Lockdown: Holy freaking mackerel

I’m writing about Wednesday at 5:30 in the evening on Saturday. Woo. NaNoWriMo and work are making it very difficult not to fall behind.

Wednesday was Veterans Day, a holiday from work. But the major proposal I’m working on with the CEO needed work and he wanted to see it soon. I also had an assignment for the conference, and it took me a while to get it right.

I seriously thought about either skipping laundry Wednesday morning or pushing it off to Thursday, but ugh. These days I hate the thought of strecthing early-week stuff into the rest of the week. So after two hours of sleep I got up and just did it.

Turns out early on a holiday morning is a good time for laundry. I was alone nearly the whole time. I thought I might hit the beach but considering what I had to do Wednesday, I knew my best option was to get home as soon as possible and get as much sleep as I could.

I kind of worked on the assignment most of the morning and submitted it around noon.

I needed a break. I was completely drained. I don’t know if it was sleep deprivation, stress from work and the conference, or the flu shot, but I had no energy, so I went to bed for a few hours.

I got up and worked most of the evening on the proposal. This one fell outside the usual process, but when the CEO wants you to work a different way, what are you going to do? So I drank a rare evening Diet Pepsi and got to it.

I don’t remember when I got it submitted, but I thought I did okay for a second draft. I popped in on the NaNo group Skype and banged out something like 350 words. I just didn’t have it in me, and I had a 7:00 conference session, so I begged out early and went to bed.

Breakfast was a Big Mac combo from McD’s, consumed with little moans of pleasure at the laundry, although I think I got the fries right before they threw that batch out, because they were cold and stale. For lunch I fried up a ribeye a day or two past its sell-by date.

When I was at Safeway early Sunday morning, I picked up a tin of anchovies for this thing I want to prepare, inspired by a link Jennifer sent me. While I browsed the options, I grabbed a tin of mackerel too. I’m familiar with the brand — I’ve had the boneless, skinless sardines and they are great. A coworker got me hooked on them, and when they’re on sale at Costco every few months, they’re like a buck-thirty a tin. A regular part of my intake in normal times. I think I’ve only had them once since lockdown began, though.

That was dinner. I made a fresh pot of brown rice, then just popped open the tin and poured the mackerel and olive oil over it and went to town. The mackerel look a lot like the sardines but they’re larger. I took a bite and oh my gosh. Sublime is the word I immediately thought. They also tasted a lot like the sardines, but they were a lot mellower. There was something almost creamy about the texture and taste.

I looked around for my Safeway receipt (I keep all my receipts for at least a couple of weeks) but couldn’t find the stupid thing. I couldn’t remember what I paid for those stupid little oily fish but I’m hooked so it might not matter. Next time I hit the supermarket I’m grabbing a bunch. Although I’m a little worried they’ve spoiled me. Maybe I should finish my enormous stores of sardines first.

My friend-coworker is a fellow sardine fanatic so of course I texted her a photo of my new discovery. She said she’d seen them on the shelf but never tried them. Also, most of those texts I said I got Tuesday? They were Wednesday. Because of course I messed that up.

I’m going to see if I can write about Thursday sometime before bed.

Blah blah blah connections. Blah blah blah pandemic. Blah blah blach leave a comment. I’m blah blah blahing this but I’m sincere. You need connection you got it.