adrian_turtle

I learned how to use a broiler when I had an electric stove. I had cooked for decades without any broiling at all, and still don't feel comfortable broiling meat. But I liked using it for toast or eggy things. I especially liked being able to leave the oven door open a little and peek at the top of the food to see how done it was.

This apartment has a gas stove with the broiler in a drawer under the oven. (I don't know if all gas stoves have that kind of broiler arrangement.) Because it's an unfamiliar stove, I expect to do some fumbling around getting used to how long things take. Just like I had to learn this oven's idea of 375 degrees F is a bit hotter than my Arlington oven's. I don't have a problem with that. I'm annoyed that there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust the vertical distance from the heat, but I can be ok with that too.

What bothers me is that it's so painful for me to move the drawer in and out. I can't tell if this is a problem with my body or with the stove. Either way, it makes it extremely difficult to adjust timing. I can't watch the food while it cooks, because the drawer has to slide in to put the food under the heat. I'd like to slide it out frequently to check for doneness, and that's a horrible strain, even when I'm sitting on the floor so I can pull straight out without twisting. (And so I can peek at the food with minimal sliding out.) It's painful enough that I've been choosing not to cook foods that would need broiling.

Is this a solved problem? Is there some kind of lube that makes broiler drawers slide easily, and doesn't catch fire? Or is it just common knowledge that moving a broiler drawer requires a nontrivial amount of arm strength and a few healthy joints, like lifting a full stockpot or putting a turkey in the oven?

ETA: The stove is new to the apartment, but not "new" in the usual sense. (There were a lot of renovations before we moved in.) The drawer rails don't seem to be bent or damaged, but it's hard to know for sure. I slid the broiler drawer out as far as possible without lifting, and the rails weren't obviously distorted.

Sovay and I are going through our apartment. We want to have a list of our concerns before the housing inspector turns up. So the inspector doesn't look at the terrifying windows, then go away without seeing the dubious back door. When we actually sit down with the building code, there turns out to be a LOT of dubious around here.

At least we don't have raccoons. Or squirrels. Or daleks. (We're on the second floor. I suppose we'd be safe from daleks no matter how incompetent the builders were.) It seemed so nice when we signed the lease last month. And even when we moved in, earlier this month. But now winter is coming INSIDE. The newly-installed windows don't close, in part because the window frames are set into the wall with mind-boggling ineptitude.

It's so very frustrating. We never thought about the doorposts of the house (except in thinking about mezuzot, obviously), and now it turns out Sovay can pry some of them loose with her fingers. That's just wrong.

I believe the landlord had the whole apartment gutted after damage from the previous tenants, and rebuilt with a somewhat different floor plan. That's why I have such a big bedroom with a walk-in closet and six windows. And why the kitchen was completely refurbished. We walked through in February while they were laying the new floor, and thought all the renovations would have that level of craftsmanship. The windows don't even meet code! (I called the landlord when I noticed. The installer had told him about the problem with a couple of the windows, and he had planned to replace them in a few weeks. That was when I asked the city how they dealt with building code violations--they're sending an inspector sometime this week.) I'm torn between wanting to keep a good relationship with the landlord and wanting to push him as hard as necessary to make him repair this [obscenity] properly and fast.

Getting the repairs done properly is a big deal. One thing I'm afraid of is that the landlord will say he'll make the repairs, and then just wrap some absurd amount of weatherstripping around the windows, so it looks kind of marginally ok until the next bad storm. I don't know if the landlord was taken advantage of by a wildly incompetent window-installer or an incompetent/dishonest building-inspector. (Do these things even get inspected?) Or if the landlord knew perfectly well what was going on, and did it that way on purpose.

I don't want to move again. I want to live in the apartment I thought we had found, if it can be made to exist. Meanwhile, I'm cold and scared.

The apartment seemed pretty good from the description, so we asked the realtor to show it to us. The location wasn't great, but it was ok--both of us like long walks. The size wasn't great, but it was ok--we could manage with just one couch, and I'm sure we could build shelves all the way to the ceiling. And there was nothing really drastically wrong with it. No impossibly narrow doors. No rotting floorboards. But there was nothing really right about it either. I looked around the place and hoped we could find better.

