the mask i wear is heavy as fuck.

i do not want to be called resilient as a compliment. there is nothing complimentary about being resilient when you've had to develop that skill out of sheer necessity.

resiliency is part of the mask i wear. of course everything is fine. no, i'm not in a perpetual state of anxiety that some fucknut or group of fucknuts is going to ruin my life or the lives of people i care about.

i'm not wondering how freeing it might be to just be out here in the world without worrying if i'm too loud or too meek or too aggressive or too large or not the right kind of large or too educated or not educated enough or too other or not other enough. not contemplating what it would be like to just take up space without having to worry about any potential consequences.

i'm not fighting a daily battle against the constant assault on my humanity. not concerned about being seen as less than when i know good and goddamn well that i can outshine some of these people even when i'm at my most mediocre.

i'm not trying to hold on to the truth that i and the people who look like me are capable of more than even we ourselves can imagine. why would i do that? of course things are horrible everywhere but that has nothing to do with me, right?

wrong.

this mask is heavy as fuck and the shit is exhausting. can there be any honor in resiliency when the alternatives, assuming any exist, are bleak and/or out of reach?

don't tell me i'm taking everything in stride and doing so well and that you'd never be able to cope like i have. of course you'd never be able to. you've never had to.

of course i make it look easy. my survival depends on it.

it doesn't hurt me any less, though. if anything, the pain lingers because i know the hits are gonna keep on coming.

on: female friends

just finished reading this book and have spent a little time thinking about friendships between women off and on all weekend. the author discusses how making and maintaining friendships with other women used to be challenging for her, which, to be honest, is not something i can easily identify with.

i did appreciate that the author quoted a professor who pointed out that viewing friendships as an indulgence as opposed to a necessity, especially when you consider it along racial and socioeconomic lines. white middle and upper class women of a certain age were taught to focus their efforts on finding a husband and taking care of the family. friendships weren't seen as essential. for women who weren't as well off, though, friendships were a part of life. you had to have a network for helping with child care or job hunting or transportation or any other number of things.

that makes sense to me. i can't remember a time when i didn't have friends who are women (or who identify as women). looking back, i can't remember my mother or my sisters-in-law or any other women i grew up with not having female friends, either. after my mother died, i went to live with her best friend's family because daddy couldn't keep working and make sure i got to/from school every day. it was great for me because she had a daughter around my age and we were totally besties. there were always examples of friendships among women (particularly black women) for me to follow. while i heard all kinds of variations of "you need to be independent and be able to take care of yourself and not rely on any man to do it for you" growing up, there wasn't much discussion of how to manage friendships. maybe it was implied, based on how the adults in my world operated. of course you would have friends and spend time with them whenever possible and be there for them. that's just what you do.

i guess that's part of what made this book so fascinating for me. the notion of a woman feeling that friendships with other women aren't important or don't matter or are out of reach just does not compute. yes, i know there are plenty of "i don't like women" or "all my friends are guys" or "women are just too [insert adjective here] to be friends with" women out there. i wonder if they know what they're missing.

i also got to thinking about my female friends, and how they've navigated and continue to navigate various life changes (marriage, kids, deaths of family members or friends, moving, etc.) while maintaining the friendships that they've deemed worthy of honoring and respecting. how we've come to a point where we can identify the people who matter most to us and do what we can to make sure they know how important they are. it's not easy work by any stretch of the imagination, but we do it because the payoff is just so great. there are any number of women i could reach out to right now to chat about various things, both major and minor, and i hope they know they can do the same.

coincidentally enough, the sex and the city movie was on as i finished reading the book. i've seen the movie more than once and when i turned in this afternoon, it was near the end. even though much can and has been said about how the characters from the tv show/movie aren't as relatable as some people would like them to be, i'm still struck by how they stand up for each other. that's what friends are supposed to do. it's amazing when it works and i really think that's why we keep at it. friends are awesome and i am definitely a better person for having y'all in my life. 💜

baconfest chicago 2018: a brief review

another baconfest is in the books. this is good news for my system. the roasted broccoli i made yesterday is already calling my name because holy crap i've consumed a lot of bacon (and a lot of alcohol) these past few days. i'm just happy that i didn't wake up nearly as hungover as i thought i should've, given my whiskey intake. maybe the bacon canceled out the booze somehow? i doubt it, but i'm also not going to argue with whatever science or magic worked in my favor here.

speaking of favor: here are a few things, in no particular order, that i really enjoyed during the friday dinner and saturday lunch sessions at this year's baconfest:

