At the supermarket

At the supermarket meat case, two women, backs bent over the well-lit array of packages of beef, pork, chicken. They are centered on the chicken: legs, thighs, breasts. One of them moves packages of boneless breasts around, checking total prices on the packages, says, "There don't seem to be any bargains here."
The other woman says, in a resigned tone, "There aren't many of those anywhere anymore. I keep waiting for chicken drumsticks and thighs to go on sale for $1.99 a pound, and I don't think it's going to happen."
"Well," says the first woman, reaching to the side, "Y'gotcher legs and thighs here for $2.39..."
"I know..."
"But it isn't $1.99."
A silence while the two stare some more at the packages of boneless chicken breast. Family-size packages of eight or ten half breasts . . . cheaper per pound than the packages of three or four. 
"I hate to lay out fifteen dollars for chicken..."
"Me too. But I want to cook something different!"
"Oh, what the hell. What're y'gonna do? There's only so much pasta you can eat." and the first woman takes the package marked $2.49 per pound, $14.31 total, the lowest price in the bunch, and pitches it into her grocery cart.
The second woman laughs ruefully . . . "Right!" . . . and follows suit.

Nobody even bothers looking at the beef. 

Gives a whole new, and banal, perspective on the last two lines of Millay's The Anguish:

Happy are the toothless old and the toothless young,

That cannot rend this meat.

Approaching the autumnal equinox

Let me write this and see how it looks: I think I'm finished with tomatoes for this harvest. Not that the good beauties are all out of the garden . . . there are probably another few bushels out there. But I think I'm done, as in stick a fork in me done. The gallon bags of frozen tomato are not innumerable, but they are plentiful. At least a dozen and a half of them in the chest freezer, a few more cooling in the refrigerator to be removed to that semi-permanent storage. I think it might be enough.
Yet, still, it feels like a sin to let that fruit just rot out there. 
I don't know.
I might not be finished yet.
Maybe after some time doing something else. The corn stalks still have ears on them. It will be tough, but still, with the taste of sunshine packaged up in each big fat yellow kernel, better than anything from any store. 
The basil and parsley have been rinsed and bagged and frozen. I did the basil wrong, put it all, chopped up, in olive oil, in one bag and flattened it out. I should have made little balls of it and frozen them individually. But I believe the day that I did that my back felt as if it were about to crack in two if I stood much longer (a legacy of my waitressing years) and I preserved the stuff as quickly as I could so that I could bend without breaking. 

Twice last week, Molly conned me into unplanned morning-quickie-rides in the car. She knows (of course) the angle of the sun when it's time for Husband and me to leave for work. If we do not plan carefully, she might be outdoors at that time. If she's out of sight, it's a given that we must undertake the ruse of pretending to leave for work, leash looped around neck, and, upon spying her as she pops bright-eyed out of a hedgerow, stopping, inviting her into the car. She's thrilled, of course, and settles down in the passenger seat to stare out the windows, an intent tourist, as we drive out one driveway, down the road, and into the other driveway. Now the leash around her neck, we exit the car and prance to the door of the house for a cookie and a shutting away. If she only knew how fervently I wish I could stay with her.

Peep couldn't care less about when we're leaving; she comes and goes according to an unknowable to humankind happy-cat-living-a-country-life schedule. She brings us white-footed mice and other delicacies and leaves them where we will find them on our way to the door. On occasions when Peep has an active hunt in progress and Molly is around, Molly takes over and Peep gives up and leaves her to it. Several days ago, I tried to save a chipmunk from my pets, and managed only to get it to a hiding spot where it spent a night and was discovered by my beloved predators the next day, killed, and disposed of. I should have stayed out of it. The poor thing probably spent a night of painful misery, huddled in the tall grass around the wellhead, instead of having been relatively speedily dispatched in the way of Nature.

It is warm today. The high temperature forecast to be 82 degrees, with 10% chance of rain. A summer day! 
Heaven.
Maybe I'll start the fire under the big pot full of water, put on my sneakers and go out and pry some ears of corn off the stalks. 
This is good work that I'm doing, not least because in the dead of winter I will be able to sit quietly with my book and think about how comfortable it is not to be picking and hauling and boiling and cutting and scooping. I'll just be fat and happy, eating the fruits of the labor. That will be a change, won't it? from my usual mournful wailing about the Dark and Cold Time.

Gratitude, supplication, memory, respite

Oh.
My.
Sweet.
Lord.
Thank you for all the tomatoes and corn and beans and parsley and basil and carrots and cantaloupes and all the rest of it.  And thank you for the good Husband who sited the garden so it got watered naturally and plentifully, and sun from rise until set, so that each plant has, completely naturally, begotten more fruit than any of its kind ever before in the history of the Earth anywhere. 
I am ever grateful for Thy bounty.

