, the fedora-wearing paper doll is still in process], we apologize. We haven’t forgotten you!)

Since the weather has decided to reprise November’s greatest hits (hail, wind, rain and sleet), we don’t feel like we’re missing too much not being outside. D. is under orders not to exert himself, so walks are limited to right out front in the garden, and across the street to the herbalist. T. bakes and cooks to temp D.’s disinterested appetite, and we’ve come up with some really tasty oat bar cookies — which sadly have no recipe at present, but we’re going to try making them again this weekend, and we’ll write down what we do!

T. attended a concert with a friend on Sunday and was amused to hear a group from the Bay Area! The Kronos Quartet plays experimental classical, Mexican folk, and South Asian music, and it was an unique experience to hear them. (A few of their songs sounded like the violin equivalent of crickets, tree frogs, and cicadas with drums, rattles, the odd mandolin riff and snatches of digitally sampled voices. Really avant garde stuff.) One of the musicians was an old faculty member from Mills College in Oakland (T’s alma mater), proving the musical world is indeed very, very small.

Speaking of music, Sunday is the City of Glasgow Chorus’ final concert of the official season. D. will be unable to stand throughout the full two hours, but has his ticket and will be sitting in the audience with friends, front and center. How we wish some of you could be there, as we sing in the gorgeous City Halls. Belshazzar’s Feast is the Biblical story from whence we get the phrase “seeing the writing on the wall.” It’s a dramatic and overwrought piece of music wherein the choir gets to shout the word “Slain!” and lament with all the skill of a Greek chorus, whisper, and sing in eight parts. It’s fast, dissonant, challenging, and strangely gorgeous. Really do you could be in the audience.

Meanwhile, we carry on, as the icy wet Spring gives way to warmer weather. We’re hopeful that a solution to our current difficulties is only a week or two away. We’ve met some kind and conscientious folk who are working with us, and we’re grateful for understanding professors and flexible bosses.

It is a game of strategy, this life, and we’re playing as wisely as we can. We’re planning for our next move. D. has gotten some job nibbles from British Columbia, and so we’re looking that direction — but that’s all so far in the future. Right now, our focus is keenly pared down to essentials — getting through a day with no major mishaps. Do keep us in your thoughts as we figure out what’s going on, and we hope that things are going well with you.

Obviously a personal blog can be whatever one wants to be, but we do strive to keep this from being too political, religious (although spiritual is fine), or filled with the ideological soapboxes atop which we climb and expound. However, we do have our yearly “support kids, books, and reading” commercial that we’d like to reprise if we may. If you’re not a reader, look away…

T. is involved with Guys Lit Wire, a blog dedicated to finding literature of all sorts for boys, in response to the cries from teachers and studies which screech that “boys don’t read.” Made up of teachers, librarians, and booksellers, this team blog is all about the books, and every year, does one charitable function in the form of a Book Fair to get the word out about kids and teens in need.

Last year the Guys Lit Wire community donated some 772 books – their entire wish list – to Ojo Encino Day School in the Navajo Nation, and Alchesay High School, on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. This year, the focus school is in our nation’s capitol.

You’d think being in D.C. would mean that a school was well-staffed, well built, and primed to turn out America’s finest scholars. Yeah. You’d think. I was a little shocked at what I saw of Washington D.C. when I went to the ALA Convention last summer. That inner city poverty thing is alive and well. A few blocks away from the White House, and the sidewalks aren’t even as nice any more. Why is GLW interested in D.C.? Because Ballou Senior High School – a school with over 1,200 students – has 1,150 books in their library. Not even enough books for every student to read one, despite the American Library Association suggested ratio of 11:1 for books to students in American schools. 1,150 books! And you know many of those are dictionaries, reference books, and the like. But, alas, the D.C. district isn’t a state – it has no representative in the House or the Senate, recall. If there’s nobody beating the drum to care about kids and literacy, they’re not getting anything other than the bare minimum. Emphasis on “bare.” Which is the exact description of their library bookshelves.

Fortunately, there’s us. And the Guys Lit Wire Book Fair. As happens every year, the librarian at the school is polite, but slightly skeptical, afraid that nothing WILL happen. Other people have tried to help, given well-meaning stacks of books – in duplicate – without asking what the students readers want and need. Guys Lit Wire is different; we’ve asked. And the list is up.

