I Want to Celebrate, See it Shinin' in Your Eye

The giant Harvest moon greeted me at the light on my ride home from work and suddenly I understood why I felt so energized and filled with light.  The orange globe stayed in view the entire way back.  I kept seeking him out to absorb all his moon-y goodness.  I can't explain why the moon affects me so strongly but I'll try to describe how it does.  My blood feels like it got a transfusion of every single vitamin and mineral it craved. Every cell bursts awake and I can feel thousands of organisms making the body work, individually and simultaneously.  I know that's impossible, yet its also a true description.  I become highly alert, my senses are more keen, my eyesight is sharper, reaction time is quicker and I'm fairly strong, like I could kick some ass.  I feel elated, almost to the tipping point.  

It doesn't always work this way.  Sometimes it's overwhelming and I want to crawl out of my skin. My muscles ache the way I imagine cranky babies must feel inside as they grow.  My heart races and anxious is all I feel.  My mind fills up with bad thoughts and I worry my temper will flair and I might accidentally whack my husband with a frying pan over the head for leaving the sink dirty or not wiping down the stove.

I love to be this awake but just like stimulant drugs, I don't think you could go too long without having a heart attack.  I am usually relieved the next morning to feel normal again.  But before it goes away, I love to dance around at night and howl and laugh because after all these years, I'm still in love with that moon.  

 That night I made bok choy with mushrooms and roasted turkey meatballs with grape tomatoes on a sheet pan.  The leftovers would be paired with farro the next day for a lunch meal.

I'm the Bad Guy, Duh!

Bunless Chili dogs

A pantry dinner and nod of pride to New York City featuring Nathan's Hot Dogs, fortified canned chili with black beans and seasoning, leftover sauteed cabbage.

P deflecting virus

When you're walking outside on the city streets now, a few weeks into this pandemic, you don't know who's sick and who's just trying to avoid getting sick.  It's just a matter of time that most of us will get this virus and either not know it, get a lighter version or worse.  When you're fully in it, you can certainly avoid going out if you've prepared or have help as I did.  When this was surfacing, I didn't wear the mask at work, no one did, even though my sister urged me to for weeks beforehand.  They issued gloves only the day before we closed. My reasoning being at the time you wore a mask if you were sick so people knew. That was the initial social agreement.  Now 3 weeks later we're all in masks each as individual as we are, even full on gas masks.  I feel bad that when I felt it coming on, I tried to fight it by getting out there in the sun and the park, to walk if off, without a proper mask.  But you weren't supposed to have the proper masks because normal people shouldn't need them.  On the reverse at that time you were told scarves do nothing, but by the way, everyone please start wearing some type of mask, knowing fully well they're harder to get then Tylenol right now.  Meanwhile I passed the little kids, strollers and mothers congregated in the the playground, the dog owners gathering, high school kids strolling together as if the whole world hadn't already changed.  I remember being pissed that everyone was not taking the task to flatten the curve seriously enough.  But I was out there too.  It's so impossible with this many people in such a small space.  Like the ultimate game of tag! you're it, but with action paranoia and public shaming.  

While in the thick of it, it's hard to tell people I'm scared shitless.  Who do you tell?  You don't want to worry family, they can't do anything for you but you don't want to hide it either in case things go south.  Friends in New York are all dealing with either being sick themselves or in a high state of anxiety, rightly so.  I've relied on my out of state friends, hopefully not leaning too far.  Beyond all of that, you can't dwell on what might come, but even if you just look at what is happening today, it's quite enough.  The daily news brings images of our worst nightmares.  Mass burials?  Say no more, please. Days are more a mental battle than anything.  There are beautiful things happening too, like the 7pm ringing of the bells. Everyone yelling out their windows for our service workers who are risking their lives and that of their families.  I cry everytime.  Still, I can't help but wonder if it's the equivalent of saying 'thank you for your service' to our soldiers.  I just read EMT workers in NYC are only paid around $34,000 a year.  Our city's core problems are surfacing like thousands of floating corpses in the Hudson river.  We are at such a crossroads, a huge opportunity to make a leap for the better.  I hope we will.

Working in a busy retail box store with no ventilation, I knew this was coming for so many of us.  I can even pinpoint the day I believe I contracted it.  It was Sunday, March 15 after a slow week, hundreds flocked in to buy home computer and school desks for their children's homeschooling and work.  We had so many call outs so they asked me to cover that department.  I felt it so strongly, the numbers, the odds,  it's just math.   The weeks beforehand I felt anger being so vulnerable in that environment having listened to doctors saying the virus can pass with breathing.  But our company tried as best they could with the limited brain capacity and nutcases in charge.  Their heart is always in the right place and that's important. You have to be your own mayor, governor and manager now I believe, there is so much misinformation and conspiracy theories everywhere.  I failed too.  I was pretty sure I had it but didn't isolate from P and now he's sick.  I also believe I killed my little Mona the cat. 

I'm the bad guy. 

Sick and sequestered to window ledge

Labored breathing worse during full moon? This is sister's pic from Colorado where you see the moon so huge!

25 or 6 to 4

Its very rare that I wouldn't delight in multiple slices of pizza especially on a full blood moon eclipse night when we have major thunderstorms and extreme flash flood warnings.  That's a dream night for a  weather loving nerd like me.  It could only be better if I was off the next day.  I'm excited but I'm also full on wolfin' it big time. My adrenaline level is through the roof. My bike ride was effortless and I was even passing the tall skinny young dudes who usually leave me in their dust.  I rode, I did yoga, a little Tai Chi and I still fear I might eat the cat.  I asked P to hang back in the other room because let's face it, he's gonna say something stupid, some insensitive comment or do one of those things in front of me that drive me insane, like spill water all over the kitchen floor and then walk on it with his dirty shoes.  Or wipe his greasy hands on the couch armrest.  You know what, he doesn't even have to do anything, just thinking about his past crimes against sanitation is already making me want to pounce on his back and take him down.

I'll need to wait this one out in solitude.  I've yet to meet another person that is affected to this degree by the full moon.  My body aches as though every muscle and vein want to burst through my skin.  My breathing is heavy.  Random hairs grow seemingly overnight. My mind races with the thoughts of the deranged. When I talk to people I feel I can see too far into their psyches.  And magically at daybreak everything tends to settle into a more manageable pace.  

If You Get Caught Between the Moon and New York City

This is a dish that an insane person made.  I'm not so much proud of it as I am interested in what goes on in my head when I come up with oddities like this.  And now I recall.  I worked this day.  We had great weather, almost springlike.  I remember telling a guy at work that I was so hopped up on the upcoming full moon already that I could literally run home I had so much energy.  And that made him laugh because I looked all electrified.  My fingertips and eyes were tingling and my hair was all crazy.  On the bike I thought man, if only I could feel this more often I wouldn't be such a miserable fuck.

I exercise daily, I eat pretty healthy, although you'd never know it by looking at this concoction.  It's a shame to know a state of mind and not be able to retrieve it again by your own conjuring.  The moon does a number on me and sometimes it's fantastic.  Other times its too strong and I feel bonkers, not able to form clear thoughts or stay grounded.  I had this idea to form a pie in a pan with potatoes and meatballs, peppers and then egg was used to bind ...and cheese. Shit got weird when the peas came. It was actually good, I ended up eating it cold out of the fridge that night. Probably just more wolfy behavior.

I took the long way home to find some good street art and happened across all these graffiti artists and some other gems.

Zoodles with pesto and cashews

Full super low moon on the night of a great day off.  No surprise the physical energy was flowing like tap water.