I think I’m giving up regular blogging for the time being. I need to step back, regroup, and figure out what it means to me and what I want out of it. There are no rules for this hiatus, so you may see recipe posts, or even “normal” posts, from time to time. Don’t know when I’ll be back; might be next week, might be next month, might be longer. If I change my mind, well, that’s my prerogative. In the meantime, best wishes.
Questions? Comments? crisitunityblog [at] gmail [dot] com.
Emotionally, I have been better than this. I’d write about it, but every time I’ve written about a mood like this it has passed and I feel foolish for taking it seriously. So here’s hoping that it’ll pass and no one will need to hear about it at all.
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My house is completely infested with spiders. Not scary spiders, or skittery spiders, or poisonous spiders, so it could be a lot worse. They are small leggy spiders that seem to have established a colony in the bowels of my gas fireplace a few years ago and, every spring and summer, they spread to all corners of the house and set up residency anew. (Which means that each winter so far I have had hope that this is over, and each summer my hopes are dashed. Fun.) Most of them reside in the living room, and a few times a week I come through with my paper towels and smash between 5 and 10 of them, as many as I can find, but they keep. coming. back.
The thing is, we also have a summer ant problem, one that has been varying in intensity since we moved in here. The ants happen to come into the house near the same areas that the spiders scratch out their existence. So part of me wants to throw up my hands and let the one problem handle the other. Not that I would stop killing as many spiders as I could, but I could stop worrying about the fact that there always seem to be more no matter what I do.
(Yes, I have tried roasting their little colony by turning on the fireplace. Didn’t work.)
(And apparently there isn’t much pest control people can do in my situation.)
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As if the leg problem (which is getting better by the day; I have high hopes that I didn’t tear anything after all) wasn’t enough, I’m dealing with this odd sensation of discomfort in my teeth. Yesterday I was eating a fruit cup with little oat sprinkles, and every time I took a bite, my teeth felt…itchy. Like I needed to bite down and grind. It was inexplicable and not pleasant, and I know I sound a little crazy but I’m just recording the sensation, y’all. And the crowding in the bottom front row of teeth, which I’ve dealt with more or less with aplomb since I was a kid, is suddenly making this one tooth feel maddeningly uncomfortable, as if it needs flossing every second of every day. It’s also the tooth that gives me painful cold sores in the inside of my bottom lip pretty frequently, because it pokes out and rubs. So I’m wondering if I should just do a little door-slammin’ amateur surgery. Nah, just kidding, I wouldn’t do that. Probably.
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Today the Blue Angels are practicing over Annapolis for tomorrow’s air show to celebrate the Naval Academy commencement festivities. Some of the people in the office seem actually to be excited about this. I guess it’s just my jaded military-child attitude, but seriously? They’re just fast planes painted blue. Which I saw several dozen times during the airshows of my childhood. Most of my memories are being bored and hot and upset from the loud noises and wanting to go home. Kind of like now, except I’m cold rather than hot.
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I watched Kramer vs. Kramer last night, which has probably the most misleading DVD cover in the history of movies. It won Best Picture, along with Oscars for Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman. Definitely an actors’ movie, but the screenplay was decent too, even if the subject matter was both familiar and foreign to me. (I am definitely in the fighting-for-custody zone in my job, but I don’t know what it would be like to want to take care of a kid that badly.)
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It’ll pass, really. This whole thing – the desperation for bed, need for distraction, impotent fury at everything, dissatisfaction with everything everything – the whole business will pass, and I don’t need to say anything to anyone. I don’t need to deal with it or talk about it, because it’ll pass.
I spent most of yesterday on the futon, or on the couch, resting my leg against a bag of ice. It feels 75% better today than it felt yesterday, much less swollen and painful, but there’s definitely an injury there. I spent a lot of the futon/couch time yesterday feeling angry and sorry for myself due to this. I do have reasons, and normally I’d be writing and writing about them, but yet another source has accused me of an entitled attitude, and I’m pretty tired of hearing it, and am pretty hurt and depressed in general, and it’s Monday morning and I want to take the Way-Back Machine to Saturday night at midnight and start everything over again with some Tylenol PM.
