It's another 90 degree day, which means that our stuffy little apartment is freezing. No wait, that makes sense. Because our place doesn't really breathe very well, when the day is really hot, you basically have to run the AC (we have two, a window unit and a portable unit) all day, along with a batch of fans. If you don't, at some point the heat will build up and it will be 85 inside and horrible. That means that all morning it's like in the 60s. But if you wait or keep stuff off or on low, it won't have the power to cool when things get really blazing. Plus the place never cools off at night, even when it's cool outside and we have every window and door open.

Stupid.

Last night the Hub whipped up an amazing dinner in like no time flat. He'd run by the local world foods for fresh hot pitas and dolmas. Then he cooked up some ground lamb with lots of wonderful spices (garam masala, garlic, onions, etc.). I prepped lettuce made a yogurt sauce. We filled our pitas with lamb, sauce, lettuce, and leftover couscous from yesterday's dinner.

Yesterday's dinner was the couscous (with chopped veggies and spices) and grilled chicken with pomegranate / honey glaze. The chicken was OMG good.

I recently made a batch of bran molasses muffins -- very dense, very good.

Ham went blueberry picking with a friend and we've been eating blueberries in and with everything. It's too hot for pie and I didn't have enough for jelly, but I froze some in for this winter and we'll just gnaw our way through the rest. Blueberries rock! When I was growing up in Southern New Mexico, berries were my very favorite fruits. But they were rare treats because they didn't grow at all well in our dry alkaline soil and desert climate. Here's it's berry central! One more reason I love the Pacific Northwest.

For my birthday I will be getting some paints, which I am very excited about.

When you say sourdough, most people think of San Francisco sourdough white bread. But any kind of bread can be a sourdough -- white, wheat, rye, raisin, buns, and even pancakes. The difference is that a sourdough is made not with commercial yeast but with a starter. This is a mix of water and flour that lives in your fridge (or counter top if you bake A LOT) that has a active culture of yeast living in it (either from a commercial strain or a wild one). Packaged yeast is alive, of course, but not active. It's sleeping -- in suspended animation really -- until you wake it up with water and flour. A starter culture is already alive and requires regular feeding and maintenance. Kind of a little yeasty pet. Here's a nifty site about starters.

Some starters are actually sweet (like Amish friendship bread) but all have a complex flavor caused by the digestive cycle of the yeasty beasties plus the good bacteria they attract and support. A basic starer with flour and water will tend to sour over time. A sourdough starter will need a lot more time to raise a loaf of bread but that bread will, in my opinion, taste very very good.

I have a starter I made by "catching" a wild yeast strain in my kitchen. It lives in the fridge until I need it and I feed it regularly and pour off the "hooch" -- the alcohol the yeasts produce along with their little carbon dioxide burps. Over time it's grown very sour. My starter is roughly a half and half mix of water and flour (a little less water maybe) to make a very batter-like starter. Some starters are much thicker and can even be solid.

I wanted to create recipe for sourdough bread to use in my machine. I knew that the regular bread cycles wouldn't leave enough time for the dough to rise, but I didn't want to use the "artisan" cycle on my machine because it requires that you remove the dough and do the final shape, rise, and bake externally. That's fine, but fully automatic was my goal. I got a couple of books at the library but was disappointed with their recipes. All the sourdough recipes added a lot of extra yeast to the mix, so much that my loaf over proofed. When I reduced the amount of extra yeast, I got a regular loaf of bread with no discernible sour taste. That makes sense. After all, commercial yeast is a very hardy strain that will take over any environment where it's introduced. My poor wild culture wouldn't be able to keep up -- which means it wouldn't have a change to populate enough to impart it's flavor to the bread.

I knew that without added yeast I couldn't make the machine do all the work (unless I hung around and paused the machine at intervals to impart extra rising time). At the same time, the added yeast was killing off my flavor. Then, I had an Epiphany. If I modified my sponge recipe to use the starter and then added the additional yeast on top, I'd get a long slow overnight ferment and rise to create flavor and the commercial yeast could take over the next morning to keep the bread moving fast enough for the machine.

I started with 1/2 cup starter (which is a half and half mixture) plus a quarter cup each of water and flour. This got mixed for 10 minutes and then additional flour plus other ingredients were added. A small amount of yeast (a scant 3/4 teaspoon -- this for a 1lb loaf) was carefully poured in a little well in the dry flour to keep it segregated from the sourdough sponge. Since the sponge bubbles up through at the corners, I put the extra yeast in the middle, away from the salt.

The result was very promising. While still mild compared to some sourdough breads, the finished bread had a sour tang and good flavor -- better than my regular sponge bread -- but rose nicely in the machine and was of "normal" bread density. Remember my goal here is sandwich loaves, not the crusty breads with big holes that truly need time and handling.

My next attempt was a rye sourdough which came out very sour, if a bit heavy (more extra yeast for the rye I suspect -- or I should catch a rye yeast for a separate starter). The next white loaf I tried had 3/4 cup starter, 1/4 cup water, and 1/2 cup flour -- with more of the finished bread being the sponge. This was even more tasty. I believe I could take this even further, until almost all the flour would be incorporated into the sponge with just a thin layer separating the salt, sugar, and extra yeast.

