Culinary goddess

That's me!

I decided to take a day off to do nothing work-related, so (in among a bit of trashy TV, college work, doing some washing and cleaning the house) I decided to experiment in the kitchen.

Breakfast was toasted rye bread with fried eggs and grilled baby tomatoes.

Number two, coming in as a late lunch, was a Thai-style hot and sour coconut milk and mushroom soup. Absolutely delicious. Flavours of chili, lemon, lime, coconut milk, ginger and mushroom, with lemon rice and carrots added at the end (an accompaniment to yesterday's dinner) to give substance. On the side we had potato cakes to dip into the soup (not homemade sadly).

Our late afternoon treat was a little plate of dairy-free fairy cakes with a dark chocolate, golden syrup and almond flake topping. They sound nicer than they tasted. Don't get me wrong; they are very tasty little cakes, but nothing special. What is special about them, however, is that they were very tasty and dairy free and my first attempt at making fairy cakes alone. Well, alone excepting the muscle-power of mixing that my beloved provided - reminds me of when we plastered the lounge, except I was the one doing the mixing that time and the fairy cakes are much nicer on the skin than plaster powder.

For dinner we shall be having the remainder of the soup and probably the rest of the fairy cakes. I expect this will be as two courses, not one.

I am now going to partake of my third fairy cake with a nice cup of tea.  

Black Swan and psychosis

I watched Black Swan last night and it made me incredibly anxious. Psychological thrillers or anything to do with severe mental health, especially psychosis or hallucinations, have always terrified me more than gun shooting, physical violence and car chases, though I don't like them either. I remember studying psychopathologies at university and each lecture would bring me more anxiety as I pored over the symptoms to see how many of those on list I could relate to. I know lots of people who did this with the medical dictionary in our sixth form library, but for me, it's the so-called mental illnesses that frighten me more than the physical ones.

I have a feeling that I have more direct knowledge of them, as well as theoretical knowledge, than many people, so I wonder if this means I am less scared than most because I understand more, or more scared than most because I can't ignore these issues and have more contact with them (or perhaps, obsess over them!). Certainly reading about treatment and management helps significantly, but it's the many thousands of despairing untreated people that my heart breaks for. And, what if, one day, I become one of them? One of the untreated: slowly, invisibly and inexorably fading away in a darkened room, or drinking themselves to death. I would hope that those who love me would be there to look out for me, perhaps more successfully and confidently than they have in the past with (slightly) more minor crises, but you never know because everyone has their own life and their own issues to focus on. If you're looking the other way, for whatever reason, you may not see.

What is it, I wonder, that makes mental illness so much more frightening than physical illnesses? What is it about going mad that instills such fear? Is it the idea of losing your 'self', perhaps? I know that the idea of taking most of the drugs around always made me anxious when I was younger, for that very reason - what if I lost my 'self' somewhere along the way and never found it again, or never found a new one?

I feel compelled to read, watch and write about the very things that terrify me the most and I rather suspect that this is so I can explore them, to understand, to know. Knowledge and understanding, to me, are security.

Then there's the whole debate about madness and spirituality. For the scientific, anything that is not science is hallucination, whether this is just a random experience or part of an illness. For the spiritual, it often feels very hard to know where to draw the line between spiritual experience and psychosis, certainly when non-believers become aware of these experiences. I certainly don't know where this line lies. Any thoughts concerning this particular issue would be welcome. I'm deeply curious about this.

Reality

There's a very comforting line that I have come across recently, that I keep reading and re-reading.

2.16. The unreal never is: the Real never is not. (Bhagavad Gita)

There's just something about it that makes me see more into those few words each time I read it. I just find it so intensely comforting that I wanted to share it with you

It also reminds me of something my Dad told me when I was little, a quote about the pointlessness of worrying - the unreality of most worries.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. (Mark Twain)

I AM NOT PREMENSTRUAL

So why am I behaving as if I am?? Not only have I disintegrated into floods of tears on at least three occasions today, I am also grumpy, wiped out and breaking things.

I very efficiently dropped a mug in the sink, breaking two other mugs - a beautiful one that I only got for Christmas from my oldest friend (length of friendship, not age-wise) and one which I have been scared of dropping since I carefully brought it home, and the other one was my man's, also one of his favourites. The one I dropped resisted - it says on the underneath 'microwave and dishwasher safe'. It ought to say 'microwave, dishwasher and ninki safe'. Survival of the fittest I guess.

Time to eat chocolate and popcorn.

The darkside

And so after this amazing experience last night, I can't work out why I feel hungover and horribly tearful and emotional. Is it just dehydration from so much sweating? Is it because everything that goes up, must come down? Is it that where there is light, there is always dark? Is it the full moon? Regardless of what people/men say, I know that the full moon has an impact on me and my dreams. No idea why, but it does. My monthly cycle is tied to it. Tell my body that it lies. I only get my information from it, my body that is, not from random claims on the internet.

Oh. Curious. I feel angry and cross and irritable too. My man has a challenge on his hands today. Lucky man. :-)

The light of women

Spring is coming. It started last night, I think, with my five rhythms dance class. My friend told me she thought that I would 'get it' - and I did.

We arrived to a dimly lit church that seemed empty and rather scary - organ music playing softly. Slowly, one by one, the rich red carpet filled with women's bodies, stretching, relaxing and twisting. After a half hour or so, a little encouragement from the leader to start standing up and a sprinkle of nervousness (me peeking with one open eye at the other women around), I was twirling and whirling my way around a beautiful old church in South London. These beautiful women, each dancing to her own beat, filled the vast space with happiness (and a whole array of other emotions) - I don't think I've ever seen so many shining smiling faces in one space. After about an hour and a half, we finished - exhausted, sweaty and meditationally zenned-out - by sitting in a large circle, perhaps 70 of us all holding hands, with a candle in the centre. I felt absolute balance.

