Still here
Nov. 18th, 2007 07:39 pmI wish I could get my sleep cycle set to something more in tune with community standards, but it's not easy. I'm not a morning person -- never have been, I suspect, though that was mostly masked by externally-imposed schedules until I left home. Mostly, these days, if I'm mobile before 8.30 it's either because I have somewhere non-negotiable to be or because I'm not feeling well, and I'm seldom asleep before midnight. This isn't too much of a problem in summer -- Tucson summers being what they are -- but at the moment, when I'm ducking out of work at 5pm sharp because I'm nervous about coming home after dark, it means I have to bring work home every night, and that isn't conducive to relaxing evenings, let alone writing. (Hah!)
So last night, in the name of trying to nudge the body-clock back towards sense, I was in bed before 10 -- and felt tired enough to do it, too. Lights out at 10.30, and then ... and then I lay awake, tossing and turning, until well after midnight, which is a long time even for me; I usually reckon on something around half an hour to forty minutes. It didn't help that the sprinklers outside have been very noisy lately; one of them is broken so that it shoots a six-foot jet into the air and splashes down on the concrete path. (I don't find white noise soothing; in fact, if I get too much of it I have to drown it out with music or the BBC to relax.)
In other news, I made beef stew again --- with a medium-sized yam, red pepper, and more onion, this time. I also stewed up ... something lumpy and sweet and purple ... from some leftover grapes and the seeds of half a pomegranate. I am now pondering white sauce, but I think this may be a non-starter; the stuff looks impossibly fiddly to prepare in single-serving quantities, and seems unlikely to keep well, so if I want a chicken casserole with opaque liquid I may have to resort to canned cream soup.
I went over to Target this afternoon in quest of kitchen bits and pieces, but chickened out when it came to acquiring actual good knives -- much too finicky to look after. Maybe in a month or two, if the cooking craze persists. I also looked longingly at some lovely red dinner plates, but decided they were too heavy and bulky to carry. (I once carried home a whole dinner service from central Birmingham, but I was a lot younger then, and I think a taxi may have been involved. Those plates are still with me, but after seventeen years they're starting to look a little tired.)
So last night, in the name of trying to nudge the body-clock back towards sense, I was in bed before 10 -- and felt tired enough to do it, too. Lights out at 10.30, and then ... and then I lay awake, tossing and turning, until well after midnight, which is a long time even for me; I usually reckon on something around half an hour to forty minutes. It didn't help that the sprinklers outside have been very noisy lately; one of them is broken so that it shoots a six-foot jet into the air and splashes down on the concrete path. (I don't find white noise soothing; in fact, if I get too much of it I have to drown it out with music or the BBC to relax.)
In other news, I made beef stew again --- with a medium-sized yam, red pepper, and more onion, this time. I also stewed up ... something lumpy and sweet and purple ... from some leftover grapes and the seeds of half a pomegranate. I am now pondering white sauce, but I think this may be a non-starter; the stuff looks impossibly fiddly to prepare in single-serving quantities, and seems unlikely to keep well, so if I want a chicken casserole with opaque liquid I may have to resort to canned cream soup.
I went over to Target this afternoon in quest of kitchen bits and pieces, but chickened out when it came to acquiring actual good knives -- much too finicky to look after. Maybe in a month or two, if the cooking craze persists. I also looked longingly at some lovely red dinner plates, but decided they were too heavy and bulky to carry. (I once carried home a whole dinner service from central Birmingham, but I was a lot younger then, and I think a taxi may have been involved. Those plates are still with me, but after seventeen years they're starting to look a little tired.)
