Simple Abundance 7/2-7/9
Jul. 9th, 2002 01:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cthulhia
7/2 Simple Pleasures
(written 7/3)
She first describes an idyllic beach vacation day. Waterfront morning, window shopping, arcade games, cocktails and a summer dinner with friends. Then she describes another day perfectly planned, until an 8 am phone call destroys her plans, and she wants to scream or drown herself in the toilet, or, her last choice, be a grown up. She then relaxes with a cup of tea in the one free hour she has in Plan B.
My simple pleasure today was my Air Conditioned Car, playing DJ while Queue drove and Prog alternated between dozing and working on his book. He even brought an adapter for the lighter.
People get so much out of their gadgets. My roommate had fun using an antenna attachment to have his iPod play on the car radio. I have the credit, and might have bought an iPod for the trip if I hadn't just used - for the first time - those evil credit card cheques - to pay off my deferred taxes.
Other simple pleasures include being able to show them my hometown, and its most popular restaurant, Symeon's. Although, now that I notice such things, there were no vegan options.
Looking at this place through my friends' eyes, mom's house is rather a paragon of Simple Abundanceness. Lots and lots of blue and white china, flowers, cookbooks, tchochkes galore but a vast enough space that it doesn't look cluttered. I didn't appreciate this enough when I lived here, and, barring moving back here (which is not ideal for all kinds of other reasons), I will probably never live in a place as palatial and lush.
During a hike out to the car to get arnica, Queue and I saw lightning bugs for the first time this year.
7/3 Original "Sin" is Free Will
A bunch of references to the Great Creator and Eve and the Apple that chafed like... any statement of religion that doesn't adhere to one's own beliefs, I suppose. But... I like her attitude about it. Eve made us sentient, self-aware, hungry. Having appetites and desires is a good thing.
The best advice she has is to figure out what you want, and if it's not getting drunk in front of the TV well then, DO SOMETHING ELSE.
I went to check on the rosebush I started from Danny's cutting. I'd been trying to lure him out to Boston with the promise of hoards of roses, but he dismissed them as modern and scentless. They had a strong enough scent for me. But, wow, nothing like this rose bush, on a par with the thimbleful of pure czech rose oil I paid $20 for at a Pennsic years ago. Maybe he WOULD be disappointed. But it'd be fun to see him duke it out with the People's Republic of (Greater) Cambridge.
(written 7/4)
7/4 American Dreams and The Pursuit of Happiness
Distinguish between dreams and expectations. Dream are a leap of faith. Expectations are ego. That's what is hurt when you "lower your standards". (Although I tend to think I don't have standards. Most of the time I'm not for sale. But if you turn up during a rare blue light special, I'm practically free.) She then offers convincing, almost buddhist arguments for reliquishing expectations in order to be happy with what you get, which might even be satisfying if your ego didn't have its heart set on being on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Rolling Stone, Time, Nobel Laureates... all in the same month.
I am in an odd place as I write this.
I am spending the week at a gaming convention with my ex. We made these plans back when we were a we. A part of me is still really angry. Ego. Another part of me is determined not to be this year's uncomfortable exes sharing a room. Also ego. For the sake of least discomfort, we've fallen into treating this week as if we were still dating, sort of. I am biting my tongue a lot, resisting my usual bitterness about the whole situation, to avoid drama. So far, the reward of having an apparent date has been worth it. (Although, as a chick at a gaming con, I could probably find a new escort with no effort.) I am cycling through the various worst case scenarios when we get back home (per my ex, not because it's july 4th terrorism alert and we're all nervously checking CNN), trying not to expect too much of anything in particular, so I won't be upset when it doesn't turn out the way I expect.
I am reasonably happy now. Considering I was lamenting about this dreaded "vacation with ex" as recently as Monday, it's turned out well indeed.
(written 7/6)
7/5 Cooking up fantasy
She waxes nostalgic about the friends she has is beloved domestic/cooking authors she never met. A perfect souffle is attainable through patience, and is only slightly easier with the ideal equipment. Duct tape may save the day, but it won't help *you* get a suite on the first commercial space station.
