So, today’s magic, immortality-granting bento is pasta, chicken drumstick and some veggies. No fruit, because I’ve been lazy and haven’t been shopping.

But that thing about not having been shopping?  That’s  something that has a  lot to do with how I approach the whole bento aesthetic.

Sure, you can have the perfect containers, and make the perfect recipes and make some perfectly beautiful food art.  I’ve done some cute food art myself — piggie onigiri, seascapes and all kinds of stuff.  It’s fun.

But even non-perfect can be kinda cool, if you put a little thought into presentation.  Again, I used Gladware containers to make these bento.  In addition, a lot of the bento included leftovers.    Yes, I paid attention to color and presentation, but these meals were not planned.  They were put together with what I have on hand.  Yes, I regularly have fresh veggies on hand, but so should anyone if they can swing it.

I’ve been presenting these to show that while yes, the cute Japanese boxes are fun, and making Japanese food for your bento is also fun (Onigiri are awesome), Gladware and Western-style food works just fine.  If you want to make bento, you’re really only limited by your imagination, not your pocketbook.

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I’m probably only intermittently girly.  Yeah, skirts.  Wear ‘em most of the time if the weather isn’t extremely cold.  My hair is about waist length.  But high heels?  Not my thing.   Jewelry – mostly quite understated.  Makeup?  Same/same.  I wear it, but I go for understated.  My “look” tends to be best described as well-put-together.  However, it is a specifically-chosen look, so that pushes the image back over to “girly” a bit, doesn’t it?

My fingernails are fairly short, but I don’t bite them, so I do have a bit of a nail.  Other than keeping them clean and neat, I don’t often wear nail polish.  Rather, I’ll go through a six week period of doing so, then put away the manicure stuff for awhile.

I think, however, I may have found a look that I’d be content with as a constant thing – the French manicure.    This is the real thing, not the dramatically artificially-colored fingernail tips.  I think the look can be cute as hell, but it doesn’t match the way I dress.  No, I mean the subtle French Manicure with white tips, and a nail bed color that is close to your real nail bed color, maybe only better – rosier, deeper, less yellow, whatever.

I love this look because it’s neat and pulled-together without being too dramatically obvious.   It looks good with a broomstick skirt or a suit, and you don’t have to have really long nails to pull it off.  It also has the advantage of not showing wear at the tips very much[1] – unlike darker nail polish.  So I think this is something that’ll last a great deal longer for me.

Now this pic is of my hand, and yes, I did this myself.  It also took about ten tries to get the process down to the point where it wasn’t sloppy!  So this is something that takes practice and isn’t something I can free-hand[2] even with a pen, or would do at the spur of the moment.

[2] Scotch tape makes a fine polish guide, just sayin’.

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I used my iPod as a sleep aid and productivity tool.  When I can’t sleep, I’ll put an audiobook on for a certain amount of time (usually 15 minutes will do it), and listen to a story until I fall asleep.  It keeps me from ruminating on useless crap and allows me to do the truly productive thing at night – SLEEP!

So, no music/audiobook player was going to make Noël-san happy unless it had a feature where it’d turn off after a few minutes.  Well, whatdoyaknow? The Audible app has exactly that!

However, not all of my audiobooks are from Audible.  I have the Harry Potter books, MP3s I’ve ripped from CDs from the library – you name it.  So, what’s an audio/bibliophile to do?

Well, there is the Sleep Timer, a free app developed by Patrick Boos.  This will integrate with your music player to turn off your music (and other functions on your android-based phone, if you want to)  after a specified length of time.

However, that didn’t solve another problem.  I have an extensive music collection that I’d organized into smart playlists on iTunes.  Now, for all that Apple gets under my fingernails from time to time, I do like the organization features of the iTunes media player.  Was I screwed for using those playlists on my phone?

Nope!  Now, iSyncr is not a free app, but at $2.99, I’m not going to sweat the price for one paid app.  This will load whatever playlists you select onto your phone.  They play just fine through the default music app preloaded in Android.  What it won’t do is play DRM protected music you bought from iTunes.  I know there’s a kludge for that, but I don’t know exactly what it is, and I don’t buy a lot of music through iTunes, anyway.

This means that my iPod is completely replaced, because I also use a music player with a sleep timer for another function.  It’s a serious productivity tool and procrastination avoider for me.  When faced with a large, overwhelming task, I often will put on a music player with a fifteen minute sleep timer, promising myself I can stop when the music stops.  By that time I’m usually into the task enough to finish it, but even if I’m not, do you know how much you can get done in several fifteen minute sessions of hyperfocus?

