Mini-spring mid-week.

I woke up with all the restlessness of a bad case of spring fever this morning, but it's turned around in the nicest way possible today. The weather the past couple days has been slightly warmer, so it's felt like it's been turning toward spring, so that's given me a false sense of warmth and an anticipation for a spring that I don't think I'll get for at least another month yet. I think winter's just turning over in her bed, so we're just seeing a fresh new side, but she'll fall into a deeper sleep in a few days.

Went to work at Slips today (thankfully, to get rid of some of this persistent energy) and got to make 2 sandwiches along with everything else, instead of just doing the washing up all day long. Tomorrow I get to make more sandwiches, Terry says, I need to start practicing so I can get more confident. He sent me and Leander home a piece of chocolate cake for dessert because it's Leander's birthday on Thursday and Terry used to know Leander when she worked at Slips. So tonight we're celebrating in advance because she's going home to spend her birthday with her family, and then we'll celebrate again on Friday night when she gets back. It's been a slew of birthdays in this house the past couple weeks. Mine last week, Leander's on Thursday, and Stef's on Saturday. We'll celebrate Stef's next Monday with a wheat-free cake (her best friend Janine is wheat-intolerant) and another family-style dinner.

I needed to stay out after I finished my shift at Slips because I had way too much energy to come home, so I went to the only real cafe in the area to get some work done, a little vegetarian/vegan-friendly place called The Peach & Pear. The lady who owns it is awfully nice -- she's going to let me hold a mini open-mic night there next week, and then maybe every other week, for me and a couple of my poetry friends to just meet and read our poetry out loud to each other. Like a performance workshop. Too often we get caught up with the writing instead of the reading, and its something that's been puttering around my mind the past few weeks. I'm a little sound-obsessed at the moment.

She also told me about a lot more places that I can volunteer if I want to get to know the area better, one of which being an old warehouse for kids to paint and play with art stuff after school -- they get paint and tiles donated by people and they either recycle the paint (either by re-mixing it with water or another similar color) and resell it or sell the kids' artwork, which usually tends to be paintings or mosaics from the leftover tile pieces. It sounds like such a cool place that I really want to check it out, but my time might be limited now because of Slips and school. I think, though, that now I've got the hang of this new school system and what it demands, I can be more creative with managing my time, and put more of my free time into fun things like that because I know just how long it'll take me to do an assignment.

Another way I'm diverting energy is through renewing my vigor for healthiness. It goes up and down, my sense of healthiness, and while I doubt I eat terribly, I can always always improve. Recently I've been in a cycle of dinners that usually involves some combination of grapes, pita, green beans, salad, cous-cous, rice, hummus, and, if I'm feeling particularly exotic, sun-dried tomatoes. So I'm just continuing the healthy kick -- tonight I'm modifying my age old banana cookie recipe, making it healthier. I love recipe-modifying, it's the only way to be creative with food, I think. I think I start modifying things for myself when I'm feeling the need to be free to do my own thing in absolutely everything, and since I can't really do that with work or school, I take it out on my food. But it is fun, really. Modifying a recipe is like modifying a poem -- there's sometimes something that will make it just a little bit better, and if there isn't, at least you know what doesn't make it better. Now I'm thinking of other ways to make things better, and more ways to experiment with honey and nutmeg and rolled-oats and fruit.

I love walking home when it's almost-dark. You get to see the kitchen windows of the houses start to fog up as people start cooking their dinners. It's between 6 and 7, usually. It's not pitch black yet, but just dark enough for the steam-streaks to be visible through the kitchen lights stretching out into the streets.