A Talel of Three Meals

 "The wound is the place where the light gets in"  --Rumi

I've written about food before.  I am very food oriented.  Not a "foodie."  Not into fancy restaurants.  I think it goes back to my very early readings of MFK Fisher (you're missing out if you've never read any of her books, especially the Art of Eating).

And I've written about learning to eat alone, after 48 years of having someone to share meals with.  Usually all 3 a day because we'd meet for lunch when we both worked on campus (I have such fond memories of sitting in his basement workshop, eating lunch and watching Time Team.)

I still sometimes share a meal with someone, usually family.  It works out to once every month or two.  But sometimes it really comes home, how much everything has changed since losing Bob and living in a world with Covid.

After work on Monday I had to go to Lowe's to get more deck stain (the deck debacle still needs to be written up).  I had worked my shift, and then walked around with the owl, and chatted with a friend, so it was near 2 o'clock when I was driving and I was getting hungry.  There is a Steak and Shake on the way to Lowe's.  

In 2019, Bob would have been with me.  We would have gone to Steak and Shake.  A waitress would have seated us, given us menus, asked how we were doing, taken our order, brought us our food.  Asked if we needed anything else.  At some point would have come by to see if we needed anything else.  We would have talked.  Had our little sweet romantic ritual of feeding each other the cherry off of our respective milkshakes.

2022.  I go in, and use the touchscreen at a kiosk to order my meal.  I pick it up at a counter when my number is called.  I eat quietly, reading my book.  There is no cherry on my milkshake; you actually have to add one to your order and pay extra, and I didn't bother.  There is no human interaction.

Tonight, I was eating my dinner (salmon, potatoes, roasted zucchini - as I have said in previous posts, I eat well), and, as usual, watching a cooking show.  They were cooking some eggs, and I suddenly had a flashback to one of the most pleasant meals of my life.  Nothing fancy, and nowhere fancy.  17 years ago, and I still remember it fondly.

It was when I was the costumer (or, as I preferred to call it, the clothier) at the Mission San Luis.  My sewing room was also the dressing room for the historic interpreters.  One morning we had all somehow dragged ourselves into work - there was a deluge outside; not quite a tropical storm, but almost.  I was there, the interpreters were there, the boss hadn't made it in.  It was nigh impossible for them to go outside to there stations, and no reason to - there would be no tourists in this downpour.  I wasn't getting much sewing done because everyone was hanging out in the room.  One of them said "if I had known it was going to be this nasty, I would have been late and taken time for breakfast."  A couple of others chimed in with similar sentiments.

The costume room (and the admin offices) were in an old house on the grounds.  There was a kitchen downstairs.  I looked around - "the chickens have been laying lately, haven't they?  Anyone want scrambled eggs?"   And we all headed downstairs.

There wasn't a skillet in the kitchen, but I Know How To Cook, so I found a pot and a large mixing bowl.  I put the pot with water on the stove, put the mixing bowl on top, and use that to scramble the eggs, French style.  The person who demonstrated cooking on a fire remembered that someone had donated sausages, so under the broiler they went.  Someone else got the coffee machine going.  Another person dug around in the cabinets for mismatched plates an coffee mugs.

And in short order, we were all in the gathered around the table in the cozy kitchen, eating eggs and sausage and drinking coffee while the storm howled outside, and it's just one of those memories that stay with you.  

Old Memories and Eclipse

 Grief is love with nowhere to go - random facebook message

It's getting late and I'm getting up early so I should go to bed - but there's a lunar eclipse tonight and the night is beautiful and mysterious and a little cool and the nightbirds are calling.  The totality is not for another hour and I felt like writing.

This picture popped up in my FaceBook memories.  Three years ago.  We had spent some time dragging yard detritus (some of it likely *still* cleaning up from Hurricane Michael) to the burn pile.   We were taking a break, sitting on the bench.  He looked down at his arm and laughed - there was an impossibly tiny, perfect, preying mantis on his arm.  I don't know how he even saw it; it couldn't have been even a half inch long.  But when I leaned in with the camera it reared back, arms up, ready to attack.

After the photoshoot he carefully convinced it to crawl onto a bush.  I don't remember any more details of that day.  Very likely we roasted some hot dogs on the fire because that was our usual reward for doing yard work.  And when we were through with that and just letting the fire burn down, we likely got our books and read for awhile.

We had no idea that he only had ten months left to live.  It was three years and a lifetime ago.  The bench that he was sitting on is the one that I repaired recently and finally repainted today.

Must go check on the eclipse.

Getting closer to totality.  It seems part of my fae existence - to be wandering outside in the middle of the night, getting away from the house security light and finding a gap in the trees to see the shining, diminishing full moon.

