Well, here we are, July 1, time for me to begin to pull together the one blog a month I felt I could pull off.

Yes, this is past tense.

But I am not going to beat myself up about it. Because here I am, on the 1st, sitting in my studio, looking at a painting in progress and watching the neighborhood scary/tragic neighbor do slow and sweaty laps around the block on a loop. And writing this.

This July 1st, I find my two favorite people out of town, one for one week, the other for two, and I am feeling a mite blue about that. Mine is a generally solitary existence, but the people I like I really like and I want them around.

Mercury is again going retrograde as well, and there are two eclipses in the month of July. So according to astrology, my communication is going to suck, mood swings will abound, and I will doubt myself. In other words, it’s another day that ends in “y.”

On top of the stupid solar system and my MIA people, my plan to get rejected is going well. The goal is 100 rejections by the end of 2020, and although I started off slowly, things are picking up. I found a place that will reject my work within 24 hours, and The Sun has rejected my photography, poetry, and prose. The point of all of this rejection is to get serious about submission and creating new works, and to some extent, it is working. I have written a couple of new poems this past month and have been note-taking and researching other forms of poetry and doing generally writerly things.

But the rejection can be a little challenging. Not knock-me-back-on-my-ass challenging, just not completely pleasant. I have gotten some lovely form rejection letters (in the vein of, “This is no commentary on the quality of the writing” which may, upon reflection, be a falsehood and not very nice at all and actually a loud commentary on the quality of the writing).

I do have a poem being published in Plainsongs this month. The acceptance letter referred to it as “your fine poem.” My self-esteem will be dining on those three words for at least the rest of the summer.

So I am just feeling meh and low-grade shitty. As this is a blog, I put that forth as an entirely legitimate way to describe what I am feeling. I am saving the words for the poetry.

And I have been cooking, even though it’s sad little meals for one. Today I made mango sticky rice in the rice cooker and some granola with the last bits of Costco dried mango (it’s mango-riffic), the only fruit I could scrounge up in my pantry.

I made gluten-free chocolate frosted chocolate fudge chocolate Pop-tarts that I had to throw out because they were making me ill, they were so rich (I saved an unfrosted batch in the ‘fridge).

I made epic pizza crust and ate the shit outta that (pro-tip: don’t make the crust too thin and it’s MONEY).

Many other lesser lights have made it to the groaning board in the past 30 days, but here’s the thing: when I feel low-grade shitty, I only want to cook sweet things, or else I want to lounge around in my bed and eat chips and watch crappy Netflix (I call this “Netflix and chonk”).

When this gets old, I need some food for real. Easy food that can be made with whatever is in the ‘fridge that’s not cold cereal, chips, gluten-free chicken tenders, or an entire cake.

So I make confetti salad.

Easy: boil two cups of water/veggie stock and add one cup rinsed quinoa and half a diced onion. Cover and cook until fluffy.

Add to a large bowl: three shredded carrots, one diced bell pepper, handful of chopped cilantro, handful of dried fruit, handful of pumpkin seeds, handful of sunflower seeds, can of chickpeas (rinsed and rained), juice of one lemon, olive oil, and black pepper. Add cooked quinoa, stir, adjust seasoning (maybe more lemon juice or olive oil), and you’re done.

Infinite variations. Add sliced snap peas. Dried fruit can be raisins, cranberries, barberries, mango, cherries. Add a thinly sliced spicy pepper. Use parsley instead of cilantro. Mix up the seeds. Add fresh, halved cherry tomatoes. Add warm grilled chicken (otherwise it’s vegan).

I eat this warm, cold, and room temperature. Throw it over greens. Whatever. Perfect for when your people are gone and you have been barefisting hunks of cake in front of the ‘fridge since they left.

Happy summer.