A review

 So.  A few years ago, I bought a copy of Office '03.  It had five uses.  I used my last one on my last laptop.  

Which died last April.  Well, started dying, probably in March or so.  

My laptop is my livelihood.  I do everything on it: writing, publishing, budgeting, household accounting, planning, communicating with the kids' school, checking their grades...everything.  I can't do that with a dead laptop.  I mean, sure, I can use one of the desktops, but there are times I'm not physically capable of working at a desk, but the work goes on.  

I ordered a new one from Amazon.  And a thumb drive (well, pinky-fingernail drive--a 500 GB one the size of a dongle) to put all my files on.  The drive arrived the last day of April, and I was able to copy everything onto it before the old laptop gave up its last gasp, and the new laptop came in on the first of May.  

It had a year of Office 365.  So, I pulled it up and started using it.  Finished the final draft of Certified Public Assassin on it, and pulled the trigger on publishing...

...and something about the newest Word threw tantrums about working with older Word.  To the point of breaking even LibreOffice.  Oh, the electronic copy of Certified Public Assassin worked okay, but I could not get the print version to fly.  No, Word insisted on fucking up with the margins.  It did not matter what I did, I could not get the print version to work.  And I hacked away at that, on and off, for six fucking months.  

So, my Office subscription runs out at the end of next April.  I could re-up for a hundred bucks a year...every year.  I could. 

But I don't wanna.  It's a cheat.  I don't replace a laptop every year.  I don't pay for a new computer every year.  Why should I have to rent my software every year? 

I figured I'd have to switch over to LibreOffice at the end of the year, when my subscription ran out, when I bought the laptop.  

And then...a miracle happened.  I've made money, this year.  Not a lot, but double what I did last year.  And I'm producing again.  

That changed the dynamics a bit.  And changed my mental dialogue a lot.  I mean, if I'm actually making money,* shouldn't I have tools to make money with?  

Keep in mind, I'm categorically opposed to renting software.  I talked it over with my other half, and when Black Friday deals hit, I purchased a new writing/formatting software: Atticus.  

On a whim, I uploaded Certified Public Assassin, and put it through the formatting.  And then, I uploaded the file to Amazon, and looked at the internals. 

Lo and behold: the text stayed within the margins.  Everything looked good. The cover took some extra work, but everything worked.  Everything worked.  I could publish a print version.  Atticus fixed what rented Word broke.  And Certified Public Assassin is now available in hardback!

So I can definitively state that it works as a formatting tool.  It's worth the (one time) cost for that alone.  

However, that's not all it does: it works quite well as writing software, and allows you to set writing goals, too.  And uses reminders to keep you  on task when you sit down to write.  Something Word does not help with.  It also keeps track of your word count by chapter as well as by book file.  Yeah, it takes some getting used to, but it really is intuitive, and a good bit easier to use than Word.  Your screen's less busy, less distracting, you're only looking at one chapter at a time; while yes, that means you have to dig into it to look at how your entire document is looking, you can get a page estimation by the trim size you want to use for the project you're working on.  It shows you previews of your project by how it'll look in print, or in any of several e-book readers/reader software on a tablet. 

I would say that this is probably one of my best investments into my career as a writer.  I am honestly blown away by the sheer awesome.  I mean, maybe there's better writers' software on iThing platforms, but this is, I think, perhaps hands down the best one out there for anything else. 

I cannot recommend it highly enough. 

*Double last year's income is a bit under half what I made in my first year teaching for MSSU.  A hair under a semester's pre-tax income, in  other words. 

A thought.

Something occurred to me, late last night, as I was drifting off to sleep.  I've often referred to the tantrum-throwing left as toddlers...and that connected with all the kids pretending to be anything other than what they are.  

This is a normal stage in human development.  

Both my imp (now 16) and my pixie (soon to be 14) threw tantrums.  I showed them through being firm and consistent with consequences that tantrums would not only not get them what they wanted, but would get them the opposite of what they wanted.  

Unfortunately, we've got eighty years of protests of varying levels of justice and violence demonstrating to a lot of these overgrown toddlers that yes, tantrums do work.  Unfortunately, it's going to take a lot of harsh consequences, fairly and consistently and constantly applied, to undo that lesson.  