I'll have to try that experiment soon.

So, I've been talking about my experiments with the HPI Bread Machine, but I don't think I ever described the actual techniques/recipes. Skip if you're not interested in making bread...

I love making and eating good homemade bread, but wanted a process that required less babysitting. I know people will say that making bread isn't hard... and it's not. But it does require a certain amount of scheduled "foolin' with" and my schedule wasn't being accommodating. Add to that the fact that we have no house A/C and running the oven on hot days isn't a good idea. And loaves of decent bread at the store (even the loaf breads) were getting annoyingly expensive. So, we bought this bread machine.

Making bread with this thing was about as easy as falling off a log. Unfortunately the taste of the loaves was in keeping with that metaphor... about as tasty as pulp. The problem wasn't the machine -- it mixed, rose, and baked perfectly. The problem wasn't the recipe -- it had the right proportions of flour, salt, yeast, and other ostensibly tasty stuff. The problem was that bread that only has a brief rise just isn't that good.

Now I wasn't expecting this thing to spit out baguettes or boules or Bavarian sourdough. But I was expecting tasty sandwich and toast bread... and I wasn't getting it. I began to understand why bread machines are one of those things that people often buy and abandon (like exercise machines). I mean, if I wanted Wonderbread, I'd just buy it. So I began to research how to make better bread in my machine.

Many bread machine recipes have lots of mix-ins. And I'm sure some of those loaves are OK. But I'm not interested in cranberry chive bread or cheddar chipotle bread. I don't mind a nice raisin or herbed loaf, but I wanted bread that was good on its own merits, not because I added two cups of stuff. Other bread machine recipes are meant to be pulled from the machine for a reshape, slow final rise, and then baked in the oven. This makes sense, particularly for rolls, twists, braids, etc. No amount of fiddling is going to make my bread machine bake anything other than rectangles. But I wanted a loaf that would be tasty without the extra steps and bake in place -- especially in summer.

Then I found this wonderful article. It contains a basic formula that you can use to transform any bread machine recipe into a sponge version.

In summary, you take the water, a cup of flour, and about half the amount of yeast and start them mixing in the machine for 10 minutes. Stop the machine and layer on the rest of the flour, any oil, salt, sugar, etc. -- but no additional yeast. Then reset the machine on a timer for 8-12 hours. Basically, you have a sponge on the bottom of the pan working all night long and when the timer starts the next morning it mixes the sponge with the rest of the ingredients and makes the bread as usual. The sponge will actually bubble up through the other ingredients by morning. This formula worked wonderfully! It makes tasty sandwich bread with a nicely developed yeast flavor. I've done white, whole wheat, and rye (all with a white flour sponge) and gotten good results. It works best for smaller loaves but is otherwise completely automatic.

It's so easy that we've only bought a few loaves in the months since I figured the technique out. I just set the machine up every couple of evenings and we have a loaf of warm bread by the next morning. The only manual step (when we remember) is to remove the mixing paddle before the final rise and bake, which keeps it from making a hole in the middle of the loaf.

Next time, my technique (and this one is all my own) for making a sourdough bread machine loaf.

I am extremely sleepy today. And whose fault is that, I ask? No one's but my own. That's what I get for spending the evening chatting with M until the Hub returned from his "practice gig" -- after midnight.

I'm looking forward to the band's "real gig." I have a sitter for the Ham (actually a sleepover date with her good friend) and it's the day after my birthday. I will, of course, buy a ticket as opposed to deadheading on a "wives and girlfriends" pass because the number of tickets sold by the band affects their stage time. And it's a Friday, which means I won't have to get up early and drag into work!

It's been such a busy summer!

So, the Hub's band, Sons of Richard, has a gig on August 7st at the Satyricon at 125 NW 6th Ave here in Portland. If anyone local wants to go, I've got tickets for $8 or $10 at the door (tell the doorman you're there to see Sons of Richard). There are a number of bands slated that night and the rocking starts at 6:30. Their MySpace page has some of their music.

What kind of wife would I be if I didn't pimp him out to everyone I know?

As busy and crazy as this summer's been it's exciting that we still seem to be moving forward.

Had Friday off for the 4th. Myra came by and took the Ham swimming and then we partied -- well, so much as people in their 30s with a kid party. Despite being 1000 degrees out, we had a lot of fun eating, chatting, drinking, talking, watching movies, conversing and dialoging. We watched Armageddon in honor of the 4th (Myra had never seen it and thought it was hysterically bad). (1) She crashed out at our place and we all hung out most of the next day as well.

For the 4th, we drove up to a nearby pocket part at the top of a little hill and watched a couple different displays. Good view, but low key, with most of the participants being locals from the neighborhood (you could tell the locals because they all carried up glasses of wine). Ham stayed up very late indeed.

Sunday was catching up day. In the morning, I took Ham and some neighborhood kids over to the little walking park. In the afternoon we had some errands to do. Finally, about 5 in the afternoon, the weather broke and a cold front moved in. It was such a relief. It was a good weekend.

Finally figured out the mysteries of fully automatic sourdough starter bread machine bread. Now I just need to tweak the recipe.