Speaking of which, got some writin’ that needs attending to…

Audible	iSyncr	Sleep Timer

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1. They’re delicate. The ones you generally find don’t stand up to rough treatment and you can’t really put them in the microwave or the dishwasher.  You can buy bento that can go in the microwave and the dishwasher, but they’re…
2. Expensive. ‘Nuff said.

I could buy a $30 box from Japan (adding in, of course, the price of international shipping.  Or, as my bento collection slowly disappears through breakage, I’m more likely to use plastic ware from the local department store, or even those cheap Gladware babies (which last longer than the bento boxes.  Go figure).

Here’s a step by step bento I did for my husband.  This one is a larger box,  (750 ml) so is more for a larger appetite. (<cough>Teenaged Boy</cough>).

So, we start with fried rice.  I’d had some rice left over, so figured that’d be tasty.  I’ve got this spread all over the bottom of the container so that it will cool.

Then I slide the rice over to save space. The green veggies holding the rice in place is cucumber slices cut in half, then arranged in an alternating pattern to make the structure a little stronger.  Engineering and art!  Who says they’re diametrically opposed?

Remember all that money I was saving cutting up chicken parts?  Drumsticks are great for bento, so that’s exactly what I used here.

One of the things that’s important when you make a bento is to make sure that you stuff the box full enough that the food doesn’t have much room to move.  Veggies are great for this.  Go for color as much as possible, as that means you’re getting a wider range of vitamins and a healthier meal.  Yes, it’s prettier, too.

Speaking of color, just green, brown and red aren’t enough for my own tastes, so I added a bit of yellow.  Since this was suggestive of a flower, I kinda ran with it.

I put some blueberries inside the flower, more because there wasn’t any fruit in the bento and Dear Hoosband likes a bit of sweetness with a meal.

I did cook the fried rice (had half of it for dinner, NOM) and the drumstick, but I could have just as easily used leftovers in the fridge (and often do).

The rice and cooking the drumstick was what made the bento more time-consuming.  Assembling it, even taking the time to take pictures in the process, only took me about five minutes.  All in all, it was still less than half an hour, and I started the drumsticks cooking while I set up a curry for a crock pot dinner tomorrow.  So, it was very little “extra” time that I took to make this.

But notice, this is a cute bento, and it was made with ingredients and materials you’re likely to  have around the house.  I mention this because making your food look nice is often a way to make something inexpensive special.  In these economic times, it’s nice for the brown-bag lunch to seem like a treat rather than a letdown.

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I’ve discovered a way to save a whole bunch of money on meat.  In my area, a boneless, skinless chicken breast runs over three bucks a pound when not on sale.  Even on sale you’ll never see it for less than about $1.99/lb.

I can pretty much count on one of the area grocery stores having a sale on whole chickens for between $0.89 and $0.99/lb most weeks.  Now, you might say that you get sick of a whole roast chicken all the time, and fair enough.  Sure, I do the thing where I roast a chicken, save some of the leftover meat for chicken salad, then make Garbage Soup out of what’s left every now and then, but it’s not all you can do with a whole chicken.

One thing I’d never done was cut up a whole chicken into its various parts.  If I was going to use the parts, I bought the chicken cut up.  Noticing how much cheaper the whole chicken often is, I decided I needed to learn to cut up my own.

I tried it yesterday, just because, well, I like learning new things.[1] I watched a video on Youtube about it, then on my very first try it took me something fewer than five minutes.  It might not be as cool or as pretty as a professional can do it, but it’s a large enough money savings, I’m all good doing this.  Yeah, it’s a little yucky, but I feel like if I’m willing to eat meat at all, I need to suck it up on the yucky anyway and get real that I’m eating an animal.

Now, not everything I make uses chicken with bones in.  In fact, a lot of it doesn’t.  Next time I find a good sale on chickens, I’m going to learn to debone the chicken.  I’ve been given to understand it’s fairly quick and easy.  I think Elliot Yan claims to be able to do it in 18 seconds, so I’m sure I can do it in a couple of minutes.  The next time I buy a chicken, I’ll debone it and possibly even portion it out already cut up for stir fries.[2]

I’ve seen people talk about the waste involved.  We don’t eat the bones! Who eats the wings?

