After ten of the quietest days of my adult life, my husband is finally home from adventuring through the California desert! With the weather around here being as awful as it is (literally a Nor’easter blizzard every week), I encouraged a restless Jon to focus on his photography and get a little bit of California sunshine. Well, now he’s back from Joshua Tree, the Salton Sea, and Death Valley, and I can’t wait for him to unpack his camera and show me all the images he’s come away with!
And I have a confession. While I thought these days alone would be the most productive of my life, they were…different…than I expected. I wasn’t AS productive as I’d like to have been, opting for quietness more often than not. Mostly I just savored the alone time like a dissolving piece of candy on my tongue. I breathed into it, indulged myself (as I usually do), and came out feeling slightly reborn. Of course, that could be the improvement in the weather speaking, or the fact that I’m no longer reading books about a drug addict’s stint in rehab, but I’d like to chalk it up to some mindfulness, lots of peace, and a refocusing of my own desires.
Speaking of desires, I have been on such a romance novel kick that I’m having a hard time wrenching my nose from between those luscious, feathery, paperback pages. It’s fun and silly, but dreadfully embarrassing when anyone catches a glimpse of the damsels in a lurid embrace on the cover. In fact, I ran to the grocery store with three on my back seat and covered the Fabio inspired photographs right up! My solution has been to put a Post-it Note across the cover to keep Jon from eyeing the quivering biceps smack on the front.
Right now I’m on a bender of historical romance (this one, if your wondering) and they’re very Jane Austin meets a smutty film, except a little too long and exhausting. Nonetheless, I’ve already read two in two days. As I gobble them up until 2 am, I’m wondering what is happening in my dopamine deprived brain that has got me so addicted to that heady feeling of lust and love.
So when I stumbled on this radio article (what else do you call it?) from NPR’s All Things Considered about people’s addiction to scratch tickets, I felt a snag of guilt. Jon buys me a few a year to satisfy my love of scratching things off with a quarter, but I know that the high that I get is, in fact, very real. Just as it is when I read smut. While my vices are small, the clip certainly puts the lottery business in perspective and will be hard to forget the next time I eye a $2.00 Pot-O’-Gold ticket at the 7-Eleven.
In other news, I absolutely loved this article about a 12-year-old boy from Mexico named Marco Zozaya, who wants to be a science communicator like Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s charismatic, utterly adorable, and fiercely smart – things that light a YouTube channel right up. I also thought this list of picnic blankets was so wholesome that it made me want to wrap up a sandwich and head to the park. My sweet sister sent me this list of non-depressing documentaries on Netflix, and I couldn’t stop reading this Lenny essay about a woman’s complicated relationship with her abusive brother.
Recently, I’ve had it with heavy, winter pasta dishes, so I’ve gathered a few new recipes to give a try. In particular, I’ve been dying to make spring rolls and lettuce cups, so this recipe has been on my radar for the weekend. I’m looking forward to a new season of salads, salads, and more salads!
And just so you don’t think I’m a total nut, I’m about to start reading this book written by Eileen Chang, a Chinese author whose writing is supposed to be spectacular. I’m not sure how I came across this novel – browsing on Amazon, I think – but, I spoke too soon because it’s also sort of a romance (I mean, the word is in the title!). I have chosen to look at it as a really well written, probably-doesn’t-have-a-happy-ending novel that has some love in it. Oh well, addiction be damned, it’s getting me to read like a rabid academic!
So, other than having my nose stuck in a book like the Beast’s Belle, I’ll be waiting for the snow to stop, and spending time catching up with Jon. It should be a pretty quiet couple of days. And as for you, I hope you have a wonderful weekend full of all of your favorite things, even if they’re sometimes less than appropriate!
What have you got planned for the weekend? And please share books, articles, recipes, movies, etc., that you think I’d like! Thanks for reading! <3
