Kara & Michael’s Blog

I have weird feet. Understand that I am the kind of person who, when given the opportunity to go barefoot or wear shoes, goes barefoot. I’ve always felt that shoes have contorted my feet. I would rather work out in bare feet than wear shoes because at least if I work out in bare feet, I can control how I land on my feet.

I blame this on the fact that before I ever jumped on a treadmill or an elliptical, I took a dance class. The entire class was conducted in bare feet. Dance is a great prelude to serious exercise because it teaches you how to fall, how to jump, how to land. So I became sensitive to what every part of my foot was doing, I taught myself how to not kill my ankles or knees, both with how I landed on my feet and by holding weight in my stomach muscles (or “core,” if you will).

But my feet are problematic in shoes. I have high arches. I have wide toes. And most shoes restrict the full motion of my foot and ankle. When I move in bare feet, I push my weight through my entire foot. Most shoes constrict that movement, and I end up walking a bit flat.

Anyway, after stuggling with Dr. Scholl’s inserts for my arches, and waking up every morning to pain in my right heel and going to bed after working out with throbbing pain in my right heel, I invested in some Earth Shoes sneakers.

I broke them in a few hours at a time for a couple nights. The morning after wearing them, my right heel wouldn’t hurt. I can actually get up in the morning and stand on my feet.

My posture, while I wear the shoes, is much better. I don’t feel my feet falling inward anymore from lack of arch support. Of course, walking up hills is about ten times harder in the shoes. Seriously.

I get that Earth Shoes don’t work for some people - especially if you have leg or knee problems, they might not work. And they’re expensive. But I’m happy to walk in them, and it’s been a long time since I could say that.

A collection of popular Google search terms, in poem form.

why do dogs eat grass
why do cats purr
why do men cheat
why do we yawn
why do divers shower
why do mosquito bites itch

why is the sky blue
why is russia attacking georgia
why is my computer so slow
why is a raven like a writing desk
why is my poop green
why is marijuana illegal
why is 4chan down
why is step brothers rated r
why is my period late

why are we here
why are gas prices so high
why are the linked rings an olympic symbol
why are yawns contagious
why are flamingos pink
why are barns red
why are russia and georgia fighting
why are people gay
why are gas prices going down

why won’t god heal amputees
why won’t limewire connect
why won’t my car start
why won’t he marry me
why won’t he propose
why won’t he call
why won’t my tomatoes turn red
why won’t my ipod sync

why don’t we do it in the road
why don’t you get a job
why don’t we get drunk and screw
why don’t you do right

why doesn’t he call
why doesn’t he love me
why doesn’t he like me
why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle
why doesn’t alcohol freeze
why doesn’t kevin jonas sing
why doesn’t limewire work

why am i so tired
why am i always tired
why am i here
why am i still single
why am i always hungry
why am i gay
why am i not losing weight
why am i so tired all the time

why so serious

I read this earlier this week and felt the immediate need to take produce a tidal-wave of vomit, one that would wipe out every single person on the planet who thinks and feels the same way as the woman in charge of this chat.

It’s times like these I am grateful for Michael because we took everything in the complete opposite direction.

People of the world: it is NEVER polite to ask for gifts, especially money.

We did not throw a party (with the help of both our families) for gifts. We threw it to celebrate the joining of two families and to shove homemade crab dip, Sam’s cake and plenty of booze down everyone’s throats. It was small and intimate and anyone who wanted to get us a gift spoke with our parents or friends. No registry, no big deal.

The only reason anyone needs a registry is because they invited a whole lot of people they don’t know that well. And if you’re invited to the party of someone you don’t know that well and you don’t want to go empty-handed, just give them money. Everyone needs money.

These charity registries or buy-us-our-honeymoon registries and everything else are stupid. If you give me money, I can give it to charity or use it for my honeymoon or throw it into a savings account for a house, or blow it on hookers and blow. You’re not being a better or less-greedy person by registering for charities. You’re still asking for money.

And for people who complain about there not being a registry, grow up. How long have you been giving gifts? If you want to get someone something other than money, call them. Ask them what they need, what the colors are in their house. We got the sweetest gifts from people who sent us personal things with notes attached. For example, one of my aunts gave us a box of teabags with a note attached about how she and her husband used to drink tea together. It meant something.

And for couples who get something that isn’t “their style,” and you worry that someone “wasted their money,” grow up. Give it away to good-will or set it somewhere in your house. Sell it at a yard-sale. Someone was thoughtful enough to give you something they thought you would like. It’s like people never learned how to gracefully accept a gift. It’s not that hard.