So I don’t think I’m qualified to talk about my emotions today. They’re dull and tiresome and painful. Instead I’ll talk about movies and ordinary things and then sign off.
Frances. This is a 1982 movie with a hella powerful performance by Jessica Lange. The subject is Frances Farmer, but after the first 45 minutes I took a break to read about her on Wikipedia and decided to take most of the movie as fiction. She never had a lobotomy or a lifelong love interest or hated her mother or any of that. Although the lobotomy scene was a horribly painful thing, because I’m sure that exact thing did happen to a number of people. (I read about that, too.) The movie is overbaked and generally a lot of hooey, but still somewhat interesting to watch. Great hair, great costumes.
Cactus Flower. I kid you not: Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, and Ingrid Bergman, in 1969. Goldie is about fourteen (or so it seems). Ingrid Bergman is still extremely beautiful. (And she has a flair for comedy I did not imagine.) The movie is not extraordinary in any way – I almost turned it off three or four times out of boredom – but it is an extremely flamboyant slice of 1969 America. It would be one of the most useful anthropological documents I’ve ever encountered for future researchers of the 20th century.
Written on the Wind. I’d seen this one before, in film class – it’s a 1950′s melodrama by the master of masters, Douglas Sirk. I made BF watch it with me, because it is unmissably hilarious. To the point where I have no idea who could have taken seriously melodrama and symbolism this silly, at any time, anywhere. I’d go so far as to call this the ultimate melodrama, and say that if you must see one, see this one. (Although I haven’t seen Mildred Pierce yet, so that opinion may change.)
Friday’s restorative class went somewhat better than I’d expected. I had one student, a woman who was a fan of N’s, and I explained that I was teaching full restorative with no active poses, but she stuck around anyway. She appeared to have a wonderful time, and I had a pretty good time teaching, even though there were long, long stretches where I simply sat, having no idea what to do with myself. Overall, successful. I think I’ll be making flyers for that class to draw people in, because with the audience of this studio, I think a class that’s pure restorative will be well-received. And that’s a class I can teach even if my right leg falls entirely off.
Which I almost wish it would do, just to end the ambiguity. I told BF last night that at least one thing is clear: my body was not meant to be that of an athlete. It is just too fragile. For the record, I wasn’t doing anything unsafe at all – it was a move I’d done dozens of times before. This time was just different, I guess. And bad.
I don’t think I’ve slept as poorly as I did last night in years. I was awake and waiting for sleep to come for most of the night. We didn’t even get to bed until midnight, and at 1:37 I turned over to look at the clock and went, “okay, this is bad.” I also felt strange during most of the night that I was trying to sleep, drifting towards dozing and then awaking again, feverish, with a racing brain. At some points I felt like I was almost experiencing waking dreaming, because my mind went to weird places and asked weird questions. But I still wasn’t asleep.
I spent some of the night praying that no one will come to my class this morning. (The class, of course, is part of the reason I slept so poorly: stayed up late anyway, only going to get 6 hours, so the pressure’s on to sleep now and sleep good, and I didn’t.) I have never felt less qualified to teach yoga than I do this morning. If people show up, presumably I’m meant to learn something from that, but I asked whatever’s up there to please cut me a break this one time so I can come home and go back to bed.
The reason we got in so late last night was BF’s cousin’s wedding. She shares a lot of her guest list with us, so it was interesting to see what we’ll do that’s similar to what she did (and what isn’t). The wedding took place at MP’s house, and it was really just beautiful. The bride looked lovelier than I’ve ever seen her. I drank a good deal and danced some and had a good time, but I was ready for it to be over long before it was so I could be in bed . I couldn’t believe how long the party was, actually – the guests had all arrived by 4:30, and the DJ didn’t stop the music until 11:00. Of course, the guests were more than half people our age, who like to party.
