a wish

This made me tear up a little bit when I read it on Le Love. How I wish for someone to acknowledge me in such a way, to appreciate me for me. It seems like a simple request, yet feels nearly impossible, and for that I resent those that did not care about me, yet wasted my time anyway.

Today I met with my counsellor for a pep talk. I mentioned my growing dissatisfaction with the inconsistencies of the men I encounter and he informed me that 99% of them lack the ability to feel anything other than lust or anger, and I shouldn't expect much from any of them. This makes it more difficult to be hopeful that unmarried men are not complete assholes, especially in light of the last few that I've dealt with. Hopefulness is futile.

RT was right: finding a good man is nothing but blind luck. With the odds presented to me, it's no wonder they all seem like jackasses. I'm starting to get that, by and large, they likely are.

cutbacks

This week a friend in Edmonton posted a link to a blog about a group of people who were raising money for the food bank in Edmonton. They decided to try to live on $80 for the month of February and still follow the Canada Food Guide. This was the amount estimated that the working poor in Canada had for food in one month. It has been startling to read.

When I was a child we went through some poor years, where we hovered around the poverty line. My parents were extremely thrifty, so I didn't notice it much, other than not being able to afford clothes and private skating lessons and holidays and stuff like that. We were well-fed, though economically, my parents relying on the garden to get us through huge parts of the year and buying in bulk.

When I was in university, I went through months when I had $20 to feed me for the month. I just figured it was what all students went through, living solely on rice and bread for weeks at a time. I barely remember eating vegetables that weren't frozen in the winter months. I never wanted to live like that again.

I've been lucky to be able to eat relatively well since returning from Japan. A little too well at times.

My work situation is always a bit precarious and once my terms end in April I'm not sure what's going to happen. No idea if I'll have any work this summer or in the fall. Huge cuts in the city (thank you, Olympic Village and NPA) means even the public library is potentially deeply affected. There's a hiring freeze (they're estimating it will last until 2011) and positions aren't been replaced. I don't have stable hours; I'm just auxiliary. In hindsight, I probably can't afford to go to Chicago, but it's been paid for and I need something to look forward to. Still, I know things aren't as bad for me as they are for others.

The next few months, I'm going to try to figure out how to live a more simple life, especially when it comes to food. Just in case. My goal is to cut back severely on what I pay for food and donate regularly to the food bank. How this will happen, I haven't quite figured out, but a plan will absolutely be necessary. Comments on the blog offer a lot of helpful information and I've been scouring recipes that don't call for a lot of ingredients or at least only use staples or cheap ingredients. I could probably stand to eat a lot less, so it might be time to look at the Canada Food Guide as a weight-loss option.

I might have to stop baking. This is the crushing blow.

In short, maybe think about donating some food or money to the food bank so people who have it worse off than us can eat fruit & vegetables or have milk or just survive.

the agony of defeat?

I haven't checked yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm not a multi-millionaire. Yet. A part of me wants to enter as many million dollar lotteries as possible, but then I remember that's like throwing money away. A bit counterproductive. Still... those ads for $1 million a year for 25 years... They're so tempting. It would be sort of rad to win. I could, like, stay in a nice hotel in Chicago and buy a candy thermometer. Maybe get some new socks.

My wants are modest. Usually.

Last weekend wound up being much more interesting than it looked like it was going to be. On Friday I met up with my sister and went to see the Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation at the Rio. Beforehand we grabbed a coffee (neither of us drinks much of the stuff) and tried not to watch as paramedics tried to revive a woman who had overdosed at the Skytrain station. Anita isn't the most chatty, open person, so when the people next to us started trying to talk to us, she just gave them eye-rolling looks while I tried to be friendly. It wasn't a great collection; some of the films were pretty dull, but there were a few amusing ones. The best ass contest was actually really tiresome and people seemed to get increasingly bored with each of the 5 contestants, especially the goth girl who thought she was way hotter than anyone noticed. I never thought I'd be so bored looking at asses. The stupid stamp is still partly on my wrist, even after excessive washing.

