Clam Cakes and Auntie Maur

So, I've been told that clam cakes are a New England thing. Or, rather, a coastal New England thing. Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine. I love them. I've loved them for as long as I can remember. It's a family tradition to have chowder and clam cakes on the 4th. My beloved aunt Maureen, who passed away in 2003 due to ALS, was the one who used to make them for us.

You know ... I often wonder if things happen unconsciously for a reason. Like if there's something in the back of your brain that's telling you "You have to do this. Now. There won't be time again." The summer before my aunt was diagnosed, I asked to help with the clam cakes. I'd never helped before but that summer, there was something in me that NEEDED to help her do this. So from start to finish, I watched. How much batter mix went into the bowl. How many cans of clams and how much clam juice. (we never have enough. I've told my grandmother we need at least three cans and she only ever buys two. NEEDS. MORE. CLAMS!)

Anyway, that July, I watched. And I watched her stir the batter into the right consistency. You need it thick, like spackle. And it has to stick. If it's not sticking to the spoon and the bowl, it's not right. It can't be too thin but it can't be too dry, either. I can't explain it, because there's no set recipe. It totally depends on the weather outside. If it's humid, you don't need as much liquid. If it's dry and hot, you need a bit more than normal. It's all by sight and touch.

In October, she was diagnosed. I'll never forget the night we found out. It was the first time I had seen my dad cry. He hung up the phone and kind of just slid, all boneless like, into a dining room chair. His face was white and his green eyes had tears in them. They told us that most ALS patients have about 5-10 years to live - but she had already had symptoms for a lot of years. From the time she was diagnosed, we had three years with her.

ALS, also known as Lou Gherig's Disease, is a horrible, terrible disease. The long and short of it (without getting too technical) is that the nerves basically die, rendering the muscles useless. For my aunt, it started in her legs. Feet problems, I believe it was drop foot that initially had her realizing that something was wrong. It took years for her to get diagnosed. I believe it was almost two (I could be wrong on that, it's been awhile).

Slowly, over the course of the next three years, my aunt became increasingly more paralyzed. She was eventually wheelchair bound and at the end, she couldn't move anything. Not her legs, not her hands, nothing. She passed away in the evening hours of Thursday, November 6, 2003. It was both heart breaking and a blessing. It was so hard to lose her, but at the same time, I knew she was up above us, dancing around and using all those muscles and limbs of hers.

Anyway, I got off on a tangent there, as I tend to do sometimes. The summer after she was diagnosed, I made the clam cakes for the first time under her supervision. She told me she was having trouble stirring and let me do it all. The clam cakes were a success! And from that moment on, I've made the clam cakes every single Fourth of July. It's a bitter sweet task for me. I love doing it. I love that I can make them. There's nothing like scooping batter off of two teaspoons into hot oil and listening to them cook. The whole experience just screams Fourth of July to me.

But it makes me miss her. The kitchen of the house where I currently live, my grandmother's house, is the same kitchen where she taught me how to make them. And every time I'm in there alone on the 4th, mixing the batter and heating the lard to fry them, I always think of her and that last 4th we had together, working to make the clam cakes. So many things have happened since we lost her nine years ago. Her daughter, my aunt, got married. She blessed the family with two gorgeous, amazing kids. I graduated high school and college. My brother joined the Air Force and has since been to both boot camp and tech school.

There are lots of moments throughout the years when I miss her, but nothing makes me miss her like making clam cakes on the Fourth of July. We love you, Auntie Maur, and we miss you terribly. I hope you're having fun wherever you are.

How To Make Clam Cakes!

Step One!

This is what you fry your clam cakes in. 

Scoop it out and get it hot while you make your batter. 

Step Two!

Melting lard. It really looks gross.

And kind of makes you feel like a fat ass hahah!

Step Three!

Your ingredients! I forgot to take a picture of the batter mix.

We just use a local mix that's for fritters and clam cakes.

Like I said above, you REALLY need at least three cans of clams.

They weren't as clammy this year as I like, so next year, I'll make sure to get three cans.
 

 Step Four!

This is what your batter should look like. 

This year it ended up being the two cans of clams (PLUS their juice) and half the bottle of juice.

It's really sticky and when you pull the dough out on spoons, the dough stretches kind of like pizza dough.

Step Five!

Fry the little suckers hahah.

The really cool thing about these is that they cook themselves. Honestly!

When they're done, they flip themselves over. After they flip, give them about two-three minutes.

