Anne's titty cabinet

There is a lot going on right now, and I am really questioning my next few moves. 

When I tore my Achilles tendon, I spent a week or so debating on whether or not to press pause on my studio in St. Louis. I weighed a lot of things and ultimately decided to close my studio. My remaining clients are being shot in different locations, it isn't like I cancelled on my clients. But the studio just didn't make sense any more. I knew Derek and I would be moving soon, anyway, and I very honestly hated that my studio wasn't accessible to everyone. Being third floor with no elevator? Terrible. Lots of things went in to my deciding to close up shop in STL. I loved my space, I loved the images I created with my clients, but I do not feel like I'm suffering without my physical studio. Plus, like...MOST importantly, I just couldn't manage getting up and down the stairs in my boot with my gear, and Derek couldn't be with me for every single shoot to manage my gear for me. And I needed time to heal. 

Which.

I am getting better, the pain itself is limited to a much, much, MUCH smaller region of my foot instead of my entire leg. I injured myself in July, RIGHT after my birthday, and I am finally finally about to start PT for my foot. In 19 days.

It's relatively quiet for me, photography-wise, because I've had so much other stuff to do and I can't focus on getting more clients. 

One of the things I've been doing is courting PhD programs. I am a chronic sufferer of FOMO, and as a result I never feel...settled in myself. Dan told me once that I wasn't quite still. He compared me to the time traveler in The Time Traveler's Wife, and said that he didn't think he could spend time waiting for me to arrive and be fixed in time. I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but I do remember him making this comparison in a fairly similar way, because I had never seen the Time Traveler's Wife and I had to watch it to  understand what he meant. To be very clear, I do not think this was an exactly genuine critique of me as a person and how I as a person was not a good fit for Dan. I will continue to believe that he just didn't want to be with ME because I wasn't the right kind of person aesthetically, I wasn't the right kind of person on paper, and I don't think that Dan actually wanted a long term relationship. Which is all fine, I understand, and I've only ever been hurt by the lack of transparency. Well, that and it never feels good to know that the problem is you and your ugly face, body, and trash CV. Anyway, I've thought about this critique for the decade plus since Dan said it, and while I do not think he was being honest in that assessment of me for HIM, I do think he might have been on to something. My ADD/Autism for sure comes with an inability to stay committed and focused to something. A career for me has always seemed nice, but ultimately...like...my interests are legion, my talents are diverse, and I'm just supposed to pick ONE thing? One?? One and that isn't depressing as fuck? I for sure flit from thing to thing, and I take on new hobbies and interests and I am a person whose brain is essentially television static. To me, the television, I get it. I know what's going on. But to anybody else taking a peek at me, it's just noisy and upsetting and it needs to be changed or turned off. There was an element of truth to Dan's commentary on how I'm maybe never really present. I'm always off doing some such thing. 

So in my pursuing of PhD programs, I've felt like...kind of bored. I have moments of excitement...like, make no mistake, the program at Denver that I'm (maybe) applying to is a fucking AMAZING program. So. Good. As tailored to my academic interests as any program...aside from the one in Seattle that I am not a good candidate for...can be. I think about accepting their invitation to be in the 2026 cohort and I'm like, YES! This will be AMAZING!!!! I have less excitement about Syracuse, and my choice for Syracuse would be more about doing the adult, responsible thing. I could for sure make myself something wonderful if I accepted their invitation to be in the 2026 cohort, and it would come with a lot of stable benefits that Denver just can't offer...but I am also occasionally caught up in excitement about Syracuse. But like...mostly I just feel like I am doing it because it's the next logical progression of my academic career, not necessarily because I feel passion about it. 

I do not think I do feel passion about my PhD. And Derek's marketplace opening and seeing the options available to use has really opened my eyes to that. 

Derek got the following options:

Washington State, Texas, Texas, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Europe

That is the order Derek put in for. He put Washington State first, it's been my big want (other than Europe and Alaska) the entire time we've been together. He put the two Texas positions and the Georgia position as his next three choices, and we're hoping that if that's a slot he gets, we can parlay that into a compassionate reassignment and instead go to a queer friendly state, likely Colorado or New York. The other part of the reason for choosing those states is the PhD programs for me. I've known about the locations of the PhD programs for a couple of years...I've been really researching what programs I wanted to apply to...but when Derek's marketplace opened with Washington, I was so fast to say, "pick Washington." When Derek said, "uh, what about your PhD programs", my immediate...and I mean IMMEDIATE response...was, "I would rather spend four years in Washington". And I meant it. 

Derek and I have talked more in depth about what it would mean if he gets Washington as far as my career goes. Derek very much wants me to pursue my PhD and become a professor, he believes in my abilities to see success in the things I have been saying academia needs, and I love that about him. It's lovely to feel like someone believes in you. But like...I don't think I actually want to do it. A part of me wants to do it...but most of me just...doesn't. I am an academic that is so not an academic, and I have no lasting desire to participate in a system that I have been researching how to divorce ourselves from because it's corrupt, it's broken, it's racist, it's sexist, it's queerphobic, it's ableist, and I can still advocate the change in academia that it needs without being entrenched in the same shit. I don't know how strong my mind is, man, who's to say I wouldn't just be like...no, actually, academia is fine! after a few years of being deep in its guts? Not me! Physician know thyself, and I do, and I think there is an aspect of myself that is a thoughtless, cowardly pushover. Best to not indulge her. 

I told Derek I would still apply for the programs, but all my head is saying is, "ok, do it, but it's not even a top priority, if we're being honest". It would just be a thing to do. If Derek gets a TX or GA spot and we submit for compassionate reassignment...I kinda just wanna submit that CR for Washington. If we end up submitting for CR in CO or NY, I don't think it will be for my PhD. I think it will be to get our forever home (NY) or to spend a few extra years adventuring around (CO). 

I don't know if I'm just listless right now, or if I just don't actually have ONE singular passion and everything I'm interested in is at the same volume so nothing seems louder than anything else, or if some secret third thing, but I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to be doing. 

