well someone must be told of my kitchen activities.  as i am quite proud!  though vaguely neurotic.  somehow the past few days have been occupied by kitchen time for a fair chunk in the morning afternoon. 

for my very first time i soaked chickpeas right a proper and cooked them all by myself in flitered water.  wowee.  i made a tasty curry with them plus cauliflower, cubes of potato, yellow onion, cumin, mustard seeds, curry powder, sea salt, a bit of tomato, kale and spinach, a smidge of agave syrup, a couple cloves of garlic, fresh cilantro, and yogurt. walnuts crumbled on top.  served with brown rice.  hurray.  tasty cooked meal.  good work, lady. 

meanwhile, a small experiment in sprouting chickpeas in a jar.  little white tendrils are emerging....

today i made mediocre breakfast quinoa with cinnamon and cloves and vanilla soymilk and banana pieces and agave syrup. 

and finally, i made hummus.  a curious species of hummus.  pretty good texture.  not so wonderful that you want to eat a spoonful by itself.  but a pleasure with some toasted pita.  perhaps with some cucumber slices.  it contained: the aforementioned chickpeas, some raw tahini, fresh lemon juice, flax seed oil, cilantro, two cloves of garlic, sea salt, pepper, cumin, turmeric, dulse flakes, and something else i think i am forgetting. 

i also made a salad.  but didn't get a chance to eat it because of various timing factors related to indecision and then the return of roommate requiring key hand off (so i ate sushi at whole foods).  but hey.  i'll tell you what was in it anyway just because: kale, spinach, radishes, grapes, little bits of beet, red onion, avocado, lemon juice, goddess dressing.

i like food.

hmm.  having a spot of tea tomorrow with a kind of new friend person who i have been acquainted with for several months out dancing, but only recently more conversation.  neato.  super nice guy.  my mild telephone call fear dissapated quite instantly.  it could be nice to find it is possible to make friends outside of my childhood every dayer grow together kinda ways.  but it does mean making friends with the dreaded phone.  on the other hand--maybe i am passing the critical month number required to feel more "at home."  while i have felt at home in a physical daily this is my place i know it sense for quite a while.  perhaps this socially inept lady needs an extra margin for the hey i have a little pocket of personal good people goodness to develop.  is it? developing?  well.  i can't get ahead of myself.  but it is a nice hint of something.  though it does make me furrow a bit inside and out to think of going to school in some far-ish kind of place and having to start all over again.  though.  i do so much appreciate getting to know a new place.  despite all the crumpling destroy me loneliness involved.  of course.  i could end up some mad coast swapper, back in boston.  but. ho ho ho. who knows.

books?

finished "the red queen: sex and the evolution of human nature"  pretty satisfying.  i like this idea that wit and intelligence are potentially the product of sexual selection.  ha. and matt ridley is so good at breaking down silly dualities in science (nature and nurture in particular).  nice sentences.  i know when i try to write about interwoven processes, circular causality, and such, my sentences go growing off into the distance with unseemly number of clauses embedded amongst too many prepositions.  so good job mister ridley.  good.

"city of night" john rechy (upon zithereen's recommendation) which i was kind of going back and forth on at first, interesting people portraits abound in there, odd encounters, and then these certain parts that kind of emotionally wrenched and rumpled me. hmm.

just getting done with "the detox manual" about nutrition and detoxification.  loving your liver and the like.  i really like all these weird body processes and learning what happens to things entering exiting moving on through the body.  it's a crazy place in there.  i should like to make it run all the better.  and all that meat and heavy biz at home definitely left me feeling...all full of too much funny stuff.  though today was weird.  tummy ache.  bubbly rumble.  maybe because anxious.  didn't eat enough.  the aeroplane that sucked the life out of me.  neeeeed vegetables.  don't know. curious thing this body is.

ok!

wowee. i'm all full of anxiety. ambiguous guilt beast.  mysteries eek.

but otherwise.  well. just fine. 

i was in cleveland for a quick cleaner upper (mum's having the house's interior painted, me must move masses of pottery to alternative rooms, also bagged many possessions and clothes for giving away...leaving a great mass of stuff to my own spoiled child object attached horror).

no terrible fights.  just mum getting into the talk talk share old stories mode (e.g. her intestines tumbling out a bit while they did her c-section for my older sis, having improperly administered her epidural because of her scoliosis, intense pain and an explosive fight with my dad shortly after she was born, my own scheduled pain medicated to the max (she had a self-operated morphine pump man oh man) birth, these births as explanations for why she likes me better (which she declares...and i feel l ike parents are not supposed to declare that and it makes me uncomfortable...especially when sis is so much like her), how she stopped having sex with my father after i was born (they were married four more years by the way)...) which after a long while, plus a litttle more information than i want to hear, plus that uncomfortable feeling that i am supposed to respond fairly positively to all this when...really...it gets to be too much...and it all starts to touch upon sore little spots in myself that make me rather sad.  luckily it didn't get to be too much.  and there were some distracting errands to run. 

