a wolf angel is not a good angel

In an amusing discussion, a friend yesterday said she thought most blogs were cheesy.

The problem really is how much I dislike myself when I interact with my sister. I can’t seem to keep myself acting anything better than sulky toddler.

I would go into more detail about her again but, really, what’s the point? The fights are always the same, my reactions are always the same, I know it sounds like I overreact, but the truth is, she is incredibly cruel, and all the time, it just doesn’t translate. And I can’t seem to be sympathetic to any of her issues, and I can’t even manage my own enough to deal with her in a way that I don’t end up regretting for some reason.

New appliances! Oh, to have a good oven, or a fridge that doesn’t need an extra shove to shut, or a dryer that dries the first time round.
An espresso maker.
A huge deep bath.
A flat tv that I could mount on the wall, saving lots of space in my not very big bedroom.
New sheets.

I leave out the obvious (books[1]! then more books! a few books besides! nice art for my walls). I didn’t realise how little I actually wanted, though, since none of these are really pressing or things I think about that often.

[1] this list is incomplete, obviously

I have dough all over my hair.

I sometimes wish I knew how to be less private. (One could say “obsessively secretive”, but private sounds classier.) I was so proud to have told friends when I was considering something — I then went ahead and did it, and despite these friends still asking how things were going, I have either lied or hinted strongly that nothing at all had happened, just look away!

I don’t really know how to say things about me. Good things, bad ones — doesn’t matter.

I know I’ve been like this my whole life. I’m not sure what it is, really, I think the feeling that I shouldn’t be bothering other people with the boring details of my life. Except that doesn’t quite sound right. That I don’t want to see their initial reactions? That I don’t want to presume to actually talk to people about myself? That I don’t like myself so figure that no one could like me or like anything I say? None of these sound right.

This isn’t a secret — everyone who knows me knows I’m reserved. That I don’t tell people things about myself. It mostly irritates people, except those people who are much like me, in which case we’re both relieved, except when I have something I want to say but can’t, in which case I am insane.

That’s the problem, really. I don’t mind being reserved, but it pushes from normal reserved to crazy unable to talk about myself sometimes reserved. And sure, you’d think this blogging idea has helped, what with it being all about me talking about myself. Only it hasn’t, really: I still don’t blog all these things I would like to, that I think maybe I used to before it became like any other type of interaction. That was my problem with the pre-blogs I used to have — opendiary, offhand — where eventually I’d be in this community of relatively sane people and I started to hide my relatively not-sane. (This is why I liked usenet, where I could be part of a community of relatively not-sane people, all not-sane in the sameish ways. Also mailing lists. But eventually they lost something, too. Blogging is something I like more.) Another problem is that I don’t know who that I know in real life might be reading this.

So now I’m almost meta-talking about things — and it’s frustrating, and I feel like my sentences are tying themselves up in knots. But I can’t seem to simply say, this, this is what I’m thinking about and I’d like to talk about it, and trust that people who care for me are interested, and trust that people who read this blog are also interested, for whatever reasons. But I don’t, and I don’t even know why.

It’s delurking week. So: delurk! Your email addresses won’t show, and you can use a made up one.

I might get lonely at Christmas, and find it sad a bit, but I never ever ever wish I had American Thanksgiving.

Last week I made the long-rise bread, after great trouble finding something to cook it in, which last night I realised was totally not a problem because I have something myself (in fact, the same thing I borrowed! but it’s in the pile of “kitchen stuff my grandmother insisted I take” which is, by and large, not useful stuff), so, ok, stupid, but whatever, now I can make the bread again.

Which I am going to, because that bread is good. It’s quite baguette-like, except in shape, which is fine, since I know how to make baguettes too, though I never do, because I can just go buy them. It’s got a great crust, and a really nice crumb. The only bad part about this bread is the amount of time you need to think ahead.

The directions sound much worse than they are. What you really need to do is:

Combine 3 cups of flour, ¼ teaspoon instant yeast (I used regular yeast and just proofed it first), 1¼ teaspoons salt with 1 5/8 cups water. Mix until it looks well mixed. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, let it sit for 18 hours. Active time: a few minutes.

When the dough has bubbles on the surface, sprinkle some flour on a surface, put the dough on it, put more flour on top of the dough, fold it into a ball, cover with the plastic wrap again, wait 15 minutes. Active time: one minute.

Make the dough into a ball. Cover with enough flour to be sure it doesn’t stick to anything (less than you’d think), put on a piece of towel, fold towel over, let sit for 2 hours or until doubled (mine didn’t double, quite, but it got in a little car accident). Active time: one minute.

Half an hour before you want to bake it, heat the oven to 450, and put some heavy pot (ideally with lid, though you can always use tinfoil instead — dutch oven, roasting pan, whatever) in to heat up with it. When oven is hot, take out pot, drop dough into pot, put back in oven with lid for 30 minutes. Take lid off, cook a further 15-30 minutes. Active time: a few minutes.

Clean up the flour you managed to get all over the kitchen. Active time: depends how much flour.

I’m making it again tonight/tomorrow.

NB: That’s the new-homed cat. She was really into carbs.

On the CBC today I heard the weirdest thing: a French cover of ‘These Boots Were Made For Walking’

The chorus goes like this:

Ces bottes sont faites pour marcher
Et tu vas l’regretter
Car je mettrai ces bottes
Un jour ou l’autre pour te quitter

Which is translated, loosely, as ‘These boots are made for walking, and you’ll regret it, because I’ll put on these boots one day or another and leave you’.

And it just changes the song so much. (The whole lyrics are quite different in tone, I think, but the chorus most of all.) It was weird.

It’s been too warm to have a fire for a while, so I’ve been fire-free, and annoyed, because I wanted to have a nice fire. Now it’s getting cold, so I can have a fire, and I’m annoyed, because it’s COLD out, why is it so cold out? (Michelle, cold means below freezing.)