I guess.
Professional cookbooks are like glossy car ads. I don't feel connected with the Grandson of the Original Joy of cooking. I can't even remember his name.
Most of all, she describes her author "companions" as like her: "dedicated homebodies who did not have to wander farther than our own four walls for adventure and fulfillment." Meanwhile, I am some 750 miles from home attending a gaming convention. Homebody does not describe me in the least. I wish I were so content to barricade myself into my own home. I would probably do better to see less of everyone until I can figure out how to get to know me better even when other folks are around. My core group of folks would shrink back down, and feel that much less escapable. There are times when I'd like to get my homo sapiens fix in a cafe where I knew few enough people that I could get some reading done. I burn out not so much on people, as on letting them get to know me too well.
7/6 Nearing the good life
A review of Scott and Helen Nearings' Living the Good Life. They lived long lives, probably not so much for being vegan as for their other 10 principles of sane living. Right now I am focusing on Don't Worry and Be at peace with yourself. There is potential for much psychodrama here. But if I make it through this week without a public meltdown, and, I'm feeling sufficiently numb, I can simply move on, and make time for situations that are less likely to depress me so much.
(written 7/8-9)
7/7 Comfort Food
When I went to burning man, my then-roommate and his SO were surprised to find that most of my comfort foods are sweets. Meat and potatoes aren't that comforting to me. Other than sweets, (which are less comforting as I discover more about how they not only rot my teeth, but may have indirectly contributed to my hypothyroidism as a result of fluoride), my comfort foods tend to be fresh veggies, and the worst kind of meats (bacon, pepperoni). Herbwise, I turn to ginger, peppermint and fennel, since they settle my system if I am feeling that sort of discomfort.
Processed food makes me increasingly nervous, due to undetectably substandard ingredients and a fear of carbs. But even before that awareness, I wasn't a big fan of mac & cheese. When I was essentially latch-keyed, I lived on canned mandarin oranges, Celeste frozen pizzas for one, three-bean salad, tuna salad, ham salad, and glazed ham cut into cubes to dip into sweet mustard, like Nance's. Replace as much of that as possible with organic and fresh, and maybe I could eat like that again.
Sunday, we stopped at my first Thai Restaurant, the Lemon Grass in Armory Square. As they were with Symeon's and Zebb's, my city mouse friends seemed largely unimpressed. It's irrational that this feels like a rejection of me on some level too, but it does.
7/8 Soul Food
My mom is a gourmet cook, or at least sufficiently obsessed with gourmet cooking that she has a lot of cookbooks and, back when they traveled, my parents took me to a lot of fancy restaurants, as a reward for my legendary moment of one-upping a snooty waiter waiving a kiddy menu at me by ordering the Oysters Rockefeller. (I have no memory of this, but everyone else does.) Once it was down to the last two girls, we could pencil in good restaurants as a main point of the vacation, including a place near Ithaca that had carob instead of chocolate, which is still a blasphemy in my mind. A really good white chocolate mousse with raspberries got me over the issues I had with White Chocolate, largely due to Sandra Boynton. (I remember this because someone quoted her anti-white chocolate argument at me recently.)
I've always been a gourmand type. But, we're WASPs, and our heritage food is pretty bland, at least to Mom. I remember fondue, and liking the slav recipes (ajvar and feta salad), the bean thing and chicken marbella. We didn't do much casseroles. Jack made me my first tuna casserole (with potato chips) at the Khan around 1999.
7/9 Nusery fare
She means the really early comfort foods. What springs to mind is a drawing I probably found in Worldbook, or the red volumes of storybooks that were next to it; candlelit, a kid with hot cocoa trying to make animal crackers stand up. He's dressed in Laura Ingall's era clothes. I remember being surprised that aminal crackers might be that old.
Mom raves about the time she was invited to the posh home of one of her college classmates, probably long island or newport to hear her talk, the whole works. After an overdone meal, dessert was an ice cream bar, served with paper and wooden sticks intact, on elegant china on silver (charger) plates. SBB describes an elegant dinner party with a similar ending that was equally well-received. Perhaps it's when the comfort foods turn up in such unexpected places that makes them taste so good.
