Anything is a wine glass if you try hard enough. These are 20 oz drinking glasses, presumably for water or iced tea. However, in our household they are wine glasses. We just replaced our old chipped ones with these babies.
My wife and I will split a bottle of wine about once a week, and we are lazy. Sure, I could do the wine glass thing, then refill our glasses, but let’s face it, that’s a bit disingenuous. It’s like saying, let’s have a glass of wine, maybe a half glass, knowing full well we are just going to spit the whole bottle between us, and be done with it.
Yes, there are benefits to the wine glass shape. The stem is to keep your filthy mitts off the glass so you don’t mess up the temperature. The shape is also supposed to help with flavor and aroma of the wine to give the imbiber the best flavor experience.
However, at least according to this article, wine making dates back 9000 years, and wine glasses as we know them didn’t even start appearing until the 15th century when we could make crystal glass, presumably for those that could afford them. It wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that they made it into popular usage as we know them now, and really didn’t pick up in their current form until the 1970s.
In all, the article is a good read, because it goes over the science of it all, and it turns out there isn’t a lot to back the idea of traditional wine glasses.
For me? If you love traditional wine glasses? Go for it. However, I am going to sit in my corner drinking my wine, while petting my cat, and crocheting or playing on my iPad. I could care less about the form of my glass, and I care more about having to get up and refill my glass. Plus, I doubt my palate could tell the difference anyways.
I got the stakes to fix my broccoli. It’s been windy and rainy here, so all my broccoli fell over. I had no idea it needed staked, because I hadn’t ever grown it before, but now it looks much better. No more sideways plants, with upside down leaves. Ignore that tiny one. It’s a replant when that square of broccoli didn’t come up. He’s doing fine.
Also, my Amazon purchase for my wife came in. I like to buy her things. Today? It was a red dragon onesie. I love it and she was thrilled with it. The cat? Tally is really not too sure about this development. She’d only just gotten over the balloons my wife got as a get well soon gift from her coworkers for after surgery.
Behind her is a router and all sorts of internet cables on the shelves. I was supposed to drill a hole through the wall, install 2″ desk grommets, so the wires could go through, but instead I made wall pockets for iPad and laptop storage next to our bed.
I found a unicorn tote for my wife, the lovely disaster unicorn, and a hail gay satan one for me. Yes, yes I did find a hail gay satan tote bag on Amazon. You can find anything there. It’s amazing sometimes.
We both use an iPad in bed, and my wife also uses an old laptop for writing her YouTube scripts and gaming notes. I am always concerned they will get stepped on, so I made them a place to go up off the floor. We can’t use a normal nightstand arrangement because our bed is literally in the closet, sticking out, which is cool with star lights, but I don’t want to do pictures until I finish the canopy for it. This means we have to get creative with storage.
Also, my wife has ADHD, and tucking anything in for a nice clean look was out the window 30 years ago when we married. I find keeping everything in easy to access and visible areas increase the likely hood that it will get put away, and that she will remember where it is.
This is actually straight, but the picture makes it look crooked.
Construction was just a fabric envelop made out of tote bags with pictures I liked on it, and then I used the straps for the totes to make a small loop at the top, then I put some hooks in the wall, with carabiners I had laying around. The rainbow ribbon was just what I had on hand because I bought 100s of yards of it on Amazon once, so I use it in my projects when I need a bit of ribbon tab.
The most exciting part about this is I own the whole damn house, and I could use actual hooks that screw into the studs in the walls. It’s not a rental, and if I want to put holes in my walls, I sure as hell can. The sheer freedom to put 6 cup hooks in the walls? Worth every penny of my mortgage.
I am making a very large scarf and Tally has been all over it. She cannot understand why she can’t attack it, lick it until it’s fuzzy, or generally freak out on it. She’s very disappointed her input is not being taken.