Now please send an army of harvesters with strong legs and arms and backs to tote all this generous goodness from the garden up the hill to the house, to trim off the bits of tomato that I don't want, to hold the plastic bags for pouring in the crushed/blanched/pureed/cut stuff for the freezer. I need help. 
You can't rush this process. You can bring in two hundred tomatoes but you can only cook down just so many at a time. You can't cut kernels off ears of corn too quickly or you get pieces of cob in with the kernels. Certainly not harmful, but if I'm going to the trouble, I might as well do it carefully. I almost begin to sense a genetic memory of women coming together to help each other put up their harvest. And summer kitchens.

In my Childhood Farmhouse that my father's great-grandfather built there was a summer kitchen elled off the back of the house. I never saw it in use for canning and pickling and all that they used to do; in my time it was where the player piano and the fifty or so rolls of music lived. My sister and I would pump the pedal and watch the keys go down all by themselves while we listened to The Sidewalks of New York and other hits. The paper had held up pretty well considering it was all just stacked in unprotected rolls on top of the piano. Where there was a small tear here or there, there would be an odd note.

And now there's just me, coming home from work and gazing at the ripe tomatoes shining like Christmas lights on the drying-down plants. The things taunt me until I grab the basket and hie myself down to retrieve as many as I can carry back. And while I'm there, take the shears and bring back some herbs for sauce. Make supper while I'm "putting up." 

Husband rolls in as dark comes down. His work days (for money) start and end quite a bit later than mine do and he gets to come into the house all filled with good smells. If I could stop working and be home all day, I could get it all done in good order. Of course, I would need to, since we'd be a lot little bit poorer...

Why does everything have to come ripe all at once...?

So. This morning at 4:30 I was wide awake and excited and trepidatious about spending the whole day carting and boiling and steaming and trimming and bagging. And I managed to get three gallon size bags of corn into the freezer. And then I had a hair appointment. And it started to rain. And it's cold all of a sudden after ninety-degrees last week! Today's been a bust, pretty much, for food storage. 

But it's been a great Book-And-Nap Day. 

Peace and joy reigneth

Life goes on apace here in the Season Of Happiness. The temperatures have risen to comfort level, day and night, and there is Light. There are a dog and a cat, both beautiful and living excellent dog and cat lives. There is a Husband and . . . there's me. We're all happy and comfortable.

Friday night Nephew and Wife and Darling Great Niece (DGN) came to visit. We had burgers and potato salad. I labored over the latter for many hours the night before, worried that there wouldn't be enough potatoes, enough celery and onion, enough hard-cooked eggs. And the outcome was bland unto blahness: a result of my having forgotten to put in mustard, I believe. It may have been that I do not add salt to anything anymore, having tired of puffy eyes, feet and hands. Everyone ate it, but no one asked for some to take home. A major clue. 
If you see the Russian army traveling by, please direct them to my house for a plate of potato salad. I have plenty left over.

DGN has grown since her birth two and a half months ago. To be expected, and certainly A Good Thing. But the cheeks! She could store a winter's worth of nuts in those chipmunk cheeks! Cobalt blue eyes, perfect lips, a calm and docile demeanor. A perfect child, despite having had her first vaccinations that day. Molly was interested in the small one, and very very gentle. She knows how to act around tiny helpless creatures, having had several rounds of her own in her former life. 

Here she is last January being a Mama Umbrella with her last (EVER!) brood.

Saturday was given over to the usual chores: laundry, groceries, housekeeping in general. We enjoyed potato salad with our lunch and with our supper. Watched "Running With Scissors" last night, and while the movie conveyed some of the flavor of the story, I think the book was better. I always think the book is better than movies made from the books. I do highly recommend Augusten Burroughs' books, with the caveat that one's mind must be open to finding humor in tragic situations. But then, if one could not do that, one could hardly live, could one? Or maybe that's just my life.

Last night at dusk, four wild turkeys came out of the woods above the house. But no. It wasn't four turkeys. It was three turkeys. The fourth being was Peep, stalking them. She stalked them right back into the woods. Her hunting skills haven't improved appreciably; earlier I had seen her waiting in the plum tree for one of the many perching blackbirds to fall into her paws. She does, however, continue to practice, bless her little heart.

Today, the temperature will be a humid ninety-some degrees Fahrenheit. I plan to slurp ice water and read. I have showered and am leaving my hair to drip dry. The result will not be attractive, but I'll be comfortable. 
I am old: comfort is sufficient.

