Recently I was inspired by Maddy Court’s excellent food diary, so I decided to make one of my own. It ended up being a weeklong diary not just of what I ate but everything I did and thought, and is a bit of a tome. TL,DR; I walked my dogs, I hung out with my friends, I worked, I ate a lot of Costco food.
Friday
For breakfast I added ground beef to leftover brussels sprouts (which I always calls brussels prots in my head) and some leftover brown rice to that, salted it (pink salt in the mini mason jar shaker, always thinking "I should clean the lid so the little holes aren't so clogged") and drowned the whole thing in herdez tomatillo salsa. It was incredible which surprised me because I was too half-awake to have anticipated such pleasure. A single cup of black tea and the most intense cravings for dark chocolate- I always like to eat it with my tea. I didn't have any so I pilfered a few chocolate chips from my housemate's jumbo sized bag (thanks Jacob!) Which were a poor substitute but took the edge off until I can get my own. I fed the dogs their kibble and, still wanting for something, I microwaved a bowl of frozen costco strawberries. Quito begged for one which is funny because obviously dogs don't like strawberries but Quito will force down anything he thinks might be edible, even if it doesn't taste good to him, so I gave him one and giggled while he horked it down. Later I'm sure it will come out the other end of him poop-shaped but otherwise unchanged.
I worked until lunch (I was stuck with my novel for awhile but have now become unstuck, thank goodness!) and then I fixed a version of the viral tiktok salmon bowl of last year, made possible by the fact that costco is once again carrying seaweed snacks. I was too lazy to cook salmon so I opened a can of sardines, which I grew fond of in Portugal last fall, and this was a passable substitute. The bowl was brown rice mixed with veganaise and siracha, costco kimchi (IYKYK) and the sardines, each bite eaten with a seaweed snack like little sushis. I also had a piece of gluten free toast with earth balance.
I worked for a few more hours and then walked to the climbing gym, scoring some chocolate on the way, which I ate while climbing. The gym was full of children lead climbing 5.13s, which is good reminder that none of us will ever be as good at climbing as a child. On the walk home the sun was still out and I kind of wanted to walk forever. Listening to Kesha while walking the trash-strewn streets of Anchorage is such a vibe. For dinner I threw ground beef and frozen peas into the cast iron skillet and ate it with fake feta- fake feta is a recent obsession that's on its way out. I walked the dogs along the creek- the trail was slush and standing water and there were six cops just standing in the trees for some reason.
The dogs had their fill of old food, vomit and human feces that is being revealed as the snow recedes and then we headed home. My room was full of sunbeams and I had the urge to fall asleep in the pile of clean laundry on my bed, chihuahua style, but instead I folded it and put it away.
I was still hungry later so I had an orange and some earth balance on gluten free bread and then at 9 I met a friend at the Sundog and Ed Washington show at Van’s dive bar. Anchorage has several bands that I really like, including these two, and I remain impressed that there’s such good music here. Or maybe there’s been good music everywhere I’ve lived, but this is the first place that I’ve lived that’s small enough that I’m aware of everything going on, including the good music. Anyway, lots of happy people filled the bar and it was a nice time.
Saturday
I didn’t go to bed until 1 a.m. and then I woke at 4 am when Kinnikinnick barked at me for no reason? She used to only bark in the middle of the night as her emergency “I need to potty” alert, but lately she hasn’t wanted to potty she’s just wanted to let out a couple of really sharp barks in the middle of the night. She’s thirteen years old, I think she may be starting to lose her marbles a bit? After the random barks I couldn’t fall asleep for like two hours and I was filled with a lot of thoughts. Lately at the advanced age of 40 I have come to the very delayed realization that I have a lot of thoughts. At least 35% more thoughts than I need to be having, or that are useful to me. It’s great when I’m doing a creative project because I have lots of ideas (I think that’s why I’m a writer, I need to do something with my extra thoughts) but the rest of the time they just sort of clutter up the ol’ brain and keep me from being able to relax, or have a nice time, or sleep. In my next life I would like to be reincarnated as a being with fewer thoughts (consider this my official request to the universe which, thanks to quantum entanglement, was delivered the instant it entered my brain, along with the spam mail of the rest of my thoughts).