To acknowledge the arrival of spring, I retrieved spring clothes from storage this morning. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, this part of the world is warming up. Tonight it's the full moon and we're cycling to a nice part of town to take some photos, if we can, to capture her brightness and fullness.

Light comes in many forms and many shades.

A bit of peace

I’m sitting in the heart of Old Street outside a café on Great Eastern Street, amidst the traffic and the noise, and I feel a sense of delicious warmth and peace. The warmth is not surprising as the sun is shining and I’m basically sitting in a little oven, with concrete all around and my table and chair made of silvery metal. The peace does surprise me. The noise was unbearable when I got here, but as I’ve been sitting and letting my muscles relax, the sounds have receded into a background hum, with the occasional aeroplane somehow softening the already soothing buzz of the main road right next to me.

I ate a salad composed of leaves, olives, sundried tomatoes, chicken, avocado, roasted aubergine, roasted courgette and roasted pepper.

“Do you have soya milk?” The crucial question. If he’d said “No”, I’d have gone to the next café – a chain that pretty much only serves wheat and butter in various formats, but they do have soya milk.

Thankfully he said, “Yes.”

“Okay, I’d like a salad please.” I said. “What salads do you serve?”

 “Base salad, plus anything you want.”

“Anything I want?” I sounded incredulous, because I was. I didn’t think to ask the price at this point, but thankfully I didn’t have to sell my mother for this salad. It was reasonably priced.

“Yes,” he smiled at me. “Anything you want.”

Why didn’t I ask for more? Simple answer – because what I asked for was exactly what I wanted and it turned out to be the absolute most delicious salad I’ve eaten in a long time. To the accompaniment of traffic and scorching reflected sunshine.

He assumed I wanted a soya latte. Do I look like a soya latte kind of girl, I wonder? I guess I must do. “No. A tea with soya milk please.”

My tea is now cold but I love having a mug of tea next to me as I type. When my friend arrives, I might buy another. It’s delicious. Truly my English upbringing coming out.

And my English upbringing was also deeply satisfied when the horses trotted past me, admittedly slightly frothing at the mouth, which put me off my food temporarily, but once the last fleck of froth had passed me by, all I could see was their beautiful sleek shiny hides, and their powerful healthy muscles.

I could almost imagine I’m in the countryside and this, I guess, is where my deep sense of peace comes from. It couldn’t come from being in London, surely.

A family of salmons

Always swimming upstream, going against the grain, not fitting in. Is this everyone? Is it because we're all actually different and therefore never feel as if we fit in unless we focus on the similarities? Is fitting in a focus, rather than a reality? It is self-perception before it is other perception?

The monster: message for men

Guys, imagine, if you will, a tiny little monster who is very strong, who has his sharp little teeth firmly clamped on your whatsits. For the fun of it, this little monster will endeavour to do some twists, turns, somersaults and jumps (while still clamped on). He will do this for maybe half an hour at a time and when the pain finally subsides, he bites again and has a good old acrobatic session again. This usually last a good few hours, sometimes a whole day, and you know he'll be back every month.

Somehow, this little monster seems to eat into your brain at the same time, taking control of your mouth so it feels full of marbles and you can't quite talk, and scrambling the messages coming into your brain so you have no idea what anyone is trying to tell you. Additionally, he'll have done something to your kinesthetic sensors and you'll start dropping things and walking into things, thus causing more pain through bruises and bumps.

You'll also randomly, though not really very surprisingly, feel like everyone is attacking you and you'll get very grumpy and sensitive.

This is what happens to women every month.

Warning signs: two or more of the following - frequent and baffling tears, grumpiness (more so than usual), a sense that you are sleeping next to a radiator, higher hit rate than usual for breakages, seeing more bruises than normal on your beloved, complaints of lower back pain/tummy pain/boob pain/headaches/migraine, heightened sensory sensitivity including complaints that you're smellier/scratchier etc than usual, seemingly irrational criticism (in higher quantities than normal), greater demand for hugs and attention than normal, greater unhappiness with everything.

Advice: be very gentle, kind and sensitive. Admit that everything is your fault (though you may have the opportunity to retract this the following day if you have a fairly reasonable girlfriend/wife). Be extra helpful and offer to do anything at all (former advice applies here too). Hot hands on belly is good. Massage is great if your beautiful-one gets backache or headache or any other associated ache. Feeding us and making cups of tea is good. Doing the washing up voluntarily is good (not just promising to do it). Having absolutely no expectations on us to do anything at all is also good. Recognising that we have effectively been possessed by a monster (but absolutely not voicing this) and not blaming us or shouting at us during this time is also essential. Also be aware that the sense of smell may be heightened, so take a little extra time washing. Finally, be aware that all of the above may go totally unappreciated, but if you don't do it, the monster may be personified in your beloved and attack you.

The toothpaste tube

It has now been definitely proved to me that I squeeze toothpaste tubes at the top. I spent about 10 years of house sharing believing it to be other (very bad) people who were squeezing my toothpaste tube. Next time you hear yourself saying (hopefully in your head) "It wasn't me, I'd never do that", think again and think about the fact that maybe actually it was you after all. It's impossible to remember not-doing something, but it's definitely possible to not remember doing something, even for people with incredible memories such as myself. [blush]