Saturday after work I met up with the always lovely Rebecca and Gabriel for a jam-packed night. We went to Campagnolo beside the Ivanhoe and it was a really nice experience. The decor is more comforting than exposed beams and brick should be, our server Bobby was a delight, and the food was tasty and moderately affordable. The place was packed by the time we left after 7. It's not often that I go to restaurants that feel alive and with a soul; this place did. We scurried over to Science World to catch an IMAX double feature. That was fun! The one about caves was awesome; I just stared mouth agape for most of it. The one about the Mars rovers was also really interesting, but just not the same as the caves. Then we headed up to the Veteran's Hall to assess the karaoke situation. R&G had never been, but the lure of $3.25 bottles of Pilsner was too great. Had hilarious conversation and I love them. I really do. They're just fantastically interesting, kind people. I was sad when my bus stop came.

Tonight I met up with my friend from work for dinner and drinks. She came back from Japan in January and we haven't been able to catch up much since she's been back. It was good to talk about Japan again and I think she hasn't had much chance to decompress from the time she was there. I want to go back to Japan. Not to live, but to visit. Eat some onigiri and oden from the conbini. And maybe relearn some Japanese. R&G are taking Japanese this summer and I'm so jealous. If I get a regular job I should remember that I want to take Japanese classes. That could be years from now.

Unless... maybe I'll see about that lottery draw after all.

bad at oral

Sometimes I'm convinced that my sister hates me. We went to a collection of short animated films tonight and it was a struggle to have a conversation with her. She is unwilling to talk to me, but probably she's the same with everyone except her husband. I think back to the time she said she liked hanging out with me because we don't have to talk, but sometimes it would be nice to catch up on her life.

Yesterday I got a health card for the benefits I have working term at one of the schools. Right now the only benefits I think I get are half of MSP paid for, prescription drugs for free after I pay $25 and accident insurance. I was hoping I could have dental covered, but will have to wait a year for that. Unfortunately I discovered that little hiccup in my coverage after I booked a dental appointment.

My dental people want to replicate the nightmarish mouth surgery from last year on the other side and I've been avoiding them since last summer because I don't want to go through it again and pay full price for it. Oh, and they want to rip out a tooth and give me a fake one. So I have to explain to them that it will have to wait a year before I can do that kind of damage to my mouth and my bank account. If they ask me a question about my old root canal they charge me $40 for that one question. It makes me crazy how much dentists charge for talking to me with a finger in my mouth so I can't really answer.

Also, I don't want to be in Chicago again with a sore, raw mouth, so they're not ripping anything apart until sometime after that. Besides, I don't really have any work after the middle of April so can't afford anything anyway.

This week I also decided I'm eating too well and need to go on a starvation diet. I wouldn't mind a tapeworm for a few weeks so I drop a few dress sizes without any work. How does one go about getting a tapeworm?

I feel like an ugly teenage girl jilted by her prom date. My weekend is cancelled in its entirety, except for work.

On the upside, the stars were bright enough for me to see Orion.

lulls

I'm going through a boring patch again. If I go a few days without talking to/seeing people I start to lose it. It's something I need to work on.

Because my work schedule is so silly it's hard to ask people to meet up. (For the next two weeks I don't work earlier than noon.) Large parts of my day are spent alone and I don't like spending money for anything other than necessities, so I'm limited in what I can actually do during the day before work. When I call people they seem surprised and unsure why I would want to just chat. I suspect people have an inaccurate assumption of how busy my life is. It feels like I have huge gaps in my social calendar.

This is just an irrational patch. I hope. If not, I've scheduled a meeting with my counsellor next week, just in case. I'm probably overdue for a pep talk.

This morning I wanted to drink. Not to get drunk, but just to have a morning drink. It was a toss-up between a kahlua and milk or beer and clamato. The latter won out because it might be a little healthier, and I don't have that much milk. (I do have a bunch of coffee cream and whipping cream left over from Sunday's bake-off. John didn't realise that heavy cream isn't Creamo. When someone doesn't drink coffee, what does one use coffee cream for?) Beer and clamato makes me miss my dad, and I kind of want to go to my parents' house soon, at least when the blossoms come out.

