I’ve been very good this year about buying new records – for the most part, i haven’t. Sure, there was a purchase or two a few months ago, but when my music allowance for the first four months of a year is under $100 you know i’m acting with some amount of restraint. Part of what kept my wallet firmly in my pocket is the knowledge that the past two weeks would see the release of over a dozen records that i was definitely eying up for purchase, and on Monday i picked up a few between AKA and South Street. Here are first impressions, in ascending order of quality:
consume
I try to listen to my body when it screams at me.
Earlier in the evening it seemed as though everyone suddenly needed to talk to me. Lindsay had locked herself out and needed me to let her in, our friend Chris called to leave a mysterious message about how “important” it was for me to call him, members of my music fraternity were hounding me via email and instant messenger. Just as suddenly, i needed to go to sleep. It wasn’t even midnight yet, and i didn’t feel tired; my body just didn’t want to operate. I couldn’t type, or think, just slide into a dreamy haze every time i relaxed and listened to the music i had on.
I bid everyone a farewell for the night, started a cd on tenth track, and was asleep before the end of the eleventh.
It was in that same manner that i woke up: ostensibly because i heard a noise, but really because my body needed fuel. Lately I seem to have found myself on a sort of a diet, which is to say that i’m not eating a pint of ice cream every third day and i’m not eating half a pound of chocolate as a midnight snack. I know, though, what waking up like that means: i need some sort of fuel.
Down in the kitchen my body was like a compass: milk rather than juice & two small pieces of chocolate. I was obviously a little dehydrated and a little low on sugar, though i would have never noticed it on my own. In retrospect, i had hardly drank anything yesterday – definitely not the half gallon of water that’s suggested. Similarly, i had only had sugar from a fruit salad much earlier in the day.
My body knew exactly what i needed once i was in the kitchen, but did it send me down there as well? Did i wake up with the explicit purpose of needing a drink? Was the vaguely disturbing dream i had been having my subconscious mind’s way of waking me up to refuel? The dream i had been having was definitely strange … the nearest i could come to describing it would be to say that the Borg were drugrunning from a largish warehouse that was being fronted as an Acme Supermarket that my mother and i drove into by mistake, and that our only means of survival were pretending to have been already assimilated and making sure to sell out of our small stock of vintage G.I. Joes (who would apparently inform their child owners of the distress we were in, because all of the adults were on the drugs). The overall tone of it was one of horror … knowing that the tiniest slip would make everyone aware that i wasn’t who i was pretending to be.
The birds are already trumpeting sunlight, and my body seems to be through with telling me what it needs to keep it going. If only the rest my life were so succinct.
When was it, exactly, that i decided to replace red meat as a major food group with ice cream?
I did not get an Easter basket this year because i did not get Easter this year, and so i do not get to complain. Still, it somehow feels like that interminable bunny took a long hop over my life while he was on his route. Lindsay didn’t even go home, and yet she returned on Sunday evening with a basket chock full of fake grass and foil wrapped chocolate.
I ate all of her Smidgens; really, it couldn’t be helped. I was told to eat them, but not told from which basket i should take them, and since everyone has a basket with Smidgens you could hardly expect that i would’ve known that i had devoured all of the peanut-buttery bunnies in Lindsay’s basket which, truth be told, i’m highly skeptical of in the first place. After all, how the hell did the rabbit know where to find her?
On our way to work this afternoon Lindsay shoved a fistful of shiny chocolate eggs into the side pocket of her new Gap bag, leaving a spare few littering the crinkly grass in her basket. It was those few i found myself eyeing a few minutes ago. We have a bag of seasonally wrapped Hershey’s Kisses, but i didn’t want those; i wanted the last vestiges of chocolate to be found in that pastel wicker basket, those gleaming pieces buried under strands of what is, for all intents and purposes, Easter tinsel. Yes, tinsel. Let’s not kid ourselves.
Looking back upon my encounter with the basket, i couldn’t tell you why i craved those room temperature eggs rather than the firm kisses i could have eaten. All i know is that now there’s only a few lemon jellybeans and a lonely misplaced kiss left in that pile of matte green tinsel, and they’re all safe from my appetite. For now.
Asking an adventurous pesco-vegetarian, a finicky omnivore, and the master of Lipton side dishes and grilled cheese to decide amongst themselves what meal they can collectively cook and eat is somewhere between comedy and challenge. Last Tuesday Laurel came over to make dinner with Kat and I, and after a limited amount of fussing we wound up taking a stab at a spinach quiche recipe that my mother and i have been making for years now. The quiche met all of our pre-requisites … meatless, cheesy, and relatively basic in preparation. We added a side order of perogies and suddenly we had a healthy (and rather yummy) meal assembled within the span of an hour. While serving up the food i lamented that i wanted a cookbook that was “Vegetarian, but with meat. You know, like, a cookbook for lapsed and reformed vegetarians.”
We all got a laugh out of my meandering description of the perfect cookbook, and yesterday while wandering in and out of used book stores in New Hope with Elise i actually found what i was looking for. Almost Vegetarian is a smartly compiled book that veers between rare herbivore delicacies and more modest meaty fare, peppered throughout with tips on advanced preparation and vegetable shopping in green ink. I bought it immediately, for a surprising eight dollars, considering it’s in absolutely perfect condition.
I love those coincidental moments that life offers up, as though a bookstore was fated to carry a particular book on a certain day just because i was too inarticulate after baking for nearly an hour to describe what my ideal cookbook would really feature. Chalk one up for serendipity, i suppose.