Sunday, August 28, 2005

Insomnia and its Culinary Daydreamings

My insomnia has returned.

I crawl through my days, my eyes heavy-lidded and framed with dark circles, until I get to finally crawl into bed. I'm so exhausted that it literally is painful to keep my eyes open. And by 10 p.m., I'm out. Exhausted. Sometimes not even making it into pyjamas.

And at 3 a.m., I'm up again.

Still exhausted maybe, but completely and utterly unable to sleep.

I've taken to reading my cookbooks and planning my pantry recipes for when J. and I move out to the bush.

And I think I'm getting some inspiration from the brief glances in the newspaper at the giant vegetables being showcased at the Alaska State Fair.

In any event, I've been employing my Insomniac Hours reading up on Hungarian recipes for cabbage, and marking those ones that I will be likely to find ingredients for when we move.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

O mundo da voltas.

Life is really just a twirling series of batons, isn't?

Suddenly, here I am again - working much and eating out every day, every meal. And yet I somehow manage to always have a stack of dirty dishes in my sink. I pay a doggy daycare to keep my puppy socialized. I go out, I guess,with co-workers and I call these social endeavours "work." I nightmare about briefs, and motions and courtroom deadlines. I wonder how I'm going to make it to a drycleaner. God knows, some magical perpetuation of crisis keeps me incessantly unable to pay my rent on time. I can get cross over the misplacement of a comma. And worse, oh, the worst sign is that I try to squeeze in time to hear how the day is going for the love of my life - and this fundamental aspect of the genuine life is my luxury.

But it's not so bad.

Oh, I have my raging moments with this new professional endeavour.

But somehow even two hours of reprieve can freshen up my enthusiasm and motivation with a spectacular efficiency far greater and more permanent than two months of reprieve with the Manhattan lawyering stresses.

Somehow this stress, here, is always doable.

One year.....I've been here one year. Well....more than a year. A year and change, I guess. Emphassis on the change. Have I just changed? Or is this a maturity? Or is this an epiphany?

Or is this just life?

Oh. Who knows.

I'm working a lot and cooking nothing. (Well - I take the odd middle of the night moment to practice the art of poached eggs and getting more adept at it.) But I hope - and maybe that's what makes this twirl of the baton greater than all the twirls and pizzaz of Manhattan a year and change ago.

Actually, this current twirl is infinitely improved from the whirls of them in Manhattan. I'm madly in love with a man that sends me over-nighted boxes of fiddlehead ferns he foraged during a hike to view bears. I'm contemplating life changes that will require J. and I to invest in a snowmachine so that we can do such day-to-day things as pick up the mail, buy groceries, etc.