(1) Bryn and I have a theory that Armageddon was more popular than The Core not only because it had bigger stars, but also because it's more anti-intellectual. The Core, for all that it's as formulaic and far fetched as Armageddon, is about smart people solving hard problems across nations. Armageddon is about average American Joes saving the world's ass with really big power tools.

The Core
Dr. Josh Keyes: Is there anything you can't do?
Maj. Rebecca Childs: [smiles] Not that I'm aware of.
Dr. Josh Keyes: I find that incredibly intimidating.
Maj. Rebecca Childs: Yep. Most people do.

Armageddon
Truman: No, we don't have a back up plan. This is it.
Harry Stamper: And this is the best that you c - that the-the government, the *U.S. government* can come up with? I mean, you-you're NASA for cryin' out loud, you put a man on the moon, you're geniuses! You-you're the guys that think this shit up! I'm sure you got a team of men sitting around somewhere right now just thinking shit up and somebody backing them up! You're telling me you don't have a backup plan, that these eight boy scouts right here, that is the world's hope, that's what you're telling me?
Truman: Yeah.

Lots of great food coming out of the HPI kitchen. The festival of vegetarian pasta dishes continues, with a fried green tomato version. Also more fish, including high-quality canned tuna from New Seasons. This stuff is so good it barely needs anything in it to make a wonderful salad -- maybe just a touch of mayo. I will never buy Chicken of the Sea (El Pollo Del Mar) again.

My sponge / starter bread machine saga continues. This last loaf was a bit over-proofed and not as "sour" as I'd hoped, but I believe I may have made a breakthrough in understanding. If I use my starter to create an overnight sponge, I will get a long, cool rise (necessary for my wild yeast starter to work) then if I add a touch of store-bought yeast to the rest of the ingredients, I should be able to maintain the sour flavor while making next rises quicker in order to use the full cycle. See, my goal is to create a starter-based sourdough that I can make and bake in the bread machine completely on automatic -- no adding / checking / watching / stopping. I just want to start it with the timer and leave it alone.

Couscous with peas and olive oil was a simple dish that I made for the Ham to take for lunch to her summer program. Three days a week of sack lunches means she's getting bored with sandwiches. Hub brought home some dried handmade German sausage (not brats, the hard stuff that lasts a long time) and we've been nibbling on it. Sliced sausage in tomato soup is wonderful!

The other day I caved and bought some Bryers Health Bar ice cream, but I'm still planning on trying a gelato soon -- probably a vanilla, so I can judge the consistency / texture on its own merit. The all-whipping cream strawberry ice cream was amazing... the first day. But it didn't hold well (which is a problem with most homemade ice cream).

Also, I got the results of my first ever cholesterol test back. Triglycerides super low, good cholesterol high, bad cholesterol really low. Add me to the anecdotal evidence that a low-fat diet has little to do with blood cholesterol, since my diet is anything but low fat (it is low in trans-fats however).

Yes, indeed it was.

For those of us in the US, the astrological solstice was near midnight. So, depending on your timezone, it might have been either Saturday or Sunday. From a Pagan point of view (Summer Solstice = Longest Day), the whole weekend was the solstice here in Portland because the difference in day length was less than a second. BTW, see this site for nifty astronomical data including sunrise and sunset times to the second: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunrise.html.

We had planned to spend Saturday at the beach. In fact, we even talked about getting a room and spending the weekend. However the weather was just NOT cooperating. It was forecast to be borderline all week anyway, but on Saturday morning we checked the weather on the coast to discover mid-50s, rain, and cloudy. Not good. So after some cranky discussion about what we'd like to do instead, we decided to go to Oaks Park for the afternoon.

This is a great amusement park, 104 years old, just across the river in Sellwood. The weather was cool and occasionally rainy but it was a wonderful time. First we enjoyed lunch at the Sellwood Public House (which is a great family-friendly pub with good food). At the park, we rode tons of rides (Ham was tall enough to go on almost everything), listened to a cool jazz/swing trio, and had giant ice creams while we watched the river and rode the little train. It rained on us a tiny bit, but it wasn't bad enough to shut down the rides. At the end of the afternoon, we rode the Ferris wheel and watched the storm clouds rolling in.

Finally, Ham and I rode the Herschell-Spillman carousel "a 1912 American carved piece of folk art." (Note, I take no responsibility for the phrasing of that quote.) I rode a goat. The animals are beautiful, hand carved and fantastically painted with glass eyes. This is the oldest carousel I've ever ridden* (the previous winner being the one at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, from the 1930s).

* That I know of. I did ride one in Passau when I was a kid, the kind with the brass ring, but I don't know how old it was.

Oaks Park turned out to be a wonderful idea for the solstice. Carnivals, fairs, and old amusement parks (I'm not talking Disneyland here) have a kind of "summer's faire" Pagan vibe about them. They're a bit tawdry, a bit sticky, and a perfect microcosm of the human social animal. The weather hit as we were driving and it was beautiful. We were chilled and tired when we got home, so tomato soup and sandwiches were a perfect light supper.

