notice of hiatus

Oh boy. So, here we are, again. I know what you're all thinking, and you're absolutely right; I'm a weak loser, I don't have what it takes, I just don't fucking want it enough, whatever the hell that means. For the official record, I don't hold any of these harsh criticisms and judgments of my character against you. In fact, in a lot of ways, I can attest to their veracity without hesitation or uncertainty, but that's not what we're here to discuss today. As the title of this entry may suggest, we have come to another impasse in my life that I'm now imposing onto you, my loyal public.

As mentioned previously, I'm being disowned by my family for many reasons I would prefer not to delve deeply into at this time. It's fine; I'm not as worried about it was I was a few weeks ago. The long and short of it is that in a culmination of circumstances, I am taking another hiatus similar to the brief divergence of our paths at the end of last year, the main difference between the two being that while that one had an expiration date, this one will be, as much as I hate to say it, a bit more...indefinite. This was not an easy decision; the photos punctuating this post are selects from the next few recipes I had queued up for the week. Now, you guys are never going to have a chance to experience the two types of soup I had prepared for you, or my lemon poppyseed hummus, what would have no doubt been one of my most infamous offerings to date.

Since this blog's inception, few will argue with the fact that it has been an unstoppable force of nature; with the exception of my time away from home in December, I have never missed a promised post, rain, sleet, sunshine, or snow. With that sentiment comes the first of the laundry list of excuses I am presenting to you now in lieu of a new recipe to get you geared up for the weekend - I recently acquired a new job with the post office, an endeavor nearly three months in the making. This new development blindsided me; much like the last really great thing to happen in my life and the cause of the one and only break I've taken from catering lovingly to the minds of vegans everywhere, this was another opportunity I was in the running for but never in my most self-indulgent fantasies thought I would ever be able to wrest from the hands of the thirty other candidates in the room during the group interview, like the lady sitting behind me who had been working in the same office for nearly twenty-five years, or Frank, the charming security guard looking for a change of environment and lifestyle. Lo and behold, I got the big call about nine days ago, just as I was getting off of my last shift of the week at the bakery. That was a hard conversation to have with my boss. Lisa was pissed.

I will not be a mere clerk, like I had originally thought - instead, I was able to land a sweet city carrier's assistant gig, which is a fancy title for the regular carrier's little bitch. Subservience like this is nothing I'm a stranger to. I've assisted professionals in many lines of business; I can only assume that this will be more of the same. From what I've read online, the hours they make you work are bananas, on par with if not exceeding the time I committed to the job on tour; I barely had time to wipe my own butthole for the entire month I was away, so I figured it would be a good idea to not stretch myself too thin, especially in this initial probationary period, as I still intend to continue to do a bit of writing on the side for my favorite freelance client, the only one of my many former part-time jobs I have any interest in dragging along with me into my new life. I cannot afford to lose the admittedly frail grip on my sanity that I've worked so hard to achieve and maintain since returning home for the new year; I am more than familiar with my limits. If I try to pile the blog on top of my already heaping plate, not only would the quality of the work suffer greatly, I would end up going entirely and irrevocably postal (no pun intended). Sundays are the career carriers' union-mandated day off, which at least saves me the trouble of finding a new church my new neighborhood (more on that soon). Long story short, I start training on Monday in Santa Clarita to serve the Thousand Oaks area, ensuring that every resident has access to his or her waste management bill and/or any anonymous love letters they may be on the receiving end of in the most timely manner possible.

The second very large step forward that I've made in my life during the last seven days is that I've officially moved out of my mom's place, standing on my own two feet as an adult for the first time in my worthless life. I'm renting a room in Moorpark; I'm literally typing these words from my new base of operations, right now. I just got the rest of my junk moved in today; tonight will be the first time I get to sleep in the bed that my landlord (Michael) has graciously let me use while I live here, in addition to another couple of pieces of furniture, all in impeccable condition. I'm eating dinner with my laptop at a desk that doesn't give me splinters and storing my underwear in a chest of drawers for the first time since college. I feel like the queen of fucking England.