I am not the greatest with yarn arts, but I like to crochet because it gives me something to do with my hands besides pick at my cuticles when I am nervous. I haven’t really done a lot of it since before I transitioned to male, so I don’t actually look forward to dealing with the extra attention as a man who crochets if I take it out of the house with me.
I think knitting, crochet, and sewing are so very unnecessarily gendered. I like it, and I am not giving it up just because I look like some random cis dude these days.
When we went grocery shopping on Thursday, we also hit Trader Joes. They have better snacks and frozen ready-made foods with less ingredients I question, and for a pretty good price.
I bought a mint plant because my teeny tiny mint is barely there, and I planted it in the 2 foot planter with my mint seedlings. Mint is generally a contagious plant that overtakes everything, so I am hoping either the seedlings or the plant overtake that planter.
I also got on with the cheese prep. I had a 5 pound Costco log of sharp cheddar and another 5 pounds of pepper jack, and a couple frozen squares of similar items from last time we went to Costco that needed shredded.
That flat of peaches in the back is for my wife. She’s making peach cobbler this weekend, and she will make it all into cobbler filling, and will freeze any she doesn’t immediately use.
I use a kitchenmaid attachment I bought off Amazon for shredding. I don’t have a food processor. I have a Ninja blender food processor bowl, but it doesn’t have a shredder or slicer attachment. I absolutely will NOT shred this much cheese with a box grater, so this was a good solution for under $30.
My original plan, 6 months ago, was to cut it into squares, then shred it once it was thawed, however, while it does work, it’s not my favorite. You can see the texture difference below. The big bowl on the left is fresh grated cheese, but the small Tupperware is the stuff I froze, then grated after thawing. It still uses the same, but I think it impacts my nacho game with how it melts.
Fresh cheese in big bowl versus previously froze cheese in the small bowl.
I ended up with a lot of cheese.
I started doing this because the cost of cheese was insultingly high, but then I discovered that the cheese I was buying in the grocery store proper wasn’t as good. The sharp cheddar wasn’t as sharp, and the pepper jack was just bland as hell.
Don’t even get me started on the pre-shredded cheese. It’s just wrong. Like it doesn’t melt right, and tastes, I dunno? Dusty? Because of the anti clumping agents. It was just crap.
I did a quick cost analysis. If I paid Fred Meyers prices for the Sharp Cheddar? I’d have paid $39.95. I’d have paid $22.48 for the Pepper Jack. I did not take into account the Ziplock bags. That would add a few cents per package.
While that is not a lot over the course of 4-6 months in differences, it’s still aggravating. Especially for a product that tastes worse. Plus I can buy it once, pack my freezer, and not have to go back to the store or pay MORE when the corporate grocery pricing fiasco reduces the size of the package to give me less for the same price.
I think my next step will be a vacuum sealer. That will definitely help prolong the life of my food, and I suspect if I get one, I can buy the bags in bulk, reducing prices.
Yesterday we went to a business/restaurant supply Costco. You can use your normal membership to go to the business/restaurant supply Costco. It’s just a Costco that doesn’t have all the electronics, clothing, and home goods, and instead has the food in bigger quantities, and restaurant supply stuff. The reason we went is it opens at 7am and is practically empty, with easy parking. We get up really early, and hate crowds so it’s super nice.
We spent a lot at Costco, and filled our chest freezer with restaurant quality crinkle fries, salami, lunch meat, hot dog sausages, a sliced cheeses, and corn dogs. Just about everything you could need for the next six months when you have non-cooking days.
While I like to cook everything from scratch, I am not always physically up and running. On those days, I like a quick and dirty meal and ready made food is a part of that. As my condition progresses, I have had to make peace with the fact that while I have the skills and prefer 100% from scratch cooking, concessions will have to be made. I focus on those items I really love to make, and make do with store bought for the rest.
Arguably, the best greasy spoon on the west coast.
We then went out to eat at one of the best kept secret diners in our area. The staff is amazing. The food is 110% Americana diner food that is well made, affordable, and with portions that are bigger than I ever eat.
