I was walking along a bridge that connected to the freeway. Traffic was bustling by me, but I didn’t mind all the commotion, nor was I threatened by its proximity. I contemplated jumping from the bridge into the busy traffic below. I had been told that I would survive the jump (even though it was a very long fall), even with the speedy cars. I jumped, landing on my feet without an ache in my body and without a car coming close to hitting me. I turned and saw nothing behind me. No cars, traffic, people. Just a long empty road. Ahead of me cars were appearing out of nowhere. I walked along, seamlessly weaving through the busy activity without doubt, courageously and curiously drifting with some purpose.

I dreamt I was in a space vessel with some unknown travelers. I told a fellow traveler that I was worried about being sick in outer space and that I was scared of being weightless. The traveler squenched his eyes with annoyance, “But you’ve done this a million times, why would it make you sick now?” Perplexed, I tried to remember what it felt like to travel in outer space all those times before. Then it occurred to me that the impact of spinning combined with high speed made me so dizzy I would fall asleep every time. On this sojourn, however, I awoke shortly after take off and watched the stars as we spun and projected through the galaxy. Our destination was further than we had gone before and I was glad to get to be conscious finally.

Today is my first day off cigarettes. I don’t remember the last time I attempted quitting. I remember the first cigarette I smoked after having been quit for over a year. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my boyfriend of the time, after a string of stressful days, and after a particularly grueling day waiting tables at a local restaurant. He had offered me cigarettes before, but I had yet to accept any of these hand-rolleds. I was especially desperate and moody this afternoon, which caused me to toss caution to the wind. What I recall of that cigarette was that it did not taste very good, made me nauseous, but relaxed me. I remember thinking the disadvantages outweighed the perks right then at the kitchen table, but I fell victim to my own weakness and succumbed to another year and a half of roller-coaster up-down smoking.

The clarity of quitting, this time, will serve me well because I’m making the leap differently than past attempts.

• I have so far told my closest friends about this decision to quit. It’s cold turkey and I might get snippy or moody, but I will make every effort to avoid the foul behavior.
• I am carrying around with me a bottle of this just in case: http://www.gaiaherbs.com/images_prod/nicotine-relief.jpg.
• More yoga!
• A quitting buddy, Patrick, will smack my hand and/or insult me anytime I fail myself.
• I am considering setting aside, occasionally, 8 or 9 dollars to represent the money I’d otherwise spend on tobacco (I smoked roll-your-own American Spirits, which, although more expensive, was organically grown and the pouch would last sometimes upwards of two weeks), making it my healthy lung foundation. I have yet to figure out what to do with the money (suggestions welcome).

And, of course, there are some things I will do similarly to my past attempts.

• Be thankful for my senses of taste and smell returning. More bath salts, essential oils, sushi, bread, coffee and experimental desserts. Need I say more?
• Far less alcohol. Smoking is a time killer. So is drinking. The two combined are like salt and pepper.
• New found time on my hands (literally) resulting in some new, healthy habits, or an emphasis on the regular old stuff.
• Drink more water. I can’t explain, but it always works this way. Perhaps my body knows when it’s trying to flush out old toxins, especially toxins that I’ve put in my body daily for too long  a stretch.
• I’ll smell better, be cleaner, have whiter teeth, have a more natural, less harsh voice, be more alert, more balanced………

Your Road to Bliss:

1.5 cups flour (all purpose, rye, whole wheat, pick your poison)

1/3 cup of Carob Powder or Cocoa Powder (if you use this, I highly advise you reduce your sugar)

1 cup sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup of water or cold coffee

1/2 cup of oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp vinegar

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Grease a 9″ cake pan.
3. Combine all dry ingredients, mix thoroughly.
4. Add water, oil and vanilla, mix well.
5. Add vinegar, but do not overmix! If you see bubbles, stop stirring.
6. Pour batter in cake pan (duh), and slide into the oven, leave it there for 25-30 minutes.

