This Is Life

• Levee has started her spring shedding. It doesn’t matter that I vacuum every day; I cannot keep up with her hair clods. They explode off her like a wet mogwai popping off hairball babies.
• We tried açaí, both in bowl form as well as juice. I’m convinced it’s a mass joke. Before this I’d have had difficulty naming a food I didn’t like. Sure, there are foods I don’t prefer, but very few I truly dislike. Açaí has, without any doubt whatsoever, become the food I dislike. I’d describe its flavor as fermented berries or “eww.” I wasn’t sure if maybe our açaí bowl packets had somehow gone off, but then we tried the bottle of it and found the same flavor waiting for us there. Brian thinks it’s fine, but Brian is wrong.
• Winter has long been my favorite season, but this year I’ve been trying to hurry spring along since the day after the New Year. Right now there is a Honeysuckle Bouquet* candle burning in the living room, Lavender Lemongrass burning in the bathroom, Farm Flowers in the bedroom, three wax melters with White Lilac & Cotton, all oozing hints of spring, a boxwood wreath hanging from the front door, a hyacinth … well, if we’re being honest, slowly dying on my desk, and yet it’s stubbornly snowing for the thirty-teenth day in a row as though my obvious request for blooming lilac bushes has gone completely ignored.

• I have finally started removing the price tags from things we purchased five or more years ago. It isn’t that I’m trying to maintain anything by keeping the tags, I’m just too lazy to grab scissors and cut them off. There is a “honey willow” laundry basket we picked up at the Basket Shop and Carriage Barn in Gaylordsville, Connecticut in 2013 that still has the $26.95 paper tag attached, though it’s pretty faded by now. I think I’ll leave that one.
• I lost 8.8 pounds in February because Cronometer shows what is and isn’t beneficial. Take cottage cheese, for example, which is considered by some to be a “healthy food,” though it offers a lot of unnecessary fat with very little calcium per serving. Is it good? Of course… But so is a Snickers bar. That doesn’t mean I’m going to turn to candy for a minute boost in my protein. So why would I use cottage cheese as a source for calcium if the calories/fat/sodium levels are so disproportionately high? Tell me that, George Kirby!

• I haven’t had mammal meat since October 4th. Most of the time I don’t miss it, occasionally I do. My favorite food type is backyard bbq style — ribs, burgers, brats, potato salad, baked beans, and the like, which is pretty hard to replicate without beef and/or pork. I don’t care how die-hard vegan you are, you’re never going to convince me you believe barbecue tofu beats a brat. You can be against consuming meat all you’d like, but that doesn’t mean somehow you’ve lost the ability to realize truths. The most difficult adjustment has been takeout. There are a lot of bad food restaurants here. By bad food I mean bad for you. Pizza, burgers, subs, fried everything. It’s difficult to find an item on a menu that doesn’t include the addition of bacon. If you are lucky enough to find something without mammal meat, and it’s not a bowl of lettuce, it’ll probably include something fried or buttery. (Salad ingredients below.)
• I’ve been toying with the idea of legally changing my name. Amber is a perfectly decent name for other people, but I’ve never been in love with it as my own. I have two that I’m particularly fond of, but I’ll need to consider it a bit more before I commit. I’m also struggling with the idea that changing my name seems a little disrespectful. However, when I was asked my name the other day, I was somewhat uncomfortable sharing it because it doesn’t feel like a fit for me. I suppose I could just tell people it’s something else, like a completely unrelated nickname, but that feels dishonest because it is dishonest. Well, we’ll see, I guess.

* I cannot locate this candle online. It’s a yellow jar with a wood lid that has a faded flower print on the top. We picked it up at T.J. Maxx. (Look, I found a picture for you: via Maddie_Bell17. I don’t know Maddie, and I didn’t peruse her Twitter feed, so if you get interested and start looking around and come across something that upsets you… I’m… sor… Hang on, I’m looking for that shrug emoji.)

Salad ingredients: organic girl supergreens!, love beets organic cooked beets, fresh(ish) blackberries, drew’s organics honey dijon dressing, sunfood raw wild-crafted spanish bee pollen

Fun fact: The song this title is from is one of my favorites to listen to on the elliptical.

Title From:
This Is Not A Test
by TobyMac