last night, 273 south

moving for reals tomorrow. still not ready, but yet still posting on my various blogs.

why why why

I'm currently eating this sandwich. cuz it's almost 1am & I've moved four times in less than six months because my life is insane. damn, have to fix that. later. (back burner, large stove, ali). anyway, the sandwich was sriracha, swiss cheese, mayonaise, & roasted red pepper hummous. a feel good classic. with jalapeno kettle chips.

what my desk looks like, roughly eight hours before moving, not good.

& my dresser. oh dear lord, help.

dustry rose tries to help.

but isn't really helping.
although still adorable.

well, here's to to my life being more stable at the end of tomorrow. & let's hope jed & jono have some patience with the chaos of my objects.

grocery hell #1

I have this crap mindless day job. grocery cashier. Sometimes it makes me want to kill myself. One day I read this by David Foster Wallace.

& on another day recently DnD inspired me to just draw, at work, cause DnD was born out of turning the bad stuff into art and getting over it (drunkenly). (although I'm not drunk at work )

& isn't the whole point of DnD NOT KILLING YOURSELF through Drawing (& having fun?)? 

without any further explantion, some scenes from grocery hell. (this will be a continuing series. dedicated to DFW at all times. fuck I wish you were still alive & writing).

fresh meat & seafood. plus some lists I made.

there's some bacon dancing in the margins.

people are assholes, but food is visually appealing. get me that bumper sticker, please.

7.31.2009: it rained, a lot of people bought cookies.

Life is really hard, sometimes, & one of my main strategies for coping came from someone who killed himself even though he was brilliant. hard to deal with during the day to day bullshit at the grocery store. Thank christ for DnD, cause we are survivors (even if through alcohol) y'all.

weird sleep/life schedules make for weird food schedules...

what I ate over roughly the last 24 hours, 7.29.09-7.30.2009.

I should really stop the not eating/binge eating late at night thing.

just a sneak preview...

of awesome, incredible, awe-inspiring, cannot be expressed yet on the internet, things to come.
just sayin'. rin's portrait of the three of us, having the most fun ever.

on the other page, me scribbling out my frustrations with the fact that I couldn't see the stage. hey everyone get out of our way, we're Drinking & Drawing, we'll fuck your shit up. We need to be able to see the fucking bands, y'all. or otherwise I just sit in the booth & drink beer & draw things like this.

also, everyone, wasn't July a good month for DnD? Review the archives, July 2009 really ruled. Milkshakes, bacon, arabian princes, asses, not killing yourself, sunflowers, PBR,
south deerfield = crap, glitter, cosmo quizes, the fourth of july, thursdays! toast & the dragoncat, thunder, cute girls, & the sierra grille. wow. what a month. SERIOUSLY. check it out.

thursday thursday

ah, thursday nights. DnD night. it's great when your weekly drinking/art group is providing your major source of life security. but whatever. Myself, & of course the rest of the internet, we can always count on thursday nights for AWESOME. & that's what she said.

it's finally (sort of ) like summer here in northampton, SO...OBVIOUSLY...outdoor DnD. we headed to Veracruzana & scored the prime outdoor table. On a reasonably summer like night (come on summer 09, come on already) beer + food + evening light = the perfect conditions for DnD. While I was waiting for jed to find our food, here is a girl on a bike in a snappy striped shirt. while I was drawing her, the noho police were hassling a possibly crazy homeless man. He kept saying, "I'm not drunk. hassle the people who are drunk." & although I wasn't even drinking yet, I still thought he was talking about us. plus beers & art supplies on our table. I love how socially awkward it is for us to draw outside on main street. Someday, people will tell their children about us, how very much art geeks we were.

our food. Drinking & Deliciousness series. I really like food being involved in our DnD activities, we need to keep this shit up. fuck yes, yum.

off to the office to watch True Lies & do some watercolour & some clean up, then to the sierra grille for the second anniversary of Reanimate the Baystate. Mark Sheehan in a classic pose, texting/taking cell phone pictures at the edge of the stage.

alison & rebecca dancing at sierra tonight. & a raffle ticket. jed won a gift certificate to sierra. DnD as a collective better be seeing some food, yo. & drawing it of course. Jed draws the asses, I draw the snacks.

perfect.

& finally, alison & rebecca's DnD contributions.

yeah, I could have been packing tonight, but food/music/beer/friends/conversation & DRAWING are clearly more important. we all gotta have our things that keep us sane, y'all, & sometimes that's better than practicality. WTF will happen NEXT WEEK? OMG. OMG.

It finally feels like summer, so I'm using the oven.

