Big drama outside, very small happenings inside

Oh, so that's what 11 hours of sleep feels like! Every now and then I get these glimpses of what it would be like to get an appropriate amount of sleep each night - which I'm convinced that none of us do - and I think maybe lack of sleep is the reason why we haven't yet achieved world peace or cured cancer. At any rate, I'm hopeful that 11 hours with a pillow will heal me in ways that days of meds and even green chile could not. Although yesterday's conference call muting while I hacked up a lung was productive, I can't do the same in my in-person meetings later this week, so this gunk needs to pack its bags and get outta my system.

It wasn't a bad weekend to be locked indoors on the couch, though. A little lady named Irene blew threw town, after all. It was a strange couple of days. I was home alone, half delirious from cold meds, frantically watching the storm ravage my homeland and checking in with the folks down south. Then I'm hunkering down while it's blowing my own neighborhood around. Then I'm frantically watching points north to see what the thing would do to our loved ones up there. Exhausting, and sad. We've had about enough of natural disasters this year, don't you think?

The next day I went for a walk around the neighborhood - the most physical activity I'd done in days, or have done since - and this is what I saw.

 

This is nothing compared to points south or north, of course... but certainly enough to make me feel humbled. And two houses down from ours, seeing a tree resting against someone's bedroom windows, that's enough to make me feel damn lucky. 

And so it was a hunkering-down weekend, as predicted, which involved eating the food that I (very oddly) found the energy to cook on Friday, meant to last a few days. (Perhaps expending all that energy in the kitchen is why it's taking me so long to get mine back?) I roasted chiles and made green chile chicken casserole. I made an ice cube tray of fresh pesto before the storm wreaked havoc on my basil (I only lost one branch, it turned out). I made more caponata. I made chicken piccata. I was so bored I even had an egg-poaching contest against myself (hint: I won). 

 

And then I collapsed. And fell in love with this television show. And confirmed that I never should've watched this movie. Which pretty much brings us up to date. How did you all fare in the storm?