Now that I have a free day, all I think of is food

On a cooking kick, mostly because I suddenly have money and time to shop (been broke for the past ten days), and it would be good to have something I can eat in the house.  First thing is I've ended up with a lot of couscous and have been thinking about doing something with mandarin oranges (the type in a can) and kalamata olives.  While buying the olives, I found some in a brined mix along with figs, so bought some of that (in bulk), and then decided it also needed green onions.  So it was 1 cup couscous (2 cups boiling water, it's the instant kind, probably coulda' used a slightly less liquid), 1 can oranges (drained and chopped), 1/4 cup of the olive/fig mixed chopped up, one scallion (sliced thin), and some of the mandarin liquid mixed with 1/2 a lime's worth of juice, salt, and olive oil as a dressing.  Today I chopped up pistachios and added those to it for texture.  Not bad, I'd eat it again. (Which is good; it made quite a lot.)

Now I'm making pesto with walnuts, because I ended up with a bag of basil.  And I'll probably make a fruit salsa with apricots and blueberries because it was the end of the season and the apricots were on sale at the farmer's market. (Cilantro, lime, red onion, jalapeño, salt.)  I'm growing tomatillos, and those are doing surprisingly well, guess they don't need much attention; I haven't been giving them much. Can make a salsa with those, too. (I have no knack for growing cilantro, have tried several times.)

All of this to put off having to clean up after some batteries that decided to suddenly corrode all over my bookcase within the last couple of days.  Reminder to recycle those as soon as possible.  Ugh.

The pesto is "meh," had to use a blender as I can't find my food processor attachment, and the blender doesn't really work all that well.  I'll still eat it, but it doesn't excite me.  I don't like basil all that much, but someone gave it to me.

It's already scorching upstairs, in for another hot week.

(I'm choosing to share this.) If crap comes up (skeletons, ghosts, buried pain), might as well deal with it and be done with it...ain't going away until you face it.  Forgiveness and letting go lets you move on and own your own life.  Don't let your past control you.  (Not saying it's easy, I know it's not, I've been looking at this shit and dealing with it for years, but it's getting better...are you happy with where things are for you?  Start. Your life is yours.)  If you need a hand to hold or help, please reach out for it...there are people that can help to process all this stuff so you can let it go and move on.  Ask them.

Quite frankly, the world could use more forgiveness and not taking our personal crap out on each other right now. And a whole lot more love, starting with loving and accepting yourself, all of you, and then dealing with the bad stuff from a place of that self love.  Beating yourself up is pointless, (just a vicious cycle where you make yourself feel like crap, but nothing changes.)  Face it and deal with it.

And know that there is love enough for you.  You are loved.

Resistance

Have been resisting meditating for about 2.5 hours. Listening to 80's music on the radio, reading Facebook posts, looking at pictures, brushing teeth, dancing around to 80's rock...seriously, if I just did it, I could get up and leave. Keeping myself from getting on with my day because I want to do that before I leave.  Aaaaggghhhh! And I feel like it makes my day better, or my outlook, but I resist because I feel like it's going to take too long (which it does, my thoughts go racing all over the place), but not two-and-a-half hours. It's a promise I made to myself, I have such a hard time keeping those that I feel obligated to try to keep this one.

Went to market, think I'll cook all day. Am planning on going to a community supper tonight, a fundraiser, but school starts tomorrow, and that will be like working a second job for the next nine months. So, will try to have something around, so I spend less money eating out. Gonna do the slow-cooker taco filling, a modified Caldo Gallego (by way of NOLA, and minus potatoes) and a cooked salsa verde (you make a fresh one, and then cook it down.) Not a lot of fridge space available, so need to process everything somehow so it takes up less space.

As far as running into people from my past, it's a good thing. Any sting there might have been has passed, and it's good to be reminded of why I liked them in the first place even if we didn't end up being all that compatible in the long run. I'm also running into old housemates a lot lately. It's funny, it's not like most of us moved away, we are all still living in the same city, or moved away briefly and came back, but somehow haven't crossed paths in a long time. I've always lived in group houses (except for the year I was nineteen, I lived in a single dorm room for that year), and so have lived with a lot of people over the course of my adult life.

The caldo seems edible, not as bitter as I would have thought with both turnip greens and turnips in it, and I have managed to resist lifting the lid of the slow cooker. I think it's working. Salsa verde will have to wait, none of the kitchen outlets seem to work, so can't plug in blender. (Slow cooker is sitting on a wooden chair in the living room to be able to reach a working outlet.) Keeping an eye on it.