What happens when I'm really broke, moving AGAIN in three days & I haven't really packed, & it suddenly becomes really & delightfully hot out. & I'M HUNGRY.

free sunflowers from work are cool. I should so totally pack that vase, but whatever. beauty means something too. also cool is a shit ton of free summer squash. roasted in my beloved le cresuet baking dish with free shitake mushrooms, & thai basil & banana peppers & thyme from my garden. in olive oil & garlic & salt & pepper, of course.

dr taking advantage of the now empty record shelf. yeah I'm packing a little between drinking & cooking & blogging, etc.

even though having the oven on at 400 degrees was insane right now, it all smelled really good roasting & if DnD is really taking a road trip to new orleans in late august, I need to work on my heat tolerance. So far, after crap freezing rainy summer 2009, I'm really liking being sweaty & drinking chilled white wine in short shorts. over angel hair pasta. I think inspired by this post.

me, cooking & sweating & packing, july 2009.

dusty rose is also hot.

anyway, I think it's neat to cook yourself a really nice dinner in the middle of chaos. & last night I didn't pack at all but had an awesome time with a really good friend. & I'm about to embark on a road trip that I totally can't afford just for AWESOMENESS SAKE. & I'm going dancing right this minute.
Balance it's all about balance. & cooking & painting & adventure. That's it. oh, & dancing & friends & not killing yourself.

eating "exotic" squash & ignoring sadness

First, & most importantly, here's DR, helping me pack. thank jesus for kittens.



Yup, another late night dinner. this time "exotic" squash free from work (no idea why it's so exotic, it appears to be a round version of zucchini) & onions (also free from work) & avocado & thai basil & a banana pepper from my garden & whole grain udon noodles. no time to be doing this, this cooking meals & then contemplating them. really need to pack. but something else besides the general life chaos of me/financial crisis/moving/uncetainty about housemates/ thing that's been going on with me lately also happened & so there an undercurrent of sadness to everything I do. A very dear & trusted friend told me, "just give it some time & don't think about it for a couple of days" & that's right. but now it's been more than a couple of days & I find I still can't think about it or deal with it. it still hurts too much. & so now I find myself not packing but at least I am cooking mjyself a beautiful dinner & not sit on the floor crying. & I packed one box of vintage juice glasses & fabulous shot glasses that's gonna have to be enough for now.

noodles plus green things.

& then eaten over the rest of yesterday's lettuce. for freshness. five different green tastes: squash in butter (warm), avocado (meaty), lettuce (crisp), thai basil (sharp), banana pepper (hot).

I dealt with a lot of practical shit this week while ignoring my current emotional landscape. I'm doing the best I can. I still believe that people should try to communicate better, but they never ever do. Still I really learned this week that even though I feel kind of out of place a lot of the time, I do have some real true friends, even here, & they all came from unlikely places.

So I'm just gonna eat my green things & noodles & drink more wine at 1am & keep listening to all of the silver jews albums mixed on itunes shuffle & maybe pack another box or two. doing the best I can. that's all I've got. & if my heart is breaking under the surface, well, I find that it matters less & less.

& I'm gonna end on one of my favorite lyric quotes ever, "& if cars could run on teardrops I'd be long long gone. " thanks david berman. also, Drinking & Drawing road trip 09 to the deep south in august to look forward to. If we don't die, it will be awesome.

The Trials & Tribulations of the Glitter Pen

Last night, in honor of Cher's
very kind offer to let us be semi-official during the screening of Azwan's film Off Da' Chain (official for the second time! why do people keep allowing this? ridiculous.), jed & I invested in some glitter pens at Stop & Shop on our way to the 11's. This didn't go well. This AWESOME, PRICELESS, CLASSIC drawing was damaged. & I accomplished crap like this.

I'll admit it. I was really off my game last night. Look at Jed's post if you want anything actually good, amusing, visually stimulating, witty, etc. The best drawing I did at the 11's was this, which has nothing to with anything other than all the weird obsessive bullshit that goes on in my head. & the glitter pen then kind of torn up my sketchbook.

In conclusion, Drinking & Drawing is undecided on the subject of glitter pens. On one hand, GLITTER. On the other hand, DESTRUCTION. Hmmm.

3am Dinners?

One element of the weird lifestyle I've been living lately is that my meal schedule (& my sleep schedule) are way way off. For instance, yesterday I worked, ate these things, went to the 11's for a night of "official" Drinking & Drawing, went to hugo's for more drinks & more drawing, & then we all went to the 11's to dance our asses off. Then I walked home all sweaty & realized I was starving & despite the late hour needed some real food. this has been my pattern lately, coming home from the bar to an extremely late night dinner, & finding myself really inspired to take pictures from my sketchbook & blog rather than sleep. Many of my finest blog posts are completed 2am or later, usually while I'm eating dinner.

last night I reheated cold ravioli from the previous night with tons of hot sauce & tomato sauce (I like food really spicy late at night).

