Time wounds all heels

My cat and my laptop are not friends, despite the fact that they have a couple of things in common (designed for laps, going to sleep automatically, generating considerable heat).  You can probably imagine why.  I’m not sure my laptop shares quite the same grudge but I can tell you that being in the middle of (or a bit under) this feud is not fun.  And I’d like to blame it for the fact that I haven’t written in quite some time.  It’s not that I don’t want quality time with my now 18 year-old cat.  I do.  I really do.  I know that someday soon or soonish my chance to sit with cat - at least this cat, in lap, will be gone.  Here’s the rub: sitting and doing something other than work feels so frivolous to me.  Indulgent.  And please don’t misunderstand - it’s not like I have a ton of time on my hands for sitting idly by watching the rain drip awkwardly from gutters that never got cleared or the dust bunnies sitting waiting to be tumbled around the floor by the other cat that doesn’t sit quite so much.  But in the spare time that I do have, I feel compelled to do work – progress notes, lack of progress notes, sorting out billing issues.  These activities are not soul food people.  While they need to be done, they are not what I need.  I need to ponder, to mull, to find my silly side, my serious side, sitting.  Why sitting?  Because thinking while doing may generate the sparks of cool ideas, but it doesn’t jog the brain like the act of coughing up words onto “paper.”  I wonder for those who may read this – what things that are good for you and that feel good to you do you put off doing?  For a while, for me (in addition to writing and doing other left-brain-type things), it was exercise.  And then, slowly but surely, I started running and going to yoga.  A couple of months, maybe less, into the building of what I hoped would be a new routine, I was forced to quit the running by some heel pain that I’d been ignoring for too many weeks.  Big bummer.  And not running definitely started to impact the rest of me – forgive the small sample size but I basically proved that there is a strong correlation between regular exercise and positive mood.  (My research teacher from grad. school would be so proud.)  Here’s how the abstract might read:  Running makes you happy and gives you energy!  When you’re happy and have energy you want to make an effort to cook adventurously!  When you make an effort to cook adventurously you want to write about it!  You see my point.  So please forgive the temporary blog void.  It’s not that I haven’t been cooking at all – I’ve managed to pull together a few decent meals here and there.  The pizza you see is a more or less copy from something I read off the menu at our local vegetarian restaurant, Garden Grille – it’s BBQ sauce, turkey bacon (they used tofu bacon, which tastes exactly like a REAL pork rind – remember those?), queso fresco (yum), corn, roasted sweet potatoes, mozzarella and cilantro.  Black beans would have been good on there too.  The other dinner-looking thing is my version of a hearts of palm burger.  The photo doesn’t do a whole lot for it.  (It got smushed when I tried to flip it in the pan.)  They were rockin’.  When I’m not so tired I’ll try to remember how I made them and jot it down.  The green goopy looking stuff in the blue bowl is Green Soup.  I swear by this stuff.  It's good health in a bowl and tastes WAY better than it should.  I picked it up from the Splendid Table radio show that I usually catch on my Saturday trip to the grocery store (how timely).  I'll put a link to it at the end.  The picture I’d like to show is the one my husband took last week of my kids eating cereal off the kitchen floor, at dinnertime.  Piper spilled the box and Mazie moved in, joining the feeding frenzy.  We were too pooped to intervene.  So sometimes, even oftentimes, dinner at our house isn’t exactly something to brag, er, blog about.  But whether off the floor or off an actual plate, we manage to eat.  And I can deal.  My energy will come back.   After all, don’t we know that time heals all heels?  

Make this...

http://www.publicradio.org/columns/splendid-table/recipes/basic_green_soup.html