For reference, I have played with this recipe so much (and made it with other people that experiment into much grimmer territories than my comfort level) that I can give some words of advice and/or suggestions for variation:

• Use apple cider vinegar. It’s good for you and if you don’t have a big jug of it in your kitchen, this is the perfect excuse to buy one.
• To make a thicker, fudgier cake add more cocoa/carob powder, increase by about 2/3 cup. You will not regret it, especially if you like chocolate the way I do. The batter will be much thicker t han usual. You like this.
• If you’re going to use coffee instead of water, make sure it’s room temperature because otherwise it will throw off the chemistry of your batter.
• I’ve heard about an extreme variation that involved a sourdough starter and lemon zest. Not for the faint of appetite.
• I have used coconut oil, which some of you have probably already adopted anyway. I, however, felt that it took too much from the taste of chocolate. I have also tried sesame oil, which had the same effect, except this I didn’t mind as much, as it provided a nuttiness. I prefer extra virgin olive oil.
• Mix by hand. No regrets.
• Make a ganache! Simply put, if you haven’t made it before: make sure you have a ratio of chocolate and milk 2: 1. Heat milk (or any preferred milk-like substance, half-n-half, goat milk, cream, rice milk, whatever) and pour the heated milk over the chopped chocolate. Cover. It’ll do it’s thing. Pour this, while it’s still warm, over the cake. Yum!
• Double the above recipe to make two layers, marry the two with  homemade syrups and jams. I once made a double layer chocolate cake with ganache, between layers was a delicious homemade elderberry syrup. With elderberry wine! Bliss!
• Experiment with nuts and different kinds of extracts beyond vanilla. I thoroughly enjoyed using anisette extract as well as orange.
• Add cinnamon! Lots of it! Cinnamon and chocolate are a heavenly duo.

I am suffering in an early morning shock of vanity. I rarely go on tirades about these sorts of useless, shallow atrocities, but I am trying to exorcise my hatred for those Ugg Boots. Before I worked on a college campus I never really noticed them. I live in an urban setting where these pampered sophomoric adults who typify the Ugg Boots donned population dare not roameth, unless they’re too drunk to realize where they are. Even then, Ugg Boots rarely make an appearance, luckily, without a safe radius of my home.

I’m willing to make a compromise with the Ugg Boots Wearers. Please, for the sake of a very mildly stylish lady, do not wear those damned fur boats with sweat pants. This trend is like a zombie factory. Everyday it gets grimmer, everyday the style of sloppy sweats tucked into the tops of bunchy Ugg Boots grows more dominate, and I get grumpier.

So, you’re all wearing these psychotically ugly clodhoppers because they’re comfortable? I know there are better options, even considering the Merino Wool lined on the insides of this apocalyptically terrifying shoe make. Just try harder, try not following Jessica Simpson, also. She really does not know what she’s doing.

Why Even Try?

A ceiling of thorny branches obscure milky gray skies, tufts of new wild grass shoot indiscriminately here and there. A sooty ground is slowly turning into a playground for robins and squirrels. Blackbirds caw atop the roof of an old unused church. The tools from last summer’s painting project are stacked against the building’s back wall, covered in crusty leaves. The three-legged grill is rusted into one spot.

The sun rests wearily in Pisces. It’s a trans-figurative influence, traipsing with difficulty in a zone of monotony and death, purging cesspools of forgotten hope, ripe with an unsurprising mood. Nothing is disturbed, everything is stagnant with memories of first Aquarius, then Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio, Libra, Virgo, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, Aries. Pisces awaits its final day, to put the memories into their cubbies, to let the energy completely break itself down. All rest in their bunkers, like Aphrodite and Eros, waiting for the safety of spring’s dawning.

Underneath these heavy somber layers is some unsettled urgent chaos that cannot break from the Piscean cloak. The desire for peace is never matched, security always beyond grasp. The cycle perpetuates. Not until Spring’s equinox can a deliverance occur. Fields barren, minds drained, bellies sagging, lips unquenched. All under the Piscean guise march drearily to a death, a funeral song. The apex approaches. It will always happen this way.

The vines growing along the tree turn from fragile veins to supple toadstool covered fingers, crawling and reaching upward. Little violet flowers peep out along the sidewalk’s edge. Trees lining the street begin to burst with trembling green buds. Birds swoon to one another in glorious, fluting cadence. Honeysuckle creeps in along every fence and border, bounteous with unrelenting steadfast, the eve to the coming influence. The air is saturated, dense with perspiration that has built since November. The earth’s body odor creates reactionary fits.

The sun bursts from its melancholy into a vibrant position honed only by Aries. A spirit of unique newness spawns and awakens the rust, the fragility, the oldness. A daring bet to survive the cycle again is placed by the Aries sunrises, with a bouncy, clean, childish grin. Activity once solemn becomes seemingly abruptly refreshed. And so again, it will go.

One of my first encounters this morning was with a man whose eyes were bloody red, the pupils a milky black. His skin and hair were the same hue as his white thick cotton tee. His faded black Fubu pants were held somewhere indiscriminate of what the actual essence for which pants are traditionally worn. Barely was there time to turn on the public catalogue monitor before my perceptions of the morning were jostled. I was chanting internally that by 11 I would be able to sit down with a cup of coffee from the cafe and get to the busy work my job revolves around, but it was already too late. Everything became clear that my morning was not to be a good one, not until the people with issues had their complaints resolved.