(written 7/3)
She first describes an idyllic beach vacation day. Waterfront morning, window shopping, arcade games, cocktails and a summer dinner with friends. Then she describes another day perfectly planned, until an 8 am phone call destroys her plans, and she wants to scream or drown herself in the toilet, or, her last choice, be a grown up. She then relaxes with a cup of tea in the one free hour she has in Plan B.
My simple pleasure today was my Air Conditioned Car, playing DJ while Queue drove and Prog alternated between dozing and working on his book. He even brought an adapter for the lighter.
People get so much out of their gadgets. My roommate had fun using an antenna attachment to have his iPod play on the car radio. I have the credit, and might have bought an iPod for the trip if I hadn't just used - for the first time - those evil credit card cheques - to pay off my deferred taxes.
Other simple pleasures include being able to show them my hometown, and its most popular restaurant, Symeon's. Although, now that I notice such things, there were no vegan options.
Looking at this place through my friends' eyes, mom's house is rather a paragon of Simple Abundanceness. Lots and lots of blue and white china, flowers, cookbooks, tchochkes galore but a vast enough space that it doesn't look cluttered. I didn't appreciate this enough when I lived here, and, barring moving back here (which is not ideal for all kinds of other reasons), I will probably never live in a place as palatial and lush.
During a hike out to the car to get arnica, Queue and I saw lightning bugs for the first time this year.
7/3 Original "Sin" is Free Will
A bunch of references to the Great Creator and Eve and the Apple that chafed like... any statement of religion that doesn't adhere to one's own beliefs, I suppose. But... I like her attitude about it. Eve made us sentient, self-aware, hungry. Having appetites and desires is a good thing.
The best advice she has is to figure out what you want, and if it's not getting drunk in front of the TV well then, DO SOMETHING ELSE.
I went to check on the rosebush I started from Danny's cutting. I'd been trying to lure him out to Boston with the promise of hoards of roses, but he dismissed them as modern and scentless. They had a strong enough scent for me. But, wow, nothing like this rose bush, on a par with the thimbleful of pure czech rose oil I paid $20 for at a Pennsic years ago. Maybe he WOULD be disappointed. But it'd be fun to see him duke it out with the People's Republic of (Greater) Cambridge.
(written 7/4)
7/4 American Dreams and The Pursuit of Happiness
Distinguish between dreams and expectations. Dream are a leap of faith. Expectations are ego. That's what is hurt when you "lower your standards". (Although I tend to think I don't have standards. Most of the time I'm not for sale. But if you turn up during a rare blue light special, I'm practically free.) She then offers convincing, almost buddhist arguments for reliquishing expectations in order to be happy with what you get, which might even be satisfying if your ego didn't have its heart set on being on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Rolling Stone, Time, Nobel Laureates... all in the same month.
I am in an odd place as I write this.
I am spending the week at a gaming convention with my ex. We made these plans back when we were a we. A part of me is still really angry. Ego. Another part of me is determined not to be this year's uncomfortable exes sharing a room. Also ego. For the sake of least discomfort, we've fallen into treating this week as if we were still dating, sort of. I am biting my tongue a lot, resisting my usual bitterness about the whole situation, to avoid drama. So far, the reward of having an apparent date has been worth it. (Although, as a chick at a gaming con, I could probably find a new escort with no effort.) I am cycling through the various worst case scenarios when we get back home (per my ex, not because it's july 4th terrorism alert and we're all nervously checking CNN), trying not to expect too much of anything in particular, so I won't be upset when it doesn't turn out the way I expect.
I am reasonably happy now. Considering I was lamenting about this dreaded "vacation with ex" as recently as Monday, it's turned out well indeed.
(written 7/6)
7/5 Cooking up fantasy
She waxes nostalgic about the friends she has is beloved domestic/cooking authors she never met. A perfect souffle is attainable through patience, and is only slightly easier with the ideal equipment. Duct tape may save the day, but it won't help *you* get a suite on the first commercial space station.
I guess.
