"I can hear the ice cream truck one street over"

I keep almost pinging this handful of people.  Well, three.  But then I realize I just want to talk to them, I don't actually have anything to say and then I get cross with myself.

 

I've been stalling on reviewing May.   It feels a little bit like a failure of a month, I've been reading fanfic instead of books, I've been eating takeout and scrounging rather than cooking.  But here it is anyway.

 

May began with Light away with Boisterous at Beltane and me volunteering at the annual fundraising gala of the the not-a-convention organization I volunteer for.  Light came back sick from his event and we navigated another tricky poly moment.  I failed to go to both the Doubleclicks and the Delta Rae concerts I'd bought tickets for, but Abundance and Polyglot went to doubleclicks.   I saw my inadequate psychiatrist and remain on the same cocktail I've been on.  I bought a bunch of books at the local library booksale.   Abundance and I went to Salem to visit lovely people and ate amazing cheese and sat on their deck and played what is now my New Favorite Game.  (Reader, I purchased it.)  Another amazing haircut where my stylist and I talked about the Met Gala and camp.  A not especially well attended but still ridiculously fun Eurovision viewing.  (Iceland, never change)   Abundance went south with Nonsense for a parent visit, Light and I went to Hands and Hips to help break in the new hottub.   N came over and it was awesome.    I went to my mother's bday partybelated mother's day celebration and pretty much ignored everyone older than 45.  (ie, hung out with brothers, spouses and nibling)   Went to the hospital with Delight and got very good news that I didn't know I was worried about not getting until we got it and I pretty much giggled for the rest of the day in that sort of relief from panic I didn't know I was feeling.   I did an at-home sleep study which was ridiculously annoying.   I went out to relaxacon and actually loved it.   May was also the month I made all the doctors' appointments, so June will be the month that I need to actually show up to them.  Whee?

 

 

Top five recipes.

 

Morning glory oats from Whole Grain Mornings.  Steel cut oats, carrots, raisins, coconut and a lot of orange zest.  It's ridiculously good and I've already made it twice and portioned it out over the course of about a week each time.   

 

Cardamom-spice Oat cookies from King Arthur's.  I shunned the apricots and substituted dried apples and they were so good.  

 

Mexican Rice Bowl from Moosewood.  black beans cooked with orange juice and cumin, a salad made of radishes and charred corn and lime juice and a tomatillo-avocado sauce.  

 

Homespun pot pie from Moosewood.   I'm still kind of a sucker for biscuit topped anything and this is no exception.   Edamame instead of peas, seitan instead of mushrooms.  I still can only really one-for-one substitutions, but I'm getting better at them.  

 

Browniest cookie from Smitten Kitchen.   Not the browniest, but very good,  

 

Top five books.  

 

Like I said, I didn't read much this month but it had some high points.

 

I read the entire Tensorate series and despite being packaged as a single audio book, I feel like it probably counts as three books, especially since I liked the first one, Black Tides of Heaven, best, the second one was okay and the third one did not work as an audio book.  (things that don't work as audiobooks: someone reading a mostly-redacted communication, anything where someone tries to describe a informational graph, lists of books and their call numbers.)

 

Mary Lambert's book of poetry Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across hurt so much in so many ways and was so brutal and  I loved it. and I intended to use some of it as dw prompts because they gave me all the feels, so of course I can't find where I put it.  Sometimes I think the more emotionally loaded and object the more likely I am to misplace it.  

 

Brittany Cavallaro's A Question of Holmes finished up the series in very satisfying ways.  They're all so traumatized and adorable and full of sharp edges cutting each other when they don't mean to and it's a lovely mix of distinctly fictional and bits I really relate to.  

 

Angie Thomas's On the Come Up because of course I did and of course it was good.

 

Alexandra Oliva's The Last One was an apocalyptic novel, more peri- than post- about a woman competing in a reality show about being out in the woods and surviving on your own when the apocalypse happens (a flu apocalypse) and she continues to believe that everything is still being staged by the production crew and diassociates and then eventually has to realize what's really happening.  It could have been played for laughs and it very much wasn't, and I actually liked the narrative jumping around the timeline.

It was a month, I survived it.  It had more good points than I thought it did, looking back.  Oh, brain, you tricksy fucker.