How to Fail at Sleeping

Is it actually possible to fail a sleep study? If so, I just did so.

Yeah.

I went in last Wednesday, got hooked up like a cyborg (Leads were attached to my jaw on either side, looking for bruxism, to my legs for Restless Leg Syndrome, under my eyes to check for REM sleep, a thingy up my nose to check for nose breathing and one over my upper lip to see if I am a mouth breather, to my chest for positioning, all over my head to check for alpha waves and all kinds of everything else.) and fell asleep with someone watching over me and occasionally asking me to turn over onto my other side or onto my back. I don't know how often I woke up on my own, but I remember at least 4 incidences.

And yes, it is possible to sleep while wired up like a Christmas tree.

Yet I just received the call telling me my study was "normal". I wake up gasping for breath on occasion, but didn't have an episode of that while I was being observed. Of course. I go to sleep exhausted and wake up exhausted. I nap during the day and wake up still tired. I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. I'm not a good candidate for road trips.

Logan waking up about 6-8 times last night didn't help, either.

Why can't he eat during dinner time?

It's been suggested that I have PPD, however, I believe I have acute Sleep Deprivation:

a sufficient lack of restorative sleep over a cumulative period so as to cause physical or psychiatric symptoms and affect routine performances of tasks.
-- From WebMD

I may not technically have Sleep Apnea (stop breathing 10x or more per hour while sleeping), but I do sometimes stop breathing. I'm exhausted and get really, really angry really easily.

At first, it was because I was massively pregnant with twins, with an additional 65 lbs on me, and a burning need to pee every 30 minutes to an hour every night. Then it was twins, needing food every 1.5 hours. Then it was random waking from one of those twins. That still hasn't stopped and now my brain wakes up randomly, throughout the night.

Ooh, and Harvard thinks "...a good chunk of our epidemic of obesity is actually an epidemic of sleep deprivation.". Now that's something to think about.

Now what?

Now I try to go to sleep earlier. Try to stuff the difficult twin with more food at dinner time. Try and try and try to sleep and stay asleep.

Somewhere along the way, I'd like to find my brain, my vocabulary, my patience and my sense of humor. They've all gone missing.

Curiouser and curiouser

I'm broken. And breaking.

And lost and alone.

I'm hurt and hurting.

My inner 12 year old has come out and fucked me up good.

I'm pretty certain now that I'm unfriendable. I've just shoved away one of my last two friends. Didn't take much. A simple email. No more than 2 sentences. Five years of friendship: poof!

I'm apparently good at losing best girl friends.

Dierdre. Poof!
Anna. Poof!
Patricia. Poof!
Sherry. Poof!
Nancy I pushed away because that was all kinds of messed up.
Christine. Poof!
Kathleen. Poof!
Heather. Poof!
Now Misty. (Updated to add: Or maybe not.)

I'm so amazing!

I'm fucked up. I think fucked up thoughts and do fucked up things. I'm barely hanging on from day to day. Right now I'm hoping the sleep test I'm going in for on Wednesday will have answers. Maybe I can stop being crazy if I can get more sleep. Or maybe crazy is just part of who I am. I can't seem to make new friends. I talk too much. I talk too little. I'm always too late. I have twins.

No one gets it. No one gets me. I'm not interesting enough. I'm not mainstream enough.

I can't write. I can't take pictures. I can barely parent.

I'm certain no one wants to be friends with me, so I'm not very surprised when they stop calling or writing. I feel like I'm chasing them down and asking them to play with me and then I stop doing it and then there's this big silence. No one calls. They're not going to. I can't make myself call because how many times can I ask the same question? When do you want to get together? When can we get together? When would you like to get together? Everyone always has to "check their calendars" and "get back to me". It's that second part that seems to slide and slide and slide.

I shouldn't be allowed near communication devices during the lowest parts of my days.

I shouldn't write about it.

No one actually cares.

Maybe one day I'll be friendable again. I just don't see it happening.

Maybe it's better this way. I'll disappoint fewer people.

I don't think my inner 12 year old will ever grow up and move out.