but mom is very happy i must admit.  a mellower mom than in previous times.  but i wish she had more friends.  it is a bit overwhelming when this confiding mood appears.  too many deep issues that i know are quite unlikely to be resolved.  and i'm a bit too young to be able to accept things without letting them gnaw at my tender prolonged human adolescent spots.  twentysomething is tough i think. 

sister is sister.  we had our charming talk talk moments too about our fears and disillusionments with marriage, about babies, boys, friendship and all that.  it was very cute.  very sisterly.  ha.

my mother keeps calling my sister fat.  which also is terrible.  my mother doesn't eat enough and has tremendous hand pain and feet problems and smokes and drinks and won't see a doctor no matter how much we tell her to.  but.  i guess we'll tell her to even more than before.  i think she'll see about the weird hand since her hand is fundamental to her doing surgery, being a doctor, maintaining that identity. 
but we'll see.  a stack o worry.  she likes to tell us that we would be financially better off if she were dead.  i hate that very much.

onward?  my small guilt fest?  totally not wanting to work at this summer camp thing.  getting all stressed out about how my physiology final and last lecture on the very topics i mainly wanted to learn about (reproduction, immunity) conflict with those days.  and how i have to get these nonprofit taxes done in the next week or so.  how i ought to really want to earn that $300.  but being so parentally supported this summer, not very motivated by it.  also quite a pittance when i think of the over three days, three nights constantly with a mysterious never before met autistic boy who might be quite maddening and poorly toilet trained with mightily sized eight year old poo.    so i told the lady this (the physiology class aspect, not the money and poo).  said probably no.  i will call tomorrow if i find out better ways to make up that phys class stuff.  though i also am motivated by anxiety.  and the way the summer is disappearing so fast.  and wanting to not kill myself with summer camp fatigue right before taking that final and then driving off to oregon (which despite being fun will be mildly stressful with all the lesser known acquiantaces who will be present in this house i am staying in).  maybe i am being lazy?  i want to be healthy and not overtax my mental or physical health.  but maybe i am underestimating myself.  egads.  so goes on the round and round business.  but anyway.  advise me if you are that sort.  otherwise....really..i ought to study the rest o the way for physiology test (yes, a test a week before the final, how absurd).

sizzle.

well oh well
today i feel
un-happy

rat a tat tat

disturbing physiological curiosity anyone? 

perhaps people do not want to know this.  but happily, in blog space, this matters not in the least. ha!  my period came almost two weeks early!!  quite disturbing.  though this happened once before when i drove across the country, sleeping and eating rahter poorly for a week and a half or so.  and this is what i have been doing lately.  well...eating healthily but too little.  anyway.  thus my cycle thrown off is. ok.

i daresay i had fun.  several hour drive with mister raw food.  all quite pleasant.  i think i am quite content to have this new friend.  and not more-than-friend.  it is an interesting friendship.  a most genuine feller.  at times he can go convolutedly on and on about certain feeling life change dot dot dot kind of things.  a curious change from usual compatriots whose speeches are colored with a certain ironic flair.  but i think i can learn things from him and this is good good. 

the desert was quite a lovely place.  i feel good there. i want to return. more evil thoughts of burning man.  i succeeded in a fair amount of proper dancing.  bemoaned my lack of hat.  had a few small but pleasant conversations (one of which rather sealed a future conversation in which i get to hear a tale told that was too long a tale for hot up all night morning with loud music near the ear).  i had forgotten how incredible the desert colors are at dawn (having discovered this nearly four years ago on the way to the playa).   it was fairly scrubby.  this desert that you pass by on the highway with little attention i discovered to be quite thrilling when completely surrounding and  poofily pale greens and tans and quiet mauve purples off into the distance.  plus all these tiny pieces of quartz that cover the ground.  plus dried river beds all full of soft fine near white sand.

though that heat takes its toll i tell you sir.

sadly, did not make it to hot springs.  we motivated out of there in the late afternoon (my efforts to sleep quite unsuccessful).  then friend's car got stuck in the sand.  and there was pushing and a random old man and his random old overly madly affectionate dog appeared with pickaxe shovel digital pressure gauge and expertise (keep in mind, this is an unmarked dirt road, we are all trespassing i imagine). and then my car trying to get stuck in the sand.  performance repeated.  bless this random old man.  savior.  oh yes.  but to the hot springs took too long.  darkness was falling.  motivation fell.  asleep at a random campground. oh well. 

