What I did while doing nothing.

also cottage cheese

Thank you all for all your really kind and thoughtful responses to my sad sack post last week. They made me feel really cared for. I took two covid tests yesterday and they were both negative! This means I won’t have to reschedule my neck ultrasound or Elliott’s birthday party which I am so thankful for. I am still feeling run down but hopeful!

This week’s free illustration is of cottage cheese. You know, beloved cottage cheese. Everyone loves cottage cheese right? Hah, just kidding, I know this is a very polarizing food. But I have a lot of feeeeeelingz about cottage cheese. It’s a comfort food for me. I was reminded of my Mom’s cottage cheese dill bread recipe when Heidi Swanson posted this cottage cheese muffin recipe. Growing up I would eat cottage cheese with canned peaches or, this is strange but don’t knock it until you try it, DORITOS. As a very refined adult (lol) I like to eat it as an afternoon snack. I’ll put it in a bowl, sprinkle Trader Joe’s ranch seasoning on top and scoop it up with triscuits. The cottage cheese has to be Breakstone’s 4% small curd. All other cottage cheese is garbage. Full fat all the way, this is not diet food, this is comfort food. But maybe this also has to do with my high cholesterol numbers that I mentioned last week, yikes. One more thing I’ll mention about cottage cheese is that there’s a reference to it in one of my favorite children’s book Those Darn Squirrels by Dan Salmieri and Adam Rubin. There’s a little breakstones cottage cheese cameo that the grumpy old man eats and I found this detail so enchanting that it instantly stole a place in my heart. That’s why I drew cottage cheese this week and will never be a popular artist, just a lady that feels compelled to draw weird things that make her feel things.

Here are some things I loved this week while I did nothing on the sofa:

I love tugboats. This family lives on one and it is just pure magic.

I listened to the You’re Wrong About podcast about Karen Carpenter and can’t stop watching her drumming, at the end of the clip she really gets into it.

I don’t usually listen to true crime podcasts but Bone Valley was so well done. I cried last night while telling Jason about it. It’s written over 3 years by a Pulitzer winning journalist and explores a man wrongfully convicted of killing his wife who sits in jail even as another man has confessed to the crime. Hearing them untangle the truth of this story and the humanity of the characters is compelling. There’s injustice, and confession, faith, repentance and grace. At the end I wanted to give the murderer a hug and that’s weird. It is also just so unbelievably sad.

I’m really smitten with this AMAZING quilt that Carson Ellis made. It’s loosely about death, yeesh, heavy stuff this week.

That’s all. Thanks for being here!