Do you know how BORING a career sounds to me? Barf. I love being a photographer, but is that forever? Unlikely. I love being a caregiver...kind of...but is that forever? No. I love being involved in my community, and while that IS forever, I do not want to be so cynical as to turn that into a job. I love being at home, but that's also boring. There's so much to do and so much to experience and so many places to visit and how is ANYBODY expected to go to work when there are bugs and mountains and sunsets and people and rocks and food and crepuscular rays and birds? 

I die at the end of everything. There is no scenario where that doesn't happen, and I keep saying to both myself and other people...I just don't see myself regretting not getting a PhD when I'm at death's door. How could I possibly give a single fuck about a PhD when there is so very much life to live and smells to smell and outside things to learn? Send me to Washington. Send me to Washington and let me hunt for agates on the beaches and travel to Oregon to see Oneonta Gorge and the ghost forest and Crater Lake and go see all of the National Parks and let me miss the snow while running around Multnomah Falls and learning new plant identification for foraging. What is a PhD against any of those things.

I initially went to college to try and make Dan see me as his speed,  his kind of person. Worthy. I stayed in college to make myself believe it. I graduated with honors with both my BA and my MA. And I left academia completely disillusioned with its necessity, hating every inch of it, and feeling some type of way about the hows, whys, and means with which I excelled in it. I immediately considered a PhD as the next logical step, was told I was maybe a little too autistic for it, and I spent a year internalizing that and feeling ANOTHER type of way about it. I think somewhere I want to get my PhD just so I can finger wag and prove to naysayers I am NOT too autistic for academia. I think somewhere in me, I also just want the validation that I'm a competitive candidate, that I am  worthy of a bankrupt institution that I hate (don't ask me why this is a factor. I was brought up to think degrees were the pinnacle of achievement)...and I might even apply JUST to get the acceptance letters...which I feel fairly good about. I've talked with each of the directors dozens of times, I've spoken with faculty, I've found mentors to recommend me, I've gotten my letters of rec, I have my fucking statements of purpose written. My applications are essentially done...but like. I'm reluctant to pull the lever on submitting them. And it's the ultimate tell. 

Drea in her mid twenties would be shocked by Drea in her forties. Not even to make a milquetoast huckster love you, I can hear her saying? Not fuckin' even. I can do it. There is interest in my field of research, I've been given stipends and commendations for my commitment to my field. I've accomplished a lot. And I honestly care less about that than I do sitting in my garden and feeling the fall breeze while my chickens run around being terrors to the dirt. 

I didn't know if I had settled on not applying. I knew I was close. Derek was upset when I mentioned it the other day, and took it as a lack of desire on my part to actually help the queer community in the ways I want to, and he chastised me for that. He's wrong and silly for that, of course, but I felt a momentary urge to go through with my PhD for the same reasons I enrolled in school in the first place: what if Derek no longer thought I was worthy of anything? Do I need to prove myself academically for a man until I'm fucking dead, and can I ever catch a god damn break? 

I just hate academia. What a fucking slog. So I think that settles it for me. I do not think I'm going to get my PhD. If this is a crisis of confidence, and I end up going for My PhD after all, I will be surprised, but not that surprised. I am flighty. Dan clocked it almost twenty years ago. Maybe flighty is the wrong word. I'm too unserious about participating in society and too serious about the world to feel like I need a PhD to be good. My interests are too varied and my time is too fucking short to waste it. 

Bring me the mountains. Bring me the sea. Bring me a garden. I'll find them if you can't. 

RE: you either get a fever or you're neurologically diseased posts

 I am historically terrible at getting blogs done in a timely fashion. So here they all are:

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Part 6

I backdated all of the ones I recently finished, so they're all in "order". 

Working on Iowa next. Then Bumpa updates. Then life updates again, maybe?

The empty half of the meat bag

There are moments in my day where I catch myself during a dissociative moment and have to bring my consciousness back into my present body. I did this last night on the way home from St. Louis. I don't know if this is something anybody else is familiar with (I am not so vain as to think this is an only me kind of thing, I just mean I haven't talked to anybody about these moments), but to try and explain what it's like, I feel like my brain disconnects from my body and my body is a separate thing. It isn't like floating outside of myself and observing my body, it's like...well, maybe kind of. It's like leaving the body I call my "self", being only my invisible, intangible "self", and then drifting from a self entirely. It's a blissful few moments where I am aware of nothing. I don't feel my body, I'm not thinking, I'm everywhere and nowhere. The empty half of the meat bag. 

When I pull myself back from wherever nowhere place I am, I think about death. If that's what death is like, a blissful nothing stretching on into forever, there isn't really anything to be scared of. The power of not knowing is heady and I have never been able to force it on myself, it happens organically, and over the years I've learned to move straight into thinking about death instead of trying to get back to that omnipresence that is also wonderfully oblivious. It's kind of like trying to will yourself back into a wonderful dream you've woken up from...it isn't going to happen. 

While those moments truly help me feel like death is nothing to fear, and I have come to reflect on them with anticipation and to deepen my embrace of my mortality, it isn't like I personally don't maintain a dread of death. Will it hurt? Is there something after this? Will everyone I leave behind be ok? I certainly understand an inability to find death a comfort when it's something we witness others do before us. While I often discuss death being a kindness, that doesn't mean it's wholly kind. I do think death is an ambivalent occurrence (as a natural force only. There are plenty of ways death is a tool of cruelty. Free Palestine), but the things left in its wake are hard. Grief, sadness, fear, uncertainty...they're a lot to grapple with. Mourning is a process, one we often put off because taking it on head first and immediately can feel really hard in the moment it's necessary. 

Which is why it was particularly cruel of me to intentionally trick my sister into thinking her dead hamster was still alive. 

When Stef and I were kids, the only pets we were allowed to have were hamsters. I had a hamster named Midgie, and she had a hamster named Hammy. We both loved our hamsters so much, but neither of us were very keen on taking care of them. Midgie died before Hammy did, and it's more than possible I was a little bit fucking bitter about Stef's hamster still being alive when mine left me for that  hamster wheel in the sky. So when Hammy died and Stef was distraught over it, I thought it would be funny to trick her into thinking otherwise. When she ran downstairs to tell our parents that Hammy had gone the way of Midgie before her, I screeched down, NO WAIT, SHE MOVED TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CAGE! 