Emma says...

"Whatchu doin', guys? Shaaare!"

She walks from the kitchen, where she was snuggling with me on the floor and eating popcorn (From a bowl, people! I have some standards! The floor is just more comfortable. Especially when you can't see what's happening in the other room. Much more comfortable that way - trust me.) and went walking towards Caitlin and Logan who are hollering in the other room.

There's lots of hollering around here, these days. Some days it's good squealing/hollering with laughter and other days it's the "She/He/They stole my pencil! Paper! Blanket! Toy!" angry kind of hollering. Which often leads to me hollering, "What's going on in there, guys?! Share!"

It's almost like Emma's following me around and copying me.

Little mimic!

Other personal favorites:

"Don' touch dat!"
"Don' drop it!"

"Be careful!"

"Oh my goodness!"

"What's dis?" Twins "helping" in the kitchen.

The only way Logan gets to push Emma around.

They're pretty funny, the two of them. Caitlin is still running hot and cold towards Logan, but clearly prefers Emma (which is very sad for Logan, frankly). Both twins are talking a lot, but Emma is very clear, while Logan isn't.

Until Grampy comes over.

Suddenly Logan has a million things to say and Emma gets all shy and won't talk. She makes this face a lot:


Considering that they both go completely ape when they hear "Grammy and Grampy are coming over!", you'd think she'd be a little less shy when they actually show up...but, no.

"Hey Daddy! Check it out!" and "Daddy, come back heeeere!" are fun. Almost everything is worth checking out and Daddy is especially fun to call back over when you are teasing him with popcorn.

Still won't eat her breadcrusts, though.

Emma! Can you say, "Minx?"

Bread Baking: One Year Later

It was one year ago (plus a week, but I was too busy baking to edit photos and write), that I started making all of our bread at home. I started off with possibly the easiest bread making book techniques I'd ever run across from AB5M and produced some fantastic loaves. Yummy and easy, what more could you want?

Well, next thing I knew, I was trolling bread baking blogs and seeing some pretty amazing stuff. The book The Bread Baker's Apprentice kept getting mentioned and there was even a challenge that started last summer to bake every bread in the book. I'm not actually part of the challenge, but I am amused to think there are other people as crazy as I am that want to cook every bread in the book (I've made 12 out of the 43 breads in this book since I received it for Xmas. Some, even twice since they were sooo good!). The constant practice with AB5M and now the technical info and step by step photos of BBA have completely taken my bread baking skills to another level. The first 100 pages of Reinhart's book are worth the purchase price alone*. I learned a lot!

Which is how I went from simply stirring flour, water, salt and yeast together and letting it rise, to creating a biga and a soaker one day and then combining them and working on the dough the next day. From easy to almost silly levels of complexity (One day maybe I'll be almost as good as Steve from Breadcetera!). It's not that it's any harder. It's just a little more work.

But the bread! The bread!

The difference is amazing!

Mise en place for multigrain transitional (half wheat, half white) bread.
This recipe is from Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. I wanted to see how different the techniques are for whole grains vs. plain all-purpose flour. The answer is very!

The biga and soaker are made the day before you want to actually make the bread. This helps to get more flavor into the finished loaf, soften the grains and break out the sugars in the flour and grains.

Biga

Soaker

The soaker is made up of buttermilk, whole wheat flour, oats, coarsely ground corn, finely ground flax seed and cooked brown rice. Or, whatever mixture you like.

Kneading

The next day, the biga and soaker are mixed together with the remaining ingredients and kneaded together. I use my mixer for the majority of the work, but had to do a little hand kneading to get to the right texture here.

Smooth ball

Once it's all lovely and smooth, rounded and sexy, it's ready for rising.

Risen dough

Then, once doubled in size, it's time to de-gas it and get ready to form it into a loaf. That's right, de-gas, not punch down. Far too violent a thing for my bread.

Degassing dough

You don't really need to "punch" the dough and you don't need to roll it out with a pin. Instead, you can just gently stretch it into the shape you want with your hands. This way you'll get a nice open crumb when you're done.

