On Becoming a Person

Because I have been too busy with school to keep up with much housework, I am ashamed to admit that over the year, my stove had become so crusty that the burner pans caught on fire a few times. So during the break I have been giving certain areas in our home a good deep clean. Today was that nasty stove. The good news is that I found a pretty effective way to remove a year’s worth of burned-on gunk. Read on if you want to learn how.

Tools you will need:

--Ammonia mixed with water
--Some brand of Oxy Clean
--A measuring cup
--Stainless steel or stove top cleaner
--Dishwashing soap (liquid)
--Washcloths or dishrags (preferably old ones!)
--A scrubbing pad, like ScotchBrite
--Rubber gloves

I wore the rubber gloves throughout this entire process because it was pretty disgusting.

Step 1: Fill up the sink with dish soap and water. Remove the burners and the metal cups underneath (I don’t know what these are technically called!). You can wash the burners themselves with one of the dishrags and/or the scrubbing pad; just don’t submerge the part that connects to the electricity. Everything else can get wet though; rinse thoroughly and put in dish drainer to dry, electric prongs facing up.

 
I also pre-washed and rinsed the burner cups in the dishwater at this time because mine were really really disgusting. The ones that were the grossest, I let soak for about 20 minutes.

Step 2: Meanwhile, I washed the top of the stove with the same dishwater to first remove all of the crusty rings underneath the burner cups. Then, I went over it again with a mix of ammonia and water that I keep in a spray bottle. Wipe dry.

Step 4: Lift up the stove top itself. Mine opens and props up just like a car hood. First, I vacuumed out all of the food crumbs. Then I used the ammonia and water spray to wipe down the entire thing. Be warned: if you have crusted on gunk down here too, it smells putrid! I turned on our oven fan and left it on for a long time!

Step 5: Make a paste out of the Oxy Clean and water in the measuring cup (easier to pour). I used 2 scoops of Oxy Clean and maybe like 2 Tablespoons of water. I didn’t really measure the water, but I dribbled enough in for it to be a thick, thick liquid. Put the burner cups in the sink, and pour the paste inside of them. I actually needed one 2-scoop mixture for each of the larger burners; they were that bad. I shared one mixture between the other two.

 
Let this soak for 20-30 minutes. On mine, the paste actually hardened and I had to chip it off with a spoon while running it all under hot water. What happens is that as it dries, the Oxy Clean sucks up all of the fat and grease (AMAZING!).

Step 6: After you chip or scrape the Oxy Clean all off, rinse thoroughly. Next I used the stove top cleaner and the scrubber to go over all of the burner cups again and get off any remaining residue. Rinse well and let dry. I also used the stove top/stainless steel cleaner to clean my tea kettle, since it is metal. It came out nice and shiny!

Step 7: Once everything is dry, you can put the stove back together. Hooray—everything is clean!

Which I will present to you in list format, complete with photos:

 
(Our living room, before opening gifts).  This was like John’s third time celebrating Christmas ever, so he was very eager. He hardly let me take any photos and we had to rush through breakfast :-)

 
Everything I got in my stocking from John was candy! (Save for the McDonald’s gift card). Oh, my poor teeth…

 
I GOT A ZOOM LENS!!!  Here I am, opening it.  What a surprise – John knew I had been wanting one for some time, but I did not ask for it for Christmas.  And yet, there it was. Thanks to Alan for helping him pick it out :-).

 
Right away, from across the room, it took some sexy shots! Behind John in this image is our big panel of sliding-door blinds— which are nowhere to be found.

 
We went to my parents’ house on Christmas day, and my sister and I made her horse Emmy some delicious cookies. Oatmeal, apples, carrots, and peanut butter. In the spirit of Christmas, we shared them with all the horses in the barn though.  I tasted one. They were remarkably disgusting.

  
Greg had returned from France, and brought with him a French version of the game Scrabble. So, naturally, we played it in French. It was harder than I thought at first, but I was quite pleased with the results. The picture is terrible thanks to my laziness in not wanting to remove the zoom lens, but probably nobody can read these words anyhow.

All in all, I think it was quite wonderful.

I photographed Christmas!

Wishing everyone a beautiful holiday and a happy new year!

This is kind of cool – Facebook has a couple of new applications where it compiles random snippets of your status updates (Pic #1) and uploaded photos (Pic #2) from the past year.  Here’s mine:

(If you click on them, they will enlarge).  I think it is kind of sad and hilarious at the same time that most of the statuses it pulled were about school…

by Paul Celan

Flower

The stone.
The stone in the air, which I followed.
Your eye, as blind as the stone.

We were
hands,
we baled the darkness empty, we found
the word that ascended summer:
flower.

