Divine Urination

Violets are blue
Roses are red
When it rains a lot
I get really wet.
~My roommates

Rain. The world reacts to few things with such a diversity of sentiment than it does to rain. Rain breathes life into barren austerity; it wipes out entire existences. It is the exhilarating drop-splash stimulating the body, and the dreary miasma blotting out happiness in a mundane world. Hemmingway, meet ee cummings.

My feelings directly reflect the rainy context. If I can stay inside in my PJs and drink warm tea while the rain patters on the window, rain is perfect. If I can dance a slow Argentine tango in the warm summer rain, I'm in love. If I am reduced to doubling my commute to work on the bus because God hasn't stopped peeing on Berkeley for a week, rain is Xanax-proof.

Actually, it is not that bad. Taking the bus instead of biking is fine, except for the time lost and the crazies met. Some crazies are fun: I've enjoyed a couple blues concerts on the bus and people ranting about racists when the door doesn't open. There are people who stare: both in the "If I keep looking at you, you might decide to sleep with me," and "I wonder how much I can get selling her internal organs on ebay?" One day I'll have the balls to stare back and figure out how much I could make auctioning off their internal organs. Who knew the things you could deduce by staring?

Apparently rain is the Bay area's version of winter. I cannot complain: I do not like cold. Rain evaporates without leaving dirty streets, it doesn't carve the shivering void in my viscera that ice does, and a hard shell and umbrella beats fifteen sweaters and snow boots. Yet, for a girl who spent four years in Phoenix, multiple days of rain in a row blows my neural circuitry. You must understand: Phoenix gets 8 hours of rain a year. The drainage system is the atmosphere, and people drive as if velociraptors were falling from the sky.

Yet here, it rains all the time. There is no core-shaking thunder or eye dazzling lightning. It is almost as if the rain was a normal part of life, and not some outside force trying scare the shit out of me. Imagine that.

So, I continue to adjust. The first rain when I came back home from my first year college, my mother nearly called a therapist. I guess I would too if my 20 year old daughter was singing and dancing in the downpour. I must squash my inner Arizonian and refrain from building any arks under such a leaky sky. Besides, I don't think you can make an ark out of Priuses, and I know I'll get an army of angry hippies if I try to use wood. Perhaps one can make a soy titanic. The Tofutanic! Oh wait... it sank.

Anyway, rain evokes varied emotions, and I find them more intense than those drummed up by other meteorological phenomena. Rain makes me crave the contentedness of hot cocoa and a soft blanket; it unleashes a torrent of energy that courses through my nerves like broken dam; it saps the world of color and leaves my soul drab and grey. Yet, at the end of the day, there is always a perfect response: milk and cookies.

Why not soup? Or tea? Hot chocolate spiked with too much peppermint schnapps? Those are expected. Perfect milk and cookies bring both spark to a dull day and comfort to a harried soul. It reminds us that five years old is always the perfect age, and brings out all positive connotations of rain. Not to mention that I feel 'all grown-up' since I can now make my own milk and cookies, so I don't need my mother to yell at me for leaving wet clothes on the chair and offer me warm morsels of buttery paradise.

However, I am not five years old. So I can do milk and cookies my way! I present one of my first cookie recipes: Irish-chocolate chocolate chip cookies, and grown up milk.



The cookie has a healthy splash of Baileys, which blends with the cocoa in a spiced-up childhood way. The added fat makes the cookies very moist, but the extra liquid keeps them from being particularly chewy (which you can fix by adding less baileys or a touch of corn syrup, which I dislike...) but trust me, these cookies lack nothing. They pair perfectly with milk blended with Kahlua and Baileys. If that doesn't make your day brighter, I suggest you move to the surface of the sun.

Baileys chocolate chocolate-chip cookies
2.25 c flour
.5 c white sugar
.5 c brown sugar, lightly packed
2 eggs, room temp
2 sticks butter, room temp
.5 c cocoa
1 t baking soda
1.25 t salt
1/3 c baileys, scant
2 c chocolate chips

Sift dry ingredients: flour, soda, salt, and cocoa in a bowl, set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Beat in Baileys. Slowly beat or fold in dry ingredients, 1/3 at a time. Fold in chocolate chips. Batter will be wetter than normal.

Drop by generous spoonfulls on a baking sheet. Bake for 12 min at 375 until cookies just barely bake (the tops should almost look browner than the cocoa). Let cool.

