lessons learned

so. there have been some lessons of late. little ones, mind, but important enough.

first off, it's incredibly unwise to put off paper-grading until you have 64 papers to be graded in 2 days, esp. if you have other obligations that take up the better part of those two days, leaving around 20 total hours for grading. is it possible to grade that many papers in that many hours? sure. if the grading is done in spurts of energy over a week or so. when the grading is all in one giant frenzy? nope. not at all. but 31 is possible.

second off, melatonin is turning into a real pain in the ass. when i first learned of this stuff, it was very neat. it shut down the thought-generater in my head so i could sleep instead of running through a ten-minute piece of character dialogue over and over until i was happy with it. it helped me ignore the stray thoughts that drifted through my brain and kept me up all night.

i never really worried about food, money, the continued presence of a roof over my head, or other mundane things that i hear people lose sleep over. i was always losing sleep because i wanted to rehash the plotline of my latest story, or come up with a new story, or invent an entire culture to be plopped into the longer pieces i was working on. and melatonin would make me so sleepy i managed to actually sleep.

and while it sounds like i took this melatonin all the time, i didn't. i only took it during particularly high-energy weeks or right after a semester when i couldn't make my mind realize that the nightmare was over and it could take a break.

lately, whenever i take melatonin i get incredibly vivid dreams. and actually, these dreams are almost always nightmares that keep me up the rest of the night after i've had them. things like my family being hurt. things like the people i care about rejecting me and despising me. other things i'd prefer not to write about here. etc. all sorts of horrible, horrible things that i only ever dream about after taking melatonin to try to sleep.

the easy answer? stop it with the melatonin. duh. why haven't i figured this out? why is it that even after making the connection between vivid dreams and melatonin (and at first, they were just vivid dreams and not nightmares of the inescapable-bad-trip-oh-God-why-can't-i-wake-up variety), i didn't think "hey, you know, maybe you should just try to find a different way to sleep on the hard nights?"

i'm not sure. maybe i just still think of all the previous times when it's worked just fine and no weird side effects. maybe i know that i'll sleep deeply and that's what i want at the moment. maybe i think that this time, despite it being several months of nightmares whenever i've taken it, this time at least, i'll be fine. i don't know.

but the second lesson? i need to just stop the melatonin. even taking it once every three or so weeks is messing me up when i do take it. maybe it's stopped working. maybe it has this effect on some people and i've just become one of those people. whatever it is, i will be better off without these nightmares. they are not worth the restful sleep that they shatter. i'd rather toss and turn the entire night (knock on wood) than fall asleep easily and be trapped there in a nightmare that i can't escape.

lesson three: as far as lent is concerned, it's much easier to add a good thing than to take away a bad thing. case in point. about in mid february, i decided that for lent, i would give up procrastination. yeah. i know. wow, right? giving up procrastination? that's right up there with giving up food (all of it) or speaking (to anyone). but i was going to do it. i was. for the entirety of lent, i was going to be on top of things if it killed me.

my brother told me about yesterday being ash wednesday. he told me in time to stop procrastinating on the right day. but i was already behind something like 52 papers by then. and there's that paperwork for the conference. and this stuff that needs to be mailed home. and this other stuff that needs to be mailed to austin. and about the only thing i've been on top of is actually paying bills, because i've got a system for that that works.

so suddenly giving up procrastination? not all that easy. i'm so far behind in a little of everything that in order to do everything that i've been putting off or forgetting, i'd have to live the same day four or five times before moving on to the next day. last time i checked, that was impossible.

so instead: eat one fruit and one vegetable each day. the entire vegetable. not a couple of flouretts of brocolli or a few baby carrots. not half a bell pepper or three cherry tomatoes. i'm talking about an entire vegetable. a big-ass tomato. a whole carrot. one sliced zucchini. etc. now, i know, i know. i'll be really miserable if i eat a cabbage one day. but that's not the kind of vegetable i'm talking about. i mean instead of a scoop of corn, eat a whole cob of it. i'll pick my veggies accordingly, but this will keep me from "eating carrot sticks for a snack" and actually eating two carrot sticks and deciding the rest of the baggie can be tossed back. we'll see how it goes.

