orange kiss

Not my photo, but it is free to use, and certainly beautiful. And the name of this post comes from a photo collection curated on the same website.

This morning, the struggle is real.

Kiddo took a minute out of her first break to commiserate. She said she’s struggling, too. But she also suggested another Sleep Token song I might enjoy, that she’d recently discovered. “Give.”

Those texts were some of the first things to greet me, as I struggled to rouse myself. I can always tell it’s her, because she sends short bursts of several messages, or reactions to messages I’ve sent her.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t immediately perked up.

With dramatic flair and a bit of lyrical Sleep Token wordplay, I said I wished I could stay in bed and cry, but that it was “time to emerge.”

So, I toddled on into the kitchen. Put some butter in the frying pan I’d just cleaned up a little bit more. Chopped up the rest of the spinach in the pan, before the surface got too hot. My eggs came out more spinach than eggs, but they were tasty. Hot sauce on top.

Two strips of salty, fried bacon, and toast with crunchy peanut butter and strawberry preserves.

I’ve been toasting my bread in the pan with my eggs and bacon so I can really lock in some buttery flavor to the crispness. But you can’t really spread peanut butter on toast made that way. It ends up too soft in the middle. The peanut butter would be too thick– you’d have to use so much force to spread it that you’d rip the bread.

So today, I tried an experiment. I added my PB then placed a pat of butter in the pan and added the bread PB side facing up, on top of the butter.

Not sure what I think of the results. The peanut butter got very melty. I had to kind of stir the preserves into the peanut butter to get it all to stay together, after I took it off heat.

It still tasted good.

AND, I peeled and ate a Cara Cara orange, from the 3 pound bag I’d gotten at the store, on the last trip.

“Give” is a pretty great song.

I listened to a few more after that.

And I read some encouraging things strangely enough from my antiviral program. They were cautioning against deepfakes and AI-generated persona scams. But here is what they said:

“Stay real, stay safe, stay you”

AND

“Fortunately, no matter how many fake, AI-generated people are on the web, you’re real and still here, and that’s worth celebrating!”

After teetering on the brink of needing to call the Crisis Center last night, it felt good to see that someone was celebrating my persistence.

Not that kiddo wasn’t. She made an effort, too.

I guess it’s funny how some well-intentioned words hit, and others don’t.

There have definitely been moments where she’s made me laugh, in spite of myself, and lifted my mood dramatically. My having still been in bed and half asleep this time was probably also a factor. I am not a morning or even early afternoon person.

Anyway, I’ve got to start getting for work, but thought I’d check in, for the dopamine.

Stay real, stay safe, stay you.