The processional was like so: the groom walked his parents down the aisle on either side of him, and the bride, shortly after, did the same. The bride’s parents were divorced years ago, and I have to admit to my shame that I felt a bolt of extreme jealousy when I saw them walking her down the aisle together. They’re grownups, said my brain. How fucking nice for you. I felt awful, because it was her day and I was genuinely happy for her, but I can’t lie: it was upsetting to me. My father was much on my mind all of yesterday, in fact, thinking about what he’s going to miss 13 months from now. More about that some other time.
Someone pointed out that starting this morning, the spotlight has moved from the newlyweds to me and BF. We’re next, and they’re going to start pecking at us right away. One of BF’s aunts has been a particular irritant in that way in the last few days. I have always had the suspicion that she doesn’t like me – she doesn’t wait for me to finish my answers to questions she asks me before commenting on them, she doesn’t always meet my eyes, and generally I just get the feeling from her that she’d rather be somewhere else than talking to me. She really loves BF, though – I think he’s her favorite among the nieces and nephews. Anyway, she’s been asking me nonstop picky little questions about the wedding, and I’ve been answering her as best I can, but I’m exasperated to the point where I want to just send her the giant document describing the wedding so she’ll leave me alone. The other half of me wants to say “Just wait and see!”, because I can’t imagine it’ll be much fun to attend a wedding where you know every detail of how things will go.
BF spent some of yesterday playing Red Dead Redemption, which is a Western open-world game from the makers of GTA. It’s very enjoyable to watch (and, it appears, to play). I have to say, the thing I like best about it is the music; they completely nailed the cool Sergio Leone style of Western music, with whistling and the occasional mouth-harp and all. It’s a deep, wide game, with excellent dialogue and remarkable graphics.
I’ve got to hit the ol’ dusty trail myself, so I can go teach. I’m really, really hoping that everyone will stay home this morning.
Update: The universe either did not hear me or decided the best thing to do was send me three students: two regulars and a brand-new, somewhat rude and irritating woman. I then proceeded to reinjure my right hamstring; you may remember that the previous injury…hamstrung me two years ago in the late summer. It’s too early to tell if it’s a tear or if I just snapped a ligament the wrong way and bruised the muscles in there (which was what I felt like when I did it - the resulting pain feels a lot like whatever I did to my shoulder at teacher training, which was probably just a bad overstretch of connective tissue), but I’ll know more in a few days.
FUCK. I wasn’t even overstretching myself. And now I have to teach through whatever this is – before I just had to deal with being a student through it.
At least it meant I could cancel my 4:00 class. (Secret glee.)
Man, this blog thing is just neverendingly exciting. As exciting as yelling into an empty canyon. Hellooo…Hellooo…Hellooo…
Last night I made corn soup. I’ve never made it before, and it was another recipe out of this month’s Yoga Journal. The recipe was incredibly simple: chop fresh corn off the cob, boil it in vegetable broth for 15 minutes, saute a chopped onion, add it to the soup with salt and pepper, blend in a blender (and optionally put through a sieve, which I didn’t do, too much trouble), and serve. I learned from this endeavor: 1) Alton Brown’s method for chopping corn off the cob, which uses an upside-down paper bowl in a work bowl instead of sawing it off over a board, is more brilliant than I ever knew. I remembered thinking when I saw it that it was kind of unnecessarily complicated for the task being done, but I’d never sawed corn off the cob before. The kernels bounce all over the place if you do it on a chopping board, and you can’t get the knife down the cob if you do it over a bowl. But his solution is perfect. Also, 2) the weekend crew at our local grocery store is definitely the B crew. I got a little taste of the A crew when I went to the store last night for a few things, and they blew me away with their quick and helpful work for me.