Both of my children had phases of pretending to be an animal--a dog, a cat, a dragon, a dinosaur (oh my gawd the dinosaur was Pixie, and she jumped on Imp and bit him.  Because "dat's whut raptors do. I a dinosaur! RAWR!).  I...put a stop to the dinosaur stuff, but not because I stopped the imaginative play, but because I did not need them biting each other. 

They sort of still play make-believe, but via Minecraft, now.  Other than that, they've grown out of it. 

Leftists...haven't.  I'm not sure if it's because they didn't engage in imagination play as toddlers/preschoolers (kind of hard when they're overscheduled for every second of every day by parents that didn't want to parent their kids), or if it's because they're told that they're bad for being born white/male/cis het/rich/poor/female or whatever.  But whatever the reason is...

...leftism looks, from the outside, like a giant case of Peter Pan syndrome.  Delayed development.  Socially-enforced retardation.  

Call it whatever you will, they need to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and let the goddamn grownups actually run the country.  Because trying to enforce kindergarten rules on a grown up world has backfired spectacularly.  If your cunning plan depends on "if people will just..." it won't work.  Because people will not "just." 

I'm personally tired of putting up with behavior that should have been met with a spanking before the little 'tards hit kindergarten age.  

I vote we start calling the behavior like we see it--socially-enforced retardation--and treat them like toddlers: ignore them, up until the point their behavior crosses a line and must be corrected.  

Because that's the other thing about toddler misbehavior: they're doing it for attention.  If we stop giving them the attention, some of them will stop acting out...and some will earn the richly deserved slap-down.

Bugger. I'm an idiot.

So.  I had a health issue that drove me to the doctor, earlier this week.  While I was there, I asked her to switch me back from artificial thyroid replacement hormones (T4 and T3) back to natural (desiccated porcine thyroid gland).

I took my first dose yesterday morning.  And I woke up.  Woke up for the first time in months. 

I had been sleepwalking through life without realizing how bad it was getting.  I just knew that some of the other hypothyroid symptoms that I had had under control were coming back.  I was (and still am) always cold.  My hair was dry and I was shedding like a nervous cat.  I was struggling to slow weight gain on 900-1100 calories per day.  Not stop it, not lose weight, slow the gain.  

So I asked to go back on what I'd felt better on: the natural stuff. 

I still am limited in physical energy.  I'm still stiff and sore in the joints, with jolts of pain if I push too far. 

But I can think.  My brain's working again.  

I feel like an abject moron, putting it off for so long.  

(and now, back to my scheduled writing)

Old Fashioned Lard Biscuits

2 c all purpose flour*
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/3 c lard**
2/3 c milk

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Mix the dry ingredients, and cut the lard into the dry ingredients until everything resembles coarse meal.  Stir in the milk until a sticky dough forms, sprinkle flour on a flat surface and turn the dough out.  Knead until it's elastic and no longer sticky--probably about twelve turns.  Maybe fourteen.  Roll out, cut biscuits by pressing straight down, form the remnants into another pat of dough and keep cutting until you've not got enough left to cut and make that last biscuit, and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 12-15 minutes. 

Now.  That's the standard recipe.  

Here's lard biscuits for those who have to be gluten free:

2 c all purpose gluten free flour--I don't recommend almond flour for this unless you like eating hockey pucks
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/3 c lard
2/3 c milk***
1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Mix the dry ingredients and cut in the lard--this version of the recipe works better if the lard is COLD lard.  Beat the egg into the milk, then work into the dry ingredients.  Add more milk if needed by teaspoons.  Fold and press four or six times, to make flaky layers in the biscuits, then sprinkle flour over the top, roll out, and cut.  Mash the remnants together and roll out and cut a couple more biscuits.  Continue until dough's all on the cookie sheet.  Bake until golden brown. 

These are, hands down, the best gluten free biscuits I've made.  BEST.  They turn out like soft wheat biscuits--the Southern style ones.  They hold together for butter and honey or jam; they also work really well under sausage gravy.  Best thing of all?  They don't end up so dry you feel like you're choking down formed sawdust. 

