not-so-glorious food

I have eaten like a total out-of-control person today. I started out okay with tuna, olive oil, oregano, Italian seasoning and plenty of chopped spinach served on wheat crackers (I'm not a traditional-breakfast-foods person). However, after that, the rest of my eating was shot. I've had two kaiser rolls, two turkey meatballs, some baked steak fries (technically, then, not 'fries' but, I suppose, baked potato wedges), a cookie and some ice cream throughout the day. My body is ready to kick me (herself?). Yeah, vegetables and fruits? Apparently not much of a priority for me today. Sometimes I get like this...I'll eat something crappy and then just eat crappily for the rest of the day. Ugh.

This makes me think, of course, of things like my horribly negative body image. (Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?) Every time I think about things like this, I wonder how to not pass this set of neuroses on to Pic. How can I not? Even if I insist that every body is beautiful, just about every other source of information about bodies is telling us othewise. We went to the store tonight and there were these Barbie fairy things that were like freaking twigs [I can't find a picture of these, sorry]. Then, of course, we passed the Barbies and by the time we reached the end of the aisle, we had reached the Bratz dolls. Um, and Disney princesses -- I almost forgot them. Then, there are the images of popular women splashed across the covers of all of the magazines, including some women who used to be more average-sized but who have become emaciated over the years (except their thinness is due to something other than lack of access to nutritional foods and plenty of access to ravaging disease). All that and my very own negative body image. It's not like she'll never pick up on that, right? Don't kids sense things that we think we are hiding oh-so-well? She's picked up on funkiness in our supposed-to-be marital bliss before when she was just a wee(er) lass.

Anyhow, this brings me to two other observations, both media related.

One is Gilmore Girls. I love Gilmore Girls, but I've always hated that these women (mother and daughter, sixteen years apart) eat worse than anyone else ever (except, perhaps, Michael Phelps) and they shun exercise, yet they are both incredibly thin women. What is up with that?

The other: The Women. I watched the 1939 version, which I thought was okay. Then, against the reviews of others, I watched the newer version (because I clearly like wasting my time). At one point, Mary's (Meg Ryan's character) ten-year-old daughter refuses to eat something because it'll cost too many points. As in Weight Watchers points. She declares herself fat. She's a thin little wisp of a girl. While she's told she's not fat (if I recall correctly), no one ever deals with this. This movie was such a disappointment for so many reasons, this being just a small one. (Like, what was up with the [SPOILER ALERT] baby at the end of the movie being a boy and then being passed from hand to hand across a backdrop of a wall painted sky-blue with clouds? Weird savior images abound.) Anyhow, don't watch it. Spare yourself.

Okay, well, so much more can be said about this, but I need to finish reading an article (forthcoming chapter?) on Michel Montaigne's anti-ethnocentrism (which I promptly looked up) and then read Twelfth Night and then read The Tempest and then read part of Stephen Greenblatt's Marvelous Possessions and then read.... (I really want to read Harry Potter again). Please send me some positive vibes (yes, I did just use that phrase) that I make it out of this semester alive...definitely not OD'd on ice cream. Thanks.

sing, sing a song

I came across this while I was browsing around NPR's site. (And, when I type 'came across,' I mean it is listed as Song of the Day.)

It's 'Land, Land, Land,' by Apollo Run.

the stuff of dreams

Is it the end of January yet? No. [sigh]

Here's what I've been dreaming about and desiring lately:

Ice Cream Ireland




from here



from here

These next two, I got from...I know not where. I can't remember. Sorry.




...and, well, Twelfth Night. Yeah, I really need to get going.

when i was just a little girl...

Today, a friend observed that when I pull my hair back (as it is in the picture), I look like I'm twelve. Then, she revised the thought and said I usually look about fifteen, but with my hair back, I look twelve.

So, yes! I must look like one of the genius kids around the campus. I'm thinking that this will also be to my advantage when I really start to age, many years from now. I'll be able to mess with so many people's minds when introducing my teenage daughter one day.

I, though, never feel that I look very young. It could have something to do with the gigantic, titanic black circles that have taken up permanent residence under my eyes. It could also be my horrible skin...although, come to think of it, that horrible skin might be part of what makes people think I look like a preteen* or a teenager.

Hmm.

