The Haunted Library

We don’t tell our guests about the library.

Here at Chateau de Livres, we have a wide array of amenities. An Olympic-size lap pool, a world-class spa, a Michellin star restaurant, and of course luxurious guest rooms. Despite our name, though, the library in the basement is strictly off-limits to all but a few select staff.

Unfortunately, the breaker boxes are in the basement, and the spirits there like to play tricks so sometimes we have to go down there.

The breaker boxes are along the wall. Sometimes it’s a one-minute walk to them, sometimes twenty. It depends on how the library is feeling that day. Whatever you do, stick to the wall. No matter how long your walk, as long as you stay on the perimeter you will eventually make it out. If you venture off into the stacks, it’s a death sentence. You’ll be lost forever.

The apparitions are best ignored. If you ignore them, they’ll ignore you. They wander about, but as long as you don’t interact with them you’ll be okay. Don’t give them more than a smile and nod. If you try to talk to them, stare at them, or run from them, they’ll drag you off into the stacks. 

Don’t follow any sounds you hear in the library. The sounds will try to lure you off into the stacks. Whatever sounds you hear, ignore them.

Just last week, I took a trainee down there. Joe. He did a fair job ignoring the apparitions. It took us five minutes to reach the breaker box. Once we reset everything, we started our walk back. About twelve minutes into our return trip, we heard a loud thud, and then a girl crying. Joe started to look for the sound. I tried to pull him back, but he shooed me away. “I’m just going to peek around the corner,” he whispered. He stepped maybe five feet into the stacks, around the corner, and was gone.

I felt bad for Joe. I almost followed him to try and call him back, but the stares of the apparitions told me what didn’t need to be said. Don’t go into the stacks. I smiled, nodded, and continued on my long walk back to the stairs. The apparitions returned to their usual business of walking about and ignoring me. I dreaded having to tell my boss that we lost yet another employee to the library.

We don’t tell people about our library.

Anxious Reflections

I know I have been very, very absent on the blogging front lately. I have been burned out for about a year which has resulted in one of the longest bouts of writer's block I've had. But something else has also come up.

I feel like the first few months of this pandemic, I was doing okay. I was actually losing weight and walking around the neighborhood a lot. But as time wore on, my energy and focus suddenly dropped. It was hard to stay focused at work, and things that once gave me joy like hiking (and writing) became dreadful, energy-sucking chores. I've also started experiencing what my doctor thinks are panic attacks, and I've had them in the most benign and random settings like when I'm folding laundry.

Talking to colleagues, I am not alone. Everyone's anxiety has been sky-high. Several of my colleagues have been seeking out either counselling or medication to help cope, which I believe is a good thing because it means they're taking the steps they need to take to care for themselves.

My first meeting with my new therapist when we were talking about my anxiety and where it began, I explained how it's been worse over the past year, but to be honest it's something I have struggled with for a long time. I told her how my normal outlets have been cut-off with the pandemic.

"I think what's happened with you is that you've been able to run away from what's bothering you and have been able to sort of stay ahead of it for a long time," she told me. "You've been staying busy and have been able to push it aside and cope with it that way. But now that you're basically stuck in one spot, you're being forced to actually confront it."

Damn. That struck me. I feel like she hit the nail on the head.

With subsequent sessions, she also seems to think I probably have PTSD, though we're still figuring out from what. People who know me immediately assume my ex-husband, who was abusive, but my anxiety runs back to before I ever met him, so we got a whole lot of digging to do.

So here we go. I wanted to share the start of my therapy journey because in these trying times, I think it's fine to ask for a little help on the mental health front. We shouldn't stigmatize it. Hopefully when I come out the other side, I'll be a bit happier and a bit more focused. Maybe I'll return to updating this regularly, who knows?

Hang in there, be healthy, and take care!

Pandemic Thoughts

I haven't been writing much. I have been very, very burned out and have been neglecting a lot of hobbies. I feel like I should say something about the coronavirus pandemic. Most of what I have to say has already been said so I won't lecture you too much.

I work in skilled nursing and we had a wave of it go through out building. Fortunately, most of our staff and residents had mild cases. We did have a small number of fatalities among residents and a few hospitalizations and one staff member in the ICU, but for the most part we got through it with minimal complications. Not every facility was that lucky, so I consider ourselves lucky. We cleared the cases in our building and were Covid-free, testing our staff and residents on a weekly basis, and we were finally accepting new admissions. 

Then, the spouse of a staff member tested positive. They were an essential worker in another industry; I'm not sure if it was retail or agriculture or what, but they were exposed. Our staff member stayed home as soon as this was realized, however it was too late. Last I heard we had three new confirmed positive residents and one suspected case who had symptoms.