One project I'm hoping to figure out this spring is how to plant/grow a container garden. Not flowers; flowers I can see anywhere. I'd rather have some vegetables or small fruit plants that I can tend outside my door. My parents might visit me in March, so maybe I can enlist their assistance since they're masters of gardening. Maybe some tomatoes, some herbs, maybe some strawberries... Will see what happens with that.

If only I could get obsessive about something like exercise... Then I could stop feeling like a lump.

victory is mine

When I got the confirmation email on Saturday that the bake-off on Sunday afternoon was on, my heart filled with glee. (I'm guessing... I don't know what glee feels like, except that I kept wanting to squeal "glee!" over and over.) I love getting my bake on.

I readied my ingredients and waited. My friends came over and we chatted a while waiting for my competition to arrive. He was outstandingly late, so Rich suggested I get started on mine so we wouldn't be baking all day. My cake came together so quickly, documented by Christy's camera, and I had it in the oven before John and Simone made it over.

His process was much more involved than mine and I found pieces of his recipe in interesting places around the kitchen. The waiting was hard. I served teacup gimlets and then we switched to teacup Strongbow. By the time the cake was slightly cooled and drippingly iced we'd already tried mine; then we had a piece of his vanilla cake. It was a nice cake, fluffy like an angel food cake, but it was significantly different from the tartness of the cranberries in mine. John forced a vote and I think they all chose mine, which resulted in John lecturing about loyalty. I felt bad giving Simone some of my cake, that as long as it existed there would be rifts, but not bad enough that I didn't give her a nice chunk.

I also got rid of all my lemon cupcakes. Whew!

Baking competitions sound fun and I wish there were a place that multiple entries could bake at the same time. The more entries, the more sampling gets done. I also like watching how other people bake because I tend to be fairly contained and tidy when I bake and I know other people are not the same. I'm going to research potential places with multiple ovens to make this happen.

Saturday after work I met up with TP and had a quick pub dinner with Strongbow (oh, beloved Strongbow... how I love you) before heading up the street to the Rio. We decided to see "He's just not that into you" and we both kind of groaned at the ending. Like, am I really supposed to believe that these attractive people would have such a hard time meeting people? It was like a teen movie for adults, where everything works out for almost everyone, and the ones that don't have things work out still get laid. I am just doubtful that things like that happen to average-looking people. We also hated the music during one of the climaxes at the end. It was unnecessary 10 minutes before the end of the film.

Today is the first of 15 consecutive days of work, so I'm a little concerned that I'm going to start losing it as the next two weeks go on. I'm hoping to do stuff over the next week to distract me. Karaoke, hockey, movies, maybe a rock show if I'm feeling energetic... These are things I would like to do. I also found out that Vera's has sliders now (!!!), so I'm going on Wednesday to try them out before work. Sliders are awesome. So is cake.

It's a Rose Melberg kind of day.

Today I realised I will never be killed in a horror film sort of way because I am unboyfriendable. Only hot girls or girls with boyfriends are killed. I am neither.

I've recently started reading I bang the worst dudes and realise that I have nothing but stories like these. I seem only to encounter douches.

My search for jobs in Dubai is slow. I am feeling misplaced here and figure I should physically misplace myself so my head and body are coordinated. As I've learnt in the past, distance makes the heart and head forget.

I wish I could have an "It's a wonderful life" moment.

This time of year sucks.

new love

I may have to rethink my interests. Not one to want another living thing to depend on me, lately I've been feeling jealous about my friend's dog. It's getting more pronounced every time I see her.

My heart swelled last night while watching the results from the Westminster Dog Show online, especially the chihuahuas (smooth coat) judging. I am not a dog person. I'm not an animal person and have never felt like I've missed out on not ever having pets. (We did have a dog until I was about 2 1/2, but I'm not sure that counts because I only have fleeting memories of her and I can't remember her loving me and vice versa. My brain was still soft. We never bonded because my brother claimed her as his and I didn't get much one-on-one time with her. She was a collie named Lady. My parents gave her away to some people that owned a farm and I thought they put her down or she ran away because she was there when we went on a holiday to Oregon and then gone when we returned. My mother is still adamant she lived up the hill [this means up Anarchist Mountain] because our in-town yard was too small for a collie and she got out of the yard too often to be safe for her.) Something about seeing these tiny dogs trotting around... It gets to me.