However, going out in public these days is always risky. When my wife went to pee, some lady complained to staff about a “man” in the bathroom. My wife looked damn good in her little floral skirt, doc marten’s and top. She has boobs larger than my head, and her hair color was killing it. To call her a man at this point in her life is just literally being a bigot. She may be identifiable as transgender, but she looks NOTHING like a man.
We live in such a blue area that this was a non starter with the staff. The staff member cleaning the bathroom completely blew her off. When my wife left the bathroom the lady had gotten her husband to come stand with her by the door to the women’s room. Apparently, not content to just wait and come back after my wife, she wanted a man person to come menace my wife.
I should remind everyone my wife is 6’2″ tall. This apparently matters to the cis men she towers over. He couldn’t look her in the eyes when she smiled and waved at them both, and came back the the booth. This has been happening more and more. The amount of times my wife has been challenged by some lady in the bathroom, who then goes and gets a man to come help her threaten my wife with either implied or overt violence is just insane.
To be fair, the silver lining to this madness is the number of cis dudes that completely look out of their depth and back down when my wife shows up. Size really matters to cis dudes when height and threats come into play.
Oh, and can I be petty? My wife looked more feminine, had better fashion sense, and was just factually more beautiful than the nasty tired old lady freaking out?
The real challenge of this all was actually just being in public. My wife can’t leave the house without something happening right now. Those bigots seem thrilled there is a minority they can unabashedly attack because they feel they finally found a socially acceptable victim. Don’t be mistaken, these same people are probably racist antisemites, too. They just found a new group that isn’t fully protected by social convention and are gleefully on the attack. The Venn diagram for transphobia, racism, sexism, antisemitism, and all the other ‘isms, is pretty much a circle.
The most insidious situation is the picture taking. People will just take my wife’s picture like they saw Bigfoot. They are not as discrete as they think when they even try to be sneaky. Some assholes use it as a way to harass her by outright getting in her face to do it.
I live in a large city. My wife, is legit not even the weirdest thing I see driving to get donuts at sunrise just last week. Have you seen a meth head wearing a feather boa and nothing else at a bus stop dancing? I have! This is not a really rare occurrence because we live in a city that has a rep for that kind of drug use.
I mean, there are so many more pronounced situations going down at any one time in my limited time outside my home, that to pick my slightly gothy transgender wife to target for photos is just people being assholes.
It’s a risk whenever we go out these days, and while I am a transgender man who can “pass” as cis, my wife cannot. I worry for her safety a lot these days because the uptick in violence is very real, and you never know if you are going to run into someone that has been wound up by the media and is just foaming at the mouth to hate crime someone.
I truly wish this wasn’t a concern we had to work with just to go get breakfast and groceries.
My garden continues to grow, but I’ve never grown broccoli before, and did not stake them. We had some wind and they are all falling over and I will have to see if I can stake them this weekend.
It’s not terrible, but I need them to grow up due to my limited space.
I did tie up the jute twine for my tomatoes. I am using tomato clips. I think I got like 300 for a ridiculously cheap price on Amazon.
You just clip them on the twine and the tomato and you are done.
I am also fighting the animals. Squirrels dig a lot of holes in the dirt in my yard. Since it’s not full of grass, they really go to town.
I do it to myself because we have so many bird and squirrel feeders around.
We have several of those black basket peanut and corn feeders. We get a lot of crows with them. I love crows and they won’t eat out of a feeder, and honestly I love the squirrels too. We have an enormous number of squirrels all over.
When we redo the deck, I will make a more permanent set up for them. This is just until then.
Below is the disaster that is my front lawn.
My lawn is half dead because they got it green enough to see the house, and it’s just dying. That crap fill dirt is the same in the front of the house. It’s filled with rocks, glass and rusty nails. I don’t like grass anyways, so I am re-seeding with clover. It’s actually starting to work.