No we don’t eat the bones, but I cook with chicken stock a whole bunch, and not just soups.   Rice made with chicken stock is delicious.  Beans and rice, jambalaya and many other dishes that use water have a richer flaver, and are more nutritious[3] with the stock anyway.  Bones and chicken backs make fine, tasty stock.  So, no, it’s not wasted.  I just save them in a bag in the freezer for the next time I’m going to make stock.

As far as the wings?  Don’t you ever have parties?  Buffalo wings, and variations thereof are pretty popular ‘round here.  I’m saving mine for the next party I throw.

It does take some time to cut up and repackage a whole chicken, but it doesn’t take that much and it’s not even hard.  If you’re looking for a way to save money on meat, I have to encourage you to give this a try.

[2] Which will make my son happy for the nights he cooks.  He detests cutting up chicken.

[3] If you’re worried about calcium intake and are not big on dairy, this is another great way to get your calcium. When you make homemade stock, it leeches from the bones.

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Friends, this is no more a hallmark of introversion than is blue eyes.

Being an introvert is not about being scared of being in the public eye.  In fact, being afraid of public speaking is an incredibly common fear that runs across the introvert/extrovert lines and has more to do with being a human being than it does with one’s mental orientation.

What’s actually a pretty common pattern is for an introvert to be a pretty accomplished public speaker, but find that she detests noisy parties.  Being an introvert isn’t about being scared.  It’s about being drained by too much interpersonal contact.

The introversion=shyness thing tends to get to rub me the wrong way.  I think partially because there is an underlying implication that the introversion needs to be cured, but also because if someone doesn’t know me well, they’ll deny I’m an introvert and interpret my behavior from an extroverted frame of reference.

Ferinstance, if someone sees that because I am not shy that I am an extrovert, but only want to socialize with them on a limited or irregular basis, they’ll interpret that as me not liking them very much, but don’t want to say so.  If they were to see me as the introvert that I am, they recognize that I just need to be alone a whole bunch and it has nothing at all to do with my fondness or not for them as people.

I remember once teaching a class and mentioning being an introvert.  I forget why it was brought up, but since I was teaching, I was probably looking for an illustrative example of something.  One of the class members immediately said, “But you’re not shy![1]”[2]

No, I’m not.  I even enjoy public speaking.

For the last time, fear of being in the spotlight is not an introversion/extroversion thing.  It’s a not-too-unusual people thing.  ‘Kay?

[2] I am a very animated public speaker.

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Now this chick can write. Funny?  Oh very yes!  Clear?  Yep.  Has a specific voice.  My goodness yes.

So, when I saw it and asked if I could edit it, it wasn’t because what she did sucked.  It was because it was good and just needed a few rough edges sanded down and polished.

Something that is a real myth about the writing world is that an editor will just ruin your piece.  I even believed it for awhile.  Blame it on some of Heinlein’s snarky comments if you want.  But the truth is that no editor wants to ruin your piece, kill your voice or anything like that.  That’s not the editor’s job.

It’s the editor’s job to make you look brilliant. Well, insofar as possible.  Can’t make bricks without straw.  But what an editor wants is for anything that passes her desk to be readable, instructive, entertaining or whatever might be the goal of the publication.

Her comment was, “Oh wow. Ok that’s amazing. I totally see. You sort of turned it into the piece I wanted it to be in the first place with the editing.”

That means I managed to do my job in working on it!

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This is a good thing, mind you.  It means money, the projects I have are interesting and they’re practice in things that make more money than SEO, but I’ve felt intimidated in trying to do.  I’ve made a note that I need to write up an “intake” type questionaire for press releases and money raising pitches.  This client seems to be tolerant, but I think I’d do better, and get work done faster if I have a standard questionaire for this sort of thing.  I think it’d make the client more comfortable to have more structure when it comes to giving direction as well.

Even with being so busy, I’m making a commitment that if I do no other housework at all, I will tidy up the clutter that accumulates through the day for a few minutes each evening.  It’ll keep me from feeling out of control from visual clutter.  Now, I have been able to keep up on routines, but to be frank, unless clutter and mess starts interfering with my thinking and mood, work is far more important.

I was talking to The Bird the other day while in Borders.  (If I have a lot of work to do, I often take the kids to Borders so that we can sit down and have a snack, then I can work and they can read and hang out in a place they like).  She asked me how I felt about writing in a bookstore and being a writer.  I told her that while I really do love to read, and I enjoy books, it’s very hard not to point to the shelves and go, “Yep, that’s product. Product over there…”

I’ve stopped seeing the printed word as something elevated or holy.  I know what this really means is that I’ve become a hack.

