Twenty something year old doing twenty something year old things

 Continuing in the tradition of my namesake Phoebe Buffay--I am actually named after the wise sister in The Catcher in the Rye but being neither wise nor a younger sister I generally nod in agreement to "oh, like Phoebe in friends?!"--I have found a cat friend that, I do believe is sending me feline messages of telepathy. She (or he, I have not inspected) has taken to sitting on our garden wall and, as I step out to the cool night air preparing to disappear below to my 'underchambers' (similar, in effect, to undergarment but in this case a bedroom that lies below the house) it sits and looks at me. The look, dear reader, is quite unnerving chiefly due to its unwavering intensity. I have, many times, ignored this wilful cat, disappeared into my bedroom, closed my door and taken to the bed. This method is not effective.  A tinkling of a baleful bell will interrupt my earnest preparations for sleep and I am forced, once more, to face this spectre of the night. Without f...

Nostalgic memory of youth: My mother telling me not to watch too much TV in case I got "square eyes".  I spent a long time trying to find someone suffering from this affliction but strangely never did.  But ah,  the days when 'screen time' was seen as an unnecessary pleasure and square eyes the risk associated with it, akin to the 'monster under the bed'. Now it is a necessary evil. We buy special 'anti-blue light' glasses to allow us to continue to stare, squarely, into the screen in an intense 'who blinks first' match. I'm currently in one and will continue until four pm when I log off my duties of monitoring  psychology classes.                                                                        ***** The above section was written, as you can guess, well before the present --when I ir...

 If you look at things from a completely different point of view, you'll see some pretty f**** weird stuff.  Example: Porridge. Just a morning meal to have with honey, a la three bears and a gold haired child? Aha, no. That's where you're wrong.  Porridge can be savoury and turned into a cheap fools risotto. I'm even going to tell you how, despite your disgusted face. Fry some garlic and chilli in a pot, throw in some black pepper and spinach-- then, if you're feeling fishy, put in some mackerel. At this point, you can add your oats. Toast your oats, stir your oats and finally, water your oats. Continue to water until the mix begins to look thick and creamy like, well, porridge and then, just to make things even creamier; crack some eggs into the mix like an absolute mad yolk. If you're really feeling adventurous, you could whisk some soy sauce into those eggs. Trust me, it's good. I garnished this with mozzarella and, as we're good eggs that support loc...

 I seem to have a habit of stockpiling all of the things I need to do, however enjoyable and fulfilling they might be, to the very end of the day. Today was one of those days, hence sitting down to write this, fuzz brained, at half eight in the evening. I have just come off a zoom meeting (you may be familiar?) but rather than the usual screen fatigue and awkwardness that seems to be the order of the day with these 'multiple floating heads on a screen socializing/working/schooling/everything-ing' I emerge excited and energized. I am working with these other heads on a collaborative and participatory, soon to take shape-ory, film project. Adding fuel to the bizzarreness of current times, none of us have ever met in the flesh.  Before being a head on a zoom call however I spent my day as a- somewhat- whole body in reality. I woke up, delighted, to a light smattering of snow about as thick as a layer of dandruff and watched from my window as kids with plastic spades scraped what ...