Comments Off on The French Gimlet was my Fall Down the Rabbit Hole
I knew I’d fallen irrevocably into the spirit world, and by that I mean HARD LIQUOR type spirits and not the kind who haunted a person or place, when I started loving Gin. Gin isn’t for the faint of heart. And many will tell you they hate the stuff. I was was on of those not too long ago.
But then it all changed.
I found Hendrick’s gin. And all its iterations. And while the juniper-forward gins made famous by the London Dry style left a lot to be desired for a young gin drinker like me, the floral-forward Hendrick’s was right up my alley. It was everything I’d been missing in gin. A little cucumber, a little rose, and juniper took a back seat. I mean, that pine flavor was still there, letting everyone and their brother know that this spirit was gin, but it was tempered and softened. And the limited edition release known as Midsummer’s Eve edition was all that and two bags of chips. I LOVED it. And I am so sad it is no more.
I like Hendricks for my French Gimlets. I tried it with Plymouth gin, which I normally favor for anything with sage in it, and I thought it would play well with the Elderflower liqueur, and it did. But I think it played too well. The French Gimlet with Plymouth gin was too soft. If you know what I mean. And then I tried it with a French gin, Citadelle, and I knew I had a winner, winner chicken dinner.
And that’s when I knew.
I’d been able to make a cocktail with various gins I had in my repertoire and some I didn’t and found the one I liked the best in the recipe.
I’d become a gin lover.
For a delicious French Gimlet shake in a shaker:
2 oz gin
1.5 oz elderflower liqueur
.5 oz lime juice
Strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.
I think the search for a better Amaretto Sour might’ve been the beginning of my deep dive into the craft cocktail world. The ones I keep getting were too sweet, too hazelnut forward, not well-balanced–although, I wouldn’t know it then, or too something. I’ve never been a fan of whiskey so whiskey sours we’re just out of the question. Then I stumbled onto the Morgenthaler Amaretto Sour. Jeffrey adds in just enough cask-proof bourbon to the usual amaretto to make the drink more balanced and have more depth and more tasting notes. Just more of everything.
But I don’t like bourbon. And what I don’t like about bourbon is doubly present in over-proof bourbon.
Still, I made them the Morgenthaler way for years. That is until I discovered Japanese whiskey. They oak they use makes Japanese whiskey sweeter to me. The Mizunara oak imparts a taste not present in any other whiskey. And I love it.
My recipe for an Amaretto Sour is:
2 oz amaretto
.5 oz cask-proof Japanese whiskey
.5 oz Suntory Toki whiskey
1 oz lemon juice
1 tsp enriched simple syrup (2:1)
.5 oz egg white
Shake in a shaker. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with a cherry. Or three.
The Morgenthaler Amaretto Sour was a huge improvement over the regular one. But I think I’ve taken it to the next level with my substitution of Japanese whiskey for bourbon. And because I don’t like the boozy forward-ness over over-proof whiskeys, I did a mix instead. It’s damn near perfect when cherries are added to the mix. Luxardo cherries, to be exact. They are my favorite as well. And I’ve tried a LOT of cocktail cherries.
It’s been a few years since I perfected my Amaretto Sour recipe, well, perfect for me. And in that time, I’ve made a few more drinks. And then, I fell down the rabbit-hole of craft cocktails. And now my home bar has more bitters than most commercial ones.
Comments Off on Espresso Martini… and My Hunt for the Perfect One
I discovered the Espresso Martini in the last couple of years. I’m pretty sure it’s a throw-back to the 1980s and my Kailua fueled college years. It’s taste reminds me of my past. Plus, they are super delicious.
The recipe I’ve been using lately is pretty simple:
2 oz vodka
2 oz espresso
.75 oz coffee liqueur
Add all the ingredients to a shaker with ice. Shake. Pour. Garnish with 3 beans. Viola.
Sometimes, if I’m feeling myself, I will add a thin layer of fresh soft cream on top. I like cream with my morning coffee, so it’s not a stretch that I would like a little with my espresso martini. Other times, I add some Frangelico and add a little hazelnut flavor. That’s the beauty of this drink. With just a little of this or that, you can make it fresh and new.
I know it’s the end of the October… almost. I know that it’s been awhile since I posted… but still, check your ta-tas. It’s that time of the year; it’s that time in this month. 2016 will live as a year in infamy for me. I hope that you check your ta-tas and that 2020 isn NOT a year that lives forever in your memory.