And this gentleman with the worrisome eyes, eventually sitting with his buddies from one of the local homeless shelters, he was young, seemingly already influenced by one thing or another, approached me before I could view the catastrophe that the book-drop always is, before I could check on the holds list, putting his face close to mine as I leaned over the public pc to say “hello” interrogatively. He stared at me coolly, waiting for a flinch or a remark, but I could only say “hi” back and turned away without further inquiry. Walking towards the corner of seats he watched me with a maniac fluttering of one of his black eyes. I brushed it off, but couldn’t help wondering what else might come when I was at the front desk.

Before my supervisor and I, who were manning the front desk together, had a moment to collect ourselves for the shift, we heard shouting close by. A second young man was yelling obscenities at an older raggedy man whose words were softer, but growing urgent. Soon the older man approached the front desk, in a dingy flannel shirt with a bulging turquoise backpack in his hands and a tragic, watery look in his eyes. A young, possessive man had accused the elder of stealing his backpack. Given the younger man’s hostile tone and immediate usage of inflammatory language, which, no doubt, was perused to convince the sad elder to hand over the rather sodden pack.  Regardless of the foul language and depth of rage, most of which I fail to repeat here due to its racial slurrage, the old man refused to give up the backpack.  Secretly, I applauded the old gent because he maintained a quiet calm that outweighed his apparent fright.

Neither myself nor my supervisor needed to dial for security, as our omnipresent guard was already dashing down the stairs to dissolve the problem, as he has done reliably throughout his tenure. The young man was running on more than adrenaline, we found, so the police were summoned. Being that our facility is located directly next to the police headquarters, the event would diffuse in only moments. Things like this happen all the time at public libraries, perhaps even in the smallest of provinces, so I moved about my morning duties while the police investigated the minor details of the younger and the elder. Upon the police arriving, however, the younger man began to quibble in a shy tone, remarking that he simply asked the elder whose pack he carried and where he found it.  My eyes rolled involuntarily.  The police were not amused and asked the younger to perhaps take a walk with them.

And, surprisingly, I finished my work with little more interruption, though it did look like a possible romper.

Part One:

I was pregnant with our child. I knew I was close to childbirth because the due date had already passed. We took a train into town, we had been living in the country for some time, but needed to get into a populated region for some specific errand. The train stopped because a man had been run over and lost all of his limbs as well as his head. The lone, very square looking torso was passed through the train, much to the chagrin of the many passengers. It looked nearly frozen, and neatly pared.

We decided at this point to de-board the train. Soon after this, though, I went into labor. It was a very solitary experience, and also somehow very painless. I told everyone after having the child that I didn’t know why it was always talked about in such morbidly painful ways. It was one of the easiest things I had done! We named the boy Saul and he had beautiful blond hair and a wild, innocent curiosity. He was instantly independent and yet very connected to his parents. I walked in a drugstore with a soda fountain with Saul, jointly we were oodled by strangers with a penchant for such images as mother with child.

Meanwhile, as I bonded with my new son, you were sorting things out with a fuzzy image, kind of like a walking cloud of static. An entire soundtrack of music burst forth in pockets of heralding, epiphanic tides, I was distraught and trying to stay focused on Saul, your mom was also keeping me company. I looked deep in your eyes and asked you something, and said, “Please be honest.” You responded casually, “Well, yes,” with a shrug to your shoulders.

Saul slept between us.

Part Two:

We had a church wedding. Everything matched a tradition neither of us follow or believe in. My hair was closely cropped and dyed, though no-one could tell since I wore a blossoming veil that concealed the short red tufts. A flood was raging slowly into downtown as hundreds of people ushered us into the church my parents took me to as a child. This Catholic church had a peculiar Italian architecture, which, even though we could not accept what the building stood for, somehow appealed to our own designs. Instead of the usual organ master, we chose your brother to beatbox. This inspired a few giggles throughout the usurping crowd that greeted us. You decided to wear white with me, we radiated newness and growth, particularly in our hands. Tenderness and excitement percolated throughout the ceremony. When we walked back outside after placing rings on each other’s fingers, the water was at the bottom of the steps. We found a salvation in this.

Just as I promise to write more often on Tirades From the Sink, I also promise to post more podcastics at kitchenkillingfloor.podomatic.com.