Then remove them from the lard with a slotted spoon and dry on paper towel! 

Step Six!

Dry and serve! 

They're so hot when they come out that I just pile them on top of each other on the paper towel.

They keep each other hot without being "burn your mouth" hot.

I personally serve mine with some cocktail sauce and/or dip them in my chowder broth!

I hope everyone had a lovely and relaxing Fourth of July! Here's to the rest of a great summer!

Healing Up

So ... I had foot surgery on April 13th. My last post spoke of it, but I was so doped up on meds, it probably doesn't make sense!

We thought it was just a simply ganglion cyst removal. Welp, when I came out of surgery they told me it wasn't a cyst but it was filled with blood and they didn't really know what it was. And OH, by the way - here's some crutches and stay off your feet for a week, don't change the bandage for at least five days, and here's some Percocet cause it's gonna hurt.

Saturday and Sunday of that week were a BITCH. I was in so much pain I pretty much stayed drugged on Klonopin and Percocet so I could sleep. Percs didn't make me sleepy, they made me high as fuck and it gave me headaches so I took the K-pins to sleep. Rest of the week was okay, didn't do much, slept a lot. Went back to work this past Monday after being out for six freaking days, had my first post-op appointment tonight.

Turns out it was a ruptured blood vessel. Which, apparently he knew that SOMETHING had happened to the blood vessel when he closed my foot up cause the whole point of crutches for a week was because he didn't want my putting pressure on the foot and rupturing those sutures in the vessel. So he thinks that somehow the blood vessel got injured and then the injured part swelled and that's what was bulging out of my foot. So basically, what they cut out of my foot was the injured part of the vessel but they didn't know that at the time of surgery. They thought maybe it was a tumor or something. So they took it out, stitched the vessel closed, sent the part they removed to pathology, and here we are.

Unfortunately, they don't know WHAT caused it. I don't remember any trauma or injury and I would think that I would have had to have bruised my foot pretty badly for it to have happened. Since we don't know what caused it, we can't be 100% sure that it won't happen again or that it won't happen in the other foot. So much fun, right? Stitches are out though and in a few days I can stop bandaging it and give it a good cleaning. It's super bruised and there are still marks on it from the surgery pen.

Pre-Surgery:

Post-Surgery:

the perils of foot surgery.

Day ... five of laying in bed like a lazy ass. Stupid frigging foot surgery. I should have known that this would happen. It always does. First, the surgery was delayed four hours. (OMG I was so frigging starving!) and then it turns out that it wasn't a ganglion cyst like they thought, they don't know what it is so it's been sent to pathology, and oh by the way ... you have three times as many stitches as we thought you were going to have and you're going to be on crutches for the next ten days. Not to mention the excruciating pain and the being unable to put pressure on my foot.

Luckily, I have wonderful parents who make food for me or else I would starve to death. My brother was wonderful though. He took me in for the surgery and brought me back home and fed me and made sure I had my meds and he even carried me through Walgreens to get my meds so I didn't have to use said stupid crutches. Percocet? I highly recommend it. Seriously. So good.

But I had feeling dependent on people and I hate having to hop, on legged, into the bathroom and then back from the bathroom and being exhausted and needing a nap because it takes SO much energy to move around. And I have to be back to work on Monday, healed or not, cause someone else is already out on Vacation. I might be napping instead of eating come lunch time. Stitches come out Wednesday, though, hopefully so I hope there's more progress between now and Monday.

Now I'm off to eat my yummy bagel sandwich consisting of ham and cheese that my daddy made me so I don't starve to death. 

winter in new england

so much has happened in the past few weeks and most of it i can't say in public simply because i don't know who i can trust and i really cannot afford to bring any bad things down upon me so .... pictures! i took these this morning. it's our first TRUE snowstorm of the season and we've already gotten 5+ inches. they say we're only supposed to get 8, but it doesn't look like it's stopping any time soon! anybody out there got warm weather and wants to send it my way??? so not a snow fall kind of girl. i'm looking forward to my 80 degree days again!!

xoxo,

caitie

I don't want to be in love with you anymore.

I'm so sick and tired of being in love with you. I don't want to love you anymore. I don't want you in my thoughts anymore. I don't want you invading my dreams. I can go months without thinking of you, without remembering how you made me feel. I can meet another man and not want to compare him to you. I can develop a crush and not feel guilty about it. And then, out of nowhere, you come slamming back into my life. Why? Why can't you just STAY gone?! I don't want to love you anymore. I don't want to be in love with you.

