Papaya and lime

Sitting here eating my papaya with lime juice. It's delicious. My grandma taught me this method of eating papaya and I don't believe I will ever go back. You cut a papaya in half and squirt half a lime into the center of the papaya. Scoop with a spoon and enjoy! So simple. The combination of incredibly sweet, neutral fruit and some acidic lime is wonderful.

For breakfast, I'm eating enough fruit here for a small family. Half a banana, 1/3 cup blueberries, 1/3 cup strawberries, 1/2 cup red and green grapes, 1/3 nectarine, 1/4 apple. Left out the peach from this mix. Usually I wash a whole bunch of fruit and dump it in a bowl so that I can scoop it out easily during the week. That is why my refrigerator has probably 5 bowls of mixtures of fruits and vegetables sitting there, ready-to-eat. I do this with my salad topping too -- bell peppers, tomato, sundried tomatoes, asparagus, artichokes, grapes, onion, cranberries, raisins, avocado, flaxseed whole and ground, walnuts, and pecans. Just pour it on some lettuce and ready to go! I wonder if fruit/vegetable loses nutrition when it's cut? From a quick search, seems that store-bought produce dwindles in nutrients due to not picking at prime-time, length of commute to your store, and trying to grow foods en masse too fast. Farmers markets have food with shorter commute time and produce shorter pick-to-plate time as well. They "may" contain more nutrients for this reason, but there is debate. Personally, I'm a believer of logic and at first glance it makes a lot of sense that trying to grow foods too fast makes them not as potent, and then picking them before they're ripe so they'll be ripe once they're in your grocery store is probably also not that great of an idea. So I'm voting for the farmers' markets produce having more nutrition, based on my logical assessment. Also, fruit that is ripe doesn't appear to be losing nutrients at a horribly high rate, but studies of food (cut and uncut) that sat in a refrigerator for 9 days lead to slight declines in Vitamin C and other phytochemicals, in certain foods. Bottom line, again, appears to be, "Why take a chance -- eat your food within one week from a farmers' market that sells local produce". That's my conclusion.

On another note, I started the prologue and first chapter of my novel this week. I was pretty excited about it all week. I only wish I had money and time to fly to Ireland, rent a cottage, and write on my laptop for 3 whole months while overlooking the ocean from the cottage grounds. In fact, that is what I intend to do in 2015.

I have made a tentative plan for my near future in order to enable me to go to Ireland in 2015 and write a novel while looking out at the sea every morning and night. But first, my plan is to go to Hawaii for one month in 2014! Here's how I'll get there.

• I will be moving to a cheaper place in the next month or 2 months that will save me a few hundred dollars per month. 
• Then I'm going to save up as much as I can over the next 10 months.
• Then I'll quit my job at the end of May 2014 and go to Hawaii for a whole month. I already have the itinerary planned. Oahu, Maui, Big Island, and Lanai.

My plan is to start applying to jobs in the spring of next year, around March. If everything went according to plan, I would have an offer by the time I leave for Hawaii in May and then come back to a new job. But I'm going to save up some money in case I can't find a job by then. I have a hard time imagining how I'll survive another 10 months here, but I might have to start imagining it.

There are too many uncertainties in my life right now, so all I can do is make my decisions based on the certainties and not get too overwhelmed thinking about how I'm going to solve ALL of my life problems at this moment. I get overwhelmed by the stress and non-existence of free time because I'm still in school, and I feel like I can't find a job that is a great fit for me in the area I want to live. I want to settle down and have a stable life, clean through and simplify my physical possessions, and have regular travel breaks scheduled in my life that I can be excited about. I want to have free nights and weekends again! But I can't solve all those things right now. I'm in the process of solving them, that's what I need to tell myself. I'm working on trying to fix the major one right now -- school. That will be done in 2 months, either way (pass or fail). I should know what my outcome is by then and either I'll be ecstatic or depressed. Lol. The point is, I just need to keep pushing through it for 2 more months...2 more months of putting things on hold. It seems like an eternity, but also not long enough.

So for the time being I'm focusing on getting school out of my life, and it will happen soon and the outcome will either be positive or negative and I will move on. I'm also focusing on budgeting and saving as much money as I can, because no matter what happens in the next year or two, I will need money for sure. I hope to be able to make the time to have long trips, but I would also need it to pay loans or buy a house and a dog. I want to settle down, but I can't think about that right now until I resolve my other dilemmas (Maslow's line of reasoning). And as far as trips, I can still go on local trips to Bend, Oregon, Sunriver, Oregon, Crater Lake, San Juan Islands, Vancouver, BC, and Hawaii. I know that I want to go to Hawaii because of a work event there, so I might as well increase the utility of the time spent traveling, flight, and lodging costs. I'm really excited. I already planned a budget and a lot of beaches I want to visit and activities I want to do. Parasailing, snorkeling, beach relaxing, kayaking, volcano tours, Pearl Harbor tour, botanical gardens, hikes to beautiful views, festivities, and one week on four of the islands. I'm really, really looking forward to it :)