Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Dr. Shmoo & Stew

I had an early morning out of the house.

First, I had my doctor's appointment with the new primary care doctor (for both Dave and me) that I've seen only once before. I made Dave laugh a few days ago by calling the doctor, Dr. Shmoo. He really does have a Shmoo-like appearance. Anyway, he's mostly harmless--I hope.

So now there is a new prescription for my ear. We'll see how that works. I went ahead and made a follow-up appointment with the doctor during the appointment so that I don't have to go through the usual rigamarole of arguing my way into a follow-up appointment before December.

After I left the doctor's office, I went by Whole Foods and picked up some things--frozen roasted green chile, onions, and potatoes (for a batch of green chile stew), lots of--too much--dark chocolate, some berries and bananas, chicken nugget type things for my lunch, and, as a reward for yesterday's tough therapy session, some new Mineral Fusion makeup (a medium-coverage foundation and a 3-in-1 color stick for eyes, lips, and cheeks).

It was raining slightly when I left Whole Foods and I thought I might drive out along Rio Grande on the way home, but in the end I decided not to.

I came home, put away the groceries, ate about half a bar of chocolate and my chicken bits (which I shared with Saba, since she came around to beg once she realized that I had chicken in the house), then I went back to my book.

I've been reading graphic novels recently, spurred on by a trio that I got Dave for his birthday (This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, Through the Woods by Emily Carrol, and the devastating Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann).

Yesterday I received Allison Bechdel's (she of the long-running alt comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For") two graphic novels, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama.  I stayed up late to finish Fun Home (the title comes from the funeral home that her father ran part time), and then started Are You My Mother? after that. You'd imagine graphic novels to be easy reads, but no. These two books have been wrenching in some ways. Fun House is about Bechdel's relationship with her father, a deeply closeted gay man who (perhaps) committed suicide four months after Bechdel wrote a coming out letter to her parents. And Are You My Mother? about her own experiences in therapy and her problematic relationship with her mother. The book is filled with excerpts from works by Freud, Jung, Alice Miller, and Donald Winnicott as well as Bechdel's notes about her mother's experience surviving WWII in and out of London.

They're amazing. I can hardly put them down and I already went to Amazon to put The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For in my cart. (I've read the comic from time to time, mostly online, but I'm curious to read more Bechdel now.)

I did put my book aside in the afternoon to throw together the green chile stew (green chile, lots of onions and garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, and the two wild cards, carrots and sweet potato). Then I came to do a little online surfing and check my email.

After spending the afternoon making green chile stew, I decided instead to serve caprese salad for dinner, so I started getting everything out to prep that. Unfortunately, the basil had gone bad, so I made a grilled salad instead. I grilled zucchini, onions, an ear of corn, and cherry and pear tomatoes. When everything was cool enough to handle, I cut everything into pieces and squeezed lime juice all over it (there was already olive oil on it from the grill) and put a bit of salt and pepper on. I heated up a can of beans to add to the stew. Then I made Dave a quesadilla with some cheddar cheese and whole wheat tortillas. Oh, and I also grilled some peaches! So I just kept cooking and cooking all afternoon.

(While I was cooking, my mother and I texted back and forth about a photo I came across recently. I'll write more about this another time.)

When Dave got home, we sat down to dinner and, when we were finished, went out. First we stopped by the pharmacy to pick up my new prescription. Then we went to the studio so that Dave could trim some pots he threw a last week.

That done, we came home and settled in for the night.

2 comments:

Helen said...

I have to correct something that you wrote in this entry....too much dark chocolate? No such thing.

One of my big treats is having a nice square of Lindt chocolate before I got to bed. Makes a bad day so much better!

I've never really read graphic novels. They are a bit too expensive for me to get over here. Maybe if I had a library to borrow them from I might start.

Your stew sounds good!

Have a good day!

Rosa said...

Lol! So true! Chocolate makes everything better--unless you do as I did and eat 2/3 of a giant bar of milk chocolate before eating 2/3 of a bar of dark chocolate. My stomach was not too happy with me after that. I have to remind myself that I'm not a kind anymore whenever I'm tempted to suck back a couple of chocolate bars instead of eating a proper lunch! :D

I've never been into graphic novels before this either--I'm kind of a lit snob, to be honest!--but I'm finding them to be really interesting.

Hope you're having a great day, too, Helen! It's always nice to see a comment from you in my queue. :)