Whereas I resent being forced to buy *three whole* packets of yeast, when I will only ever use one! I make Dilly Bread rarely enough that the previous yeasties are always past use when I come to it again. (And trying to make sense of my dialect is an iffy proposition. My parents are both from Ohio, but I'm an Air Force brat who grew up all over the US. I'm firmly on the East Coast side of the soda/pop divide, but otherwise I'm rather a mish-mash.)

Mortar and pestle, check. Having spent way too many hours of my life grinding dried marigold petals (for professional reasons, not culinary), I'm inclined to blame too much moisture for the ones that don't grind right. We did the drying ourselves, and even when they were all done the same way, there were some individual plants whose petals just had more "substance," and wouldn't give up the last traces of water to become brittle. Then when you have different brands and suppliers in the mix, you add the possibility of different thoroughness in drying, and different aridity of storage conditions on their way to you.

a really hard 4/4 rock rhythm to make the punching go right

Hmm. My repertory right now really doesn't include anything that answers this description. We'll see what I can do about that.