Sunday Ham and I ran out early to fetch pastries and a giant orange daisy for father's day. In the car, Ham said "I love mother's day and father's day because I get a doughnut for breakfast!" -- which pretty much sums it up. Pastries and coffee in bed rock, let me tell you! We spent the rest of the day hanging out. We took turns playing Pente, Bryn got some solid studio time in (he recently acquired some nifty new equipment thanks to the wonder of Craigslist and a down economy), and Ham and I rode our bikes down to the library. The Ham is just getting old enough to ride on the street and I've been teaching her all the skills she needs in order to be safe. She did pretty well. She's still prone to stopping suddenly (which is challenging for me as I'm right behind her) and riding more like a pedestrian than a car. In the afternoon we put on Lord of the Rings.

Later I ran back out to the grocery store (bad planning, but that's what I get for going out pre-coffee) to pick up some stuff for dinner as well as some fruit for the coming week. The Hub made a delicious fish dinner with tilapia, savory rice, and local snow peas. It seems unfair that he should cook on father's day, but dinner was sooooo good, with a lemon-butter cream sauce for the fish and yellow raspberry crepes with whipped cream for dessert. I cleaned up the kitchen and got a loaf of sponge bread ready to go in the bread machine (bread machine bread tends to suck, IMHO, unless you start with an overnight sponge). I also managed to harvest a bunch of mint to dry for tea.

The energy around this solstice has been a bit odd -- pensive might be a good word for it. When the weather broke on Saturday afternoon it felt a bit better, but it's been interesting. I've had a lot of powerful dreams and get the feeling that, for the HPI at least, this is going to be a busy season with a lot of energy and change. I really felt the switch over the course of the weekend. To me the solstices feel like that moment on a swing when you just reach the top of the arc and are poised before you start to fall again. Which, astronomically speaking, is pretty accurate. So even though there is a lot more summer ahead, and a lot warmer weather, we've started the slow inexorable fall into... well, fall.

So happy solstice, and happy mid-summer -- and for my friends across the globe happy mid-winter.

So, Pagan Values month... or Pagan Value Meal month...

I've read a lot of interesting stuff on Pagan values (or rather potential Pagan values, no one out there is claiming to have the definitive list). When I began thinking about the topic though, I ran across and interesting linguistic challenge. "Values" seems to be a term about what a particular group or demographic think is worthwhile for everyone to believe. So the "family values" of conservative Christian sects is about what they think all people should be for and about. When you're speaking only for yourself, you're not talking about "values" in a general sense so much as the things that you yourself value.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't have Pagan Values, I don't have "values" period. I just have things I value. So in honor of the Solstice, here's a list of things that I value:

Love
Personal Responsibility
Community / Family
Hospitality
Diversity
Efficiency / Simplicity
Sustainability

Those are roughly in order, not of priority, but how well I'm doing in each area.

... and I bet some of you might be interested in this as well...

http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/omikuji/

Also, read her new YA novel for free and pay whatever you think it's worth.

* Always makes me think of Office Space.

So, I've been riding to work again after quite a lull last year. It's gotten me thinking about the challenges that riding posed when I first started out (and that I'm having to deal with again) and how those challenges translate to lots of different areas of my life.

When I first started riding, back when we just moved here to Portland, I'd never ridden in any kind of commute situation before. I could ride, yes. But I'd never ridden in traffic or with an actual time constraint. Starting out, it quickly became clear that I needed to improve in three areas:

Strength. I needed to get into better shape, which was taken care of by the ride itself. Over time I got faster and less winded.

Skill. I needed to cultivate certain skills for riding in traffic. These included physical skills like signaling, gearing correctly, and being able to look around and behind without veering off the path. In addition, I needed to learn mental and emotional skills like remaining calm, avoiding panic, being observant / in the moment, and a skill that I think of as "projecting Ki" (from Ham's Aikido class -- basically making sure that people see you). The physical skills came while I was riding, but the mental/emotional stuff I had to deliberately cultivate.

Logistics. In addition, I needed to learn HOW to ride in. Not only the street directions, but how to park and lock the bike efficiently, pack appropriately, change quickly, deal with weather, access equipment quickly, etc. Interestingly, this took the longest to learn and involved creating a bunch of new habits. Some parts developed naturally, but others required a bunch of trial and error experimentation. It was only after the logistics starting coming together that riding actually became easy and something I could see myself doing all the time.

Looking at this list, it seems that I could generalize these skills to lots of goals I might have in my life. Whatever it is I need to do, I need to be strong enough, skilled enough, and in command of the logistics. The first two seem obvious and are generally accomplished by doing the thing you want to learn to do mindfully. But the third is, I think, often ignored and at the same time highly critical.

Let me give you two examples of logistics for riding into work:

* Keys. You have to lock the front door, get the garage closed behind you, and lock up your bike when you get in. What keys do you need and where do you carry them so that they are immediately available (don't want to unpack your whole bag at the bike rack) but don't accidentally get lost on the ride? How do you make sure you don't forget your keys and arrive at work with no way to lock your bike?

* Bag packing. What do you carry in your bag? What can you leave at the office? How do you pack your bag so you can get changed piece by piece without having to drag everything out at once? What do you do with your office shoes so your bag doesn't get dirty inside? What extra riding clothes might you want in case of weather changes during the day? How do you pack lunch so that it doesn't spill in your bag?

