Stress Management

Hello, my name is Ashes, and I'm about to lose my #&%^!
That's kind of how I want to introduce myself sometimes. But I don't. I smile and make happy small talk and do my best to make every one happy. I think most people have some kind of mechanism we can call a "Stress Management Button". We hit it when we don't want to look like idiots, burden the poor cashier with our woes, or generally simply don't want people knowing we're drowning in a sea of WTFamIsupposedTodo?!

Sometimes we lose that filter. I seem to have misplaced my filter at some point on Monday and I would be pleased if I found it again. Yesterday and today for some reason I cannot find my Stress Management Button. Not that I'm going around screaming at the top of my lungs "Dear God Why?!" but I simply can't say anything to anyone for fear of blurting something like "I'm having a terrible day, thanks for asking." Probably in a snarky tone, as I crinkle my nose.

Because of this recent destruction of my calm I've been thinking a lot about how human beings manage stress. The Google has a lot of articles about 'taking time out for you' and 'making lists to help manage your time' and 'how to get back in control'. Nothing that will help my brain stop playing things on loop, or imagining horrible scenarios, or keep me from telling Jex that his Vulcan-ness is going to give me more work than anything else ever of all time.
I can't 'take time out for me' there's too much crap I need to do, I will not enjoy the shower/nap/game/downtime at all; actually it will probably key me up even more than I am already.
I've done the list, the list is what is stressing me out. It keeps growing, nothing is ever actually finished. And why on earth did someone write 'fix Jex's drivers' in that tiny space between 'check visa status' and 'find shot records'?! Is that what it says? All I see is a scribble? OMG this is probably a super important scribble I have to figure out what it says!

That's just it. I can't get back into control. Because if I would really be honest with myself I was never actually in control to begin with. I cannot control what Jex does or does not say in the most mathematical and unfeeling way. I cannot control that what he says may or may not make someone cry. I can't make the car in front of me stop slamming on it's breaks every time the phone in said car get's picked up by said car's driver. There is no law of the universe that will allow me to get everything I need done in the time I've allotted to do it in if any of those things requires more of me than I previously thought it would. We can't control our world, we can't control our peanut butter, our government, or the guy next door; It's simply not a possibility.
And that is why we're stressed.

We think we should be able to 'get back in control' of our lives, our job, our money, our refrigerator, closet, body, pets, children, cable package, phone bills; the list goes on and on. I don't know when we got this idea that we can actually control things, but there are magazine articles galore about the topic.
We can influence, of course. We can make changes for the better, make informed and wise decisions, we can guide our path, we can put forth effort. At the end of the day however, we cannot actually control anything.

It's hard to admit, personally.
Though now that I've written this out and taken a step back I feel better. I can't control what's going on; honestly who would want all that responsibility? The only thing I can control is myself, and even that control is a bit shoddy sometimes. That's fine. I'll learn from it, get better, move on to the next challenge life tosses in my face.

Stress Management looks different for everyone. Contrary to popular belief the Google Machine and the people on the internet do not have all the answers. I don't have all the answers; actually I probably have none of the answers.
I kept my mouth shut all day, got home and cried, then sat down to work through the problems via text. Read through the horrid stream of consciousness blather and streamlined my thoughts, let them less of a chaotic shape; this is my deep breath. Now I'm imagining myself as someone kickass like Red Sonja, She-Ra, or Wonder Woman (yeah her outfit is silly, but she's still awesome). Later, with those images in my head, I'll probably go on a walk. It's dumb, but it works. I think I can manage not to freak out when the internet gets slow, or crashes when I HAVE to email TIME SENSITIVE documents to someone, now. (^_^)

What does your deep breath look like? If it involves a hot cup of delicious you are required to share.

Till next time my lovlies,
~The light heart lives long.

Visas and Veganry

Hello my lovlies!

Jex and I are wading through the wonderful world of "Visas for a foreign country". It's awful! (^_^) no really it's not very fun. Mostly because the agency we're working for has to go through another agency because of all the hullabaloo with the Thai government right now and it's making everything take that much longer. Time is something we're kind of running short on. Doesn't help that they send us the Visa package on a long American Holiday weekend so I can do NOTHING to start the process till Monday.

That being said I'll just skip to the reason I hopped on the blogger (other than trying to find my zen because of the above). I want to share with you the Awesomesauce I cooked up a couple Vegan Vendzdays ago. Why not wait till Wednesday? Because I have no idea if I'll be running around like a chicken with my head cut off or calling 400 different people and agencies and dancing around the house to horrid hold music for hours this coming Wednesday, that's why.