Oh my god, speaking of thoughts, I just had one- you know how some people are like “we create our own realities with the way we think/affirmations really work/change your thoughts and change your life” and other people are like “that is gaslighting toxic positivity and it sucks” and there is truth in both? Like, obviously there are many socioeconomic factors that determine what is possible for each of us and also within those parameters there is a lot that we can very much control. I just thought of another way of looking at it- the universe has a really good algorithm with really excellent AI. When you’re on tiktok, the app pays attention to what you watch all the way through, what you like, what you scroll away from, what you watch more than once, etc, and it uses that info to show you more of the same, until you have a FYP that’s so maddeningly specific to your mental state at that exact moment that it gives you the most brain drugs possible and you cannot help but continue to watch. The universe is the same way- our world shifts and changes shape depending on what we think, say and what we give our attention to. And this is constantly in flux- sometimes we’re able to build a healthy FYP, sometimes we’re overwhelmed and flailing and end up surrounded by toxicity and we’re like “how did we get here", and we don’t always have the strength to dig ourselves out of that and get our FYP to a good place again, at least not right away. And that’s ok. Being a human is fucking hard. But when we’re ready and when we have the strength again it’s cool to know that the universe is a sort of algorithm and we can influence it.
I’m rambling! This newsletter is fun, it reminds me of when everyone used to have a blog, and it was like say whatever! Long form! Dear diary!
Anyway, this is supposed to be a food journal so Saturday, continued- I finally fell back asleep for a few hours then woke up and made Costco frozen broccoli with ground beef and leftover brown rice for breakfast and it was really good. My friends are in a hockey league and I had wanted to see their last game, which was this morning, and I was running late so I raced out the door and caught the last twenty minutes of it. The hockey playing was exhilarating and very fast and everyone was very good and seemed to be having a lot of fun. This winter I learned to ice skate, this fall I think I’ll join the women’s hockey league- it’s very beginner friendly and I am a beginner, so.
My friends’ team was called the squids and their colors were pink and grey and my other friends had brought pink things to the game- mimosas in pink grapefruit juice and tiny pink plastic squids. Afterwards we stood in the sun in the parkinglot talking and since it was warm and sunny (like 45 degrees!) it felt so good, even though we were just standing in a parkinglot of an ice arena across from a car wash. We walked dogs on the coastal trail and then I went home and made a salad with fake feta and ground beef on it and ate chocolate and an orange and tried to take a nap but couldn’t really, too many thoughts, but it was nice to lay in bed with the blackout curtains drawn and be cuddled by dogs for an hour. I felt disoriented after the quasi-nap, sort of unstuck from space-time, so to reorient myself I cleaned both the bathrooms, which made me feel accomplished and also reminded me of how little time it takes to clean a bathroom- like five minutes? So why do I procrastinate it so much. For dinner I made the sardine kimchi bowl and ate it with seaweed snacks again and then a friend arrived from Cordova and we got ready for a recital at another friend’s house- a big house out in Chugiak. There were tons of people there and friends played piano, the flute, the saxophone and sang opera while the sun sank golden outside the huge windows and water shimmered in the inlet. My ex was there so I stress-ate many miniature peanut butter cups from a bowl of trailmix on the charcuterie table. I also ate gummy bears, grapes, gluten free crackers, smoked almonds and several dill pickles. A friend brought a twenty-pack of taco bell tacos for the charcuterie table which I thought was hilarious and also brilliant. I don’t drink so at parties if I feel uncomfortable I just stress eat, and pound a lot of seltzers, and walk around from room to room, and also pee a lot. Being allergic to alcohol prevents me from having to worry about overusing it but sometimes I wish there was something I was addicted to, so I could use it to have fewer thoughts. When I got home it was late and everyone was eating cheerios so I had some cheerios too, and then I used the EMDR ball on youtube to try and stop feeling stressed about my ex.
