I'm working on making hand pies with an oat flour crust. I tried a 50:50 wheat flour to oat flour mix and that was good and tasty, but I guess I'm technically supposed to not eat gluten so I'll give a 100% oat flour crust a go. The oat flour seems more dense and less workable than wheat (no gluten to give it that stretch). I made plain oat cakes and they were alright, but why not have the toppings stuffed inside, ready to heat and go? I love to eat hand pies - I've made them with the cheese based keto pizza "dough" for a low carb version, but it's time intensive. I don't have the cooking patience to make them unless I get really motivated. Right now they are sounding very very tasty and the idea of making a big batch and then having no-fuss portable meals is very appealing.

Fruity oaty bars. Hand pies. Smoothies. This is my battle plan.

The other day for dinner I made a thai chicken recipe that had soy sauce. I'm not supposed to have soy sauce, I just got tired of trying to figure out what to do with the chicken (that went with the rice I already had) and I was very hungry. That night I got startled out of a scary dream in a panic. Heart racing, high blood pressure, etc. Like reacting to a jump scare. I was getting these more frequently a year or two ago, especially waking me up from a nap, and then they faded out when I started getting more potassium and B vitamins. So that was interesting.

My ears are still stuffed up and after the jump scare it was worse. I was hoping cutting down on cheese/dairy would make a real difference, or maybe drinking more water, but so far, no. I'm wondering if I have a bunch of earwax in there, but I get the pressure pops like in an airplane. I'm thinking about trying a neti pot. I find neti pots to be horrifying and disgusting. Maybe it's my fear of drowning, or maybe I really don't want to go spelunking in my sinus cavity. But here we are.

Things are still going okay but my ears are still stuffed. I thought perhaps spouse and I caught a slight cold over the weekend. He was sniffly and I was tired, more tired than I should have been. Plus the ear pressure. I remember I used to get some allergy symptoms around this time of year in the land of crab and allergy meds helped (I thought it was juniper pollen or mold), but I've been taking the allergy meds and they don't seem to make a darn bit of difference. Maybe it's because I breathe more indoor air during this time of year, instead of being outside? Who knows, right?

I got a big bag of organic rolled oats at the health food store. I tried making my own oat milk in the vitamix and I think I overblended. You're supposed to strain the bits of oat out of the oatmilk afterward, but the solids were pulverized and it wouldn't strain worth beans. Weird gluey pudding thickness. Then I realized oat milk is roughly comparable to the simple flour and water "glue" one uses in paper mache and now that's all I can think about. Drinking paper mache paste. I tried some in my sad morning coffee and I was not impressed. They say it's as good as milk - it's a lie. It's fine in smoothies, though.

I've ordered some "instant chicory root" as a coffee substitute, so I can make myself a hot brown colored wake-up beverage. It's caffeine free, yay. Supposedly it tastes like coffee (nasty?). I hope it'll be an easy switch. I just need some kind of hot morning beverage that isn't plain water.

It's probably a good idea to get off caffeine. There's a very fine line between properly caffeinated and jittery, and jittery is bad for art/tattooing. This is what I am telling myself, anyway. I'm successfully at a half cup of black coffee, and I'm hoping the chicory root shows up soon so I can cut the coffee with that and wean myself off 100%.

I put some solid work in and cleaned up the whole kitchen. I put the clutter in a clutter-box and got everything washed and put away. I scrubbed the sink, counters, stove and mopped the floor. I moved some stuff around for better cabinet organization. The cabinet spaces are odd shaped and I'm going to have to put more thinking work in to get things tetris'd into the right spot. I feel like our kitchen stuff will all fit okay, once we figure it out, but right now there's too much in this cabinet and empty wasted space over in that cabinet. If the kitchen were larger it would be easier, but it is a smol house. I might have to cut some custom shelves for some of the cabinet spaces. Maybe install bins that can be pulled out on rails. We have three lower cabinets that are very narrow (an 8" and two 5") with no shelves at all. Awkward tall, narrow, deep spaces that cannot be utilized properly. I tried cookie sheets and baking stuff in one and it went to hell very quickly. I've no idea how the people before us used these cabinets. I did figure out the 5" ones can fit a 12 pack of soda cans. Spouse likes mt dew, inexplicably. Maybe one of the 5" cabinets can be straight beverage storage.