Ashes' Protein Stuffed Mushrooms

1/4 of a med onion chopped
1/4 cup or a little less shelled pecans
Six good sized Stuffing Mushrooms or One Sm Portobello mushroom
Fresh ground Sage, Rosemary, and Salt to taste.
Coconut oil for cooking the onions.
about 1/4-1/2 cup of water for steaming the mushrooms.

Chop the onions coarsely and throw them in a sm pan over med heat. Stir every now and again, cooking till they're almost golden brown. While the onions are cooking shell the pecans or if you bought shelled pecans throw them in a food processor with the spices and pull the stems from the mushrooms (I saved the stems for omurice the next day, but you can throw them in the pan with the onions if you like. Just add a little extra oil).
When the onions are the desired level of gold throw them in with the nuts and spices. Blend away!
Fill each mushroom with the mixture. It should be fairly moldable, not super crumbly. If it's too crumbly to work with add a touch more coconut oil.
Using the same pan you cooked the onion in place each mushroom stuffed side down, turn the heat up to med and brown the tops, about 2-4 minutes. Flip the mushrooms over and turn the heat up to med high. Add the water (I use less water for smaller or portobello mushrooms and more water for white mushrooms, also less water if you cover your pan, more if you can't or choose not to cover your pan).
Let the mushrooms hang out for 5-10 minutes, serve warm with your favorite sides.

I pared our mushrooms with some garlicy green beans and pan fried carrots.
I'm also thinking about trying to make a miso version of these mushrooms.

Till next time,
The light heart lives long~

Lost in Space!!!

Maybe, I don't know.
I keep losing track of time, and objects, and memories, and oh my god did I feed the dog today?! It kind of feels like my brain has melted, or I'm going through puberty again. *shrugs*

Anyways. I think I announced on this particular space that Jex and I are going to Thailand soon.
We just got back from Storm Con last Monday and I think I've been fighting the germs of 500 people since then while trying to still be a responsible adult. I think so far I've gotten a C+ for my attempt.

So, Storm Con 2014.
Jex decided that it would be a GREAT idea for us to sell Foam Swords or 'Boffer Weapons' at the con this year because we were having LARPers this year and a group of Knights of the Fiat Lux (look 'em up, they're kind of ligit). It didn't turn out so well in that the con was on a UTA weekend thus I was alone running the damn table, and the vendors were cordoned off in a room away from all the gamers so we had very little traffic. But I did get to play in a Call of Cthulu game that was streamed over youtube (didn't see that till the next day, I really just wanted to play with Lance and Amber in a fun Cthulu RPG setting) where I totally choked, and Jex and I won a game called Belfort (so many tiny pieces!!!!). Oh and I LARPed for the first time ever! It was fun. The group wasn't psycho crazy or anything, they were actually all really really nice and helpful to the noob, it was kind of like RPing at a table but we all stood more and were in costume.
Can't find them online though, I'll have to ask the GM about it next time I see him.

Anywho, I met some super rad people I want to tell you about. I guess being a vendor is kinda like being a Gypsy, the moment you're in the ring of tables you're all accepted and stuff (one of us, one of us). I loved all the other vendors that hung out and watched me table for me so I could go to the little girls room. No really you guys are awesome.

Begin the shameless plugging!

The first guy who made an impression on me was this super cute kid (hell he might be older than me, but he seemed like a college student) who was running a booth by himself as well. He just had the best attitude. His name is DJ and this is his booth.

That's him painting away. He and his family will be at Dragon Con this year. So be sure to keep an eye out for them. They're stuff is really cool. They even have an Etsy store if you just HAVE to HAVE a captain america or galifreyan clock.

This was my sad little table. To be honest I had no idea what the crap I was doing. I think if Jex want's to keep doing this as a side job we need to make some weapons racks.

This is the super rad comic book guy, Jerry, corner. He let me watch world cup on his smart phone. Best dude ever!

He has a facebook page if you want to find something particular: Facebook.com/ParkCircleComics

These are the Impudent Mortal guys. I didn't get to talk with them much, they were on the other side of the room and I didn't wan't to shout over the Event Horizon guys. I did walk over to see their stuff though. They have some super rad buildings for RP and Warhammer stuff. 

