Mason Jars, Anesthetic and umm, Chimpanzees in Everyday Ramblings

Again, from a couple of years ago, except for a few outliers, this was not a good year for roses here.

They used a special kind of anesthetic spray on the back of mouth yesterday as well as the more traditional numbing agents and when I came home I was faced with the prospect of hours of numbness so I just decided to get into bed with my iPad to listen to podcasts with one or the other cat. (They don’t share me well unless I am asleep in which case we are all sort of in an intertwined pile).

I must have been emotionally exhausted and drawn for summer grass allergies and just the general tiredness from dental work in general. At least I was able to stay within my Weight Watchers points allocation for the day, something that has been difficult for me lately with the change in eating habits.

On Monday I took the Mason Jar Meals class. I got to hang out in yet another research kitchen I didn’t know was there for a little while. It was the same tall practical dietician that was one of the pair that taught the vegetable classes I took last year with a very enthusiastic young student assistant.

We made:
Healthy Breakfast Bread Pudding
Blueberry Cobbler Protein Smoothie in a Jar
Chicken Curry Salad with Greens
And talked about making Oven Baked Egg and Vegetable cups

Their oven wasn’t working properly. We used the microwave for the muffins and contrasted them with ones prebaked in the oven. We brought the salads home to eat later. One thing I hadn’t thought of doing before was adding almond butter to a smoothie. And I didn’t know you could get dried buttermilk. That is useful for those of us who don’t cook a lot. Lots of good ideas.

These classes are great because the Dietician actually shops at the same grocery store I go to so it is not some exotic specialty focus where one has to make a special effort.

The lunch on Friday this week out on an island in the mouth of the Columbia with the hiking club is a potluck. I have been agonizing over what to make and finally decided on a summer squash gratin with rice that I can make tomorrow night and take.

Tomorrow the guys are coming to replace my toilet. I will have to corral the cats and hope they don’t make a mess.

Besides not voting for the mentally ill narcissist who wants to be King and not President of our fair country I wonder what else I can do to stop this slide back into the dark ages of tribalism that is based on spurious logic?

As I was listening to the gene book yesterday the author jokes when talking about how the determination of sex works genetically that for all the men reading (or listening) because this short very unusual (you might even say mutation) X chromosome that determines maleness, men almost didn’t make it into existence.

We are way more the same than we are different, humans. We are more the same even than chimpanzees! Our differences are minor genetically. (And we are all descendants of one woman born in Africa. Every human you have ever known or heard of has the same common ancestor, Mitochondrial Eve.)

And these are the people in charge of my world… both the shooter and the presumptive nominee. To a chimpanzee they, we, all look the same. It is just that one of us had a couple of high powered guns and one of us, if elected, would be in charge of the most powerful military in the world…

Last updated June 15, 2016