I had a scare this month. I normally get my boobs checked in August. Which is the month that I received my cancer diagnosis. But for various reasons–Covid–well that just didn’t happen. Instead, I got it this month, of all months.
And I noticed a small spot of skin change about six months ago. I decided to keep watch, in case it was just radiation damage. But about three weeks before my mammogram of my old boob was scheduled, I felt a hard lump under the spot with the skin change. Well, two things make alarm bells go off in my head. So, I asked them to check it out as well. Thank goodness my gynecologist had included additional ultrasounds and biopsies and stuff on her order. Because it allowed the radiologist to check that spot, mammogram my DIEP boob, and do an ultrasound guided biopsy. All this with just a few days. Which is AWESOME-SAUCE.
Don’t be afraid to point stuff out. Don’t be afraid to be the squeaky wheel. You might be a pain in the ass. But you will be a pain in the ass who is ALIVE.
My biopsy came back negative.
It is my wish that this is your outcome as well. But it can’t be if you don’t schedule and attend to your own ta-tas.
I just recommended the Artist Way by Julia or Julie Cameron to a friend on Facebook. Now, most of the people on my personal FB page are friends from high school. I went to a weird, freak high school where people have stayed in touch with each other over the years. We still have a pretty good turnout for both kids and teachers at our reunions. Although, they’ve gotten grayer as the years have moved on.
I stumbled on the Artist Way due to a recommendation from my bff. It literally was a necessary thing at a period in my life when I needed it. I wrote stream of consciousness in the mornings for almost three years. Probably longer than I thought I needed, but looking back far shorter than I should have. My mother’s death, wherein I went into a deep, dark depression fora few years probably could’ve benefited from journaling every morning. I forgot during that period as I was in survival mode. I wish I had kept up the writing so it would’ve already been there. I have given a lot of thought to getting back to it.
I still take myself on dates and buy myself presents. I spend ALL of my $10. I leveled up from $5 because inflation, yo.
Weirdly, the one other thing which has helped my mind is an amalgamation of a short story I read in 9th grade and something I read many years later. When I was in 9th grade, Mrs. Sinclair, who was my 9th grade English teacher gave us tons of short stories throughout the year. The one I remember in relation to this thought was one that was a science fiction. It was about the invention of teleportation. Humans has invented a teleporter. But in order to have living things alive from one point to the other, anything alive had to be put to sleep. So, you are put to sleep, you are teleported, and then you wake up. Less than a minute or two. A smarty pants boys wanted to know how and why a person had to be asleep to teleport. So, he took drugs or somehow concocted to stay awake during the teleportation. He ended up completely insane when he arrived on the other side.
Although the teleportation took only a second or two, the human mind when it teleports and doesn’t have a frame of reference perceives it as infinity. His brain had live an infinite amount of time… alone and in a vacuum. He came out insane. In case you have figured it out by now, humans are community species. We are built to live together with others. otherwise, bad things happen.
The second thing which hammered this home was Stephen Covey’s first 7 Habits book. I don’t remember anything else about that book today. But I remember this: Infinity resides in the space between action and reaction. The old ways of doing something doesn’t need to be kept because you have all the time and choices in the world as you sit in that space between the initial action and the attendant reaction.
When you put that together with the short story, you get a complete thought, in my mind at least.
Now, when you put all this together, using stream of consciousness writing to help your brain gain more time between action and reaction. Making that period of time go in slo-mo.
Anyway, I woke up this morning thinking these things and thought I would share them with you.
I am three years into my cancer journey. August of 2016 was the month I learned my life would change. It’s been a hell of a ride so far.
A lot of people have told me they notice I have such a good attitude about the cancer. I tell them having agency in my own medical journey AND stellar at-home support are the keys to recovery with a sound mind. It’s an article for another time, but seriously y’all, being able to have choices was fabulous. With an out of control disease… having some control is NECESSARY. But I digress.
One of the interesting things I’ve noticed over the last three years is that the chemo stripped my mind of my normal coping mechanisms. For what, you ask. Well, I am pretty sure I have ADD. I say pretty sure because back when I was growing up, ADD or ADHD weren’t diagnoses. Not being able to sit still or listen very well were. Boys who had the wiggles and girls who daydreamed. All of that. It’s even more complicated because ADD and ADHD looks different in girls than in boys. And boys were the ones most studies are about… then… and STILL.