Rolling up loaf

As for rolling up the loaf, the new technique I've learned it to fold it over, seal that edge, then again, sealing the edge each time. Don't worry about de-gassing the dough, it's going to have more time to rise again after it's formed.

Sealing the seam

Make sure to seal the seam well so it doesn't split open while baking. The seam always goes down into the pan.

Formed loaf

Roll the dough under your hands to even out the shape of the loaf, if you end up with one side slightly fatter than the other.

Poppy seed coated

For grins I decided to roll mine in some poppy seeds. I think if I'd washed the exterior with egg wash they've have stuck on better. Just rolling them in the seeds meant that after it was cooked they all just fell off as I sliced into the bread. Oh well!

Cresting the pan lip

Once the dough crests the lip of the pan, it's ready to go into the pre-heated oven (I probably should have let it rise a little higher here.). Oven spring is what we're looking for to make the bread even taller.

Slashing the dough

I like the idea of slashing the dough. Mostly it's for aesthetics. Sometimes it helps the bread to handle expansion without splitting on its own in unsavory ways in the oven. Each recipe is different.

Finished multigrain bread

Then, finally, when the bread is baked and then cooled for about 2 hours (You have to let the crumb set and the moisture inside the loaf equalize before slicing. Trust me, it's better this way. The other way will often get you gummy bread. A little waiting is worth it!), you are ready to finally taste it!

Multigrain bread crumb

Yes, that is an awful lot of work for a single loaf. However, once you've seen how it works, you can then fiddle with the recipe: doubling it, altering ingredients, lengthening the rise, etc. I like to make bread by following the exact recipe at least once and then fiddling with it after that. This way, if there's a failure, I know a little more about where that failure point may have been introduced. Also, it's not a bad idea to try a promising recipe 3 times before giving up on it.

I think that is the key thing I've learned over the last year: to not be afraid of yeasted doughs. All else fails, I can always try again.

I have to warn you, though. This bread baking becomes an obsession!



* Just in case you're wondering, I am not being compensated by anyone mentioned here. No, it's just me, buying yet more cookbooks and going a little crazy baking. But a yummy kind of crazy!

Emma's First Lecture

We've instituted a new rule around Chez Hatchet: if you touch mommy and daddy's laptop or mommy's plants, you immediately get taken to your room for a 2 minutes timeout.

Logan has needed constant reinforcement on this issue. He's seen the inside of his room more times than I can count between today and Friday (when we really started being hardcore about it). Emma, on the other hand, has been paying attention.

I know this because the last time I put Logan in his room and set the timer, Emma walked upstairs, opened the door and let him out.

I was going to go and put him back in when I heard what she was saying:

"Yogan, no touch computer! No computer. Yogan no touch. No computer, Yogan! You no touch computer. No."

I don't know how long she went on in that refrain, but it was long enough for me to have heard at least one repetition of her spiel. That girl! I love that little monkey!

And Yogan better start paying attention!

The Futility of Floor Cleaning

I am not OCD about cleaning. I'm not even particularly crazy about cleaning (although I do have higher standards for cleanliness than the other adult living here is, I've noticed), but one must clean house if one is to survive.

HOWEVER.

The children

are

trying

to kill me.

Specifically the twins. While Caitlin may make her share of messes, the twins have out stripped her in breadth and scope of sheer destructive and deliberate mess making.

What's the point in sweeping and mopping if not thirty seconds after allowing a twin into the room with some beans and rice it is all over the floor, requiring yet more sweeping and mopping? I left them alone while I went to go get my food and water in the kitchen. It's not even that far away! The dining room and kitchen are essentially the same room, but separated by the bartop/stovetop peninsula between the two.

That peninsula is what hides the worst of the twins' depravities from my eyes while I'm working in the kitchen. Only the sneaky silence tells me that Something Is Wrong.

Also, every time I turn around Logan is busy ripping my poor fuchsia apart and throwing soil all around.

Every. Time.