– from organizer Colleen Mondor, author and book reviewer: “For those of you who have been with us before, the drill is the same. Go to the Powell’s web site. In the upper right you can click on “wish list”. On the next page you will be asked to enter the email address for the friend’s list you are looking for (you might need to scroll down a wee bit to see this prompt.) Enter our email: [email protected]”

There are 900 books on that school’s wishlist. We want to give that many, and more. Read the rest of the Fair details, and see the video the librarian made of the school’s EMPTY SHELVES @ Guys Lit Wire. And, think about the impact of just one book, and what just one book has done for you.

This month in the U.S. is National Mental Health Month. One of the many cures that we Hobbits have found to work, over and over again, when we are stressed and losing our minds is to concentrate on the struggles and troubles of others. While not downplaying the reality of our lives, we often ask ourselves, “Are armies encamped on our streets? Are people going door-to-door arresting dissidents against our government? Are flood waters rising even now and lapping against our doorsteps? Do we have a roof and food and a place to sleep tonight? Then, are things really so bad?”

Please, if you can, look outside of yourself and your own troubles this month, and bolster someone else. Participating in the Guys Lit Wire Book Fair is but one of many supportive options, and a place to start. Thanks.

Okay, granted, just because one has turned in their full first draft of their dissertation doesn’t mean that all of the work is done. Just because one has had that All Important Chat with one’s editor about one’s revision, and has the hope of actual money changing hands (Authors get paid so erratically. Do not attempt this profession if you’re actually into making money or don’t have a sugar daddy with a PhD and a penchant for genius in your back pocket. N.B.), the work is not yet completed.

However, the projects are done enough for government work. That is, done enough for the moment. In a few weeks, the pressure will start up again…(The oral dissertation presentation before the external examiners and the entire department takes place the 26th. T.’s freelance editor is tapping her foot for the science fiction manuscript due the end of May, and her middle grade novel is coming up for editorial review via committee. Notice the groups of people passing judgment around here?)

…but, for now, there’s apple tart.

We wish that we could point toward some noble impulse like Making A Healthy Dessert in the formation of this dish, but alas, it was more along the lines of O Noes, We Bought Braeburns, And They Were Overripe, And All The Apples Are Getting Mealier, Except For the Pink Ladies, Which We Have Scarfed Down, Yea Verily.

Generally, T. makes sauce out of the various Varieties of Apples Which She Will Not Eat, of which there are legion, as she tends to stick with Gala, Pink Lady, and ripe Braeburns. D. keeps bringing home different varietals to try, and she tends to turn up her nose, dry or sauce them, as this really isn’t apple season at all… but apple season never really ends in Scotland.

But we digress. Badly. The point was the tart. Which we pulled together because we had geriatric apples around the house. Okay, not too-too geriatric, we aren’t talking withered flesh and wrinkles here. Just… older apples which were slightly softening.

You may wonder why we are talking this through, instead of putting down a recipe… well, we have a sneaking suspicion that you already know: there IS no recipe for this tart. We just… dumped it all in a springform. Here’s our best guess of what we did. We started out by:

A. Thinly slicing the apples. We left on the skin, because our Mama would be Saying Things if we did not. We used 2 Tbsp. of orange marmalade and coated the apples. If you don’t want your apple tart tasting orangey, use apricot preserves for this, which will allow the apple flavor to shine through. Only apricot-ly.

B. We took one cube of plain, silken tofu, and, with a stick blender, combined 1 Tbsp of almond extract, 2 Tbsp of water, 2 Tbsp. white sugar, and 1 Tbsp of cornstarch into a smoothly blended whole. You can substitute lemon juice for the water, or add 2 tsp. of freshly grated lemon zest to give your creamy faux custard a lovely scent.

