Those of you who know me might be aware that I am the queen of leftovers. I do not throw food away. My first cookbook was about leftovers (Encore: The Leftovers Cookbook), and went into 2 printings. So you can understand I had to make sense of my unused dinner when Matt stood me up the other night. Did I tell you the original menu? I remember mentioning Weight Watchers because I used a WW recipe for "Southern Fried" chicken, baked in the oven - two boneless, meaty breasts. Vegetables included green beans, Israeli couscous in pesto sauce, and baked sweet potato. I ate a small amount of that dinner; I don't have as big an appetite as Matt has, and that night even smaller. .So:

I cut up some of the chicken and added chopped red pepper, celery, hard-boiled egg, onion heated in curry seasoning and mayonnaise to create a chicken salad filling which I rolled into tortilla wraps, for lunches. (Gave two of them away.) I had a guest for dinner last night: seared haddock, roasted beets, sugar snap beans, and leftover Israeli couscous - still have some of that left. Tonight I had sliced chicken on a bed of green beans, sprinkled lavishly with shredded Parmesan and heated till the cheese melted. (Num.) I guess I'll do something like a potato skin with the sweet potato, have to think about the seasoning. Maybe the last of the couscous can be a stir-fried thing like I do with rice.

We go through each day with layers and layers of thoughts, some more useful than others. My mind is like a pousse-café.

I was still roiled after my comeuppance with my son and had to find my equilibrium. I actually started yesterday morning when I woke early and began at once to fuss. You'd think after all this time (54 years) I'd have begun to accept the setbacks and the frustrated expectations, but I am naive in my hopefulness, also maternal and sentimental - words I used in my blog.

So I started thinking about those words, adjectives actually, and listed others ending in 'al', like fraternal and paternal, but I couldn't think of one for sisterly. Okay, "ly" more often is a suffix that makes a word an adverb rather than ad adjective: wryly, hastily, gaily, and so on. I love the 'ine' suffix used for animals: bovine, canine, feline, pavonine (nice one for peacock, isn't it?) and vulpine. but there isn't one for tortoise or turtle and I wish there were. How about 'tic"? Sympathetic, empathetic, hectic, frantic. Yes, but my favourites are very few and very old, as in olden, golden, oaken, wooden, leathern (very old) and silvern. also archaic, seen only in fairy tales.

All this while I was still lying in bed, not sleeping. But I felt better, more relaxed. Focusing on words helped. It usually does.