Thursday, July 31, 2008

10(0)1 bunnies

i have a new blog. i am doing 101 things in 1001 days. you should do it, too.



i can't make a link work, and don't want to fool with it right now. so here is the url: http://morganbunnies.vox.com/

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

gentle

over the past months, i have battled a lot of guilt. i have spent a lot of time feeling really shitty about myself and regretting choices i made that hurt other people. i let myself listen to other people who said really hurtful, judgmental things about me, and i believed them.

needless to say, this has been pretty miserable. i have been stuck in the past, reliving what i did, and what i didn't do...wondering what i could have done differently, wishing that i had acted differently...feeling like some how, some way, i have to prove to myself - and to other people - that i really am not a lousy shit, and that i'm not defined by things i do, whether they are good things or bad things.

today i was listening to someone talking about how she's fucked things up pretty bad in the past, and has had a hard time accepting the choices she made. and then she said: "you know what? i did the best i could with what i had, and sometimes that wasn't a whole hell of a lot."

so yeah, i feel shitty about some things that i did. but i believe - i have to believe - that if i could have done better, i would have. that helps me to feel a little compassion for myself. it helps me to see that i am not heartless or sinister, but sometimes i don't have a whole lot to work with. which sucks, but what can you do? other than try?

anne lamott says that being a human is a real stretch for her sometimes, and god, do i agree.

Monday, July 07, 2008

new skill acquired

yesterday i learned how to make crepes. by myself!

i have always been really intimidated by crepe-making. go ahead and scoff, but really, crepes seem so fragile and temperamental to me that i have always felt like if i so much as blinked my eyes too many times while cooking them, they would turn into a disastrous mess.

not so!

and i don't even have a crepe pan! well, not yet. but i might have to get one now, because i am obsessed with crepes, and was really devastated when i had used up all of the batter and had no more crepes to cook. i feel like a door has opened to me, and the culinary possibilities have expanded exponentially. do you know how many things i could put in crepes? and how many sauces i could put on top of crepes? my god. i feel dizzy with the enormity of it.

yesterday, not only did i make crepes, but i made blintzes out of my crepes! blintzes, which i had never eaten (and obviously never made, on account of my unreasonable fear of crepes), are cute little packages of goodness that will single-handedly improve the quality of your life. first you make crepes. then you make a tasty filling. then you put a little oblong pile of tasties into the crepe, and you fold it into a little rectangle, and then you cook it with the tiniest smidge of margarine (or butter i guess, if you're into that kind of thing), and then you have little, perfect, lightly browned packets of wowie!

don't count how many times i said little in the last paragraph. don't do it.

my first blintzes were potato-mushroom blinztes....potatoes mashed up with onions and mushrooms sauteed with caraway seeds. and then i served them with unsweetened applesauce and cashew ricotta i had made the day before. it has been awhile since i have been so satisfied with something that came out of my kitchen.

oh, the leisure of being able to putter around unhurried, cooking whatever i want. i wonder how many crepes i could make before my bank account runs out of money. let's find out.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

hard core unemployment

when dad retired, he told me that it was easy to lose track of what day of the week it was, because there is no longer work to create a distinction between workdays and weekend days.

this, oddly enough, is also true of unemployment. fridays used to be my FAVORITE day because of all the promise of the whole weekend stretched out before me.....and sundays used to inevitably make me the most terrible grouch, because i would feel like surely another weekend would never come, ever ever ever.

and now here it is sunday....which is just like friday.....and wednesday....and monday......

i have not been allowing myself to lay around in my bathrobe eating bonbons. well, only for a few hours a day. i've been working on getting up earlier and earlier so that when i do have a job (and i will! i shall! i must!!) it won't be a horrible adjustment. i'm having trouble getting over the 7:10 hurdle, but i know my persistence will eventually pay off...and before you know it, i'll be getting up at 4:30 am so that i can have the cows milked and the butter churned before the break of dawn.

oh, and i qualified for unemployment! bring on the bonbons!