It's spring

so let's balance eggs for the equinox. . .in the snow. Or, gaze at these lovely pastry swans, which were made and set out on an altar of symbolic-shaped foods in honor of St. Joseph yesterday. . . .

My mouth is all onioned from a Taco Bell spicy chicken thing. I'll spare you the calorie report, and instead list the banal account of "what I did this weekend" and what I'm not doing right now (at work). It's gross, being out of Big Red gum that the people from the Grace Church of the Nazarene brought me in January.

I was supposed to pass on the good deed. They brought more than gum, of course; you may recall my being sustained for weeks on mere microwave kettle corn and honey-dry-roasted peanuts. Working on it. . . .

Anyway, there is no Sudafed a'flowing (I can breathe again unassisted, but am feeling the feeling one might call withdrawl. When your body is used to the old-fashioned appetite-supression-factor of psuedoephedrine that's reminiscient of Dexatrim diet medication of days gone by (wasn't that just caffiene? I was a baby back then and had no concept of being fat and never took the stuff and then they made it "safer"), it gets used to it, plain and simple.

I think I'm going to pass out.

And I've eaten and I can't fill up!

(Add most of bean burrito - yup, we've approached the 1,000-calorie mark!)

Still hungry.

Got up at 5 today, again, as usual, after another thrilling weekend of work-related travel, typing and socializing. Had a blood-sugar nausea episode that almost shut down the Monday morning writing production. Recalled without fondness the 50.5 hours spent these last seven days caring about issues and events, crime and punishment, trash and weaponry.

The St. Joseph's Day tables, well, I actually care. Not enough to hit all four (five) churches putting their Italian heritaged old women to work making cookies all spring and dragging things out of storage, the men in charge of making anchovy-based (and Lent-approved) pasta Milanese, but I care. Other years, I've seen them all. Since March 19 was on a Sunday, well, I'm trying to have a life, too, and you can only eat one plate of this stuff in the space of a couple hours anyway. My cookies - cutie biscotti and some round and chocolate things said to contain cocoanut - are at home, two went for breakfast.

It's this wonderful homecoming of sorts, even if you have no clue who anyone is; you can tell they are happy to be there, happy to have the work over (all but for cannoli-filling and sphingi-frying), happy it didn't snow yesterday and happy to collect openly-displayed piles of cash that will fund feedings and such all year long, in honor of the Medieval tradition Sicilians started once when their prayers were answered.

"This famine sucks, St. Joseph," they said, I imagine. "You're our patron, can't you do something?" Of course it eventually rained, the harvests came back and people didn't have to eat boring fava beans anymore. And then they shared.

Which reminds me, missing one of the tables this year means I didn't get my three lucky beans.

There are two old ones in my desk drawer, and having all three, I think (think Trinity) somewhere in your purse or money-pocket is said to bring fortune. It was described to me less fantasically - "Keep these and you will always have a bit of money, at least some change, to call your own."

Make them jellybeans!

Still hungry, but by no means a'famine.