So yeah I didn't sleep til 530 AM like I had hoped, but otoh I will say that while I was asleep, it felt like the melatonin helped me get down real deep and I remember there had been some long dream going before I woke up.
Perhaps tonight I will again take melatonin before bed, but also prepare a half-tablet and a glass of water so if I wake up and don't fall back asleep in 20 minutes, I take the half-tablet and see if that can get me back asleep.
So anyways my big plan for today is to roast a chicken. I can eat a few meals from that, then take the remainder of the carcass and turn it into soup.
Ordinarily I would do that in the late afternoon, but I realize with my tendency to be in bed before 7 PM, it's smarter to do it this morning/early afternoon.
Also I've now got the oven heating up. Soon I'll put some carrots, onions, and potatoes in the cast iron pan and cook them in there till they begin to soften. Then I'll put the chicken on top of them and get it cooking.
So later on I'll have a meal of carrots, onions, potatoes, and roast chicken. Along with green beans and pear slices.
Not doing anything too fancy with this. Just doing it pretty simple style.
So I'm glad I've already started things cooking and that I will have a good meal later, plus be able clean up early. Been a long time since I roasted a chicken, don't think I did one last winter. It's a favorite meal of mine to prepare and you can get a lot of mileage out of it.
But it does take spoons to put everything together.
For my favorite Ginza photo today, it's definitely the one that's blurry from all the motion going on in the early morning light of the living room. She really went wild on the catnip carrot after I tossed it in front of her and for the first time showed me her fully playful self. That made me so happy to see her having fun like that and then after she was done, clamber into her cat bed and take a nice long nap.
It's funny because a couple of weeks ago I was texting with a good friend I made at work in the late 2010s and telling her about Ginza.
She texted me and said, "you've become a cat whisperer!"
Maybe I have? Though maybe luck has played a role here, I suspect that if Ginza had socialized with people as a kitten, she would be a total lovebug cat.
But still, it took my persistence and knowledge to start bringing those lovebug instincts to the surface of this feral cat.
It's always nice to cook a good meal that makes a home smell good.
Plus I'm hungry. Appetite was minimal all week long when the caffeine withdrawal symptoms got bad. I ate more food yesterday, but was still under how much I really should eat every day. That sense that I might get really hungry is what led me to buy a whole chicken on a day when I felt no hunger at all.
Now today I'm taking advantage of that and look forward to the meal when it's ready.
Something I wonder now is will there come a day I will look out my front windows in the afternoon or early evening and see Ginza sitting there, wondering if I might pop outside and let her in?
Basted chicken a third time. Skin is beginning to brown lightly. Smells super good.
I'm super hungry now. I ate breakfast after the sit and chat with Ginza today, but that's almost 4 hours ago. Plus the fact I didn't eat nearly enough the past 6 or 7 days.
Basted chicken for the 4th time. It's now about 20 minutes away from being fully and safely cooked. I've started up a small pot of canned green beans to serve with everything that's cooking in the cast iron pan in the oven.
That was a splendid early dinner. I cut off one of the legs from the chicken, both the drumstick and thigh and served it with the potatoes, celery, carrots, onions, and green beans.
The meat was fall off the bone, tender and still juicy. I can cook a good roast chicken.
I'm glad I ate dinner early. All the leftovers have been put away. Now I can just laze away the rest of the day. Which apparently is me watching Seabiscuit for a second straight day. Just so much I love about the movie even in the times it borders on corniness.
If anyone who follows me wonders if what I've been seeing with Ginza these last 4 weeks has perhaps reminded me of the movie Seabiscuit, you're right to do so.
One liberty the 2003 movie Seabiscuit took with history was upsizing the racehorse, War Admiral. War Admiral was in fact about the same size as Seabiscuit. But such upsizing wasn't a bad thing to do with the story, it helps to increase the drama and certainly works in the symbolic terms the movie constantly wants to work with.
There are other divergences from the actual history of Seabiscuit and the famed race with War Admiral, but I can't complain about any of them. The divergences all work well to increase dramatic tensions in the film. And emphasize important themes of redemption, kindness, and healing.
Sometimes I sigh so wistfully when I watch a Notjustbikes' video on Youtube on the transportation infrastructure of the Netherlands.
Like, last year in July, I went to have lunch with somebody in a small town near me. We ate outside on the porch area of a restaurant. It was lovely except...
for the main road alongside where there was so much car traffic and guys driving their huge noisy pickup trucks, showing off how loud their monster trucks were.
I wonder what would happen if someone were to show the owner of that restaurant that video in the toot above. Show it to them and say, "Imagine how much nicer of an atmosphere it would be if you could expand your outdoor seating area and your customers wouldn't have to hear all those giant pickup trucks with their motors being revved by inconsiderate men.
Anyhow today's the 8th day of decaffeinated me. Feels like it was a good decision to do so. Getting back to more baseline me now running without feeding a caffeine addiction seems like it may be improving my afternoon alertness?
I should be drop dead tired right now. I still haven't made up for the sleep I lost from sleeping poorly last week due to withdrawal symptoms, but I'm not terrible right now. I'm tired, but not dead tired.
Maybe because my body is no longer feeling a craving
I certainly plan to get in bed by 7 PM at the latest this evening. I hope that I can sleep straight through or nearly so to 530 tomorrow morning. I'll probably be sleeping better if my body isn't craving caffeine while I sleep.
It's really big thinking about it. I've a few times have tried to induce play with her and yesterday we had a little play involving twine, but today was interesting.
Because one point I'm sitting in my recliner, petting her, and she tried to playbite my cardigan and arm. And I saw she was amped up and she wanted play. So I got up and grabbed the catnip carrot, shook it at her, said, "Ginza!" then tossed it in front of her.
Exhausted her so much she needed a 25 minute nap after.
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