palace of winds

In the last year or so I have gained pretty much zero pounds. I feel pretty much seven thousand times fatter, though. Tonight, at least.

I realized this evening that I have exactly zero sweatshirts that fit me. Zero articles of clothing perfect for crawling into when it feels like the whole world is sad or bad or just tired. (I have some flannel pajamas and some sweaters and these wonderful black stretchy yoga pants and any number of things that feel comforting sometimes to slouch around in, but there is a particular mood that only a sweatshirt will answer, something so-soft inside. I used to like roomy sweatshirts, believed there wasn’t such a thing as a sweatshirt that was too roomy, but there is. It’s not comforting any more when you’re hanging half out of it, needing to shove and tuck and fold and rearrange when you move. A sweatshirt needs to be close. Cuddling on up, saying Well *I* don’t think you’re disgusting.)

I hate doing stupid things. I hate them even more when they’re the result of disorganization. I hate it when I use my credit card for little things, to pay for parking or a few dollars at a convenience store, and I’m in a rush and tuck my receipt away and then forget, later, to go back and write it in my check register. That’s the scale of money-related stupidity I’m okay with. To forget a few small charges every few months; I balance my checkbook often enough to catch them quickly, to still remember that Yes, I spent that and then forgot to note it.

Tonight I went grocery shopping and forgot my entire wallet. I only realized it halfway through the checkout, opening my purse and staring into its too-meager contents. Thankfully I’d gone to Whole Foods, too lazy to go further afield to Cub, and so I managed a seven-minute round-trip home and back. The sweet, cheerful guy bagging my groceries was the same guy who so concerned himself over the dissatisfying taste of the frozen yogurt Bryce and I got a few weeks ago. I wonder if he remembers that I was the lady who wanted to exchange a pint of frozen yogurt because it just wasn’t that good. Next time I’m out by my bank I’m going to get a little extra cash out to keep in my glove compartment, in case I’m ever that brainless again.

My neighbors in one of the houses out back have a gigantic tacky inflated glowing pumpkin in their yard, and a handful of huge plastic skeletons hanging from one of their trees. I’m unbelievably in love with them for it. Normally I don’t go in for things like that, for big illuminated holiday displays, but damned if it wasn’t something I needed to see tonight.

It made me think of the neighborhood I grew up in, and trick-or-treating, and the one house where every year this guy would dress up in a big gorilla costume and wait for kids to ring the doorbell, and then come tearing out from around the garage, bellowing and waving his arms. My sister and I had seen it happen to other kids and were so terrified that we never went trick-or-treating there. We couldn’t've been lured even if they’d been giving out entire candy bars. (I still remember the glorious year that one of the couples down the kuldesac were out that night at a party and so left an entire garbage can full of pop out. I don’t remember if I picked strawberry or grape, but it was dizzyingly marvelous to’ve gotten an entire can of pop while out trick-or-treating.) Anyway, sometimes it feels like that’s a nice metaphor for my whole life. Scared of a man in a gorilla costume.

I joined the gym across the street tonight, and stupidly was too shy to ask for the joining fee to be waived. I’m sure they would have. But that’s all right, I suppose. There’s only so much room for worrying in my head, and this new bit doesn’t seem to’ve fit in anywhere. I am going to give it a month and see how often I use it, because really between doing tapes in my living room and riding three or four times a week, I don’t know that I need to be spending the extra money for what boils down to, for me, a treadmill.

I’ve decided I am going to cook through Camellia Panjabi’s The Great curries of India, something I’ve been thinking about doing for ages. I’m hoping to do a recipe a week; there are fifty curries, so that’d take me through to next fall, which is kind of a crazy thought. Apart from having less than a year of cooking Indian under my belt, I think the biggest hurdle is going to be apt replacements for all the meat. I know a big part of cooking is playing, trying things out, but there is such a tradition in Indian cooking of carefully-balanced tastes that I know I don’t know enough about, that I know I will inadvertantly trample all over. Since I don’t know anyone to teach me better, I also don’t know anyone who’d eat my food and find me out, so there’s that. Up this week: Rogan Josh, a mildly spicy curry from Kashmir. (With my other big hurdle, which is my curious reticence to buy most things milk-based [an impulse I'm not ready just now to examine further]. So I’ve bought my first container of soy yogurt, and lord knows how it’s going to muck with the consistency and taste compared to the traditional full-fat cow yogurt called for in the recipe. Falala. Whole Foods also didn’t have black cardamom or mace, much to my surprise.)

Entirely unrelated: I need to quit chewing gum again. My jaw is killing me.

I consider myself overall a pretty mature person. But I just have to confess: one of my favorite parts of eating beets is pink pee. It makes me giggle like a six-year-old.

Because I just splurged on this bad boy (I actually got the HD, which has a slightly narrower bowl; in white, because it was cheapest, and it looks lovely with the rest of my [overabundance of] white appliances [and, for those who don't feel like clicking the link: it's a stand mixer]), my counter space is at a new premium. I’ve been using an old pair of unpowered computer speakers for my ipod, but it’s just too crowded for that business now. So, compelled by necessity, necessity I tell you!, I bought new speakers. (I can no longer be in the kitchen without an audiobook. I wander around in this daze, not knowing what to do with myself. It’s been hard keeping on-task cooking at my parents’ house. I find myself standing at the counter, staring off into space, trying to place what’s wrong, and then remembering no one’s telling me a story, and then going back to cooking, and five minutes wondering again what’s bothering me…)

The speakers arrived just a bit ago, and they are adorably wee. I’m excited to see what sort of sound they produce. In the mean time I decided it would behoove me to read the manual. The manual, it turns out, is a single half-sheet of paper, printed front and back. I felt I had to share the information helpfully provided on the front with you, in its original form:

This compact travel speaker systme is ideal for use at the office, home, carry where you go. You can enjoy sweet stereo sound produced from the aluminum speaker. Cosmetically designed to match the ipod,it will also work with any portable ipod,mini ipod ,cd players. When used with an ipod. It will also act as stand. It can be powered either through AC Adapter or batteries. The unique design protect the speaker and makes it easy to carry around.