& I had this beautiful head of lettuce that I brought home free from work hanging out in my fridge next to the banana peppers.

so I ate this, near dawn, while writing. that's goddess dressing on the lettuce.

then based on some late night text messages I left the house again, got to sleep as the sun was rising & the birds were going crazy (damn those birds), slept until around noon, got up in time to aquire my large iced coffee at the haymarket & some 3/$10 cds (stereolab, pavement, the smiths) at turn it up (my shopping contribution to the incredibly annoying noho tag sale), & head to work, where I just left, to come home, drink some wine, listen to the silver jews, & write on more blogs. & possible go out again to a party. & all I've had to eat all day is a bowl of soup at work, & I brought home a ton of free squash, so probably there's a late night dinner in my future. a typical day for me lately.
I worry that I'm turning into my dad with all my strange habits, I really do. He did, still does, the late night meal thing. I know this isn't normal, dinner at 3am, sleep at 5am, work at 1:30pm, I don't know.
I'm just so happy lately hanging out by myself, eating these crazy meals, & writing on the internet. although right now I REALLY need to be packing, since I am moving once again in six days. Having reasonable priorities has never been my strong point.

I'm Falling Into Old Patterns

Last March Rin & I embarked on an art project where we drew what we ate, every single thing we ate, every single day. we never finished the month, or at least I didn't, but about 14 paintings exist, & part of the reason for the creation of this blog was so I could use some of those images. & they will eventually be posted here.

What I ate 7.25.09.
Lately while out & about with Drinking & Drawing, when I get bored with bands & people & the bar in general, I find myself sitting at Hugos & compelled to draw my breakfast or to spend the whole night doing portraits of bar snacks.

last night between the 11's & Hugo's I drew this. Not what I was supposed to be drawing at all. what fascinated me about our project last March, & what still fascinates me about these drawings in general, is how bizarre my eating habits are, maybe everyone's are, especially when laid out visually. This isn't all I ate yesterday though, don't worry...when I got home from the evening of 11's/hugos/dancing at the basement I had one of my recently increasingly common 3am dinners while blogging, more on that here.
& stay tuned for more adventures in the mundane details of myself & food & art & why I think about these things so much.

greens & wine & breathing

It's been the kind of week where on several occasions I've woken up with the panic attacks that used to hit me every morning this winter, i.e. winter 2009, greenfield, when whole foods & some people in my life caused me to have a nervous breakdown. I don't like it. This morning I woke up that way, managed to calm myself the fuck down, drove to shelbourne falls (coffee roasters on king street, not the town) (although going to the town would have been nice) for coffee & juice, & sat in the breakfast nook & proceeded to deal with the internal list of all the stuff I need to take care of that's making my head feel all crazy. lots of life transitions, of which moving in a week is maybe not the least. considering that at 10am this morning I really couldn't see getting out from under the covers, a lot was really accomplished today. as a reward for not dying of panic, after meeting a potential new roommate in town tonight I took myself to state street & bought a bottle of very cheap red wine & a giant bundle of local swiss chard.
& made this.

there's the swiss chard sauting with olive oil, butter, garlic, a banana pepper from my porch garden, & some dried chili peppers (from the free bulk stuff at work that I've been carrying around in my purse all week). just like me to have dried chili peppers in my giant orange vinyl purse with all the pens & glue. food & art, food & art.

then I added some jarred tomato sauce (cheating but I'm moving very soon so am using up my staples plus not really buying much new food) & sriracha. I really like my tomato/pasta things to be spicy. my homemade red sauce contains sriracha, & usually some sort of spicy sausage, & fuck it's delicious. tomatoes lend themselves really well to spiciness. so does cheese.

there it is, over pasta (sadly kind of crappy trader joes ravioli things that I inherited from a friend who moved, but whatever, I'm pretty broke) with sliced cherry tomatoes from the porch garden on top. The cherries are very fresh & sweet & lend something very delightful to the spicy greens & tomatoey mess underneath. (I ALSO have to add that because I'm moving & in the process of packing, that that is not my dish. I know I know, I'm an aesthetic snob, but I cannot bear for the internet to not know that MY dishes are vintage & pretty & NOT Pier One CRAP. Thank you.)(I know: liz, stop apologizing in parenthesis.)