Besides, I don’t want any company making money off my guests. Maybe I’m just a socialist or a liberal, but something about forcing your guests to give money to Target or Macy’s or Bed, Bath and Beyond just seems kind of shitty to me.

I also completely resist the idea that you need to get someone a shower gift, a wedding gift, an engagement gift. BAH! If you’re throwing that many goddamn parties you have too much money as it is, obviously. I also think anyone who cites a dollar amount as being a minimum is an asshole. Or someone who just doesn’t have working-class friends or friends with lots of kids. There is never a set-amount to a gift, because you’re supposed to give when you want to, as much as you want to (or can afford). I also think that if you pay to travel and buy a dress for a friend’s wedding, that person shouldn’t expect a gift from you. You gave them the bestest, most awesomest gift of all - your support on their wedding day.

I think everyone should have the stupid wedding they want (and can afford). If you want to throw away a metric butt-load of money on ONE DAY, go for it. But you shouldn’t expect your guests to thank you with their wallets, or complain if they do so without adhering to your stupid rules and regulations.

Michael and I spent the evening yesterday cleaning out the kitchen, doing laundry and taking out trash. My personal cleaning project was the fridge. I discovered some moldy cucumbers in our crisper and the liquid on my fingers made me decide to clean out our crisper drawers and clean the shelves in the fridge. It looks so empty now - just fresh produce, pickled veggies (daikon? okra?), jam, peanut-butter, booze and all sorts of spreads, dressings and marinades. It’s really enlightening to see.

Then I decided to get a head start on dinner tonight by draining, marinating and pan-frying some tofu to be added to this veganyumyum recipe.

My marinade for the tofu went as such:

• Soy Sauce (or Tamari if you’re eating gluten-free, or Braggs if you’re a health nut) - probably a cup or so.
• Mirin (or rice wine) - probably a quarter to a half of a cup
• Sesame Oil - a tablespoon or two
• Garlic - two cloves, chopped or sliced, whatever you prefer. Make it easy to pick the garlic off the tofu so you can fry the tofu up without garlic burning everywhere. Or just use garlic powder.
• Ginger powder - maybe a teaspoon or two, I really eyeballed this.

As with every generic recipe I give, taste the quantities! Maybe you want more soy sauce, more mirin. This recipe makes a tiny amount of marinade for a brick of tofu, so feel free to mess about with it.

After I drained the tofu, I attempted to cut long, thin slices the whole length of the block. I did okay. Then I used a medium star cookie cutter and a small snowflake cookie cutter and cut out shapes. The leftover scraps I just cut into fry-able pieces and I layered them in a container, spooning marinade on top of each. I came back a couple of times during the hour or so I let the tofu sit in the marinade to spoon the marinade out from the bottom and drizzle it on the tofu at the top.

Then I pulled out a pretty small metal skillet (not non-stick although that would certainly work, and not cast-iron). I put some canola oil in that bad boy, and started throwing tofu in the pan (I shook the garlic and any extra marinade off the tofu before it went in the pan). Keep the piece of tofu moving in the oil for a minute or so and it won’t stick as badly. If it does stick, just scratch at the pan with a fork (unless you’re using a non-stick pan) and get the tasty bits off , it’s no big deal. After a round or two, each new piece of tofu will sort of de-glaze the pan, so these pieces won’t stick. I like smaller skillets because I tend to cook a few pieces at a time so I can control the stickiness of the pan. Make sure you keep a thin layer of oil in your pan, as well.

Everyone likes their tofu cooked differently. I tend to keep mine a little “raw” in the middle. I like the crisp outside and creamy inside you get at a medium, medium-high setting. If you cook at a pretty low temperature, the tofu will probably take a couple minutes on each side to cook through. This gives you a chewier product, but it doesn’t crumble the way “raw” in the middle tofu does.

Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll be mixing this into the pasta (which we’re making with organic low-fat coconut milk, organic broccoli and peas and organic, whole-wheat rotini because we are that pretentious) or serving it on the side. I intended the cookie-cutter shapes to be cute on the side, but some of them got messed up and maybe they’d look just as cute on top of the pasta. In any case, hopefully it will be tasty noms.

Note: the tofu used was a brick of extra-firm, floating in water tofu.

Michael and I have had this antique sofa for a while now. I made us buy it because I’m the kind of person who likes old, horrific looking pieces of furniture. We drove an hour away, paid eighty bucks and hauled it back home. The good news is that the arms and back are remove-able, which made carrying it in relatively easy even though the whole thing is wood.

