Progress! Two steps forward. Or at least one and a half.

No step back yet but I suspect it will come - I'll settle for progress. Over the weekend I sat down for a half hour - I think it was Sunday - and wrote poetry. Tonight I had ideas on the way home and sketched them out in my notebook. That took only a few minutes. I need to set aside a certain amount of time for writing. I need first to figure out the right amount of time (roughly, I can always refine it) and time to do it, to minimize the tendency to avoid. I think I'll need to deny myself the computer until I've done it if I can (or just set a time to get away from the computer). Not just yet, but soon, I'll sort this out. I want to savor the fact I'm doing it at all, first.

More photographs today. I managed to stop in Tualatin and get pictures of the building that may soon be gone. Only from one angle. Two more are not very interesting and the fourth cannot be easily shot unless I wanted to stand in traffic (rush-hour traffic on a busy street): no sidewalk there, and very little verge of the road. I took a pass on that and photographed it from the one side I could. No idea if those photos came out. I need to find that out. But if they did not, I do not have time to reattempt until at least Thursday. I don't know what the schedule is on the builing: in the parking lot on one of the sides I did not photograph, was various heavy equipment stuff, which had apparently been used to dig up the parking lot. No idea if that is a related project or not....

It is a beautiful old building, brick, perhaps not as well-cared-for as it could be but still lovely. I hope someone buys it. I would hate to know it was destroyed. And I really hope my photos come out. The entire area that used to be so fascinating and beautiful has become more and more cookie-cutter suburban. I see nothing wrong with suburbia personally but I am so sorry to see it edging out so much character of place as in this case.

Then I went to Haggen foods to do my grocery shopping - a store I almost never stop at because it is not directly on my normal route home - and I had a blast. They had a brand of chips I love but nowhere else I shop seems to carry any more, so I got those, as well as some other stuff I might not have. Including some wonderful pumpkin bread (which uses pumpkin-pie spices but isn't very pumpkinny - fine by me, whether that's a word or not, it's the spices I love). Total impulse buy, but I'm in heaven.

I realized as I was shopping that what I loved as a child is deceptive. On that list of foods is a sub-set I don't love any more and a sub-set I can't have, and a lot of the ones that I love and can have, I should have at least somewhat in moderation. Or I do already have them at least somewhat regularly, so that they are not out-of-the-ordinary.

Shrimp, say. I got them this holiday season, remembering treats of my childhood. And frankly, they were boring. Not bad, just boring. Hazelnuts? Thanks, I'm allergic to them. I can remember the nutty taste, I loved them. I don't love them enough to have my mouth (or worse, my throat, though I never was that unlucky) swell up. It just seems highly unwise. German chocolate cake? I still love chocolate, but that cake is too rich for me and upsets my stomach, and is overwhelming taste-wise. I'll settle for plainer brownies or ice cream, now. Asparagus? I detest it now. Lima beans? I can eat them...if I must.

There are things I loved then and still do. Peaches - I eat them a lot. Pears - I like the juice more, so I drink pear juice now. Blueberry muffins, I think everyone who read my earlier post knows I still like those. :) Some other things. But just going off what I loved as a child doesn't work by itself.

I want lemon chicken. I will probably have to make it if I want it, though, and that's more cooking than I want to do.

Tomorrow I meet up with a friend I have not seen in nearly a decade, and we hang out, catch up, and have dinner (we work within a few minutes' drive of each other, as it turns out). I am looking forward to that, and to seeing what else this week brings!