For my friends outside the Triscuit range

Nobody paid me or gave me anything to publish this post. I just like the things. 
My favorite is the Low Sodium; they still have enough salt, especially since I usually put hummus or cheese on top. 

How Triscuits Work

Varieties of Triscuits Deli-Style Rye Garden Herb Thin Crisps Rosemary & Olive Oil Cracked Pepper & Olive Oil Reduced Fat Roasted Garlic Fire Roasted Tomato Cheddar Original Low Sodium

Production of the Triscuit wafer began in 1903 at the Niagara Falls, New York plant with the Triscuit packaging proclaiming “Baked by Electricity.” The wafer measured 2-1/4 inches by 4 inches and remained that size for twenty-one years. At that point, the ovens were altered and improved and the cracker size changed to 2 inches square.
To make Triscuits today, the wheat is first cooked in water until its moisture content reaches about 50%. It is then tempered, allowing moisture to diffuse evenly into the grain. The grain then passes through a set of rollers with grooves in one side, yielding a web of shredded wheat strands.

Many webs are stacked together, and this moist stack of strands is crimped at regular intervals to produce individual pieces of cereal with the strands attached at each end. These then go into an oven, where they are baked until their moisture content is reduced to five percent.

In 1935, in order to better address consumer taste preferences, Triscuit crackers were sprayed with oil and lightly salted. The flavors remained the same until 1984 when popular tastes changed again. The public wanted nutritious wafers, but they also demanded more out of those wafers, including additional choices, “crunch” appeal, and flavor varieties. There are now eleven Triscuit varieties on store shelves.

Different food

Husband and I have been married for a long time. The only thing we get excited about anymore is food. 

I have my mental Rolodex of dishes, things that require no recipe reading, things that are easy to put together when I get home from work. An additional requirement is that the meal be able to stay Prepared-And-Tasty for a couple of hours because neither of us ever knows when he'll get home after his workday. Husband is tired of all of my old standbys. Additionally, he's tired of food in general because he eats lunch in restaurants every single day. Me, I'm off to the office daily with my Tupperware container of leftovers or my hummus and Triscuits. It's a big day for me when we order pizza delivery for a group lunch.

"Different! I want something different!" he said early last week.
He consulted one of his Jacques Pepin cookbooks and made, two nights in a row because it was so good, Mustard Crusted Chicken. I loved it! It was delicious. I was glad there were only four pieces of chicken so I didn't embarrass myself. The following night he made a different chicken recipe. That one wasn't such a hit with either of us. Yesterday I phoned him and said, "If you aren't already planning it, don't make anything fancy tonight."
"Why not?"
"Oh, I'd just as soon have some Triscuits or a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich."

Early this morning I woke up and mentally cast about for some kind of different food to prepare for him. The internet offers me recipes for which he has already expressed distaste.

• I'm not really a soup kind of guy.
• I'm not really big on salad.
• I'm not crazy about chili.
• I really don't like Feta cheese.
• I'm not big on wraps. This last one is a big disappointment to me because wraps are like the Indo-European language family with a million offshoots. To my mind, you can put anything in a wrap and it becomes Different and Delicious.

Many of the recipes call for ingredients I've never heard of . . . one-eighth teaspoon of some spice that I'd have to order online or drive three and a half hours to Brooklyn to get. If I make the dish without that particular spice, I fear, all the rest of my efforts will have been in vain. The finished product will be met with a gimlet eye, and a quiet, polite, and cheerful "It isn't my favorite." It's hard to take for a woman who breathes a little faster at the thrill of goulash made with ground beef, or macaroni and cheese. "Fancy" to me is macaroni and cheese made with Swiss cheese in addition to cheddar.

Several weeks ago, Phyllis brought sweet potato lasagna for lunch. It was left over from her family's dinner the night before. This morning I got up early to search for a recipe. I found one. It calls for:

• sweet potato (slice and bake first)
• kale (cut up and blanch first)
• zucchini (slice and bake first)
• two or three kinds of cheese
• red onion (slice and bake first)
• broccoli (cut up and blanch first)
• God knows what-all else.

It also calls for four cups of good marinara sauce. I have a freezer full of tomatoes that I harvested, skinned, and bagged last summer. I can't use jar sauce! So that means making the sauce first...

Suddenly I'm thinking of the relatively exotic meals that I find "in my grocer's freezer case." Sure, they're expensive, but what's the cost of the leftover spice for which I paid $6 and which I'll never use again? I think my shopping list just got a lot shorter.