Another fae moment yesterday.  I was taking a break from yard work, sitting on the front deck.  A raccoon came over, hoping for snack.  "Go away," I said.  "I do not feed raccoons."   In general, this is true.  But this time of year, they are often foraging during the day because there are little mouths to feed somewhere.  In the late afternoon I like to give my lone remaining peacock a snack before he goes to roost at night.  The only way to do this is to put out some food for the raccoon as well, because otherwise she'll go and take it from the peacock.  So she simply flopped down a few feet away from me to take a nap while she waited for me to give in.  

I got my workout last night and today.  We have a couple of bookshelves in the living room, his and mine.  Mine has books in it; his has books in it, on it, on top of it, and wedged between the bookshelf and the breakfront next to it.  I'll deal with those later.  But they also have cabinets beneath them.  I opened his, and it was stuffed with paper boxes filled with old catalogs and magazines - over 100 pounds worth.  They went to the dump today.

I don't know how much of him to erase.  He kept so much stuff.  I either tossed (ragged) or donated (in good shape) some 150 T shirts in 2020.  I kept a couple of them to cuddle.  I wrote about giving up The Honda.  A day or two after that I finally took his name off of our internet account (it was getting complicated - they've initiated two-step verification but couldn't use my phone number or email because they belonged to the secondary user - which was me - and not the primary - Bob.  The account is now just mine.

Some day I'll do the same with our bank accounts.  That probably should have been done already, but it  was one of those things that fell victim to the pandemic because it requires a face-to-face meeting with a representative - indoors - so could be put on the "do it later" list.

And now back to the eclipse.  Silly to stay up for it - it's almost midnight, and I'm getting up at 6:30 tomorrow to go to the museum.  And I still need to shower and scrub.  It's the time of year that every time I so much as step outside I'll spend the rest of the day picking mites and ticks of various sizes off of myself.  It will likely be 1 before I get to sleep.

That's OK. It's worth it.  I love lunar eclipses.  I remember one memorable one when I worked a swing shift and came home a little after midnight, stopping on my way into our apartment to see the blood-red moon hanging there, looking so close.  Likely in 1974.  A lifetime ago.  The moon, at least, is constant.

At the Last Minute

 I had a rather unorthodox birth.  I was three weeks overdue.  Mom was admitted to the hospital when she insisted that I was on the way, even though there were no signs of labor.  They were planning on inducing in the morning; instead, Mom felt the first pain, checked her watch, I came squirting out, she rang for the nurse, then checked her watch again.  18 minutes from first pain to hysterical nurse.

And that's how I've been my entire life - dawdle until I'm late and then do a mad dash.

So today - didn't sleep well last night.  Dozed on the couch until about 3 a.m. and then to bed for a few hours, so a bit groggy.  And the day just sort of went by.  That happens a lot to me - I'm thinking about what I should do, then I look at the clock and somehow it's 3 hours later.  On the whole, I didn't do much today other than chuck some stuff in the washing machine.

Then, about 6-ish, I thought I should at least do *something* and went out to the garden.  In the next two hours I weeded the garden, changed the AC filter (which involves moving the heavy-ass Victrola that has no place else to live), tidied up the back deck (it still held the detritus of my fleece-washing materials from a few weeks ago), cleaned the fish tank, made sugar syrup to finish off some homemade limoncello (last month Robert gave me some of his home distilled moonshine so I put the peels from the last of my lemons in it.  I'm visiting them tomorrow so I thought I would take it along) and wrestled the slip cover that I had washed back onto the couch*.

Imagine what could happen if I started earlier.  Oh, well.  And now it's after 8:30 so I should think about dinner.  I had a good lunch (Thai stir fry) so cheese and crackers it will be.  With an apple so it's healthy.

*I think my couch is starting to resemble an onion.  It's rather old; I've thought about replacing it but with a house full of cats it wouldn't stay new for very long.  And I'd have to have help dragging the old one out and putting the new one in.  After we'd had the couch for long enough that it was looking ragged, I made canvas slipcovers for it (I was fancy  - individual covers for each cushion plus one for the couch frame).  Even made them a second time when those got tired.  Third time is not a charm; instead I got one of those stretchy all-in-one covers.  But to keep that from becoming messed up by the cats I normally have an old sheet tossed on the couch.  So if you count - there is the original couch, the canvas layer, the stretchy layer, and a sheet.  Eventually this couch will become an archaeological site.

Goodbye to Another Old Friend

 Nope - no one died.  This time, it's a car.  The Honda.  "The" Honda.  "The" as a title of respect, especially after we got new new Honda.

Time for more therapy writing - because sometimes I wonder why *everything* has to hurt so much.  Seriously - it's a car.  So why do I feel kicked in the gut?  I want to double over and cry (and likely will when I'm through writing)

Some people love getting new cars, and going car shopping.  I can't even count how many cars Amanda and Robert have gotten in the last 5 years.  I can count how many Bob and I got in the last 50 - ten.  And one of those (my Dad's car) was given to us.   We'd drive cars until they get to the point that it would cost more to keep them safe than their blue book value, then heave a heavy sigh and go car shopping.  So, in 2001, when our Ford Explorer was falling apart, we went shopping.

