Regina Noctis

I haven’t really had much access to the computer. Even now, my usual headlong pace of typing is slowed. I’m on the computer in my mom’s bedroom, and she’s asleep behind me. If I type at my normal speed, my fingernails make loud clicking sounds on the keys. I’d rather not wake her, so I’ll just have to deal with slow typing.

With the temperature so high for this last while, I’ve had to abandon my bedroom altogether and stay inside the main house where the air conditioning keeps me from getting sick. It’s amazing how much I’ve come to envy people who can sweat, since at least it’s a way to cool off a bit. I’d at least be able to occupy my own room and sleep in my bed at night. Even at three or four in the morning, it’s still in the 90s in my bedroom with the air conditioner and box fan both running. That’s just too bloody hot.

We’ve discovered a hole in the wall that’s shared between my bedroom and the little storage shed. It doesn’t go all the way through, but it did let us look inside the wall. I’d been saying for some time that I didn’t think that converted garage had been insulated when it was turned into a bedroom. It turns out I was right. This is the biggest reason why my wall-mounted AC unit can’t keep the temperature down to something that I can at least bear, if not be comfortable in. All summer last year, I kept pointing out that the walls were so hot to the touch that you could actually blister your fingers. The grandmother unit chose to believe that I was, for some inexplicable reason, lying about it. Along with that went the assumption that I had to be wrong about the lack of insulation. But I’ve proved my point, and now at least can doss down inside the house instead of spending every night nauseated and on the verge of heat stroke.

Mom has begun to feel sorry for me. There’s not a lot to for me to do to occupy myself in the house. All my things are in my room, and my obsessive-compulsive grandmother can’t deal with me bringing things in here to occupy myself, since then things aren’t where they’re supposed to be. So, even though I’m generally fairly self-contained and don’t get bored easily, I’ve got a huge dose of cabin fever and boredom going on right now. Mom uses the only computer in the house from the time she wakes until she goes to sleep. My grandmother takes over the living room and watches Oprah on the only TV in the house, or else listens to a talk show on the radio with an ultra-conservative host that pisses me off within five minutes of the start of the show. Since these things are about the only things my grandmother can do anymore, what with the loss of eyesight and intense back pain she’s got, that means the living room is pretty much off-limits all day.

Of course, Hellano being what it is, there’s nothing to go do here even if I want to brave the heat that makes me ill and the sun that I’m allergic to. At this point, I’d be willing to deal with the week-long rash on my hands, arms, forehead, and chest for 20-30 minutes exposure to the sun, if there was just something to do.

On top of all of that, I haven’t been able to type much of anything for some time because of an injury and infection. So I haven’t been able to sneak online and ramble here or go participate much on MonkeyFilter even once Mom’s asleep. The kitten we rescued and finally decided to keep rather than place in a good home was the cause. She gave me a good swipe and managed to get a claw underneath the fingernail on my left index finger, into the nailbed near the top of the nail. She then ripped downward, seperating half of my fingernail from my finger and leaving a nice gash. By the following day, the skin around the gash was a lovely bright red, and there was green goo oozing from the cut along the side of the nail. It hurt to even brush against something, much less the kind of work it’d have to do with typing. I’ve been spending every day since making with the long-ass hyrdrogen peroxide soaks and the spreading-on of the Neo Sporin. Tonight’s the first night the pain has been gone, the red has retreated, and there’s no sign of the green goo.

For some time, the local meteorologists have been promising that in a week or two, the heat wave will and and we’ll get away from these hundred-degree temperatures. The supposed day of ending just keeps retreating. Finally, one meteorologist on the radio said that it’s unlikely we’ll see a drop in temperature before mid-October. Since they’ve been so consistently wrong about the heat wave ending in two weeks, I’m hoping that this prediction will prove wrong and the heat wave will actually end soon.

I don’t believe she did that! I don’t bleedin’ believe she did that!

Finish reading HP, people. So I can rant freely. I finished reading about half an hour ago. And, well, just… AAAAARGH! GRRRRRRR!

Forecast for tomorrow is 112. 112! *cries*

At least it will cool off to “only” 106 by Saturday.

And where it used to always be dry heat here in the southern end of the Central Valley, it’s horrible and humid lately.

, I saw you commenting somewhere that it’s cool and rainy there, typical summer weather there. Can we trade places?

What a world…

The high for Tuesday is supposed to be 106. My miniscule wall-mounted air conditioner can’t handle anything above the low 80s.

Somebody just shoot me now and put me out of my misery. This is going to be nearly 40 degrees above my maximum comfortable temperature.

When I was a kid, I never thought I’d reach a point in my life when I’d envy other people their ability to perspire. But I sure do now. I guess I’ll just have to use my stopgap measure to cool off. Stepping into the shower while fully clothed, so I can get some sort of evaporative cooling has been a necessity around here. It was in the 100s today too, and I didn’t go wandering around in sopping wet clothes. That was stupid of me. By afternoon, I was getting seriously nauseated and approaching the edges of heat stroke.