Here’s the thing, though. The springs in the couch are loud and distorted. The upholstery is hideous and the cat has taken her revenge on it by scratching and puking. The mechanics of the couch are messed up because some of the hardware needs to be repaired. And if you’ve ever slept over on our couch, you know that piling the many comforters we have on the floor or taking the time to blow up the air mattress is WORTH it. It is among the most uncomfortable couches I’ve ever slept on.

Beddinge - Sofabed

So we invested in a sofa bed from Ikea. The mechanism for converting it to a bed is relatively simple, the sofa is comfortable although low-slung and lacking arms. And the cat is already sprawling all over it, almost like she enjoys it… but she hasn’t scratched it.

In the meantime, if you live nearby and are interested in a relatively easy-to-move, decrepit, antique sofa with some serious upholstery damage, let me know. Otherwise, it’s headed to the dumpster along with all the packaging from the sofa.

I have a mildly irritating little application called Pocket Express on my smartphone. Pocket Express delivers news, movie showtimes, and lots and lots of advertisements, and it’s apparently pretty ubiquitous in the world of PDA phones.

One of the items offered by Pocket Express is a travel blog. I read through it the other day, finding that it contained mediocre but mostly interesting travel writing. There was one exception: every post by one particular author was excruciatingly terrible. The content was fine–in some cases, quite interesting–but the writing style is the most offensive I’ve seen outside of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

This author’s name is Tim Connors, and I’m sure from the content of his travelogues that he’s a nice guy. Unfortunately he really shouldn’t be writing for an audience.

After some digging, I’ve found this content on the web so you can all experience the horror firsthand. Let me quote you the first sentence from a post entitled “Mao Beer, Please“:

When one thinks of China and the Chinese, it usually evokes thoughts of burnt oil scented egg rolls, greasy fried rice, a random vegetable and meat dish drowning in a small lake of coagulating brown sauce and some poor delivery man sweating profusely as he busts his rump to hurry over your chicken lo mein just so you can palm him $20 for a $19.50 tab and fire off a “Thanks! Keep the change!” to impress that fiery little minx you picked up at the local truck stop.

I was going to try to explain the many reasons why that sentence makes me cringe, but it’s easier to just insert a picture of my reaction:

The article pretty much continues like this. Let me remind you that I am not making fun of an amateur blogger here: this man is a professional.

Connoisseurs of bad writing may also enjoy this sentence from “Off the Beaten Menu in Chinatown“, which is exactly as coherent as its title suggests:

Becoming cohesive in the later 1800’s as a place where Chinese immigrants massed, New York’s Chinatown has lived a roller coaster life of extreme ups and downs.

If I were this man’s English teacher I would circle this in red and write “see me.” In fact:

There. This has been vindicating in some small way.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m picking on you pointlessly, Tim. There’s plenty of bad writing out there. The problem with your writing is that lots of people read it, and most of those people seem to think it’s good. Travelogues are supposed to use flowery, evocative language, so you throw in a bunch of crap that makes you look smart and people just eat it up. But there is a difference between waxing poetic about pork and referring to a pig as “that sweet porcine sack of flavor that was once saved by Charlotte and her web” (I am not making this up). I know what goes through your fans’ minds when they read this:

Ha ha! “Porcine” means “pig”! I’ve read Charlotte’s Web! This is clever! I bet there are some people who don’t understand this! I had better post a comment on this blog so Tim knows how much he’s appreciated by us literary cognoscenti!

…

Wait, what?

There are many laudatory comments on your blog, including one that says you are “evocative of Hunter S. Thompson.” I don’t care what your readers think; this is an insult to Mr. Thompson, and he had the distinct disadvantage of being intoxicated most of the time.

Please, for the sake of all of us who love and defend the English language, stop writing.

Memorable Moments from our “stay-cation”

• Stumbling into the National Garden to waste an hour before the VOA tour.
• The VOA tour. Seriously, you should go if you haven’t been. So interesting.
• Touching a “sensitive plant” and watching its leaves curl up, then feeling bad for touching it.
• Chasing pigeons on the walk to our hotel from metro… every day.
• Splitting a fantastic vegan empanada at Julia’s empanadas.
• Getting coffee and baked goods at Sticky Fingers Vegan Bakery.
• The employee at Sticky Fingers remarking on the cleverness of mine and Michael’s shirts. PS: they were extremely clever because we are awesome.
• Downing a bottle of fantastic dry champagne
• Trying umeshu and eating unripened ume plum. Yum!
• A fantastic show at Bohemian Caverns.

Every time Michael and I spend time in DC, we talk about moving to the city, walking everywhere and getting in shape, having access to museums and concerts and theater. I would miss driving, though. And I don’t think I’m stylish or athletic enough to live in the city. And I would miss cows.

