Historical Fiction
Note the snappy attire. Note Bionic Boots, recently fixed with Super Glue.
Note snappy artwork on the walls. Note ‘tweens on the couch being inspired by the spoken word. Good time had by all. (See next post below for more pix).
Thank you, family and fiends, for being there.
OK, just kidding about the soul. I know just where it is, and it’s doing fine. But the planet…In other words, how I Compacted this weekend —-
Picked up CSA box. Supporting local farmers, local produce stand, yeah! 100-mile diet, yeah! Vegetarianism, yeah!
Made cat food in the Crockpot. Cats eat healthy product, yeah!
Cooked pinto beans in another Crockpot (a broken one that I got from Freecycle — the crock handle is broken at the edge but it works just fine, no leaks, just hard to grab when it’s very hot).Beans for Monday’s dinner, and to take to work. Yeah!
Boiled CSA potatoes for vegetarian daughter to eat. She uses potatoes or rice or tortillas as a base and adds a strange assortment of cheeses, peppers, veggies, sauces, etc. on top. No two meals are the same. But she loved the potatoes I cooked last week. Pre-cooked meals — yeah!
Found 4 black bananas in the freezer (the best kind for baking) and made a double batch of banana muffins. Half went into the freezer, 1/4 got eaten Saturday night by voracious cloud of locust-like teens, and the rest are for breakfast this week.
Crumbled a bunch of leftover stale cookies and toasted the crumbs, saved in the freezer for making parfait, sprinkling onto ice cream, etc. No food waste: yeah!
Made a couple of gallons of sun tea in various gallon jars, various flavors. Two teabags per gallon costs, hmm, hardly nothing, and no sugar added means this is a healthful drink at very low cost per gallon or per glass. Yeah!
And outside of the kitchen, I…
Did cold-water wash and hung out 4 loads to dry. Yeah!
Changed 3 more lightbulbs to CFLs. (Thought I had done them all, but nope!) Yeah!
Sent out some PR info for an upcoming event via Facebook: no paper waste, no trees died, no cost: yeah!
Did some yardwork to prep for early spring planting in the garden: free veggies? yeah!
Smashed a bunch of cans that I’m saving to get me to my $10K savings challenge. I think I have almost $1 worth. And cleaned up the street! Yeah!
Found 21 cents: Yeah!
Printed out The Boy’s birthday invites for next Saturday’s 11th bday party: 11 pieces of paper, very little per-page cost, and no money spent on printed invites. The party will include a bunch of young boys shooting each other with Nerf guns for 5 hours, so I am going to visit my mom and talk about quilts for the day next Saturday. Quality time with Mom, no Nerf headaches = no ibuprofin, simple fun at party and NO goodie bags either. Yeah!
Grocery shopping today with own bags (yeah), didn’t buy any crap (yeah), bought several bulk foods, got prepped for the week, and got bacon made from happy pigs for the carnivores of the family, from the butcher, wrapped in paper, no plastic. Yeah!
Worked on my knitting projects while Mr Husband entertained a dozen of his close friends with the Superbowl… All of this Compacting maybe possibly makes up for the fact that Mr Husband put a TV in every room, including the bathroom and on top of the stove, so that his friends wouldn’t miss a single second of the game. A friend brought a leftover-keg of beer that we enjoyed (reusable cups! No bottle waste! No cans! returnable keg! No beer waste! Yeah!) but the food was generally not-good-4-U. Like, pass the KFC and no thanks on your homemade pickles. Oh, well.
As Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow is another day.
Barack is da bomb. How cool is he? Super cool.
I couldn’t be happier. I’m sure not everyone feels this way. But as for me and my house, we will celebrate.
I ate one of the persimmon muffins for breakfast. What did it taste like? Pumpkin, sort of. A fruity spice cake. It was good. It was fine. Yum.
I’ve been bringing my lunch almost every day since the star of the new year. I was doing that before, but not on days we have trade-lunches at work. We used to have a trade for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. We still have Tuesday and Thursday but I’m not eating the Thursday lunch which is pizza. I’m not even that thrilled with the Tuesday lunch which is a deli whose staff have surly attitudes. They always forget part of someone’s meal, and are snotty about it when we try to double-check. But I digress. My point is that I’m enjoying leftovers, eating more veggies, eating a healthful meal with no food waste, am able to take home the peels and cores for the compost, use my own cloth napkin, silverware, etc. One trouble spot: my lunch bag is wearing out. These vinyl affairs are just not made to last. One of these days I’m going to make some new reusable lunchbags. I have some cute fabric that would make for fun lunches. Just have to put it into the queue.
It’s raining today. Praise Jah — we need the rain. I don’t want to walk or drive in it (have to drive to Livermore tomorrow) but we need it so I can just deal. *It’s not about me.*
Life is good. Busy, overwhelming, stressful, but good. I’m finishing up my poetry manuscript for publication later this year — end of Feb or begining of March, I hope. That means PR, a release party, a couple of signings and readings, and I hope some returns. I’m ordering more copies of the novel to have available for sale at the events. Call that another dream come true — I’ve been waiting and pushing to publish poetry for 20+ years.
Can’t wait to see it — Amaryllis: Collected Poems is coming soon.