Sunday
Niknik woke me too early again and I couldn’t fall back asleep but I did cuddle the dogs for a while, curled warm in bed in the morning light from the big windows in my room listening to the birds (who have only recently returned), so that was nice. Niknik in particular really likes to cuddle in the morning, which is nice since I don’t have as much quality time with her as with Quito, as he’s super clingy and she’s a bit aloof. But first thing in the morning Niknik surfaces from deep under the blankets and shoves her whole small body against my face and we cuddle and it’s great.
For breakfast I had sardines on GF toast with veganaise and mustard, which is what I ate for breakfast almost every day in Portugal. Niknik wouldn’t eat her breakfast, which basically never happens, and I worried that her stomach was upset from something fowl she horked down on one of our walks but then a few hours later she did eat her breakfast, and seemed fine. I ate some salami and let myself look at tiktok for an hour (I’m trying not to mindlessly binge tiktok and only recently re-downloaded the app after having it off my phone for a time) and then drove to Kinkaid beach with a friend. The trails down to the beach were still covered in snow, which is wild. We talked about the specific heat capacity of water, which I think about all the time in winter here. Specific heat capacity is the amount of energy something can absorb before it changes one degree in temperature, and water has a really high specific heat capacity. This is why coastal areas have lower temperature extremes than inland areas- because the ocean absorbs a shitload of either heat or cold before it changes temperature, therefore moderating the climate around it. For example Anchorage, which is on the coast, stays mostly in the 60s in summer and in winter the cold snaps are maybe -10, whereas in Fairbanks, which is further north in the interior and far from the ocean, winter cold snaps are -40 and summers are in the 80s or even 90s. (You see this in the lower 48 with coastal areas vs the Midwest, which is super far from any ocean.) The beach itself, when we reached it, was windy and bright and wonderful and the snow on the mountains in the distance looked so lovely and the tide was way, way out and the dogs were stoked to poke around eating discarded this and thats. We flipped through the well-worn rolodex of human suffering in our conversation as we walked on the beach, attempting to puzzle out the why of it all but in the end we came up empty. Damn. Maybe next time. I had my film camera so we did a photo shoot in one of the driftwood structures and that was cool. On the walk back up we passed a very large man and Quito decided to run and bark at this his heels- Quito does this every once in a while and I know it’s very Bad Behavior but Quito is also an eight pound dog, and mostly people laugh it off- this man proceeded to try and kick Quito, at which point my soul left my body and I swear to god I tried to fist-fight this man. I got super up in his face and was screaming at him, straight up raging, and every cell in my body thought that I could fight him and win, I felt like I had herculean strength, that’s how my instinct to protect these tiny ass dogs makes me feel. I often feel like I could fight a bear if it came after them (a black bear, not a grizzly), and I really believe that I could. This man did not fight me though, and I have to say I’m a tiny bit disappointed, and after some back and forth screaming that ended with me yelling “what kind of a father are you?!” (The man was pulling a woman and a child in a sled) and him responding “who said I’m a father?” and then I said “good!” we all went on our merry ways. My friend and I were shooketh, as I’m sure he was, and Quito was happy and oblivious. The human condition was certainly conditioning. Then we drove to Tastee-Freeze (my friend had never been) and got burgers and fries. They have a gluten-free bun that’s decent, although it does wad up in your esophagus as all gluten-free hamburger buns are wont to do. (WTF does that phrase mean, “wont to do”? What even is the English language?)
