the stand-bys.

home-made chicken soup. from the top left, in a clockwise direction: corn, peas, grape tomatoes (which did not make the cut, as i was afraid that my chickennoodle might turn to minestrone), homemade stock from a chicken i had roasted the night before, way too many egg noodles, not enough carrots, and not nearly enough chicken. including the stewing of the stock, it took 9 hours from start to finish, but home-made chicken soup it was, and an awful lot of it, too (i have a bad habit of cooking for armies. it was good in portland, when i knew armies, but i don't know armies here, and instead i end up with every tupperware in the house (even the ones recycled from trader joes that don't go in the microwave) filled up with chicken soup, crowding up the fridge...

i got better, though, thanks to a bowl of soup a day since sunday, lots and lots of kleenex, night time tylenol congestion, emergenc-E, and what else? oh yes, lots and lots of hot baths, retiring into the steamy bathroom with magazines that i brought down with me from portland, all about portland (so yes, karl, you were partly right). i don't know why i collected magazines about a city i lived in while i lived there, but i did and, in a stroke of what only could be called self-preservationist genius, i kept them all in the giant purging of things that i held dear in the days before loading the evil uhaul (before any of you go second guessing, it was evil cause it broke my arm, not cause it brought me down here).

i sat in baths and looked at photos of tattooed hipsters having bbqs and riding bikes on bridges and browsing at record stores wearing pigtails, and drinking beer, and swimming in rivers, and i missed portland, and i missed all of you, and i blew my nose and probably sneezed a couple of times. all in all here is ok. i still can't get over being the most tattooed person i know, though.