Tea and Dragons

So, in my rush of mild motivation last weekend, I went to my favorite grocery and picked up some peaches along with some yellow heirloom tomatoes with an eye towards making one of my favorite salads. I got it from a video on how to use tomatoes a few years ago, but it's simple and SO GOOD. Basically, slice a ripe peach, a tomato of choice, some fresh basil, and a ball of fresh mozzarella, then toss those with some good olive oil, salt, pepper, and drizzle it all with some really good balsamic vinegar. Eat with bread or just a fork.

( More food chat back here. )

In other news, I've been really enjoying Angela Chen's book, Ace. It's a book who's stated aim is to inform leftie middle class people about what asexuality even is, but is also a really interesting and thoughtful interrogation of thinking about and sitting in our expectations and assumptions when it comes to assumed shared experience as humans. Reviews have made a point at how some readers are frustrated by the author framing their work through the lens of their own experience. I can see where that would be an issue, but I really do like it as a framing device/framework for exploring the subject of sexuality and romantic attraction in general. The point is that even people who claim asexuality and/or aromanticism as an identity or sexuality also have assumptions and expectations to unpack because they're raised in a society and have their own experiences and expectations.

It's honestly a book I think I'd recommend to people aside from the asexuality aspect. (Hilarious, I know.) But I like how gentle this book is about asking the reader to take a hard look at why exploring their own assumptions of identity and sexuality might be difficult and showing that the reader is not alone and that the author had to do that too!

And I did start a book about Mesopotamian cuisine (with translated recipes!) and am looking forward to reading the rest of it. I kind of love the theme that food is such a fundamental and almost boring part of existence that we often don't think to talk about it much or record the day-to-day stuff. But that day-to-day says more about a culture or group of people than pretty much anything else. Food is the intersection of politics, culture, and geography in so many cool ways. Also, I'm reminded I really don't know much about Mesopotamia other than my dim memories of 7th grade World Cultures class. And Ea Nasir's shenaniganery.

Traditionally, August/September has been a challenging time for my brain. These days it's medicated and I found something interesting happening. For the last few months I've just not had the energy or interest in doing more than the very basic minimum. This got rubbed in my face last weekend with the mountain of laundry I needed to tackle.

I mention any of this because I actually felt motivated and engaged this weekend. I did some long-standing house chores that had been neglected AND I started tidiying my home. I also put a date on the calendar to get a friend to come over and help me clean/get the stuff taken down to get donated. I am going to try to get something on the calendar later to deep-sort my storage closet. There's a lot in there that can be passed on. I really want to downsize a lot of stuff because I can just feel it closing in. I need to do a deep sort of my book cases as well, but that can wait a while. So can the dvd weed.

Anyway, it's nice to have a tiny little glimmer of motivation. I need a lot of it in the next few months, but I will do my best to protect the wee bit I have.