I’ve known I’ve had ADD since my early 20s when I was able to study such things at university. I figured out large quantities of caffeine, enough to keep one up all night in the form of “No-Doze” pills made me calm and withdrawn. All the same symptoms people taking who had ADD or ADHD and Ritalin, Adderall, etc., reported. It was enough tomato me look into why this would be. Thus, my amateur diagnosis of ADD. Because I’m not hyperactive. Just distractible.
As a child without a diagnosis, no one taught me how to cope with my world with the way I encounter it and how that didn’t work for the community at-large. I figured out that I needed low noise in the background to study. That standing up and walking for a minute helped. I learned how to stick information int the right mental file cabinet and I learned how to access it with ease. And I figured out how to get my body and mind to cooperate.
Chemo strips all of your mental coping mechanisms. That is, until you can re-trace those pathways afterward. But the way my brain is and the things that chemo did to it are both fascinating and frustrating. I am relearning how to cope all over again. With new behaviors. Some are old ones my brain is learning to use again. Some, though, are new ones. I don’t think I understood just how much my brain had learned to work around my distractibility or my desire to DO ALL THE THINGS AT THE SAME TIME, which is almost the same thing as being distracted. Being TOO attracted, if you get what I mean.
At some point in the last 13 years, I learned mediation. Well, I learned a form of it as an older teenager to help my brain stop whirling and go to sleep, but I mean I learned mediation deliberately as a thing in and for itself. One of the ways yoga has you mediate is to step back and watch what your mind brings up as you try to sit in nothing. Your monkey mind will have thoughts. What they are and how often thoughts come are interesting things to observe. Observing the ego is a fascinating thing. I don’t know what happens in other people’s minds, but in mine when I first started mediating, I would have MANY thoughts all coming in and out of my brain at different speeds. Lots of them and often. As I sit longer and longer in stillness just watching, my thoughts would slowly slow down. At no time have I ever had a mediation experience with no thoughts floating through. Even if it is one or two thoughts coming through every once in a while, I always have a thought running it’s narrative inside my head.
I am pretty sure mediation has helped me recover from chemo and having an ADD mind. Being able to sit and watch as my brain tries different things to get information into the correct filing cabinet AND be able to retrieve it has been interesting, to say the least.
It’s been three years since a diagnosis changed my life.
Hopefully, it won’t take eighteen to relearn or lean anew techniques and tactics and strategies to cope with my learning disability. My parents had to “donate” playground equipment to keep me in kindergarten because of my bad behavior as a kid, I’m not sure I have the wherewithal to make a “donation” to stay in society as an adult. Costs have skyrocketed, after all.
We moved across country again. We got a job offer we couldn’t turn down and it came at a very opportune time in our lives and, so, we packed up our stuff and moved across country again. Back to where we came from. Alaska.
Meshing two lives can be hard.
But way back in the beginning of our careers, a sacrifice was made so that one of the two could shine. And now, way at the end of our first careers- I think everyone should have a couple or at least some serious hobbies- that first sacrifice can be honored by allowing the moves and the travel. Flexibility in work helps a great deal in upward mobility and finding positions which are satisfying and worthwhile. He made the reverse sacrifice for me. How could I not for him? And this circles back to saying yes to everything your significant other wants, which isn’t illegal and is within one’s means. Say yes to every attempt at attaining a dream. It might take a hundred frogs to get to the Prince. Failure isn’t bad. Loss of faith, however, can be severely detrimental. Always be the cheerleader of the person you love and who matters to you. Always. Let others in the world be a discouraging voice. Let yours be ever encouraging.
Back in Alaska, though. I wasn’t sure it would happen. But it did. And it’s not a bad thing. And it might help my writing, which would be a good thing. Alaska is a majestic state. I hope I can fashion some stories to treat her with care and love.
There is another thing happening on social media about women facing harassment or sexual assault. And as always the first couple of days are filled with solidarity and kumbiya moments. Further, as the days wear on, another group shows up.
This group is the THAT’S NOT ENOUGH group.
Without much effort, they tell the women who have been sharing their hash tagged MeToo that they aren’t doing enough. Just by speaking up.
It’s not enough that they bare their wounds to the world in open daylight.
Some how, again, they aren’t enough. Their response isn’t enough.
Which is what their attackers made them feel, of course. That they wren’t enough to be treated with human decency. That they weren’t enough to be given consideration to feel secure in the physical safety. That they weren’t enough of a human even to treat with basic decency. That they weren’t enough and everything they had could be taken without asking and without impunity.
At some point, they come forward. And join in a moment to show just how prevalent sexual assault is. Then they get told that they aren’t enough. They aren’t saying enough. They aren’t doing enough. They aren’t enough.
