I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and by afternoon, was harboring a case of something cruddy. I stayed home from work today, and while I’ve been desperate for a bit of concentrated time in the apartment, this is not the way I wanted to get it. I had NO energy and so all I could do was stare at all the messy piles and half done projects.

However, by around 2 p.m., I had to do something. So, I did what you see above. Yes, that’s right. I separated out my rubber bands, twist ties and clothespins (I use them to close bags and clip notes together) by color and size into their own jars (I’m not entirely sure how I came to possess so many rubber bands – I think some have to be leftover from my grandparents).

Happily, after a day of laying around, which brief organizational breaks, I’m feeling much better. The cold (at least, that’s what I think it is) seems to be leaving (although my right nostril is a faucet I can’t quite turn off) and I should be back to work tomorrow.

It seems to me that this is an incredibly poor choice in company name. Because who says, “I’d like my onions to be as flavorless as possible. Yep, that’s right, give me the bland ones.”

One can only imagine that it’s the family’s name. Otherwise it’s just ridiculous.

After school was over, I moved home for a few months, just until I figured what was next. What turned out to be next was a move to Philadelphia, in which I entrusted all my worldly belongings to the Amtrak cargo service (a great way to ship large items from sea to shining sea for very little money). The pot was too heavy, so it was left behind. I promised it that I would be back for it, and my sister took it with her to the house she shared with friends in Portland’s Ladd’s Addition neighborhood. Sadly, when that housing situation finally broke up, my old pot was badly burnt, and the lid was missing entirely. Knowing just how much enameled cast iron cookware cost, I mourned that piece but good.

These days, I don’t find myself mourning the demise of that pot as fervently as I once did, as I’ve discovered that getting married has been the cure for this girl’s Le Creuset woes. The stack you see above represents my cook pot array and I’ve also got a handful of other pieces in different shapes and sizes.

Lest you think our friends and family showered me in hardware, I must admit that the top three pots have been mine for awhile. The very smallest pot at the top of the stack once belonged to my mother. It is the only remaining piece from the set of Le Creuset that her Aunt Doris gave her for her wedding back in 1970. Unfortunately, she learned the hard way that cast iron enamel doesn’t take kindly to regular bleachings.

The orange pot one level down was part of a lot of vintage Le Creuset/Descoware I bought on eBay about a year ago. I don’t know exactly why I did that, but I do so love that little vessel. Next down is a more modern 5 1/2 quarter that Scott bought me for Valentine’s Day the first year we were dating (actually, the pot you see there is a replacement. The first one was flawed and Le Creuset replaced it under their limited lifetime warranty). Nothing says love like heavy duty cookware. Only the bottom two have been a result of getting married. But that doesn’t make me love them any less.

I do believe I am now set for life when it comes to cookware. At least, that’s what I’m trying to convince myself to believe.

There’s a wall in my kitchen that, when rapped strongly, always sounded hollow. The storage space in my little galley comes at a premium and so I’ve frequently wished that I could bash into that empty space and add a few more shelves. Well, this week, my dream is coming true, thanks to my very handy father.

He was in town less than 24 hours before he’d cut a hole in the wall and developed a plan for building a shelving unit that is two feet wide, six feet tall and just six inches deep (perfect for jars of all stripes).

The gift of storage – it’s the best wedding present a girl could ask for.

About three years ago, having hear about potential issues with plastic bottles leaching chemicals that mimicked female hormones into their contents, I switched from using Nalgene water bottles for work/gym/school water toting, to Sigg bottles. Everyone said that the metal bottles were BPA-free and so I felt safe guzzling water out of those vibrantly printed canisters. Over the last few years, I’ve amassed quite a collection of Siggs, so that there’s always one around the apartment that’s clean and ready to go. I even convinced Scott to trade in his Nalgene for a silver Sigg.

However, it’s recently been found that the lining used in these older Sigg bottles also have small amounts of BPA in them, despite all company assurances to the contrary (for more about Sigg bottles and BPA, check out this Metafilter thread). When I heard about this on Friday afternoon, I was pissed off, as between Scott and me, we’ve got seven older Sigg bottles. That represents a fairly significant financial investment, that we made thinking we were buying safe, chemical-free bottles.

I sent an email to the address (liners@mysigg.com) I found online (I don’t remember where I found this exactly, I did a lot of searching once I first read about this) on Friday, inquiring about whether the company would be offering replacements. Amazingly, I got a response within two hours of writing and it was a completely positive and helpful email. They are willingly taking their old bottles back, and once they receive them, will issue me a gift certificate to buy a few new ones off their website.

I’m seriously bummed out that the old bottles have BPA in their liners, but I’m so appreciative that they’re responding in such a customer-friendly manner. If you’ve got some old bottles that you want to send back for replacement, just send an email to the address above and they’ll take care of you.

