Scions of tertiary education are made, not grown, and the work therein continues to demand the majority of my waking hours. I am at present in a fast-spinning cycle of waking, walking, rewriting and reviving that will continue for ten more weeks. Even as the core tasks remain predictable—I know, after all, what to do in front of a class—the periphery swipes at my expectations. Today I leaked a few tears of frustration in front of a colleague over ongoing audio visual difficulties. I don’t like such moments, but they seem part and parcel of being human at work, which I am getting better at doing.
This semester I have one-hundred-and-eighty-eight hours of teaching, sixty-eight of which I am writing from scratch. The wave of marking will begin tomorrow; in what fashion I will ride it I am not quite sure. Saturdays are for resting and Sundays for housework and my own writing. I can’t keep this up for ever, but three months seems achievable. Even so, it’s already shrunk me down to a coherence of timetables, equipment lists, email addresses and USB drives. How fortunate it is that I am well paid.
Cathi summoned me some days ago to write on food. This writing is governed by rules: I shall link to she who named me and the rules there posted. I shall share five food-related facts about myself, nominate five more people and inform them with a comment chez eux.
The facts, then.
I don’t eat farm animals or fowl, nor have I done for some seven years. Prior to that, I disliked meat but ate it out of a combination of laziness and convenience. I was much in the company of vegetarians as a thesis writer, whose habits facilitated my entry into a meatless world. For the last six years or so I have eaten fish and seafood, but some meals of late have cured me of that habit too, as has the company of Señor Mojito, who has been a vegetarian since childhood.
The dogs eat dry biscuits, twice a day, carefully measured, and drink water. Occasionally they might be given some cheese as a treat, a scrap of naan bread or, in the company of the harvestparents, a small piece of chicken. Short-legged terriers gain weight very easily indeed and I work hard to keep my five lean. The greatest challenge in feeding them is making sure they get enough food to be well-conditioned without becoming bony or tubby.
I eat for neutral, necessary reasons but also for wrong reasons too. Eating alone and to excess has an anaesthetic quality that I crave much in times of stress. Recognising this before the craving turns me into a gluttonous automaton is quite a challenge, as unlikely as that may seem. The relationship between work, stress and overeating is the largest challenge of my day-to-day life.
The first evening I entertained Señor Mojito at home I served couscous with capsicum followed by wedges of fresh pineapple. We probably drank Shiraz, which was my wine of choice for a number of years, but which I curiously grew tired of not long after meeting the señor.
I am a tea enthusiast and keep a variety in caddies in my kitchen, although at work I tend to drink more coffee. I was first dismayed and then very amused to see that each of these beverages are identified in Stuff White People Like: le café, le thé.
Having made my list of five, I intend now to ignore the instructions-to-tag, not least because a number of you have already shared your own musings but also because I know many of you-whom-I-read are adverse to receiving an unsolicited tagging. Having said that, there are foodies among you, and I know who you are, so you may consider yourself stared at, at least.
Here we celebrated the end of the pup’s first year on 2 March. Looking after them is a lot of work but it is a joyful task that gives shape and meaning to the day, not to mention unprecedented punishment to my carpet and soft furnishings. This is the year of greatest change for them, from this:
to this:
and this:
Credit for the photos rests with harvestdad, whose sixty-sixth birthday, today, the pups’ anniversary has somewhat overshadowed.
