Cheryl Katz

Tuesday I had the whole keyboard panel of my Macbook replaced.  (For free, actually, by Apple because the cracking plastic was a known issue with the model.)

I’d been planning to have the Geniuses take a look at my computer for general issues.  In the past few weeks I’ve been seeing more of the beach ball of death between keystrokes than I think is healthy for a daily-use computer.  But before I went to the Mac store I got advice from friends and family that involved removing infrequently used system extensions and applications, and running Disk Utility after booting from CD, and both these things helped with the speed problem.  (No more waiting thirty seconds to type a line, or switch Finder windows, or Firefox tabs.)

I did have the Genius Bar folks check the fan when they addressed the case problem because I’d noticed that it had been running loudly lately (as in, I noticed the noise of it, where I never used to mind it.)  The fan was fine.

Late tuesday night I turned my computer back on, and I heard the fan whirr on, a soothing quiet whisper.

And THEN my hard drive engaged, and it sounded like an attack of the killer coffee grinder.

I kept my computer running for exactly 15 more minutes.  I backed up everything, emailed a few working files to myself, and shut down.  My new hard drive is already in the mail, I’m hoping it will arrive today so that I can install it ASAP.

This all got me thinking.  How much off my computer can I replace and still recognize it as my computer?  Well, right now I’m using our family netbook, the faithful Asus Eee that Ben got so that he could access critical internet functions while we were away in Perú without carrying an obvious computer.  I can access my gmail account, have installed a few applications to make it feel more homey, but I tell you what – the dwarf-size keyboard and screen kind of give it away.  Oh, and the Windows OS.  And the lack of all my personal files, photos, music and settings.

I’m replacing  the hard drive but will restore all my settings and data back onto it.  I could easily replace RAM, external drives, the case, the camera, anything.  Even if it didn’t necessarily have all my data, I could probably still feel at home in it.  I could probably take all the data and OS and dress it up as a Dell and still feel that it was my computer.  What makes it my computer is a) its full-size computerness and b) accessibility to my stuff.

Those aren’t very stringent requirements.

Thankfully computers aren’t as complicated as people are.   I mean, take Ben’s brains, personality, stored memories, idiosyncracies, etc and put them in a new case, and I’m not sure he’d still necessarily be my husband.  What if his new face didn’t react to his thoughts and emotions the way his old one did?  Not a problem with computer hardware – there’s no unpredictability factor like there is with living beings.

What if I didn’t like what his new body smelled like?

What if any component were left out?  What if his personality, facial expressions, intelligence, etc were transferred but his long term memory not?  What if he had the memory but didn’t have Ben’s logic.

This is hurting my head, and I think I need to stop.  Thankfully it was my hard drive that failed and not Ben’s brains.  I will now carry on with my productive day.

I saw a man this morning on a tiny motor scooter with his happy brown pit bull sitting between his knees. What a happy dog he must be! It reminded me of all the places I used to take Alex, how I’d rarely leave her home if I didn’t have to. And it made me notice that I can have happy dog memories without completely falling apart over it.

Everyone, go squish your dog a little for Alex! Loving your dog makes the world just a tiny bit nicer.

I was able to get up and dressed this morning, and I’m confronting the reality that every time I look at her crate, she still isn’t going to be there.

Eventually I’ll put the crate outside or give it away, but right now it just feels like I’d be telling her to sleep outside. More pain than it’s worth to me right now.

Someday all the little things she left behind, all her dog hairs and surprise toys buried random places, will be gone. I’ll always remember her. But I miss her so terribly much right now, it’s hard to believe I could still be alive in this house without her.

Just one foot in front of the other, a day has already passed and life is going on, but every minute that takes me farther from her sleepy puppy face right now just hurts more.

I’m sitting here on my sofa now, Alex is laying on the floor, on the sofa, standing and panting, half-heartedly considering destroying the last cardboard box I’ll ever give her.

I’ll be with her for the rest of her life, and it is so much shorter than I thought it would be.

She has to go now. She has a growth that requires surgery, and even to get to the point of surgery requires more consultations, more sedation, more fear and stress and hyperventilation, than I could ever ask her to endure just to keep on living with pain.

Even if we could make her 100% physically better (which we can’t) we can never take away the fear and paranoia that made her such a difficult dog to have in the first place. To put her through all the pain and stress of healing, only to be a) at best only partially successful and b) still just as fearful and skittish seems cruel.

It is selfish to keep her with us and let her pain get bigger every day. She is a stoic dog, she doesnt complain about pain until it’s excruciating, and every time she lies down now she is whimpering.

I know we are making the right decision, for all of the many right reasons, but then why does it feel so BAD?

I don’t want to say goodbye to my friend.

She was there for me at some times when no one else was. Before I knew I was pregnant, when I had the “stomach flu” I took Alex outside to pee, and before I could get back in the house I had to barf. I curled down on the lawn, and she sat next to me, not taking advantage of the perfect getaway time when I could easily have lost hold of her leash, and she sat there, licking the side of my head and helping me stand up when I was done.

