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Some nights I just want to eat a Frankendinner, ya know?

You know what I mean. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, and none of it adding up to a cohesive whole, but somehow that's what I want anyway.

It occurred to me, after eating the veggie hot dogs and the zucchini in garlic and olive oil and the tomato and basil salad, that we're always expecting life to be like a story is. To have a beginning, a middle, and an end - and more than that - a thrust, a meaning, a punchline - something to pull it all together.

We expect it to be like spaghetti and meatballs, not like a Frankenmeal.

But it feels a lot more like my little plates. A little of this, and a little of that, things that taste different, songs that don't go together. Milkshakes before the meal, pancakes for dinner, chocolate in the morning, and fruit with vinegar. It's weird. And it makes very little sense, except in snippets, flashes of insight that peek through at us like the stars winking here and there in the heavy backlit blanket of a NYC night.

Once you start down the Dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. - Yoda.

Put it down to a sudden onslaught of girly bleeding. I have resisted and resisted and resisted. I bought the French press just in case I had a coffee-drinking visitor, months ago. The boy in question vanished before I could use it on him, and there it sat, in the upper cupboard, looking sexy.

All glass and stainless, small, sleek, batting its little French mesh at me. Drat the thing.

I'd also bought a pound of this. (The Hair Bender - do you even have to ask?)

And again, there it sat, well-sealed against air, in the fridge.

Every night it calls to me and I say, no, it's late, I'm not drinking you. And then today I crawled wearily out of bed at 1pm. Okay 2pm, but that was after doing my exercises. Padded into the kitchen. Threw some bras in the sink to soak. (The ones that got hailed on and danced all night in, respectively - I figured they were due.)

Fed the yowling feline.

And looked up into the cupboard, where she sat, twinkling at me. "Lizzzzzbon.....Psssssst. You know you want it."

Yeah, I do, but "It" is usually some glamorous and flouting-the-laws-of-physics escapade involving multiple young boys.

"You can put hot milk in it."

Yeah, honey, I can put hot milk on young boys, too.

"But they are not in your cupboard. And I am."

Well, I can't really argue with that, can I?

Everyone from doctors to gypsy fortune tellers have warned me that coffee is just not good for me. I've got a sensitive stomach, and my brain doesn't respond well to drugs. I had a terrible time, years ago, kicking an only-mild daily coffee habit, and since then I've really just stuck to green tea, and that not even daily.

But:

My redheads are gone - one's moving away, and the other's got a girlfriend. And my new bike is still waiting for all its parts to arrive. And I've recently come to the conclusion that I am not up to letting anyone get closer to me than a safe biking distance. And....look how pretty it looks in that nice big purple cup.

It tastes just the way I remember it, too. And smells even better.

And now, yes, my stomach hurts. Sigh. Perhaps I ought to just find a new crop of boys.

Of all the things I've learned to do over the years, one of the skills I'm most glad to have is my ability to cook. Especially when I see how much poorer a quality-of-life people who cannot cook seem to have, regardless of their income. In fact, there are lots of people who make far more than I do (especially in this town) who don't eat nearly as well.

Because I am a natural cook and I learned so early (at the knee of Julia Child, as it were), I find it hard to imagine being intimidated by ingredients, and hard to imagine having to follow recipes to the letter, or being afraid to improvise. I've thought many times that I'd like to write a cookbook that would help people to learn in approximately the way I learned - that would be more like having a pal in the kitchen to encourage and guide experimentation, which I feel is the key to becoming what I think of as a real cook.

I did write something like that, once, for a friend who'd asked for a cookbook that explained the ultra-ultra basics. I did little diagrams of what a medium or low flame on a gas stove looks like, and added in some silly cartoon vegetables to make it extra-friendly. Really, my aim was not just to explain how to do the basics, but to make the whole thing seem less mysterious, and less like a chore.

I am reminded of all this by the smell coming from my stove, where I've got some apple/pear sauce with ginger and cinnamon and cloves and maple syrup simmering. And also by how nice it was to make soup earlier and eat it, and to feel so very content from those simple acts. There is something primal about cooking - something that puts us in touch with the elements of the earth, with our own creativity, and with the unique joys of smell, taste, and satiation. I hate the idea that there are people who miss out on that, who maybe even live their whole lives kept alive by restaurant food, without ever having the smell of something wonderful simmering in their kitchens.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our heroine was making technicolor soup (that photo is completely unretouched), sitting on the couch with a sleeping kitten, and watching a lot of MASH reruns. Oh, that Alan Alda. I can never decide whether in his youth, in that role, he belongs on the list.