* Yes, I'm aware of the term 'tween,' but that doesn't mean I have to accept it.

dream a little dream

Yesterday, I was pretty much dead-tired all day long. I roused myself long enough to take Pic to the library and then to the grocery store (where I forgot to buy sour cream), and then it was home again, home again jiggedy-jog. Upon returning home, both Pic and I immediately reverted to pajama-clad status. We ate lunch and shortly thereafter, I tried to get Pic to get some rest. I needed to (re)finish King Lear and she really needed sleep after having gone to sleep somewhere after eleven the night before. The child resisted the sleep. Finally, I told her to come lay down with me, in hopes that all of the warmth generated by my body, a covert cat's body and the two tattered comforters on my bed would lull her to sleep. Didn't happen. She did, however warm up my freezing nose by resting her face on mine and breathing directly onto said nose. At the same time, she rested her icy feet on my shoulder. (We were both on our sides, facing one another.) My child is bendy in ways that I never was and, no matter the amount of pilates I do, never will be.

So, anyhow, I slept and Pic bounced around and then went into the living room to read books and play with her puzzles. I slept and I dreamed. I dreamt that I crafted a cat out of black modeling clay. This cat resembled one of the covert cats (who is actually a really dark, chocolately brown, but he deceives us by looking black). My clay cat came to life and then I couldn't discern the real cat from the clay cat. This, people, was a terrifying dream. I'm not sure why, but it was.

Perhaps if I got more sleep, my dreams wouldn't scare the living crap out of me (if there is living crap in me). Or, perhaps I have been cooking with mescaline and I haven't realized it. Hmm.

because everybody should care...

Here's what I had for both lunch and dinner today. Plus, a dinner I had a couple a weeks ago.



I made some tuna with olive oil, oregano, tons of garlic powder and chopped up mesclun.* I like to eat this on saltines (we have the whole wheat ones right now...although it's probably enriched whole wheat flour, but whatever).




I started making this black bean soup at eleven of the clock on Sunday night. I'm sad to say that it takes something like four hours so I didn't get much sleep before I headed out to face Monday. I held off on the blending of the soup until tonight, just before I heated it up for dinner. I used two boxes of organic vegetable stock instead of the five cups of chicken stock and three cups of water (because I needed to use the stock). I used nitrate-/nitrite-/hormone-free turkey bacon and I skipped the onions. I forgot to buy sour cream, so I used cotija cheese and asked Cardo to bring some tortilla strips home from work. I think we'll be eating this for dinner tomorrow night also.




Cardo loves me (yes, yes he does...sing it now!) and made me potato pancakes. I thought that I had posted these before but it seems that I had yet to transfer them from the camera to the computer. So, here they be. (Pic insisted that we get Pirate's Booty today -- except she calls it Pirate Booties -- so I feel the need to occasionally talk like a movie pirate.)


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* The spellchecker seems to think that I really ought to have typed 'mescaline' here. Um, maybe next time I make mushroom soup.

stuff and nonsense

Okay, I'm beyond exhausted and my brain is barely functioning. Dear old crazy Lear will have to wait until tomorrow.

I was looking up information on South Carolina when I found this site. Did you know that South Carolina has a state drink? Milk. So, I thought, 'Hey, Nevada's has to be some kind of liquor,' but, alas, we have no state drink (at least not one that is listed). Oh, also SC has a state hospitality beverage: tea.

Oh, wait...Maryland also boasts of milk as the state beverage. And, I might have to move to Massachusetts, which boasts of a state muffin (corn), beverage (cranberry juice), dessert (Boston cream pie) and cookie (chocolate chip). I could do without the dessert and muffin, but I just love that Mass has these.

Ha! Utah has a state cooking pot: the Dutch oven.

Nebraska has a state soft drink: Kool-Aid (aka two cups of nasty-flavored sugar with a few drops of water mixed in).

Okay, so there's more. A bunch of states, actually, prefer milk and square dancing. There's a blueberry muffin honored in one state and the bolo tie as state neckwear in another. And more.

So, sorry to have replaced the useful information in your brains with this bunk (as one of my English teachers referred to such things). This was my pathetic attempt to surf the wavy web in hopes of finding something fun. I got bored pretty quickly and stopped with the states.