Know what?  In a lot of ways I’m proud of that.  Hack writers do make a living doing it and that’s a cool thing.  (As long as you’re making that living.  When you’re not, it can be stressy as hell!)   Even after three years of taking the leap, I get up in the morning and bid on projects or answer client email or sit down to work, but I bounce up and down in the chair a little thinking “This is really cool.”  I saw someone from my old job and when she asked how I was doing since I left, I could say in all honesty, “I’m doing really well.  I love what I do.”

So, while I don’t see books as quite as holy, I find the process and day to day job of being a “real” writer¹ even more amazing than ever.  There’s a sense of wonder about it for me.  I really do this.  I write, I get money, I buy groceries with that money.   But in spite of the mundaneness of what I do, it feels like the end of Beauty and the Beast or something, with the majestic music playing and the thorns turning to roses and the light flooding the entire castle.  I have to remind myself that it’s real.

The funny part is that it wasn’t luck or someone waving a magic wand or anything like that.  I just decided one day, “I will do this” and then did.  I got scared and felt insecure, bit my nails wondering if I’m good enough, all of that.  Hell, I still do.  But it’s one hell of an adventure.

That adventure isn’t specific to being a writer, though.  I mean, that’s what resonnates with me, but people’s tastes are different.  I think the adventure part comes in when you love to do something so much that you just dive into it with no idea in the world whether or not you’ll succeed or fail, but with the total abandon.  Sometimes you fail at this.  I’ve dived into things and hit rocks.  Don’t think I haven’t.

But oh, when you find clear water and depths, it’s so very, very good.

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You know if a guy grabs the butt of a woman he finds attractive and when she objects he’ll make the, “It’s the testosterone, I couldn’t help it” excuse?

Know how we don’t have any real sympathy for that?

Then why should we expect sympathy for flying off the handle at our hormone cycles?  Why should the menstrual cycle give us a free pass?  Don’t get me wrong, my moods are very much hormonally-driven.  I just don’t think that me being mean in the face of that is excusable.  I feel like I’m a grown up and responsible for my behavior.  If I pull the “I’m at the mercy of my hormones” card, and then expect a man not to, then what I’m really saying is that as a woman I’m not as much of a grownup.

I’m not into that.  I think expecting all the grownups to be grownups whether they’ve an innie or an outie is what makes the most sense.

And since we’re all human as well, yes, apologizing when one screws up[1] is a good idea, too.  “I’m sorry, I was wrong to do that, and I’m going to try to do better” should be in all our repertoires.

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It’s funny, because we all seem to have this idea that being a Grownup™ means perfect self-discipline, and if you don’t have it, you’re not a Grownup™. This particular blogger will try to be a Grownup™  by doing lots of housework, cooking perfect meals, and scheduling her life to hell and back.  She’ll also find herself failing miserably because she’s set the bar too high.  She’s trying to be more and more “perfect” in managing her life.

It’s not that I don’t get how it happens. I do and mostly because I do that.

It also has zip to do with being a grown-up.

I think we’re looking through out tween to teen goggles when we assess being a Grownup™. We see being a Grownup™ as being frenetically active and working all the time, never ever being slow, or late, or forgetful or…

You know, I’m older than one of my grandmothers was when I was born[1].   When my mother was my age, she had a married child.  I think that gets to count in terms of age.   In terms of where my life is and how I live daily?  My life isn’t really like either of theirs.   I made some radically different choices. Does that make me not a Grownup™?

Part of it might also be that we’re forgetting the help we were to our parents.  Keeping the house neat is easier when you have the husky teenager doing some of the work.   Do they do it as well as you want it done?  Almost certainly not.  I know for a fact I didn’t with my mom.  But the laundry still got folded, she did not clean every bathroom in the house, and Dad certainly wasn’t wrangling all the wood to heat the house by himself[2].   Why?  That’s more work than one person can do![3]

When we try to do it all ourselves, we’re actually setting the bar higher than our parents did for themselves.      If you’re not feeling like a Grownup™ because you can’t get it all done to white glove perfection all by your lonesome, cut yourself some slack.  Grownups™ have historically gotten help.

And if you have a kid, go make ‘em do a chore J

[2] In fact, my brother and I have had a bit of a chuckle at the fact that they got a gas furnace after he and I moved out of town.

[3] And while I don’t know this for certain, I’m willing to bet that in my grandmother’s case, her home was neater when she had three girls at home v. when they moved out.

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