Milk: In a normal glass, add 1 shot Baileys, 1 shot Kahlua, and fill with cold milk.

Deck the halls with cheerful lunatics

I felt like singing "I will survive" at the top of my lungs friday afternoon as I walked out of my final exam. No more science for two whole weeks. I could now vainly attempt to re-acclimate to society and pretend to be normal! Merry Christmas indeed.

Too bad society is not normal. In fact, society is terrifying. Forget Homeland Secuirty: the average highway has more terrorists driving than the CIA should allow. I'd like to see Bin Laden flee from the army of SUV driving soccer moms barelling down the I 10 in search of last minute presents. We must notify Obama that a torture far more sinister than water boarding persists far closer than Guantanamo: Christmas shopping.

I left the night vision goggles and sniper scope at home. Of course I didn't need night vision goggles, that would be silly. However, I could've used more than a scope on the highway. James Bond has nothing on Phoenix. Evade the bludger SUVs, skirt the barely moving Buicks, don't forget to exit. Jason Bourne can drive through tiny European streets with people shooting at him. Who gives? I can ninja from the West to East valley in under an hour.

Yet, the highway is the easy part. I cannot stand traffic, and as I got into the first of many lines trying to find a parking spot, I yearned for a paper bag and some chocolate pudding. It was worse than Lord of the Flies. Every car for itself, just trying to park and happy to be alive.

If the parking lot is a frying pan, a shopping mall is a bonfire to be recokoned with. Screaming children. Stressed out Santas. Irritating teenagers who refuse to talk in normal octaves. Harried mothers. Armies of old men asleep on chairs, waiting for their wives. Phalanxes of families looking for their spears and shields. No statin would bring down my blood pressure.

I do confess: I am to crowds as a cat is to thunderstorms. I don't mind performing in front of them, and I'm not phased by public speaking. However, actually assimilating into the Borg puts me on edge. My sister laughs at her sibling who usually can handle inordinate amounts of stress but has to be talked off a ledge every time she gets near a Macy's.

This is not new. It is nearly tradition, actually. Every year my wonderful parents ask what I need for Christmas. Every year I need new clothing. Every year I have to try on clothing. Every year the legions of clothing overwhelm me, and my mother finds me curled up in a dressing room, hiding from reality. The upside to this is that I've figured out which stores have the best napping spaces. Finally, every year my family resuscitates their daughter, who proceeds to rant about indoctrinated materialism and consumer whores. Fortunately, before said daughter decides to join an ashram in the Himalayas and live off wheat grass, it is time for lunch.


Of course, the antidote to post-shopping paralysis is comfort food. However, I was desperate to avoid my devolving holiday diet of sugar, fat, and beer. So, at the suggestion of my mother, I came up with a winter soup using up some left over turkey sausage and kale. It apparently also echoes of the kale soup at the Olive Garden, although I'm sure this is much healthier.

Kale screams comfort to me: it is one of the few greens I like to eat wilted or in soup- it is so sturdy it doesn't feel slimy at all. It lends a heartiness that almost makes me understand how vegetarians are not constantly starving. Turkey sausage is by no means vegetarian, but it is low in fat and full of flavor, so you needn't add a bunch of spices to the thing, nor drain out rendered grease. It is incredibly fast to make. I add a little whole milk, potatoes, and onions to make an easy winter soup that would soothe a cat pushed into a bathtub by an entire mall full of menacing shoppers.


Sausage and Kale Soup: Shopping Antidote

1 lb hot italian turkey sausage, either removed from casing or cut into 3/4 in pieces
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 onion, diced
1 head of kale, rinsed and roughly chopped
3 small red potatoes, or two small normal ones, diced
salt/pepper
optional seasonings: paprika, dried rosemary, fennel seed
3 cans chicken broth or stock
2 c whole milk

Cook sausage, onions, garlic, and potatoes in a bit of olive oil in a large soup pot over med-high heat. Once sausage is browned and potatoes are less like rocks, add kale and let cook down a few more minutes. Season. Add chicken broth, and stir to deglaze pan. Bring to a boil. Bring down to a simmer and cook for 10 more min. Keep heat low and add milk. Stir occasionally until soup is just ready to simmer again.

Beans can be thrown in if you like that sort of thing. One can of white beans or garbanzos could be thrown in with the stock, giving more body to the dish.