She did. Because I moved her. Stef came upstairs crying, so relieved that her beloved hamster hadn't yet pushed up daisies. She spent the rest of the day oscillating between playing and watching the hamster cage for Hammy to move, but everytime Stef went to the bathroom, I would move Hammy's pretty fucking obviously dead body into another part of the cage. Neither of our parents came to check on the dead hamster, and I'm unsure how much to judge them for not checking, but really...why wouldn't you believe a kid shouting down NOPE, STILL ALIVE, IT JUST WALKED OVER TO THE OTHER END OF THE CAGE! I would hope that my sinister sense of humor and horrible sense of comedic timing weren't obvious at such a young age that my parents would be like...no, this sounds like a Drea lie, let's go check the body. 

That night, I grabbed Midgie's hamster wheel and cackled to myself in bed while I spun it around myself, whispering to my sister, see? Hear that? That's Hammy in her wheel!

No, man. Hammy was dead as fuck, rotting away in the cage. 

I kept up the charade the next day, and I can't say if I got lazy and stopped moving the hamster enough, if Stef caught me moving Hammy's PetCo corpse around the cage, or if my mom finally investigated the hamster herself, but the fuckin' jig was up in a major way. I got in serious fucking trouble, but not for being so cruel to my little sister, who wouldn't have been more than 8 at the time (I don't think our sibling was born when this happened, and I am eleven years older than they are and two years older than Stef, so MAX I was 10 and Stef was 8), no....I got in trouble for touching a dead animal. The clearest memory I have of this is my mom screaming at me about playing with dead animals, dragging me into the kitchen by the arm (she wasn't gonna touch my death covered grabbers), and lecturing me about how dangerous it is to touch dead things...as she boiled a pot of water. And told me she was going to have to boil my hands clean. 

And I believed her. And was terrified. 

Now, make no mistake, I am not trying to pull focus from the fact that I did something heinously cruel to my sister in a moment of profound grief. Pets are often our first experiences with death and loss, and they set us up for how we approach and view death for the rest of our lives. We can build on the foundations, of course, but these things are pretty integral to our view of losing a loved one. I am solely to blame here, do not feel bad for me and forget that I did something so far beyond big sister-little sister fuckery. I was old enough to know better, and my cruelty is immeasurable. 

My mom still threatened to boil my hands, and the wild truth of that can be separated from the wild truth of what I did. 

My mom.

Threatened. 

To boil.

My. 

HANDS. 

And as I started wailing, she started laughing at me for crying. And mocked me for crying and asking if getting boiled was going to hurt. She told me I was stupid for thinking she was actually going to boil my hands and told me to go upstairs and wash my hands and to never do something like that again because it was gross. I really want to drive the point home that I was not in any way in trouble for being so fucking mean to my little sister, I was in trouble for touching something dead. I went sobbing upstairs and told my sister I was really sorry for being so mean to her, and she hugged me and told me it was ok, she was just sad about Hammy (sometimes, y'all, we really do not deserve our little siblings because they can be so much kinder than big sibling shenanigans deserve). I regretted doing that to Stef after my mom made me understand that doing something that YOU find funny but someone else finds scary or cruel isn't actually funny, it's just scary. Or cruel. 

This was also my first massive brush with death, in some regard. This was death of the ego, and that's a fucking undertaking at such a young age. I understood that pain is a network, and pain isn't the only thing that connects us. In most of our emotional connection, there is no self. We are not separate from the sadness of our sibling just like we are not separate from the pain of our parents just like we are not separate from the consequences of the actions of others. In the revelations of the young, that mind opening awareness is...at best...short lived. I may have never again considered gaslighting my sister about how dead her pets ACTUALLY is, but I was still mean to her in the ways that siblings can be mean to each other. In explanation not defense, our household was one of kindness scarcity, and we had to compete for it. If Stef was getting loved by our parents, I was getting shit on because our parents were incapable of kindness for all. As we got older, I took on a lot of heat for my sister, because I did notice how cruel our parents were when we were in trouble, and as the oldest, I felt a duty to my little sister to carry the worst of the nastiness so she didn't have to. The only person who was allowed to beat her up was me, not her dad and not my mom. Me. Anybody else trying to fuck up my little sister was going to hear about it. I was smaller than my parents so I rarely put my body on the line for Stef (I did a few times, but not as often as I should have), but I would scream at them to leave her alone when she was in trouble and getting hit for it. 

I wondered to myself in the shower the other day if I grew so protective of her because that was a natural progression of the person I was turning into. If I was always going to see myself as needing to protect other people from harm because I don't want to see anyone suffer. None of us should be suffering. "The children are ours" James Baldwin says, "the children are always ours, all over the globe. And I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of realizing that may be incapable of morality." I wasn't aware of James Baldwin when I was playing trauma chess with my sister's dead hamster, but I'm aware of him now, and we should care about the suffering of anyone because we're all interconnected. Our struggles and liberation are woven together. I see it now, and I would like to think that years before I made Hammy a puppet of my cruel sense of humor, I was set on the path of realizing it and living that truth the way I try to now. 

Or perhaps. 

Perhaps what I needed to understand how interconnected our struggles are was to have my mother threaten to boil the dead hamster patina off of my fingers.

You Eat: my white girl search for Chinese Chicken Soup Part Two

It's pretty common parlance to say we want something so bad we can taste it. Maybe not for younger people, I have personally had way more fun saying "I am super horny for that" for anything that is very obviously non-sexual. Who knows what the youths are saying now to dramatize desire, but growing up, wanting something so much you could practically taste it was how people got their point across. 

I have wanted Bumpa's soup so badly I could practically taste it. 

It's not weird to say when the thing you want is a food, though. 

I was not ready to throw in the towel on my search for where my grandfather is from, but I was ready to move on to another phase: reckless experimentation with zero regard for legacy or tradition. 

I am a spectacularly unreliable narrator. 