Listen, the first step to fixing a problem is identifying it. I really wish these never enough bitches had taken some basic and rudimentary science classes, wherein they might’ve learned that they hypothesis is JUST AS IMPORTANT as the experiment. Sometimes, it’s the key. Because asking the right questions gets you to the answer faster. While wrong questions gets you more hypothesis and more testing and revisions and more work.
If every woman who has been sexually assaulted says me, too out loud, that is all that is needed to highlight the pervasiveness of sexual assault. It happens everyday to every women everywhere.
Because there are people- in positions of power, positions of trust, position to help- who don’t know. Who don’t understand just how all encompassing this shit is.
Once we can get everyone on the page with this shit happens everyday and maybe we should do something about, then and only then should the next step be asked about. The what have you done for it lately crowd gets to get in the spotlight. Until then, #metoo.
And yes, we’ve been married for 30 years this year. October 16, to be exact. He deserves to be canonized. Seriously. He’s a saint. But then again, so am I.
Our marriage has matured with the both of us. I can’t remember a time he wasn’t in my life. We’ve been married for all of our adult lives. Which is pretty cool. And presents a problem or two.
He got to watch me grow up. With all the growing pains that entails. Sometimes, I feel jealous of couples who significant other only saw them mature or at their best. Mine got to see me at my worst, as I figured things out, as I matured into my adult self. And I got to see that for him as well.
Has it been easy? Umm, yeah no.
Our relationship was maturing along with us. Going through it’s own growing pains. The ups. The downs. Figuring things out. Forming the marriage into something good and beneficial for us both.
I couldn’t imagine going through cancer with another human being. He’s been a rock. And so supportive he gives it new meaning. My recovery from cancer and the treatments that kill cancer- and me- has been smooth because of his unwavering support. Plus, he loves me and my new body. He loved me and my old body. He just loves me.
You can’t know what it means to hit 30 years with the man I have. It’s exciting, comforting, and so fucking awesome. He’s so fucking awesome.
And no matter what, it’s still the two of us against the world.
Here’s to 30 more. If my body is willing! I’d love 30 more.
Comments Off on Breast Cancer and Other News Update
It’s been a while. I feel like it’s been an eternity. It’s been months at least. And that’s because cancer treatments kick your ass.
No, really.
I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but it the treatments that’ll kill ya. Seriously, the business of fighting for your life against a vicious disease is a hard battle. And I am fatigued. But I am coming out of the fog.
My hair is the shortest it’s been since I decided I wanted to be a buddhist monk at 3 or 4 and had my mom shave my head. I tried to keep it, y’all. And if my chemo had not been the worst, most dangerous and strongest chemo around- they call it the red devil, if that tells you anything- I would’ve kept most of it. As it was, I kept about 25%. It just simply looked too terrible not to shave off into a boy cut and go all Audrey Hepburn.
Cold capping works. It just doesn’t work very well if you do the chemo I did. And then if you have a semi-formal event- like a college graduation that you can’t miss because it’s your oldest child and you wouldn’t miss that shit even if you were bald on the head and hairy on the leg- that you must attend without a baseball cap. So you go and get a nice short do. And proudly wear that shit to your son’s graduation. Proud and loud, bitches. I beat cancer.
I did. For right now. Cancer always comes back. They don’t talk about that. But it comes back. What you want is for it to not come back for a really long time, like 15 years or more. But my body scans tell the docs I have no other cancer hot spots. And the chemo plus radiation treatment plan kills rogue cells which have broken off and might be roaming free.
It’s been 5 weeks post radiation. The black skin is all gone off my chest. And almost all gone off my back. Soon, I will be back to my old self. Well, without one boob. And with a wicked fucking abdomen scar. But with my life. And my brain in tact. Not that my noggin has been much help lately. Chemo brain is REAL, yo. But slowly, I am coming back.
I attended a Master Class with Alexandra Sokoloff this past weekend. It was awesome. Got my creative brain and juices flowing. And I wrote the most words I’ve written since I started this whole cancer saga.
Anyway, here’s my new do. Hopefully, my hair grows quickly. And I am so glad this whole no hair thing happened now. If this had happened back when I was younger, I think I would’ve been completely devastated. As it is now, short hair is just another thing. I’m alive. And that is all that matters.
And here’s hoping I have many more words this week. And I want to do an update on my erotic gothic thriller story. I’ve got some ideas.
Now. I need to go write. And take supplements to try and get these strands GROWING!
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