C. In another bowl, we combined 1 Cup of porridge oats — which means they’re practically instant, they’re so over-parboiled, and we use them for nothing but baking, because they make GLUE if you try to eat them, and we have zero idea how people here cook them without that happening. We prefer plain rolled oats — 1 Cup AP flour, a pinch of salt — well, we forgot that, but please don’t you forget —1 Tbsp. ginger, 1 Tbsp. brown sugar, and 4 Tbsp. of olive oil. Feel free to use butter or margarine, but we tend to make crusts with olive oil because then we can say that Pie Is Healthy. It’s a lie, but it works for us. We cut this oat-flour-oil mixture up with a fork, until it clumped a bit, then moistened it with a scant teaspoon of water. It formed a dry crust, which we pressed into the bottom of a springform pan and baked for 10 minutes at about 350°F/160°C.

D. Once the crust was baked, we poured on the tofu mixture, and layered the top of our custard with apples, and an additional 1 Tbsp. of sugar. The last bit of sugar is to assist in the caramelizing of the apples; technically one can leave the custard under a broiler for a minute, but as our broiler tends to make things go up in flames, and the foam from the fire extinguisher somewhat ruins the delicate taste of food, we skipped that bit and just baked it for 35 minutes at about 350°F/160°C. /p>

The trickiest thing was putting together the springform. Seriously. All tarts should be this quick and off-the-cuff. Our next attempt at this will include salt (cough), more spices in the crust – possibly just using gingersnaps and oats pulsed in a food processor with a little bit of olive oil would work – and the aforementioned lemon zest AND lemon juice. We’ll also likely experiment with an orange tart. Imagine thinly sliced clementines or oranges in marmalade, and maybe adding a bit of creamed cheese to the tofu mix, to make it more like a baked cheesecake…

Baking: the best thing you can do, when crises arise, and you need distraction.

If you are stressed, here is a way to de-stress. First, find a good and dear friend whom you have met in person but once in your life for the space of thirty minutes in a Starbucks on a layover in Seattle. Next, have your good and dear friend unexpectedly surprise you with a doll of you and your beloved.

(If you find you cannot manage this, take a moment to wonder why you cannot do something so simple. Then, look at our dolls.)

(Yes, that’s a camera that Baker doll has. He multitasks. And Author has tiny books. Please fall on pillows during the tremors from your Cute Overload.)

Then, take said dolls on a tour of your house, and put them in all sorts of ridiculous positions. Then, realize that you’re actually playing with dolls, when your two hundred page revision and/or the first draft of your PhD dissertation, the culmination of the last three years of your life in this damp and green country is due on Friday.

Oh, great. Now you’re stressed again.

(Okay, not really. You’re still playing with your dolls.)

This photograph of Author & Baker is from the doll maker’s Flickr account. Our thanks to her for such a lovely gift. Do check out her other story dolls, and her Etsy page.

Married to the Sea

Around these parts, today is a holiday.

As we speak, thousands are going about their business whilst the Royal Wedding is going on. And thousands are riveted to their television screens.

Though we tend to joke about people’s fascination with the wedding of Prince William, the truth has been explained to us by our friend Judy – when she was “a wee gel,” Queen Elizabeth married Prince Phillip, and there wasn’t television coverage, nor was there coverage of her coronation. People were bused to cinemas to see it on film, after the fact. For people in Judy’s generation (and, okay, people who lust after Kate Middleton’s wardrobe), this is a BIG DEAL. Imagine the millions of little girls who desperately wished to see their beautiful princess crowned and wed. And for Judy’s sake, today we will not mock. (Tomorrow is another story, however.)

Seriously, though, people have asked us how we, as Americans, feel about singing the Coronation Te Deum for chorus, which was written for the coronation in 1953, and how we feel about being here for the wedding… to which we can only reply, well, we don’t know the couple or their parents, they didn’t invite us to the wedding, and while we wish them as well as we wish anyone embarking upon a marriage, frankly, what does it have to do with us? Further, the Te Deum is a song to God – not to Regina Elizabeth, so we just can’t get into a swivet about it. Americans do not implode upon exposure to another country’s royalty. Despite the international picture of us as hardcore flag-wavers, we don’t generally get upset about anyone else’s flag. (Or do we? Are we behaving un-American-ly? So hard to know.)

Meanwhile, on Facebook there was an ALTERNATE Royal Wedding party to be staged today at Kelvingrove Park. The Powers That Be have put the kibosh on that, as the 1200 people who were going to attend might have overwhelmed the park’s bathrooms, and that there were extra police, etc., on hand for such an unofficial gathering. We have a feeling that it is going on anyway.

