Friday Time Clock #2

Photo by Peter Rinblad (cc)

Over at The Fluent Self, Havi has a weekly ritual that has become known as the Friday Chicken, a little check-in moment that started about a year ago. After years in the kitchen, and because we’re all about the march of time here, the idea of punching a time clock seemed like a good mental image to me. So here we go.

The good stuff this week:

I’ve been cooking at home more, and I’ve been getting to cook for my friends more too, which is terrific. I love entertaining. Those domestic spreads you see in lifestyle magazines and wedding rags, with the neat little appetizers and drinks that coordinate with the linens, and match the (real, with a postage stamp!) invitations? I love doing that kind of thing. I’m ecstatic to finally have a place again where I can host people without being embarrassed by the neighbors/bathroom/carpet/etc. Maybe I’m oversensitive about that kind of thing, but there’s all that Libra again. I like it when things go together.

A good friend gave me a Barnes & Noble card as a birthday gift, and also brought me a beautiful orchid for my housewarming; I’m thinking of naming it. It’s exquisite, and for those keeping score, he’s a Libra sun/Pluto with Venus rising and lots of Virgo… immaculate taste!

I went to the bookstore today to gaily fritter away said card, and came back with three great-looking books:

• The Gastronomy of Marriage: A Memoir of Food and Love by Michelle Maisto. My little Libra/Taurus heart can’t wait to read it.
• New World Kitchen: Latin American and Caribbean Cuisine by Norman Van Aken. I want to eat every single thing in this book.

and of course I couldn’t get away without an astrology tome, so I found this one:

• Cosmic Love: Secrets of the Astrology of Intimacy Revealed by Jan Spiller. I’ve been spending a lot of time on nodes lately, and I’ve been impressed with her other books so far. Should be good.

A good Friday, indeed.

The hard stuff this week:

Still in a rocky patch, hiring-wise, in my bakery so I’ve been logging more kitchen time, at weird times, than I had planned. It’s frustrating because I can’t really make plans for my off time right now, and the promise of a steady schedule was a big part of why I took work where I am. Le sigh. It’s teaching me to be more spontaneous, which is good, but triggering all my weird insecurities about stability, which kind of sucks. Taurus moon is happy to at least be in a bakery making things, but is NOT HAPPY about the split shifts and unpredictable parts lately!

Since it’s October and I have a lot of things in mid-late degrees of Libra, last week the week of reckoning was sun and moon together! I’ve been keeping a lid on things in public (Leo rising), but man what a ride. I can already feel it starting to pass, like my mind is coming back to me in a way; I have a lot of air element so being deprived of my logic-crunching-machinery is like, well, going without oxygen. It felt like turning up the fire underneath, and dumping water on it, all at the same time… it will take me a little while to even properly be able to explain it.

So that’s my week. What was good for you? What was hard?