Month: May 2024

Posted in cooking

Anti-Werewolf Potatoes

Posted on by debthumanblog

This is a new kind of post for me. I haven’t done a cooking post before. Probably because I’ve never learned to cook. My mother was a terrible cook. You think I’m exaggerating? Okay, here’s her recipe for steak. Take a pile of steak out of the freezer. Using a rolling pin, beat on the pile until the pile separates into individual steaks. Put the steaks under the broiler for 15 minutes. Turn the steaks over, and broil for another 15 minutes. Good luck trying to cut into this steak. Here’s her recipe for spaghetti sauce. Open a jar of Ragu and empty it into the kettle. Fill the empty jar with water and add it to the kettle. Add onion salt. Add garlic salt. Let it cook for a couple hours.

And so I’m writing a cooking post.

Once upon a time, I needed to bring a dish to pass to a halloween party so I invented anti-werewolf potatoes. Unfortunately, there are no specific amounts for this recipe. I created it on the fly and just started tossing things into the slow cooker.

I like using little new potatoes for this, but any decent potato will do. Wash but don’t peel the potatoes. Chop to potatoes into bite size chunks.

Chop up an onion.

Chop up lots of fresh garlic. You want to keep the werewolves away, so use lots of garlic. When in doubt, add more garlic.

The original version used coarse sea salt and fresh ground pepper. I’ve been experimenting. Savory Spice has a Sunday Pot Roast seasoning, https://www.savoryspiceshop.com/collections/spice-n-easy/products/sunday-pot-roast that works well. So does the Barrier Reef Caribbean Mix, https://www.savoryspiceshop.com/collections/all-products/products/barrier-reef-caribbean-mix-seasoning.

Today, I’m using a combination of Sunday Pot Roast and Ancho Chili Powder https://www.savoryspiceshop.com/products/ancho-chile-powder. I want the potatoes to have a bit of zip, but I don’t want to fry my tonsils when I eat the potatoes. Per the package, on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the hottest, ancho chili powder is a 1.

Mix the potatoes, onions, garlic, and seasonings. Then, add just enough olive oil to coat the potatoes. Put it all in the slow cooker on low, and forget about it until it’s time to eat. Figure at least 3 hours to cook. Specific cooking time depends on how much you’re making and your slow cooker. Keep an eye on it, but don’t lift the lid. The point of a slow cooker is moisture stays in the pot rather than condensing on the ceiling.

I’ve made anti-werewolf potatoes many times, and every time I’ve made it, there have been no werewolves nearby.

Posted in Dyeing, Embroidery machine, Fiber

I’m Having Fun With The Embroidery Machine

Posted on by debthumanblog

And learning.

This is down time for me. The semester has ended. No more trying to paint in the same room with the hate criminal. No more fear of being attacked while walking from my car to the art building. No more terrorist encampments. Now, it’s me time. Time to recuperate. Time to heal. Time to make art. It ain’t called art therapy for nothing.

Threads need to be clipped and it’s a bit off center. And a bit uphill. But it says what I want. Yes, I dyed the tee shirt.

I wanted to make Brady a Pride bandana. I ran out of bobbin thread, hit the wrong button and had to rip out the darker blue hand. Ripping out embroidery is horrible. It’s worse than ripping out an errantly serged seam. I’ve decided that Pride is for diversity and inclusivity and the darker blue hand represents those who have been injured at their workplace. I was all set to sew up the bandana, and discovered the markings I had made had disappeared. I was wondering how long the marks from the markers I recently bought would last. Apparently 2 days is the limit.

This is a hand-dyed tee shirt. I played around with variegated threads. There aren’t rigid categories into which we stuff people. Pick a group. Any group. Is every member the same? Nope. Diversity among the diverse.

Hand-dyed tee shirt with Laurel Burch designs. I didn’t have the exact thread colors, so I decided to wing it. I got some interesting results.

