So tired So satisfied...

... even though I burned the chocolate pudding and it will take weeks of baking soda scrubs to get the char off the bottoms of not one, but TWO pans!

Food Not Bombs had a lot of eggplant donated this week, also potatoes, peppers, onions, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, seitan, and tofu. We couldn't all manage to get together to cook until today. I got up early and burned the pudding, then I made a fruit salad with peaches, apples, grapes, and I squeezed all the citrus on it; 1 grapefruit, two limes, and four lemons, then I got fresh mint from the garden and did a rough chop and mixed it in. After everybody came we chopped and chopped (Oh, I guess I did the eggplant before they came) we mixed everything together in our NEW pans and added some olive oil, salt, pepper, and dried Italian seasoning. In one pan we added chopped seitan and in one pan we did crumbled tofu. We threw those all in the oven. Michael and Shaun made a tomato salad with all the grape tomatoes and rosemary and thyme from the garden.  We had also been given a bunch of single serving yogurts of different flavors, so Stephanie mixed those all together in a bowl. So we had two chafing pans of hot veggie food, one 8 qt. size more than half full of fruit and about a quart of yogurt, and a mixing bowl of tomato salad. We had OVER FIFTY people in the park eat, plus us. Most of our friends in the park are men, but there were also at least seven single women and one mother with a toddler.

The pudding had been made with donated soy milk I felt kind of bad about wasting it, but I learned some more about cooking it in a large quantity and if we get some again I will be able to do better. I want to be a good steward of the resources we are given. We had  a $100 donation and I bought two food quality plastic containers with lids and 3 large mixing/serving bowls and a 5 gal water cooler at an auction a couple of weeks ago. I ordered two complete chafing pan sets and we made and served the hot food today out of one of the actual pans and one of the steam pans from one of the sets, and used both lids.  I think we will actually need a couple more of these if we continue to get large crowds. We hope to be able to continue even after it is cold, and that is when we will use the full set up with flames to keep them warm.

It just occurred to me that we will have to make sure to keep the fuel watched, some of those guys will drink ANYTHING with alcohol, especially on Sunday when even if they have money, they can't get booze. I remember I was in town on Super Bowl Sunday and one of the guys was drinking mouth wash. Yuck.

Part of the time we were serving a PIT BULL parked itself under the table on my foot. I was nervous as hell, but I just kept on serving... I was pretty careful to not move my foot! That is one of the things about going to the park that bothers and scares me, the dogs, and they tend to let them run loose. Even if there is a leash on a dog, it gets dropped and the dog runs around trailing the leash. There are at least three dogs who they and their people are usually in the park when I go.

I am so tired. I need to go to bed, but I don't want to go too early or I will wake up in the night. I still have some pans to wash. I brought them home (ugh). We talked about will we store them here or ??? Plus a lot of the young ones are going up to Chicago next weekend for a Big Queer Dance Party and even thugh I am going to Lafayette on Saturday, I will be back on Sunday.

Okay, the end. By the time I mess around a little bit more, wash another pan, fill my medicine doses for the week and shower it will be late enough to go to bed!

argh

My left foot keeps feeling like a cramp on the outside edge, but it's NOT a cramp and I don't like it.

And really

doing Food Not Bombs with the young people is fun, but some of the hippies are smellin' better to me, if you know what I mean!  ;)

Cooking!

I made vegan banana bread this morning and for the first time ever put chocolate chips in one loaf (but they're not vegan). Then I tried a new recipe for individual baked oatmeals that I plan to sell at a Farmer's Market. Now I've got an enchilada casserole in the oven. I thought Michael had agreed to cheese, but he hadn't and he's a little disgruntled. That's what happens when you mumble!

OCD

I wouldn't shake my massage therapist's hand today, but I shook Dennis's at People's Park because I am afraid of hurting his feelings.

Getting better.

I slept terribly last night, which is no surprise. It's been the same at night as it has been during the day with this illness. Fitful, painful sleep wracked with strange and sometimes terrifying dreams. This morning, however, once I woke up I stayed awake. I felt pretty good so I got dressed to go to church. Once I was dressed I was completely exhausted! I fought the urge to go back to bed and went ahead to church. I hoped to park in the actual parking lot because I felt so yucky, but of course that didn't happen so by the time I walked half a block and across the street I was pooped again. I enjoyed the service - Gospel music Sunday! - and there was a breakfast afterward. I saw several people I know and I was actually sociable this week.

I managed to go to Aldi and do just a little shopping to tide us through the week. I was so glad when I got home because I was really taxed and Michael was here and brought in and put away the groceries.

Since then it has been a hodgepodge of resting, eating, cooking, movie viewing, music listening, Facebook and Scrabble AND, AND, AND... I went out and did weeding for the first time this year. At one point I could tell I was physically exhausted, yet restless so I polished my nails to force myself to be still a while longer!

I want to try to stay up until 11 so I won't wake up so much in the night (I hope) then I will be more rested for what promises to be a super busy week at work.

2 months

So Ken and I officially "broke up" today. I don't need comforted because it was the right thing to do. He needs somebody who really needs him and I just don't. The kind of things he did that in his mind were spoiling me or helping me just pissed me off. He's so kind it's unbelievable... it amplified what a bitch I really can be. If I were to be in a successful relationship now I would really need a man who is willing and able to be a sort of disengaged companion, yet realizes when I really need or want him. Also I need to learn to be kinder and that at times I will need to be ready to fill a man's desire to be needed and cherished.... Sometimes being so independent doesn't pay off.

It's sadly ironic that I felt like Garet didn't love me as deeply as I deserved to be loved, yet I would describe Ken as loving me too much. Maybe I can just never be pleased and I need to be prepared to be single forever.

In other news, this terrible, nagging illness has paid off. I completed reading the third book of The Hunger Games trilogy. I intended to go to the movie today, but I guess I was too sick because I kept going back to bed and sleeping instead of getting dressed and going. I feel in some strange way that I should be commended for listening to my body for once.