Not because I'm an intentional liar, but because I am a flamboyant romantic with a penchant for prose laden, hyperbolic soliloquys instead of just bluntly fuckin' saying the damn thing I mean. See previous sentence to illustrate my point. I can get very carried away with how I romanticize memory, to both myself and to others. When I am recalling my afternoons eating soup with my grandfather, I would describe them as something like...

"The oppressive heat and humidity of Florida afternoons may not seem like the ideal setting for a lunch of belly warming hot soup. Given the climate, it may seem strange that day after staggeringly warm day, I would walk through the afternoon dampness to have congee with my grandfather. With little regard for my things, I would toss my backpack down in the yard behind their fenced in driveway and walk in their home, heading straight for the kitchen. 

Whether my grandfather was quiet because English was his second language and spoken communication was a struggle, or his deliberate silence was just a character trait, he would always break the silence I walked into after school with a loving, "you eat?" And I always nodded and smiled. Sitting at the tiny table in Bumpa and Nonni's modest kitchen, enjoying each other's company in the familiar, familial quiet that a good meal deserves, Bumpa would ladle out a double helping into our bowls, putting mine in front of me as he sat down in his seat with his own bowl. He would pat my hand and say again, "you eat". And so I would. Together with my Bumpa." 

Which like...isn't untrue, but is also some bullshit. That's not real. Reality is, I would get bussed to Western, I would walk to my grandparents, Bumpa would be like, YOU EAT? kinda loud because he was hella deaf, and he'd be fixing me a bowl before I could answer. The part about him patting my hand is true, and the familiar quiet of good food enjoyed by people who love each other is, too. But the language is unnecessary. 

So when I recount the way that I remember the soup, am I trustworthy? The smells, the way it tasted, the ingredients I think I recognize from memory. Are those real, or did some flowery bit of nostalgia inspire me to Christopher Nolan the reality of Bumpa's soup?

Who fuckin' cares. 

When I decided I wanted to make the soup and see if I could recreate it from memory, I had a discussion with Derek about how I've kind of good cook-ed myself into a corner. My memory says that Bumpa's soup was a clear broth with chunks of veg, and it was always super rice heavy (like I said, he served it congee style a good deal of the time), but I don't personally do clear broths. I know way too much about good flavor, and building a strong soup foundation. Was I going to try and be accurate to my memory, or was I going to say fuck it and do it my own way and out soup my own grandfather?

I chose the out-soup route. Of course I did. If there's one thing I like to do, it's upstage dead people. 

When Derek and I go to Costco, I almost always get the kids a Costco chicken. Honestly, you are hard pressed to beat paying 5 bucks for a big ass whole chicken that tastes and smells fuckin' AMAZING. Every time the family would finish a chicken, I would ask them to please put the carcass in a bag in the freezer for me. When I have two carcasses in a bag, it's time to make stock. As a general rule, I go for a pretty standard herbaceous stock with the usual suspects: peppercorn, garlic cloves, basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme, bay leaf, and whatever veg scraps I have on hand, usually carrot, onion, and SOMETIMES celery, though not often. I will bloom the aromatics in a tiny bit of oil for a few minutes, then I dump in my carcasses and veg scraps, and a couple gallons of water, and then I let that shit simmer until it sits right in my spirit to turn it off. Good stock. The remaining chicken falls off into the stock, the good yummies leech out from the bones, and the base flavor is roasty yumminess because the chicken is cooked by fire on a spit. It's perfection. It's more like bone broth, too. Calling it a stock doesn't quite do it justice, and calling it broth is a downright lie, but bone broth is fuckin' MEATY for a liquid. Not really like, Asian flavor in my carcass water, though. So I knew I would have to go for a different kind of base. 

mmm. Dead stuff.

Take..one?

Aha!

I knew my broth needed more punch, but I also knew that there was no fucking way that my grandfather did all of this shit making my soup. So at some point, I wonder if I should stop calling this "My Bumpa's Soup" and start admitting that I had every intention of upstaging him, and if I wanted to be true to my memory, I should have just boiled a fuckin' chicken with raw ass veg and served that shit over rice when it was done. But I mentioned earlier that the little monster that drives my brain machine is such an unrepentant wearer of rose colored glasses, so this is her love letter to what truly is a wonderful memory, even if the bare bones reality is less culinarily proficient to a Western sensibility.  

See, the filtered water is clue one that I am not staying true to the reality of this soup. My Bumpa didn't use filtered water, he used horrid, horrid, sulfur tasting Florida garbage tap water. Fetid, heinous, unforgivable. My version was not lacking in sulfur on the front or back palette. That being said, neither was Bumpa's. Truly his soup was delicious. 

We're cooking now! Simmering. Boiling. Whatever the right term is, that's what we're doing. 

I was right on. I DO  know too much about making aromatic stocks, but isn't this ALSO part of legacy? Adding your turn to whatever the recipe is? I hear people saying no in my brain, and honestly...fair. Accurate. Honest reporting. No. I should have just done it the other way. The way I think my grandfather did it. And like...I will. I have already talked to Derek about doing a side by side and seeing if Bumpa's assumed way produces a just as good or better result. Eventually. There is a time for that, but that time isn't yet. 

I let that stock simmer together for maybe an hour and a half. Enough time to get deep flavors, but not too much that I would start concentrating the stock. Here is the result, and just LOOK at that layer of fat on top:

Oh. Oh my, yes. The color! The fat! The little bits of soupy goodie floaties! I've only really heard unctuous used as a pejorative until the last year or so, which is funny, because I think it sounds like such a positive word. I don't know if the positive spin on it has caught on en masse, but if it has, that shit looks unctuous. If it hasn't, it looks something not unctuous. 

Is that a clear broth? Eagle eyed readers may note that it is rather on the opaque side of the clear spectrum. Well. Sorry, Bumpa, but you're welcome to my flamboyant writer's brain!

Let's take a moment to see what my live in critic thinks:

More salt. Harrumph. 

Harrumph but fair. I hadn't salted the stock at all, as I was relying on each eater to salt their own dish. I mention in the video that Bumpa and I would eat it with our own sesame oil and soy sauce, but...I am questioning that memory in this moment. Thinking very hard, I think all that was ever on the table in the kitchen for seasoning was salt. I really am a fucking unreliable narrator. Jesus. Well. I still think each eater should salt their own dish, whether or not there was soy sauce and sesame oil on the table, and whether or not we used them together. I'm not your maid. 