In addition to Michael, I also now have two housemates, and, not one to overstep my boundaries when it comes to the space others are entitled to in their own home, am less than comfortable dominating the kitchen to shoot approximately once a week as I did before, especially to make food I know for a fact neither of them would be interested in eating. This is far from the most pertinent reason I will be unable to continue inviting you into my little vegan world now that I live here permanently, however; one tiny detail about the living arrangements I may have glossed over in my desperate, desperate search for a roof to cower under before getting the ol' boot from ma and pa was the fact that the kitchen was scheduled for a complete overhaul, beginning, coincidentally enough, the week I was slated to move in; everything that was in there during the walkthrough is now in the living room, and I have been generously granted a brand new mini-fridge to store my provisions in during the remodeling. As you can probably imagine, this particular set of circumstances is not exactly conducive to the creative process of both coming up with and performing recipes that don't make people who aren't me want to gag. My latest culinary innovation? You take a yam and, after stabbing it a couple of times with a key and swaddling it like a baby in a damp paper towel, stick it in the microwave for a good four or five minutes, until it's just soft and sensuous enough to dissect like a frog. After that, you dump in about a quarter of a cup of unseasoned pinto beans and christen the dish with a sprinkle of Morton's; it has become, unironically, my favorite meal of the day. I'll be cooking out of my rice cooker until the floors go down next month; it's exactly how I was living while on tour. Honestly, I'm so grateful that I'm not homeless right now that the thought of roughin' it like in the old days excites me more than anything, and will help me trim down a few stubborn pinches of belly fat that I've accumulated in my content malaise at the bakery. Unfortunately, though, the fact that there will be, for all intents and purposes, no kitchen here for the time being doubly seals the fate of this blog. That, and, the fact that my mother decided that the iconic pinkbelly block stays with her after a bitter, heated custody battle. I have no hard feelings about either of these things.

Lastly, as I've mentioned previously elsewhere in my public, vegan captain's logs, I'm on a fucking budget, and, while being evicted for no reason and getting a real job has definitely thrown a wrench into my plans to return to college this summer, I'm choosing to look at the situation constuctively and use this new source of income almost exclusively to save for school, taking from that sum total only what is absolutely necessary to sustain myself. No more organic beets from the farmer's market, no more champagne mangoes, not even for nine cents a pop - those were precious dollars, valuable moments of wasted time toiling away in the saltmines of remote dental copy that I will never recover. I can't do it anymore; I need to find a less demanding creative outlet. I caved hard at Food 4 Less yesterday and bought a bag of bruised peaches for a dollar in a predictable moment of despicable weakness, but after that disgrace, I'm done fucking around, and I mean it. I've got my meal plan for the next five months of work drafted out and ready for execution come Sunday afternoon, my last projected day of freedom for a very, very long time, and it's a real beaut, if I do say so myself - nourishing, delicious, and cheap as hell. No deviations, no cutting corners. I'm dead serious. I need to do something meaningful with my life.

With all of that being said, please know what a pleasure it's been for me to cook disgusting food in front of you for the last six months or so. This blog has improved my life in more ways than I can count, and, while none of these positive changes have had any tangible effect on any of your lives, I still think you deserve to be told how much your viewership meant to me during this time we've shared. It's been an absolute rollercoaster - I laughed, I loved, I cringed, I cried. I'm a whore for attention, through and through, and I never would have been able to come this far from where I started without the endorphin kick I get when I know that at least nine anonymous individuals will be tuning in each week for every hoop I backflip through. It made every early morning worthwhile. Now that I'm an adult and investing that time into work instead of play, I'm realizing that I didn't appreciate the thing we had going while we had it. I'll always remember the good times, and think fondly of you whenever I have to take my lonely-girl blender back to Walmart and exchange it for a new one.

I guess this is it for now. I don't really know what else to tell you. I'm terrified of fucking up and landing on my ass like I always do, but my rent is paid for the next month and I've never felt this free before in my life. Wish me luck. You already know I'm gonna need it.