I think it’s doing better than the dying grass. I have seeded twice, and will do it again in July here. It doesn’t grow as tall, and is way greener.
Then I have this problem:
The driveway and front walks have a bare inch of gravel and no landscaping fabric was laid down. I had thought it was weird there was like a gallon of heavy duty weed killer in the shed when we moved in. I guess that was their solution. I am not so keen on that. I don’t want to put damaging chemicals in the ground.
Instead, I am trying rock salt. Just Morton’s rock salt. I have mixed it up in solution of 2 cups for a gallon of water, and sprayed it with a hand held sprayer, but this last time I got tired of carrying it so I just sprinkled rock salt all over. I got more salt in, and then watered it in. It’s working, but slowly.
You do have to be careful to not get it in your lawn. It will kill anything. I am hoping after several treatments, this will make the driveway and walk ways ungrowable. the walkway is kind of temporary?
We do plan to install a large fence when we do the decks, and change the walkway layouts. We will add another walkway straight to the road, and straighten out this one in the picture to the driveway. I will probably do like I am planning in the back, and make a wide gravel walk, done right this time, with big 2′ X 2′ pavers for stepping stones. It will carve out more grass out of my small lawn. The less grass the better. It’s not ecologically a good ground cover choice.
It’s just so novel for me to be able to work on these things and make a difference. I am not used to this, having been a renter for so long. I still feel grateful every day we managed to get into a house.
My wife had surgery on the 9th. It wasn’t a huge surgery. She’s had, I think 9 of them in the last 4 years for her transition from female to male. She’s one of the craziest strongest recoveries I have ever seen for surgery. When I was a nurse, in my first career, I did medicare units with post surgical recovery on and off, and so seeing my wife recover this strong is impressive to me.
For instance, she didn’t take anything much for pain the last couple days. She never does. She hates narcotic pain medication, so she switches over to Tylenol or something over the counter really quickly.
I think part of the issue is my wife has ADHD, and I am not sure if it’s related, but meds just hit her different. Stimulants put her to sleep. Every time she has general anesthesia she is incredibly busy until it wears off in a day or two. The night I brought her home, she was so chatty I had to tell her to be quiet at midnight so I could sleep. She was happy and up, but I was exhausted from getting her to Seattle and back and getting all the details taken care of.
For the bigger surgeries, she is more out of is and sleeps, but every little one like this? She practically doesn’t notice.
Wife in her housecoat I made for her out of my grandmothers quilt, being stalked by Tally the cat. This is a general picture of them, as I didn’t think to snap pics of my wife yesterday. Plus she’s so busy, it’s hard to chase her around.
Anyways, on to food. My wife always wants Dick’s Cheeseburgers and jelly beans after surgery. I don’t know what the anesthetic does to her, but it’s pretty reliable. Once, years ago before her transition, she had a vasectomy in a town an hour away, and on the ride home, she was so insistent I get her jelly beans I had to pull off and go into a Fred Meyer to buy her a pound of bulk candy.
When we got to the house, 20 minutes later, she once again got insanely insistent, so I asked where her jelly beans went. Turns out, little miss post-anesthesia ate the entire pound of jelly beans without remembering. It made her a bit queasy too, so after that I was much more careful with her demands, and I only got her a small bag of jelly beans, and vetoed Dick’s Cheeseburgers on the way back until I could be sure she wasn’t going to be nauseated from eating.
Sweet and Sour vegetables and rice.
For the first night I wanted to go easy on her stomach, so I made the above, sweet and sour rice and vegetables. I made the sweet and sour sauce from scratch and the green onions are from my garden.
I wanted her to have a good protein-rich set of meals for recovery. We don’t normally eat steak and red meat that much. The costs are prohibitive and we just don’t miss it, but I splurged to make sure she had good recovery food. I should note, I was so tired from the night before, that I got the groceries delivered, and the steaks I wanted were replaced with flank steak. Which is fine, but they looked like they’d been through it. I am a little pickier on my meat selection, so I just cooked them up in the pan with butter, salt and peppers and sliced them across the grain.