Baked Zucchini (aka courgette in the UK) and Tomato Casserole Recipe

My friend B sent me this zucchini/tomato recipe and I cooked it up Sunday afternoon. Instead of the panko bread crumbs, I used some stale homemade Italian herb bread that I chopped up into little dry coarse crumbs. And when I was grabbing herbs from the pantry, I grabbed Adobo seasoning instead of garlic powder. I hardly ever make anything the way I'm told to.

It most definitely does require that (at least) ten minute wait before cutting for it all to firm up. I actually let it sit quite a bit longer than that and it was a little loose. My tomatoes were very ripe and juicy. Next time, I might layer the crumbs among the vegetables. It didn't come out of the pan in perfect little squares. Sure is tasty, though, and the zucchini was nicely al dente. I think this is going into the regular rotation. 

Thanks, B!

Glorious day!

I have just spent about an hour outside at the picnic table.

In the sun.

In sleeveless top.

Mostly keeping sleeping Max-in-diaper company and making sure he kept sleeping and didn't get up and wander away.

Lilac scent wafting around the corner of the house.

Mockingbird singing, singing, from the tops of the trees, one song to another. He barely stops for breath.

Doug brought over a small dump load of fifteen-year-old cow manure for the garden. It shines in the sun like black gold, looks as if it could at any moment burst into growth without benefit of any human effort.

I read my Cooking Light magazine. Even if I never made any of the recipes, that magazine makes me feel good. The recipes all look so simple and so beautiful, and mostly easy provided I could keep my mind on what I was doing for five minutes. It's a magazine full of Possibility.

All that joy and it's still only 10am.

'T'is The Day!

How much do you know about Christmas? A quiz.
I am unaccustomed to doing so poorly on quizzes that I choose to take for fun. 55%? Come on!


Yesterday the vet gave me a good gift. She pronounced Maxie "not ready to give up yet."
He has a little UTI and some antibiotics to take care of that, and he has some muscle relaxer medication to make his back feel better. He hasn't complained, but he's been walking around hunched up like an inchworm. Medicated, he seems to feel much more comfortable, and he's very nice and quiet: he's sleeping a lot. Maybe it's so very restful to have some relief from what has apparently been ongoing discomfort. Dogs are stoic. Even the ones (Max) who seem like crybabies . . . they're stoic. They bear things that they don't need to bear . . . if only they would tell me!
On Friday night I moved something and a lost tennis ball rolled out; Max was all over it. Not quite up to Fetch, but very happy to see Good Ol' Tennis Ball. And outdoors, he's still prancing like a Saratoga thoroughbred. So the vet's pronouncement was not unexpected, but still very welcome. I guess we'll have him for a while. 
Nice gift.


So here I am, up at 3:00 on Christmas morning, watching my fire in the woodstove, listening to Angus snore next to me. Max never got up out of bed to come downstairs with us . . . he is still a small lump under the blankets upstairs in the bed. MiMau is toasting nicely in her spot in front of the stove. 
Later Husband will fix the prime rib. I'll make whipped potatoes, or maybe twice-baked, and some salad, and we will feast and give the dogs bits of beef, and then we shall all nap at will. 

I have no desserty material, unless I make another chickpea/chocolate cake, which I could whip up in five minutes or so. Honestly, it is an absolutely delectable item, which must be eaten in small portions. Chickpeas are just chockful of fiber. Trust me: I know . . . now, after having eaten two-thirds of the cake in one sitting. I was so annoyed, last Monday night, that I was required to go back to work for a meeting that promised to be long and awful (and turned out to be, in fact, four long hours of tedium and tension) that I scarfed down, in one of my more memorable eating binges, what was left of the cake. I was . . . uncomfortable . . . for three succeeding days and nights. I cannot stress enough how important it is to control one's portion size of that particular delicacy. 
Wow. The memory alone is enough to give me chills.


I hope you all have the kinds of Christmases that you want, whether that's peaceful, exciting, child-wondrous, spiritually rich, or some variation/combination thereof. May you be blessed today in whatever way you wish to be blessed, and may you have the kind of joy that is so evident in this video from the Richmond, Virginia Animal League: Operation Silent Night.

Merry Christmas.

Sunday morning: relaxation cds, "Max's issue," and food

Some weeks ago I bought four or five relaxation cds to play next to my head for night-time going to sleep purposes. I don't need things like that in good weather when the windows are open and I can hear the crickets and the katydids and the owls and the wind sighs through the screens and slides its chiffon sleeves across my legs.