• pork belly clay pot from the roaming hog. i need this food truck to come to the city so i can eat all of the things. so many of us raved about this dish during friday night's session that i'm still kinda shocked that they didn't win the people's choice or golden rasher award. 
• bacon and fried chicken ramen from honey butter fried chicken. full disclosure: i had a bacon-less version of this ramen a while back when the hbfc homies had it on special and omfg that broth. i could drink that broth every day. why am i not drinking that broth every day? if a cup of that broth magically appeared as i type, i'd be 1) pleasantly surprised because i know honey butter is closed on mondays and 2) thrilled because i would so down that broth right now. honey butter won the golden rasher award for the saturday lunch session and i'm guessing that the judges felt the same way i do about that broth because omfg.
• bacon-stuffed chicken wing from burger bar. more full disclosure: i've had their wings, sans bacon, more times than i can count right now, so when i saw this on the baconfest lineup, i knew i had to try it. y'know, for science and quality control purposes. the bite i got was a boneless wing, but apparently there were actual bone-in wings (as god intended!) that the crew decided not to clue me in on. this is fine. i know where they work. they know i'll be in for wings and house wine (aka jameson).
• baconchetta from whirlyball. i know some folks from #thatsite may be reading this and yes, i totally said "you can whirl these balls, bitch!" under my breath when i made it to whirlyball's station. give me bacon and mango/cherry chutney and whipped goat cheese and you are pretty much guaranteed to have a happy customer on your hands because i love all of those things. 
• iberico bacon. this was so good that i totally spent $7 on a 8oz package to take home and stash in my freezer. i regret nothing. 
• bacon crack from nosh this. i had a sample of this friday night and before the saturday lunch session was over, i was handing them money for a bag of it because if you're able to successfully combine two of my favorite foods, you deserve my support. we'll see if this bag, which is still unopened as of this writing, makes it through the week. 

recipe reviews: sausage and cabbage, slow cooker mongolian beef, & chicken with white beans and tomatoes

the past 2 saturdays have been meal prep days for me, which is awesome because it's one less thing i have to worry about during the week.

last saturday's entree (registration may be required if you don't have a nytimes account) came about because i had some italian sausage in the freezer that needed to be used. i only needed to buy cabbage, which worked out because jewel still had cabbage on sale after st. patrick's day. i used a 20oz package of mild italian sausage and 1 head of cabbage that weighed about 3 pounds or so. there was still a bit of liquid left after the initial 2 hour cooking time, so i followed the instructions and let it cook uncovered for an additional 30 minutes.

i ate this for dinner almost every night last week (and took it for lunch at least once) and i am so making this again. i'm sure you could use chicken or turkey italian sausage if that's your thing. i bet it'd be good with hot/spicy italian sausage as well, but i'll leave that to y'all.

i also made a batch of lemon muffins to have for breakfast, but i think i overworked the batter and the resulting texture was not what i wanted and i threw out most of them. i'd made them before to relative success, so i was definitely annoyed by this turnout.

this slow cooker mongolian beef, though. quasi-landlord made this some months ago and enjoyed it so much that she sent me the recipe, along with her notes on how she modified it. per her recommendations, i added 1 red bell pepper that i sliced into strips and cut back the brown sugar to 1/2 cup. there were 3 garlic cloves left in the bulb i was using, so all 3 went in. i used 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger instead of fresh ginger because that's what i had. quasi-landlord used sirloin tips and i used flank steak that i cut into pieces. i let the beef marinate in the fridge for about 2 hours before adding it to the crock pot for 2 hours on high. the only reason i'm even remotely upset about how this turned out is because the steak came out tough. it tastes delicious and i would totally make this again, but i want to try some different cuts of meat (and possibly boneless skinless chicken thighs) and experiment with the cooking times to see what happens. i had a bowl for lunch on saturday and have another serving packed for lunch tomorrow, along with some veggie fried rice i made with the leftover carrots and green onions. this is when keeping precooked brown rice, soy sauce, and eggs really comes in handy.

that was friday night. saturday's meal prep was this chicken dish, because i had chicken thighs in the freezer and wanted to do something a bit different. i used 3 garlic cloves, added 1/2 cup of white wine to the beans and tomatoes, and skipped the red pepper entirely. the chicken wasn't quite done at the end of the initial cooking time, so i'd say my total time was closer to 55-60 minutes. i had a serving for dinner tonight and while it tasted good, i don't know if i'd make this again - i wasn't as dazzled by this as i was by the other entrees i've made recently.

on: not remembering

i was hanging out with some friends last night and the conversation turned to marvin gaye, which was appropriate, given that yesterday was the anniversary of his death. we were trying to remember how our families reacted to the news of gaye's death, given that we were a bit too young to fully grasp what was happening at the time.

it didn't occur to me right away, but as the night progressed, i realized that the reason i couldn't really remember marvin gaye's death or how anyone around me would have reacted to it was because it would've happened exactly one month after my mother died. 7 year old me probably would've chalked up any crying or sadness as ongoing/residual from the previous month's events. my father would've been focused on figuring out how i was going to get to/from school since his work day started before my school day. i wonder if/how daddy was able to mourn, knowing he still had me and james (who was 21 at the time but still living at home) to be responsible for. if gaye's death would've just been one more thing for him to deal with on top of navigating a new reality that didn't have my mother in it.

to be honest, there's not much i remember after my mother's funeral. i do remember the letter my 2nd grade teacher wrote for our class at the end of the school year - her closing note to me was to have a great summer, work on my math facts, and keep up the good work with my reading. math is still not my strong suit and i have no idea what i did that summer (visits to st. louis and/or mississippi, maybe?), but obviously the reading thing kinda stuck. 😛

so, yeah. i have no idea where i was on april 1, 1984. google says it was a sunday, so i'm sure i went to church that morning, but i could not tell you how the rest of the day went. i wonder if james and/or daddy took a few minutes to mourn in private so i wouldn't see them sad or upset or ask them to explain yet another death. i wonder if they would've even felt comfortable enough doing so. i'd like to think so, but who knows?