“Learn the difference between a man who flatters you and a man who compliments you. A man who spends money on you and a man who invests in you. A man who views you as property and a man who views you properly. A man who lusts after you and a man who loves you.”

Yum Yuck

I have a ravenous appetite for good food, but I have a love/hate relationship with cooking.

It's a whole bunch of things. I love eating out. One of the greatest things about living in this city is the endless cache of excellent food options. In the last five or six years that I've been living downtown, I've been spoiled with boundless access to a variety of eclectic food options. Feel like Vietnamese? Italian? Turkish? Lebanese? Italian? Comfort food? Poutine? Japanese pub food? Portuguese? There's almost no limit to the good food that's on my doorstep. If I had a bottomless wallet, I could eat in a different restaurant every day for a month and never repeat a dish, if I wanted to. Probably way longer than that.

I love being in restaurants. I love people watching. I love food. Good food. I'm drooling right now.

But... eating out is costly, and unfortunately, when you become an adult, you end up with a lot of other more important things to spend your money on. Fun things like car payments, gas, insurance, rent or mortgage payments, condo fees, utilities, repaying student loans for some. At a certain point, you have to cut back. Eating out so often just isn't as easy as it was before.

The thing is... I don't really love cooking. It's not that I can't cook, because I can. It's just a huge effort every time, even when I'm cooking something simple. I also have "chef's stomach", which means I'll be craving something like crazy, but after spending time making it, I just don't want it anymore. I often struggle through meal preparation and finally sit down to eat, exhausted and prone to just shovelling it all in because I'm so done with food already. The following day, I open the fridge and look at the leftovers and think "I so don't want to eat that right now." I know, some people love leftovers - even prefer leftovers, but I'm just wired in a way to want to eat something different for. every. meal.

I imagine it to be easier when you're cooking for a family. It's easier to manage your ingredients when you're not the only one eating them. Jean and I don't live together, and on the nights when I'm eating alone, I find myself with an excess of herbs and vegetables that I can't get around to using before they go bad. Hell, we have trouble managing these things when we're together. Having no obligation to or routine of putting food on the table for other people on a regular basis makes me feel less motivated to spend time in the kitchen.

If I had a love for cooking, these things probably wouldn't be an issue. But I don't like being in the kitchen. Being in the kitchen feels like a job to me, it's exhausting. Jean and I also don't really have overlapping palettes in the sense that I tend to prefer strong, interesting flavours. I automatically like all asian foods, for example, and while he likes it, it's not his preference. Finding meals that we both like has been an exercise in frustration -- mostly for me -- but it's getting better.

So, we're trying. My eating out has cut down by about 75% and I've even actually been bringing my lunch from home at work half the week! Don't get me started about how big of a deal this is to me, and how depressed I often feel when I'm eating leftovers or sandwiches at my desk.

It's an uphill battle, but it will all be worth it when we figure it all out and have healthier and less costly eating habits.

After - Part 1

I'm... exhausted... and I only really completed the living room. I tackled the kitchen and the desk as well, and they're mostly cleaned off, but they're not picture ready yet.

I need a massage.

Don't judge...

In an exercise in motivation via self-humiliation, I've decided to post before and after pictures of my clean-up job today (or as Jean always refers to giant clean-ups: A Shutdown).

Ouch. This post hurts. But now that's it's out there, now I have to fix it, right?

In my defence, this is after two weeks of basically not being home at all.

Good luck, self.

A list, of sorts

Since I'm awake, here's a list of fucking things I'm going to try to accomplish tomorrow:

1. Clean the floors. Sweep/mop. It's been slightly too long since they've had a good moppin'.
2. Post my old TV and printer on the FREE section on Craigslist. Yeah, that's how badly I want to get rid of them.
3. Execute a much needed sartorial spring cleaning.
4. Rid my bookshelf of crap I don't need anymore.
5. Clean out the fridge.
6. Do my nails.
7. Make TACOS!!! (Although in my current condition, I'll have to run them through a food processor in order to be able to consume them.)

I've been doing a bit of reading about minimalism lately. Not that I actually think minimalist living is in any way feasible for me. I just am realizing way more now than ever that I'm a prisoner to all the stuff I have and it's stressful and depressing. I don't even really know why I have so much crap. I think it's partly because I uselessly attach sentimental value to things that I really shouldn't have any strong feelings toward whatsoever, and partly because... I'm paralyzingly lazy.

I always feel motivated at the wrong times. Like when I obsess about all the things I can make for dinner while I'm at work, but am too tired to actually tackle when I get home. Or like now... when it's 2:30am and I should be sleeping.

I just hope I've received the last of the drunk texts and that my boyfriend stops snoring sometime soon so that I can get some shut eye and feel well-rested enough to accomplish at least 25% of the things on my list tomorrow.

I'm wearing my optimistic pants!

BLARGH!

Is it horribly uncool that I was awoken from a wonderful comfortable sleep by a bunch of text messages from an out of town friend who's complaining about a terrible bar they went to that a random person on the street told them to go to, instead of one of the dozen more enjoyable places I recommended to them after they asked me earlier today?

... and now, since I'm a serial insomniac slash light sleeper, I'm wide awake.

Let's just say I'm sufficiently irritated.

Ouch.

I did something dumb.

I went to the dentist to get a filling, and later on in the evening, while my tongue was still frozen, I chomped down on the entire side of it really badly without realizing it and now I'm in so much pain.

My tongue is all raw, swollen and bumpy on the left side and I can barely eat or speak.

… and I'm PMS'ing.

… and I have a cold.

... and in other news...

Kim Kardashian is Michael Jackson.

Zzz

Sunshine makes it infinitely easier for me to wake up in the morning. I can mash the snooze button a million times and end up late for work every day of my life, but it's way more effective if I leave my blinds open just enough for the sun to pour in early in the morning. I mean, how can you go back to sleep when your room is flooded with light?

So that's why I've been a bit bummed in the morning for the last two days, because since we sprang the clocks forward on Sunday, it's still been dark at the time I usually wake up at. The awesome thing is that I actually get to see daylight when I leave work, which really is way better than having the sun set at 4:00pm in the dredge of winter.

It was so dark this morning that I kept deliriously checking the time like "Am I really supposed to get up now? In the... middle of the night?"

It's that much harder that J isn't stirring because he's sick and not going to work and I want to stay with him. He has a slight fever and so the bed was SO warm and that much more inviting.

Haha that's terrible. What I really mean is that I want to stay home and take care of him.

...

Happy Tuesday!

You know you're getting old when...

Me: hahaha i just drooled big time on my desk
Me: oh man... so glad no one witnessed that
Friend: hahahah i did the same thing this morning!
Me: hahah seriously?!
Friend: yeah! right on my hand
Me: HAHAHA
Me: what's up with that!
Friend: haha no idea
Friend: excess saliva
Me: fuck
Me: we're getting old

Nelly Bobbing for "Apples"

Things I Bought That I Love - Vol. 1

Zara Blazer with Zips

Zara Sweater with Zip at Back

Sam Edelman Petty

Mango Suede Perfecto Jacket

Well...

... I think I'm going to try this again.