#toast and marmalade

[redrcs]

So, I have recently switched to sourdough bread. Eating it, not making it, and I like toast in the morning. The slices of bread are small and fit inside the toaster really well. So small in fact, that when the toast pops, the top of the slice doesn't stand proud of the toaster lip.

Now I am a proponent of buttering the toast while hot. So do I burn my fingers trying to get the hot toast out? Do I pick up the hot toaster, turn it upside down and shake the toast out (along with 3 months worth of crumbs)?

No, I am reduced to flipping up the toaster handle fast and trying to bat the toast out onto the breadboard like a cartoon character.

Success. Well buttered hot toast with home made marmalade and coffee while the butcherbirds sing a duet in the garden.

All is well, all is well.

[elaine4queen]

A week I’d set aside for recovery and catching up with myself suddenly fills up. A woman phones me while I’m out with the dog and asks if I want her to bring forward my appointment for Ear, Nose & Throat. I’m not indoors and can’t see my calendar I tell her. She persists and I back down, but she tells me she needs to tell me how to find them. I tell her it’s pointless because I won’t remember. How often do I have to disclose my autism and is there any point in talking to people about ADHD which seems to be even more poorly understood, to the point of being reviled. Though I’ve had my fair share of attitude for my late diagnosed autism, too. Anyway, I don’t tell her. She says she’ll phone me back later. 

Worse than the disruption of a week already planned is the news that the ENT department is in fucking Worthing. I look on the map and it says it’s a half hour drive, which means 40 minutes for me, then the appointment then the drive back. It’s a bit of a bust, and all in busy traffic. Given the choice I drive mid morning with good visibility and low traffic. Also, I don’t like to drive for more than an hour. I don’t want to cause an accident. Committing to this makes me anxious. Also, I know what they’re going to do when I get there. I’ve had it done before, but a long time ago. They’re going to put a camera all the way up my nose. It’ll be painful and disgusting. 

After the top layer of my symphony of pains and problems was mostly dealt with with the migraine preventative the sinus issues became more obvious as something worth mentioning. I’d had the problems for years, but when you have a list every time you go into the doctor’s it’s hard to get to everything and with my inability to figure out what’s important or urgent, or even easy to look at or deal with, I’ve always let this one ride. Anyway now it’s come up. I’ve been on a steroidal inhaler for a while and my breathing at night has improved but there’s one nostril that shuts down regularly still. There must be only one thing worse than having a body and that’s not having one. The tipping point, though, that’s the rub.

Louise’s husband Adrian PM’s me then posts on Facebook that in the past few days she has become a lot less lucid. She wasn’t exactly herself when I visited, and was frustrated that she had to reach for words. The drugs she is on are so hard hitting it’s hard to know what she would be like without them. I’m so glad that I went when I did. I can’t really say why. I tried to work it out on the ride home, but told Adrian last night that I just wanted to. And maybe that’s it. I just wanted to, I did it, and now it’s done and it can’t be done again. I thank him for helping to make it happen. On the open thread he says she is not able to use her phone or computer but if people want to leave comments he’ll read them out. 

Rob says 

Tell Louise this is an excessively dramatic way to avoid buying me lunch.

I imagine Adrian reading the comments to her, and wonder if, through the fog of drugs, she might get a smile from that one. And it makes tears prick in my eyes.

I had a yearning to eat toast and marmalade with another mug of tea. It’s a particular pleasure eating without a dog staring at you, so when she goes off for her walk I head to the kitchen. I know that I won’t have fully digested it by the time I hit the gym later, and will regret the sickening lump in my stomach but I do it anyway.

In proximity to death, or the awareness of a particular death everything else is trivial, and you really feel it. Sometimes the more trivial your fixations the better. Why think about big things when there’s a big thing already? The PDF that was linked to the talks on Dying in the Dharma on Audio Dharma is missing so I message them about it and they send me a link. Reading it comforts me, particularly the funeral verse

All things are impermanent,

They arise and pass away.

Having arisen, they come to an end, 

Their coming to peace is bliss.

Our lives arise and pass away, our fixations arise and pass away, our walks, our lunches, our relationships and our desires for toast and marmalade - everything, everything arises and everything passes away.

[catfindr]

[eat-love-eat]

Orange Marmalade French Toast Bake

[sciderman]

Hi! I hope you’re doing well! Not sure if you’ve had your surgery as of right now, but I’m sure by the time you read this you’ll have had your surgery. I hope the hospital food isn’t terrible (it’s terrible in America) and that your recovery is swift!

oh bless you! actually – funny – my surgery was postponed to – get this, the day after my birthday. fun, hilarious. i'm on some medication to get my stress levels down because - well, my stress levels were so high that they were worried i was going to bleed way too much in surgery. so - lamar's still here, waiting. buuuut... soon. soon...

[life-spire]

[fullcravings]

Cinnabon French Toast with Grand Marnier

[gummi-stims]

🍊🍞Marmalade Toast🍞🍊

From peachyslime on tiktok!

[scoutingthetrooper]

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[ratatatastic]

criminal technically commits crime, gets booked, says "stupid" and wallows in his own misery

florida panthers @ new york rangers game 2 | 5.24.24

[confetti-critter]

I used to show pics of my meals on snapchat but then one time my friend replied "you're not seriously going to eat all of that, are you? 🤢" so I. Stopped.. But just know I made the most wonderful breakfast. Good morning everyone!

[gideonisms]

series of steps that will CHANGE YOUR LIFE:

Before bed, fill a clean pasta sauce jar with coffee grounds about 1/3 or 1/4th of the way and fill the rest with room temp water

Leave on counter overnight. Sleep for a long time

wake up and filter the grounds out. How you choose to do this is up to you, I have a pour over but you can just stick a paper filter in some type of cone atop a cup and get the same result

Put ice in a cup

Fill the cup about 1/3 full of topo chico or other sparkling mineral water

Add some of the cold brew coffee you just made

Add a bit of half & half

add some vanilla syrup, the kind you use for coffee flavoring not the kind you use on ice cream

stir

consume the most refreshing spring beverage in the world

realize you have enough ingredients for like 5 more of these

peace and love on planet earth

[runawaycarouselhorse]

[littleobelia]

Wondering what Louis would think of this

[life-spire]