palace of winds

Last night I dreamt I was back at school, taking a course taught by Neil Gaiman. It was held in this strange sort of multi-level room in his house with everyone just hanging about on various odd chairs and throw pillows. I started out in the loft but ended up lounging on the stairs. He had asked one girl to describe one of her most vivid memories about ice cream, and as she did he strolled among the students. She had a very short recollection, though, and he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and just stared off into space for a while, and we all waited for him to move on with class.

After a few long minutes he said that he wasn’t sure how we were going to have an entire class of discussion on just that, that she hadn’t given us much to go on, and then he meandered up the stairs. One of his cats, a small light orange tabby, leapt onto my chest and began purring madly, bowing sphinx-like to have the place just before her tail patted and generally twisting and rubbing at me with her face in cat ecstacy. Neil expressed some surprise, saying usually she took ages to warm up to people.

Because it’s Friday I:

• am enjoying peach iced tea instead of just water
• splurged on breakfast with:
  • a slice of raisin rosemary rye bread with a smear of cream cheese
  • a banana pineapple frappe
    (blend: 1 banana, 1/2 c pineapple juice, 1.5 t honey, 1 T buttermilk; serve over ice & garnish with mint)
• am indulging in feeling persecuted at work
• am letting myself make all the lists I like

I also:

• baked last night (the aforementioned bread)
• am still dreaming of cats, and bicycles, and tiny houses, and hidden passageways
• want to go home

Browsing my library’s online catalog, I see they keep not one but five copies of the Pillow Book movie. Which shouldn’t surprise me as it’s all arty and what-not, but I was introduced to it from the ‘omg there’s nudity heehee!’ angle, so.

In addition to the many things it does have, my library does not have:

• Secrets of a Jewish Baker
• Season 2 of Cowboy Bebop

Interlibrary loan, however, can provide me the former. And probably the latter, come to think of it, but I haven’t yet checked.

These days I wake up — awake. As awake as you can expect to be six seconds after opening your eyes. Happy to be moving. Purposeful. Ready to act. And I step into this office and I can just feel it all shutting down, all the switches flicking off. Everything going dead and dull. And I’ve known it for a long time but still it makes me wistful, makes me sigh a little. It’s something my day never quite recovers from. I come home from the long dreadful boredom and want only to crawl into bed and sleep. Lifeless little sloth girl.

I finally broke down and ordered S1 of Grey’s Anatomy, even though I think it’s pricey for only 9 episodes, and even though I have a suspicion that if I just waited I could eventually find it cheaper. I had a reward certificate, though, and I came to the realization over the weekend that it’s my favorite show on television right now, the one I’d pick if it came to it (which is sort of weird, now that I think about that, this mental ranking — in what conceivable situation would I be forced to pick just one television show to watch per week?). And on top of that? Grey Matter. Faaantastic. I think my lunch hour will be spent reading the archives.

Jo came over last night and brought this gorgeous key lime (Key lime? Key Lime?) dessert from D’Amico’s. It was a lovely cool custard sort of affair with a curled rose of white chocolate and yum. Yum. I love the brightness of lime.

I have not been missing meat. I haven’t been super-strict or anything, but apart from a few dishes scattered over these last weeks — month? it must be nearing a month now — I’ve been pretty much vegetarian. Psuedo-veg, then, I suppose. Ovo-lacto-pescetarian, with occasional lapses? Well, not lapses, since I don’t think meat-eating itself is wrong. Blah blah blah. I brought a salad (lettuce, red onion, cucumber) and a sweet potato for lunch today and the two and a half hours until then seems an impossibly long time. I adore sweet potatoes.

The office plant (remember Fern?) is looking a little sad and bedraggled. We moved it — for some reason, I don’t now recall — and so I forget to water it even more often now. Maybe there is a small subconscious part of me pleased with the winter-wilting, as it so often matches my own office-mood. Longing for the sun and warmth and a good drink. Summer air.

Ooo, the UPS man is going to get that eye thing that I can’t spell. Lasick or what have you. He came in just now in glasses, a lovely little dark copper-rimmed pair. Said he was sick of contacts, which I understand. I wear mine maybe half the time now, on odd whims. Depending on clothes, hairstyle, laziness. If I think I will exercise that afternoon.

My across-the-hall neighbor has me dreaming of cycling this summer. I have a vague itch for a new bike, a pipe-dream of getting in shape enough to cycle to work and back each day. I have no good clue how long it would take, though; certainly much longer than my fifteen/twenty minute-ish commute, though unlike my commute it would be full of fresh air and sunlight and birdsong and flower blossoms swirling on the breeze and music-montages, and me waltzing into work radiant, fit, glowing, with a haircut that requires just a quick headtoss and a wardrobe that’s all at once classic and chic and casual and sharp.

That’s how cycling works, right?

I’d wanted, once I caught my breath a little, to write about the long-weekend-long cooking adventure (complete with cheese-making) and Capote and Transamerica and the pleasures of real Oreo ice cream, but just at 8 this morning I got a call at work from my mom. I could tell instantly that something was wrong, that she was waffling and working up to telling me something, and for a moment I was convinced that my cat was sick — that perhaps he had died, even, and I was just on the outside edge of devastation, fending it off.

Instead she told me that my dad’s truck has been stolen. Someone came into his networking meeting and took his coat (one he loved that he got from my grandma last Christmas) and then took his truck, which he loved and which was full of his cds and all his best tools and all the special extras he’d bought for it. He’s devastated, of course, and I’m sure he blames himself for leaving his keys in his coat pocket.

And I’m just shocked and sad and angry and I hurt for him. I want to cry. Go home and cry and then find who did this and slap them, and tell them that they should have picked someone else. My dad is the best man I know. He is good and kind and patient and giving. He never demands anything, never keeps anything for himself, never thinks of himself before others and is happiest that way. He takes joy in joy. He is tireless, never-complaining. And I know it’s just some senseless crime, probably just some fuckup drug addict I should feel sorry for, should pity, but I can’t. I’m furious, hateful. I hate myself a little for it but I think of this person beneath the bootheel of society and right now I just want to see them ground well and truly into the dirt.

Last night I made the pumpkin oatmeal muffins from the Moosewood Restaurants Low-Fat Favorites book. They’re quite pretty, with a dollop of apricot preserves in the center of each. Embarrassingly I forgot to shake the pineapple juice before opening it, though, and as I needed just a half cup out of a massive can I’m afraid I got a fairly watered-down sample from the top. The muffins were still quite good, but I would be interested to try them with more of a kick from the pineapple. I also like my pumpkin things spicier and pumpkinier, so next time I will add three or four times the cinnamon (I doubled it immediately) and maybe more pumpkin too. But there’s just one of me and a dozen of them now, and I only have so much freezer space, so it’ll be some time before I bake any more — well, anything, since I also just made two separate sorts of cupcakes for my sister’s birthday. I’ll be making the frosting for them tonight, and the sheer amount of butter and sugar that’s gone into this endeavor is terrifying and has been enough to put me off baking for a while, because it’s just too damned dangerous. I now have almost an entire gallon of whole milk in my fridge and no earthly clue what I can do with it, since I certainly won’t drink it.

So who’s got something interesting I can do with all or any of the following: 3 oz full-fat cream cheese, 3 oz reduced-fat cream cheese, whole milk, pineapple juice, evaporated skim milk, apricot preserves, mushrooms, fat-free plain yogurt, fat-free sour cream.

I mean, I’ve got lots of other things too, but those are the things I should be trying to use up. In a healthy way. Ha.