But we have a delicious, delicious winner for the stock, so I think we call that done! Time for the more tedious part of the soup recreation:

Taking out all of the bones and aromatics, and jarring up the excess...

Are you a person who thinks this looks gorgeous, or are you a person who is wrong?

..and now that everything was separated from the broth and the extra was canned, it was time to shred the chicken from the bones...

And then put in the veg. I do think that I was right, that Bumpa's soup was a two phase process. Not as extra as all of the shit I was doing, but not just chucking some raw chicken in with some raw veg and calling it good after twenty minutes of boiling. I think the middle of that and my over the top method is where Bumpa's soup actually lives. 

And that was it. I did it. I spent an afternoon just...trying it out, and I did something that...while perhaps not identical to what Bumpa made for me every afternoon three decades ago...related enough that my quest for his soup feels complete. 

And honestly, my take away from this?

My take away is what the actual fuck. Because here's where we're at:

Number one, and perhaps most important: I have had the skills to make this soup for literally a decade plus and I've just been sleeping on the idea that it was just...just a fuckin' chicken soup with an aromatic base that is considered Asian. I could have had this years and years and years ago. I don't know if it's regular ol' racism that made my memory exoticize the simplicity of this dish, or if it was my enduring fondness of my Bumpa that wanted the reality of the dish to be more complicated so I could further lionize the man I grew up with as my only grandfather on my father's side. Maybe the truth is in the middle, maybe it's nowhere close to either, but for sure this is just a really good chicken soup. I hunted for something so simple and I honestly did not fucking have to. And if that isn't 75% of my entire lifespan, I don't know what is;

Dos: I am on a real hunt for my grandfather's life now. The soup was a gateway into a mystery that is so much bigger than the me chasing that taste for years and years could have ever dreamed.

Over the last several months, I have been trying to understand what life events my grandfather lived through. I always knew him as quiet, deliberate, and kind...I stepped on one of his cockatiels when I was a little girl. I killed it. It was entirely unintentional, but I remember my grandfather picking it up from the hallway and carrying it outside. I followed him, crying and apologizing, and thinking he was going to yell at me...yell at me, then bury his pet. He did neither thing. He threw it in the trash can and walked back inside, giving me a little shoulder pat on his way in. He didn't say another word about it. I was too little to wonder what kind of life makes someone that pragmatic or detached. But I wonder now. And it doesn't seem like my family has a lot of answers for me, and without the least bit of judgment, the answers they HAVE had for me and largely incorrect. So I set about finding them myself. 

You Eat: my white girl search for Chinese Chicken Soup Part One

As a little girl, I thought I was Asian. 

I said this once during a podcast episode with Steffie, Derek, and our friend Pinkney and I remember everybody present...and everybody watching Pinkney's instagram live of us as we podcasted...laughing at me. 

I laughed along with everybody, more out of embarrassment and shame than finding anything funny, but then I rushed to explain myself. I grew up with my grandfather from China, I said, and followed that up with saying he was the only grandfather I knew until I was older. 

I knew I sounded dumb. Like. Y'all.

I am white.

I am so white. 

And like...I know that...now. But when I was little, I didn't. I saw my grandfather, a Chinese man, and assumed we were alike. I didn't understand biology from marriage, nobody told me my grandfather wasn't my "real" grandfather, so what other conclusion should I have drawn? I had a grandpa from China, so I was part Chinese. 

My memories of my family are flooded with my grandpa. My Bumpa. He and my grandmother raised cockatiels. My Bumpa was brimming over with ingenuity and skill, and he would invent amazing things, like turning an exercise bike into a water bicycle. I do not actually recall that story from memory, it's a funny story my aunt Mei-Ling tells. But it tracks from the things I DO remember about Bumpa. His PVC pipe garden walls in the backyard. The TV cabinet he built that had something written in Mandarin on it, but I never knew what it said. The table in the living room that he was always playing solitaire on. He built me an amazing dollhouse that I used to play with all the time when I went to Bumpa and Nonni's, but I don't know who has it now. I think Mei Mei has it, actually. In fact I feel fairly certain she does, because I think she showed it to me when I last visited her in NC and she was like, do you remember the dollhouse Bumpa built? Here it is! I was like, yeah...I remember because he built it for me. She said she didn't remember that, but she loved the house and was glad to have it. I whispered to Derek how sad I was at Mei Mie having that, Renee having all of the photos and sewing stuff my dad said Nonni left to me, and me having fucking nothing from either of my grandparents. I've low key always felt like both my dad and I were the black sheep of the family, but I maintain that my dad has an easier time of it than I do. I see the relationships my other cousins have, the relationship my aunts have with my other cousins, and I have always wondered why my aunts and uncles didn't try harder to have a relationship with me when I was younger. Maybe they did and my mom stymied them, I don't know, but it's always made me sad and slightly bitter. I love my family, but I feel like I've had to love them at arm's length. 

My Bumpa and Nonni lived maybe two miles away from my house in south Florida. Probably less, actually, though walking there was a long enough walk that my mom didn't REALLY want me doing it. I did, anyway. I would head to their house after school and hang out until I absolutely had to go home. Amber and I hung out there a LOT together. Russell and his friend Chris would come hang out, sometimes, as well, but initially it was just me. And Bumpa would always have food ready for when I came over. I would get off the bus, walk the ten or so minutes to Nonni and Bumpa's, throw my stuff down in the driveway, and head inside to have congee with Bumpa. It wasn't necessarily ALWAYS congee, but there WAS always...soup. 

Bumpa would have a vat of the most delicious soup on the stove always. It was always exactly the right temperature, and in my memory, it is a very lovely clear broth soup with bits of chicken, bok choy, onion, and carrot, and it smelled like no soup I had ever had before. My olfactory memory of this soup knows that if I were to walk into a kitchen tomorrow and someone were making this exact soup, I would be like, looking around for my reincarnated Bumpa. Or Zombie Bumpa. Though if zombies can make that soup for me, they are welcome to my brain. I've been craving it for years. 