There will be more embroidery. More tee shirts. More bandanas. I went shopping at Sam’s Club and discovered I need some larger size grocery bags for shopping at Sam’s. I make our grocery bags. Some are made out of upholstery fabric. Some are made from hand-dyed muslin. I recently found some upholstery fabric that is a mystery. No idea where it’s from or when I got it. I do know I don’t want to use it for upholstery. Might be good for larger size grocery bags, though.

I need help with my online shop, Deb Thuman Art http://www.DebThumanArt.com What would make my store more attractive? What would bring more traffic to my store?

Spoonflower has changed to an interesting format. I can now proof my designs online rather than ordering proofs. I’ve been adding to my design collections. My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Posted in Uncategorized

I think I might be starting to understand

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’ve been doing ketamine macrodosing through Mindbloom for a bit more than a year now and I have made progress. I’ve been able to radically lower the dose of my mood stabilizer and my antidepressant. I now have little to no brain fog and words don’t get lost in my brain as often.

Mindbloom breaks major things down into 6-lesson pathways. The one I’m working with now is rewiring habits. I’m making odd progress with this one. At first, some major trauma from my childhood was coming up. I found myself having insights some of which are disturbing. Like how I thought the crap that was done to me was normal. I’m seriously pissed off about that. Then again, the isolation I endured ensured I would not know what normal family life was like. Maybe there’s no normal, but constantly being screamed at, hit, told I’m no good, told I’m selfish and worthless and being held out as an example of everything that is evil is definitely not normal. I think what’s happening is I’m feeling the feelings that went with the events but I’m not getting all the feelings at once. I doubt I could handle that much emotion all at once. That’s why I stuffed everything in the first place. And so I’m progressing in bits and pieces. Some days, I find myself eating less than usual which is good. I badly need to lose a significant amount of weight or health issues I have will rapidly become worse.

This past week, I’ve gotten some clarity. I realized I’m dealing with past trauma from my childhood and major present trauma caused by the antisemitism I’ve been facing. These are separate traumas and need to be processed separately.

I finally found a therapist who takes my insurance and had my first appointment this past Tuesday. Knowing I needed immediate help, I bought Brady (my service dog in training) with me. Turns out, the therapist brings her dog to work with her. Brady did well in the waiting room. She insisted on sitting under my chair. This is an advanced placement for service dogs and it seems to be where Brady feels most secure. During the therapy session, I sat on the sofa and had Brady sit on the floor at my feet. At one point during the session, Brady became agitated. She wanted to help me. I asked if it would be all right for Brady to sit on the sofa. It was. Brady immediately stepped over my lap and leaned against my chest. It’s our version of deep pressure therapy and it’s works well. That immediately calmed Brady down. She will be coming with me to my therapy sessions from now on and I’ll be having her sit on the sofa next to me.

Posted in Abstract Art, Fiber, Painting, Photography

Getting Some Art Made

Posted on by debthumanblog

I survived critique on Thursday.

This is a mindless landscape I painted so I could have a mental health break from all the emotional paintings I did this semester. This one was fun. It’s not great art, but it was something I needed to give my brain a rest.

I thought this was going to be a fun little painting. I had taken several shots of a smiley moon and did a focus merge. That should have given me one very detailed smiley moon. Something went awry, and I got this wild photo with moons all over the place. I thought it might be fun to paint. Not wanting to use up all my black ink, I put the photo into a negative and printed out something intriguing. I thought it would be a nice abstract design. Then I decided I wanted to work with just one color of paint – Da Vinci Soulshine – plus black and white. And that’s how I got all the colors. I am not thrilled with this painting, but it set off a series of ideas in my head. This will be a series next semester.

The original weird focus merge is below.

Finally a decent photo of the painting about the events of October 7, 2023 as reported in The NY Times (a notoriously anti-Israel newspaper).

