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Thanks to Chiara and her evil, mind-bending ways, I have now consumed steel cut oats for breakfast two mornings in a row. Had I ever in my life previously consumed steel cut oats? No. No, I had not. But I went to Whole Foods recently, my first trip to the new store in town. I called my girlfriend on the way in to see if she thought I could do a quick run in and out or if I would become intoxicated and go into a trance. "Trance," she said. We hung up, and I entered what can only aptly be described as The Promised Land. Sure, I'd been in Whole Foods before in another city, but this was just like nothing to believe. I was drawn instantly to the bath and body products and forgot I was actually in a grocery store. Then I just wandered slack-jawed and hypnotized through the aisles, picking up such much needed items as soy crisps, Thai noodle packets, and evergreen/eucalyptus body oil and of course the steel cut oats, and meanwhile I'm surrounded at every turn by some kind of glorious hot food station -- did I want a chicken pesto panini? Some pizza florentine? Some stir-fried vegetables or curry or cous cous? Did I want some gelato from the gelato counter or a smoothie from the smoothie counter? It was too much. I ended up grabbing a little saffron orzo salad for dinner and running to the check-out line before I just was completely overcome and had to lie down on the floor and recover myself. The steel cut oats have been an adventure. Yesterday I didn't turn down the heat after I boiled the water because the instructions didn't say to and lo, mistake. Steel cut oats like to BOIL and FROTH. They boiled and frothed so vehemently that I shrieked, removed them from the stove, placed the sputtering pot and its overflowing mess into the sink, and had to do that thing where you actually open the stove top to wipe out the goo that has plunged down through the burner hole and oh, the smell, the bits, the goo. Ugh. Finally I got the damn things cooked and they sure were tasty. Today I did it a lot more responsibly and figured out that I needed them to simmer down now. So they simmered. And … yum. I really do need to try to hitch myself to a healthier wagon. For the past month or so, I've eaten like the world was ending, mostly I guess because it sort of felt like it was sometimes, and the six pounds I've packed on are reminding me every day that I need to get a grip. Of course, I bought a chocolate-covered witch hat-shaped rice crispie treat at the bookstore just now, so there you go. However, if loving “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid is wrong, I don’t want to be right. --Weetabix. And … now I have been stuck on this song for hours and days. And I'm not complaining, for like Weetabix, I love this song. But I had forgotten about it until her entry. It's just not a song in my regular listening lexicon. But it should be. It should be! I even have the sheet music for this song, for the love of St. Scholastica. Flippin' your fins you don't get too far. Legs are required for jumpin', dancin' … STOP ME. Amalah's journal is just making me giggle and basically weep. As is Sundry's. I just cannot get over the cuteness of these little dudes. So tonight I'm going to New Orleans for the first time in a pretty damn long time. I guess the last weekend I was there was the weekend before Hurricane Katrina. I remember going to see The 40-Year-Old Virgin. What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand? See? See? Now you're singing it in your head, too. I am ready to go back, I mean, I want to see my boyfriend, and I want us to throw some money at a city that really needs it. Sometimes it's really hard for me to imagine what it must be like for him to work there every day but not be able to sleep in his own bed. I wonder what it's like to see so many dead trees and shrubs and for so much of the city to still be in total darkness when the sun sets. I wonder how my good friend will feel going back on Saturday to her childhood home and her dad's store that were covered -- covered -- in water and how she will get over the sight and smell of that experience. I wonder how I got to be so lucky that the tree that fell wasn't a little taller and didn't break through my dining room and kill my dogs where they slept. I wonder how this state can afford to recover when so much of its tax base has been eliminated … I wonder how in the hell all of this will play out on the larger scale as far as rebuilding and recovery and I just feel like my head is turning inside out on itself. And I am not even involved. Not really. I'm not trying to make it all about me. I'm just a person who's watched this happen to people she cares about and whose city is full of people who now live here because they don't have homes or jobs or both anymore where they used to live. I'm just someone worried about her state. I want everyone who's left to come back. I want New Orleans to be the same as it was. I want people to realize that the devastation spreads so far beyond New Orleans and that our coast has basically been demolished. I want the Paolo family to be Philiminated. I want my best friend not to have a broken heart and for her ex-boyfriend not to be a robot. I want George W. Bush to not be the president. I want my other best friend to not have anxious squeezing sensations in her arms. I want Veronica Mars to break up with Duncan Kane. I want my little brother and sister to have fun in Radio City Music Hall tonight. I want my jeans to button more easily. I want us all to live happily ever after.
About this time in ...
© Copyright 2005 elb |
I bought one of Jette's shirts. Don't you want to? Colleen's wish lists were a big success. Thanks to anyone who sent anything! |
