Sincerely, Cabra.As pedantic as I can be, I am not a good nitpicker. When there are actual nits to picker, you need a good nitpicker. Being called a nitpicker should be a neutral thing and to be a good nitpicker should be a source of pride.
Anyway, I had some nits, but I found a good nitpicker and now I’m going on a trip.
I am just not convinced that these policies will improve ‘the climate’ or make peoples lives better. In 2035 I am still certain that a significant portion of people will be better served by internal combustion engines.
Born at 19:42 weighing 3600g and measuring 52cm.
Carol broke water just after 7am, we decided not to take Sarah to school and I am glad we didn’t. Carol finished preparations and had a good long shower. I did a few pre-birth things and took care of Sarah. Everyone knew it would be a hard, long day and that this was a time to eat a good breakfast and take things as easy as possible.
The first midwife showed up around 11:30, shortly after the birth photographer showed up and by noon the second midwife showed up.
The pool was filled and for the next few hours Carol laboured in the water. But by 4pm it was clear that not much progress was being made. Carol, the midwife, gave a stern talk. ‘There is a lack of progress, and that is a reason to move to the hospital’, Carol, my wife, was devastated to hear this.
But there was a second part: ‘The baby is in a good position and there is plenty of room for the baby to come out, we just need to push more effectively’. So Carol was forbidden from the pool and exiled to walk and try using the toilet and the sofa.
Quickly the mood changed.
I saw the midwives getting excited in a way they weren’t previously.
Sarah was restless and while the photographer was doing a good job of keeping Sarah distracted (she had been asking since 12pm why it was taking so long), that wasn’t his job. She hadn’t eaten a meal since breakfast or left the house yet that day.
I called a friend who got Sarah’s music teacher to come by with her boys and take Sarah for a walk to the park. It was good to get her out of the house for a while.
Carol was clearly in pain, but at 6pm the midwives started placing bets as to the minute in which the baby would be born (they were both wrong), this inspired optimism for me. Though Carol says she was dreaming of a c-section at this point.
Sarah got back from the park just in time to see her brother be born!
I was handed Jacobo while the midwives were giving Carol some stitches. Carol lost a lot of blood and spent the night on the same sofa she gave birth on. She fainted when she tried to sit up an hour after birth.
We never ate a meal that day, we all slept by the fire in the living room. Slept is a loose term, I got up when I had business, when Sarah needed attention, when Carol needed help, and when Jacobo needed help. Sarah cried until literally the last second before she was snoring that she didn’t want to sleep.
All told, the home birth experience, attended by professionals, was as good as I could have hoped for. An advantage to the hospital is that the postpartum cleanup is someone else’s job.
I just realized I don’t feel like I’ve fully processed 2020 and none-the-less 2023 is here. AND we have a newborn in the house, I don’t expect to have a lot time to process over the next week. The last two years have brought so much joy and so much sorrow. And as much grief as each day has brought the time has flown by. But I’m praying for a more tempered 2023.
I have a lot of respect for Russel Brand and Jordan Peterson. I watched the following interview a few weeks back and I just have to say that Russel’s take that we should just indulge Ellen/Elliot Page in her transition demonstrates an incredibly naive concept of love.
I don’t always feel great when my wife points out my faults, but she does because she loves me enough to want something better for me. My daughter doesn’t always like the discipline that I render her, but she knows it’s because I love her.
Being loved doesn’t always feel nice.
I don’t, as a rule, spend money on kickstarter, I got burned for $400 in the past. However I own products from this company already, and I am super excited about this.
I like that it has no bluetooth or wifi and that I theoretically can program it to work with my HTPC, speakers, bluray player and TV. My March 2023 delivery date can’t come soon enough.
I bought the PC version of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time from the Battle.Net store. I later bought a Steam Deck. I long wanted to play Crash on my Steam Deck, but I couldn’t get it to run past it’s DRM check.