Professional cookbooks are like glossy car ads. I don't feel connected with the Grandson of the Original Joy of cooking. I can't even remember his name.
Most of all, she describes her author "companions" as like her: "dedicated homebodies who did not have to wander farther than our own four walls for adventure and fulfillment." Meanwhile, I am some 750 miles from home attending a gaming convention. Homebody does not describe me in the least. I wish I were so content to barricade myself into my own home. I would probably do better to see less of everyone until I can figure out how to get to know me better even when other folks are around. My core group of folks would shrink back down, and feel that much less escapable. There are times when I'd like to get my homo sapiens fix in a cafe where I knew few enough people that I could get some reading done. I burn out not so much on people, as on letting them get to know me too well.
7/6 Nearing the good life
A review of Scott and Helen Nearings' Living the Good Life. They lived long lives, probably not so much for being vegan as for their other 10 principles of sane living. Right now I am focusing on Don't Worry and Be at peace with yourself. There is potential for much psychodrama here. But if I make it through this week without a public meltdown, and, I'm feeling sufficiently numb, I can simply move on, and make time for situations that are less likely to depress me so much.
(written 7/8-9)
7/7 Comfort Food
When I went to burning man, my then-roommate and his SO were surprised to find that most of my comfort foods are sweets. Meat and potatoes aren't that comforting to me. Other than sweets, (which are less comforting as I discover more about how they not only rot my teeth, but may have indirectly contributed to my hypothyroidism as a result of fluoride), my comfort foods tend to be fresh veggies, and the worst kind of meats (bacon, pepperoni). Herbwise, I turn to ginger, peppermint and fennel, since they settle my system if I am feeling that sort of discomfort.
Processed food makes me increasingly nervous, due to undetectably substandard ingredients and a fear of carbs. But even before that awareness, I wasn't a big fan of mac & cheese. When I was essentially latch-keyed, I lived on canned mandarin oranges, Celeste frozen pizzas for one, three-bean salad, tuna salad, ham salad, and glazed ham cut into cubes to dip into sweet mustard, like Nance's. Replace as much of that as possible with organic and fresh, and maybe I could eat like that again.
Sunday, we stopped at my first Thai Restaurant, the Lemon Grass in Armory Square. As they were with Symeon's and Zebb's, my city mouse friends seemed largely unimpressed. It's irrational that this feels like a rejection of me on some level too, but it does.
7/8 Soul Food
My mom is a gourmet cook, or at least sufficiently obsessed with gourmet cooking that she has a lot of cookbooks and, back when they traveled, my parents took me to a lot of fancy restaurants, as a reward for my legendary moment of one-upping a snooty waiter waiving a kiddy menu at me by ordering the Oysters Rockefeller. (I have no memory of this, but everyone else does.) Once it was down to the last two girls, we could pencil in good restaurants as a main point of the vacation, including a place near Ithaca that had carob instead of chocolate, which is still a blasphemy in my mind. A really good white chocolate mousse with raspberries got me over the issues I had with White Chocolate, largely due to Sandra Boynton. (I remember this because someone quoted her anti-white chocolate argument at me recently.)
I've always been a gourmand type. But, we're WASPs, and our heritage food is pretty bland, at least to Mom. I remember fondue, and liking the slav recipes (ajvar and feta salad), the bean thing and chicken marbella. We didn't do much casseroles. Jack made me my first tuna casserole (with potato chips) at the Khan around 1999.
7/9 Nusery fare
She means the really early comfort foods. What springs to mind is a drawing I probably found in Worldbook, or the red volumes of storybooks that were next to it; candlelit, a kid with hot cocoa trying to make animal crackers stand up. He's dressed in Laura Ingall's era clothes. I remember being surprised that aminal crackers might be that old.
Mom raves about the time she was invited to the posh home of one of her college classmates, probably long island or newport to hear her talk, the whole works. After an overdone meal, dessert was an ice cream bar, served with paper and wooden sticks intact, on elegant china on silver (charger) plates. SBB describes an elegant dinner party with a similar ending that was equally well-received. Perhaps it's when the comfort foods turn up in such unexpected places that makes them taste so good.