Sovay drew me aside and murmured, "It's big enough, and the layout isn't horrible, but it smells wrong to me. Not smoke, but..." All right then. Cross that one off the list. She seemed embarrassed about rejecting an apparently-good apartment for such an inexplicable reason, but there's no need to explain "smells wrong" to me. I get it. I'm usually the one waving my hands helplessly and feeling defensive because I can't explain it to other people.

We got back in the realtor's car to drive away from the apartment, and he asked what we thought of the place.
A: "It's very nice, but I think we need to keep looking."
R: "I don't think you're going to find anything bigger in your price range. Not that close to the T."
S: "The size is fine. Really. We just don't think it's quite right for us."
R: "Why don't you want it?
Ok. I guess that's part of his job as a salesman. Finding alternatives when we don't like something.

A: "Do you know how sometimes a space feels comfortable, for reasons you can't explain? This just doesn't feel comfortable to us. If you find us another apartment that size, that close to the T, we'd probably like it."
R: "Well, if you don't tell me what's wrong with it, I can't help you."
That put my back up. I hate having to defend my "no."

S: "I'm sure somebody else would love it. Really. It's a great apartment"
R: "If it's such a great apartment, why don't you want it?"
A: "It just didn't smell right to us."
R: "Smell right? That's ridiculous. We'd have it cleaned."
Of course, it's harder to defend my "no" when my arguments don't make sense to anybody. Well, not to anybody except Sovay and Mrissa.

I think that was when we lost patience with one another, and he told us we'd never find an apartment as big and cheap and close to the T as we want, and thus we will need to settle for a smaller place with no room for bookshelves. After we got out of the car, I wondered if I had said something wrong, somehow...if it might have been possible to keep him on our side with the right kind of diplomatic lie or non-response.

I need to do a lot of things before I move out of this apartment. The big ones, obviously, are finding a suitable* place to move TO, packing everying** into boxes***, and moving it. It won't be feasible to go look at potential apartments, nor to go get empty boxes, until the weather clears. So I am having a quiet day at home, beginning to sort through the everything.

I have 4 boxes of documents I've saved over the years, for a variety of reasons. Is there any reason to keep car insurance or purchase records when I don't own the car anymore? How long do I need to I save tax returns? Health insurance records? (I want to keep the dental insurance records because they're kind of funny.) Bank statements? Documents about my student loan, which was completely paid in 2001? I might be able to shred more than half this stuff, which would clear up a couple of boxes to start packing.


*I'd like to thank those of you who pointed me toward Sovay, who helped me redefine "suitable." We plan to share, and having an ally in the search is making the whole process less terrifying.

**Everything I expect to fit into half a large 2-bedroom apartment. That's quite a bit more than would fit into a studio, but I still need to do some culling.

***The only empty boxes currently in the apartment are shoeboxes.

Last fall, I went looking for Rumer Godden's doll stories. "Little Plum" was once one of my favorite books ever, and the youngest of the little girls I love seemed like she might be close to the age of appreciating it. (The older one didn't want anything to do with dolls.) I might have read one of the other books from the library, but Aunt Pat gave me "Little Plum," and I read it many times. After the paperback died in a tragic housetraining accident, the story lived vividly in my memory.

Or so I thought. After I managed to track down a copy (they're remarkably hard to find these days), I had to read it myself. Maybe it would have to go in the "when she's older" pile. Besides, I wanted to spend some time with Belinda again.

The only copy I could find was actually a collection including all Godden's doll stories, which would certainly make it a more impressive present. As I vaguely remembered, "The Doll's House," wasn't bad but didn't grab me hard. "Miss Happiness and Miss Flower" was wonderful! (Some of you probably remember it from when you were 8.)

The little girl who feels so out of place. The bookstore owner who helps her. The dolls who can't move or speak or do anything, but love her and play with her and make her less lonely. *happy sigh* And the other lonely girl in "Little Plum," who doesn't know how to play, and thus her doll is lonely and neglected. And how they are wished and pulled and quarreled into friendship and community and happy ending.

