Mostly employed.

I was all geared up last week to write a post on rejection after I didn’t get a job I really wanted, but then I received a deluge of freelance work and didn’t have too much time to feel sorry for myself. The job I wanted was a salaried position copyediting a financial newspaper based in New York from home, and the job I have now is freelance curricula editing/thesis editing/ghostwriting. While I would prefer the steady income and résumé cachet of the former, there’s something to be said about the variety and flexibility of the latter. Today, for instance, I dropped Daniel off at school in the morning, headed over to the farmer’s market, came home and edited a unit from an intro to art course, touched up a project management lesson, revised the first portion of a course on paralegals and family law, and spent the afternoon researching neuroscientific approaches to investing. It works for now. I’ll keep looking for more gigs, but for the time being I’m happy to wake up in the morning and have a list of tasks waiting to be completed.

Daniel and I have been cooking a lot, and by a lot I mean every night, because we haven’t quite gotten the whole let’s-go-out-for-dinner thing down yet (even though we budgeted for it and told each other we were going to go out once a week...). The novelty of having my own little kitchen hasn’t worn off yet. Nor has the gratuitous feeling that no one is going to take my food or leave the dishes in the sink (dorm life is not for the uptight and persnickety). While I currently want, with every fiber of my being, to be one of those self-satisfied domestic bloggers who posts SLR shots of every meal she makes (you know what I mean), I don’t have an SLR (I told myself if I got that fancy job I would treat myself to a cute little Rebel, but alas, it was not to be. I have no other way of justifying half a month’s rent on an electronic toy...) and I don’t quite have the chutzpah to believe anyone actually wants to see boring pictures of my food (believing anyone wants to read my words, though? I’ve got buckets of chutzpah for that).

I will, however, give brief descriptions of some of our best meals so far, because I want to remember them and because I’m quite proud of what we’ve come up with (posting menus is nothing new for me; cf. The Dinner Club). Tonight, we paired the soba noodles we picked up at the Asian market yesterday with a spicy peanut sauce, and had these huge steamed green beans fresh from the farmer’s market on the side. For dessert, we had homemade cinnamon-apple boba tea. Talk about a pièce de résistance—boba is surprisingly easy to replicate at home. Other triumphs:

• Red bell peppers, roasted on the stove burners and filled with tuna 
• Butternut squash soup with garlic cheese bread
• Fried tofu with spicy peanut cabbage stir-fry
• Garlic edamame with tofu and rice
• Macaroni with homemade cheese sauce (roux ftw)
• Italian sausage on sourdough with cabbage salad

Et cetera. Thinking of dinner is a pain, but whipping it up and having everything I need at my fingertips is a serious joy. I can’t wait for fall foods. I just picked up a bag of Jonathan apples this morning. The fall weather, however? Not so much. I noticed this morning, looking out our window, that some of the leaves on the trees in the courtyard have started changing color. Um, it’s still technically summer. Go easy on us, Michigan.