Today was different; feels of possibility. I woke up to an alarm after five hours sleep to finish writing about Irigaray, finished that in plenty of time and got ahead on my reading. After class, I spent four hours grocery shopping for my sister.

It was interesting. I was doing things for myself from an early age, but I've never shopped for a family of eight. The amount of planning involved--especially with a diet high in produce--is spectacular. Also, the repeated push-starting of the car (not my car, which would have completely stressed me out) and a mild blizzard contributed to the sense of adventure. :)

And now I'm home, in pain (a high 4) but thrilled. There are vegetables in my fridge, a backup jar of nutella in my pantry, and--perhaps most importantly--a dozen packets of seeds across my desk. I have been counting them, reading and re-reading, arranging them. I've narrowed it to four I definitely want to grow and six others in the running. They are my sister's seeds, shared because that's what we do, and because out of the packets that I choose, I'll only need a few. It's important not to get involved with too many different varieties. This is, after all, the girl who killed lavender and rosemary in Utah making her first beginner garden.

Before now I never appreciated how much fantasy goes into planning a garden, but I'm making up for lost time, savoring every choice in vivid detail. The nutty, crisp warm of biting into a parsnip? Or the high contrast of casper and sweet pumpkins sprawling across my yard, disconcertingly orange and white against the lush green of their vines? What do okra plants even look like? And what kind of tomatoes do I want for making my first eggplant parmesan completely from scratch?

I also have, from this afternoon, 20$ of un-designated cash in my coat pocket. I would hate to associate poverty with virtue, but I think that it (poverty) can, for some people in some circumstances, be good. I'm one of those people in one of those times; some alchemy of my current circumstances allows me to unpack the magic in a twenty-dollar bill like never before. I was recently out of gas, funds, and fresh food all at the same time, but still had my basic needs completely covered. Knowing what I can do without makes it easier to understand what the things I have are worth--and turns a small amount of cash into much more freedom than I thought it could be.