What Falls Away

Before I started school, I figured that something in my life would fall away. Would it be the novels? The Knitting? I wasn't sure. My guess was that for a while I'd read less at night and knit more. I figured my brain would be somewhat addled from reading for class and I'd want to unwind in a word-free way. So far, that hasn't happened. In fact, all I want to do is read. It's like my books are about to go on a long vacation and I want to take them all in before they go away. In fact, while I'm still knitting, and, more to the point, fantasizing about knitting, when push comes to shove, it's the books that I want. But my passionate embrace of the written word isn't the point of this post, such as it were. No, what I wanted to point out is that for me, what's fallen away, is food. Not eating it, cooking it. In the last month, I've made it to the market once. I've prepared some meals, I'm sure, but I've taken less joy from the making. Even reading cookbooks feels a little bit like a chore when I have Cosmic and Coraline on my nightstand, not to mention Middlemarch, which I think I should re-read. (I read it for the first time two years ago when I turned 40, which, according to Rebecca Mead, was a very good time to read it.) Luckily, though, I get hungry. And when a girl gets hungry enough, eventually, a girl like me will cook.