Ragout and Oatmeal Wheat Bread and Contemplation

I made a portabella, tomato, leek, and cannelini bean ragout and then a oatmeal wheat (quick) bread today. I was also super productive in not doing much homework, yet. The stew was great, I think I added too much creme fraiche but other than that it's super yummy. For the amount of portabellas I had to buy (at a not so cheap price), the stew didn't make that many servings. Oh well. The bread is good, I over baked it a little. For a quick bread it's not bad, but I don't think I'll make it again. When I hear Oatmeal Wheat I expect the kind of bread that you'd get from a yeast bread, so I'm not surprised that it's denser than I wanted. It took ten minutes to put it together and only 45 minutes in the oven. Overall, a good cooking/baking day.

I got up early to do my laundry and went to grab some coffee but ended up reading there for a little over an hour. I'm trying to finish up Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer and Bare Life for Birmingham's seminar this quarter. We've been moving slowly though so I'm not too worried. Tonight I have to make significant process on my English Major Inventory report-this is almost all busy work, cataloging my non and Major classes at DePaul and expanding on what I got out of each English class. Boring, but I understand the need to look back through what I've learned and actively engage with it.

In all honesty, I keep going back to thinking about what happened in Bloomington with Landon. The first week back home I didn't contemplate it much at all. But the past few weeks I stop and it hits me really hard. I think it's because I've never felt so comfortable with someone off the bat like I did with Landon. We never had dull conversations and were both perfectly happy not talking about anything, just spending the little time we had together in silence was comfortable and welcoming. Then all of a sudden-bam-he completely disengages. Which would have been fine if this didn't happen after I directly asked him if he was still interested in spending time with me. Blah blah blah, anyway, I've come to the conclusion that the reason I'm still hung up on this that yes, I'm lonely; but also, this is the third person in a row to do this to me. To really engage in a friendship/pseudo-relationship and all of a sudden, out of the blue, completely change their attitude towards me. I'm tired, in the exhausted sense, of establishing some level of trust and intimacy with men only to have them suddenly change their character.

With Matt, he turned brutally unattached, uprooting our six inseparable month relationship. When he broke things off his language with me was entirely unfamiliar. He refused to see me or talk with me any further about it. My other friend that I was hanging out with just kind of freaked out which was fine, he was super busy and still is so it was bad timing but he also, without any explanation flaked out like I'd never seen him do before. Then Landon showed me a side of himself that was selfish and cocky and heartless.

I'm definitely at a stage where I don't trust too many people. I can't deny it. I've just been hurt (all three were varying degrees of hurt, I don't mean to be uber-dramatic) a little too much in the last eight months.

What now I ask? I don't know. Try to strengthen my friendships here in Chicago a little more I guess. Figure out...or just wait to figure out about graduate school. I'm becoming more and more skeptical about acceptance anywhere. Especially since two of my schools didn't get one of my letters of recommendation til this week because one of my recommenders forgot to send them in. Maybe try to establish more relationships on campus to get better letters to apply next year? I don't know.

What now now? Finish my Goose Island Mild Winter beer, put on The Cairo Gang's album, and start my inventory. Oh, and stop worring so much about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.