~image borrowed/stolen from One Man's Wonder

But now that the windows are closed and the only sounds I can hear are the snores and groans (and mutters and growls) of the poodles I'm finding these cds to be wonderfully soothing. I have quite a variety of sounds . . . windchimes, and one called "Sounds of Nature" that includes a disturbing sound of some insect that sounds like a buzz saw or an old-fashioned hand-cranked airplane propeller: click-click-click-click-wwwhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnne, over and over again. My favorite has been the thunderstorm that moves in from the distance; thunderstorms always soothe me straight to sleep. Last night I tried a new one called "Golden Pond." Wonderful. Sounds of oars sloshing in the water, crickets, frogs. It was so comforting that I wanted to stay awake and listen to it, but it put me to sleep anyway. Somewhere I have a hypnosis tape . . . it might have been a stop-smoking hypnosis tape . . . that had new-agey music on it and was very relaxing. 

My hair appointment yesterday was at 10:00am. At 8:30am I left a voicemail for my hairdresser asking her to call and comfirm the time. She called at 9:50am to tell me I was due there in ten minutes, not forty, and could I come at 11:30 instead of coming late for the 10:00? I agreed to that change, and mentally reaadjusted the hair/shopping sequence, muttering to myself about how I could have been there had she called me back earlier. It was my fault, though, for having lost the appointment card. The new one is stuck into my car's dashboard where I will see it every time I check my vehicle's velocity. By the time January 21st comes around the card will have become invisible to me. I need a secretary. Or a parent.

I fear that thes Max Issue is going to become a minefield between Husband and me. He seems to feel that Max's increasing issues are no more objectionable than Angus' cavalier attitude toward similar issues. Max knows what to do and can't do it; Angus knows what to do and chooses not to do it. I know the whole issue is disgusting and in deference to your sensibilities I won't go into more detail. Husband removes himself from the problem, leaves the whole thing to me and then recoils from my scent of parfum d'urine de chien. I have a feeling of No-Can-Win.

The man has his redeeming qualities, however. Last night he prepared a delectable repast of fried shrimp. He made cocktail sauce for his dipping, mine was sour cream and salsa verde. 

To die for.

That's another difference between Husband and me. A small supper at my hands is leftover baked potato sliced and broiled with cheddar cheese on top; his is breaded shrimp. He's far more willing than I to go out and buy the shrimp and get his fingers all gicky with flour and egg and crumbs, and he makes shrimp dishes while I make peasanty potato-and-cheese dishes. It might have something to do with the cleaner-upper duties and the person responsible for same.

Post-Thanksgiving Saturday

A fairly recent phenomenon: I often wake myself up talking to my dream companions. Husband told me the other morning he could hear me singing in my sleep. He didn't recognize the melody, he said, "but it was tuneful," a choice of words that made me laugh. As I poured my coffee and fed the dogs I had Helen Reddy singing Delta Dawn rattling around in my head. I never cared much for that song; it's hard to believe that, in my sleep, having no one but myself to please, I would choose to sing it.


Thanksgiving Day
A smaller group this year than on any holiday in recent years, but what a combo. Husband invited friend Joe, I invited friend Barb. They'd never met and I had a great deal of fun watching them preen for each other. 
Barb brought her dog Moby with her and Angus, who, you will recall, loves new friends, did his best to drive his guest mad with attention. Moby is an elderly, gentlemanly dog, however, and finally, after increasingly stern admonitions, made it clear that he preferred to watch undistracted for falling food. Angus stood back, tail all a-twitchet, quivering with happiness, but . . . back.
Food holidays belong to Husband and he is always extremely ambitious with his array of menu items. It's a family tradition that something gets forgotten. Usually it's the bread or rolls; this year it was the cranberry sauce. Practically treasonous, isn't it, to forget the cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving? But there it is,  still sitting virginally untouched in the fridge. 
I put away almost more food than we put out. We really have to talk about downsizing his offerings. He thinks maybe it's time to begin dining out on Thanksgiving. Fine with me. I'll be days cleaning and putting away every dish and cooking pan and utensil we own. And that was for four people.
By the time we got to dessert . . . two pies, a two-layer carrot cake, and cookies . . . I was nearly passing out from food overload. Most of the sweets are still nearly intact and I happily nibble between dishwasher loads. 


The weather is unbelievable. When have we ever had such a stretch of sunny, near-sixty-degree days in November? I adore it; I am out walking more now than I was when it was Official Good Weather time. 
Yesterday I thought I had lost my camera. I looked upstairs and down, in all the places where I put things so I won't forget where they are. It was in none of those places. Aha! There it was, among the Keurig cups on the kitchen counter! Who would not have looked there first? I'm just relieved to have it back again. I thought the gremlins (or that goddamn Jim D---- . . . a story for another time) had taken it. 