I thought I would spend more time outside in the evening but it got cloudy in a heavy, grey way and even rained a bit and I was feeling wiped so I did some scrolling and then decided to find something to watch. I realized I hadn’t had vegetables all day so I made this weird salad with sauteed broccoli and fake feta on it, and also ate GF toast, salt and vinegar chips and a bowl of microwaved frozen Costco strawberries. Every show I started was boring, and then I got an idea for a short story called The Situationship where two characters try and connect and live out two different timelines depending on the choices that they make. I worked on that for a while, on the couch with my laptop on my lap and a dog wedged on either side, and then I started watching the recent TV adaptation of Tiny Beautiful Things. My expectations were super low but the first episode was really good and I cried a lot! Parts of it were cringe but the premise, that all of our lives are just barely-controlled chaos and absolutely none of us have it figured out, and that our relationships with each other and with ourselves (and with the earth, I would add) are the only things that truly matter, is solid.
I put myself to bed at a reasonable hour but then had too many thoughts so I scrolled for a while, as one does.
Monday
Morale was pretty good in the morning despite the fact that I’d stayed up too late so hadn’t gotten enough sleep (again) and I baked a salmon that I’d defrosted yesterday so for breakfast I had the salmon bowl with actual salmon instead of sardines.
I keep myself on a Monday-Friday work schedule to have some semblance of routine, although within that things can still get fairly chaotic. Today I wanted to get a lot of work done so that I could take Tuesday off if the weather was good. I worked on my novel for a few hours and then went on a long dog walk with a friend. The tide was way out in Cook Inlet and we saw sand hill cranes on the mud flats and there were pussy willows!
It was grey but the days are so long right now that even if it’s grey for part of the day it’s usually sunny for at least a bit another time, and that rules. For lunch I had GF toast with fake cheese and sardines on it, and then I worked some more, and had some hippeas (I have the giant Costco bag, IYKYK) and chocolate and dried figs. I walked to the climbing gym and man, I can’t get over now nice it is to walk around now that the ice and snow is gone. Have you ever heard of pavement? It’s incredible!! The friend I usually climb with has a shoulder injury so I’ve been climbing by myself, but today a stranger asked me if I wanted a climbing buddy, which was cool, and I think has only happened to me like once before. My friends in Anchorage focus all their energy on skiing in winter and in summer they can’t be convinced to go indoors so it’s actually pretty hard to find people to climb with. Anyway, it was fun to get off the auto-belays, and also funny to try and make small talk with a total stranger. We ended up talking about winter tires, of all things.
After climbing I walked to a friend’s house to pick up some gear for tomorrow and then I walked home. I made meatballs and roasted brussels sprouts for tomorrow and ate some of that and then it was bedtime, even though the sun was still out. I love summer in Alaska!
Tuesday
I woke up early and gathered my things for packrafting. I don’t have a packraft or really any gear for it but the friend I was going with does, so that’s cool. I ate GF toast and meatballs and brussels sprouts for breakfast and made my black tea and drove an hour to Sutton, watching the sun come up over the Talkeetna mountains, which are so beautiful it makes me want to cry. My dash said that the outside temperature was 39 degrees and I did question my choices a bit. Hello summer are you there? It’s me, Karnit. It wasn’t raining though, and I’d brought a lot of layers, which turned out to be a great choice. In Sutton we went to the general store so I could get more caffeine and my friend told me stories of going to that general store as a child when he “lived in a chicken coop without running water” (his words). We left one car in Sutton and drove up the road to a little pullout next to the Matanuska river. We had to carry the boat over an ice sheet and then scoot down off this ice sheet to get into the water, and there were more ice sheets all along the river, which was funny.
The water itself was very chill class two and not very deep and we had a nice time. The only thing that was cold were my feet. We had lunch on an ice sheet. Besides the meatballs and brussels sprouts I brought salt and vinegar chips and dried figs and chocolate and a thermos of mint tea. We popped out in Sutton after a few hours and I drove home, trying not to fall asleep in the warm car.