I know that I've mentioned the need for a dog that I can pull out of a pocket dimension to eat all of the food that gets thrown around, but I think what I really need is a straight jacket for Logan. Or a force field that a) keeps them out of the plants and b) doesn't allow food to fall to the floor.

Yeah. Get to work on that, would ya?

Note to the Twins...

Screaming is not the same as sleeping.

I know they both start with "s" and end in "ing", but really? I know you're both just two (and a third), but they AREN'T the same thing.

Now please, let's make with the napping, OK? OK. Great.

Oh man, did I just confuse the issue by changing it to the "N" word?

I don't know, but the screaming has abruptly stopped. Maybe my super powers have finally come in and I've made them fall asleep by thinking about it hard enough! Woo!

I'd give up on the idea of flight for Super Directed Napping powers, I would.

Emma's First Lie

Certainly not her last and likely to be a pattern.

When asked who broke the dresser drawers (They ripped the metal wheels off of two of the drawers and snapped the rail off two others - these two are destructive!), Emma answered "Yogan did it!".

When asked, "Who made this mess?" (any mess, anywhere in the house, any day, any time): "Yogan did it!"

When asked, "Just you just make a stinky?": "Yogan did it!"

Logan is doomed.

On the bright side, whenever he doesn't want to eat something, she helpfully pipes up with "I eat it!" and then grabs the food off his plate. Very helpful, she is.

Just don't ask her about who did anything naughty.

Bread Baking Bonanza

I've been baking bread like mad in the last couple of months. Mostly it has to do with the fact that fresh bread is yummy, healthier for you and uses up less plastic. It also keeps me slightly saner to feel creative in the kitchen. After working my way through Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (and then buying the second book), I decided, for grins, to try to work on "harder" bread.

My first attempt was a Pugliese.

That's no moon!

It was enormous. Tasted pretty good, but not amaaaazing. It took an extra day to make because I had to create a pre-ferment called a biga. Very interesting.

Then, I decided to create a bread called Pain de Campagne. It took 4 days of creating a pre-ferment and then it wasn't very good when I finished baking it.

Flat, dense and sour.

In between the more complex breads, I was still making the AB5M breads and enjoying them greatly. There's a lot to be said for bread that you don't have to spend a lot of time making and yet tastes great!

Lentil curry bread. Yes, it was green.

The lentil curry bread sounded good to me, in theory, but I needed to find out what it would be like in reality. As it turns out, Caitlin, Eric and I loved it. It turned dark brown once cooked, but was still sort of dark green inside. Caitlin received flak about it at school. Her friends don't understand why she doesn't have "normal" bread. Green bread was really blowing their minds.

Five minute baguette. Easy and yummy.

I also love the reaction I get from friends and family when I break out a bread for dinner and they inhale it.

However...around Xmas time I asked Eric for a new bread book. This one is called the Bread Baker's Apprentice and teaches you quite a lot about the science behind the loaves. I love it.

The very first bread I made from it?

Bagels.

Large bagels in front have just been boiled.

Bagels are coated in onion (back), sesame seeds (middle) and a mix of light and dark sesame seeds, poppy seeds and salt (front).

Baked bagels make the house smell fantastic!

Of course, I had to make cream cheese to go with the bagels. It takes 2.5 days to make the cream cheese and 2 days to make the bagels. It's not just baking, it's a commitment and it may as well be good! As it turns out, these bagels were fantastic!

And that was just the start of the fantastic breads in this book. There was Anadama bread, which I've read about but never had an interest in making.

Anadama bread.

Delightful!

I jumped at making cinnamon raisin bagels and discovered that I'm never doing that again, unless I have a much larger KitchenAid mixer. That dough is tough, in order to be chewy, and the addition of all of those raisins makes it impossible to knead in my 4.5 qt without having a raisin shower. had to hand knead it for many more minutes than I ever wanted to.

Cream cheese on cinnamon raisin bagels.

I was glad to be done and glad to eat them. They're on my list to make again...some day. Just like croissants. I made those in my pastry class years ago and haven't made them since. There's an awful lot of work in those things!