Anyway, while I was making this recipe, I was thinking that a little smoked paprika would really do something special to the soup. But I never alter recipes the first time I make them, I always do them by the book. When I was finished, I tried the soup, and my brain went “smoked paprika, girl, put some in”, and I did. I tried it again, and the smoky and the sweet were terrific, but there was still something missing. I pinched in some cayenne and tried it a third time. Oh, it was perfect. BICKETY-BAM. I love improving recipes written by real live cooks.
I still haven’t heard from N, but J wrote me back this morning with a totally neutral it’s-cool email about the Asheville weekend. PHEW. I will be making reservations this weekend for my very own hotel room! I haven’t often stayed overnight somewhere on my own dime, so despite the fact that I’ll be spending money I don’t really want to spend, I’m sort of excited.
Tonight, after I teach my first restorative class ever, is the rehearsal dinner for BF’s cousin’s wedding, which is tomorrow afternoon. No big deal for me, but I’m sure she’s flipping out. Trying to think good thoughts for her. And also for TB, who is having a family crisis.
Wrote an email to J telling her I didn’t want to stay over with her and didn’t want to ride down with her. I phrased it by saying that I needed time to myself to process everything that’s happened in 2010. This is true, the more I think about it, but of course it’s not the whole truth. Haven’t heard from her yet and am starting to get nervous. I fear I may have done the wrong thing for our “friendship”, even though I know it was the right thing for me.
Wrote a second email to N asking her what she wanted me to do about the damn class already. I don’t think it was too much, when I emailed her on Saturday and hadn’t heard from her by Wednesday, that I decided to email her again. I am aware that she doesn’t check her email very frequently, but I know very few people who check their email less than twice a week. In fact, I think none, including my 83-year-old grandmother. In 2010 it’s akin to letting your bills pile up in the mailbox all week.
Watched a DVD about restorative yoga (skipping through the long holds), and read some of a book about restorative yoga. I think I’m ready to build and teach a restorative class, but I find myself still wondering what the heck I’ll do with all the time the students will spend in those long holds. After I adjust them (if I adjust them – perhaps I won’t), I’ll just be sitting there. I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep talking all throughout, because I want them to spend time in their bodies, as much silence in their minds as possible. But that will leave me with nothing to do for long minutes ticking away. (This is going to be my very first question at Yin training in June: what do we DO with ourselves during all that time?) Also, FYI, Amazon Prime does not play around. Free two-day shipping means you might get your item the Monday after the Sunday afternoon you ordered it. I think it might be worth $79 a year, but I’m not sure, as I tend to buy a lot more used stuff than new stuff from Amazon and those items wouldn’t qualify.
Made a recipe for cashew curry from Deb’s book that I think was disappointing. The curry itself seemed pretty delicious, and the cashews had a wonderful texture, but it was high in fat (healthy fat, to be fair) and not very filling or nutritious, and the flavor was far more of cashews than of everything else that went into the sauce. I think I’ll use the sauce for a tofu or chicken curry instead, another time.
Worked hard.
DID NOT go to class at the community college.
Admired the seedlings I have successfully nurtured out of the soil in their tiny pots. Pictures and more info about that to come. I got a parsley package and a bell pepper package for a dollar each in the Target discount bins a couple of weeks ago and have been furiously overwatering them and peering at them ever since. I am so proud of myself that I didn’t kill off these little plants, y’all. I was sure I would. I always do. But these have LIVED. Soon to be replanted into bigger pots and put out in the sunlight. Where they’ll probably die. But maybe not!
Pined for the fjords BF. Until he came home. At which time: went to bed. Yaaaaay.
Cross-posted at No Butts About It.
Since the fall, the quality of the meals I make at home has been steadily declining. At first it was because of my (temporary) two-hour-a-day commute, and how tired and not-in-the-mood-to-cook I was when I got home. Then when I started taking the anatomy class, being totally unable to cook dinner two nights a week meant that produce went unused, decent leftover lunches taken to work got rarer, and I just sort of gave up on getting a healthy meal 10 times out of every 14. Lately BF and I have been living on burritos and pasta, and while Chipotle is by no means the same as McDonald’s, it’s still not the quality of food I was dishing up before things got so crowded in my life.
