Wow, can you believe it's almost October? September went by so fast! Actually, for me, September went by fairly slow. Mostly due to the fact that four our of seven days a week I have nothing to do. With no classes Thursdays or Fridays, I pretty much spend the majority of my week being bored. Which, consequently leads to time moving a lot slower. I applied for a bunch of jobs at NYU, but I either didn't get them and they didn't bother to ever let me know, or they're waiting until sometime in November to actually interview. This is endlessly frustrating for me, mostly because I actually do need the money, but also because I'm SO BORED. But maybe now that the semester is actually gathering steam and I actually have work to do having so much time off will be a blessing. We'll see.
Anyways, I'm actually thrilled that tomorrow is the first day of October. I think that October is my favorite month of the year, give or take a week or two in November. The time when the leaves start to change and the wind begins to have a chilly edge and best of all, fall produce begins to show up at the farmers markets. After a summer of fresh tasting, light vegetables I really start to crave heartier, stronger tasting produce. Cue the brussels sprouts, the butternut squash, the apples! The figs, oozing their honey-like filling! (Yesterday's lunch: saute one onion, sliced, with one apple, cubed, and a bag of brussels sprouts, halved, until they begin to brown. Add thyme, salt, pepper, and a half cup of water, and cover. Cook until the brussels sprouts are soft and water evaporates. Deglaze pan with apple juice or cider, and stir in some dijon mustard. If you can still say you don't like brussels sprouts after all that, we are no longer friends). And come the cooler weather, turning the oven on isn't so intimidating. Which means I can indulge in my favorite way of cooking anything at all - Roasting. Roasting EVERYTHING, from vegetables to chickpeas to fruit and even to meat (though I think I've eaten meat twice since I've gotten here...I become a vegetarian by default whenever I leave my parents' house. I think it's because nary a day goes by during the summer when my father doesn't demand some variation on steak/potatoes and by the end of summer I'm so sick of meat tofu and black beans sound like the Nectar of the Gods). There's something infinitely comforting about the act of preheating the oven, preparing whatever is to be roasted, then sitting around doing other things while the apartment fills with wonderful, appetite stimulating scents that make me have to consciously restrain myself from opening up the oven and sticking my head inside. Not in a Sylvia Plath way, however. More a Giada de Laurentis kind of way.
Though October does have its downside. More specifically, October is when I am most likely to get sick. And it has happened again this year. I felt something coming for about a week now, but for the majority of the time I fooled myself into believing that it was just fall allergies. Unfortunately, that was but a dream, and my "allergies" have turned into a full-fledged head cold. I'm really terrible at being sick. In general I have the immune system of an ox (I'm not entirely sure that analogy actually work. The phrase is "strong like an ox" so I assume oxen don't get sick - they're strong! - but that may be just faulty logic on my part). In fact, I think I can count the amount of times I had to miss more than one day of school on one hand. The consequence of this is, unfortunately, that whenever I actually do get sick I can't help but feel like my body is betraying me. As in, who are YOU, body, to dictate whether or not I should go to the gym? Yes, I know that trying to use the elliptical machine when I can't breathe through my nose and I'm coughing every thirty seconds or so (the cough isn't painful, so at least I don't have H1N1 yet. I've heard a painful cough is the first symptom) is a bit of an exercise in futility. But why should my body tell me what to do? F You, body, my mind thinks. But then it remembers that pushing until collapse probably will just make me feel worse, and the best thing to do is the smart, logical thing. Don't work out, rest, avoid dairy, and drink gallons upon gallons of tea. Then I can get better quickly, and return, once again, to bossing my strong, sickness-free body around.
No comments:
Post a Comment