Not that I am going to get a dog. Like children, they're much better when someone else has to be the primary caregiver and I just get the adoration as the fake auntie. My friend's dog is always excited to see me, but I realise she's excited to see everyone, so it makes me feel less special. I'm plotting my attack with her. I just need some alone time and to read The dog whisperer to get some tips, and then she'll come sit with me when I visit her.

This is my latest baking: lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting. I'm not super delighted with this particular recipe, so will have to tweak it or something. Not lemony enough. I'm debating about baking rugulach tonight after work, but it's going to depend on whether or not I get some butter and how I'm feeling. If I could afford to buy butter in cases, I would. I'm not even kidding. It's the only thing keeping me from baking right now.

I wound up getting Small-batch baking by Debby Maugans Nakos with the remainder of the gift card I had, mainly because I figure that, even if it isn't totally awesome, it will at least give me enough recipes for small-scale baking that I can bake like crazy without having a load of baking sitting around. The cake recipes are for two small one-person cakes, the cookies are for between 4 and 10 cookies, pies are for two people. I tend to get obsessive about things and then move onto something else, but baking is a constant. I would bake daily if I had the time and ingredients. It's one of the few things that makes me calm. It would be unhealthy for me to eat everything I want to bake, so I'm going to see how this works out and save the bigger recipes for something more targeted.

How old do dogs have to be before they can eat baked doggie treats? Maybe I can bribe that puppy with homemade treats... Not cakes, though.

boncharific

This is my favourite seat in the house. Check out the bonch on that captain/zombie (yes, yes, I know it's meant to be an admiral...). Whenever I go there in the future (which, let's face it, is going to happen) I only want to sit in this booth.




Unrelated, can anyone explain why I'm developing a crush on Jason Mraz?

conscientious consumption

Just finished noshing on a Monterey jack & ham cornmeal muffin. I decided to use up a few things that were close to walking out of the fridge and it turned into a cooking spree. The muffins, mushroom bulgur, rutabaga & potato mash, asparagus spears, cheesy risotto... It took a surprisingly minimal amount of time to cook all this stuff. Partial meals for the rest of the week.

While out around Nanaimo today with Jill, I picked up some fruit and we had lunch and a drink at Oscars. I went on again about people not willing to learn how to cook (it's one of my soapboxing topics). I know this is a generalisation, but there must be something to it when both Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay are soapboxing about teaching people how to cook from scratch after years of reliance on prepared meals. Not that I cook every meal, but it's become a lot easier to convince myself to cook than it used to be. I like knowing what I'm eating. I'm much more relaxed when I cook than when I do almost anything else. And I tend to get obsessive about stuff, so there are worse things for me to get obsessive about. This year the number of meals out has dropped significantly and I don't feel like I'm missing out. (This is part of the decision I made that I wouldn't eat out unless it was for either a good reason, like socialising with friends, or for a really good meal. No more fast food or crap consumption if I can help it.) My belly tells me I'm eating a little too well at home.

This afternoon I talked to my friend Mark about the bacon he's curing right now. It has inspired me to look into making some of my own. He's become quite interested in where his food is coming from and is taking a more conscientious approach to, specifically, his meat consumption. If he doesn't know where the meat came from he won't eat it. It's a good approach. River Cottage was what got me interested; he's been reading it, too, along with a few other books. I've been meaning to visit Windsor Meats on Main to get some chicken for roasting and perhaps a few pork chops for the freezer because their meat is local. Mark got his pork belly from Windsor and talked me through the bacon process as he showed off the cut. It sounds easy and the idea of having prosciutto at the ready is tempting.

Last night at the party I talked to someone who has been making his own bacon as well. It's funny to have a similar conversation in less than 24 hours. That person also made the bacon explosion that Eileen wants me to make, but I just don't think it's doable. He wasn't as jazzed about it as one who eats latticed bacon surrounding sausage and more cooked bacon should be.