I know you're not the person I fell in love with. That person doesn't exist. I don't know if he ever really did. Logically, I know that he wasn't a figment of my imagination. After the assault, you were everything I needed you to be. You soothed the hand shaped bruises left on both flesh and psyche. You were the strength I needed when I didn't even know who I was or who I wanted to be. When I was lost and couldn't lift my head above the current, you were the raft I needed. When it all crashed down the first time, I convinced myself I didn't need you. I convinced myself I was better than you and your love.

But you came back in. And you shook my entire world up. I admit, part of that was my fault. I was so incredibly stupid for seeking you out in the first place. But I had wounds that I needed healed. I needed that closure. I should have known you'd never give it to me. Instead, you stirred me back up. Instead, you made me fall in love with you all over again. To see you with your little girl, to see you being the man I always knew you could be ... how could I not fall in love with that? I could hardly breathe when in your presence.

Was it a lie? Was everything a lie? You're not that person and I know this. Logically, I know that you are not who I think you are. You never outright lied to me. You never pretended to be something you weren't. But with me, you were always different. You weren't the manwhore everyone expected you to be. You were quiet. You were calm. You balanced out my crazy. You were one of a few people who could put me in my place without hurting my feelings. You did it with tact and grace while still being firm.

You are selfish. You are arrogant. You care more about the things you think will make you into the person you want to be. Why couldn't you see that we were both in the same place? Didn't you realize that we could've helped each other to find the place we wanted to be? I finally came to see you would never be anything more than a man-child. Forever, in my heart, you will be the one who pieced me back together. You will be my first love, until the day I die. But I don't want to be in love with you anymore.

I want you to stop invading my dreams. I am sick to death of dreaming of her. She will never be OUR daughter. I will never have children with you. So why, when I dream of her, are you always there? I don't want you there. I don't want you tainting those moments. I don't want to dream of you anymore. I don't want to dream of her either, to be honest. I suppose in my mind, she'll always be yours. My blue eyes, your jet black hair, and chubby rolls. I'm sick to death of it. Would we have made a beautiful child? Of that, I have no doubt. But it will never happen. You are not meant to be the father of my children. I wish you would just disappear. I wish I could control my dreams.

It's easy to realize all of this when I'm awake. It's easy to be logical when I'm awake. I'm tired of hurting over you. I'm tired of letting myself fall back into that same pattern. I so badly want to unblock your profile from Facebook. But I won't. I can't stand to see the pictures. I want to tell myself that I am over you. That you were nothing more than the older boy that my high school self was in love with. But you couldn't let me have that, could you? You had to tell me that you were in love with me too. You had to tell me that I'd be a lucky catch for any guy and that you'd be forever jealous of the man who got to have me as his wife and the mother of his child.

Was I supposed to be flattered by that? Was that supposed to make me feel good about myself? Because in reality, all it did was piss me off. If you're so jealous, then why couldn't you man up and be that man? Another crush told me that I was good enough to fuck but not good enough to date. Is that how you see me as well? I'm good enough to fool around with but never to settle with? You can pick up the broken pieces and glue them back together but you can't stick around to see how well the glue dries?

I don't want to be in love with you anymore. I'm sick and tired of thinking of you. I want you gone from my life forever. Why can't I seem to get rid of you, even after all these years?

this is a hard post for me to write ....

cutting this post due to talk of sensitive topics such as abortion and fetal death.

living with BDD

Part of this whole body dysmorphic disorder, for me, happens to be 1) my hair and 2) the numbers on the scale. Luckily, now that I'm medicated for it, I can logically realize that I'm being irrational. The numbers don't necessarily matter. When I was at 105, I looked horrible. I was a stick. A skeleton. But that number sounds SO nice in my head. I love the way it sounds. I want to be that weight again ... except, I don't really. I didn't look healthy, I didn't look good. Everyone commented about it, they were worried for me because of how I looked.

I'm at 135 currently. I'm okay with the way I look in the mirror. Not thrilled, but okay. I started a Zumba class last night and I'm super excited for it. I'm signing up for it and I'll be going every Tuesday and Thursday. I hope this helps. I HATE exercise. ABHOR it. But this was tons of fun dancing! It didn't feel like exercise! One day at a time, right? Another step closer to better, overall mental health. My hair kicks ass right now, I love the colors, so that makes me happy. Now if I can just stop with the number obsession.