Grim satisfaction

Oh, and after two weeks of spectacular adventures/failures in cooking low-fat turkey-spinach meatballs (1. An ill-fitting lid got vacuum sealed by sauce to the pan, thus forcing me to dent the lid – it took some doing – to liberate the meatball goodness inside, 2. The dreaded wooden spoon incident in which spoon bits were pureed into the mix by the blender, 3. Ground turkey from Perdue – that stuff is DISGUSTING), I finally achieved sweet, tasty, delicious success.

Note: Cooking is hard to do when you are so hungry your hands don’t work. Maybe next time I won’t jog three miles and do weight training before I start.

My coworker Taylor sez

“Why do women get all the delicious calcium supplements?”

The other shoe?

Well, I attempted to help teach the kids on Saturday. Luckily Lou was there; he loves kids and is very good with them. The 4-year-olds are very cute. I worry about C. because he seems so sad, but it may simply be that he has a mournful looking face and is actually not unhappy at all. Little J. built an imaginary “cotton candy ride” out of kicking pads and a small punching bag. So cute, but so shrill.

Afterward we went to NJ to celebrate the 3rd year anniversary of the school branch there. More shrill children, and some tasty vegetable sandwiches. We ended up at Steve and Jamie’s house, where they fed us a lot of very good wine. OK, I admit I know nothing about wine, but I had about ten glasses of something that I liked very much. It tasted buttery somehow.

Jamie and Steve have a closet that is bigger than any room I’ve ever had, and an amazing steam shower. Also a claw-foot bathtub.

The ride back home was excruciatingly tense, what with J. crashing the ride. Because he was there, K. was out of sorts and enforced an “it’s my car and there will be no talking” rule. The rest of us were fine with this, but of course it agitated J. no end. By the time K. stopped to get gas, J. was cursing her out behind her back, and M. left the car to be sick.

Retribution will surely strike for this. I wonder when, and to whom, and in what shape.

There are mostly great waves.

A vague impression

Of unfathomable weight

cold

And weak things

swept away

Heart and mind

And chattering bone

I can almost hear them.

It’s a trap…?

My usual subway line has been discontinued for the next 9 months, and there are something like 500,000 ex A/C-ers clogging up the alternate lines. Trying to leave a subway station has become a slow and difficult affair, not so much irritating as scary.

I know the fires were probably started by a single homeless guy trying to keep warm, but something in me fears we are being herded into an ever narrowing supply of routes so that we can be more easily wiped out later.

So, am I paranoid? Am I???

A recent conversation

Person A: Another carnal cult?

Me: Dude! They just keep coming!

Another phrase thought in the line of work

I’d make a sound effect for that, but I don’t have enough spit.

A True Martial Artist’s Life is Fraught with Peril

It seems that on Monday, the office at the 50th Street school caught fire in the early morning hours when no one was there. Luckily no one was hurt, but there is now a hole in the office floor, half the couch has burned away, and extensive water damage was done to at least two floors.

Selfishly, I wonder if this means that all my old training buddies will come to visit at the 77th Street school. Sob! I’m so alone!

Oh, and on Saturday, poor Dr. J (the punk) busted his ACL and some other important leg thing when he landed badly after a 360 jump. Yup, must be pretty confidence-inspiring when your orthopedic surgeon hobbles into the surgery on crutches.

My cold, black heart

So, Saturday, during the blizzard. I had dinner plans with a guy friend from an outer borough. I hinted strongly that maybe he didn’t want to come all the way to Manhattan in the snow, but he wouldn’t take the hint and said he really wanted to see me no matter what, and that it was up to me.

Years ago, I told him an irrevocable no, and he seemed to take it well. But when I saw him on Saturday, he said that there was something about me that made him want to take care of me and make sure that nothing bad ever happened to me, and that he really cared a lot about me. It’s very awkward when you can’t bring yourself to say “I care a lot about you too” because you’re afraid of what someone will infer.

It’s no one’s fault that he can talk for hours and hours about things in which I have no interest and that he doesn’t understand me at all. It would almost be easier just to give up and say yes, sleep with him now and think about throwing myself off a rooftop later. It’s not like I haven’t done it before.

So I said “Thank you.”

I’m such. A bitch.

By the by

When my new roommate moved in, one of the first things she did was insist on getting brunch at that cafe that’s part of Fairway.

You never realized that scrambled eggs taste really, really good mixed with cream cheese, did you? Or maybe it’s just me.