Today I had a day. I woke up at 4:00 this morning after having only gone to sleep a few hours earlier. I tossed and turned until I got up at 6:45. I had to go to DSB for another part of my “assessment” aka hoop-jumping so that I can be recommended for advocacy services which will hopefully make me an employed person again. I got assessed, hoop-jumped, felt scrutinized (whether I was or not), felt very blind (I definitely was), and headed home. It was one of those trips where, once I got home, the trip was so confusing that I couldn’t remember how I’d done it, only that somehow I had. That’s always disconcerting.

I went inside to make tea. I broke not one but two of my favorite teacups, the heavy-bottomed pottery one I got in Portland and a marbly-textured one I bought my first time in Seattle. Both had matcha powder in them, so now my floor is covered in green dust and glass.

I have an essay due earlier than I thought, and I can’t get it right. It is so limp and apathetic under my fingers and I want to grab it by the back of the neck and shake something into it. What, I don’t know. Maybe all that spilled matcha would perk it up.

It’s really gray and overcast, and I wish it would rain but it won’t.

My fridge is nearly empty, and I don’t have time or energy to go to the store or cook. What I needed to do seems fairly obvious at this point. So, I baked some cheese.

Feta, precisely. I can’t even remember when I started throwing feta at the oven and waiting for something to happen. I’m pretty sure I got the idea from a BBC network recipe, but that’s about as best as my memory can conjure. Also, since only a small percentage of you care about my dinner, I suspect it doesn’t matter much. Back to the cheese: I had a giant block of feta getting no love, and the good thing about going to DSB is that I can stop by Columbia City Bakery on the way home. AND, today they had a walnut and fig bread. No sweetness, except for the pockets of seedy figs, crunchy walnuts, an almost salty crust. Lacking a decent bread knife and since no one was there to judge I was ripping it apart with my hands and stuffing it in my face like a deranged person before I even remembered the feta. But I remembered, thankfully.

This bread probably should be eaten with goat cheese, but feta’s what I had so feta it was. I drained my giant block, plopped it on some foil, and gave the top a drizzle of olive oil, plus a scattering of herbes de provence and pepper flakes. I think the original recipe calls for oregano, but herbes de provence is the thing I will always try to use for sprinkling if there’s any possible way I can get away with it. Lavender’s a tricky little thing, though, so I use it less than I’d like. Then I scrunched the foil around the feta, put it on a baking sheet, and into the oven. I hovered for about 10 minutes, decided it was soft enough, and ate it with the bread. I never did bother with a utensil, because my alone eating habits are atrocious.

Now, back to rearranging all the lack-luster words in my lack-luster essay over and over and listening to Portishead on repeat until I can’t think any more and must, must sleep. Hopefully more sunny posts next week, when I’ll be on spring break.