Anyway, the kitchen was beautiful ... for maybe 5 minutes. It's a disaster in there right now and it seems especially insulting considering how much cleaning I did. I'm cooking from scratch now, so all the cooking generates more dirty things than normal. Spouse doesn't help with the dishes (fair) but there is a demoralization factor because dirty dishes just appear like magic. In the 9-10 years we've been living together he hasn't internalized the fact that I like to keep the garbage disposal side of the sink empty. It's like bailing out a leaky boat - there's a constant stream of dirty dishes being deposited in the sink I am trying to keep clear. I've told him, "hey, I like this side to be clear so I can fill a water bottle or rinse a stew pot", but he walks up and sees the empty sink and it sparkles like the ideal place to dump his dirty plate. NO. I used to solve this problem with paper plates, but that's out. One of these days I will train spouse to look in the dishwasher to see if the dishes are dirty and put his dirty stuff in there, and that will be very exciting. I know this is a side effect of spouse's mom being a kitchen-general - spouse instinctively wants to dump his stuff on the first empty surface and flee, lest he be trapped into chorework.

I have to work out some kind of kitchen routine and communicate it to him so I don't lose my mind.

I'm in the "clutterbug" phase of my projects, which means all available work surfaces are covered with projects in various stages and I have no idea where anything is. See, I start a project, but then I figure out I need to order a part or there's a step I have to wait to do, so I move on to a second project. Eventually, all projects are "on hold" for various reasons but I don't want to put them away because I'm waiting for this-or-that to pick them up again (it always seems very simple in my head). However, there's no space to work on them anymore because I've started multiple other things and the tools I needed have been scattered or moved. Then I get very frustrated because I can't find stuff and this is when accidents happen - paint gets spilled, try to do without a tool and make a mistake, etc. I am learning to make myself stop, take a cleaning timeout and put everything away, so I can choose a project and start the cycle all over. I get upset about having to put everything away because it feels like a waste of time when I just want to accomplish something, and this is the big personal stumbling block I have had to work on. When is it time to call "clutterbug" and switch to cleaning, so I know where my tools are, so I have clear working space, so I can restart the project. I think in the past I have not been able to recognize that point. The sooner I "see" it, the sooner I can put the cleaning time in and actually get back to productive work. I really dislike pausing to clean - it feels like going backwards instead forward, like I'm running a race and I see the finish line but instead of going for it, I'm forking off on some side detour while the race clock goes tick-tick-tick. WHY. I haven't learned how to make peace with that. But when I feel like I'm having a ridiculous time getting any project momentum going, it's probably because everything is too cluttered up and I need to clean.

The past 9 months or so I've been keeping these long, ever evolving project lists for house stuff in a dotted notebook. In the beginning I thought I'd try bullet journal style. It started out very structured, but now I rewrite the whole list every month or so as things evolve and my short term lists are more fluid. I keep grocery shopping lists in there, measurements, etc. Crossing stuff off the list is supposed to be motivating, so I write down whatever I want the satisfaction of marking off. Some days I put down very simple things if I'm low energy. I've had to learn how to manage myself through these lists. You would think I would have learned all this basic adulting stuff by my late twenties, but alas, no. I think it's a combination of having the lion's share of my time and energy focused on my job, where I have bosses and hard deadlines and I have to be on my game to get a paycheck, and also not really feeling safe to be emotionally honest from childhood. Felt like I was always getting upset at myself for having inconvenient feelings and not being cooperative. What is wrong with you, etc. Great way to encourage productivity when one does have free time (no it's not). If you don't know how to identify what you want internally, and it's easier and safer to use other people's priorities (a boss, etc.) as surrogates, you'll never get your own satisfaction and you'll be rudderless without someone to follow. But what I learned as a child was that wanting things was 1) for rich kids and 2) a weakness people would exploit if they were feeling cruel. It was never a positive. So here I am, and without the structure and simple demands of a workplace, I am adrift. I'm inclined to steamroll my own internal wants for some idealized maximum efficient projection of how I think functional people work. So it's a process to teach myself to take a step back and listen and try to be cooperative instead of interrogating or punishing. It's hard to accept that I need to pause and declutter instead of forcing myself to keep working in a mess because I did it to myself so I ought to suffer. Yeah, I probably should have figured that out in my twenties, which makes it kinda shameful to talk about with other adults. Oh well.

Stuff I've learned:

- I don't do well with day specific lists. If I put a date or "today" at the top, and then I get a headache or some other delay prevents me from completing all those tasks, it just creates extra stress and pressure and makes it harder to restart. I feel behind before I begin. So I have big picture list for longer term tasks and a "priority" list that gets done over a day or two or three. Some days I can't run all the errands I meant to run, or for whatever reason the stars don't align and I can't finish what I thought I could. Then it's not a big deal, it rolls smoothly to the next day.