And now I can think of nothing but aprons.

up for a fight

Riding the Skytrain this morning, I had Rose Melberg in my ears as I watched nondescript buildings zoom by me. I felt a little melancholy. Only momentarily, until the song finished. I love her, but she can sometimes bring me down if I'm overtired or in another susceptible state.

For a minute I felt like my old self again, the fun one. Recalling last night's events, I was hopeful that things are turning around in my head. I haven't been to counseling this year; partly to see if I can maintain normalcy on my own, partly because I haven't felt like making an appointment. I'm really trying to be more open to everything and I think that's helping me be a bit more consistent.

Last night after work I met up with the Langara people for a 12-course Chinese dinner at a restaurant in Metrotown. It was great food and I tried everything, including the chicken feet (though it was only the skin, I think... It was hard to tell). Everyone was fun to talk to. One of the librarians I hadn't met yet asked me early on in the evening if I was partnered or had children or what my status was. When I said I'm single something clicked in her head and she asked how old I am and what I'm looking for. I mentioned that I'm trying not to date gay men or hardcore drug users, and I'm not good at dating stupid men. She said she's been a matchmaker for a couple of successful pairings and she'd keep an eye out for some possibilities for me. This, in turn, made a couple of surrounding ears suggest a couple of faculty members that were single and hot, and soon everyone at the table was offering suggestions. There was one ringleader who knows pretty much every faculty member on campus (she deals in reserves) and kept bringing up new faculty and giving their status. A few of them were pretty adamant about getting me hooked up with someone; at least the ones they'll choose for me already pass the not-stupid criteria since they're all teaching at a college. I loved the gossip part, especially since I'm only there when everyone else is gone for the day and I don't get any of this stuff at work.

After dinner I headed up to the Old Admiral (location of my shameful condition mere weeks ago) to see Terry perform and meet up with friends. I actually missed Terry by a few minutes, which was disappointing, and didn't get to talk to him because he was doing sound. But I did have a couple of drinks with my other friends and reveled in the fact that someone else at our table was ridiculously drunk at the Old Admiral. John, at one point, banged his hand on the table to the beat of the song about a plastic Jesus on his dashboard that he chose to serenade us with. It was touching. After discovering Christy missed the allegedly rigged 50/50 draw, we went next door to the Liquor Barn to get supplies and walked over to Alfie's for drinks and to hang out with his dog. (She confuses me. Sometimes she loves me, but sometimes she pretends she doesn't know me. It is unfair, and since I don't see her often enough for her to grow deeply attached to me, I think I might have to start carrying dog treats in my pocket as a bribe/conditioning thing. She will love me... Oh yes, she will.) It was there that I was challenged.

I mentioned John was drunk. Alfie and I were talking about the bourbon cake (he brought it up, not me) and John said something about that cake not being that good. Rich and Christy got all in his face about it, and I said, "I'd like to try one of your cakes."

"Anytime," he said. "I can make something better than that cake." Poor, silly, drunk John.

Immediately I suggested that we have a bake-off, to test both our cake baking abilities in a juried competition. He got all grandiose about it, saying he'd kick my ass, and Rich gave him a look like he was an armless fool suggesting a knife fight in the back alley for territory rights. "She bakes for fun," exclaimed Rich. "You're gonna get your ass handed to you."

Now, I'm going to point out that John's girlfriend was looking at him in disbelief and asked him how he was going to bake since they don't have baking tins and she's never seen him bake anything. But he was adamant that his grandmother's cake recipe is going to beat out my upside down cranberry cake. I said I'd make some cupcakes as an appetiser and John freaked out that that was cheating. Rich said, "If you do that then you just win automatically. There's no challenge then." So I'll stick with my cake. He looked a little scared when I said I baked 5 desserts for my birthday and then accused me of trying to make them feel sorry for me that I had to bake my own birthday cake. I'm excited by this challenge. Apparently this all goes down next Sunday, but we haven't agreed on the terms or the location. I'll have to see if Rich can organise the finer details. Those that had that cranberry cake, do you think it could beat a vanilla cake with chocolate icing sugar icing?