I survived facing down terrorists on Monday. Classes are done for the spring semester and I get a three month break before I need to worry about my personal safety again. I didn’t realize how much a hate crime, pro-hamas terrorists on campus, and feeling alone had affected me until I realized I have been six 5 times in 5 months. The last time I was sick this often was when I was in kindergarten. I had never been around kids until I started school and there were no vaccines against childhood diseases back then. I had both kinds of measles, mumps, and chickenpox all while I was in kindergarten. Since the first week of December, I’ve had covid (and I’m fully vaccinated and boosted), bronchitis, a UTI, an infected hair follicle, and the flu. I haven’t had bronchitis in about 15 years. I haven’t had the flu in about 20 years (I get a flu shot every year). I haven’t had a UTI in at least 5 years. I’ve never had an infected hair follicle. After finally finding a therapist who would take my insurance, I started therapy this past Tuesday.

I bought an embroidery machine, bought some additional embroidery patterns, and dyed some tee shirts.

A bit off center, but I’m learning. This is the small version of the Star of David. I’d like to try the large version – maybe on a tote bag. But I like how the dye came out on the tee shirt.

Now that I’m 71-year-old walker pushing bad ass who doesn’t back down from terrorists, perhaps I need an appropriately bad ass tattoo. I’m not a tattoo kind of person. Tattoos to me are like wallpaper. If I paint a room and get tired of the color after a few years, I go to the store, buy more paint, and repaint the room. Easy. Wallpaper is another matter. Putting wallpaper up is a PITA and taking wallpaper off the wall is a PITA times a factor of 10. Tattoos are like wallpaper and I get bored too easily. So, no tattoos for me. But I have having major emotional fallout and I went in search of an appropriately bad ass type tattoo. I didn’t find anything remotely bad ass. I did find a tattoo that said: Have The Courage To Live, anyone can die. I thought the last part was superfluous, so I embroidered Have the COURAGE to LIVE onto a tee shirt I had dyed.

I took the third tee shirt I had dyed and added Laurel Burch designed. The shirt looks much better now that I’ve removed the thread lines and washed the shirt. Laurel Burch designs are fun….especially considering I’ve a penchant for variegated threads. Makes for stripes in odd places, but cute nonetheless.

At the moment I’ve got three dye buckets going. Three tee shirts and enough cotton fabric for four large dog bandanas. I intend to embroider on all the tee shirts and bandanas.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My on-line store, Deb Thuman Art is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

Posted in anxiety, Bigotry, Israel, Judiasm

Terrorism

Posted on by debthumanblog

Today is Yom HaShoah, Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day I remember those who were murdered and those who fought and died so I could have a homeland. I honored the day by confronting terrorists.

There was an encampment at the university. This was billed as free speech. The First Amendment is not now and never was absolute. You can’t yet fire in a crowded theater. But you can call for the genocide of Jews and the obliteration of Israel, my homeland. That’s perfectly acceptable.

I went to take photos to send to the FBI. Depending on how much walking I need to do, and I needed to do a lot, I have to use a walker. The terrorists called the police. And that’s the extent of the details I can talk about because of the possibility of criminal charges. I had hoped the officer would accept my passport as my ID. My passport has my post office box address rather than my home address. Unfortunately, he asked for my license which has my home address. Never have I been so glad to be living next door to the sheriff. I’ve sent her an email explaining the situation and saying there might be a problem if the terrorists get my home address. That’s not supposed to happen, but life doesn’t always go according to the script. I’ve told Jim to call 911 immediately if he sees anyone he doesn’t recognize around the house. I’ve got security cameras on the front, back and side of the house.

When my great-great-grandparents along with my 10-month-old great-grandmother left Europe, they came disguised as German Lutherans. They were Polish Jews. My grandmother, who thought she was a German Lutheran, was taught never to do anything that would make people think she was Jewish. I was always horrified by that.

Today, to my shame, I hid. I wore nothing, said nothing, and did nothing to make the terrorists think I’m Jewish. Because I hid, I’m home scared rather than in the hospital wondering what my insurance will cover.

Am Yisrael Chai! The people of Israel live.