Not pretty, but pretty yummy.

Baguettes that took a pre-ferment and two days to make.

Oooh! Aaah!

I learned about proper folding technique to stretch the outer dough and make a properly shaped loaf of bread.

Light whole wheat. More effort than I want to put in for a single loaf.

I made a bread entitled Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire, so I felt almost dared to make it.

Poppy seeds on crust.

Interior crumb.

It had brown rice in it and wheat germ, oats and cornmeal. It was incredible. I need to make it again, it was so good!

The last one I made (so far) was the Casatiello.

Oh. My. God.

It's a sandwich within a bread.

Salami.
Provolone.
Butter. Eggs. Buttermilk.
It was so good that I'm surprised the neighbors didn't break down the door from the heavenly scent wafting out the front door.

Ooooooh!

In the end, though, all of this bread winds up in our bellies.

And on the floor.

And stuffed between the pillows on the couch.

And in a trail that heads upstairs to the twins' room.

You see, while I love my bread and eat it all up, those short people are known to be a little...messy when it comes to eating.

Jamface Man.

But they love the bread. And they like to watch while I make it and sniff all of the ingredients.

Logan elbows Emma for room on the stepladder.

They also offer to touch all of the balls of dough and taste test anything before and after it is done baking. They love anything with a soft crust (Emma is terrible about picking out the middle and then dropping the crust wherever she wants.) and are tiny Carbivores. If it has flour in it, they want to eat it.

Yup. It's been a bread bonanza around here. You should really drop by and have a bite!

Wasn't there a holiday in there, somewhere?

Yes, I am still around. Seriously. I actually am.

I've been so busy baking bread and attempting to potty train* (and doing all the extra diaper laundry that attempt entails), that I haven't had a whole lot of energy left over for much of anything else. However, here are a few photos to make up for it. A little.

Ready to rip and roll!

Xmas 2009 at Chez Hatchet

There were few presents under the tree this year, but piles and piles of them at Grammy's house the night before. Someone went a little crazy with the presents, but 'tweren't me. Here, at home, there was quite a bit of ripping and shredding of paper, even with the few presents we had.

You know what the twins learned about Christmas? Shredding is fun! It didn't matter what was inside, so long as they got to destroy some paper. (And they are destructive little buggers, let me tell you!)

Opening a present from Aunt Cindy.

Oooh! New books!

The twins love this book! Unfortunately, they ripped several pages out of it the day we mistakenly left it in their room on the dresser. They climbed up and ripped out parts of the PIGS! book. The rest of us were very sad. Now we lock up all of their books at night. Sigh.

Logan "reading" his photo album from Cousin Janet.

Photo albums starring the twins (and Caitlin) were a big hit again this year. They love them, carry them around and flip through them all the time. Except that we have to take them away when their screaming/messy fingers/shredding instincts kick in.

Emma sings along to the Beatles for Kids album.

We also got some new music for the kids: Ziggy Marley and The Beatles for Children. Verrah nice.


Eric received some presents, too! Amazing! He was almost forgotten in the feeding frenzy. Even I received a present! A new cookbook: The Bread Baker's Apprentice. You suddenly understand where all my free time has gone, don't you?


Caitlin received yet more books, of course, and a few video games for the Wii. She seemed quite happy with her haul, so all is well.

We spent a very quiet New Year's Eve here at home. Eric and I had discussed the possibility of one of us getting out to a party solo, but decided not to bother. NYE solo isn't as much fun. Finishing off a new book my MIL gave me was much more fun, anyway.

I found 2009 to be a very rough year for me as a woman, mother and a shut-in housewife SAHM. I'm really hoping 2010 will be more to my liking. It's OK so far, but still...no silver jumpsuit? No flying car? No teleporters? The future is a total ripoff so far!

Instead, I'll have to be content with homemade bread. And lots of it!

Why yes, I did make that. And the cream cheese that went on it, too.

And some bagels, for good measure.




* I have been reading all of your comments. Thanks so much for the support and humor and well wishes! Thanks for sticking with me!