You can take a look at www.impudenmortal.com .  No really their stuff was amazing. 

 This is Mia and Will. I thought their stuff was all one booth but I was wrong.

 Will makes these patches and cuppy things.

Buy his stuff on Etsy!

 Mia makes all this stuff. And this stuff is amazing. If I wasn't going to be near a Mitsuwa here in a couple of weeks I would totally be rocking that Tardis dress right this second.

 Mia will be at Dragon Con aswell this year if you want some incredibly awesome Nerd Accessories. Or you can visit her portfolio at: artwanted.com/miacorn Or her Ebay store.

These are the beautiful brains guys. They're business cards are also savage worlds playable adventure cards!

 You can visit them Here.




Last, but certainly not least are the Henna/Glitter chicks. They're only local to the Charleston Area, but they're work is really good. I forgot to take a picture of the Henna Desi did for me, but she free handed it and I was impressed, and I'm not easily impressed.

If you're in the Charleston area and interested in her services you can find her on the Book of Face.

Net Neutrality?

Hey guys.
A lot of you have probably heard about the issue with American Law Makers and Net Neutrality. It's hard to understand and there's all this crazy legal speak and internet companies assuring us that 'nothing will actually change'; if that's the case why are they even doing anything?

Here is an amazingly well put together bit on Net Neutrality and what little bit we can do about it at the moment by John Oliver.

I'm working on my comment to the FCC right now. I want to make sure I don't say anything that can be twisted around by lawyers. Bleeeeeh. If that's even possible.


Just a little heads up; Jex and I are going to Thailand in August. I'll have to manage two blogs, a facebook community page, and a bunch of teenagers.

Pray for me. *laughs*
No really, I'm not joking; I'm going to need divine intervention.

Till next time my lovelies,
~The light heart lives long.

But... what would we do without Facebook?

It's something a friend asked recently.

Facebook has almost single-handedly taken over the internet in my opinion. Only a handful of years after it's creation did other websites start emulating their super post modern minimalist design. MySpace died a horrible death; I liked MySpace. *sadface* But for some reason a page with less options, less customization, less... well everything... exploded and eats up more of people's hours than anything but the Google search engine.

And they're getting scary. First it was the maps thing that tracked where you were posting things from by examining your IP location. I don't know where that thing has gone, but I hope it's far away and forever. Now their app is going to have the option to listen to you, aaaand I really just hate having to reset all my preferences every few weeks. It never fails that something turns itself on to email me every hour, pages I've never been to show up in my "liked" feed, people wondering why I posted something so incredibly right wing when all I did was like a picture of a kitten my friend shared that gave some political page the right to post for me for some reason I can't fathom... *deep breath* Then there's just the crap.

I've been thinking about saving all the pictures I've been tagged in that I don't have personal copies of, like my sister's wedding, and bailing off the Facebook ship.
But... it's so easy to see what people are doing and share little tidbits and pictures and Facebook owns all our content and... and... and... what would we do without Facebook?

What we did before it ever existed! We'll post blogs and use emails for more than spam catchers. Maybe, just maybe, we'll actually call one another to tell some one about our day. Also who said you can't put short posts on your blog?
Imgur is full of fun pictures and the Google engine is more than capable of finding all the memes. I don't see why Facebook has to be the center of our online socializing universe.
I have made more real relationships with people on forums than with people who I've met in real life and been Facebook friends with. I miss you FPians! I'll come back soon... I hope.

I don't need to shout things into the internet in short bursts of fire, my life is not an assault rifle. I don't need to have people click a little button approving of my choice of content to share. We don't need Facebook to keep the friends that matter to us.
I don't mind social networking. Honest. I just don't understand how we've let it blind us to the fact that we have other options, that if we really don't like it we can leave.

... then again that worked out really well for me and the blogger... didn't it? *laughs*

Till next time lovelies,
~the light heart lives long

Vegan Wednesday

Good evening! I thought I would share the experiments going on in my house today.

Breakfast is not very vegan friendly. It just isn't. Every culture I've been exposed to eats some kind of meat in the morning. The United States and the United Kingdom both have classic bacon and egg breakfasts, though rashers (UK) and streaky bacon (US) differ a bit, still the same concept. German breakfasts are equally not very vegan friendly. We eat breakfast sandwiches with butter, cheese, deli meats and some kind of crunchy green thing like lettuce or pickles, maybe an apple too. Japan has miso soup, the broth of which is made with tiny little dried fish. Some kind of leftover meat from the night before and rice with a raw egg yolk (My favorite!).