- there are certain repeating tasks that are difficult to 100% finish. Like "doing the dishes" or "laundry". Sometimes I'll load the dishwasher but I'll be sick of dishes and leave the stuff to be handwashed for later. Have I really "done the dishes" if all the dishes didn't get washed? Arguably, no, the dishes are not done. Then I have this thing on my list that never gets marked off because it's never really done (in 4 hours there will be another sinkful of dirty dishes) and then I get no credit for what effort I did make. So I've learned it's better to be more specific and time focused, like, "30 min cleaning kitchen". Then even if the kitchen isn't 100% done, I still get to mark it off because I spent the time. I don't have to eat the whole thing, I get credit for taking a bite.

- I tear out pages when the items are marked off, or when I feel like I can take the few leftover things to a fresh page and start a new list. When a page has no more utility, I tear it out and throw it away. I don't need ten pages of lists hounding me with a few incomplete tasks. I consolidate without guilt. The purpose of the lists is just a reminder, to give me a nudge and then a way to mark progress. I rework them as I please. Sometimes I rewrite a thing many times because I'm dragging my feet getting around to it, but whatever.

I think these are positive steps but it is slow going to recognize what works best and what doesn't. Maybe that's because I waste a lot of effort forcing outside patterns and expectations on myself. Where does that shit come from? Right now, the internet. Maybe I'm not on facebook or tiktok or instagram, but it's unavoidable.

I'm getting curious about taoism and I think I'll pick some books up (with my shiny new library card I just got). There's a book about comparing sufism and taoism and I really want to get it because I am so curious about the overlap. Maybe my spiritual sweet spot is in there somewhere because there is something very True at the core - I can sense it but I can't articulate it. I don't want the identity or the label, I just want ... help thinking about stuff, I guess.

We watched the Arrival recently - heard it was good, but hadn't gotten around to watching it. Well, it is good. Without spoilers, it's about how a language changes how one thinks. I know that english limits and dictates my understanding, especially when I get curious about philosophies developed in other cultures I wasn't born in. I'm always going to be reliant on translations and it may not even be possible to grasp the concepts and nuances correctly. It is a shame. I can try but I am limited by already being imprinted with certain paths of thinking. But even thinking that comes from the desire to rank myself in a heirarchy, like taoism is a class you take to see what grade you can get and therefore be "better" than the lower grade students. Like everyone gets into religion to see if they can get to be King or Queen of Church and be the most spiritual of them all. Very christian, I guess. So even judging myself as a "bad student" before I get started is part of the problem. What can one do? Just do what one can.

I got the chicory root drink and you know, it's not bad. It is a hot brown drink. It doesn't have the acid bitterness of coffee. It doesn't really taste "good", but I don't feel sorry for myself for having to give up coffee when I drink it. I deem it acceptable. I'm tapering down on the coffee by putting less in my cup and then topping it off with chicory drink. Visually it looks exactly the same as a full cup of coffee and my lizard brain likes that.

I got a neti pot and tried it for the first time last night (with boiled water so as not to get amoebas). It's weird. Anticlimactic - I had no gross surprises or sudden relief. Feel a little waterlogged, like I played marco polo in a pool for an afternoon. I'm going to try to keep doing it once a day because I think I got some stuff dried up in there, so maybe I need multiple goes to loosen it up.

Diet is going fine. I'd be lying if I said I'd been eating perfect, but I'm putting in very respectable effort. I feel okay. I still have head pressure and some ongoing very mild headache that I think is caffeine related. Danger week is here so I am going to have to be as strict as possible for a while.

I have reserved a public use cabin for the spring equinox so I can go out and be woo-woo and freeze my butt off. $45 gets you an isolated cabin with no power, no cell service and no plumbing for a night. End of March is still very much winter, and I have to pack in my own firewood. Hopefully my weather luck is good. I'm hoping to reserve a different cabin for spouse and I sometime this summer, but the reservations go really quick and most of them are already booked solid from May to end of July. Waiting to see when they open August for reservations.

I'm attempting to make friends with one of the ravens. He was perched in our spruce tree and Reginald the magpie was also around - I think Reginald told him we were good for treats. So I went out and put a handful of peanuts and kitty crunchies on the BBQ while the birds were watching, and the raven actually flew over and ate the kitty crunchies. So now I'm putting treats on the BBQ grill to hopefully get him to come back. Cat is mad because he knows there are treats up there and he can't get to them. There is a raven in the area that can mimic a cat meow - spouse and I heard him when we were shoveling the deck. Of course we meowed back. I don't know if this is the same raven, but I like to think so, because then I could call him Meow-meow. We'll see if I can get him to come back. Spouse says I am turning into a wood witch. I am okay with this.