that is my overview.  there are, perhaps, some little bits that could be details divulged.  though the colors at dawn remain right at the top of things. 

oh.  it looks like august will bring my very own special pacific northwest friend tour.  hooray.  my physiology final will be early.  so i get to see old pal m in eugene.  then high school pal m in seattle.  plus some naturopathic doctor schools.  with hot springs and forests in between.  meanwhile, roommate m is heading up to alaska in her car.  debating whether to meet up and rumble up there with her.  but.  there's a bit of time before such things need figuring. 

anyway...

hey funny to be subject to random acquaintance callings.  hmm?  this boy who i met in the forest. twice. he's nice.  grounded space boy.  randomly in town.  calls my tellerphone.  ends up in my home for all the evening.  this kid. smokes. so. much. pot.  so it was a curious affair to oops become quieter.  and this one of differing body chemistry whose sentences and twists increase in length and density.  these funny california stoners.  i give him my floor to crash on.  we trade computer music.  talk of many things.  funny.  get a pitiful fraction of needed sleep due to late night get to bed and worrying of the ambiguous possibly p g & eed parking spot.  saving the day i did. at seven o clock.  this one goes to repark his car.  returns mightily awake.  to begin constructing another spliff.  ha. 

but this is very curious.  i feel most in contrast to all the mish mash freeformer folk with my studious just so ways.  and i wonder if they've any wind at all of my careful thinking and putting things in places, my carefully controlled perfectionism (i expect too too much out of other people, moreso myself, and i have learned to temper this to avoid misery, you see).  too much i imagine that i and interaction mate somehow get each other all wrong.  our exteriors subtly colored by perceptions of other person and what they might be wanting to see.  yes.  ever troubled by this big scary void behind every person. 

ok.  remember, i am a big scary void too.

hmm. can i be concise?

this boy. he is very nice. an evening well spent. well and quiet, sitting in the kitchen, conversation, i was not bored a bit.  we fell to watching this dvd and slowly sank together sleepily.

a very very long time since i spent a night intertwined. no mouths just limbs.  warm bodies sleeping (trying to sleep) together. 

i nearly did not sleep a wink. 

he woke for work at 5:30.  snoozed repeatedly until six. 

he asked me how i felt.  he told me he was not up for more intimacy just yet.  a long time since he had been with someone other than four year girlfriend. which seems completely reasonable but

i couldn't sleep stifling all this sizzle. 

but i must say it was exceedingly nice to settle amidst these warm wiry limbs and fit like interlocking parts, to feel each other breathing, and softly sink in...

i hate hate hate thrice hate that it pleases me so that i get to play with this young man tomorrow evening.

(ok. it is also quite charming that such a thing is a thrill.  it is moreso the uncertainty of reciprocity.  and the mysterious impenetrable void that composes other peoples' consciousness)

anyways: yahoo.

other things: a test i took.  was okay. i think.  long time no test.  like some snootball though it irritated me how poorly written it was, how it didn't seem to test my knowledge in any prim and proper way, was written more for the convenience of teacher grading.  but. one should nto complain about things that make classes easier.  apparently my education was good after all...

thursday showed up at my doorstep this czech fellow i met over the weekend.  totally unaccustomed to such appearances unphoned.  but it was  charming.  we went for a beer round the corner and down the street.  accidentally stumbled upon the screening of a movie about a cabaret troupe with mostly drag kings and other assorted lesbians.  which was curious.  funny.  pleasant chit chat. 

i fear i might go to burning man.  despite all my promises to myself not to.  but time goes on.  chit chat.  chatter.  it is very much present in my mind.

friday a visit to kabuki springs.  hot rooms, naked ladies.  always lovely.  bravo. love it.

today the mysterious oversecretion of skin oils.  the debating going to a barbecue of acquiantances of trance party fame.  making me nervous.  feeling inadequate for deciding not to go.  but a nice time drawing in dolores park.  reading city of night, by the way (upon zithereen's recommendation in fact).  purchasing epiphytes delight in an effort to rekindle the life of my tillandsia plant.  also a small lens for starting fires.  and three more books: an oliver sacks book on deaf culture, a book on nutrition (an ongoing obsession), and a book of essays on buddhism and ecology. 

indeed i did it i left the house this nighttime with my roommate.  it was charming.  a beer and a chat at the phone booth (dive bar in the mission...though pop's is better i tell you). 

hmm.

but oh thus and so my head remains occupied by the--could it be?--continuation of connections made in elsewhere places.  never happens.  could be good.  never ever do i get to get together with boys i rather thrill about. egads.