EntriesIn all, I had a busy and partly productive weekend. Friday night I was knackered and glad that the week had finally ended. I worked a 50 hour day job week which doesn’t really leave much room for 30 odd hours of Twelfth Planet Press. Though with the long day I pulled today (still tempted to get some ASif! updates done now, at nearly midnight), I think I did pull about 30 hours on TPP too.
Tired. Not the best way to go into the week. And as seems to be usual lately, did not get close to nearly all the housework done. Sigh.
Still Friday night, I had a lovely bath (C ran it cause he could see how cranky I was, no patience left at all and the puppy misbehaving). I read a bit more of Yarn by Jon Armstrong. And then watched some Doctor Who.
Saturday, I was sleeping in when C came and offered me breakfast out – see he knows how to make me do anything! I was up and ready for a proper flat white, you bet. Unfortunately, either the tail end of my Crohn’s flareup or just the long week and not being careful enough with my food, I had a mouth full of ulcers. With Crohn’s it’s not unsual to have 1 or 2 but I have about 5 at once. And one is sitting near the back of my teeth and right where you swallow. It took me ages on Friday night to work out why I was having difficulty eating dinner. So yeah, kinda avoided eating much this weekend – be careful what you wish for (see further down). So I had a lovely coffee and just a croissant. I wasn’t fussed. And then C suggested we head to Rocky City since we were near to see if the A&R had Trent’s new book Business of Death. Quite liked that idea too! And it turns out it’s been ages since I’ve been in the shops and I try to avoid hanging out in them because … well, I went shopping. I bought Gotye’s new CD and after being annoyed at the price of Mad Men S3 in Sanity, I got S3 and S4 and S1 of Breaking Bad for the same price in JB HiFi. (C is off early next month for a course so I shall amuse myself with TV obsession/catch up.) I also splurged at The Body Shop – went to replace my finally all used up Oceanus perfume only to find they stopped making it. The smell reminds me of my 6 month working holiday in Israel so I’m sad I have no more 
A&R had not yet received their copies of The Business of Death so I reserved a copy and will pick it up next week. That should all keep me busy for a while.
Then we came home and I did the interview with Ben Peek for Galactic Chat. And then hurried off to shower and beautify to go to a work function with C. As usual, I totally missed the mark on what to wear. I’m usually not this bad but Navy throws me – I try to match it to the uniform C wears but that is no help at all. He looked really dressed up, as did all the officers, and the women were way dressed down, lots of pants and casual summer dresses. I wore a maxi dress. Fail. We had a nice time which is actually funny because via a miscommunication, neither of us really wanted to go and was going for the other. We laughed and decided we should have better clues for each other but I’m not sure about that now since C got to catch up with some people he hadn’t seen for a long time and we did kinda enjoy ourselves. We’re house bodies the pair of us and the forcing ourselves out was good, I think. I got to see my first ceremonial sunset which was fun. And I had a lovely think about things which I might write up for another post.
By the time we got home it was late and I think I just watched TV and headed to bed. To wake up by 9am to record a special episode for Galactic Suburbia. Tansy and I had a very lovely and long debrief on The Hunger Games trilogy. That episode will go up soon but don’t listen to it if you don’t want to be spoiled for the books because we talk about a lot of the details. After the recording I basically worked, finally, for the rest of the day. I’ve sorted a bunch of PR stuff – PR is all the little things but they are very time consuming to set up and maintain. They are so easy to put off but if you do, then … you don’t have them. I worked through a few of the PR things on my list. I also worked on emails. And book orders. And sending out some other copies of books. And did I mention I answered a lot of emails? I also had the washing machine going the whole day. I did some dishes and a bit of tidying/unpacking. As usual, my mother was right and instead of working steadily across the house, I concentrated on a few spaces and finished them (top of the dryer in the laundry, unpacking a couple of bags/suitcases and sorting out the TV space I sit in) and seeing a few places start to come to where I want them was a good feeling. So much further to go. Sigh.
And I did some cooking today. And here is the tie in to the title of this post. For a while now, I’ve been ordering a fruit and veggie box as part of our weekly food order. And recently C dropped it down to fortnightly because we weren’t actually getting through the box. The point of the box was to challenge myself to make food to fit in with whatever they sent – to cook seasonally and to also push me to try new things each week. I am a bit of a routine lover. But see, if you don’t actually take up the challenge, well you end up throwing out limp fruit and veg at the end of every week. The week before last I decided to make a soup on the Sunday with whatever of the veggies was leftover and looking a bit sad. And then I ate the soup for lunch every day at work. And it was great – very hearty, very healthy and a good low GI that made me last without snacking.
Cue to this week. On Friday night I was catching up on some blogs and read a few different SF/F writers talking about their own struggles with weight and specifically talking about the issues being related to their depression. And boy did that strike a chord with me. Hello! The three authors I read were all taking a long term and really healthy approach to dealing with this issue and I really liked the way they were looking at it – as nurturing themselves back from the harm they did to themselves when they weren’t in the best mental health. That’s me too. And I’ve given myself a year (from about June) to get on top of a bunch of things and one of them is this exact issue. And it’s all tangled up in headspace and emotional things. You can address the depression and work through it but … well … us self saboteurs, we can find ways around. I got a little bit motivated, I admit (I’d been following one author’s progress for a while already). And I’d also been talking with my boss whilst away this week and he made something else click for me too – that running isn’t a good way to lose weight but you notice every extra gram when you run. The idea of losing weight to enjoy running more appeals more than other reasons one might have to lose weight. But at the end of the day this is all a product of a much less healthy headspace and the bad habits (of how I treat myself) remain, even if the reasons why do not.
Which brings me to preparing a soup today for my lunches for next week. I grabbed all the veggies in this week’s box that I didn’t think we’d use elsewhere and I made up a veggie soup. I played around with the flavouring. It turns out spices are awesome. If food tastes fantastic, you totally don’t need as much fat and salt to cover it up. This one is kind of a version of sweet and sour or hot and sour, maybe. It’s quite nice. Not at all authentic but importantly, not the same flavours as the previous soup. I threw lentils in to thicken it. And it was so delicious, I had a big bowl for dinner. Definitely good for a very sore mouth. The interesting thing though was how it felt to prepare the food. I’m used to being loved through food. C does most of the cooking and it makes me feel loved by him when he does so. And I spose my mother always shows love through food too. And if you seek comfort in (junk) food … what does that mean? But to stand there and peel and chop fresh healthy veggies to prepare healthy and wholesome lunches for myself for next week? That felt like a very nurturing thing to do for myself. And that feeling felt foreign. Meaning that all the comfort food I normally eat is not so. An interesting thought I want to mull over some more. After I put the soup on, I looked through the fruit to see what we’d eat. We do worse at the fruit than the veg. So I decided to bake the apples (thanks all for your recipes on Twitter) for dessert. A lovely warm, sweet dessert that I made for us. Yet wholesome. Again, really weird feeling. They were good too though I need to work on the liquid a bit more. But in all, the fruit and veg this week won’t go to waste and I took up the challenge and I feel kinda good about it.
Tags: health, life, love, weekend