Vegans can have non of this. Out of the four above Japanese breakfasts come the closest to vegan. I've tweaked the broth for miso soup and it was palatable (but not awesome), rice, pickles, and grilled veggie slices (I like sweet potato and asparagus) are all great first thing in the morning. If that's all you eat though, it gets kind of old.

So, instead of a fruit smoothie, or some strange almond milk pancake (those never turn out well for me), I decided to try some stuff from one of my favorite vegan cooking sites Olives for Dinner. I love her because she typically doesn't use things like vegan sausage, earth balance (pretend butter), or vegan cheese slices (dear god, why?!), and the food still turns out pretty tasty.

This morning I fed Jex Coconut Crepes with Smokey Herbed Mushrooms.
I have never actually made crepes before. My sister and I made them together once (I think) but she was the baker in the family, still is, so she did most everything and I pulled out and put up all the ingredients. But I'm confident in the kitchen, this should be easy enough.
Oh no Batman!
Crepes are kind of hard to make. For me anyways. The first four were mangled beyond recognition before I was able to get the hang of it (then I promptly did a victory lap around the house). Even with all the mistake making I had enough batter to make enough crepes to hold all the mushroomy goodness.
Don't worry. As long as you spray/grease your pan between crepes, let them sit long enough on the pan, and have a goodly amount of time to make breakfast in the morning you should be able to pull it off.

It freaked Jex out a little when the crepes were savory instead of sweet. Which kind of made my day. *laughs*

The black bean soup I made for lunch wasn't the best ever, but I'm really not a big fan of the veggie broth I had in the fridge. 'Better than Bullion' how could you make something so nasty?

Then we have dinner. My crowning achievement for the day; General Tso's Cauliflower. Oh my goodness those little fried Cauliflowers were yummy! Even with the bad luck I have with battering things for frying they turned out perfectly crispy with a warm, soft, center. Mmmmmmm.
Rice flour is hard to find where I live (so is everything else I need/want) so I simply added equal parts starch and flour to make up for it.
I found the sauce entirely too gingery. Dear god, a 1/4 cup of ginger. Half of that was a touch too much in my tongue's opinion. With a little tweaking to one's own palette though it should turn out very nicely the second time around.

Eat well my friends!
~the Light Heart Lives Long~

I've decided to stay... ummmm

So I've decided to keep this blog and not completely abandon Blogger.
Why?

Well for one there was some begging by a pair of people I love more than chocolate, and that's an amazing amount of love right there. For another I really wasn't all that impressed with other sites.
Being a frugal gal I really didn't feel like paying to make my blog look the way I wanted it to. Picking colors should be free in my opinion. Nothing about the competition really stood out as amazing to me. A lot of the same stuff  mostly in a stark two color scheme and menus that were all pretty much the same. Interface varied little enough that what was different felt dumb instead of innovative or easier to use.

I'm still upset with the Googlesphere for not giving me options with my Nexus linking up with blogger but I won't be abandoning ship just yet. I suppose I'll just not write blogs or upload pictures directly from the device; even if having it around for instant posts when something interesting happened was one of the reasons I got the little thing.

On a completely unrelated note I found out that I say "ummmm?" when I get cut. Which totally makes sense, right? I mean, if one has a medic for a spouse "ummmm?" completely conveys that you're in pain and bleeding everywhere, doesn't it?
No not really.
I thought of all this while trying to find something to hold over my finger. Why "ummmm?" instead of "Oh My God!" or even a simple "Ouch!"?

Oh, I guess I should let you know how I sliced my finger open.
My awesome dude bought me a set of Cold Steel kitchen knives. Those puppies are incredibly sharp, and so much better than the set we had cobbled together from Goodwill and various garage sales. I really wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been while washing dishes and a bowl I was holding slipped and in the juggling of pottery and splashing of hot sudsy water I managed to jam my finger right into the back corner of the chef's knife waiting to be cleaned. I won't need stitches or anything, but it bled like a glass cut and hurt like a colorful expression.

I'm almost done with my second quilt ever! Yay! I'm excited to post a picture because the thing is awesomely technicolor.

Anywho, that's about the most exciting thing going on in my week so far.
I'll just leave you with a little gem I found on the cooking channel website.

Till next time lovelies,
~The light heart lives long.