Steak, country mashers, candied carrots and Hawaiian rolls. This is my plate so it has all the fat and gristle bits, because I like that.
She woke up well, and I made her a late lunch, early supper with flank steak, country mashers with some leftover potatoes in the fridge, and carrots glazed in honey. She loves rolls, so I bought Hawaiian rolls. Normally they are a bit sweet for our tastes, but it was what was available for delivery.
Later that evening we were both hungry, so I used leftover steak to make burritos with steak, rice (leftover), cabbage, green onion, and cheese. I used some light sour cream for sauce in them. I forgot to get pictures of that one.
Steak, mushroom, green onion, and cheese frittattas with Trader Joes polenta broiled with parmesan cheese.
I made a nice frittata and used it to use up leftovers in the fridge. I used up the leftover polenta as well, broiled with parmesan.
The cheese in the polenta is pepper jack, and cheddar. The only place I buy cheese these days is Costco, in large blocks, and grate myself using a KitchenAid grater attachment. I swear the pepper jack tastes like pepper jack. Some grocery store versions are very bland and not remotely spicy.
I might do more sweet and sour vegetables for dinner. I need to get more veggies into her.
However, she’s been doing super well, and maybe now that she’s good, I can finally relax.
The closest I have ever come to having a garden, was once when we lived in a trailer park, I planted tomatoes in a raised concrete bed. It worked out well, but the internet was not as good as it is now for hobby information, so I had a few flyers, and my grandmothers garden wisdom. Spoilers: My grandmother was not exactly a successful gardener.
I think that beauty bark was the best, most economical idea. I don’t have any issues walking on it, and it’s protecting the landscaping fabric.
I really like the layout here, but I think I am going to buy some garden bags, and plant potatoes in them and put them down the center next year. I got some potato seeds, like honest to god seeds for potatoes from Botanical Interests, and I am going to try those, as well as normal potato slips.
So far the chicken wire cage has kept all manner of critters out of things. We have feral cats, possums, squirrels, and whatever else. I am pleased with how well this has worked. I was worried I’d overdone it, but so far so good.
Above I have 4 sunflowers growing on the left side, then dill, parsley, and basil. I am kind of hoping the birds don’t demolish the sunflowers, but they can get into the chicken wire pretty easily. Just a tiny sliver of the herbs are visible.
Above, the green onions that are biggest are actually grocery store green onions I planted after I used up all the green parts. I have this fodmap thing with garlic and onions, and green onions don’t seem to mess with my stomach, so I use them a lot. The Tokyo Whites in the squares closest to the straw are just not doing as well. I didn’t get as much germination as I was hoping. I will replant some of the areas that missed tomorrow.
The broccoli has really taken off. I had to replant one square, but the rest are huge. I don’t really know when you harvest broccoli? I guess I am hoping I see it and get it before it flowers.
These are 55 day tomatoes. I think I planted them a wee bit early, as the weather has been on and off. I have the tomato cage set up, and I will train them up on twine. I need to rewatch a Gardner Scott Youtube video on how to remove the suckers on them. That one time I grew tomatoes I planted half a billion seeds and just let it go wild.
Above here is my cucumbers. I have four sunflower on the far right, but the rest are cucumbers. I chose a version called Homemade Pickles. It’s a 55 day version. I wanted as short a growing cycle as possible.
Above is my rhubarb. I know normally you split a plant and do it that way, but I know nobody in my city. I just bought seeds off of Amazon, and planted them. The seed package was less than helpful. I planted four sets of seeds in the 2 foot circle planter. One set did not take. I will replant that. I can always thin them back. Rhubarb always grew like a weed in the rental houses from my teens so I have no idea how one optimizes the environment. I have googled, and it seems like most articles spend time on how long the plant lives not on planting from scratch.