I've heard some say "just isolate the vulnerable and reopen for everyone else." What that fails to take into consideration is that the vulnerable population can't be totally isolated. Our residents have been locked down in their rooms since March. But their caregivers still need to to get food, get medications, go to the doctor, and be out in the community. They may live with others who are essential workers who face the public.

We get tested weekly at my workplace. Which means in less than a week, this staff member who had been negative was exposed and spreading it before we could catch it. It's no fault of the staff member or their spouse. It just demonstrates how incredibly contagious this disease is and also how quickly after exposure you can start spreading it without knowing it.

So for the love of your community and your vulnerable neighbors, the absolute BEST things you can do are wear a mask and follow social distancing. Because this thing is so contagious, even when not showing symptoms, there's no simply "isolating the vulnerable". It takes everyone to pitch in to control the spread of this thing. You could be sharing it and not even know. Please, I am pleading with you, mask up!

Most Annoying Recipe: Easy Peanut Noodles

So I'm going pretty much straight between work and home during the pandemic these days, and figured I'd try my hand at writing a recipe. You know those annoying blog recipes where they tell their entire life's story before you get to the recipe? Don't worry, I'm not going to do that to you!

Instead, I'm going to make this so, so much worse...

Ingredients

• 1 package of whatever noodles are still available on grocery store shelves (I usually use rice noodles, but during the pandemic work with what you can find)
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• Sriracha to taste
• A couple cups of cut up veggies; I usually use broccoli and carrots but go nuts with whatever you want
• Some protein for this sucker: either a couple chicken breasts cooked and diced; a cube of tofu cooked, diced, and faux-fried; or a cup of edamame are good options
• About a pound of existential dread

Start by boiling water for your noodles in a large pot and cutting up your veggies (and if your protein needs to cook, now's a good time to do that). Some people salt their water for pasta. Growing up, we never did this (that's right, I'm throwing this shit right in the middle of the recipe. You were warned by the title) because we were on a low-sodium diet, so Mom NEVER added salt to anything. It was a sad and tasteless existence. When I finally moved out on my own and discovered salt, it was a godsend! See, sodium ions can help block bitter tastes from our taste buds, enhancing the more pleasant tastes in a dish. I missed out on all that goodness growing up. So I say go ahead and salt the water. You only live once.

Once you get your water to a rolling boil, go ahead and reduce heat and add your noodles. Rice noodles will cook quickly whereas spaghetti and linguine noodles will take longer. I don't know how long noodles take to cook; you cook them until they're tender. Did you really reach adulthood without knowing how to cook noodles? Just take a noodle out every once in a while and nosh down on it...if the texture seems right then they're done. There's also a trick where you're supposed to be able to throw a noodle on your cabinet doors and if they stick it's done or something...that always seemed like too much of a mess for me. I'm trusting you to figure out how to cook your noodles. 

While your noodles are cooking it's time to make your peanut sauce. In a medium bowl, combine your peanut butter, soy sauce, and about 1 tbsp of your sriracha sauce (more is fine...in fact I usually use more, but sometimes I cook for pansy-asses who require less). Now you gotta mix them together. This part sucks because you're going to quickly discover that peanut butter and soy sauce don't like each other. In science class, we learned about different types of mixtures as solutions, suspensions, and colloids. Solutions are clear with homogeneous particle distribution. Suspensions are cloudy with particles that will settle and separate out when still. Colloids are sort of in-between; cloudy but stable and homogeneous.

We're making an emulsion here, which is a subclass of colloid. Milk is an example of an emulsion. In our case, we have oily peanut butter and watery soy sauce. It's going to take more mixing than you think to make them mix together. It's going to look like some sort of horror at first as you have this lump of peanut butter just sort of rolling around in a pool of soy sauce. You're going to think I'm full of shit, telling you to mix these together. But then suddenly it's as if the ingredients just sort of surrender, and they magically start to mix. You have to keep it up though. Don't let them win. 

In the last few minutes of your noodles cooking, add your veggies and let them cook with the noodles. I usually use broccoli and carrots, but you can substitute out virtually whatever vegetables you like. I like the broccoli and my dog likes the carrots. He'll beg for them and sit there and gnaw at them while I finish cooking. Sometimes he'll eat the broccoli too, but he doesn't like it as much. He eats it more out of stubbornness than actual enjoyment of the vegetable.

When the veggies and noodles are done, all that's left is to strain them, mix in your sauce and protein, and then top with more sriracha as desired!

I hope that recipe was thoroughly annoying. Stay home and have a safe quarantine y'all!

Reflections on a decade

All over Facebook people were like "where were you a decade ago?" and posting their pictures from 2009/2010 in comparison to now. I thought it would be fun so I looked up my photos from 2009. There weren't many, and I was dismayed at what I found, as they were all pictures from my wedding. I was making the mistake of a lifetime, and suddenly all the memories came rushing back.

