Curried red lentils with squash over rice

I’ve got too much homework to do, primarily because I didn’t do it earlier, so I had to spend lunch in my cloffice spooning lentils down my gullet while pulling out supporting textual evidence for the argument I want to make in tonight’s class presentation. I had a hard time thinking it through. Something about aporias and terror and stories and murder. Or something. Needless to say, I would rather have been loading and reloading Facebook. (And admittedly I did some of that too.)

 

Chicken club sandwich plus cookies

The poster for the brown bag lunch event said we were welcome to bring our lunches, but I felt like the only person there with half a sandwich sticking out of my mouth, I was still chewing when it came around to my turn to say my name, garbled around a gullet full of last night’s leftovers from delightful dinner with C. A box of assorted Pepperidge Farm cookies sat in the middle of the other table, and no matter how longingly I willed a Milano to levitate into my greedy, greasy little paw, they just sat there, piled in their fluted paper cups, waiting until the speakers were done at which point the box was passed around the group. Since we were in a circle there was no escape from all the shaming eyeballs, which meant I only took two instead of the fistfuls I really wanted.

 

Curried red lentils with squash over rice

I was told by a professor recently that what he liked about my library session was my efficiency of language, how pared down and nothin’ but the news my standard library resource spiel has become. It’s gotta be–there’s just so much we have to do, and not enough time! Time time time! I feel like that Alice in Wonderland rabbit with that giant clock around his neck these days, totally obsessed with my minute hands. I thought about that as I sat and ate and read this column about time management, wondering if a week or two of time-mapping might help me stop watching hours and hours of crime TV and start getting the smell off the roses that are surely all around me.

 

Baked eggs, scones, and donuts

Best thing to come out of Portland in years has to be C.’s tradition of homemade donuts on Halloween. She and A. had me and L. and a bunch of folks over for them and other assorted sweet and savory brunch items. L. made our contribution, a spinach and tomato and egg bake that looked just like it did in the picture on the website, perfect. I took a cube of that, my weight in donuts, and a scratch cheddar scone and settled in to idly watch the Jets game, drifting in and out of conversations, listening to the doorbell ring and watching new arrivals bearing quiche and bagels and cookies and candied treats.

 

Egg and cheese on a roll with fries and pancakes

We left the shelter cat-and-puppy-free and stopped at the Gemini diner for food and coffee. D. wanted pancakes but not only pancakes, so we ordered some for sharing. I got an egg and cheese on a roll, and L. and D. each ordered omelettes. I was feeling pretty sadsack about my cats of days gone by, so was glad for D.’s drunken mariachi band jury duty story and L. sitting right next to me.

 

Grilled cheese on rye with tomato and fries

I picked up L. and R. at the hotel and walked us across the street to the Naturally Healthy Health Food Restaurant and Deli which turned out not to be a health food restaurant at all, though you could order a baked potato. R. had oatmeal with strawberries and L. and I each had the grilled cheese with tomato and fries. R. kept doing that thing little kids do, blowing on his food to cool it off except that he couldn’t muster much of a breeze. The spoon was so much bigger than he was. Being four must be like being on acid said L. as R. wiped his hand across the table, stared at it, and then put something invisible in his mouth and started chewing. If you’d told me this time last week that I’d be splitting (heavily buttered) bread with L. before Annual, I would’ve said you were crazy. Guess I just got lucky.

 

Turkey wrap and a macaroon

As of mid-macaroon, one of the least irritating things about my day was swatting a scurrying cockroach on my cloffice wall with an extra copy of the campus literary magazine as I ate through my sandwich. So when I got a call that the student I was meeting was here early, I dashed out and we went upstairs and talked through her confusion and I pointed her a couple of places and explained the thing about keywords and she had two articles to start with before fifteen minutes were up. She was so grateful she tried to give me a hug (that I resisted). The rest of my macaroon was tasty, but I didn’t even really need it at that point.

 

Sandwich and chips

Wait. Was I really this late eating lunch because of a pedagogy workshop that ended with a guided meditation during which I was asked to think of myself all alone, disconnected from culture and politics and religion, attached piggyback to a tiny grain of sand at the bottom of a volcano that, through heat and compression and violent chaos, was transformed into a beautiful amethyst?

 

Veggie sandwich, chips, and a chocolate

A package came for you said S. as she hurried out and I hurried in with my sadpants lunch. What magical words! I knew that A. had received her Metro thank you chocolates yesterday, and now here were mine. I inhaled my sandwich and chips. Then I washed my hands. I pulled the tape from the shipping container. I rustled down through the nested paper and grabbed the gold box. I lifted it out and placed it on my desk, on top of a bunch of files. I read the thank you note and pinned it to my bulletin board. I pulled on either side of the blue ribbon. I lifted the lid. I cut the plastic wrapper with my scissors. (Okay, B.’s scissors, but she never asked for them back.) I threw away the enclosed nutrition information without looking at it. I chose the chocolate that was shaped like a little diamond, covered in some kind of crumbled nut fairy dust that was on the inside too. Like a present! Like an honest-to-goodness present!

 

Mushroom barley soup

That poor student worker, she arrived at the microwave mere seconds after I put my dish of soup in for reheating. Could there be a slower four minutes in the world than the four minutes on somebody else’s microwave timer? We stood in the hall and chatted with this awkward thing between us, this four minutes. Smells good she said and I concurred, even though I think she was just making idle four-minute-passing chatter. But she’s right–it is really, really good. I think it’s the several tablespoons of butter that kick it up a notch.