This is the mint planter that the feral cat got into, before I had a chance to wrap them in chicken wire. There is the teeny tiniest bit of mint starting. I am not too worried about the mint, because as the tag says, it’s garden herpes. I have this planter on the far side, away from anything else, and near a gravel driveway, in a raised bed. Containment is hopeful secure.
I did switch from some pretty copper name plates to white plastic ones. I found after a month, the copper ones corroded and were illegible. I didn’t want to use plastic, but pragmatic needs such as readability trump pretty.
I am very much looking forward to cooking with my own vegetables. I am able to harvest the grocery green onions, but the rest are still growing.
I am an aging street rat that made it to my 50s. I managed to get off the streets in my 20s, and marry my beautiful wife, and together we have managed against all odds, to create a life together.
We are both transgender and queer. We both come from a level of poverty that few people deal with. We’ve both fought our way through and managed to get not only off the streets, but managed to get through school, and get careers.
This blog is about my life, which is mostly my garden and cooking, but there will be a bit of politics and the occasional diatribe thrown in. While in a perfect world, my biggest concerns would be my garden and if my jam canned up right, I am transgender in an increasingly hostile world. It is impossible to just exist in a world like this, without being aware that at any moment some emboldened bigot might take a swipe at my wife. My being a transgender man, I can usually fly under the radar in public, so it’s mostly for my wife I worry.
This started as a Tumblr blog, but thier archival system is atrocious, so it’s easier to settle here and feed into that blog rather than try and make Tumblr’s system do more than what it was designed for, which was fandom based shitposting.
Topics I tend to write about in no specific order:
My normal work schedule is Monday through Friday. I took off Thursday, and my wife and I made three trips to Lowes. We got 24 bags of dirt, 12 at a time, and 5 huge bags of beauty bark. As you can see in the pictures the beauty bark filled out the rest of the hoop house aka the Squirrel Interdiction cage.
The problem with having a physical disability is you like to forget and think you can do things you used to do 30 years ago. I am in rough shape. I not only filled the raised beds, added the bark, but I mowed the lawn.
My lawn mower saga is now over. I had ordered that lawn mower from Lowes, and they no-called, no-showed me three times, so I canceled and ordered a Makita battery mower from Amazon.
I was just going to test it to make sure it worked, so I could break down the box, but it was so cool, I mowed the back yard. My grass is only in tufts becuase they used nasty glass and garbage and rock filled dirt to level the lot, so it’s a bumpy nasty yard to mow.
We also have an issue with the driveway as they only put a bare inch or so of gravel over the crappy fill dirt, and it is growing so many weeds now. We are opting to use 2 cups of rock salt in 1 galloon of water to kill the weeds. I have sympathy at trying to get a house ready for sale, but a lot of corners were cut all over.
So anyways, I have things set up in the garden finally, and I was starting to wonder if I had committed a bit of overkill on the hoop house and chicken wire, until the day after I planted it all.
The damn cat, which is lovely and beautiful and feral, had dug up my mint bed to pee in it. I had to drag out the chicken wire and wrap each of those small round beds to keep him out.
All this is to say, I am dead up against a wall of sore and exhuastion today. I spent the day in bed and watched Good Eats on Discovery+ with the wife. She made game maps next to me while I dozed.
I have so much more to do, that it’s nuts. I have 9 more curtains for the house, a kitchen cabinet box, and a coffee table. I’d have been done with this in a few days when I was healthier. Not so much now. I have to take each item day by day.
Like for instance, today I was going to sew one set of curtains, but I just can’t. I hurt. It’s really hard to be able to work with your hands, and be prevented because of your body’s failings.
I am trying to be patient with myself and happy that at least the garden is planted. I will need to top the beds with dirt in winter, and maybe transplant the strawberries to a fuller raised bed, but it’s in its final form. Now, even when I am hurt and sore, I can still do the little planting things. As this condition progresses, I am set up to continue with my garden which brings me a lot or joy.
Garden Rat 