She was home with me when Ben had to be traveling for business, so that I (and Sami, after Sami came) would not be alone.

I’m not just losing a pet. Not even just a difficult pet. She’s a family member who had problems and who taught me that you don’t just bury or ignore problems, but work through them as a family, and you don’t ever stop loving your family. No matter what.

Not even when you want more time to love them. Especially not when more time with them means more pain for them.

There are so many thoughts going through my head, I don’t know what else to write.  I’m speechless and yet could go on for days about how hard and complicated and guilt ridden and compassionate and loving and terrible a place I’m in right now.

But her last thought will be about our happiness, about protecting us from everything she was afraid of, and so I’m going to make sure that I take away as much fear and pain as I can in the next 4 hours.  It’s a pittance compared to the joy and love she’s given to us unconditionally (except for the occasional peanut butter matzo.)

I hope that whatever comes next for her, she is pain free and can finally truly rest.

I’m reading A Handmaid’s Tale and I’m not exactly finding it depressing, but parts of it make me feel real sadness.

I made challah yesterday – the texture came out not very challah-like but it was very good bread.

Reheated coffee isn’t very good.

Sourdough starter is on Day 2 – it is very foamy, very quickly, and smells sour. Not exactly how I was expecting. But I think in another day or two it will be ok.

Wanted to make a post but now it seems like it was a bad idea.

I released a book on BookCrossing.com! I feel so liberated, actually letting a book go instead of hoarding it. I plan to do more in the future.

In 24 hours we’ll be boarding our flight to Lima.  I can’t believe how fast time has gone.

I should have been posting more all along – many things to post about but all of which were too involved to think through during such a busy fall.

Suffice to say that… there will be Peru posts coming up soon.  If you’re interested, keep your eyes peeled.

Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

This is possibly the closest examination I’ve seen of McCain’s life and career that I’ve seen.  I have to say, if Rolling Stone can pull out a well researched article, why can’t the rest of the mainstream media?  If even half of this article is true, well… jeebus.

I’d like to see a similarly scrutinizing article about Obama, just to know what it would turn up.

I joined the ranks of People Who Have Made Soy Milk At Home.

My first attempt yielded a pretty weak product, though it tasted good hot and both Sami and I enjoyed it. Combining info from five or six different sources on home soy milk making (without a machine), here is what I did:

1) Soaked one cup of dry beans overnight in about a quart of water.  I replaced the water about once every 8 hours for 24 hours.  I think this is longer than necessary, but it didn’t seem to do any harm.

2) Boiled the beans for about 30 minutes.

3)  Ground up beans in the food processor with about one cup of (hot!) water for each 1/3 cup of beans.

4)  Strained the milk through cheesecloth to remove the okara (bean pulp.)  Squeezed the okara until it was more or less bone dry.

5) Added a tablespoon of honey and a pinch of salt to the quart or so of hot hot milk.

6) The end.  Enjoyed a cup of hot, fresh soy milk.  It was very weak (about 50% regular soy milk strength) but still tasty.  Even Sami liked it.

The second attempt was much, much better.  This time, I:

1) Soaked 2 cups of dry beans in 2 quarts of water overnight.

2) Microwaved the beans until they were heated through – about 3 minutes.  I read on the internet somewhere that heating the beans before grinding them in hot water can reduce the beany soy milk flavor.

3) Ground up the beans, this time in the BLENDER (not the Cuisinart) for a finer grist.  One cup of beans to about 3.5 cups of barely boiling water.  I did this in four shifts before I got tired, and still have about a third of the beans.

4) Strain the blended stuff through clean cotton cloth.  I skipped the cheesecloth and went straight to a 12 x 12 inch swatch of muslin.  Since the grist was very fine and the cheesecloth I have is a loose weave, I figured this way I’d get better straining.  I think I was right.  Strain it until I’m satisfied that all the gooky parts are out.  I did this twice.

5)  Cook the milk.  Low boil for 30 minutes.  I scooped off all the little bits of foam that formed on top.

6) Serve hot with honey and salt as before – yum.  Then pour the rest (about a gallon?) into a storage container – in my case a giant tupperware container with a pour-spout lid.  I plan to get a glass pitcher with a sealing lid.

It wasn’t as hard as you’d think it would be, especially without a soy milk machine.  I probably wouldn’t make this big a batch again, so in the future I won’t have to do the grind/strain dance so many times in a row.  THe most time consuming elements were the soaking of the beans and the 30 minute milk cooking time.  I can take save soaking time by putting them in the fridge a day or two before I want to make more, or always keeping a batch in there if I think I’ll make soy milk once a week or so.  Not much to be done about the cook time, except perhaps to time it so that hot fresh milk is available when I want it.

I highly recommend doing this.  It was (dare I say) fun!  And I don’t think I’ll need to buy soy milk again.  For the price of one carton of soy milk (or so) I got about a pound of beans, which I can use to make a whole case or more of soy milk.  I don’t have to take home all those plastc-lined cartons!  I don’t have to drink additives or preservatives or sugar!  Unless I want flavor or sugar!  Wheeeee!

How about a post that’s not a tweet? It’s in the works.