Back to Winter

It's snowing in New York this morning. I guess it's back to the winter weather.

One good thing about being in grad school and working mostly from home is lazy weekday mornings. Or sort of lazy. I'll go to the gym in a little while once it's less crowded and then finish up some notes for class before I have to leave, but for now, I'm just hanging out in my bathrobe, playing around on the ukulele and just enjoying being able to take the morning at my own pace. It's so rare I get to do that, and I know a lot of people who would agree.

Sometimes when I have an article due or something it's different, but today I'm enjoying a short respite between writing assignments. Of course, even slow mornings require fuel. Today, I made a bowl of oatmeal with banana cooked in and added a tablespoon of almond butter. If you've never tried it, you have to! I got the idea from the lovely Jade Sylvan, who blogs over at Boston Massage Therapy's Boston Healing Blog. All you do is stir the almond butter into the oatmeal until it melts in. Sooo good. Even better, it actually keeps me full until lunchtime!

The Banana Man Strikes Again

I don't know if you remember my post earlier this summer about the guy at the fruit stand who likes to give me a free banana—For the past few weeks, I'd been enjoying relative anonymity while he had other guys working with him. While free food is always a good thing, there's something awkward about free bananas. I guess it's the blatant phallic symbolism.

Anyway, today while I passed by, I figured I should pick up some produce, since we're out of a lot of things. There was one person ahead of me, and when he'd been helped, I said my usual, "Hi, I'd just like to get—"

"You can get for yourself! You are a well-known person!" Banana Man cried jovially and handed me a plastic bag.

"Um, okay. Thank you." I cautiously put four bananas into the bag. "Great. Here's a dollar."

Banana Man grabbed a particularly large specimen and plopped it in my bag with a grin. "This from me."

If he hadn't given me the extra banana, I probably would have bought more, but I just felt too awkward. I told him to have a good rest of the day and intended to run home as fast as possible, but apparently, that wasn't an option, as a woman shoved a microphone in my face.

"Hi, can I ask you a question? How are you handling the heat?"

This is why I'm glad I don't have a TV—I sure don't wanna see my sweaty self rambling about how we turn the AC on in short bursts so it doesn't get too expensive. Good God...

repost of a reposted reposted recipe

I'm not a huge fan of the whole raw food thing, but I saw this recipe posted on a friend's blog and decided that I have to try it!

Basically, what you do is freeze cut-up bananas (2-3) and then put them in a food processor until they've turned into a frozen treat that resembles soft-serve ice cream.

Um, sign me up. That sounds amazing. I do have to give these raw food folks credit for their creativity—I never would have thought to try this.

5 for a Dollar

I feel a bit funny about always taking the extra banana from the fruit vendor on 9th, but I do it anyway.

My sister tells me this is how people like me get into trouble. What she may or may not realize is that I wrote the book on trouble—it's just that nobody bought it.

I've actually written several books on various sorts of trouble. I've only showed one or two manuscripts to people, only actually shopped one around. One agent wrote back to me, "When you have a story that is not your own, get back in touch with me."

No thank you. I had a weird moment of clarity a few months after that in which I realized that instead of using my writing to share painful stories, I could use it to spread positive ideas that could help people more directly.

Sometimes I feel a bit guilty for neglecting my fiction and essay-writing since I spend so much time and energy doing other work for my jobs and school. I do get to do a ton of writing and blogging, at least, it's just about different subject matters.

It's been an interesting path so far, and kind of funny to see how after a while, writing about sex is so much less interesting than writing about, oh, I don't know—Chinese medicine, vegetarian protein sources, or weird findings and goings-on around the city.

The closest I come to writing about sex lately is when I have to write fertility-related blog posts (check here for the latest one), but somehow, I think that's okay. I feel like in a few years (or many), I'll look back and see that the stars were, in fact, in alignment.