People think I’m crazy around here, because all summer they see me wandering around in soaked clothing. But then winter comes, and they think I’m crazy because they’re bundled up and griping about the cold, and I’m wandering around barefoot with short sleeves. Even during the lowest lows at night. Ah, the joy of being the town freak. It’s a damn good thing I enjoy being considered crazy by the general public. Though I’d like to be wealthy enough that people call it “eccentric” instead. Emergency Psychiatric Services doesn’t generally get called (or at least threatened) for eccentricity.

I mentioned this recipe a while ago, and said then that the recipe would be forthcoming eventually. Eventually has now arrived, apparently.

I have what my mother sometimes refers to as a “Mexican sense of proportion.” This is based on what we saw about my father’s sense of proportion was like, as we saw quite well when he was running his Mexican restaurant. Then we moved to Mexico, and discovered that the rest of the family was the same. A Mexican sense of proportion means that when I look at what’s probably 1/2 teaspoon of minced gingerroot, I think that it’s far too little and couldn’t possibly be anywhere near the correct ballpark. So I mince more, and wind up with something more like a heaping tablespoon than the 1/2 teaspoon it’s supposed to be. I think that this is the real reason behind my success at so many things that I cook. I rarely measure anything. I go by eye, and my eye sees things in exaggerated proportions. Were I to follow Chef Chu’s recipe for Snow White Chicken exactly as he’d written it, my own version would taste exactly as it does at the restaurant. Which, of course, is quite excellent. But I get the raves that I get, and the comments that mine tastes so much better than his, because I don’t measure. I put in more of almost every spice and aromatic, because of my Mexican sense of proportion. That should probably be taken into consideration when I post recipes here. Rarely is there anything I’ve actually invented here, because “add soy sauce until it looks right” doesn’t translate well, and I have no idea how much I actually dumped in. I just know when it’s “right.” Liquids such as broth, water, and sherry I usually measure when following these recipes. If you want the true Christophine touch, though, develop a Mexican sense of proportion, particularly when it comes to scallion, ginger, and garlic, and either follow the recipe exactly for most dry spices. Sugar in recipes is generally either as measured, or somewhat reduced. All else is generally measured correctly.

I bring all this up because this recipe is an example of how my Mexican sense of proportion changed the dish. That 1/2 teaspoon minced gingerroot suddenly becoming a heaping tablespoon of gingerroot that I used as an example earlier is exactly what happened here. I give you the recipe as I found it. Apply your own sense of proportion as necessary.

2 pounds medium-size prawns

Marinade
Pinch salt (about 1/4 teaspoon)
Pinch white pepper (about 1/4 teaspoon)
2 egg whites
4 teaspoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Vegetable oil for blanching

Sauce
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon minced fresh gingerroot
2 teaspoons dry sherry
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar

4 green onions (white part)
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
2 teaspoons cornstarch dissolved in 2 1/2 teaspoons water

Slice the scallions diagonally 1/4-inch thick. Shell, devein, and rinse the prawns. Pat them dry, and split them in half lengthwise. Combine the marinade ingredients in the order listed. Mix and beat by hand well, until a froth forms on top. Add the prawns, stir to coat thoroughly, and let stand for 10 minutes. Combine the sauce ingredients thoroughly and set aside.

Set a wok over high heat. When the wok is hot enough to evaporate a bead of water on contact, add 3 cups oil and heat to 300 degrees F. Bubbles should just be forming on the bottom, with a few sometimes breaking contact and coming to the surface. Add the prawns, stirring gently to separate. Blanch for 1 minute, remove, and drain.

Remove all but 3 tablespoons of oil from the wok. Add the green onion and stir-fry until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Return prawns to the wok and stir-fry for about 10 seconds. Most of the prawns should either already be or start curling into little corkscrew twists. Sprinkle the vinegar over the prawns, pour over the sauce, and bring to a boil. Thicken with the cornstarch mixture. Remove immediately from the heat and serve.

A few notes: The vinegar is used only lightly here. When the dish is complete, there is no vinegar taste at all. Instead, this small amount of vinegar brings out the flavor and aroma of the prawns. The sauce should be light; it’s only supposed to be enough to coat the prawns. You can also, if you choose, blanch some green vegetables (snow peas or broccoli work very well) in water, and then add them during the stir-frying. Sliced carrots or cashews also work well.

She weaves when she walks. She can’t stand straight without swaying. She slurs when she speaks. The simple act of putting a cat down near some food ends up with her on the floor and unable to get up for quite some time. I’ve found her passed out in her chair, sometimes as often as three times a week. She can’t remember anymore what we were discussing two hours ago, much less the night before.

The drinking starts now at one or two in the afternoon, where it didn’t used to start until six at night. She carries on until she passes out around ten or eleven that night. And the cycle starts again the next day. I don’t talk to her about it. I don’t talk to my grandmother about it. I have almost never talked to my friends about it, and don’t talk about how bad it’s gotten if I do say anything at all.

I thought that there might be a little hope, that she was starting to recognize that she has a problem. I’ve heard her say a couple times that she’s a drunk, which was something she never would have admitted a few years ago. But I’ve come to realize that the tone is wrong. She says it like it’s bragging.

