sometimes it's hard to get up

_ and when it is, I lie there for a while, wanting to roll over and sleep for a couple of hours, and fighting, trying to find the will to get up.   I think of TS Eliot's The Hollow Men, one particular stanza, and it works so well I copied it and put it on my bulletin board to memorise it.  Here it is. Maybe you can use it, too:

Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow

I guess it's the spasm that works for me.

what did you have for dinner tonight?

I’m going away next week so I’m trying to use things up rather than let them spoil in the fridge while I’m gone.  I’m also trying to diet, like most of the free, fat world in January. I’m using The FAST Diet book to help me along , because you only have to deprive yourself for two, disparate,  days a week.  The other five are yours, but less than you’d think.  Abstinence is contagious.  The Fast book has a few neat recipes that are low in calories and instrumental in curbing appetite.

However, like most diet menus or recipes, it is both unfeeling and inconsiderate.  I have never found a diet menu programmed for leftovers.  If you ever needed to know what to do with leftovers, D(iet)-Days are the time.  I’ve seen amounts called for of an ingredient that I never saw again like: 1- ONE- 1 tablespoon of tomato paste!  What are to supposed to do with the rest of it?  Right now I am coping with an overage of vermicelli .  I foolishly activated a whole package of the dried stuff and now I am trying to figure out how to use the rest of it, in an abstemious way, of course.  See, that’s the trouble. You can’t just toss an unused portion of something into something else because it wrecks the calorie count.  Unfair!  But, as you already know, I am dedicated to using up leftovers. I can’t simply discard an unused portion of anything – can - not.

So this week, in addition to doing too much in other areas of my life, I am coping with odd leftovers in a dietary way.  If I had any spare time, which I don’t, I should write down some of the ingenious recipes I have concocted. Necessity, as you know is the mother of you-know-what.  The hardest part would be to name the dishes thus arrived at.  I don’t think so. 

Vermicelli Venture?

I’ll never see it again.