Flower - a blind man's word.
Your eye and mine:
they see
to water.

Growth.
Heart wall upon heart wall
adds petals to it.

One more word like this word, and the hammers
will swing over open ground.

Corona

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people
   look up from the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.

“Speak you also,
speak as the last,
have your say.”
--Paul Celan

Since break started less than a week ago, I have read 2 and a half books.  I have about 10 more lined up in a stack on the floor of my office, and even more spreading over our coffee table.

All of this reading has caused me to think about things, which, for those of you who know me well, I do a lot. 

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with an undergraduate I went to school with a couple years back.  He was reluctant to engage in parts of the conversation out of fear that we would get in an argument. Eventually, once I showed myself difficult to provoke, he said that he thinks counseling is pointless, and that all therapists do is label what is “wrong” with their clients, tell them how they think they should live their lives, and argue with them if they show any signs of disagreement. 

I did not argue with him about that – actually the kind of therapist I try to be is the exact opposite of what he described.

Of course, Carl Rogers probably says it best:

“I liked better to sit sometimes and listen to a toothless old woman or some drunk, talk about life as it was to them, because that was what I wanted to know, and most people wouldn’t tell me.”

-- William Kamkwamba

This is one of the best stories I have ever seen.  I just finished reading the book last night (I had to stay up until 2am to finish it!).  To make a long story short, William grew up in a village in Malawi where there was extreme poverty.  When he was a teenager, famine struck the village and many people starved to death due to the shortage of crops.  At that time, he had to drop out of school because his parents could not afford the $80/per fee.  Instead, William spent his days reading books at a local library that contained textbooks donated by the United States.  In one of the books, he saw a picture of a windmill and learned through diagrams (he could not read much English at all) how electricity is made.

Using nothing but scrap materials and trash (he even secretly dug up a PVC pipe from a neighbor’s shower drain), he built an electricity generating windmill in his backyard.  He put 4 lights in his home and was able to charge villagers’ cell phones, and power a radio, all in a village that had no electricity or running water.

This really is an amazing read – I highly highly recommend it.  I have felt quite inspired sharing in this story.

William’s blog

Today was our annual Psychology Department holiday luncheon.  This is always one of my favorite days at school—everyone from the entire department gets together and we all bring food and have a gigantic feast.  I think it was quite a success.  Check it out:

The second year cohort (1yr behind me; they far are bigger and better than us 3rd years)

Derek actually asked me to take this picture:

Me, Myriam, and Amanda, before things got weird…

Me, Myriam, and Amanda while things were getting weirder:

We decided we are going to make a music video about graduate school in our program… there are going to be various scenes to depict all of the different roles that we have to play.  The hope is that we will actually follow through and make it, and then show it at Spring Fling.  This is us kind of practicing…and stuff… you know.

Taking my last final of the semester tomorrow.  (Of course, it is in that wonderful Vocational Behavior class).  I have a stack of 75 or so notecards that I made that I am trying to memorize.  But I have been having a really difficult time focusing this week.

This afternoon I decided to try a little experiment to do something with my energy and unfocused-ness.  I put my iPod into the speakers in our living room and picked the most upbeat dancing songs I could find.  I figured maybe if I was moving around (i.e., dancing) while trying to study it might help me out.

I think it did at first, but then it gradually became me just wanting to dance and not study.  So then I thought maybe I could try a thing where I sit on the couch, and I get to dance one song for every 5 notecards I learned.  That didn’t last that long either.  So then I thought maybe I would just dance until I got too tired to continue.  That sounds good in theory, except that the tiredness didn’t really happen…

1.) I actually find it relaxing – it gets me away from anything school-related for a while, which is very rare for me now-a-days!

2.) It is creative – I love coming up with ideas of gifts to give people.  For some odd reason, this comes really easily to me.  On any given holiday, I usually end up with more gift ideas than I can afford to buy, but the person is almost always happy with what they get :).

3.) I like giving – It is much easier for me to drop a wad of cash on someone else than it is for me to buy something similar for myself.  And I find it actually very fun—I get baby shower and wedding gifts for people whose events I’m not even invited to—not to make a statement or anything, but just because I like it.

4.) I like wrapping gifts – This is also relaxing and creative.  Every time I wrap Christmas gifts I think about when I was little and my dad taught me how to wrap presents so that the paper is all tight to the box and precisely folded.  I remember I used to love this so much.  The first Christmas when I didn’t go home for winter break (the one before I got married), I actually cried at gift wrapping time because I wasn’t in my parents’ bedroom this time.

I know all of this probably sounds really weird.  And some people probably look at me like I am materialistic or something around the holidays because the gift-giving is important to me, but I think materialism is the last reason why I enjoy this season.