off-trail

lil brown bear in the woods on the cold, cold coast, with arrow-shaped holes in his lil bear sides and a hunger in his lil bear belly.

no-chicken salad

it is quite delicious, i assure you.

steam a double-handful of broccoli and two quorn cutlets for approx. 10-15 minutes (if you like your broccoli barely cooked, start the quorn five to 10 minutes early). meanwhile, combine mayo or vegenaise with dijon mustard, sweet chili sauce, worcestershire sauce, red pepper flakes, fresh ground black pepper, garlic salt, and onion powder* in a bowl. next, chop up two pickles and several stalks of celery, add to the bowl of spiced mayo. once the broccoli and quorn are cooked to your liking, dice them up and add 'em to the bowl. stir everything together and boom! no-chicken salad. serve on toasted bread (might i suggest poppy seed challah) with mazuna greens.

*i rarely measure, but i have arranged these ingredients in the order of largest amount added to smallest amount added, i.e. i added more dijon mustard than i did sweet chili sauce, i added more sweet chili sauce than i did worcestershire sauce, etc.

on another, much more break-your-heart-it's-so-cute note, nelson made himself quite comfy on the back of the couch today.

dream comedy

With someone mowing a small hill with a push mower, yards away, another someone shortened a grassy patch with a weed-whacker, neon plastic spinning, spinning, spinning. Near by and droning, a gas mower drew lines of short, blunt blades of grass in a small field. Amy Sedaris, somehow handling a motorcycle landscaping tool by standing to one side of the growling machine, swiveling her hips to sweep it from side to side, chewing a dirt pit into the turf.

"Whoever told Jesus to become a shepherd, was way off."

Stumbling up the push mower hill, tears building up in the corners of my eyes, I laughed myself awake.

dog mountain

happily sore, the only regret for today is having not been accompanied by my camera to the top of dog mountain. apparently it turns out to be extremely calming to run through a full cycle of feelings in four hours of time: motivation, curiosity, pain, doubt, disappointment, awe, accomplishment, worry, curiosity again, pride, slight boredom, satisfaction, exhaustion.

the canopy above the trail was eventually ripped open; thimble berry and wild flowers, bracing insects, bracing hikers, a sweeping view much, much higher than i had expected. and the wind, which swept and pushed and blew. the colors: greens and whites and yellows, with pinpricks of orange and scattered mounds of purple and fuschias. the sky and water below a variety of blues and greys, no surprise there. a difficult descent atop orange crumbles and rocks, back into a hug of deeper greens, brown affected one hundred different ways by bugs and birds, and those ghostly white-stemmed flowers that grow at the base of trees.

aches

my throat has been aching for days. each time i swallow it's a little reminder that my lungs hate my f****** guts and want me to suffer. did i mention that my chest hurts, too? feels a little crumpled at the top, near where i imagine my lungs start, slightly to my right-hand side.

on another note, i am feeling quite cheerful for things. living a double life ain't so bad.

breaker, one two

boo. i'm never as good at this as i wish i could be.
boo.