Back when Derek and I still lived in Texas, my dad wanted Alex to come by for a week during the summer, and it so happened that my aunt Mei-Ling was having a July 4th party at her house. Why didn't Derek and I just visit for a bit at the same time? Cool, we thought. So we drove Alex down to Florida and stayed a couple of days so we could be at the party. Pretty much the whole family was there, all of the aunts and all of the remaining uncles. I was chatting with my uncle Kevin and I figured I would ask him if he had Bumpa's soup recipe. 

What kind of soup was it, he asked me. I told him I had no idea, I think it was just a chicken soup, sometimes he used it as a base for congee. Kevin said he'd check his recipes from his dad, but that it didn't ring a bell off the top of his head. 

A week or so later, I got an email from my uncle titled Chow's Chicken Curry! Well. That certainly wasn't fuckin' it, but I did remember Bumpa's curry. I was never a fan, the wings always stayed a little too wet feeling in the mouth for my preferences, but I was glad to have a Bumpa recipe. And besides, I still recalled Bumpa's curry with a humorous fondness. Anytime he made it, I could always immediately tell not from the curry smell that lingers in the house, but because Nonni's mouth was a tattletale, and for a day or two after curry night she always looked, as I described, like she had mouth fucked a highlighter. I put away the search for Bumpa's soup and continued to quietly crave it. 

I asked my dad several times about it. Did he remember the soup? No, he said. He did not recall the soup, but did I know that he used to own a restaurant in Syracuse called Lung-Hai? 

Well no I fuckin' didn't...did he serve my soup there, god dammit?? I was pretty singularly focused on JUST that soup for a really long time. I have this thing, where I see a food, or hear about a food, and I have to eat it. Have you ever read the original Snow White, Rose Red story? Where the mom is pregnant as fuck, looking out of her tower window at the witch's gorgeous garden, longing for her cabbages and that cabbage longing leading to the either sale of her children or her swift demise? Have you read that and thought to yourself...over cabbages? Or any food? Fuckin' weird. 

Well.

I have read that and been like, YES BITCH ME TOO. 

When I want something, the thought of it consumes me until I have it. Sometimes it starts as a tiny nag and grows into an avalanche, and sometimes it just starts as a tsunami of need need need. I can think of several tsunamis of need, but Bumpa's soup was more like a little tiny ripple. 

That would eventually turn IN to a tsunami. Not because of the need for his soup, but because of what the drive to find the recipe would turn into. 

A few people I've talked to about my grandfather, when told he was from China, have looked at my face very intently and said, "oh yeah, I can see it."

Oh, you. What a fun, sweet little lie! There's never been any backpeddling when I say that no, actually, I am not Chinese, it's just my grandfather was, and he isn't my biological grandfather. It's been some variant of, "well...you do look kinda Asian."

I don't. I don't at all look any semblance of Asian. Sometimes I see photos of my aunt Mei-Ling and I'm like, oh I can tell we're related, but that's because the Irish in her matches the Irish in me, because her mom is my biological grandmother, and my biological grandmother is Irish. Gene expression is fun that way. 

Here's the deal: my dad's biological dad, Richard, left the family. I won't get into specifics, not because I'm not a gossip hound but because I don't really have a lot of details. My dad's biological mother, Marilyn, was left with my dad, my aunt Mary, my aunt Renee, and my uncle Paul. Several years pass, my grandmother meets Ray, my Bumpa. As my dad tells it, Bumpa and Nonni were only meant to be a fling, but he knocked her up and did "the righteous thing"...my dad's words, not mine...and married her. Bumpa and Nonni  had Mei-Ling, my aunt, and Kevin, my uncle. Until I was a teenager, I did not know my biological grandfather. The only grandfather I had ever known my whole life on my dad's side was Bumpa. Ray. You could not have told me that Bumpa was not my real grandfather. You still can't, even though I know the difference now between biology and marriage. He was, is, and always will be my grandfather. 

I asked my Aunt a few years ago if she knew the soup I was talking about. She didn't know it, either. 

I did not fuckin' hallucinate this fuckin' soup. 

Amber remembers it, but doesn't recall eating it. Nonni always had the more kid friendly goodies...eclairs, ice cream, chips. But I still ate my soup that Bumpa always had on the stove. I never saw anybody eat it but me. Me and Bumpa. Nonni didn't eat it, either. I think that's why I've always associated it as something that was just between me and Bumpa, and I've always talked about it like it was something that he made just for me. To my recollection, we are the only two that ate it. 

When all of my relatives came up empty on knowing this soup, I wondered out loud to Derek if maybe this was a regional congee that could be found more easily if we knew where Bumpa was from. So I was going to send my aunt a message asking her where my Bumpa was born, but then I remembered she made a little book about him a few years ago that she called The Legend of Kong and the Monk's Riddle. It was two separate stories, both written and illustrated by her, telling the story of my grandfather. I thought maybe that would have his birthplace in it. So I took out my copy and it does have a birth place...but the name of the city was not as accurate as it could be, Mei Mei was writing it down from memory phonetically. Which kind of put me back at the starting line. 

Derek and I love a puzzle, so we read the story my aunt wrote again. My bumpa lived in a village and there was a lot of farming they were doing...peanuts and peaches and cotton are the things that stood out to us. So Derek and I looked up provinces in China where peaches and peanuts and cotton grew. This was not terribly helpful, either, as those are pretty prolific crops over the entirety of the country. What we DID know is that Bumpa's village was flooded by the Yangtze. Which actually IS a pretty good starting point, because there was a fucking monumental flood of the Yangtze in 1931.  

Seeing as we were coming up kinda empty, I asked my Aunt if she knew where Bumpa was born. She did not. Not for sure. Mei Mei told me that my aunt Renee had once done an extended video interview with my grandfather two decades ago, Renee might be a good place to start. I do not like my aunt Renee at all, she is a bigot and a bitch, so I asked my dad to ask her for me knowing that she similarly does not care for me, and I assumed she would be disinclined to help me. My dad reported back several days later than Renee had long recorded over that video, and she also does not recall anything Bumpa talked about. I asked my dad if HE knew where Bumpa was from. He said he thought Bumpa was from Shanghai. That didn't seem right to me, but I'll get into why another time. This is a whole mystery, and we're only at the very beginning of the thread. 

