My Sunday Morning

If you like, you can play this while reading. Me'shell Ndegeocello has been the soundtrack to my morning. Some days I can think of little better than a hot lesbian playing the shit out of her bass guitar. On my way to the farmer's market this morning I had her cranked in my car and caught myself feeling a little silly when I sang/shouted along to the lyric "I need some black on black love, baby." Oh well. I doubt she intended a chubby, middle-aged white guy to be singing along, but there it was for all the universe to hear. Here is the song God, Fear, Money:

I've been a little out of touch lately except to post about how pissed off I am about the presidential race. I can't even think about the congressional race between Norm "I'll feel you up" Coleman and Al Franken. Norm grossed me out years ago when he was still the Democratic (yes, it's true) mayor of St. Paul. He had a hideous reputation for being really, really handsy with women, which my co-workers at the UW could attest to. Anyway, he's running some ugly attack ads against Franken, that fortunately are backfiring in the same way that I hope Palin's attacks on Obama will backfire. It just goes to show that Republicans will say or do ANYTHING to get elected, even when those you pick for VP have been shown to abuse the authority of their office. Sadly, most Americans still buy in to the politics of fear and divisiveness.

My trip to the farmer's market was great this morning. Sadly I can't go as early as I once did because, god damnit, it is still dark at 7:00 a.m. It seemed to happen so suddenly this year. *hmpf* Anyway, I picked up a bag of Honeycrisp apples, a dangerously delicious loaf of Pumpkin Swirl bread from Great Harvest bakery (which, try as I might, I can't stop thinking about), and some fingerling potatoes. I nearly kissed the old Hmong granny who sold me the potatoes because, not only were they gorgeous, they were- get this- PRE-SCRUBBED!!!! I love her.

When I got home, I cut the last of the rosemary and oregano, chopped up some leeks, drizzled olive oil in the bottom of the crock pot, dropped in some of the herbs and leeks, a frozen sirloin roast, my potatoes, topped them with the remaining herbs and leeks, ground some fresh pepper and set the crock for 8 hours on low. Easy peasy. I heart my crock pot.

With the change of season, I need to pay attention to the onset of my winter depression. The sun goes away and I am toast. I have a light and can exercise and take supplements, but it can still be tough. This winter will be particularly challenging because I am trying it without anti-depressants. In May, after 20 years on anti-depressants, I decided it was time to try a holiday from them and have been off them ever since. Summer is easy though, winter we shall see.

The last several weeks, I've been teetering at the cusp of melancholy as I go through some of my parent's things that I brought home with me. I asked for and got all the family photo albums and scrapbooks (minus those that the entitled one just came in and took for himself. Karma comes around. Ouch.) and was tasked with scanning in the pictures, editing them to improve color, etc. and distributing them via CD to my siblings. It's been tough. I found a newspaper clipping from our small town paper announcing the housewarming party for my parents as they moved in to our family home back in 1958. I found some pictures of my mom hidden in a scrapbook of her high school graduation cards that I had never seen. I also found out that my mom had done a bit of traveling before she got married, that she probably talked about, but sadly I probably wasn't paying attention. I try hard not to have regrets and to focus on the time we had together, but its hard.

Enough for now. More later on my new vehicle purchase and how I, surprise that it may be, can be a customer from hell. With a smile of course.