Confessions of a One-Track Mind

Last night was one of those wretched 4-different-kinds-of-PMS-awful nights. I was in a rotten mood over various things: the slowness with which my life is changing (I'm tired of being broke and borrowing money, damn it!), the commute (I'm afraid it's going to kill me or the car, and I'm not sure which would be worse), the upcoming wedding of friends (at which I will have to deal with my ex- and several people from my last job who I would just as soon tell to fuck off and fuck themselves), and the lamentable state of my love life, which is to say, nonexistant.

Then this morning, I woke up and the hormonal tide had turned. I feel perfectly fine; fixed breakfast, went back into the kitchen afterward and made a meatloaf. Maybe not the best meatloaf I've ever made, but when I got home from church, I got out my plastic containers, opened a couple cans of green beans and made some rice, then proceded to prepare six ready-to-heat-and-eat meals to get me through the week. Lunch or dinner, doesn't really matter, as long as they're reasonable portion sizes---not huge, but bigger than those dinky supermarket frozen dinners. (And a lot healthier, since the only sodium in them is whatever's in the gravy---the meatloaf is just spices and black pepper.)

Even after I start bringing home regular paychecks, I'm planning to take lunch most of the time---I *might* buy lunch once a week, if I'm feeling affluent, but I'm going to try very hard to have home-cooked meals with a minimum of convenience foods, since I'm not happy about having gained back everything I worked to take off (which I haven't gone into here, but hey, I own it---and I *know* it's mostly water weight by how puffy my ankles have gotten). And the hell of it is, I completely stopped adding salt to things, but there's been enough sodium just in the canned soups I've been taking for lunch the last couple of weeks to do the job. It was a case of using it because I had it on hand, but I've got to find better alternatives---I'm thinking of crockpot soups and a thermos. Or, like now, fixing a whole bunch of something on my days off so I won't have to crisis-cook and be tempted into making lazy choices. (Because sloth really IS my favorite deadly sin....)

I still have to figure out what I'm going to wear to this freaking wedding, though. It would be SO much easier if it was MY wedding!

What am I doing up at this hour? Well might you ask! I have been confronting the challenges of trying to cook in a strange kitchen. The kitchen itself is marvelous--literally four times the counter space, way more storage, it ought to be great, right? It probably would be, if I could *find* anything.

*eyeroll* It never fails to amaze me how differently women keep their kitchens. What we regard as essential in the pantry or for equipment varies so much. I, for instance, find it absolutely inconceivable that there is not one, single can of tomato sauce anywhere in the house. (Otherwise, there would be chili happening in the crockpot and I'd be in bed already.) There's also a marked lack of pans suitable for roasting a meatloaf...I improvised with what I think of as a "brownie" pan.

Personally, I prefer the meatloaf method my dad taught me---baked in a cast iron skillet. It gives it a nice crust. I have enough cast iron for three kitchens...I think I know what S. is getting for Xmas! I understand that she has a digital abomination one of the newer stoves with a solid surface top, but no cast iron AT ALL? I guess she never bakes cornbread, either.

The other day, I picked up a new bottle of polish from the clearance rack at the grocery store. $1.25 for Cover Girl #545: Candy Corn...a sassy shade of orange. I had the forethought to bring my manicure bag with me, and after I got through showering away all the sand and salt, I was in the mood to pamper myself, so I painted my nails this evening while watching TV.

I admit, I've gotten no writing at all done this week, but I've blissed in the hot tub every night except tonight, gone for one long walk on the beach, and actually started reading a *new* (to me) book---The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver---part of the Lincoln Rhyme series that began with The Bone Collector. (Yes, they made a movie that somewhat resembled it.) I've gotten about a third of the way into it, and I'm quite enjoying it. This doesn't surprise me; although I haven't caught *all* the books in this series, the ones I have read were pretty good, and I enjoyed an earlier series of his with a young lady named Rune.

S. called this afternoon from St. Thomas, and was just bursting to tell me it was a U.S. Territory and that we bought it for $25 million dollars just before World War I. (I confess, I did not know that.) And she said that just went to show that $25 million didn't go as far as it used to. I forebore to mention that in those days, gasoline was less than a dime a gallon. Conservatively, that's about $5 billion today, if I've got the maths right. And I seriously doubt we'd sell it for that, so really, we've definitely gotten our money's worth out of it.

Am I babbling? I'm babbling. Twenty-eight minutes before I can stop baby-sitting the meatloaf and go to bed!