The actual segment was really, really fun. I had a great time chatting with Michelle Buckman and I could have talked so much longer about canning (it felt like it was over in a flash).

For those of you who missed it yesterday or who don’t live in Philly, here’s the link to where you can watch it online. My name is outrageously misspelled, but everything else about it is terrific.

I scurried with this chore and that scrubbing errand, not finishing and sitting down until 10:30 pm, at which point I was totally exhausted and had negated any of the relaxing benefits that the earlier day had possessed.

I don’t know why I do this to myself. I long to read books or fall back into the trance that comes when you write for extended periods of time. Instead, I write short blog posts, leaping up to wash each dish the moment it becomes dirty. My eyes dart over Twitter, a service that has increased my connection with other people but which has shortened my attention span to the point where I’m unable to absorb more than two or three sentences before needing a topic shift.

At work this morning, I find myself returning to a sensory memory from childhood. It’s a moment that contains a feeling of freedom and is one I’ve continually flashed on over the years. In it, I am driving along a Los Angeles freeway with my mom, heading towards Pasadena. It’s the middle of a weekday and I am aware that under normal circumstances, we should both be at school or work. Whether we’re playing hooky or just in the midst of a week-long break from school, I don’t know. I can feel the rays of the Southern California sun and the am excited by the speed and movement of the highway. There is something so joyous about the moment, back in the days when kids were still allowed to sit in the front seat and nothing was more exciting than going to a thrift store with my mom. I am desperate to feel that way again.

One of the things that came up for me (in a emotional sense) during this cold, was the amount of guilt I have around being sick and missing obligations. When I was growing up, I often pretended to be sick in order to have a break from the social demands and discomfort of elementary and middle school. My parents knew that most of my colds, sore throats and upset stomachs were the result of my insecurity and propensity to be the most picked-on kid in the class and so they allowed me the bulk of my “sick” days. However, despite a talent for convincing my body to be sick on cue, I knew that staying out of the classroom wasn’t entirely necessary and so I carried around a little bit of guit about it.

As the years went on, school started to get better and I found I didn’t need to stay away like I had before. However, that sense of guilt about staying home when sick (even when I really and truly was ill) stuck with me. I’ve found in recent years that I’ve felt a need to be given permission to be sick, dragging myself into jobs when I’m near-catatonic in the hopes that someone else will recognize my ailment and say, “Oh you poor girl. You should go home and take care of yourself.” I needed permission from an outside party to be sick and take care of myself.

I’m beyond the worst of that now. I recognize when I’m sick and I do everyone I work with a favor by staying home (no one wants Typhoid Marisa sitting next to them in a poorly ventilated office). However, traces of that guilt still remain and they cropped up like a mofo this time around, despite the fact that I could hardly breathe and my brain ceased functioning sometime Sunday night, only picking back up around 3 pm yesterday afternoon.

I don’t have a solution to this issue (although I do believe that it goes hand in hand with my feeling that I’m never working hard enough or doing a good enough job at my place of employment), but like most juicy internal hang-ups, recognition is always the first step, so I’m putting it out there. Does anyone else react like this when they’re sick? How have you dealt with it?

Half a hour later, the soup was in the slow cooker and I headed back to work. The parking garage in our building has been under construction for the last five months, getting the four stories of concrete ramp replaced. They recently put scaffolding up in the back of the building, where I walk at least twice a day (and sometimes more) as I come and go to work and home. Yesterday, just as I walked out from underneath the scaffolding, a hunk of concrete the size of a baseball fell from one of the levels of the garage. It missed my head by about half a second. I stood there and stared at it for a moment, adrenaline racing as I realized how nearly I was hit by it. I spent a moment imagining the pain I could potentially be feeling and playing out the possible scenarios – concussion, bloody head, a trip to the emergency room or even worse.

I looked around, to see if anyone else had seen how close I had come to being clocked on the head by a falling piece of cement, but there wasn’t a single person who had been a witness. I glanced up, to see if anyone was peeking out from the parking garage, to see where that errant piece of stone had gone. Then I realized I was just fine and headed back to work.

It was interesting to have had two moments within the period of an hour where I came so close to being injured and yet was totally fine. It made me appreciate the integrity and health of my body, as well as the inherent frailty of being human.

Scott and Marisa, interviewed on CBS3

Last Thursday, I got an email from Nicole Brewer, the reporter for CBS3.com, asking if she could feature Scott and me in her column. Friday morning she came over to the apartment to film us and Monday morning, there was an email in my inbox with a link to the piece. It’s cute and focuses on the story of how we met through blogging. Just click on the image above and it will take you to the story and video.