flashingreds...
do i try too hard
(2003-11-20, 10:56 a.m.)
I mark the weeks from fall to winter with soup.

There was veggie chili, roasted red pepper and sweet potato soup, herbed lentil soup and Moroccan split pea soup, repeated at will. This week, it�s the lentil soup. Tonight I�ll whip up more applesauce from the endlessly overflowing baskets and bowls all over my kitchen.

Comfort food. I think it�s working. After weeks of ambivalence, depression and anger, I feel a bit like getting up. My back is killing me.

The car�s going in to the shop again tomorrow, and I don�t care whether it means I rot for eternity in debtor�s prison. Frankly it can�t be much worse than the weekends have been of late, weekends that find me lying on the sofa, not bathing, watching the same items appear again and again on the home shopping channel (when watching the Bears starts to hurt too much), wishing the phone would ring, hating myself for wanting the phone to ring. I need to be able to get the hell out of town and quit spending time in bars with the same people, waiting to see whether anything will happen. �Cause here�s a flash, flashingreds�ain�t nothin� gonna happen, and that�s a damned good thing. Get some self-respect.

Growl.

I had a mild (yet HUGE!) success against a corporate giant yesterday, and it gave me enough righteous anger to imply impending nastiness to a film producer who�s trying to play me for a fool. And with such a delicious start to the day, anger and boldness only grew as the hours wore on. It fairly dripped off my hands into the Dutch oven as I cooked last night, and the lentils are magnificent.

(Well, it�s not all perfect yet. I was all weepy and soft when I walked into the living room to hear them playing Rhett M.�s �Question� in its entirety on �Ed� last night. Such a dreamy new daddy. Who can blame me?)

My mother stopped by, and she felt compelled to try the soup. Of course, she also fortified herself from the candy dish for her 20-minute drive home, but for a moment, she was actually interested in soup. It�s that powerful.

And I�m itching for a fight.