I still love it. Only now that I'm not 8, I'm not comfortable with some of the details. The little Japanese dolls are fascinating because they are so exotic. Nona making a dollhouse isn't just about making a nice comfortable home for dolls she loves. It's very strongly about making a Japanese dollhouse, so different from the English kind! with everything just so like the books. Making green tea out of paint. Making rice out of snippets of thread. Dolls bowing and thinking of "Honorable so-and-so."

And of course the dolls are silent. Nobody asks them what they want before moving them around. The only power they have is wishing. Where the silent and powerless dolls are so emphatically Japanese dolls, it makes me uncomfortable. Yes, of course they're dolls, and dolls don't talk. (I love how dolls' wishes have power, and how Godden shows the parallel with children who are moved around with nobody asking what they want.) But there's also that stereotype of small, pretty, exotic, doll-like, Asian women with no voices or wills of their own. It makes the whole thing feel vaguely creepy, unlike the small, pretty, voiceless, English or Dutch dolls in Godden's other stories.

Is this a glancing blow from the racism fairy? The colonialism fairy? Am I being hypersensitive about a book that's really sympathetic to all its characters--the disempowered ceramic Japanese ones, as well as the English children (and even the adults in the background.) I didn't recognize "Little Plum" as being even slightly racist, the first dozen times I read it. That might have been because I wasn't 9 yet. Or because it was the 1970s, and I lived in a world where "racism" meant calling people vicious names or beating them up. Not subtle othering.

The child wouldn't notice any hint of racism in the book. She reads very well, but she's only 7. She's only 7...but someday I hope she'll be a strong voice against bigotry, even the subtle kinds of bigotry. I don't want her to think this kind of thing is ok, or that Aunt Adrian thinks this kind of thing is ok. (But she won't notice.) But I do want her to know about Nona. And Mr. Twilfit, because of course miracles come from bookstores. And Gem. And Tom. And Belinda, who does spiteful things and then is sorry and tries so hard to fix them. Ack. Wibble. Thus do I grind to a halt.

The word "opiate" does not mean "something that makes a person behave badly." It does not even mean "something that makes a person behave badly, and is also hard to stop using." Most especially, it does not mean, "something that makes a person agitated and short-tempered, and is hard to avoid because it's so pervasive."

I wish there was not so much stigma around the medicine that lets me be as functional as I am.

It's a fool and I love it. Apricot Fool. http://rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com/473752.html Redbird and I made it this weekend, and it really is delicious. I found a non-dairy (soy-free, gluten-free) whippable thingee called Healthy Top, last week at Harvest, and substituted it for the whipped cream. It's made of coconut, almonds, and cashews, and it worked amazingly well. It tastes faintly of almonds, very faintly of coconut, and immediately became best friends with that rich and complex apricot puree.

Rush called the fool "a very simple and delicious dessert which is perfect for fall and requires no thought whatsoever except when you are finding the apricots." A comments on the post recommended a source for the apricots, directly across the street from my apartment, so one might have expected the thing to be dead easy. I'm sure it was, for Rush. (And generally. A "fool" is customarily simple.) The problem is that my standards for simple cooking are so embarrassingly stringent. In my kitchen, a recipe stops being simple after it starts talking about whipping cream.

It's not that it's such a hassle to find a pareve replacement for whipped cream. (It is, but I got lucky when I found the Healthy Top.) I had been considering an experiment with cooking down coconut milk, and I'm glad I didn't have to. We just had to chill the bowl and beaters, pre-chill the stuff, measure the stuff out of the carton, and take the electric mixer to it. That's pretty much what I used to do to whip cream.

It reminds me of how Papersky and Redbird make cakelings they think of as ridiculously simple, and that recipe isn't simple for me either. In that case, it's the need to chop the apples and melt the butter that makes it hard. (I have a microwave, so melting butter isn't even all that hard. Just not simple enough to put it on my list of easy desserts.) I recognize the intrinsic simplicity of crockpots, broilers, and large stockpots even though I myself can't handle them. But the complexity problems feel different.

(Is this just me?)

