Yep. Except for the swear (I prefer other swear words 🙂 )
Category Archives: Things I am Avoiding
Literature Review
I am writing this from my dark dining room. Time is running out. Time will kill me. I have been surviving on nothing but crackers and marshmallows for the past two days. They won’t let me leave.
They are filling my head with their theories and contradictions. Driving me mad. Pushing my ignorance away. My comforting ignorance; gone.
Plotting my revenge has been easy. I plan to burn them. Every last one. But not until I have used them as they abuse me.
Using them won’t be easy. There are too many of them. They outnumber me 30:1. They want me to run out of time. And they want me to use them.
I have become one of their contradictions. While time still grows short.
My Definition of Torture
I may have figured out why I am struggling so much with all this reading and writing for my thesis: I suck at working completely alone! I am a people person, a team player! I really dislike working on something that I have to dream up, plan, research, and handle all the details for all by myself.
I was so desperate to do anything but work on my thesis this morning that I spent the entire first half of the day cleaning the house and doing my laundry – two things I dislike almost as much as I dislike going to the dentist. Writing this post is the last non-thesis related thing I am doing today, so here’s to another day of writing!
Cheers!
Problem: Need food; Solution: Think like grandma
Here I am again, enjoying another tasty recipe thanks to my wandering mind. About a half hour ago I had to stop what I was doing because the protests from my stomach were becoming distracting. A quick look at the sparse offerings in our pantry, freezer, and refrigerator kicked my mind into high gear for some creative problem solving (it also made me wonder why I ever decided to go part-time, but that’s another tale for another day…).
Problem: Need food. Tasty food.
Solution: Think like grandma and work with what ya got.
Now, I don’t want to think exactly like grandma – as sweet and nurturing as she was, she was a terrible cook. This woman would literally ruin something as simple as buttered noodles – noodles that have been boiled and tossed with some butter. Ruined. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
But as a woman with little financial means, she sure knew how to use what she had on hand. I have been witness to many a casserole, whipped up in a matter of minutes from last week’s leftovers, this week’s leftovers, milk about to go bad, brick cheese, noodles, rice-a-roni, and eggs. She was a pro at throwing stuff together. The problem was that it very very very rarely tasted good. She was lucky that my step-grandpa adored her so much that he had his taste buds burned off (ok, so that may have been an embellishment, but we did often wonder how he could stand it).
Leftovers don’t last in our house since we take them in to work with us the next day, so I just stuck with hunting for what I had that sounded like it wouldn’t be too terrible. I found linguine, peas, milk, parmesan cheese, imitation lobster, and cream cheese and decided I had what I needed for a decent alfredo sauce. It isn’t gourmet, but tasty enough for me! In honor of my grandma, I named it:
Esther’s Super-fast Seafood Alfredo
2 servings
- 2Tbsp butter (but I really think this can be substituted with olive oil, and possibly even cut in half)
- 1 tsp garlic powder (don’t skimp on this one!)
- 4 oz cream cheese (I used the 1/3 less fat version)
- 1 cup of milk (I used 2%)
- About 3 oz parmesan cheese
- Pepper to taste (preferable freshly ground).
- 1 small package imitation lobster or crab
- Noodles of your choice – about 4-6 oz
- About 1 cup of peas or whatever other vegetable you’ve got that would go well
Get the water going for your noodles. While that gets started, melt the butter in a medium saucepan.
When the butter is melted, add the garlic powder and cream cheese. Whisk until smooth.
Start whisking the milk in, little by little until smooth. Add the parmesan cheese and pepper and again whisk until smooth. Taste the sauce. Is something missing? Add it. Cook until it reaches your desired consistency.
Add the peas to the noodles for the last 2-3 minutes of cooking time. Drain. Add the imitation lobster to the sauce and heat through. Toss the noodles and peas in with sauce and you are done!
I think Esther would be proud!
Ohmigosh I have so much to do…going offline now!
Unicorn Poop and More!
In keeping with the theme of my avoidist ways and unicorn banner, I was pretty excited to find out that other bloggers occasionally write about unicorns and glitter. While I was searching for ways to avoid the reading I should be doing, I found this post by a blogger I have been following for a while, and had to share:
Presenting: Unicorn Poop Pancakes
Yep. Multi-colored unicorn poop pancakes. She also mentions a number of other unicorn poop edibles I must try.
Perfect for my ride along the glittery rainbow on my trusty, horned, four-legged friend…
(PS: Yes, I know that “avoidist” isn’t a word. See the comic in my previous post to learn how I feel about that.)
“A recipe?! But this isn’t a food blog!”
It’s my blog and I can food if I want to. And yes, I just used “food” as a verb. I’m feeling a little Bucky Katt-ish today. Though I’m not sure if that means I am feeling sassy…or ignorant. Let’s go with sassy.