Heavy clouds

Weather is gloomy, I'm feeling a little gloomy. Left the radio on all night and woke up at some point scared, not sure if I had a nightmare or if it was whatever they were talking about or if it were the constant voices outside (which I don't usually hear.) Feeling the lingering remnants of that. Last week it was 93 degrees and yesterday I kept a (light) jacket on all day. Our heater kicked on for the first time in months, blowing dusty air all over. There's a filter, but I don't think it's the right one or in the right place: the house gets dusty, and the filter remains relatively clean. Not sure where else it could go.  At any rate, my head is clogged up, including my ears which is making me feel slow of thought and in that groggy "head-cold" universe. And while I like snow, and winter in general, somehow I am not looking forward to the cold and darkness and the end of summer. I feel that more every year, and I've lived here pretty much my whole life (I spent one winter in Central America where it was dark for 10 to 12 hours of every day. No lingering dusk or dawn. Boom!  The day began.  The day ended.)

Looked up Crock-Pot recipes. When I first got it (a gift from my mother, years ago) I was frustrated by how long it took to cook anything...I come to find out that it was because I kept taking the lid off and losing all the heat. It's probably also better with a heavier glass lid, this one is plastic. Should remember to get freezer bags, too. I always get bored after eating the same thing two days in a row (exception being tacos. Barring food poisoning, I imagine I could happily eat tacos everyday for the rest of my life, for at least one meal.  I think it's the smell of chili powder, or the heating up of the masa dough for freshly made tortillas.)

The heavy clouds are persistent, neither burning off nor moving. It's very still out. Saw a handful of swallows on my walk.  Migrators? And lots of clover; all of it the three-leafed variety, from what I could tell. My eyes aren't currently trained to see it any other way.

Monday early-ish

So much social media writing throwing out missives hoping to be read or seen. Hoping if someone sees it, "likes" it, reads it, acknowledges it, then we have some validation. We have acknowledgment that we exist, either in general or from someone we imagine we are writing for. Hoping we are not alone in our way of thinking, acting. Hoping that whether we are or not (alone), we can still be understood, accepted. Perhaps not wanting to be the only one that knows what we know. (Not always, sometimes it's reporting on an event that needs to be known, but a lot of the time we want to be known. This isn't meant as a criticism, just as a compassionate acknowledgment. I don't think it's bad.) Great love to all of us, sending out our human feelers, trying to connect.

Still no birds singing the sun awake, though I did eventually hear a baby crow ask for food, probably from across the street. Gonna go cook something now. (For me, not for the crow, though there's always a chance it will be fed by me.)

I am still trying to let go of that one, but now I keep seeing men that look like him. I still think he's more beautiful than they are.

Happy Monday.

The one baby was SO loud! Crying and crying (lustily?) for one of the others to feed it. I was both laughing and cringing, it probably woke the whole neighborhood up, or at least my household. And then it hopped up on the neighbor's roof and stuck it's head in a pipe, don't think it cawed into that. Can you imagine waking up to that if it did?

Selling books on a Saturday morning

Working up the will to go sell books. Need a certain amount of internal fortitude for the rejection, the snooty-ness of "I can't believe you think we would possibly want to buy that from you." It's worse with clothing, the disdain of what bad taste I must have. I do it sometimes, but more often, give clothes to Goodwill or some other charitable organization. Some bookstores are more willing to accept than others, but you usually sell to those by the box load, and that would require a car and an appointment.  I will do it. I need groceries. I want to go to the Farmer's Market and these are the last two Saturdays I'm free for the summer. The Saturday market is my favorite, I've been buying my food there for almost 20 years. I've been here a long time. I was graduated from college 20 years ago. Crazy.

Okay, sold books for $13, which did buy some produce, and I had an old gift card with enough left on it to get some coffee. The buyer was super nice, he didn't buy all of them (I ended up finding more books I was willing to part with, will have to do it again, but it's a start), but I think I can sell a few more to a different store. When I was picking through the cherries, I looked up and started laughing, realizing that I was surrounded by people who were as picky about fruit as I am. We were all picking up individual cherries and looking at them before tossing them in the bag. I know I won't eat it if it's really bad looking, even if I should, and I don't want to pay for it if I'm just gonna throw it out. Anyway, I have a little less stuff now, and I thought about more clothes that I am willing to part with, will do that today as well, before I change my mind. Clothes are the easiest thing for me to let go of.  But first, promised myself I would work on the resume for an hour. Gonna do that now. Let go, let go, let go.

Okay, resume draft done. Sent off to have instructor look at it, and waiting to hear back from sister regarding spoken word performance info.