Even more, this games always online DRM, which offers no cloud features; none, zero, zilch, no cloud saves, no online competition, nothing and yet if my session from the internet for more than a few seconds, I am unceremoniously disconnected from the game.
The game was launched on Steam last week and should work on my Steam Deck, even offline. But I already paid for it! And, Steam is basically a game monopoly, I like to support multiple stores.
So after much tinkering I fired up my Tor Browser to peruse alternative installation media sources and quickly found an altered, DRM-free version. It was quick and easy to install on my Steam Deck (the only real troubleshooting is that the audio had defaulted to Russian, which I was able to easily correct).
I’m not a thief who steals things I haven’t pay for, but I have no qualms about procuring DRM-free versions of things that I have paid for. Which makes me frustrated, why is my experience as a paying customer worse than the experience I have as a ‘pirate’?
I followed through on the best decision I ever made and I am so glad that Mom, Dad, Josh, Rudy, Andy, yes, my wife and all her family and all the other guests were there to celebrate with us.
More specifically, my daughter loves Finding Nemo. But it’s a good story and after reading John Elderedge’s Wild at Heart. I understand that it’s a great story about a dad finding his masculinity and sharing it with his boy. There aren’t nearly enough stories about dad’s becoming men.
I dedicate this recipe to my Aunt Ramona as she is the closest family I think I could hope to see make this recipe. I did start with this recipe my wife found online, but my version is distinct enough and such a vast improvement on the original that I feel comfortable calling it my own.
I have had major health struggles these last two years, but corn is a staple carb that works good for my digestion. I feel better eating corn. That said, I’ve poo-pooed corn as a health food in the past; it’s one of the most GMO’ed and pesticide ridden crops known today. But it hasn’t always been that way, corn is what gave rise to powerful and rich Latin American societies and while the plant was exported to the rest of the world, the proper preparation of the plant was not.
History shows and Pure Fermentation by Sandor Katz confirms that properly prepared corn actually contains a complete set of amino acids for human protein production along with sufficient B vitamins to stave off deficiencies. Properly prepared corn is cooked and soaked in an alkaline bath; a process that is referred to as nixtamalization. I won’t go into how to nixtamalize corn, Eat Like a Human by Bill Schindler, the aforementioned Pure Fermentation and the internet are all plenty able to guide you. I just want you to know that you need to start with organic corn and process it in this way and it becomes delicious and nutritious.
The recipe calls for masa or pozole, masa is nixtamalized corn that has been rinsed and processed into a dough, pozole is rinsed grains of corn.
Once a week I nixtamalize about one kilo of corn, which turns into 1.5kg of pozole. I set aside 400g for this recipe and process the rest into masa. I then set aside 300g of masa for grits and make the rest into tortillas.
We don’t meal plan in the strictest sense of the term, but I do meal prep in a strict sense. From this prep we get tortillas 2x in the week, grits once, quesadillas for breakfast and pancakes on Saturday morning. Along some cupcakes for a snack throughout the week. All of which are super easy meals once I’ve spent an hour doing my corn prep.
Grease a cast-iron skillet with some lard or butter and put it on medium heat.
Put all ingredients in a blender and blend on high for 1 minute. Scrape the blender contents into a bowl (I use the bowl I weighed out the pozole with)
Fill a ¼ measuring cup slightly less than full, pour batter onto skillet and let cook for 1 to 2 minutes or until bubbles appear and the bottom has browned. Flip and cook again until bottom has slightly browned.
Remove cooked pancakes and repeat with remaining batter.
If making cupcakes, bake at 180 Celsius for 12 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean (we make mini-cupcakes)
If you don’t have pozole you can soak 1½ cups corn flour in 3/4 cup lime water overnight. The result isn’t as nice. See nourishing traditions on how to prepare lime water (no limes).
If you are not soaking the corn flour in lime water replace the lime water with yogurt. This works but is the least delightful version.
Sincerely, Cabra. 