...kitchen so small in the new place it’s not exactly curbing my tendency to get take-out instead of putting in time and effort to make dinner...particularly not with that Chinese place down the road with its five buck heaping portions of General Tso’s and rice...deep frying, high fat content, MSG—check, check, check...does it help at all that I biked the half mile or so and back for it?...there’s also the ongoing cold and wet that’s making Philly in June more like Seattle in April...I’m a negative creep, I’m a negative creep, I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned...Kurt Cobain...been there, done that, of course, but not now...
...now I’m sitting in my mellow room after midnight, reading poems and typing away on another blog post...was getting heated there for a bit, reading politics on the web...which, of course, is outside the purview of the mellow room...but, then, the number one rule of the mellow room is that if I break the mellow room’s rules, it’s not a big deal...
For now, my life is enough. There’s not much more to expect.
Simon J. Ortiz
...still going to four yoga classes and biking between fifty and a hundred miles most weeks...cut down to not-too-much-more-than a mug of coffee a day months ago and, amazingly enough, have stuck to it...even if I’ve started drinking soda again...don’t drink much alcohol, though...don’t smoke anything...so, all in all, really not doing badly...even if...oh, god, do I love junk food...that fortune cookie merely a final sugary bite to cap off the day’s indulgence...but it's alright...
...and its fortune, as it turns out, was memorable enough to cap off this post...
Don’t ask, don’t say.
Everything lies in silence.
13 comments:
This weather makes me think of Olympia every day! I recall that this type of weather drove me to despair. I recall that this is why I left...
Oh well, you can't run away from your challenges. They will always follow you home like a stray dog. That sad, pleading look always in there eyes.
You take care of the alcohol consumption and I'll take care of the smoking. we'll share caffeine and soda duties but the biking and yoga are all yours.
Any post with food and biking is my cuppa joe...the food I do too much of, though, and the biking I've yet to resume.
Hooray to you, drjay, for such awesome mileage per week---very impressive. My poor wheels have still not made it out of the basement, although they are closer to the stairs...
Soda...please tell me you drink the real stuff, although the original real stuff was full of sugar, not corn syrup.
And I like that your mellow room is so forgiving...afterall, it is a room for doing what you want to do, not what you have to do, right?
I'm in a process of trying to "better myself". I've cut out soda for the most part only drink it if I order a combo from somewhere. Alcohol is next. Might give yoga a try too.
you can take my life, but please don't take my coffee.
funny....I always get a fortune that reads "help. I'm a prisoner in a chinese fortune cookie factory."
go figure....;)
But, the fortune in the cookie was so worth it! Ah, it's something the writer of A Personal Tao (another blog I follow)would have said. Or Deepak Chopra. A perfect thought to cap off my long and bewildering day. MSG is my bane too, but in instant noodle form. Taking four yoga classes a day sounds quite stressful and my perfect nightmare ;) Your About Me section still kills me - Faulkner, ha ha! I just love the literary references mashing up with the yoga references - and there are a lot!
I love the short wisdom in the cookie. Well done you for all that biking - it must make the chowing down on the junk food ok we hope.
"I feel stupid and contagious" at least I think that's what Kurt said in the song?..hmmm..not sure now.
General Tso's is one of my favorites too..makes my mouth water just thinking about it. Down the street where I live there is a nice chinese restaurant that uses no msg and makes a good General Tso! Want me to have them deliver it to you?..:o)
In my new "little" apartment my kitchen is so very small also. The stove looks like a minature toy stove! I turn around and bump into everything..trying to figure out how to put up little shelves on the walls and such in there in order to have more room to "prepare" when I cook. It's not easy is it? But we work with what we have.
Pepsi (the real thing "pepsi no coke" or is it "no pepsi, coke" John Beluchie used to say on SNL? That diet stuff is so bad for you much worse than the corn syrup sugar so hope your going for the "real" stuff at least.
You know Coffee is a herb and actually very helpful with some health problems.. but in moderation. Sounds like your really making a lot of effort to "Change"...Obama would be proud of you. I hope you get that joke..:o)
I'm doing a lot better these days now that I have a little place of my own. Now I can do what I want. Freedom!
Try some green tea...you can get used to it after time and it is really very very good for you. I drink it a lot when I start feeling like a flu bug or my immune system starts to act up.
Enjoy your new place. By the way will there be a house warming party? Think of all the nice offerings people might bring to your humble home.
I hope you continue to enjoy your "mellow" room Jay. I know I'm still enjoying mine.
Blessings,
Rhi
According to the fortune cookie, I shouldn't even be commenting!
However.. Relax about the chinese takeout - you are doing enough exercise and shouldn't feel guilty. Life is way too short to go without such pleasures.
still going to four yoga classes and biking between fifty and a hundred miles most weeks.
Well, damn, I am already impressed enough!
The last kitchen I had when living in Sydney was I-can-almost-touch-both-walls-tiny, so I can relate. Although, I had better luck cooking for myself there than I did once arriving in Melbourne (post-assault).
And this is something I've wondered about - I think not being able to cook for yourself is more about self-neglect, lack of self-care, than it is about the size of your kitchen (its not how big it is, its how you use it!!).
Certainly, I've struggled for several years now, on and off, actively cooking for myself at home again - more than just toasted cheese sandwhiches or baked beans anyway. And its tough when the local takeaway is so close, too.
So, whether its cold weather, a small kitchen, your love of takeaway etc, in the end they're all just excuses for the underlying issue of not nuturing yourself. If ya know what I mean.
I had a reunion lunch last month with someone I hadn't seen for 15 years. He came out from Minn. and I suggested we meet at this place called Kwan's "for old time's sake" because I remember the two of us ate there when he visited his brother and me (bro and I lived together...he's the one who I posted about recently, having just learned he died in 2002), and his brother was working.
After the initial hug hello he opened his wallet to show me what he'd carried in it all these years: his fortune from that dinner, with "Kwan's" and the date in 1982 written on the back......
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