These are pretty picky and detailed. It's not like you sit around thinking up all this stuff before you start riding. But as you ride, if you are motivated to be as efficient and effective as possible, you'll find yourself answering these questions. The first time you arrive with a wet tush from a freak shower you'll realize that a COMPLETE change of clothing is probably a good idea. After a week of trying to find your bike lock key in your bag, you will end up with a carabiner. After the first time you're late for a meeting because you took 40 minutes to get cleaned up and changed you will figure out how much time you can save just by packing correctly.

My point is that logistics are often the forgotten aspect of acquiring new skills. We have this new stuff we're working on, but don't make any new habits to support it. We join a gym, but don't get a gym bag ready. We start reading, but the book always ends up someplace else in the house. I have medication I take regularly before bed. For weeks I'd be about to drop of to sleep when I remembered that I needed to take it. So I'd get up out of bed and go to the bathroom. Now I just keep the darned pills in my bedside drawer and a glass of water on the nightstand. When I remember, it's right there. Not only do I not have to get up, but I'm remembering earlier and earlier -- to the point where it's not remembering at all, but just another part of my bedtime routine.

Right now the Ham has three bags next to the stairs: her Aikido bag, her swimming bag, and her school bag. The Aikido bag holds her gi, belt, and white T-shirts. The swimming bag has her suit, towel, water wings, pool card, saline drops, and a granola bar. The school bag has art supplies, library card, and various detritus. Getting Ham to where she needs to go has gotten so much easier since we set these bags up. No more hunting for stuff all over the house. No more wondering if items are clean or not. We can just grab and run.

But logistics isn't just about making habits. It's also about dealing with the unexpected. So from a riding perspective, what are my options for getting to work or home in the event of bad weather, a flat tire, an emergency, or a schedule change? Because I took some time to look into the options, I know which buses I can catch along my route in and home, and roughly when (the express bus only during commute times, the slow bus during the middle of the day as well) and I also know how much a cab ride is (my emergency fallback) and where I can leave my bike overnight.

I think I'm going to identify some areas of my life where my logistics are weak and see whether improving them helps me.

----

Unrelated note: last night the D-30 came OUT of my pillowcase and went on the altar (along with a cranky demand for some sleep!). So last night I still had multiple dreams... but they were less intense and I got more actual rest.

* Swimming
* Ham enjoying a swimming lesson from M
* Tuna fish wraps
* Excessive grocery shopping -- stocking the HPI pantry
* Local strawberries and organic blueberries
* Pasta with chicken veggie tomato sauce
* Molasses bran muffins
* Strawberry ice cream -- actually more of an iced strawberry whipped cream
* The library and listening to Ham read to me
* Working from home when you feel under the weather

Interesting tidbits:

Just finished Mindset, a very interesting book about the difference between two common mindsets that people have. The fixed mindset says that traits and abilities are fixed and the growth mindset says that people can, through effort, improve themselves. People sometimes have a mixed view where they will believe that people can improve their social skills, for example, but not their intelligence. The growth mindset is the better mindset to have. It more accurately reflects reality as well as making for more success and better interactions. A nice readable book along the lines of Gladwell or Pollan and gave me some great ideas for helping inspire the growth mindset in the Ham.

I had a strong fixed mindset as a child. It changed to a growth oriented mindset when I was an adult. I credit the interference of Mr. D as Auxitês / Eleutherios / Lusios (Bringer of Growth / Emancipator / Liberator) in this process. I'd like to help encourage Ham to have the growth mindset as well.

Have been having masses of wild and crazy dreams lately. Lots of chthonic themes (in the sense of coming from my my deep subconscious not regarding giant evil squids) and disturbing if vivid imagery. Last night I discovered an odd lump in my pillowcase. It was a 30-sided dice, one of my collection. I assume the Ham is responsible for its odd location. I put it back, but after last night I think I'm going to have to remove it... I need some rest.

Planning an outing for the solstice.

Seems like a great illustration to my last post:

http://www.humansexmap.com/

My prior post mentioned an entry by tatjna that sparked discussion about privacy and deviance. One result was the idea that interested parties should blog about deviants, picking a particular deviant behavior to discuss. The focus was on sexual deviance and the attitude was around how we're all "deviant" in one way or another. Kind of defending deviance or reclaiming the word. Titles like "We're all Deviant" imply that deviant is really something a little different than you might think.

I get the idea. I understand the power in reclaiming a word used as a slur against you as something positive. I've seen it done with the word Cunt and always thought it was amusing and, yes, empowering.

However, I don't see the need to reclaim the word deviant because, despite the word's frequent misapplication (someone with blue hair? not deviant*) the connotation of "bad, wrong, not what we want in our society" is still perfectly valid. What we need to do is not reclaim the word deviant, but redefine it.

For example, as a society we are getting more tolerant toward differences in appearance, culture, and even sexuality. Sure, not everyone's on the bandwagon yet, but calling a modern tribal, immigrant Muslim, or gay man a "deviant" is becoming less common and less acceptable. And despite my feeling that change comes too slowly, population attrition will take care of crossing most of these groups off the deviant list.