One of the things I like doing with Redbird is reading aloud. With the right book, it feels connecting and cuddly. With the wrong book, it's just annoying. We don't want books Redbird already knows. Or books that are deeply scary or depressing. So I'm asking advice from people who have read more than we have.

For this purpose, we want episodic books, or those not focused on very complicated plots. We want to be able to pick up reading chapter 17, and have it make sense even though we read chapters 10-16 three weeks ago. Detective stories would only work if each chapter were its own mystery. (Mirable?) Or if the idea was to follow the character development of the detective, more than to figure out the puzzle the detective was working on. (Charlie and Constance?)

Both of us have a low tolerance for sexism. (We all know the difference between sexist characters and a sexist story? Good.) I can be ok with an all-white story, but not with active racial bigotry. We have limited patience with characters being stupid just because it's convenient to the plot. One nice thing about reading aloud is being able to call out the annoying bits as they go by...but we don't want every page to collapse into MST3K.

We had a good time with Patricia Wrede's Dealing with Dragons and 2 of the sequels (the last in the series was less good, because of characters being gratuitously stupid, but not a disaster.) Naomi Kritzer's The House That Wasn't There was a somewhat more serious adventure, aimed at the young side of YA, and we really liked it. And A.J. Hall's The Curious Incident of the Knight in the Library was great fun.

There are a great many stories outside YA and fanfic that Redbird hasn't read yet. (Those categories do seem to help the odds. She's read very little fanfic, and only that YA which has crossed over to adult popularity.) In order to work for this purpose, YA needs to avoid dystopias and problem novels. Fanfic needs to avoid relying too heavily on the source texts--we read The Curious Incident of the Knight in the Library as a standalone novel with some peculiar character names. I think horror is right out, but other genres might work.

A bunch of uncooperative things (the MBTA, my shoulders, my old blackberry, high school students) are conspiring to make me consider getting a new gadget. Until now, I have used a stupid phone* for voice calls. I also have an old blackberry, with no monthly service plan, which I use only for ebooks and audiobooks. Because it doesn't connect to anything without a cable, I can't use it for GPS or email or other apps.

I was getting ready to go out last week, and dithering about whether to bring an ounce of sunblock, or a little package of tissues, or my sunglasses, or 2 ounces of water. Because I couldn't afford the weight of carrying ALL of them. That's when it occurred to me that I really should not be carrying separate devices for ebooks and telephone. I have been managing without GPS for quite some time, because my GPS is a third device that is hardly ever worth the trouble for me to carry, but there are times when it would be a great help. And I generally regret not having Nextbus at least once a week. In winter, I regret it much more often.

I haven't done anything about getting a new thingee, because it's expensive--both the gadget and the monthly service. And because I'm using something that kinda sorta works. And because shopping for something new is confusing and difficult, especially when I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing with it. So here I am asking for suggestions.

( it has to do this for me to bother with it )

( and wouldnt it be nice )

Any suggestions would be very welcome.

*I don't mean to insult it, when it has given me years of good service and cost me remarkably little. It's just not a smart phone.

Spring has finally come to Massachusetts. It's the season of opening windows on warm days and closing them on cold night and when it rains. My apartment has horizontal sliding windows, which has been awfully inconvenient over the years (because window air conditioners are designed for ordinary up-and-down windows), but never so inconvenient as to make me move away from the bus stop, the bike path, and the supermarket.

The type of shoulder pain I've been dealing with for the last few months makes lateral motion exceptionally hard. More resistance makes the pain flare last longer. (Pushing a shirt on a hanger along the closet rod causes a sharp increase in pain. Pushing a heavy coat, or many shirts (all at once or one at a time) makes the pain increase for hours, maybe more than a day.) The windows don't slide easily. A friend came over this morning to open them for me, and we're not supposed to have another frost until Friday night, nor serious rain all week. I don't think this is a good long-term solution.

Do any of you know of a tool that would help me open and close the windows? I can push or pull (perpendicular to the window frame) reasonably well, but have trouble exerting the kind of lateral force that's needed. A wrench is too small and an automobile jack is too big, and either is hard to clamp to the window frame.