Well, the cat had a bath so now she’s trying to cuddle with me because she’s cold. Poor stinky darling.

Our lemon tree started getting clusters of buds a week or two ago and I mentioned it here. I am pleased to present two full-out blossoms that smell delightful, a bit like honeysuckle. I took Inari outside and made her sniff one and she liked it so much she came out from the experience with pollen all over her little nose.

Lemon Flower

Suckers, you just wait ’til I get me some actual Meyer lemons. Then you’ll wish you were close enough to eat the fantastic stuff I’ll be cooking up.

Oh, and our cayenne count is up to 31 and the plant is STILL flowering. Crazy thing!

And also, Papa Johns pizza with whole wheat crust, sauce and tons of veggies is tasty. Around 200 calories and 6 grams of fiber a slice. It’s like health food, excepting the sodium content.

I’m on a supreme death-metal kick which for some strange reason energizes me. So I’m gonna go do stuff.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why we, in this culture, tend to see a man who doesn’t eat meat as being… feminine. Michael got a comment this weekend that spurred my thoughts, but it wasn’t an unusual comment or even one that I - at some point in my life - would not have made.

I generally see the act of hunting as one that a man does - historically that’s been the case for a variety of reasons I feel no need to cite here. But since nowadays all hunting entails is shooting a gun - a skill that a woman can certainly learn - there’s no reason for anyone to see it as a masculine activity. I know women who fish and shoot. And women, traditionally, have had the role of cleaning and prepping meat for future use. So really, there’s not a whole lot of masculinity left in hunting today. Not in my perspective, anyway. Tools like guns have evened the playing field.

But we’re not even talking about hunting or fishing for the vast majority of the meat people eat. If we were, I’ve a feeling Michael would respectfully decline participation, but he’s certainly fished and shot a gun before. Society sees the very act of eating meat as a masculine practice. Somehow, munching a burger from McDonald’s represents a masculine act. But muching a soy burger doesn’t.

And I don’t understand this. A burger from McDonald’s is about as far from a slaughterhouse as you can get. Otherwise, people would have to face the fact that they are killing and eating a lovable, hug-able cow.

The only train of thought that leads someone to think that it’s feminine to abstain from eating that meat is this: that women are sensitive and thus motivated to protect animals where men are not. Which is, I think, probably true to a large extent. Many young, sensitive women become vegetarian because they can’t stand the thought of an animal dying. It’s not very thoughtful abstinence from meat, but it is probably among the most common.

What the general public often fails to see is that there can be significant ecological and health benefits aside from the ethics issue. And the ethics issue expands beyond just wanting to abstain from killing cuddly animals into wanting to abstain from unnecessary suffering. These are complex, sincere ideological foundations that have nothing to do with feminine or masculine traits. Rather, they stem from human thought. In fact, some of the most respected philosophical thinkers in this world chose to become vegetarian.

The vast majority of Americans choose to eat meat - men and women. While more women are likely to become vegetarian, I doubt that most people consider that when they deride men who choose to abstain from meat. I think it has to do with our image of masculinity, which for much of us is locked into the past. A man who eats meat, watches sports, drinks beer, belches and farts. But most of my female friends like beer, prefer hamburger over a salad and enjoy watching sports. Not to even touch on belching and farting. The fact of the matter is that while there are most assuredly differences between men and women, they have less to do with how we think of men and women socially and more to do with the way we process our thoughts, view ourselves and talk to each other. And most of us encompass a bit of each gender, whether we care to admit it or not.

I’ve spoken a few times about how I fell victim to a phishing scam as a direct result of my utter and complete stupidity and lack of forethought. I was not so much threatened by the internet as by my own sleep-deprived decision making skills. I was angry and I was also pretty embarrassed because… it’s just not like me to do something that ridiculously stupid on the interwebz. Well, my shame cycle is now nearly complete since Mary Worth’s most recent conflict is a woman who fell victim to a phishing scam after buying her significant other (husband, mayhaps, I don’t follow this comic) a hard-to-find dvd online.

I read through the past couple weeks on washingtonpost.com and then my head hit my desk and I curled up in the fetal position. I fell victim to a scam that Mary Worth is now warning 80 year olds who are terrified of the internet about. So much for growing up with computers and all the computer skillzors my grandmother said would come in useful.

Then I got all irritated because no one flipping gets a charge for a couple bucks and nothing else on a credit card statement when they’ve been scammed. Try a couple thousand, at least.

I explained all this to Michael in an email and he sent me back a doctored comic strip that made me cry, both from laughter and again, shame.

It’s a shame-filled day.

Mary Worth - Original Strip

Kara Worth - Michael's doctored strip