But I think our society will always have deviants that that's as it should be. In part because some behavior IS wrong and in part because it gives us a clear bucket for ongoing discourse about what that behavior is. Sexual deviance is easiest to talk about, probably because there are common names and well-understood definitions for most sexual behavior.

I can think of a list of things right now that are, and should stay, high on the deviant list. Anything outside the realm of ADULT and CONSENSUAL, for example. I call deviance with its full negative connotation -- and I doubt many would disagree with me. Likewise, a game of "escaped convict and the wardens wife"** played by committed adults in their own home? So not deviant.

But you have to admit, between those two extremes is a huge gray area. Reasonable and reasonably tolerant people might choose to draw those lines in different places, and with a fair degree of subtlety. So, to make an example of myself, these are the things I consider deviant sexual behavior (off the top of my head, there may be more):

Non-adult
Non-consensual
Harms an animal
Necrophilia
Scatology
Infantilism

For the above with clear victims (the first three), I say that the act is criminally deviant. For the above without victims (the last three), I say that the act is psychologically deviant (it implies that the person's psyche is highly damaged and they need help). There are areas where I'm unclear about possible deviance. If it's a bad thing for someone to cut themselves from despair, is it equally bad to cut for pleasure? Maybe not, but I haven't exactly pondered it. I also draw the line between what someone might fantasize about and what they actually do. Actions count and we have control over our behavior (if we don't have a good measure of control that's another kind of deviance).

You may disagree with my list or want to add a lot to it. In either case, we'll always have some things that we consider deviant behavior, that we either create laws against (pyromaniac? go into demolition or design fireworks, don't set fire to houses) or simply disapprove of (you want to do that stuff, fine, do it in the privacy of your own home). And deviance is a perfectly good word for those things. When you align with the "deviant" you align with some pretty nasty characters with some pretty despicable behavior. Let's find another term for the funky, the kinky, the Pagan, the leather, the fandom, the geek -- one that reflects the respect in which they hold themselves and the respect that they deserve. "Perfectly normal, thank you very much" is one that I like.

* unless they're over 80 -- blue-haired grannies are deviant as all hell
** from an old episode of M*A*S*H, the Hub and I used it as a euphemism for the kind of light kink and role play that otherwise vanilla people engage in

tatjna had an interesting (public) post about deviance and secrecy here. In the post she asks a number of very thought provoking questions about why people feel the need to keep deviant behavior (particularly deviant sexual behavior) secret. Now, she's using the term "deviant" literally in terms of it meaning behavior that deviates from the norm. There's a negative connotation to the word that means "what we don't approve of" that I plan to explore in a future post (told you it was thought-provoking).

Now, most of the replies to this question focused on the "other" that is society's potential reaction to deviance, social acceptance, normative behavior, etc. My response was somewhat different...

To me, not discussing or displaying certain aspects of my life is more about privacy than secrecy. I mean, in terms of my life I'm completely open about my religion and sexuality -- I don't deliberately try to hide or obfuscate who I am. However my natural inclination is toward privacy in these matters. I just don't act in ways that would lead someone to think I was "deviant" in any way in public, not because I'm afraid to, or afraid of people's opinions, but because it's simply a private matter. I look very "regular" in person and dress (both when I'm at work AND when I'm out and about) because I have no overwhelming urge to look any other way.

I believe that privacy has value in and of itself, beyond any social pressure or threats or feelings of fear (which can be very real and which I do not discount). Now, I've always been somewhat private, even when I was younger and more involved in being "different" just for difference sake (which is a stage that I think a lot of young people go through). In my opinion, it's better to look normal and actually BE interesting than to look really interesting but actually be completely boring and incapable of independent thought. Being non-conformist simply for the sake of it is giving as much credence and power to dominant society as conforming to it. And many non-conformist groups expect incredible conformity from within their ranks (if you are one of our type of deviant, you must look/dress/act/believe a certain way). You aren't just being yourself, you're acting COUNTER to the current CULTURE... and society's counterculture can be as repressive as any dominant culture. Anyway...

Why choose privacy? Why decide that, however interesting or "deviant" you are, having aspects of your life be private is a GOOD thing? When I was commenting to Tatjna's post, I had a difficult time articulating the value of privacy at first. I felt that it was important, but I didn't know quite why. Here's what I came up with (copied from my comment to her post):

"Something about mystery. Or inner sacred space for understanding yourself and the world. Or a feeling that we actually have so little privacy that we need to hold some things close. The thought that global communication and cultural norming mean that as we get more open, we get more the same. That we have to pull back from a world of too much information in order to be authentically ourselves and not some accidental construct of media and advertising. That useless and even harmful corporate and government memes are often cloaked in the guise of deviance (drink BigCo Cola, because all the deviants are doing it)."

Every time you turn on the TV, you see someone airing their dirty laundry. TMI is rampant and we all seem to willing to share and share and share. But does that act dilute us? When I tell someone about a very powerful dream, it often sounds silly and banal. It's strength lies within me, not in the sharing. What kind of inner world can we have when we open all the doors to ourselves to anyone who comes along?