Derek and I spent days looking at maps, at flood maps, comparing them to crop regions, and reviewing them over my aunt's retelling of my Bumpa's stories and the information we had gleaned from my grandfather's table recreation of his village. Literally days. It consumed us. Derek would come home from a day at work and tell me about the insights he had into new places we could look, I would tell him I had yet again determined I was just going to buckle down and learn Mandarin so I could read these fucking maps, and we would collectively dream about taking our search to China itself and perhaps looking out over the Yangtze in the vague area of where my Bumpa's village had once been. You know. Once we figured it all out and had sleuthed our way to the finish line. 

And in all of those fantasies, I pictured myself doing a victory lap over a bowl of Bumpa's soup. 

In the days and weeks that followed, I put my need to eat Bumpa's soup, which had grown to a low, ever present buzz in the part of my brain that is always yearning for one thing or another, on hold. I learned so fucking much about farming in different regions of China. What crops likely grow where. I learned a lot about different cultures in China while trying to track down a tidbit from my aunt's story. I learned about the flooding of the Yangtze, the devastation that wrought, the deaths, the displacement, the famine. I learned about the wars as one learns about wars...like a voyeur into the past burdened with a horrible knowledge of what's coming, and what its arrival means. 

Obviously there was no room for soup here. And I was getting frustrated.

As fun as this puzzle was for Derek and I, and as much as I love being devoured by a rabbit hole, what I wanted more than anything was to have my Bumpa's soup. Food is such a wonderful way to connect between the dead and the living. I may not ever sit at the table with Bumpa to eat ever again, but I can sit at a different table, eating the same soup, and share memories of him. Food is transcendent, and in some ways it makes death obsolete, provided we live as long as we're remembered. Food may be the great equalizer. 

I halted my research and told Derek that I was just going to try and reverse engineer the soup. I would start by making a chicken soup with the things I could VISUALLY remember, create a patchwork stock from there, and then we would taste test it and I would work backwards. 

And work backwards I did, with my signature over the top panache. 

You either get a fever or you're neurologically diseased: Colorado and Kansas Day 7 and 8 and 9/home

So, these days weren't nothing days by any stretch of the imagination. Day 7 was mostly driving,  it's about a 9 hour drive from the springs to KC. We left fairly early so we'd get in fairly early...I really felt pretty shit the day we drove to KC, but pretty shit in a way that was mostly feeling better? Still assy, but assy in a sexy way. Not sexy. Just normal. 

All I wanted was ramen, so I looked up places in Kansas City where I could find vegan broth and keto friendly toppings. We have given Jinya in KC enough fuckin' chances, it was time to try somewhere new. I found KC Craft Ramen. And it fuckin' delivered.

Look how fucking cute it is in there! Anime was playing on every single TV, and there were figurines EVERYWHERE. Two of our kiddos collect the figurines, Vivi and Laurel. We for sure sent pictures to both of them. 

They seated us outside, which was perfect, since I was sick. 

But we still had a TV! Playing Pokemon! Perfect for Derek!

Their menu was pretty great, and most importantly, they had keto friendly noods for me, and vegan options for me. I was in ramen heaven! 

Gotta get the spicy edamame, obviously. 

So I forgot to ask them to remove the corn from my ramen, but I was still feeling gross, so I indulged in some grain. Delicious. And the cold, crisp green onion shreds on top were a game changer. I crave that shit on everything now. 

Derek got his usual char siu ramen, and while I thought the pork looked like it was lacking color and flavor, he reported that it was amazing. 

After ramen, we went to a card shop and got me something I have been coveting for ages. 

I fucking LOVE playing Magic the Gathering. Love it. One of my clients was a huge fan of playing, as well, and we would sometimes have our outings be going to coffee shops and playing MTG for a few hours. I had largely stopped playing because I had nobody to play with, and I have all of these cards (around 2500 MTG cards from releases before Bloomburrow) just sitting and collecting dust. Some of them are pretty decent value cards, and they're all in great shape. I've been trying to unload them for awhile, though, and while I was glad I got some use out of them for the two years I was at Easterseals, I have just lost steam for playing. Derek has asked me why I don't join any of the various nerd nights in town, and the answer is pretty easy: I'm a girl. My experience with dudes who play MTG is they are not fucking friendly to me, and whenever I beat some dude at a random card night before, they always said I was just lucky, and they're really dismissive. So randos burned me out on drop in games. Derek says the community here seems pretty nice, but eh. I'd rather just get rid of my cards. 

While I am still actively trying to unload my previous MTG cards, in August of 2024 MTG released a set called Bloomburrow, and it's based on pretty much every animal related piece of media I loved as a kid, drawing a LOT from Redwall. I fucking LOVED the Redwall series. I tried reading my favorite one, Mattimeo, to the kids a few years back, but neither of them were interested. When I discovered this MTG offering, I fucking needed it. 

So I started buying commander decks. Play boosters. Pre-packaged decks. I got the pre-release deck. I have been collecting these almost the entire time they've been released, and I love them. I have 67% of the regular issue cards, and 87% of the commander deck issue cards. I have two gorgeous binders (one for commander, one for standard issue, obviously) where my cards are very lovingly sleeved, then tucked away, in order. I keep meaning to put up an Ebay shop with all of my rares and rare foils, because I have a fuck ton of them. I have gotten to a point in my card collecting journey where I "need" the collector booster packs, though. And friends...those cost some cash. 

But I got one. Two, actually. We got two of these for me.

Now, they have since WAY shot up in price...a collector booster box is currently going for 897 on TCGPlayer, and I didn't pay nearly that fucking much for the two the we bought in KC. I bought two for far less than that price, actually. We ALMOST bought a third, and still would have paid less than the price of one currently, but I said that was too extravagant. I'm regretting it now. However, even with two collector booster boxes, I got a LOT of doubles. They're still rare cards, but I ended up being glad I only bought two boxes, because I'm still swimming in doubles...but I DID get some really great cards out of them, rounded out my collection a LOT. 