There are some speifications [sic] on the back, but I won’t bore you with the details.

My boss just walked by my desk, where I’m munching on this gorgeous fuschia bowl of beets, and he looks at them all nose-crinkley:

“Ugh, beets?!”

“Yeah! You don’t like ‘em?”

“No!”

“When’s the last time you had them?”

“Never!”

“They’re delicious!” I call as the door swings shut on him heading out to lunch. And so they are. (He left too quickly for me to tell him about the best part, alas.)

The Minnesota Daily did a little write-up about Dr. Bekoff and Veg Week.

Last night I was up for Family Dinner Night. I made the Another Shepherd’s Pie from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites, a lovely chill-weather mix of veggies on a bed of mashed potatoes (I used regular and sweet because I have a deep love of sweet potatoes) with mushroom gravy, which I served alongside the roasted beets and onions from the same book. Like everything else I’ve tried so far from the book, it was good food, nice for a family dinner, but not something that knocked my socks off. All the flavors seemed solid but expected. For having worked an hour and a half in the kitchen (unaided, granted; it would’ve gone faster with help), it was a little disappointing not to’ve made something that wowed anyone. Well, that wowed me I guess. Unless the food’s unusually heinous my family’s reaction is almost always the same.

Later in the evening we had frozen yogurt, and Alex has adopted this habit of running between all of us for bites, and it’s just — the most adorable, delightful thing in the world. He dashes up and giggles and takes the bite of frozen yogurt and his head just tips back and he laughs, loving it so much, in this ecstacy of giggles. And you can’t help but laugh with him, and remember what a deep, honest delight this can be, sitting around sharing dessert with your family. Remembering how simple happiness can be.

I’ve had my car for almost three years now. And as far as I can remember, for most of that time it’s been pretty tidy. No eating allowed. No trash left on the floor. Nothing carted around endlessly in the back seat, apart from de-icer and snow scrapers, which are necessary car tools and not random extra non-car things.

And now I’m riding again, and in a few short weeks my car’s become this sea of horse things, strewn with boots and chaps and brushes and lead ropes and clothes and, somehow, books. It’s driving me insane. It’s also starting to smell less like nothing, like neutral tidy-car, and more like a barn — which is probably not pleasant to most of my very-occasional passengers, but is homey and comfortable to me.

Last week Weetabix was on sale at Whole Foods, so I grabbed a box. I’m a little on the fence still. They’re tasty, but they go instantly to mush, and if I’m going to be eating a lovely mushy cereal in the morning I kind of want it to be oatmeal. Weetabix are faster, and I don’t mind my cereal going a little soggy, but more often than not I find myself craving something a little crunchy and flakey. Still, they almost always make me think of Buffy, and as long as I don’t dwell on the blood-drinking aspect it’s a nice thing to be reminded of.

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It’s funny, I was thinking just the other day about how lucky I’ve been, how this extra-riding opportunity just sort of fell in my lap. The rightness of time and place, what a Good Thing it all is. And then yesterday my Good Thing got even better: I had my lesson on a new horse. So now if I go out and Saza’s being used in a lesson (or if I just feel like it), I can ride Nighthawk instead. I’m giddily excited about helping school them, about working on my own riding.

My dreams have come on all long and vivid the last few days; I wake up reeling from them, running over and over the events as the memory slowly fades, pieces falling away.

I am in Australia; my hands are both occupied in keeping Alex lifted high away from a swarm of ants, leaving me unable to push the insects off my legs. I force slow, deep breaths, willing away my terror.

I am moving into a new dorm with my first roommate Katie. The bedroom is very long and somewhat narrow, the bunk beds long to suit it, spacious, and I am sprawled comfortably on the top bunk, looking down at Bryce stretched out on his back on the lower bed. Elated, I realize there is more than enough space there for him and Allison, so they can both have somewhere to sleep when they visit. Katie is setting up her enormous television across from the beds; along the top are the speakers, which are transparent tubes that, normally invisible, can also be switched to emit red party lights.

I am in a coffee shop, picking out a donut; Bryce and Allison and I are sharing a big chocolate chip cookie, thick and chewy and delicious, and then a sugar cookie sweet and buttery, the top sparkling.

In a grocery store I have accepted a little sample cup of something and only halfway through do I realize, sickened, that in the vegetable pasta salad are pieces of chicken.

Allison and I have detoured into Macy’s and Bryce is being patient while we rifle through the racks, pulling down a few skirts and dresses in this beautiful summery grey subtly-pinstriped material and heading for the fitting rooms.

So it seems my dreams lately have been filled with going back to school and food, which comes as no surprise whatsoever.

Speaking of food, obliquely: Amazon is having a big sale on their KitchenAid stand mixers that, coupled with their current fall Kitchen & Housewares promotion, makes them nigh on impossible to pass up. For me, anyway. Maybe they have these kinds of sales all the time and I never knew about it, but regardless I now have a Professional HD making its merry way Minnesota-ward. (Though not its speedy way, alas; Amazon chose today to offer me a new Prime trial with its glorious two-day shipping, which doesn’t help at all with the order I placed yesterday.)

I found out about the offer on Simply Recipes, which is a foodblog that is neither usually vegetarian nor usually healthy, but is beautiful enough that I read it anyhow. Which is pretty rare, considering the utterly insane number of foodblogs out there, which means there are many that are vegetarian and healthy. In the end I’m just such a sucker for pretty.