"And I know it's just a spring haze "

 Not a lot of songs I can find that mention May, so I'll slip it in under the wire with something about spring instead.

For reasons I can't quite fathom yet, April was not a good month for omnias, despite how well it started.  I played a lot more Merge Dragons than I read, I ordered out a lot more than I cooked and I'm pretty sure I was allergic to anything a plant even thought about doing in my airspace.

 

The month began with my next awesome tattoo.  There was also a hockey game, Abundance's trip to Virginia, finally seeing Hands and Hips again, dinner with Light's Uncle, Boisterous's bday party at my house which included my first intentional ingestion of marijuana in more than two decades (I think I liked it, but didn't love the delivery mechanism since hot vapor on the back of my throat felt waay too much like the way smoking grated at the back of my throat all those times I inevitably got bronchitis or pneumonia and kept smoking), then Abundance's trip to SF, quitting as a DH for conA, a nibling's bday party and participating in a charity walk   Delight and Goodhugs moved, so I helped pack and tended to Spark when I could.  But, I did manage to finally locate and purchase new dishes, which has been a lovely feeling,.

 

On a more daily note, today was a strange half-hearted day.  I cleaned, did many loads of laundry , cooked a bunch of food, paid some bills and parking tickets, picked up prescriptions and still just felt sort of adrift.  Light took the car in for inspection, it failed inspection but in a fixable way, and then on his way home from the dealership the car stalled out and every possible dashboard light went on, so he called AAA and got it towed back to the dealership, where we wait upon word of its fate. 

 

The top five books were

 

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, a memoir of her time in the crematory business. Delight introduced me to her youtube channel, and that meant I was already smitten with her and her awesome cadence before listening to this, which made it even more awesome/

 

Alien Echo by Mira Grant.  I love Mira Grant, I love the Alien franchise, I love YA novels with queerness.  

 

Vow of Celibacy by Erin Judge.  Fiction about a plus size woman being plus size, about being bisexual, about unpacking past toxic relationships to try to figure out why they were toxic.  It's also a lot about having thwarted dreams and friendship.  Recommended to me by Brooklyn Bookmatch, it was both more charming and more impactful than I expected from my snap judgment of the title.

 

Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse.  This was was even better than the first,  The main character is actually kind of working through a bunch of trauma and forming relationships with other characters that tie her into the world more firmly.  I got an ARC and even though I only read it two days before it was officially out, I felt like I was getting away with something.  

 

Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor.  Not as good as the first one, but still very good.  A strange sense of control on the author's part, the worldbuilding just kept either opening up more or having another nested layer depending on how I want to swing the metaphor.

 

The top five dishes (according to my notes I only made six things this month, though there was also multiple rounds of "homemade" pizza with whole foods premade dough and storebought tomato sauce) were these, but I want to go to bed more than I want to write about the actual recipes.  Maybe tomorrow.

 

wildly fruit soda bread

walnut cheddar "meatballs"

frijoles etc casserole

spaghetti w/ caramelized onions and yogurt

kip's ginger scones.