Late on Thursday evening I was once again reading about the benefits of apple cider vinegar. One site advised that if you drink water all day long, it's as well to add a splash of vinegar at every fill-up rather than add two teaspoons in one "dose." I tried the "adding a splash at every fill-up" yesterday. I do not recommend it. I needed a Pepcid at bedtime, which altogether defeats the purpose of the vinegar.

Damn the peppers!

Who needs peppers for clearing out the sinuses? The fresh horseradish in Husband's shrimp cocktail sauce did the trick.
I have the sensation!

Clearing out the sinuses

The week before last, Husband went to New Jersey and brought back a head cold. He stayed home and slept for half the week. On just the day he announced that he was feeling better, I began to sniffle, and took a day and a half off from work to tip over into sleep. Our household has, for the last couple of weeks, been a house of sleeping shifts.
This New Jersey cold seems relatively painless. It knocked out each of us for seventy-two hours and now sits quietly in our sinuses, not dripping, not hurting, just there. It did not sneak down into my bronchi and morph into a chest cold. You can't imagine how grateful I am for that favor.
Over the weekend I made a pot of chili con carne. I wanted it very very spicy hot. I bought fresh jalapeno peppers and chopped up several of them, making sure to throw in every seed. It fell short of my hopes. It was very tasty chili but it did not sear the linings of my sinuses, making it necessary for me to hold a paper towel at my nostrils while I ate. 
Sunday evening I baked russet potatoes for supper with a little buffet of various toppings, one of which was chopped fresh jalapeno pepper. With the seeds. Delicious. But still not paper-towel-at-the-nostrils material.
Perhaps what I need is to stuff the peppers with potato and eat that.


A friend recommends Ponaris, which for some reason I keep remembering as Peloponnesus. I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer to keep experimenting with food.

Weekend. At last.

I have written lyrical, pretty prosey posts. This is not one of those.

I am so glad it's the weekend I could plotz.

For most of the week . . . no, for all of the week, I wrestled with one of the cops' "times used" in order to get it right for reimbursement from the workers compensation insurer. He got his finger broken while subduing an evildoer on June 13, and came back to work on September 8. What with hours used from accumulated Comp time, Holiday time, Personal time, Vacation time, Sick time, and 36 hours one week and 44 hours the next week to make several two-week, eighty-hour pay periods, the project just about drove me around the bend. It's about as done now as I can get it. If I have to go back at it again on Monday I might have to cry or vomit or just get up and come home. Or go to the bus station and wait for the next Greyhound no matter where it's going.

My heart is warm with friends I make,

And better friends I'll not be knowing,

Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,

No matter where it's going.

My right eyelid is red and puffy.  Just the lid, not the eyeball. I believe it is the fault of my makeup or my facial cleanser having gotten into my eye. This happened before and it healed itself in a few days.  At that time I determined not to use the cleanser around my eyes and not to overdo the makeup too close to the lash line. I broke both of those rules and the next day? You guessed it. I went to work yesterday with my Quasimodo eye and no makeup, hoping somebody would say, "You look sick and should go home immediately." No one did. No one even noticed or mentioned it until I was walking out the door at 4:30. 

Did I mention I'm glad it's the weekend?

On the way home I stopped at the bank, withdrew funds to pay the school tax and put the check in the mail. It is due on Monday: perfect timing. Then I stopped and picked up a greasy delicious pepperoni and onion pizza for supper. At this rate, what care I about the numbers of my cholesterol and my bathroom scale? It is the weekend and it is all mine. Mine, mine . . . all mine. I even believe that the sun might shine. If I die before Monday, at least I will be current with my school taxes.

Moderation and the lack thereof

Remember the revelation, several years ago, that a daily glass or two of red wine was good for one's heart? I took that as great news, although at the time I was not a great lover of red wine. Hell, if it was good for me, I'd drink it! My problem arose from my belief that if a little of the stuff was good for me, a lot must be better! And down that road I went, skipping like a drunk munchkin toward Oz. I drank red wine when available, and I drank other alcoholic beverages at [frequent and lengthy] other times. Hence my membership in the club to which no one aspires to belong. I don't drink alcohol anymore.
But still I don't know moderation.
I don't have the moderation gene. I don't know how people eat one slice of pizza, or one cookie, or smoke one cigarette after dinner. If I like something, I want it, I want a lot of it, and I want it until it is no more. 


On Thursday someone gave me two chocolate truffles, brand name Moser Roth. I had never heard of the brand, but I knew they would be good. Each truffle was wrapped in cafe au lait-colored heavy tissue paper with a sophisticatedly discreet quarter-inch-square foil sticker. Packaging has so much to do with one's enjoyment of some things. As a courtesy to my donor, I unwrapped one and popped it into my mouth. It . . . bloomed gradually, spreading over my tongue in cocoa-y flavor and light yet rich texture.

