How to Fail with Panache

So I get these urges every now & then to cook something extravagant (i.e. time consuming & laborious). I start out all stoked about it (homemade stock! braised haunch of saber-toothed tiger!) & then feel overwhelmed about halfway through. I am made of culinary fail. Tonight we are having a salad. Just greens & grilled chicken & a homemade vinaigrette. There is a giant vat of slow-simmering Italian gravy on the stove & it's freaking me out right now. It smells good but I don't want to finish making it.

I am still in a holding pattern regarding the new batch of poems. Empty brain syndrome. This is accompanied by a bout of profound social awkwardness. When I speak, it comes out all backwards & strange. I am pretty sure I am inadvertently offending people. When I write stuff, it comes out all stormy & full of fucked-up-ness. I need a nice, productive-style creative occupation with practical results. I wish I knew how to knit or quilt or something like that.

There are two upcoming readings in November & I'm feeling nervous.

I could just sleep for days & days.

My dog needs a haircut.

Jellyfish are fascinating. So are spiders.

Samhain approaches. There might be ghosts in your cooking pots. Be aware of the unseen.

& etc.

My stomach has developed this strange habit of waking up very angry and knotting itself up inside for hours & hours. It might be an ulcer. Or an alien fetus, because it's possible I really was abducted by aliens & just don't remember. I am drinking black tea with honey & hoping for the best.



Recap of last ten days:

Leek-potato soup

Wasp in the house

Family drama

Knee socks

Interdimensional travel to alternate universes

Caddyshack

Buttered popcorn and Mexican Coke

Cuss words

Dirty dishes

Villainy

I have not been abducted by aliens.

It's like I blink & ten days have passed & I don't know where they went.

I have not written anything much lately except in my head. I am mired in the mundane these days, in the lettuce & the forks & the dust motes floating in the air & driving the car to various places that are not exciting or interesting. Life is mostly about trying to cover the checks I write & making sure the dog has lots of fresh water & selling pumpkins in the rain.

I am watching Warehouse 13 via Netflix (I don't have cable channels) & cannot decide whether or not I like it. Disc 2 should be on its way soon. M continues to Netflix movies that ruin my recommendations with lists of cheesy comedies but I forgive him.

The inbox for blossombones is filling up & I must get busy with the reading of poems & the writing of emails. This is the hardest part.

There have been no interesting dreams. Just repeats, like sitcoms during summer vacation.

ex haust ed

The weather is strange & I sleep & wake at odd hours. I dislike heat. I am ready for cooler weather. There have been dreams of alien crime scenes, with strange machinery & unidentifiable puddles of gore. I can only imagine what this says about my psyche.

I did not write this week, although I was efficient in other ways. Still, it feels like fail. I came home from work yesterday after a 6 a.m. shift & took a nap & cooked a pot of stew & some homemade soup and a bunch of spaghetti sauce. Sometimes I get a little hyper and want to have things in the fridge for the week. I sliced my thumb with the potato peeler and didn't notice until later. Now there is a tiny flap of disconnected thumb, which irritates me but I am glad to say is still attached & didn't end up in the stew, because that would be gross. I keep reading through my cookbooks & wanting to make fancy things like saffron cookies and chocolate almond gateau but who would eat it all? There are only three of us. (Speaking of cooking, the last poem I wrote was about Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd & I wonder if this has inspired the cooking marathons. Ha.)

M accidentally took BOTH of the chargers for my cell phone out of town with him & my battery ran out of juice yesterday afternoon so I am sans phone for at least another day. This is both liberating & upsetting. I am not much of a phone talker, but I like the comfort of *having* the damned thing, just in case.

I just finished reading Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman & I enjoyed it very much although it was quite similar to her earlier books. I have been making more trips to the library these days, which makes me happy.

I need to wash my floors & catch up on my reading & bake something pumpkin-flavored & write creepy poems & read the submissions in my inbox for blossombones & organize the scads of paperwork sitting in piles on my office chair. Instead I am writing about it which seems counterproductive but it helps me think.

I have the urge to do too many things at once. My horoscope says that October will be a glorious month. I am still waiting for the impending awesomeness. Maybe someone will bake me a pie.

Ghosts of Octobers Past...

October seems to be a big month for poetry readings. Yesterday I read with the amazing women pictured above at Woman Made Gallery & it was lovely.

I last read at Woman Made in October 2008 with some really wonderful women writers & it feels much more recent than that, but I still believe that time is speeding up, at least in my reality. Maybe yours is slower.

In October of 2009, I read with DGP at Flourish Bakery & I will be reading with DGP again this October here. Maybe I'll see you? There will be sandwiches.

***

Balancing the schedules of three busy adults in one household is getting more & more complicated, like juggling leaky pens and trying not to get ink stains on my blouse. I keep making rules for myself, like "always have a pot of homemade soup in the fridge" & this doesn't make it any easier, but it does make life better. I do not know how normal people do this.

I am still dreaming of carnivorous plants that eat their way inside their victims while causing them to hallucinate, kind of like The Matrix, only without Morpheus to administer the red pill & whatnot.