I'm pretty excited to go to Jason & Debbie's tonight for their going away party. I mentioned to a friend that they're going to Antarctica and he made us sit and research how that was possible and what they could expect as far as weather and things to do are concerned. I'm supposed to ask a lot of questions and get back to him with a summary of my fact finding mission. I'm excited to be able to meet up with Rachel and get some drinks in us. Fun!

Oh, on Thursday I finally got to talk to my friend about my trip to Chicago. He promised to take me to Hot Doug's (woohoo!) and suggested that we could go into all sorts of ridiculously huge, fancy houses in Highland Park since he has security clearance. I just have to book somewhere to stay (must do that this weekend), and then I'll be at a whole new level of excitement. More than I am now, and I'm pretty fricking excited. Glee! I've also been reading up on Italian beef sandwiches and think I'm pretty close to being able to order one with just a little more practice (beef, dipped, hot, mozz).

OK, so this is the kind of nerd I am (if you haven't already figured out:
This is my newest obsession and I'm trying to come up with who in the City I should be sending this to with questions as to why something like this hasn't been constructed in Vancouver.

imperial vs. metric

Oh dang. Today I thought I got groceries to successfully complete both cottage cheese muffins and ham & cheese spoonbread. I couldn't find various spices needed for the latter and don't have enough of alternatives so will have to give up on that one. In theory, I have all the ingredients for the former, but it's a Euro recipe so some of the stuff is in grams and I don't have a kitchen scale. I tried to refer to my usual reference: my meashirt. Sadly, today it failed me. If only it told me how much 100 g. of flour is. I can only guestimate and I'm not sure that's good enough. I'm too set on precision of measurements.

Rarely do I wear my meashirt while cooking/baking (mind the boobs). I'm too terrified of permanently staining it with something. Instead, I lay it out on my bed and run to consult the conversion scales. I kind of love it. It has saved numerous recipes, though I wish it would include what a stick of butter is in metric because I'm sick of searching that out every time I start a recipe. I refuse to remember something like that. It's my Einstein info: basic things that are not important enough to remember. I do find it somewhat infuriating that Americans standardised their butter measurements so no one has to measure anything. Where is the challenge?

OK, I never do it, but recall fondly when I had to measure butter by displacement. Did anyone else have to do that? Put water in a measuring cup and then add butter until the water level is displaced the amount of butter you need. Sigh. Displacement is awesome, at least in this instance.

I'm just going to treat 100 g. of flour as 1 cup of flour and hope for the best. I'm using this and assume something on the internet wouldn't lie to me. Admittedly, I didn't use the standard methods for assessing content on a website, but give me a fricking break. It's just a muffin. Potentially a delicious, flaky muffin. Mmm... muffins... I'm around 15 minutes away from either success or failure.

Additionally, if these don't work out, I picked up some bagels from Solly's today, since Wednesdays are cheaper. I can just live on those until I find sweet and smoked paprika. Maybe I should use up the dirt cheap cream cheese I got earlier this week and throw together some rugelach so I don't dream about them every time I eat a bagel.

damn squirrels

Lately I've been thinking of doing a completely anonymous blog that covers all the finer details of situations I really don't talk about to pretty much anyone. I read a couple of questionable blogs that, if I were those people, I wouldn't want anyone to be able to identify me from. And every so often I get nervous pangs in my tummy when someone mentions something I wrote on my blog. I think back to how many details I actually wrote about so as not to give too much information away.

Usually it's fine and I heavily censor what I write anyway. But there are those moments... I've only completely eliminated one post in all the years I've been blogging. I think I was being particularly nasty to a person who had wronged me repeatedly over the course of 6 months and then I felt better after writing it but also the slightest amount of worry that someone else would think badly of me. Now I probably wouldn't care and would have left it up.

When I give out information, no one actually has the whole story. I spread it around like a squirrel, leaving tidbits in places to find later in the spring when the lawn mower blade finds the forgotten pieces for me. Oh right, I told that person about him. It's a poor information management system, but it keeps me from going completely nutty. Or perhaps it actually makes me nutty. I can't tell which.

