Sleepless in Texas

Here’s my afternoon snack from earlier today: two slices of toast, one topped with mustard, melted cheddar, and caramelized onions.  The other was topped with coconut butter on one half and peanut butter with raisins on the other.  I drank iced Sleepytime Vanilla tea to wash everything down.

What, you may ask, was I doing drinking Sleepytime Vanilla at 4 PM?  I may act like an old lady, but I’m not that bad yet.  I can offer you two reasons.  One is that Sleepytime Vanilla is delicious and shouldn’t be limited to before-bed sipping.  The other is that on Friday night, I lay in bed for two hours, thinking and fretting and worrying about work.  I’ve been trying to hedge my bets with sleep since then, and Sleepytime tea is one of my tricks.

Oh, WORK!  I have been working a lot lately.  Like I said yesterday, it’s been a long stretch of consecutive days in the lab, and I am so ready for a break.  I’m taking a bit of a break next weekend, and Matt is coming to visit the weekend after that, so I’m anticipating some good times ahead.  In the meantime, I have mountains of data to analyze.  Mountains!  I made a pretty good dent in that mountain today, but there is more to do, and I’m hoping to get it done in the next week or so.  I’m also hoping not to stay in bed worrying about all of this because that’s just silly.

Even with my hectic work schedule, I’ve tried to keep up with my commitment to this blog and to all of you, kind readers.  I like having a consistency to my writing schedule; it’s the sort of thing that Natalie Goldberg recommends in her excellent Writing Down the Bones.  When you write frequently, writing becomes easier and less scary, which is especially important when you sit down to work on something scary, like a PhD thesis.  One might think that a food blog is a fluffy hobby compared to the work I do in the lab, but I know that my PhD was easier to finish because of all the practice I’ve gotten from writing here, for all of you.

I don’t have a case of writer’s block these days, but I’m feeling crunched for time to do the kind of writing that this blog deserves.  After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to take a short break from writing Life, Love, and Food.  Don’t worry; I’m only going to be gone for two weeks.  I have so many recipes and ideas to share with you, but I have to get caught up with my work.  I also think it will be nice to have some time to work on my ideas, to play in the kitchen and read some new cookbooks and let my thoughts simmer until they are fully cooked.

Speaking of new cookbooks, I picked up these Williams-Sonoma volumes at the library today.  I even had a chance to read a bit of the Pacific Northwest book, and ooh—I can’t wait to cook out of this one!  Things look promising, and that is always a good feeling.

I’ll be back here on November 7 or thereabouts.  Before I go, have I told you about this Sam Pacetti song, “The Christians and the Outlaws?”  It’s one of my favorites (though I hope I have not offended my more religious readers…).  In it, he sings,

“Like the Christians and the outlaws

And like that summer wind

Like the singer to the chorus

I will come back again.”

That’s sort of how I feel right now.  See you soon, friends.