How the Hell Did I End Up Being the One Who Feels Bad???

K... so it's my treatment week and I have a day up in the infusion lab but I ain't sad or blue.

Got my netbook with the 9 cell, mifi, twitter peek, and I brought brownies for everybody.

Deal with that. I can make an IV drug treatment fun.

Only I popped the IV out when I moved.

Nurse: You really are a PAIN!
Me: Yeah, I know, but I'm dying and still brought brownies so you're just mean.
Everyone else: Laughter
Nurse leaves in a huff with tears in her eyes.

Now I feel bad. But I also feel stupid for feeling bad. It was a joke.

AND SHE STARTED IT.

*power sulk*

Mahima's Chicken Sahsee

Ahmed's mom is an amazing cook. She has a few recipes that are total stand-bys for us. Below is one of my favorites. I serve it with warmed pita bread, because Ahmed likes to clean the plate with it. It's not hot, but is spicy, rich, and very simple. I use both dark and light meat for flavor.

Mahima's Chicken Sahsee

1 large sweet onion, chopped
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (or 3 whole cloves, to be removed)
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 pound of boneless, skinless chicken (dark, white, or mixed) cut into cubes
1 clove of minced garlic
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon minced ginger
3 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 teaspoon lime OR lemon juice
1/2 cup of sour cream

4 cups cooked rice
4 wedges lemon or lime

Saute onion, bay leaf, cinnamon stick, cloves, until the onion is tender and clear. Add chicken, garlic, curry, and ginger, cook until the chicken is lightly browning. Add tomatoes and salt. Cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the bay leaf, cloves if whole were used, and cinnamon stick.

Stir in sour cream til blended.

Serve with warm rice and citrus wedge.

WebSong Sale HUGELY Extended!

The sale I ran at WebSong last month was successful, and many people wanted to know if I would run it again. I cleaned out my files and have decided to be really generous... put up 9 new templates, for a total of 11 on super-savings-sale at $40 each!

COME CHECK EM OUT HERE!

Eschew Obfuscation

Idon't like people who force it. Yesterday I sat near two women at a cafe. They were determined to out-vocabulary one another. I thought it was hysterical, and actually started scribbling down fifty cent words as they spewed them at one another. Here's a short list:

pedantic
paradigm (several times)
psycho-social(misused at least once)
hermeneutics (oooh, I know this one!! I know this one!! only they didn't)
abrogate
ennui (I hear this a lot, actually)
rapacious

I'm sure they were terribly pleased to slip that one in. But I have a new flash... using vague, stuffy, language does not make you sound smarter. It makes you sound like you are trying to sound smarter. Trust me when I say this... I have been to two of the snottiest learning institutions in the world and graduated with honors from both.

The only people speaking that way are the insecure over-achievers.

It's actually much more impressive to phrase something simply, cleanly, and in accessible vocabulary.

Eschew obfuscation. Seriously.

Be My Stupid Cupid Valentine!!

If you haven't started looking around for Valentine's Day gifts, what are you waiting for? I've got a great suggestion...



Funny, light, sweet, and perfect for everyone. Pick it up today!

Go Rest High On That Mountain

My father's sister passed away this morning. Dorothy was a wonderful sister, mother, grandmother-- simply a genuinely good woman. I had very little time with her over the years since most of my Papa's siblings stayed in southwestern Virginia, where they grew up. Because my own world was so different-- a small town in Massachusetts that was still a short drive from the city-- my awe of their mountain life has always been deep and tinged with magic.

If you have never been to the Rich Valley area of Virginia, you should consider it. The word "breathtaking" doesn't cover it. It is misty-blue, a water-color painting at a distance and a slice of Americana up close. My father is very much a product of this part of the world that was his home until he enlisted in the service. These are country people in the purest sense: both bone-deep honest and gleefully cantankerous at the same time. You might be teased or stared at because there are Massachusetts plates on your car, but a stranger will stop to help you with a flat. (Then make fun of the way you talk as you drive away.)

Aunt Dorothy was one of those women who inhabit their space on earth with quiet, domestic miraculousness. I didn't have enough time with her because of geography, but my sense of her-- as a strong, warm force of familial power-- goes to the bone. Memories, though they are far too few, come to me in a soft blue whirl of chocolate cakes, big pots of beans, hand-me-down clothing to take back home after a visit that was never long enough. As with all Olingers I think of laughter... a head of dark red hair thrown back, a deep throaty chuckle, the characteristic Olinger voice, filled with smoke and hickory and good humor.

My father had 11 siblings: 8 sisters, 3 brothers. Some of them I knew or know only marginally. Dorothy was quite a bit older than my Papa and I believe that sheer necessity and birth order predestined them to have a relationship that was as much of a mother and child as sister and brother. Poor Granny only had two hips to prop a little one on. I think large families-- particularly those who have little to go around-- create parents who are "naturals." Dorothy was certainly that way. I never entered her home that she didn't have an eye-twinkling smile and "sum'teat" for me. Like all the Olingers she had news, and the news was delivered in sparkling, humorous conversation. Story-telling comes with the bones we are built around. It's a parrion of great joy in my family.

I was an adult before I realized that my father had grown up without simple luxuries. To me, his childhood had been magical-- a grand adventure in a distant mountain kingdom that was one part Huckleberry Finn and two parts Waltons. In a way, I suppose, the alchemy of time has transformed it. This has always been the way of his family. They might remember a hard time, but the memory is softened with humor, packaged in acceptance. Soon enough even the hardest memories-- of losing their father when they were very young, or of going without in the meanest times-- always gives way to better stories. Always, after the sigh of remembered pain, come tales of rascal-exploits and belly-deep laughter.

But woman-grown, seeing my father stiffen with age and feeling the deep ache of this loss, I can appreciate the hard edges that had to be smoothed by time. I admire him, his siblings, his parents so much more knowing how hard they had it. It makes their characters even more miraculous. It has made my love for them deepen from something warm and gleeful. It has made me fiercely proud. From humble and harsh beginnings in the mountains 12 children emerged to create small tribes of their own, and passed on to them-- to me, my brothers, my cousins-- the ability to accept adversity, embrace it, melt its hard edges down with a warmth that comes from knowing we are always loved, will always be loved, and can ride it out until the laughter comes.

Dorothy leaves behind her remaining siblings, children, grand-children with that gift. She is missed. She always will be. But she will also always live in the echoes of their laughter, in the magic of their stories, and in the misty blue magic of the land itself, grown up from bones that are always anchored there.

Go rest high on that mountain, Dorothy, and thank you for the gift of your life.