I’ve been thinking about saying something to her, but will it really do any good? Someone talking to me when I was in the midst of addiction wouldn’t have gotten anything but my anger, and that’s what I expect here if I say anything. I simultaneously wonder if my saying something might sink in and start to make her see that it IS a problem.

I cry myself to sleep many nights a week, because I’ve watched her destroying herself another night. I’ve sobbed until the force of it has made me nauseated. I’ve sat and rocked in my room, trying to get hold of myself, after hearing her very nearly bragging about how she intends to drink herself to death. I’ve swallowed my fear when my grandmother talks about people she knew who died of cirrhosis, and how when it had gone so far that there was no turning back, their abdomens would became distended just like my mom’s has. I’ve taken to compulsively checking on her at night, over and over, in case she’s choking on vomit even though that has never happened once. But still, I fear it, because I know how drunk she is by the time she passes out at night. She will not, under any circumstances, go to the doctor, not even after tonight’s fall when she couldn’t get back up because her shoulder wouldn’t support her weight.

I wanted to say something about her drinking tonight, after that fall. I wanted to tell her, just like I have here, how I feel as I watch her court her slow death, in the hopes that knowing how she’s hurting someone else she cares for will make a difference. But if it will probably trigger an argument that accomplishes nothing while she’s sober, it will definitely do so while she’s drunk. And then she won’t remember a word that either of us said two hours from now. Hell, it’s reaching the point where she often doesn’t remember conversations she’s had or things she’s done even when she’s sober.

This is tearing me up. I feel helpless in the face of her addiction, and helplessness drives me almost as crazy as watching someone I love being hurt – even if it’s a case of them hurting themselves.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I guess I hoped it would help me to calm down if I got some of this out. But it’s not making one bit of difference. The screen’s starting to blur from tears, so I guess I’ll just stop.

When I was a kid and my eyesight detiorated, I developed a bit of a phobia about eyes and losing sight. I’d started off one year in grade school with 20/20 vision, and by the end of the first semester, my grades were dropping fast. The reason was that I couldn’t see what was written on the chalkboard any longer, even in the classes where I was seated in the front row. When I finally got to an optometrist, he told me I was already so nearsighted that he wouldn’t trust me to cross the street for a loaf of bread, since I wouldn’t see an approaching car. My eyes got steadily worse from there. I needed a new prescription every six months, and that was pushing the limit. By the end of six months, my glasses would be far too weak and I was struggling until the new pair. This went on for years, until I reached my worst state of blindness. I also had a raging phobia concering the eyes, loss of eyesight, and illnesses of the eyes. Recently my eyesight has actually been improving, as I’ve mentioned before, and that was a relief.

When I was living in New Jersey, I had a bit of a scare. The pressure in my eyes was too high. It wasn’t glaucoma yet, but it was enough to shift the center of focus in my right eye. The phobia was triggered, and I was pretty heartily freaked out for some time. Then, as suddenly and mysteriously as it appeared, the pressure was gone. I continued to worry about it, and asked every optometrist I saw as I moved from place to place about any abnormalities of eye pressure, but they always told me that it was perfectly fine.

I told Dr. Park here in Hellano about the problem I’d had ten years ago with the suddenly increased eye pressure, so he’s had his staff check me more regularly than most patients. Any time I go in, even if I’m just picking up my new glasses, they take me back and run the test before I get out of there. That happened when I picked up my new glasses nearly two weeks ago. And the pressure in both my eyes is again too high. I’d been suspecting as much. My eyes didn’t hurt, but they felt constantly irritated, and I’d sometimes get sharp pains in the tear ducts. That happened during the bout of high pressure I’d had ten years ago as well. For about a week before I got my new glasses, I was feeling those things again, so it wasn’t a big shocker when they told me that the pressure in my eyes was high. It nevertheless triggered my problem about eyesight/illnesses of the eyes, and I’ve been trying to keep calm about it. Worrying isn’t going to do anything but raise my blood pressure to accompany the increased eye pressure, and while it’d be a matched set that way, I’d rather not deal with it all the same.

On Tuesday, I go in to start again the battery of tests that I had to take last time this happened. It was caught far earlier this time, so hopefully something can be done about it before any more damage is done. The shift in my center of vision in the right eye was permanent, and is often one of the last symptoms before the pressure turns into full-fledged glaucoma. Or so the Jersey optometrist told me. And I know that glaucoma, especially when caught early, is easily treatable and doesn’t mean that I’ll go blind. A pity that phobias can’t be reasoned with, because all these things I keep telling myself aren’t preventing a bit of panicky nerves as the appointment approaches. That phobia is also a part of why I’ve been so quiet. I’ve been throwing myself into the projects I was putting off during school, in the hopes that it’ll take my mind off of this. It’s worked to some degree, so I’m not as worked up as I would have been otherwise.

It’s mostly on nights like this, when it’s almost 2 in the morning, I’m tired, but it’s still too hot in my room to sleep even with both the fan and the little wall-mounted cooler going, that this all comes to the fore again.