So, now that my class is finally over, I’ve recommitted to better eating. I threw out all the rotten onions, pored over my recipe books, and put together an enviable menu for this week that’s almost totally vegetarian. One of the bits of business that came into my life this week to help me out was this month’s issue of Yoga Journal, which has a bunch of recipes in it from yoga and mediation center kitchens all over the country. The first one I tried, from Tuesday evening, I found to be a great inspiration for anyone who’s committing or recommitting to a healthy lifestyle. Despite the length of the ingredient list, it’s fairly quick, it’s simple, and it’s got a lot of easy-to-find ingredients. It’s also a good way to introduce tofu to yourself if you’ve resisted it. I’ve modified the recipe, which is from Kripalu, with my own ideas, and I hope they’re helpful. (I don’t feel bad about printing it here because it’s in Yoga Journal this month, free to all who want to spend $4.99 on the magazine.)
To start, you’ll need to prep, marinate, and bake half a pound of firm to super-firm tofu. If you’re lucky enough to find firm tofu pre-cubed, use that; otherwise, slice the block of tofu into four thin slices. (If you bought a pound of tofu and are going to use the whole block, which is what I did, cut it into eight thin slices.) Get a large baking pan, and lay out paper towels three deep. Place the tofu slices on the paper towels, cover with two more layers of paper towel, and then cover with a second baking pan and some heavy food cans on top. The purpose of this is to squeeze as much moisture out of the tofu as possible so it can soak up another flavorful liquid later. (It’s a little trickier to do this with pre-cubed tofu, but it still works if you spread the cubes out.) After the paper towels are totally soaked, remove the tofu and cube it into wee 1/2 inch cubes.
Marinate it in this marinade, with the following changes: remove the Worcestershire sauce, use 2 tsp of liquid smoke, and, if you want, use a teaspoon of garlic powder instead of fresh garlic (I did, out of laziness). Tofu can marinate for a very short time, an hour or two, and still soak up as much flavor as if you let it marinate overnight, but for me overnight worked better in terms of timing.
While you’re preparing the rest of the paella, bake the tofu at 375F for 15 minutes, or longer if you like a tougher texture. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of marinating it, be my guest and use it plain, but if you haven’t tried tofu before, I don’t recommend it.
(If you can find smoke-flavored tofu, good on ya, and no need for the marinade. I know I couldn’t.)
4 cups vegetable broth or stock, plus one cup water*
1 tsp loosely packed saffron threads**
Olive oil
1 onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 red bell pepper, seeded & diced
1/2 yellow or orange bell pepper, seeded & diced***
1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup sliced sun-dried tomatoes, drained
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 1/2 cups short-grain rice, such as Arborio
8 oz smoke-flavored baked tofu, diced+
1/2 cup cooked frozen green peas (fresh if you can get ‘em, which is generally unlikely)
1 tbsp truffle oil, optional++
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley, or 2 tsp dried
Lemon wedges, for serving (totally unnecessary, I didn’t use ‘em)
*The recipe calls for 5 cups of broth, but the 32-oz boxes of broth you can buy at the supermarket are four cups exactly, and I used one of those and a cup of water to tide it over, which is a hell of a lot easier than buying two boxes and having leftovers.
**Saffron is wicked expensive and hard to come by in decent quantities. A teaspoon could cost you $30. I had a few pinches in my pantry and used that, and didn’t really miss the flavor. I don’t think you’ll be ruining the recipe if you don’t use it at all.
***If you think it’s dumb to use half of one color pepper and half of another, use one whole one, I won’t tell.
+See above for the marinade that’ll give you about the same effect, in my estimation. I used a whole pound of cubed tofu rather than half a pound, but I don’t really mind tofu, and it gives a little more heft to the recipe.
++Shyeah. I totally have that on hand. IN CULINARY IMAGINARY LAND.