the fruit part will be a cinch. apples, oranges, bananas, pears, kiwis, etc. are all big enough and tasty enough that i'll be fine. i've still got to fine-tune the squash, though. while i might not be miserable eating an entire spaghetti or accorn squash, there's no reason to do that. so i'll figure out how much veggie is a whole veggie after i get tired of eating zucchini and cucumber and the like.

of course, there's still the matter of falling behind in life. that needs fixing and pronto. and so i'll be working steadily toward eliminating the procrastination still. but i no longer think that can be a cold turkey sort of thing. it's a matter of triage and figuring out how to get everything done. my 24 hours is the same as everyone else's. so what am i doing wrong? aside from writing rambly, boring blog entries that all of three people read.

ah well. my can openers still work and are in a single, central location, so i can't be doing too badly, ne? i'm going to go flush my melatonin.

love and peace

Well, I tried something new at dinner today, and it went over just as I'd wanted it to. In fact, I think I could do this again for breakfast and just use different stuff. Given the cheapness of the main ingredient...

I've made rice balls before. I prefer my rice a glumpy, sticky mess, and it's perfect that way for smashing into balls. The family, and I believe most other people I've encountered, prefer this whole "no grain sticks to another" sort of rice that I find to be just less enjoyable on the whole. Give me the glutonous mess instead, thanks.

Tonight I looked in my fridge and saw --gasp-- a cucumber and some radishes that needed to be eaten before they went bad, a defrosted baggie of turkey that maybe had a half a cup left, some carrot slivers I'd taken to school for a snack all of this week with no luck at actually consuming them (I'll eat raw carrots, but not if there's something else around. I used to really like them, but now they just don't do it for me. Unless they're the really sweet baby carrots, but those are just too costly in the likely event that they go limp in the fridge.), and a jar of pickles.

I had other stuff, too, just that's what caught my eye. So I made a huge pot of rice in the cooker and let it cool enough to handle, then stuffed it full of chopped pickles, radish, carrot, turkey, and cucumber. Sometimes a combination, sometimes only one thing, just whatever seemed to want to jump in with the rice at that moment.

Once they're all lined up on a plate, it's like rice ball roulette. What's inside? Who knows? Is this one a radish? A pickle? That one looks like it has some turkey hanging out. But does it also have a pickle in it? Or a carrot?

I don't think I've had so much fun eating since I got the blender and started taking my chances on smoothie ingredients. (for the record, you can't taste the spinach when you have berries in there, too.)

And you think, perhaps, that pickles don't go in rice. But you're way, way wrong. They're quite nice together. I think breakfast rice balls would be great. Stuff a little ham/onion/bell pepper/tomato mixture in there and tell me it's not great. I bet it is. I think I'll even give fruit a try. Some canned pear would be wonderful. It'd be all mushy and smooth when you ate... And berries? Those'd be good, too.

Rice balls for every meal!

I can't see many downsides, really. Rice is cheap, easy to find, and at least somewhat nutritious. And easy to make. Start up the cooker. Use the time to chop stuff up. Stuff, stuff, stuff. Take your chances. After they're set up they don't fall apart or anything, unless you've stuffed them too full. I had a turkey radish rice ball explode on me. But only the one. I think if you wrapped them in plastic wrap and didn't put them at the bottom of your bag, they'd travel well, too.

Yep. So dinner was good in a "play with your food" kind of way, and now I want to do filled rice balls again, even though I've got six left for tomorrow. They're so much more fun than the plain ones. And not much more work, either. For the end results, I'd say filled is the way to go, even if you're in a hurry.

I wonder if you put shredded cheddar and pimentoes in one. And for another one, maybe some beans, kind of mashed up a bit. Pulled pork would be good. Mushrooms, corn, sausage, dried fruit... I see no end to the sorts of stuff that would make good fillings.

And that's dinner.

Love and Peace