We wanted something smallish.  I prefer small cars - easier to maneuver, a lot easier to park.  And Bob sure as hell didn't need a "compensation" car.  We wanted something he could fit into comfortably, that had decent leg room for the back seats, and that could hold a half-dozen cat carriers.  We picked the Honda CR-V.  There were a few color choices - mostly normal ones, and one that was an almost luminous, almost purple blue.  We both looked around, looked at our feet, acted a little embarrassed, and at the same time muttered "I like the blue one."

It's been a great car.  It's still a great car.  220,000 miles and change and we have not driven it into the ground.    But tomorrow it's going away.

After Bob got diagnosed, we had to make a lot of plans fast.  Do things like buy my battery weed whacker because, at least for a while, the yard would be my bailiwick.  Then we talked about the car.  Reliable as it was, it was 18 years old and over 200,000 miles.  We knew that we'd be making a lot of those 3-hour drives back and forth to Gainesville and, more importantly, while he was in recovery I'd be doing a lot of those drives alone.   We decided that we needed something newer and safer.

But we didn't trade in The Honda.  When my father had quit driving, he had given us his Infiniti - a luxury car.  Surprise - we didn't like it that much.  Bob was comfortable in it, but I wasn't (especially the passenger side - no lumber support at all.  I had to buy a backrest).  A luxury cars are high maintenance, and expensive maintenance at that.  So the Infiniti got traded in on a Honda Fit.  Again - bright blue.  I was actually going to try for another color (5 of the previous cars had been blue) but the choice for the end-of-the-year-sale was blue or white.

The Fit is a great little car - and I came to resent the hell out of it.  It was the car we bought because of Bob's leukemia.  It was the car that never brought him home from Gainesville.  I came home, parked it, and went back to driving The Honda.  But after 6-8 months, I started to think I was being silly.  The Fit was new, possibly safer, got 20 miles more per gallon than The Honda.  I started driving it to work.  For another year I used The Honda for the bi-weekly trash run, but eventually used the Fit even for that.   I've hardly driven it at all for the last year.

It does need some work.  There's an airbag recall.  The driver side window doesn't work.  Once the passenger side door didn't want to open.  What can you expect from an old car?  So I've decided to donate it to the local radio station (I didn't feel like bargaining with some stranger over my car so I opted for donation and a tax deduction).  It gets picked up tomorrow.  I've washed it and cleaned it out.

And it's tearing me up.  As I've written before, Bob and I mostly carpooled.  200,000+ miles is a lot of hours spent together in a small car.  The daily commute, grocery shopping.  Trips to the vet.  Mad dashes to emergency rooms and hospitals while the parents were alive.  Roadtrips.  A lot of conversations.  A lot of listening to the radio.  Despite its compact size, we even fooled around in it a couple of times because that's what you do, right? 200,000 miles of life, of companionship.

If Bob hadn't gotten sick, The Honda would likely still be the car we were driving.  But he did, and it's not.   And it really isn't logical to let it sit in the carport and rot just because I'm sentimental.

So, yeah.  Yay therapy writing.  It's not about the car.  It's about the life that I had with that car.  The Fit is my new life.  The Honda was my old life.  The life that I miss so desperately.

I hope it doesn't sell for parts, or scrap metal.  It still runs fine.  I hope someone buys it and puts another 100,000 miles on it and sings along to the radio with someone they love.  I hope there are still more happy memories to put into that car.

Gonna miss it.

Postscript:  Last night I kept looking out the window at The Honda.  I finally did something that I haven't done for almost 2 1/2 years:  I went and sat in the passenger seat. Where I have sat for over 200,000 miles with Bob driving.  After all that, I could almost see, touch, and hear him sitting there.  So very real, so very present, so out of reach.  I wept for an hour.

So I thought I was done.  Nope.  They came and got it today.  As they drove off I had to go lie down, clutch my pillow as hard as I could, and howl.  I know it's not the car, but the driver.  I watched it go down the driveway knowing that it will never come up that drive again and Bob get out of it.

I could have kept it.  But I've been feeling bad about it.  Even under the carport, it was getting covered with dust and pollen.  If I opened the door, there was the start of mildew.  I went to start it one time and the battery had died (I recharged it).  I could have kept it for the trash run car, but why?   It deserves better.

I've Been Reading

 But first, the random Bob thought.  I went to bed a few nights ago, started to doze off; sleepily looked at the clock and thought "it's getting really late - Bob must have gotten hung up somewhere."  Then of course had to sit up and read and calm down a bit before I could try getting to sleep again.