Friday night was the night of all debauchery, I tell you. We get together with our friend M and went to the always amazing Hakatamon restaurant at Uwajimaya to pig out on sushi. It had been a difficult, busy week for all of us and raw fish and seaweed was just what we needed. From miso to green tea ice cream, it was a lovely meal. Ham made an unusually large mess, but also ate a ton of food (she even got to have some flying fish roe). I learned that I do not, in fact, like squid sushi (add it to the list with uni and raw quail egg).

Afterward we wandered the store a bit. M bought Ham a wee Hello Kitty pack to use this summer. We got her a little thermos bottle. The Hub got a bottle of saki and I browsed the craft books at the bookstore (Japanese craft books are kind of famous among lots of US crafty types and they are hard to find in most of the country). That place is the mecca of cute, let me tell you. The Japanese have totally cornered the market on cute (also on creepy, but let's not go there).

We headed back to the House of Perpetual Indulgence to get the Ham to bed, drink saki, and watch Grosse Point Blank (which M had never seen before).

Over the weekend Ham had her Aikido camp. It's a sports themed over-nighter and this is her second year. I volunteered to enter the registration forms into the computer but got off lightly as all the other dojos waited until the very last minute to submit. Ham's "place of the way" is the main one for the Oregon Ki Society, so we had lots of kids from Oregon, some from Washington, and a group all the way from Hawaii! Next year we'll probably volunteer for the event itself, but I have to admit it was wonderful having a grownup weekend to ourselves.

After dropping her off Saturday morning, we went back to the house to finish our coffee. Looking around we realized that the HPI had gotten somewhat chaotic recently -- particularly the dining room. When our dear friend M. came to stay with us, we moved the Hub's studio from the spare room to the little office and the bookshelves from the little office into the dining room. Now, we don't exactly have a large dining room to begin with. Then there's the fact that that much of our kitchen has spilled over into the dining room (including a stainless prep table, beer fridge, standing freezer, and metal shelving where we keep our pots and pans). This is what we get for having such a tiny kitchen. Finally, there were about 24 dozen empty beer bottles in boxes that we'd been diligently saving for months for what we hope will be a summer of homebrew.

The living room too was a mess and we decided that we weren't going to take it anymore!

So, we moved the bookshelves back into the office along with the bottles, cleared anything else extraneous out of both rooms and scrubbed, dusted, and vacuumed them. The Hub rewired and organized the cables to our living room electronics and I took the opportunity to make strawberry custard ice cream base.

When we were done we had a perfectly neat and ordered living room and dining room... but the office was a complete disaster. So, we cleaned that too. By the time we finished, it was just after lunch. BTW, I credit this ability to clean lots of stuff in a short period of time to the Hub, who's just a machine when he gets in the mood. Plus he's strong as an ox and can shove furniture around quite easily. He's taught me over the years that cleaning stuff up doesn't take nearly as long as people think, if you're efficient and don't waffle about it.

One thing we knew we wanted to do while Ham was out was watch a couple of non-Ham friendly movies. So we watched Iron Man and the new Hulk both of which were good but had that "adapted from a comic book and you're missing about half a dozen critical plot points" vibe. Then we went to New Seasons to pick up stuff for dinner. We had grilled sirloin burgers on kaiser rolls with gourmet chips and red wine. I put the ice cream base on to churn and we finished it off with ice cream for dessert.

After dinner I suggested Superman as a completion of the theme, but Hub was a bit burned out on action and wanted comedy -- so we put on one of my old favorites, The Witches of Eastwick (that we consider this a comedy probably tells you something about us).

Then we crashed out and slept without interruption until an unprecedented 8am!

Sunday morning started slowly. Hub had a band recording session in the afternoon, so he warmed up while I went to H-Mart (that's two giant Oriental groceries in one weekend) to stock up on fruit, veggies, and meat for the coming week. About two, I picked up Ham, who promptly crashed out as soon as I got her home and slept until dinner time.

The Hub made spaghetti with pork sausage sauce (with homemade Italian sausage and fresh oregano from the pot on the porch) and we had more of the ice cream. I can't get my ice cream to hold up as well as the store bought stuff yet -- not even the all natural stuff -- but I guess that just means we need to eat it up faster. I think next time I'll do mint, as we have a ton of fresh mint growing as well.

There's plenty I didn't get done this weekend. For example, I only managed do to a tiny bit of mending. But hey, we got to just zone out and relax a lot and we needed that.

OMG I'm tired today. It's been a long and busy week here at HPI, with a surfeit of logistics and a dearth of domestic bliss. Some good things:

* Riding my bike into work.
* Making it to the Ham's elementary school talent show in time to hear her sing "Witch Doctor" (Oo ee oo ah ah, ting tang, walla-walla bing bang).
* Hot and muggy weather finally breaking in a wonderful wind and rain storm.
* Ground pork and chorizo burritos with little cubed potatoes and green chili sauce.
* Our dear friend M who's going to teach the Ham to swim this summer.
* An evening run to Old Navy for girlie shopping goodness. The Haul:
For Ham: Pink striped shirt dress, water-proof sport sandals, new bathing suit.
For Me: Pair shorts, blue/grey hoodie, two long-sleeved light knit shirts, a spring/fall weight sweater, six-pair sport anklet socks for riding.

