revenge of the foodstuffs (no, not in that way)

Yesterday I got attacked by peanut butter. Twice.

The first time was at lunch; I finally gave up on the cafeteria and now I keep PB, J, and bread here. Yesterday I had to start a new jar of peanut butter, and it was organic, the kind that separates when stored and ends up with a layer of oil floating on top. Normally when we open a new jar at home, Ted mixes it, since he’s the one who has a strong preference for organic PB anyway. (I don’t mind it, but can’t really taste much difference.) Apparently there is a skill to this, because I just can’t do it without making a mess and ending up with inadequately mixed peanut butter. I was seriously considering asking him to come upstairs (he sits a floor below me at work) and help, but that seemed too wimpy. I just did the best I could and made a sandwich with some of the less oily bits.

Then at dinner I went to make garlic bread to go with spaghetti. We’d bought bread for it the evening before, two nice crusty Italian rolls (because we couldn’t find the baguettes until after we’d paid for the rolls, sigh). I noticed they’d been sliced open in the middle, and thought that was odd, but would be convenient. Yesterday evening I opened them to put garlic butter on and found that one side of each had already been spread with some kind of sweetened peanut butter. (For all I know it’s a rare Taiwanese delicacy, but it tasted mostly like peanut butter to me. Anyway, I’m all for convenience, but is it now too hard for people to spread their own peanut butter at home?) I scraped off as much as I could, but I can report that traces of peanut do not really add anything to garlic butter.

Oddly enough at lunchtime today, I opened my jar of PB and it was perfectly smooth and perfectly mixed. Brownies?

In other news, vision continues good, though while I can knit without reading glasses I will probably need them next time I need to fix any complex error. And knitting in the car was a little uncomfortable whenever I needed to look at it much, but I’m still trying to baby my eyes so I didn’t do that for long. I do still have a little haloing at night, but I could drive wihtout a problem. I’m still on three kinds of eyedrops but no more pills and the doctor said I can take the eyeshields off when inside if I need to (they hurt my ears after a few hours).

I have now survived 5 days without washing my hair, because I’m not supposed to get any wter in my eyes. (I use a washcloth to wash my face.) Normally I wash it every other day and rinse it on days between because of my workout schedule. I’ve been rinsing it quickly with water, but washing involves more time under the shower head, more chances for water and/or shampoo to run down. I think I’m going to give in tomorrow, because it still looks more or less OK but is starting to feel unclean to me and I can’t stand that. There are plenty of people who go a week or two (or more) between washes even among people in daily-shower cultures; I just don’t know how they do it. (Supposedly also, your hair gets used to it and produces less oil. And brushing helps, but I have curly hair, so when it’s long brushing makes it frizz and when it’s short like now there’s nowhere to redistribute oils to.)

And we have a regatta in I-Lan week after next! Should be amusing, since once again it will be my first time on the water in months.