I put aside the second little package to enjoy later, knowing that its life would be measured in minutes. And it was. And it was just as delectable as the first. If I had had two pounds of the things, they would have been gone, and I would have been ill in, oh, say . . . a half hour. 

I have smoked cigarettes off and [mostly] on for the better part of forty years. No one but a complete fool [or an addict] would think that would be anything but a Very Bad Idea. I stopped for ten years. One day, I thought, "It's a beautiful day. I'd love to have a cigarette." And I bought a pack and smoked for four more years. Stopped again for four years, chewed nicotine gum the entire four years. The dental hygienist loved me. All that gum chewing kept my teeth nice and clean. One balmy early summer evening four or five years ago, I decided that smoking a single cigarette would be a nice way to spend a few minutes with Husband on the patio. And I was off again. I liked it, and if one of an evening was . . . nice . . . then two or three would just prolong the pleasure. Thus spake the addict. 

Now I am taking Chantix and it is working. I smoked, and did not enjoy, the last cigarette on the twelfth of August. Chantix, you see, takes away all the pleasure part of smoking and leaves a person with the bad taste, the stink, the awareness of the toxic gases' immediate effects on one's digestive and other systems. Not only did I not want to smoke, but other previously irresistible items lost their gleamy, glistening, glowing attraction. Ice cream, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, salty things . . . their reedy, wheedling little voices no longer called to me. 

"I want to take this stuff for the rest of my life!" I thought.

See? 

If it's good, I want it all and I want it forever.

The idea is that one takes this medication for a few months while one builds other habits to replace the after-dinner cigarette, the morning-coffee-and-cigarette cigarette, etc. And then one stops taking the medication.

I can only wonder, idly at the moment, what substance will click, like a coin dropping in a vending machine, into the empty space left by the absent Chantix.

The phrase, "Moderation in all things," is common extrapolation of Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean (as presented in his Nicomachean Ethics). His ethic works around finding the mean, or middle ground, between excess and deficiency. 

It should be noted that Aristotle's ethic is often misundertood by its summary: moderation in all things. It is frequently reasoned by those unfamiliar with context that the common phrase means that a person should approach all things (whether healthy or unhealthy) with moderation; therefore, reasoning that a moderate amount of a bad thing can be indulged is not uncommon to find. This is an inaccurate representation of the perspective summarized in the popular phrase.    ~Blue Letter Bible

Oh.

What I Did During My Summer Staycation, by June

I have been enjoying doing Ordinary Things.

• Assembling and carrying outside the things necessary for an outdoor meal: the lettuce and radishes and cucumbers, freshly uprooted and picked from the garden and rinsed in the kitchen sink, the salad dressing and ketchup, two forks, two napkins...
• Throwing burgers onto the grill when the fire is ready, or a little after that, instead of dancing from foot to foot waiting for the fire to hurry up and get ready...
• Washing down the picnic table after the meal, sloshing sudsy water over the green painted surface so warm from the sun that it dries almost instantly...
• Making the beds at my leisure, a stop on my way to do something else...
• Cutting the orioles' oranges into halves, putting them all back into the plastic bag from the supermarket, and wandering around the side yard looking for good mounts...
• Pulling a few weeds here and there as I alternately admire and worry about the annuals' ability to withstand the past two days of rain...
• Doing errands as their own trip instead of wedging them into the drive from work, as I pant eagerly to get Home...
• Making parts of meals throughout the day and pulling it all together at the appointed hour...
• Watching at the end of the day as the clouds sink into the valley, obscuring the nearest hill...

A few Husband stories

The woodstove has officially been fired up for the season.  With the overnight lows down far enough to kick the furnace into hyperactivity, it is Time. 


Last spring I scooped out most of the ash. I left some in there because I have learned that a little bit of ash helps the fire take hold. I don't know why that's the case, but that's been my experience. 
Husband, by contrast, is anal very conscientious about cleaning things that can't help being dirty; he felt that the firebox needed more preparation for the incoming dusty, bark-falling-off-in-bits-at-the-slightest-touch firewood. He likes to start with a spandy clean firebox.  He cleaned out every last ash; he might have vacuumed and washed it down with soap and water, I'm not sure. It makes him happy. The fire's caught and the house is warm, and I was not present while he did whatever he did, so I'm happy too. 