Last night I went to the singalong with my friends and got really nervous when the one said that his friend had excitedly announced he had gossip for him. He has an idea of what it could be about, but in my head I tried to think if I'd recently said or done anything that his friend could possibly tell him about. I'm pretty sure if there was anything the friend wouldn't say anything, but there's always that little worry. I'm really curious about the gossip now, so hopefully I get the announcement of it shortly, and that it doesn't involve me. I cannot explain to you why I would automatically think the news was about me. I guess I'm narcissistic. The world revolves around me, doesn't it?

Anyway, if I do start an anonymous blog you probably won't hear about it. Unless I leave walnuts out for you to hit with your lawn mower.

someone's in the kitchen

Ages ago I tried to make a pledge to myself that I wouldn't throw out food, if I could help it. It pains me to not be able to finish a head of lettuce or for milk to go bad. Thinking of my mother when I was growing up, she didn't throw anything away until she used the hell out of it: bones were soup, fruit scraps were a crumble, vegetable scraps were soup stock and those that weren't edible were compost. It probably helped that my brother ate everything that was left in the fridge, but still. Having only as much as you can consume is kind of my goal.

I'm but one person, barely able to get through a shell of salad before it starts to go wilty. I'm lucky if I can get through yogurt without it turning, and if it gets close it gets thrown into the freezer. Stale bread becomes breadcrumbs for stuff. I still haven't figured out how to use up an entire bunch of parsley before it starts to brown. I have no idea how to tell if the squash on my counter is edible, but I'm afraid to throw it out.

One thing I've been thinking about is the apples sitting somewhere in my fridge. They're past the point of being edible in hand, but not to the apple sauce stage. Tonight I figured it was time to make the hell out of those apples. I found an apple cake recipe last week that looked pretty easy, and then last night I talked to Rachel about baking a cake and we both agreed an apple cake sounded good. I had all the ingredients for the recipe, so mixed it together in less than 10 minutes and threw it in the oven to bake while I watched TV. The cake part is light and flavourful, the apples taking up huge parts of it, the brown sugar crumb on top giving a sweetness to the cinnamon of the cake. It's pretty good. I'm pleased.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all that mac & corn that I made. It took 6 cups of cheese and my tummy can't handle that much lactose all at once. The idea of tossing it... Perhaps breadcrumbs on top or some broccoli will spice that sucker up.

since 1670

Sometimes I don't make much sense. I don't always understand what I'm thinking when I make certain decisions, even after reflection and trips to my counsellor. Lately I've regretted little, choosing instead to revel in my decisions, regardless how detrimental they probably are to me. Girl's gotta learn somehow. Or not.

I may have done something silly. The criteria to make such a declaration has not been fully thought out, but I suspect it may have been an odd decision. I can rationalise almost anything, and even though I like to have things planned out, the times that I change my mind at the last minute and alter my plans I almost always make bizarre decisions.

For Christmas I got a gift card for the Bay, to be spent on any number of the housewares I suggested as possible gifts. Admittedly, I suspect I'm difficult to buy for because I'm very black and white about stuff, either liking gifts immediately and fully or wondering how I can return something and get something I like. Most friends have figured out what I like, but my family never learned, likely because I bought my own Christmas presents off and on from ages 10 to about 25 (I bought, they paid me back after Christmas).

Today I decided to use the gift card for a Bodum and a good knife for the kitchen. When I got into the Bay I was automatically drawn to the Signature display set up near the door, with signage screaming "50% off." I like the idea of Bay coats and have dreamt about those Bay stripes since I was a young child. When I came back from Japan I saw a sale on Bay blankets and bought one for myself for Christmas, at that time one of the most expensive things I'd ever bought for myself. I only half-heartedly looked at the coats, knowing that half of $800 is still way more than I can spend on a coat. I wasn't even looking at the blankets much because I've already got one and I can't really afford those suckers, either. But then... then I saw one for 75% off and I forgot about the Bodum and the knife.

I got a 4-point Bay blanket for $59 once the gift card was deducted. Holy crap, I'm excited. Mental note: visit the Bay at the end of the season for discontinued colours. Now, if only they'd heavily discount china... I couldn't even go to the china department because in the state that I was in I knew I could walk away with a few place settings. Place settings...