At home I took the dogs on a walk on the coastal trail, where the birders were out with their big cameras photographing birds in the cold grey. For dinner I made the salmon bowl and then I thought I’d watch something but instead I discovered this trend-
Based on this poem-
I fell down the rabbit hole and attempted to make a few of my own- the Eminem one was the hardest, the lyrics to Lose Yourself are like Shakespeare? But I did take a stab at it.
Before bed I was still hungry so I microwaved a bowl of frozen peas and put earth balance on them, which is a snack that I enjoy.
Wednesday
When I woke it was snowing. That’s fine… I ate GF toast and meatballs and sauteed broccoli for breakfast and then drank tea and ate chocolate and scrolled on tiktok for a long time before starting work. Sometimes I procrastinate so hard and I don’t even know why? I think right now it’s because I’m writing a whole new scene in my novel from scratch and I’ve been in the editing phase for a while, not the creation phase, and I feel rusty. I bought a water carafe for next to my bed and some dish towels online which felt productivity-adjacent, and by the time I actually started working it was noon. After working for a while I got hungry so I ate some meatballs and dried figs and chocolate, and then I was restless so I played on my balance board. I got a balance board in hopes that it would make me a better surfer but it’s also really fun just as its own thing? Outside, the heavy, wet snow continued to fall, not sticking to anything, a sort of glorified rain. Then I decided to walk my errands in the gross, wet snow, and it was… fine.
At the grocery store I bought a few things and somehow my total was $75? Food has always been expensive in Alaska but since inflation things have gotten truly bonkers. It’s one reason I buy as much as I can at Costco.
A friend came over for dinner and we made a really good green curry and watched more of Tiny Beautiful Things. And I gotta say now that I’ve watched more of it, the show is not not cringe. I still like it though.
Thursday
I slept in until 9:45, which is truly wild for me. I woke up feeling incredibly good, that “everything is beautiful and nothing hurts” feeling. I’m ovulating on the full moon, that’s probably why. I had leftover salmon curry for breakfast and then scrolled while thinking “I need to take tiktok off my phone again”. I took the dogs on their long walk in the cold grey and we contemplated the scrim of ice that still exists on Westchester lagoon.
Once home I ate chocolate covered almonds, microwaved frozen strawberries, and more curry and then I tried to work on my novel but couldn’t really, so then the feeling of failure trailed me for the rest of the day. My bike has been in its cardboard bike box since I returned from Europe in November, and I endeavored to reassemble it at last. I like to ride my bike but I only have one bike (a surly crosscheck) so I can only ride it in Alaska during surly crosscheck season, which is summer. I’m a bit of an outlier here for having only one bike. Asking any of my Anchorage friends how many bikes they own is like asking a tattoed person how many tattoos they have- they need to unfocus their gaze and stare into the middle distance for a while before they can give you an answer. (I just asked my current housemate, Jacob, this question, and he stared at the wall of the garage for a while before answering, “Ten?”) My disassembled bike was rusty from the salty sea air of the Portuguese coast and covered in sand but I got the job done. I ate a salad with fake feta and salmon on it and some salt and vinegar chips and then met up with some friends on my newly assembled bike, and we all rode to the beach. There were still patches of slush on the coastal trail and the scramble down to the water was a snowy, muddy creek but the tide was in and the inlet was looking nice and wet. I’d brought my film camera and this very summery floral dress I got at a clothing exchange and I convinced one of my friends to put it on for a photo shoot before the chill set in and we all got very cold.
Upon leaving the beach one of my friends realized she’d lost the key to her bike, which was locked with another friend’s bike, so we had to call another friend to pick the two of them up so they could go get a spare key and come back, which was a bummer for them but also the days are so long now you can kind of do whatever, it already doesn’t get dark? So much time for activities!
On the bike ride home I felt positively zany, and I kept thinking full moon full moon, wishing I could take this energy and bottle it for sleepier times. When I got home I was hungry so I ate some gluten-free toast and goji berries, and then tucked myself into bed to sleep scroll.
And therein concludes this tome of a weekly diary. Thanks for reading!
-Carrot