Carl Lumbly, though, he's a definite.

After two weeks off from work, I find that instead of feeling recharged, I am feeling like I need another two weeks. I recently met some Australians who were in the middle of a month-long tour (or maybe it was three weeks) of the US, and who have done similarly long trips to various corners of Europe in the past few years. And it made me realize how stupid I have been.

I quit my day job some years ago, in part, to have greater control over how I spend my time, and I've been completely squandering that control for the last year. I have gone nowhere and done nothing. Sure, I have been somewhat hemmed in by financial pressures and the fact that I haven't had a traveling buddy available when I did have the money and/or time. But really, there is no earthly reason why 2007 should have passed me by without my taking a single vacation. I am the boss of me, and I have not given myself the breaks I needed. Periods of unemployment (also called looking for new gigs) do not, unfortunately, have the same psychological effect as actual time off. I know that in theory, but I forgot to put it into practice.

Or rather, every time I considered doing so, a gig came up that was too good to turn down. For which I am duly grateful.

Enh. What a boring-ass topic for a blog post. I have another one in mind, but it is one of those personal things, and it has to do with boys, and it was brought on by having gone on another date and ending up feeling lukewarm afterward.

Which all made me realize that there's a very good reason I have been hung up on the blonde. I felt passion for him. Actual real live impossible to resist or even think clearly about passion. And that, my friends, has not come along very often in my life. Really altogether rarely. So rarely that it makes me sad just thinking about it.

I think that I have, in the past, settled for something that seemed sort of nice at the time, or that I fell into. Like a hole. One should not be describing past loves as sinkholes. (Don't take that turn of phrase personally, Boywich, please. You know what we had, and there was a lot of it that was good.)

Anyway. Back to the passion. Having had an all-too-brief taste of that recently, I find myself unwilling to settle for anything other than a repeat. It's ineffable, and impossible to tell by looking at photos or reading online profiles, or exchanging emails, or even talking on the phone. And I wasn't even sure about the blonde when I first met him. After the first date, I thought, well that was fun, and I'd see him again. But I didn't know if there'd be chemistry. And then the second date, I felt like I'd been hit over the head by a flaming ton of bricks.

Yeah, that's what I want. Bring on the flaming ton of bricks. Stat!

Oof, and now I am overwhelmed again by the strangeness of setting up dates with people I have never met. And by work (I have to finish two projects in three days, and I have more than enough shopping errands to fill those days). And all I really want to do is my Xmas knitting, but that keeps taking a backseat to more pressing items.

Do you ever get a longing for a time you've never experienced? I am having that - a yearning for some apocryphal era when social life was simple, boys were plentiful and comfortable to be around (ha! I can't even write that without seeing how far off it is from the truth), and I had nothing much to occupy my time, plus plenty of money. Oh wait, that is heaven. I forgot.

Meanwhile, back on earth...A little judicious tinkering and I have magically (and somewhat mysteriously) managed to get a photo to appear on the site. It is a nice subject, too. Malabrigo (top) in Verde Esperanza and Colinette Cadenza in Mardi Gras (bottom). The former is for me; I'd bought some Malabrigo a couple of weeks ago thinking I'd knit the blonde a hat, but apparently the Sweater Rule has a Hat Corollary. So, when Miz Fury and I ducked into Downtown Yarns this week to pick out some yarn for her fingerless mitts, I decided to exchange the boy yarn for the glorious Verde that I'd lusted after on my previous trip.

I think if I am not completely sick of knitting mittens by that point (I have two other pairs in the queue), I will use it to make myself a pair.

Let's see, what other ephemera can I throw at the wall here? I have two soups on my agenda, and I am just trying to decide which one to make first: A) beet, carrot, ginger, squash, and red lentil, or B) potato, leek, celeriac, turnip, parsnip, collard green, and white bean. Don't they both sound good? Wish I had two big pots; I'd do them double-fisted and alternate eating them.

Egad what a trivial post. Apparently I am too tired to be coming up with grand epiphanies. Go read Juno if you need something deeper, eh? (Yeah, it sounds dirty, but I don't think she'll mind. She's cool like that.)