Keeping myself busy over the holiday weekend worked maybe a little too well. I never got the sleep I wanted, nor did I catch up on anything at home--not anything fun, like reading and movies, nor anything useful, like cleaning and paperwork.
The one exception was cooking. I made braised root vegetables for Thanksgiving, failed corn muffins for Friendsgiving, and vegetable chowder for myself. Of course I needed broth for the chowder so I made up some concentrate. And as long as I was spending all that time in the kitchen, I also decided to make myself some proper Käsespätzle with plenty of union and some mushrooms I needed to use up.
It took forever to find the braised vegetable recipe and I ended up going through the whole stack of Cooks Illustrated back issues, which inevitably meant finding more recipes to try. That's how the chowder happened: I cracked open their vegetarian cookbook hoping to find the recipe from the magazine and found that one instead. It's a real keeper, combining two of my favourite things (fennel and celeriac) the Devon Market always has in stock.
Emotionally, I was all over the map: crying myself to sleep on Wednesday, having a glorious time on Thursday (and then crying again when exhaustion finally overtook euphoria), dragging myself through Friday, feeling sorry for myself on Saturday, dealing with an emotional hangover on Sunday that finally gave way to a sense of equanimity and well-being. I'm not as steered by other's reactions as I used to be, but I still have some way to go in keeping myself centred.
The best part of the time I spent was the conversations, especially with Big Red and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clintswan. Friday afternoon, after giving up on sleeping or scoring, I washed up at Big Red's ex' for a gameday. I was not at all into at first and only gradually warmed to the group. Afterwards, I went for Vietnamese with him and his current beau and we chatted for a couple hours--until the employees kicked us out, in fact--about the challenges and rewards of interacting with others.
And finding the time and energy to build and maintain relationships is a huge challenge, and the rewards are so uncertain. They can be extraordinary in the moment only to run dry unexpectedly. I've definitely done my fair share of complaining about that in this journal. Am I better at judging character now than I was ten years ago? I hope so, but I really don't know.
The one exception was cooking. I made braised root vegetables for Thanksgiving, failed corn muffins for Friendsgiving, and vegetable chowder for myself. Of course I needed broth for the chowder so I made up some concentrate. And as long as I was spending all that time in the kitchen, I also decided to make myself some proper Käsespätzle with plenty of union and some mushrooms I needed to use up.
It took forever to find the braised vegetable recipe and I ended up going through the whole stack of Cooks Illustrated back issues, which inevitably meant finding more recipes to try. That's how the chowder happened: I cracked open their vegetarian cookbook hoping to find the recipe from the magazine and found that one instead. It's a real keeper, combining two of my favourite things (fennel and celeriac) the Devon Market always has in stock.
Emotionally, I was all over the map: crying myself to sleep on Wednesday, having a glorious time on Thursday (and then crying again when exhaustion finally overtook euphoria), dragging myself through Friday, feeling sorry for myself on Saturday, dealing with an emotional hangover on Sunday that finally gave way to a sense of equanimity and well-being. I'm not as steered by other's reactions as I used to be, but I still have some way to go in keeping myself centred.
The best part of the time I spent was the conversations, especially with Big Red and
clintswan. Friday afternoon, after giving up on sleeping or scoring, I washed up at Big Red's ex' for a gameday. I was not at all into at first and only gradually warmed to the group. Afterwards, I went for Vietnamese with him and his current beau and we chatted for a couple hours--until the employees kicked us out, in fact--about the challenges and rewards of interacting with others.And finding the time and energy to build and maintain relationships is a huge challenge, and the rewards are so uncertain. They can be extraordinary in the moment only to run dry unexpectedly. I've definitely done my fair share of complaining about that in this journal. Am I better at judging character now than I was ten years ago? I hope so, but I really don't know.