It truly doesn't take any longer to mix these up and cut them out than it does for the oven to preheat.  And it costs a lot less than biscuits in a can. 

*I haven't made these with standard all purpose flour, but I can't imagine them turning out anything but good, considering how good they turn out as gluten free biscuits.

**You can use room temperature lard, but cold lard turns out better biscuits.  And cold lard isn't nearly so hard to cut in as cold butter is. 

***You can leave out the egg, if you're allergic, but be aware you're going to need more milk--start with 3/4 c milk, and add more by teaspoons if you need it. 

Budget recommendations

My budget just got a lot tighter.  My son hit sixteen, and there's now a small truck to insure.  

So.  It's time to sort through and figure out where I can tighten things down a bit more.  I'm really, really thankful for my aunt helping me buy a WonderMill last spring--that is an enormous budgetary help.  One 25 lb bag of white rice from Sam's Club costs the same as 4 lbs of rice flour.  4 lbs of flour that I grind and mix costs about the same as a 5 lb bag of all-purpose wheat flour.  

If you have to eat gluten free, get a grain mill.  It makes a huge difference.  You will break even in the first few months, I promise. 

My particular all-purpose blend* is a combination of white rice, sticky rice, and brown rice, with corn starch and xanthan gum added.  I use corn starch because it's a) locally available, and b) much cheaper than a lot of other starches.  I usually mix two batches of flour to keep on hand and cook with. 

I have successfully made gluten free bread, biscuits,** gravy,*** and a couple of desserts (wacky cake and cookies) with this flour.  It's an excellent blend.  The most expensive part of it is the sticky rice, but it's well worth it.  The sticky rice flour makes an enormous difference in how well your gluten free breads and bread-ish things hold together. 

The biggest difference in cost is that mill.  When you can buy the rice and grind and mix it yourself, you're not paying for a massive commercial mill, and you're not paying labor and convenience costs.  And trust me: both add up.  Fast.


*2 c white rice flour, 1 c sticky rice, 1 c brown rice, 1.5 c corn starch, 2 tbsp xanthan gum

**Best biscuit recipe is actually lard biscuits.  Butter ones are...okay, but mildly disappointing.  The lard biscuits turn out spectacularly good, and they brown.  

***Gravy is one of the things that actually turns out better using gluten free flour: no lumps.  (The other thing is breaded and fried foods.)

It's alive!

 Liquid Diet Chronicles book 4 Meals on Wheels is live, and ready for borrow through Kindle Unlimited, or purchase (or first one, then the other, if you're inclined). 

New foods!

It is like pulling teeth to get my Imp to try new foods.  I think I've found the trick though: he's more likely to try something if I tell him it's spicy.  

Case in point: we got him to try pad thai, recently, by calling it "spicy spaghetti."  He tried it, and liked it well enough to ask me to learn how to make it so I could teach him.  

Last night was another new food: buffalo chicken dip.  I started with a recipe found online, but ended up modifying it a little bit.  I'll probably half the recipe, more or less, next time I make it, and will just make it on the stove top.  

Hot Buffalo Chicken Dip

2 cans chicken, drained
2 bricks cream cheese (I used reduced fat, and thank God I did)
3/4 c shredded cheddar (grate it yourself so the dip doesn't turn out gritty if texture bothers you)
1 c ranch dressing
3/4 c buffalo sauce
1/4 c Louisiana hot sauce (optional--if you need more heat to be happy with it)

Drain chicken (my cats demanded some of the chicken water, so I drained a little into paper bowls for them), dump in crock pot, break up a bit.  Dump in cream cheese, cheddar, ranch, and buffalo sauce, and turn the crock pot on low.  Go back in an hour or so, depending on your crock pot (mine runs way too hot on all settings), and start the process of mixing it up.   It's ready when it's fully incorporated and hot all the way through.  It's good with Freetos, tortilla chips, celery sticks.  Probably would be good with club crackers, but I can't vouch for that, since I can't have those anymore. 

The picky kid ate probably a cup of dip, last night.  He only stopped because it was starting to make him queasy (as much cheese as is in it, I'm not surprised).  I had maybe half a cup...and a bottle of hard cider to mitigate the gallbladder attack I knew would follow.  

It was worth it.  This recipe turned out good.