ACTUAL RECIPE, FINALLY: In a saucepan, bring the broth to a simmer over medium heat. Add the saffron, remove from heat, cover, and set aside.
Meanwhile, in a paella pan (??) or large frying pan over medium-high, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add the onion, garlic and bell peppers. Saute until aromatic and softened to your preference. The recipe recommends 5 minutes, but I cooked them until they were totally soft and brown on the edges, because there’s more flavor and I don’t like parcooked onions. That took a bit longer.
Add the fresh and dried tomatoes, the turmeric, and 1/2 tsp of salt, and fry ‘em up. “Until the vegetables start to stick to the bottom of the pan, about 5 minutes” is the recipe’s recommendation, but I think “to the level that you deem appropriate” is fine too.
Add ~1/2 cup of the hot broth mixture to the pan and stir to scrape any browned bits from the bottom. (It will probably sizzle up all awesome.) Add the uncooked rice, the tofu, and 1/2 tsp of black pepper (fresh-ground if you prefer) to the pan and stir, stir, stir. When all the broth is absorbed, add another ~1 cup. Each time the liquid is totally absorbed, add another ~1 cup, until it’s all absorbed. Keep the mixture at a simmer.
(I know, you’re making risotto, right? Except: “Adjust heat as needed to prevent scorching, but do not stir the rice.” I didn’t notice this weird-ass direction for the first few additions of broth. A few kernels of the rice came out uncooked, but I don’t know if that’s because I didn’t follow the recipe or because I did.)
After about 20 minutes, you’re almost finished. Turn off the heat, add the peas, and cover. Let it steam for about 10 minutes, and then add the parsley and mythical truffle oil, and (in my case) additional salt and pepper to taste. Serve with the superfluous lemon wedges. Serves, oh, five or six.
Delicioso. Muy muy. Hope you enjoy it as much as BF and I did. I promise it really is a good gateway recipe for tofu. And ah, so healthy.
One of my supervising attorneys and I had a meeting last month where I talked about my frustration with not having enough work to do, and she asked me how she could get the other attorneys to help. I said I thought only time would really do it, time for them to learn to trust me with more and more tasks and time for me to learn how to do them. She said she agreed, but she was worried that I was going to get frustrated and quit. I assured her that I was not going to. What I thought, but didn’t explain, was that I had too good a deal here: this is a terrific firm with a great reputation, everything is nice and the technology is well-updated, I am being paid very well, the work is challenging, and there’s room for upward movement. Why would I want to quit all that?
A month later, I’m considering it.
Not seriously. I need a job, and actually I sort of need this job in particular, where it’s possible to take time off and be paid for it, where I commute 20 minutes in the morning, where I’m near all the things in town that I need to be near. But the idea has crept into my mind. I’m very frustrated, now, by the way the attorneys are treating me: how little they trust me and how easily one of them loses patience with me, how little they’re delegating to me in general, and how little help I’m being to them and to the firm at large. If I don’t bill a lot of hours, I’m not a worthwhile employee to keep on, and if I’m not given work to do, I’m not billing a lot of hours. I don’t know how many times I can bring this to them, how many different ways I can explain that I’m not busy enough (and that I’m doing a lot of secretary work instead of paralegal work), before I lose my mind.
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I watched a weird movie last night: The Hunger, from 1983, with Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie. I’m not sure I could think of two actors more perfectly suited to play ageless vampires. It was almost completely terrible – total 80′s indulgence and ridiculousness, a first-time director’s silly touches (although he’d turn out to be a good director, for all that) – but I did find out the name and composer of a piece of opera music I’ve been wondering about since approximately 1998, so not a total loss.
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MY AACC CLASS IS OVER AND FINISHED AND DONE. I’m not sure I did brilliantly on the last exam, but I did well enough to earn an A overall in the class. I feel such relief that it’s making my knees weak.
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This is going to be a busy week, with a wedding at the end of it (BF’s cousin). Hopefully I will be able to do all I need to do, and will find some patience for my job in there somewhere.
