Making Dandelion Wine Step-by-Step #2 - Flower-Picking to Yeast Addition

ab3nd and I are making Dandelion wine this spring. This is an ongoing series of posts.

He and I spent about 3 hours picking dandelions at a park on Tuesday, and then spent another hour cutting off most of the bitter greens, and then another hour boiling them in a big pot on the stove. It was time-consuming; if we ever do anything like this again then we should definitely make it a weekend, rather than an overnight, project.

Then, according to the recipe, the pot of boiled dandelion heads sat for two days with a twice-daily stirring. On Thursday evening, I spent another hour peeling the rind off of two lemons and an orange, and juicing them by hand since we don't have a hand juicer here, and sterilizing the inside of the bucket with some bleach and water.

I was a little worried: unboiled, the pot of dandelions smelled like bitter greens; but when boiled again let out that lovely aroma of almost-honey. I added the rind, boiled for another hour, added the citrus juices and sugar, and let it cool. I'm glad I started to do that around 4, because it took until about 10 at night for the vat-o-sugar to cool off enough to put the yeast in, even with stirring periodically. Around 10 pm I dumped the whole thing in the big bucket, stirred the yeast in, put the lid and the vent on, and sat the whole thing in the pantry closet to sit until Sunday.

Then I spent an hour designing a wine label in gimp. I don't know if we will decide to use this, but I really like it.

Short List of What I have Been Doing Lately

- Watching anime ("Girl meets Girl", which features a highschool girl romance triangle (!)) with thomasyan, doma. and ab3nd so thomasyan can see all of it before he goes to a panel on gender in anime at Wiscon. After Wiscon, we may go on to watch other anime. I have...a long list of series I still haven't finished (Hikaru no Go? Utena? Fullmetal Alchemist? Spice and Wolf? Yeah.)

- Unpacking. Still no bookshelves, but: McIntyre & Moore's Used Books is going out of business for good (I feared that their new location, in a basement where no one could see them, would be no good!). I have no bookshelves, but I will probably have some new bookshelves soon, thanks to their sale.

- Fixing the toilet. (Don't ask).

- Working.

- Trying to save my bonsai tree. It might be dead, since it didn't get enough water last summer, but I can't just give it up yet. I have been watering it with fertilizer and hope. The dracenea plant I rescued from near death a few years ago, though, is definitely dead this time around. :(

- Making wine. (See series of winemaking posts.)

- Doing gender activism stuff.

- Being ill. I am still battling total exhaustion almost every day; I walked yesterday to Porter Sq to pick up some toilet-repair supplies at Tags and my shins ached the entire way there like I'd never freaking walked anywhere before. I kept walking only because otherwise, it felt really good. At this point, I am pretty sure I will need my tonsills out eventually, and/or have enlarged adenoids; symptoms of tonsilitis and enlarged adenoids include: bad breath, ear pain when swallowing, swollen neck lymph nodes, a skin rash which may or may not be scarlet fever (I think maybe not, but who knows), chronic ear infections, extreme malaise and tiredness, sore throat, the sense of something being caught in the back of the throat, snoring and disturbed sleep patterns, frequent awakening from sleep, restless sleep, nightmares, bedwetting, mood changes, excessive sleepiness, and even heart problems, and improper alignment of the teeth (malocclusion). Have I got all that? Hell, yes. Maybe my new doctor can help, but I can't find wherever I may have packed my digital thermomoeter, or if I even have one, and I don't have enough money right at this second to go to the doctor and get all the tests that probably need doing.

All I know is that every day for almost two and a half years now, I've more or less felt like this, and I've been going to the doctor this or that and saying "something is wrong, please help me," who tells me it's all in my head and that my tests are normal and I just need to lose like 60 pounds, and then I go to the therapist, who helps me out emotionally but can't make me feel not exhausted and incredibly grumpy from it even on the most beautiful day, and then I take out that grumpiness on myself and the people I care about, and destroy my relationship with myself and my coworkers and loved ones and friends with the bad decisions I make when all I really want to do is go to sleep and stop getting ear infections and having a hard time swallowing every other month. And then I still know something is wrong, and I go back to the doctors, who tell me the physical stuff will magically disappear if I will myself to work out (which it didn't), or my emotional stuff will go away if I allow myself to believe that people love me and allow myself to ask for help when I need it because I am achy, tired, sick, or sad (which it didn't)--but generally that nothing is wrong with me that I can't fix by, I don't know, sheer force of will, and all I lack is willpower to make my life better.

It's been exhausting, knowing something is physically wrong with me that's affecting my emotions and turning me into a gradually less joyful person, leading me to make foolish decisions and thereby destroying my relationship with myself and my loved ones, but being told that nothing is wrong with me that 60 fewer pounds, a good job, and loving relationships wouldn't fix. Sigh.