I've been meaning to write about reading.  I've possibly mentioned before that I admire Margo and her Excel sheets where she keeps track of things like books she's read and movies she's watched.  I'm just not that organized and instead let things drift in and out of my head.

I've always been a reader, as long as I can remember.  *Loved* book fair days at school.  Read the backs of cereal boxes and peanut butter jars and cans [side story - when I was little, I used to love it when Mom made fried scrapple - sort of a meat thing that came in a can.  Then one day I read the ingredients: it used all the parts of the pig after all the edible parts had been used elsewhere.  I'm not sure I ever ate it again].  Bob also was a reader; our house is filled with books.  Books make me feel comfortable - I'm happy in bookstores and libraries.  These days I have embraced the e-book.  You don't have to find bookshelf space and I can carry them on my phone if I get some random time.  But I still love the feel (and the smell) of "real" books.

But all that ended for awhile after I lost Bob.  It was likely the shock and the trauma.  I couldn't focus enough to even read a magazine article, much less a book.  If I tried, and I found an interesting passage, I would start to say "sorry to interrupt" and realize that there was no one to interrupt and share it with.  I loved watching Bob read, especially if he let his hair down and looked like some scholarly druid.

Not reading felt weird.  A reader who didn't read.  Like being a hugger who didn't hug. Something that I identified as Being Ann was missing (I also haven't knitted anything in two years but that's another post).  But one day, on the Ramin Karimloo fan page, I posted that I was impressed that when he was preparing for his role as Jean ValJean, Ramin had actually read "Les Miserables."   My question was "has anyone tried reading this - not easy.  Well, a couple of people had, including Ebaida (I think this is when we started becoming friends).  Ebaida formed a short-lived reading group in January 2021, but she and I still read together, and I'm back to reading daily.  Often twice daily; I try to stop for a coffee break in the afternoon and read something I have to focus on.  Before bed reading is something lighter.

And I'm just going to list what I've read between that January 2021 and now, simply because I'm curious.  No annotations because I'd be up the rest of the night - just a list, in no particular order.  I won't remember some of them - but another advantage of e-books is that I can just check my library on there and get a bunch of them.  So, without further ado:  What I'm Reading

Currently - appears to be four books. (or six)

1) Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religions, 700-1100 by Max Dashu

2) A Short History of the World According to Sheep  (an audio books.  I rarely listen to audiobooks because I don't like them as much as I wish I did.  But I do use my rowing machine and that's a perfect time to listen)

3) Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan

4) Dracula by Bram Stoker.  I'll be starting this tomorrow.  The book is written as a series of diaries and letters over the course of about six months, starting May 3.  Someone sent me a link to where the book will be emailed to you one day at a time, with that days entries - so it will take six months or so to read it in real time.  Sounds interesting.

5) 365 Days of Rumi (which will take to the end of the year to read)

6) Rumi's Sun, the Teachings of Shams i-Tabrizi  (it's a slog.  I have a feeling that's it's not a very good translation

7)  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.   This was the first one that our little group read, and the blessed book that kick started my reading 

8)  Why Peacocks?: An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World's Most Magnificent Bird by Sean Flynn.  I started this last year but had to stop when one by one my peacocks were killed.  But I finally finished it yesterday.  And I do have one ridiculously beautiful bird left.  As the author says - a bird that should be purchased with magic beans or secret spells, something unworldly and mystical.  But basically a fancy chicken

9)  Faerie Knitting by Alice Hoffman and Lisa Hoffman.  Fun little book - a collection of short fairy tales, each one about a garment, with a knitting pattern for that garment (thought I said I wasn't going to annotate, but here I am)

10) The Twice Drowned Prince, by Lindsay Morrison

11) The Quiet American, by Graham Green

12) Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett

13)  Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett

14) Demon Warden, by Selend Kallan

15) Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

16) Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

17) His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik

18)  Some H.P Lovecraft short stories

19) Some ghost stories by M. R. James

20) Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

21) My Cousin Rachel by Daphne DuMaurier

22) The House On the Strand by Daphne DuMaurier

23) some British murder mysteries by R. Austin Freeman

24) The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman (about the problem with toxic positivity)

25) The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan

26)  Relic, by Preston and Child

27) Flatland by Edwin Abbott 

28) The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett

29)  The Flavor of Wood by Artur Cisar-Erlach

30) The Art of Washing Wool, Mohair, and Alpaca by Mary Egbert

31)  The Forty Rules of Love by Elaf Shatak (this about Rumi and Shams, which lead to the abovementioned Rumi and Shams books)

32) Your Inner Fish by Neil Shuman

33)  Camino Wandering by Tara Marlow

34) A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas 

35) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (annual reading)

36) Uprooted, by Naomi Novik

37) Circle of Magic by Tamara Pierce

That's all I can come up with this evening, but for what? 15 months, that's not bad.  I can still identify as being A Reader