Back to why I am posting a recipe. All weekend I have been doing a great job avoiding the tremendous amount of reading I have to do. Even when you are interested in the topic, scholarly articles are just not fun to read. But today when I woke up, I told myself that I was going to be a reading rockstar.
Then I remembered that I told a friend I would cheer him on in the local marathon. So out the door I went, without breakfast or coffee or tea. I cheered him on at the halfway point, then quick high-tailed it to the 18 mile mark. On the way home, I thought Ok, NOW you can be a reading rockstar.
But when I got home, I remembered that I hadn’t had any breakfast. And my slight headache was letting me know that I better make some coffee, too (caffeine can help headaches). So, I started getting my breakfast together, got the burr grinder and Aeropress out for the coffee…when I realized that what I really wanted was a pumpkin spice latte. But since I didn’t know how to make one, I had to look up a recipe first.
Of course, none of the recipes matched the ingredients I had on hand. On a normal day, I might have considered running to the grocery store to buy all the necessary ingredients. Today, however, I decided that since I had pumpkin spice syrup on hand, I would mix and match the recipes to come up with my own – and it was tasty! Here it is:
Pumpkin Spice Latte
- 2 shots of espresso or 1/2 cup of strong coffee
- 1 cup of milk (or however much you like in your latte), heated
- 1tsp-ish (I don’t measure) Pumpkin Spice Syrup (I like Torani)
- 1tsp-ish Vanilla Bean Syrup (you can use vanilla extract to taste, also)
- A bit of sugar – what kind you use doesn’t matter, but I like to use German rock sugar
- Pumpkin spices blend – I don’t know how much I used, but I suspect it was about 1/2 tsp or so.
- Make the coffee. Put it in a cup. It doesn’t matter how you make the coffee. Just make it how you like it. I like the strong coffee that the Aeropress makes, and I like to use fancy-schmancy whole bean coffees. But if you like Folgers in a drip maker, then use that.
- To the coffee, add the syrups and spice blend.
- Heat the milk. Whip it, whisk it, or if you have one of those frothers, use it. *Side note: I have noticed that 1% milk doesn’t froth. Skim and 2% seem to do fine* Frothing isn’t necessary, so if you just want to heat the milk and leave it at that, that’s fine.
- Add the milk to the coffee and drink.
I will not make the claim that this is better than Starbucks, because it isn’t. But it IS healthier (much less syrup, no whipped cream) and WAY cheaper. And I thought it was very tasty.
Enjoy! I have to get back to being a reading rockstar…
That moment you realize you have filled your time with three new things to avoid the one thing you need to accomplish…and now you’re out of time.
What I should be thinking about 
What I am actually thinking about
I want to give credit to the website I created these word clouds with because I had to crop their logo out: Worditout
Avoidance pitfall #1: ignoring your budget
Let me start out by saying that I know how to budget. I like the idea of following a budget. And I actually feel better about my purchases, am less wasteful and more choosy when living below my means.
We are on our second round of following the wonderful plan laid out by Jesse Mecham and his YNAB (You Need a Budget) software. The first time around, it was a little less convenient because it required manual syncing (a thing of the past with the new versions). Oh, and I hardly ever actually entered my spending.
If I am being honest, I know why: I was avoiding the fact that I didn’t have enough money to both pay my bills and buy the extras I wanted. I was floating through, following the glittery rainbow that seems to show up whenever I need to avoid something. And the glittery rainbow seemed so much more fun than facing reality – expensive lattes, many trips to my favorite wine bar, high-end restaurants and sushi with my friends.
I told myself that it was ok because we were still able to pay off our credit card bill every month and weren’t accruing any debt – and when I was working full time, we were even able to add money to our savings account. But I haven’t been full time in over a year.
My glitter has run out and the beautiful colors that were once so bright in that ever-present rainbow have faded. Which brings me to why I am writing this post. I once again have failed to enter all my transactions for August and the first part of September, so I sit here at my computer downloading past transactions and moving money around from underspent categories to overspent categories to make things work.
It is a chore and takes way too long to wait to enter all transactions for an entire month at one time. So why don’t I just whip out my phone and check the budget/enter the transaction as it is occurring? Simple: I am avoiding the fact that I may have to put some items back on the shelf. I am avoiding the reality of my cashflow and undermining my ability to reach my goals.
I am even doing this right now – I didn’t feel like going through all 165 transactions that have just downloaded, so I decided to use this post to face the fact that I like to pretend everything is rosy when spending my money. This has to stop.
PS: By they way, I do highly recommend the YNAB system. I have never had any ties to the company, I just think it is a great system. I will keep updating this blog on my progress.
The Art of Avoidance 