I slept my usual odd weekend hours last Saturday night, and before I went back to bed at 5:30am I hauled out the industrial size slow cooker and levered in a hunk of beef that had thawed long enough to need cooking soon. When I woke up at 8:30, it smelled to me . . . like Christmas morning . . . with the cozy waft of roasting meat winding tendrils of brown savory goodness up the stairs. Husband had been up for a while, and as I poured my coffee, I asked him, "What did you think when you woke up and smelled beef cooking?" 
I wasn't hoping for extravagant compliments on my housewifely skills, but I expected something along the lines of, perhaps, "It smelled good."
The sensualist to whom I am married thought for a minute, searching his memory for his exact thought upon waking, and answered, "I smell beef cooking."


I am pleased to report that for some time now I have been able to keep control of the laundry. Not even the odd sock has exited the dryer through the invisible portal to the alternate universe where socks go. In the past much larger garments have vanished. For a while every time I did the laundry, another pair of Husband's jeans disappeared.  Less to put away, but puzzling for me to see his stack of jeans dwindling there in the closet. In frustration one day I asked him where his jeans were disappearing to. He paused to consider and murmured, "Let's see . . . what night did I come home without pants on?"


Husband is beginning to remind me of my uncle Red. One morning at breakfast, my aunt offered more coffee, and as she filled his cup, cautioned, "It's the bottom of the pot."  Red tasted, stretched his lips to a flat line and sucked in air at the corners. "Tastes like it," he said.

Food

Last Sunday we went to a farmer's market and bought loads of sweet smelling vegetables and fruit. We walked out with many heavy bags of Good Food for fifty bucks. Tight-budded broccoli, bags of firm purply-white garlic, icy white cauliflower wrapped in its ruffly leaves, rich-smelling dark dark red beets complete with their hairy stems and dirt covering, a few acorn squash, melons, and two big bags of plum tomatoes to add to the couple dozen our garden has produced.

On Monday, I steamed and skinned the beets between my getting home from work and going back for an evening meeting.

Tuesday the workday ran from eight a.m. to eight p.m. I ate beets for lunch and dinner.

On Wednesday after work I was tired unto autopilot and thought I might as well keep the body moving while my mind was turned off. I filled three pots with tomatoes, with the barest part of the stem end cut off, and great leafy basil and parsley bunches that I grabbed by handfuls from the garden. I love throwing whole fruit and leaves and stems into a pot, knowing that the result will be the same as if I painstakingly prepared everything prior to cooking it. I feel sure that the first tomato saucemakers did it the same way, leaving the concoction to alchemize into a meal while they went out to slaughter animals or pound clothing clean on rocks.

Fresh juicy tomatoes take a long time to cook down into sauce and at bedtime I had to put the whole mess in the refrigerator. Next day I remembered that I own two six-quart slowcookers, and I filled up both of them with my sauce-to-be and let it simmer for twenty hours. When I got home last night there were still illusory whole-tomato and basil leaf shapes in the pots, but the little hand blender turned it all into a puree. Today will be ladling-into-freezer-bags day.

My autopilot cooking evening got the squash baked too, along with the three that appeared all on their own in our garden, in the same oven time that my thrown-together meatballs baked.

Fresh food . . . really fresh fruit and vegetables . . . is such a pleasure, such a gift.

Think of it: A seed lies on dirt and turns into edible stuff.

It's magic.

Ice cream

One day when I was eleven I had the very firm and distinct thought that when I was grown up I would eat all the ice cream I wanted, anytime I wanted to. For the last several weeks I have been doing that.

It is such a comfort, ice cream. Real ice cream, softened around the edges of the carton, studded with caramel or butter brickle, or nuts of some description. My preference is to eat it as it is almost turning from anything resembling a solid to a puddle of sweetened cream.

I like oatmeal. I particularly like oatmeal with raisins, brown sugar, cinnamon . . . and ice cream. Oatmeal a la mode. It's still oatmeal with all the good stuff for which oatmeal is famous, so it must be good for me. Right?

For pure hedonistic decadence I like dark chocolate cake with Hershey's cocoa frosting, with Death By Chocolate ice cream and Mrs. Richardson's hot fudge piled on top. The cake and the fudge should be warm so as to melt the ice cream and turn the whole concoction into a mush of chocolate, with the cake providing the slightest soupcon of texture.

I might one day notice or care about the inevitable result of my self-indulgence. The likelihood of that diminishes as time goes by: I am old. There's a limit to my ability to defy the Ugly Curve's trajectory:
I might as well enjoy the slide.

For now, I am adhering to my childhood determination.
I need to go now: there's some Adirondack Bear Paw calling my name.
I can hear it banging on the freezer door.
Best go let it out.