The last week included moments of productivity, some catch up on reading, and setting up (but not actually starting) a few projects. Those projects are future stuff, so I’ll hold off on talking about for now. Today, let’s check a few other things in.
In the health and fitness zone, I’m still in the turn-over phase of my new routine, and I haven’t really had time to give it the full run-through. So other than being very sore, there really hasn’t been sufficient time or use to judge the change-up. Given the season, it may be a while before there is, and that’s fine. I’m still quite happy with my progress thus far. What is on my mind, though, is recovery time. I think it may be a subject of conversation this week. I mean, I know I’m older and recovery takes longer as you age, but goddamn. Is it just age, or is my recovery time taking longer because of my compounding health issues? How long is this taking my friends and otherwise contemporary’s?
Also I finally got around to fulfilling my orders for blood work and an abdominal ultrasound for my GI. The GI’s office got back to me very quickly, which was pretty dope. Everything seems good, though no miraculous liver recoveries. So boo to that, but it’s not like it was expected anyway. Unexpected, it turns out I am extremely B12 deficient. The PA who called me about the results did explain, but it’s all doctor speak, so I don’t… I’ll see about looking it up when I get a chance. Will I, though? Anytime I look up any medical issue, the results are always either it’s completely fine and I shouldn’t worry or I’m definitely going to die tomorrow. What I do remember is the PA said it wasn’t super urgent, but she did consider it a big enough problem that I should get in touch with my primary care for injections, because she thought that the normal route of supplements wouldn’t be enough. And that I should get on that soon. So… that’s not promising.
This is Thanksgiving Week. If I can find time, I’ll use it to wrap up some of those half-written posts that I’ve been sitting on. I do really want to talk about my current state of romantic feelings and pursuits, but that has turned out to be much harder for me to express than I had previously thought. Not that anything has happened, it’s more about just how lost and mired I feel, and also confused about a few interactions that I had thought were friendly and others seem to think were more. Writing that just now made something click, so maybe I’ll have an easier angle to get into it.
So far planned for this week, I have a trip up to PA with my brother and his family for Thanksgiving dinner at my Dad’s on Thursday. Shoot, that’s tomorrow, I guess I better make sure I’ve got my shit together. Friday will be Friendsgiving at Manny’s, which I am very much looking forward to. There are loose plans for the rest of the weekend to gather with a few friends and play some video games. I’m not sure that last one is going to happen, it was a very loose idea and involves friends that are alternatively chronically busy and chronically forgetful, not that I’m one to talk. But it would be quite nice if we did so.
Friendsgiving is with my closest friends. It’s always great to spend time with them, but I believe this will be the first year we’ve done this sort of thing. I’m hoping it will become a tradition, and I’m also scheming a similar summer get together. Ours isn’t the type community to have festivals or celebrate seasons, but I like the excuse to get together and overeat with my friends, so… I don’t know, I dig the idea.
Anyway, I’m hoping to see some folks I don’t see often. It’s also an event to bring a dish, which I’m usually super into, but I have a little trepidation about this time. At the behest of one of those closest of friends, an impromptu get together was formed yesterday. It was just a sort of “happy hour” type of thing, which I have shied away from in the past, even when I did drink. But I’ve come to really trust them, and true to that trust, they were helpful in keeping others from antagonizing me over my (semi) sobriety. This hang was comprised of a small subset of those expected in attendance of the Friendsgiving, and around the end of the night, or at least when I was on my way out, much hay was made in giving the event increasingly cringe-worthy names. This is a game that I very much enjoy, especially at how one half of the group love the activity and the other half of the group despises it. Well I wasn’t sure what I’d bring as a dish, thinking I might go with a standard Midwestern holiday or banquette dish, but it seems that noone is sticking to that kind of fare. Now, I love holiday foods, but life events have soured some of the experience, and I think I’d rather prefer the change up given the proximity anyway. One friend is apparently making chili, and I love chili, so I’m super fucking into that idea.
Over the past year, I have been either picking up new recipes or reworking old ones to fit my new needs, but very few of them would really work for a crowd. Hell, very few of them are more than a single serving. Well, a single Aaron-sized serving. Also, most wouldn’t travel and would be a real hassle to try and do on the spot in someone else’s kitchen, which isn’t to knock Manny’s kitchen. He has a very nice kitchen. But you know, it’s not mine. One dish I have figured out that would fit a crowd is French Onion Soup, and so I have made that. Entirely from scratch, perfectly caramelized onions, a mix of broths, herbs, settle spices and seasonings. I’ve even got some baguette croutons, which I sorta half made. I didn’t make the baguettes, I just cut and toasted ’em. So like… maybe a quarter made. Anyway, hopefully others like it. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared my cooking with anyone.
And I would like to share it with people. I’d like to get some feedback from others on whether my cooking has become bland or overdone or, I don’t know, anything. Also, cooking was one of the ways I could impress in previous romantic pursuits, and if I’ve lost that, man… I don’t have a prayer. Is that how that saying goes? Seems about right. Anyway, it’s also a risk. Not so much with my closest friends. If they don’t like it and talk shit, that’s fine. I’d expect nothing less – give me the honest feedback. Especially after years of me talking my cooking up so much? Yeah, I’d deserve it. But there will be others there that aren’t close friends, some I am hoping to become closer with, and others that I really don’t know what to think of. I do think my current state makes me better poised to handle however people take my cooking, and I suppose even if it is bad, it will still be a good topic of discussion. And there is one woman in particular that I’m hoping will be there, because I do always enjoy our discussions. I do also worry about those discussions in that I think I may be a nuisance to her, and I don’t want to be. I’d worry that my ego couldn’t take it, the knock on my cooking or the affirmation that I am a nuisance. But then, what ego is left to be bruised anyway? Oh, I gotta remember to dig up my torch. For the Gruyere.
I am approaching the final part of Anna Karenina and I’m totally losing my shit. This book is incredible. I just finished a chapter in which the titular character went round and round in her head suffering the assumed motives of her lover while trying to ignore the counter-wounds left by her husband from whom a divorce he refuses to grant, which plagues her so. She is a deeply flawed person and her situation is entirely alien to me, and yet I can’t help but to sympathize. I would give nearly anything to be able to write like this. I think this might be what my silly little sci-fi story needs, for me to take some of my actual, lived experiences and feelings, and put them on the page through and in the context of my strange, futuristic scenarios and characters. One thing is for sure, it no longer feels entirely self indulgent to have fragments of myself written into each character. So I think I will do exactly that.
Anyway, that’s enough for now. If I can remember, I’ll fill in the outcomes of any lingering questions that have found answers in the next check-in. Did I ever come up with a parting salutation for this thing?