Scattering of notes

Since I'm supposed to reduce my reading (and I've already used up my allotted "cheat time" for reading blogs and email), I figure I'll post some of the thoughts rattling around in my brain, since she sure didn't say we could not write.

First off: I really don't like this. In order to keep to the time I limited myself to, I was racing through blogs/journals - but until I did that this evening, I felt very disconnected and cut off from my friends and support network. Neither is good. I ran a tiny bit over time today, but less than 10 minutes, and I think I can avoid that the rest of the week (Sunday is actually a very busy posting day, I've found - end of the weekend stuff). Now to see if I'm right. If not, in the future, I'll just cut myself off at 30 minutes and pick it up the next day, even if I will fall slightly behind that way.

I went out to the Gorge for my Artist's Date today. I meant to check out a hotel/resort/whatever that allows day use, and which sounded like it might be a great spot to do a sort of one-person "poetry retreat" with a chance to walk the grounds, sit inside and write, a restaurant on-site, etc. I left immediately. Just driving around the grounds, they were ugly, dreary, and uninspiring. So I went on to the outlet mall where I picked up some pears and a whisk of a type I have been looking for for a year and failing to find (and which I really regretted not having when doing some of the baking recently). The springy sort, you know? That bounce up and down? I'm not sure it's really a whisk versus something else, but it's bleeding useful, is what it is.

Then I continued up to Multnomah Falls. It was rainy and foggy and unscenic today and I would never have set out to see the Gorge or Falls in this weather if I hadn't promised myself the trip as an AD. And I did not stay long because it was cold cold cold. But it was beautiful and wild and roaring - there's been a lot of rain recently, tonight and tomorrow is another flood warning - and it was just incredible to see and hear even if I did not stay for very long.

Then I came home and I was a little tired so I figured I would nap for an hour or two. Four hours later I got up. Some of that was sleeping and some was just vegging, staring at the light from the skylight in the master bath and feeling depressed and like I had nothing to do. I found myself wondering, what effect would a week without reading have on someone who was very prone to depression, if that were their coping and/or socialization mechanism? And then I realized that if I pushed it toward feeling bad, of course I would.

So I got up and did some stuff I'd planned to with regards to re-doing the computer room. I found out my intended piece of furniture won't work - good news is I found it out with a measuring tape, before carrying the beast (which we already own) up the stairs or anything. My DH will appreciate not having to bring it up only to find out it won't work, too, I'm sure.

Went and did grocery shopping. Wonder of wonders, they had Vanilla Coke (which I love, and which is just about unfindable at my local stores now - they still carry the diet, but not the regular). Bigger wonder of wonders, they had roasted lemon pepper chicken. Now, finding lemon chicken and eating it - that was the favorite childhood food I was going to try for last week (since the blueberry muffins were sort of by accident), but I didn't want to make it and no one had it. And here it was, so I got it!

I knew it wouldn't be like Mom's, and it wasn't. But it was very similar and good. (Mom's had/has more lemon to it - enough so that the juice, drained off, could be thinned a bit with water and drizzled over rice as a sort of citrussy-chickeny sauce, rather than thickening it for gravy. It is delicious! I should get the recipe except I hate to cook meat, seeing it raw spoils my appetite. I don't have a problem knowing I am eating an animal, it just looks gross before you cook it.)

And, this week's Unconscious Mutterings:

1. Long distance:: Phone
2. Meant to be:: Is that what life's meant to be (song line)
3. Here:: There
4. Endless:: Neil Gaiman
5. Resentment:: No Reading
6. Insipid:: Thoughts
7. Bunny:: Rabbit
8. Slogan:: Marketing
9. Naked:: Eek!
10. Sarcasm:: Grrr

No idea where "Grrr" came from. I blanked and so it may just have been my general twitchy mood. :)