The last decade for me has been a transformative one. It's also been a gut-wrenchingly painful one. I entered 2010 freshly married and for the first six years of the decade continued existing in a progressively deteriorating abusive relationship. Then came what I dub the "year of hell" when the marriage finally imploded and I suddenly had to juggle two jobs, school, internships, divorce, therapy, graduation, board exams, and ultimately moving across the state to a strange city all alone to start everything over. It was an essential shift and I definitely needed out of that relationship, but it hurt like hell going through it. Ever since then, I've been slowly rebuilding. There have been ups and downs along the way. I lost my Grandpa. I rescued a lovely little furbaby guinea pig who saw me through most of the decade before she passed. Overall, however, I'm definitely coming out of the decade in a better place than I was going in.

So no, I won't be sharing pictures from a decade ago on social media. I wish I could reach through the photo albums to slap myself of a decade ago across the face. I wish I had never gone through with that marriage. I wish I had the strength to leave it when I felt I needed to instead of waiting it out for so long. I wish I had done a lot of things differently this last decade.

Of course, if I hadn't gone through all that, I would have never felt the drive to improve my situation, to go back to school, to stumble into a career that I love. So it's a bit of a catch-22. I regret a lot of things, but I also wouldn't be where I am without it those things. Go figure.

Here's hoping the next decade doesn't hurt as bad. *knocks on wood*

On traveling solo and finding your tribe

Since I am single with weird workdays off, I do a lot of solo traveling. This seems to freak people out. "That's not safe!" "You shouldn't do that!" "You're going to get murdered!" I've heard it all. People are so caught up in stranger danger that they think everyone is out to get everyone else.

Well, it's either solo travel or curl up in my bed and become a human burrito, so fuck it, I'm travelling solo.

I choose to believe that people are generally good. Yeah, there's weirdos out there, but they're the exception. Whenever I've found myself in need, strangers have come to help, whether it's a car wreck or whatever sort of emergency situation people want to help. I think people are generally good, so I keep an open mind when I travel, and that's how I find my tribe. Even as shy and introverted as I tend to be, I still manage to meet good people while I'm out and about.

On a trip to a tulip festival, I was at a brewery and made friends with the gal next to me. She was also travelling solo. We made fun of the sportscast show that was on the TV and discussed our favorite haunts along the I-5 corridor. Our time together was brief and we'll likely never meet again, but for those two hours we found solidarity and kinship.

Recently I went on my first solo camping trip. Next to me was a chapter of the Oregon League of Women. They saw I was alone and invited me over, and we spent the evening at their campfire sharing stories of our adventures. They were a tribe and they welcomed me in for a night, and I found with them a circle of warmth, safety, and camaraderie.

"How can you travel alone?" The secret is I don't travel alone. I travel by myself, but seldom do I find myself alone.

Try it sometime. Put down the phone and chat up the person next to you, wherever you're at. Actually speak with your Uber driver. Sign up for an event by yourself and talk to the people there. Embrace the adventure and the unknown. Talk to strangers. When you do, you'll find your tribe in places you least expect.

Started from the bottom now we're...here, I guess?

I know it's been a while since I've written. I got a lot of partial drafts of things saved but haven't had energy to write in months. But I've come to a crossroads and need to sort out my head.

I'm losing my job. Sort of. My company lost their contract with the facility I work at. I've been offered a new position with the new company stepping in to take over. This means I lose all my seniority and benefits with my old company and have to start over from scratch. I really love my current company and being forced to leave sucks. It's very frustrating and there's been a lot of crying and freaking out about it.

It makes me feel like a failure. Last year after my rent kept increasing, I had to downgrade between renting my own home to renting a room in a house with roommates, and losing the independent feeling I had living on my own. I've been single for months, choosing to focus on my career instead. Now, that's going down the drain, and I'm left trying to grasp for something meaningful in my life and coming up empty. It feels like everything is falling apart around me and no matter what I do, I just slip backwards.

But I've been here before. Facebook kindly reminded me recently that three years ago, I was recently divorced, pseudo-homeless living out of a motel on North First Street in a city where I was alone and knew no one, starting a career in a completely new field I had no prior experience in. I had no money as I'd drained my savings to make the move work, and my car had broken down on the drive over the mountain pass and was off in the shop for weeks. I was starting over with almost nothing, alone, and admittedly terrified.

Things aren't quite as dire, and I keep trying to keep that perspective. I have a functioning car and a semi-permanent residence. There isn't as much money as I would like in my savings, but I'm not flat broke riding on credit either. I've gotten three good years of experience in my new career, and I have a second income with the same type of work to back me up. I have good friends both in work and outside of work.

So, I can do this. It feels like I'm starting over, but I need to keep reminding myself I've been through worse. I might be hitting a reset button on the job, but I've still made progress in other areas of my life. This is just another chapter in a very long book, and I can get through it.

In the meantime, I am currently accepting all positive thoughts and vibes as I wade through this transition.