so making myself good dinners in the midst of pure chaos helps, & so does when I have an impromptu dinner party with two of my favorite people on earth, one of whom I never ever get to see. having good people in my life & realizing it makes me want to pull myself together & deserve it, & also a few simple moments of pure joy sliding down a playground slide at 2am with people you love after sharing an amazing meal together is why we put up with crap jobs & tricky living situations & being broke & scared & confused & still keep getting up in the morning.
I was not mostly responsible for the brilliance of this meal, so all I'll say is, it was delicious & the company was better. & all the flowers were grown by me.
I sometimes lately think that I just went from one nervous breakdown to another, from total unemployed isolation in snowy greenfield to out very single freaking night social butterfly in summertime northampton, but I'm still trying to pull it together. having the person who saved my life by writing to me this winter randomly show up for 24 hours this week...well, these are the things I am reminding myself of when I slow down & breathe through it. there are wonderful people on this earth, & I can count at least five of them as my true friends. ok.
I hear thunder. & now it's pouring. winter of ice, summer of downpours. I was going to go out dancing tonight but maybe I'll just get into bed & read instead. I need words. maybe cooking myself dinner alone in my party dress with dustyrose is enough.

I think that this qualifies as a good time.

in contrast to my last post, scenes from the last roughly 24 hours, in which there were very good friends, incredible dreams, & some amazing food. & much laughter & silliness.

Instead of packing, I unpacked the little I've so far managed to pack & we cooked a last minute incredible dinner out of random items in my pantry & vegetable drawer & porch garden, during which rin proved once again that he is in fact a genius. wild & brown basmati rice, caramelized onion & mustard sauce, & roasted yukon gold potatoes, summer squash, eggplant, with garlic, olive oil & fresh thai basil & thyme. with nasturtiums. all entirely vegan, & we bought no groceries for the creation of this meal. & the vintage cloth napkins were beautiful & individually chosen. 

dinner with rin & tim, 7.22.09, at my soon to be former apartment.   a dream I had in the early morning, waking up on the couch with some of my best friends & dusty rose. caught in a rabbit storm. 7.23.09.

breakfast at the green bean with rin & tim, 7.23.09.

another dream, a recently reoccurring dream, of muffins, plus jed's banana peel from the yellow sofa today. & a drawing of the astonishing muffin we witnessed but did not purchase at the green bean, the raspberry marshmellow brownie muffin. no really. 7.23.09.

pizza at sam's with jed tonight, plus jed's sketchbook. pizza in the bar series. jed's slice of pizza was insanely large, so he wins. this drawing would be better but we were there fifteen minutes before closing & bob wanted to kill our arty hipster asses so we ate & drew fast. & I cannot apparently spell "slice." "Sclice." fuck spelling.
We are Drinking & Drawing.

It's those sunflowers again. Tonight, finishing up a night of DnD at the Dirty Truth, 7.23.09. Guess what, it was raining. These sunflowers keep coming up. some guys next to us were having an amazingly offensive yet hilarious conversation about women & later walking home we saw them both pissing in a fountain. nice.

all in all, a good day. confusing & random, but I'm all right with that.

where have I been? oh, OUT. + a recipe.

long late spring/early summer for me. so so so long. in fact I should be sleeping right now. all I'm gonna say is the last night I stayed in for a single night was two wednesdays ago & that was just for one night. I left greenfield (in april, last time I posted here), & I guess I went crazy, from the shyest girl in the world to out every night. I don't know. I don't know. I still (theoretically) like staying in, I just also like being around people (also not a totally true statement), & the out option is always winning, at least at the moment. more time to do both in would be cool.
it's a lot to explain right now. it is 2:29am. although I also used to go to bed before 5am & now I also don't. but I'm always hopeful that "maybe tonight" I will. sorry for the long absence. I've also been doing these things: Drinking & Drawing & Eating & Drawing.
I moved back to northamopton. I found a new (soul crushingly horrible) job. I've met a lot of people, a few of them amazingly awesome. I've danced my fucking ass off. & plan on continuing to do so (although a small personal victory tonight was that I DID NOT go to the basement).
& life is still in turmoil.
I'm still working it out.
more details later but for now, what I ate tonight:

it was totally insane to cook myself dinner at 1:30am when I got home from melissa's tonight, but I was hungry & I had some very tempting purple scallions AND purple carrots waiting for me on the kitchen counter & I was hungry, so I sauted them in coconut oil with marsala curry powder...

& garlic & thai basil from my porch & a few red chili peppers. & randomly an egg, 'cause I was cooking all late night crazy like I do sometimes, & had just read a food article about singapore street food that made me insane with joy so I was thinking outside the box. then I added coconut milk...

& then the whole thing was served over white basmati rice & eaten at 2:26am while blogging. dinner shouldn't be eaten so late, but then again, why not?

hi again. I've been taking a lot of good/garden photos lately, so perhaps more of those later. XOXO
p.s. don't y'all think that being a vegetarian & especially a vegan is such an AMERICAN thing to do (still thinking about singapore street food, & by extension, street foods the world over).