You can see my binders and my spreadsheets. I'm not fucking around here. 

So I'm at the point in my collecting where I need to just...buy the specific cards, because it isn't economical to buy boosters anymore, and given the current price of collector boosters, it CERTAINLY isn't economical to buy any more of those. I got to take advantage of a fucking AMAZING price window from a guy who didn't really know what he had, and he has since figured it out and raised his prices accordingly. I know this because I went to go buy another box from him our last time in KC ( about a month ago, as of this writing) and his prices currently match the barely under a grand pricing everywhere else. 

UNFORTUNATELY. 

Most of the cards I need now are the rare, pricey ones. I'm not going to mind tossing 20 or so bucks at a card, but some of them are actively in the hundreds. Some of them like this super lucky pull I got:

I screamed when I pulled this, I was so fucking excited. She's currently going for around 300 ungraded, and 5-650 graded. I pulled a few other big ticket cards, but she's my biggest. 

And this is literally what I spent my evening doing. Blissfully opening up MTG booster packs and sorting them into piles when they didn't go into my binders, and updating my lists for my new cards so I can keep track of which ones I have and which ones I need. 

The next morning, we had some business to attend to at the National Archives. I've been chronicling my grandfather's life, starting with my search for his soup, here and here, and I'm just about caught up in my blogging to get to the next couple of parts, and here is where that rubber meets the road. 

So.

Derek and I went and got coffee from a local roaster, it was magnificent, and headed off to The National Archives. I will not be writing terribly in depth about this in here, for this blog it will suffice to say that we spent about an hour at the National Archives, and the trip didn't bare much fruit, but it wasn't a total loss. 

After the national archives, I asked Derek to stop by the book library, and while it was sadly closed, being able to stop by was enough. I've always wanted to see it!

And after that, I felt like raw ass and told Derek I just wanted to go have more ramen and go back to the hotel. Which is exactly what we did. I won't share the ramen photos, we each had the same thing (except Derek got popcorn this time as a hospitable offering), and then we went to bed. We had a fairly big day ahead of us the next day, though it was going to be mostly driving. 

We woke up at a decent time, packed our shit into the car, and headed out to the Kansas City Zoo. We had high hopes for this zoo, and it...it let us down. While I was on the tail end of my illness, Derek was pulling into the beginning of his, so we were both not in a great headspace, but really the only nice part was the aquarium, and I started crying over the octopus. It makes me so sad that we gawk at these intelligent, amazing beings and they're prisoners. All of zoos make me think about that, but octopus really get me. Monkeys, as well. But we didn't go to the monkey section of the zoo, we left after the aquarium. What a fucking downer. 

And then we drove home. 

Phew. There we go. We have since gone BACK to pick up Vivian, went BACK to KC craft ramen with her, have taken a trip to Iowa, and are planning a trip to Vegas next year, and I am just now fucking finishing this blog. Incredible. 

You either get a fever or you're neurologically diseased: Colorado and Kansas Day 6

Well, friends, when I tell you I woke up this morning feeling like completely swampy chode, I mean it. 

Derek and I went to the zoo, and I took a LOT of photos, but I was so fucking blasted that they're just not worth posting any of them. Plus like, zoo photos from trips were cool in the 40s when photos were still a novelty. Now they're just kinda sad. I DID see a peacock having a deep moment of either personal awakening or Narcissus-like appreciation? In my video I described him as discovering the id. Not worth posting, though. 

I completely lost my cool about 2 hours into being at the zoo. I didn't fucking feel well, I was cranky and tired, I was hungry, I just wanted some soup and a nap. Derek agreed it was fine to leave, we've patroned the zoo dozens of times, and while the weather was glorious, if you've seen the moose hut once you've seen it once. 

We went back to the car, I found a Thai place close to the hotel, and we headed there for the soup I needed, tom kha. 

And they had a vegan menu just for me!!!

Fuck yeah, everything's comin' up Millhouse! AND they started us off with a gorgeous thin broth:

I'm assuming it was vegan, I'm not going to ask any questions. And I wasn't really in the mood that day. I kept my mask on, only pulling it down between bites, because I was pretty obviously ill. I know germs still spread that way, I did my best. I did ask to take everything back to the hotel, but Derek wanted to eat in the restaurant and then I selfishly couldn't help myself. I was hungry. 

Tom kha, tofu satay, and fried kabocha squash are exactly what I didn't know I needed. Derek ordered his usual Thai orders:

Pad thai, and green curry. 

We ate our lunch, and I wanted to go take a nap, but I told Derek I wanted to go hiking after napping. Which...come on. I was at the beginning of an illness and I'm all, "TAKE ME TO THE ROCKS!" with the same ferocity as dainty Victorian women pining for the seaside. 

When I woke up, I was ready to go. I felt like shit, I was ready to fucking go, a weird combination of things. But Derek didn't wake up enough to go. So after an hour of waiting and throwing an ill girl temper tantrum, I took myself. 

Back to the Twins hike! It isn't a long hike, which was perfect, because I felt like shit, I just wanted to be around rocks. 

We meet again, ominous sky. But I was pretty determined to finish the hike this time, because this was my third time here. I JUST WANTED TO FINISH THE FUCKING HIKE. 

I did it! I made it! And I forgot I felt like shit for awhile while I was up in the rocks. But I remembered on the way down. 

This was our last night in the springs, so when I got back to the hotel, Derek got up, I changed, and we went to get Vivi for going to dinner. We went back to the same Thai restaurant, took Vivi with us to go grab snacks for the road, then...I made Derek go to the best quick Mexican eats in the fuckin' city. 

Oh. Fuck. We had a place down the street from our house that we called Greasy with the most affection, it was not said to be insulting. While Mackenzie's was Derek's date litmus test, mine was Greasy. 

There are places like this all over town, but this...this is the best one. 

The BEST sauces and sides. The best in town. 

UGNNNGGFFFHHH. I rarely feel envious of eating meat, but this time...this time I wish I could have.

And then we dropped Vivi off at her dad's, went back to the hotel, and got ready to leave in the morning.