At least the weather appears to be cooperating. For Glasgow, that’s reason enough to celebrate right there.

Highs and lows, hills up and valleys down. These are the things which make up a life, and we’ve had our share lately of good and bad. Stress has a way of making tiny things seem momentous, and we’ve struggled with feeling like we’re riding down a landslide. So much is going on! It feels like none of it is in our control… and, none of it is. We suspect that the minute a person accepts that life just sort of happens without their input, the happier they are…! We’ll become happier any moment now…

The opening photograph looks like the entire cast of Upstairs/Downstairs or Downtown Abbey ought to come out and line the drive, appropriately costumed in 1911 outfits of dark suits and black dresses, white aprons, mob caps and the works, doesn’t it? This is Mar Hall, where our friend Axel is getting married in June. D. is shooting the event and may even avoid shooting himself when all is said and done. It’s a stately venue, and the event looks to be quite posh (T. saw these pictures and wondered aloud if she’d have to get one of those huge feathered fascinators so she’d fit in with the well-heeled crowd) but unfortunately as you can see from the smaller inset photograph, the inside of these oooold buildings tend to be quite dim. Photographer D. and his stylishly-chapeau’d assistant will be dragging along all manner of lights and hoping to get some good shots of the couple during the ceremony… which will be backlit by a massive window. We don’t hold out much hope, and plan to take the pre-wedding family and bridal party shots OUTSIDE. Except if it’s raining, then there will be a switch to Plan B.

How do wedding planners around here cope!?

On the plus side, after a dampish Easter, today the weather is fabulous — and it turned beautiful the MINUTE we were on our way OUT of St. Andrews this weekend, after pouring down buckets on us all day.

It’s ironic that the train station was where D. got a slight sunburn.

Winter gives way to spring, and we are close to The End of All Things – well, all things academic, anyway. We got our snazzy Senior portrait and announcement from our graduating Little, and are still a bit miffed that his graduation day was moved up – but he’s so excited about the pomp and circumstances he actually doesn’t really care if we’re there or not. (We keep telling ourselves this.) Meanwhile D. is driving himself to finish his dissertation, and has a long list of “questions for further study,” which translates to, “things I don’t have the space to talk about in this paper, and if I don’t quit bringing up questions related to my research I am never going to finish this @!*&%&*#@ thing.” He is beginning to really hate the concept of word counts.

Sunshine and shadows, the good and the less so. The sunshine: we’ve heard that our old Uni friends are pregnant – well, one of them, anyway. The strikingly tall redhead with the massive beard whom we once called Thor (his real name is Joel, which is much less exciting than our moniker), and his lovely wife, Frieda (er, Heather) are going to be parents. They are over the moon. We’ve imagined him losing his child in his copious facial hair, which said child will later enjoy pulling. Tee hee. The shadows: D’s stress is eating up the lining of his stomach, and he’s having some twinges, no appetite, and a complete inability to sleep, among hypotension and some other things. There is a statistically high number of people who succumb to all sorts of ailments during their PhD programs and don’t finish. We continue to pray that D. is not among them. We press on toward the goal…!

Meanwhile, T. has ninety pages of her revision left before she’s due to call her editor and chat. The changes, her agent assured her, were small, only superficial. However, owing to the author, the changes have now become a bit more than expected, and T. is once again rewriting a novel from the ground up. In two weeks. She wishes she could quit doing this. Her editor at this point likely wishes the same. But, one little change is a great deal like pulling on one little thread in a sweater… sometimes, it’s just easier to see how much it takes to make the whole thing unravel.

While we’re not stressing out and unraveling our work, we are, for the most part, dealing well with our frustrations and setbacks, enjoying the newly rediscovered sunshine, which is still a bit liquid-y most days, and just trying to hang on to the tail of this beastie we call our lives, as it runs along.

Well, that’s us. What’s going on with you lot?

…they roll over and mutter, “Did you ever wonder… why libertine is considered a bad word, but liberty is a good one?”

T: “Ummm… too much freedom is a bad thing?”

D: “Apparently.” ::pause:: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Hope your weekend is full of Deep Thoughts and good sleep, too.