These are the first new clothes I've bought since last summer. I desperately needed new casual stuff, as much of mine is super old and worse for wear. Ham already had a summer clothing run, these were just a couple of extras occasioned by her really needing a new swimsuit.

Tomorrow Ham goes off to Aikido camp (an overnight sports and martial arts camp). I'm looking forward to catching up on some DVDs that we've been wanting to see.

Tonight the Hub made a lovely vegetarian (vegan even, if you don't put cheese on it) pasta dish. Fresh tomatoes, black olives, yellow squash, onions, garlic, and bowtie pasta. All in a lemon-based sauce. It's interesting that olives in a vegetarian dish will make me feel like I ate something substantial. Leave out the olives and I'm going, "nice, but where's the meat?"

The sorbet is all gone, but we got cream and I'm pondering ice cream options. There's a maple syrup ice cream that looks great, but I also have fresh strawberries so...

I need to do some useful domestic things this weekend (while Ham is at her Aikido camp) like baking and mending. It was too hot to crank up the stove this past weekend, but I want to do shortbread biscuits and molasses bran muffins. I can always do bread in the bread machine (we have found the method for making bread machine bread that doesn't suck).

Had several comments / questions re. my cheesemaking adventures. Basically, I was just starting to play with it, using rennet from the grocery store to make soft cheese. I tried for cottage cheese several times and once ended up with a soft cheese very like Boursin. Tasty! I finally gave up on being able to replicate store-bought cottage cheese (which is much cheaper anyway) but I may make try to replicate the Boursin error again. I haven't made hard cheese yet, but when I do it will probably be basic hard farmer cheese and not a gourmet cheese with special cultures. Cheese-making is fun, but there's only so serious I want to get about it.

In other news, this weekend was kind of odd as the Ham had two sleepovers in a row. Friday night she spent the night with Auntie M and Saturday with her friend L. In between she was home for a few hours, but that's it. She didn't get home again until Sunday afternoon. She had great fun at both, but I have to admit I started missing her on Sunday. She came home sunburnt, grimy, and exhausted and crashed out on the couch until bedtime.

Fortunately the burn isn't too bad. It doesn't look like it's going to peel. I guess we need to be more conscientious (Ham's coloring means she rarely burns and we rarely worry about sunscreen unless she's outside for a number of hours). I rarely burn either. But she was at the pool most of Saturday afternoon and Sunday.

Still, it was an odd weekend with her being away so much. Nice at first (sleeping in, eating curry!) but then it got hard as we both began to miss her.

For dinner last night HPI* kitchen did meat and cheese wraps with lettuce, tomato, onion, and sliced cantaloupe and finished with an orange / cantaloupe sorbet (with OJ, and a wee splash of Grand Marnier). I'm on a homemade ice cream kick and got some great books from the library. We'll see how the sorbet holds up (homemade ice cream tends to deteriorate fast).

* House of Perpetual Indulgence -- we ended up with that nickname after our friend M came to stay with us for a while.

* From a bumper sticker I see in our parking lot.

More thank yous for the comment love. Today was not the day of all optimissmo though. Today was the day of evil scheduling challenges and busyness. But I will not blame my slacker-tendencies on being busy, because it's all just a lie...

One of the most interesting things I learned about myself while I was "between projects" -- euphemistically speaking -- is that all those years I was working I really wasn't waiting for my schedule to clear up to do all that great stuff I keep saying I want to do. Trust me, my schedule was clear, but I did not find myself working out, meditating regularly, making art, writing (I'm thinking here of non-personal stuff, like poetry or nonfiction), or doing all those things that I didn't do before because I was "too busy" working. It wasn't a financial thing either, as none of those things would have cost me a dime. Now, that's not to say I didn't do anything. I spent a lot of time: reading, baking, sewing, knitting, experimenting with cheese making (yeah, seriously), and spending time with the Hub and Ham. All the things that I normally do... but more of it. I did prospect for business while looking for a new day job, but in terms of non-work activities I didn't do anything differently than I was doing anyway.

And this was a revelation for me because for years I'd been using my day job as a convenient excuse for anything I wasn't doing. If only I wasn't working, I could... fill in the blank. But that was seriously all bullshit. If I want to do something, then I will find some time to do it. Maybe not a ton of time because I am still pretty busy, but time enough. I find time to hang with the Ham and Hub, bake, sew, and so on -- and work doesn't stop me.

And so that means that (drum roll please) those other things must not be that important to me. Because if they were, I'd have been doing them all along. In fact, the structure of a day job clearly helps me structure my life in some important ways. I've been riding my bike to work each day as well as part of the way home. That's way more exercise than I was getting when I had all day free and a free community center worth of exercise equipment to use. Yet I love the ride and am happy to get to do it.

This revelation has stripped away some false views I've had of myself and I appreciate that. It's also made me ponder the disconnect between both "me's" and the reasons for it. I mean, I can still decide to change my priorities. It's just a matter of doing it. Why should I simultaneously want to do something and not want to do it? Still pondering that one.