Iron Man 2: wholly good. I decidedly have an affinity for comic-book movies, and seem inclined to think better of them than other movies, so I maybe have made too big a deal out of Spider-Man 2 and the first Iron Man, and am maybe being too lenient with this one, but I’m very impressed with what The Fav has done with this property. The thing I liked most about this one, though, was the performances. All of Tony’s tech is pretty fun to watch, but watching Gwyneth convincingly lose her shit at him at one point, and Rourke be every inch an amused, disconnected sociopath, and Cheadle remind me through my Terrence Howard disappointment of what a ridiculously good actor he is (I forget literally every time before I see him again), and ScarJo manage to entirely mute her charisma for the sake of the character, and Downey, Jr. be simply astonishing in all things – that was the best part, for me. It really warmed the experience for me, because all the tech couldn’t compare to what the faces were doing.
Aeon Flux: The opposite of everything I said above. Cold, fruitless, very poorly written, hardly performed at all, a waste of time despite very cool tech. Looking at Charlize for 90 minutes was definitely okay – her makeup was gorgeous and she was exceedingly well-lit – but the movie was awful. The animated series’ creator had this to say about it: “[seeing it] made me feel helpless, humiliated and sad.” I feel for him, but I also want to ask him what exactly he expected.
Class yesterday morning: a toss-up. I had one student, a regular, a woman with whom I’ve taken yoga classes literally for years now (we were in the same classes at another studio for a long time). This was fine, but I admit to wanting more students, and I was pretty tired from Saturday’s DC adventures and wanted to be at home in bed.
Dinner last night: awesome. BF and I have been living on pasta and burritos from California Tortilla and Chipotle, and I am getting a little tired of myself being so goddamn lazy about cooking healthy meals. So yesterday I went through some recipe books and made a real grocery list (more than half of it produce), and we went to the store and I cooked a real dinner. It was a quinoa chowder recipe that had turned out very meh the first time I made it, but I thought I knew how to fix it: use flavored broth and double the aromatics. I also used zucchini in place of potatoes because I forgot to get potatoes, and wow, it really turned out well. I think I’ll make it the same way in the future. And there’s a hell of a lot less fat and salt moving through my system this morning, which makes me feel better, both physically and mentally.
My mood, in general: not good. I have the Monday hangover sensation. I am not being tasked remotely enough at work and I feel guilty and bored. This morning I felt dread of a rare intensity at the thought of a week of work. And I’m having this issue with the yoga training I’m getting next month in Asheville that I’m not sure what to do with.
J invited me some months ago, when we both signed up for the workshop, to drive down with her in her car and stay over with her in the hotel room she gets mostly for free thanks to her husband’s travel points. The last workshop I went to in Asheville, last summer, I stayed over with her, but I drove down by myself and very much enjoyed the trip. I think it’ll be nice to take the workshop with her, and I could probably even deal with the overnights with her (social-anxiety-wise, it was hard last time but I dealt with it), but I don’t want to be in the car with her for 8 hours there and 8 hours back. At all. Not even a little bit. Most especially since the whole business with the wedding details disapproval and the veil, but even before than I was dubious about it. To be honest, I slightly regret striking up this friendship, because our personalities don’t mesh too well.
So I don’t know what to do. My instinct is telling me to email her and say that I’m going to do the trip by myself, driving on my own and staying in a hotel room on my own, but what the hell excuse can I give her (aside from an outright lie, which I’m not willing to do)? I don’t think that telling her I’m going to drive on my own but still trespass on her hospitality for the hotel room is a good idea, and I can (sort of) afford to get my own lodgings. It’s all or nothing, but I don’t know how to go from all, which is our arrangement right now, to nothing without hurting her feelings. And I’m running out of time; the trip is four weeks from this weekend.
May, as a month, in general: really hard.
I admit that I laugh at slapstick more than an intelligent person probably should, but if this video doesn’t make you laugh at least once, you have never seen TV before.
Calligraphy by Stewart Thomas
