Fridays and more food

I always look forward to Fridays, even now when I'm not working. Things seem to wind down. I never make lunch dates for Friday, preferring to go home with a whole afternoon ahead of me. I usually do part of my grocery shopping--the nuts and bolts part like toilet paper and ketchup and wine--on Friday at a market where I've been shopping for 20-plus years. It used to be Minyard's but now is a City Market, one of only two stores in the chain. The difference shows--wider, cleaner aisles, much fresh produce, and I'm told by others the meat is excellent. A sign inside the front door says Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: if the customer is wrong, see Rule #1. Every Friday, I buy a half-lb. of tuna salad, eat half that day for lunch and half the next day. The woman at the deli counter sees me coming and starts to dish out the tuna. But today, good as my lunch was, I felt sort of at loose ends, couldn't settle down to much of anything.

So, of course, I cooked for supper, tried a new recipe. Mashed potatoes topped with lightly cooked asparagus, then a fried egg, grated Romano (I happened to have grana on hand) and then a Tbsp. of browned butter poured over the top. It was good--a nice mix of flavors--but I know the egg yolk was supposed to be runny (the way I like them) and soak down into the potato, but mine wasn't--it was cooked through. I figured out later when the directions said put in the pan in sizzling butter, turn off the heat, and let it sit five minutes, I should have moved it off the electric burner--those instructions were probably meant for a gas stove. Oh, how I wish I had a gas stove.

I had invited Jordan and Christian to come for fried chicken--an experiment--Sunday night but they couldn't, so I invited my nighbors for a pasta/tuna dish heavy with anchovies (they're among the few people who will eat anchovies with me). Then Jordan said if I would still have them they'd like to come--well, they won't eat anchovies. I'll have to revamp the menu. I have a call in to her to make sure they won't change their minds again, before I do that.

Meantime, I'm going back to editing the manuscript on my desk that a friend asked me to work on. I think what I'm really doing is avoiding writing. I read a blog by an old friend today who said her writing career took off in the'90s (so did mine) but she didn't know now that she had the fire to write. I left a comment that I certainly knew the feeling. Not quite two weeks ago, the publisher who has had my mystery for so long said she should be able to let me know in two weeks--so I think I'm stalling, even as I prepare myself for rejection. Also ordered some books for a new project I'm considering, another reason to stall. My, how we can fool ourselves. But I read the listserve that specializes in unpublished authors (from Sisters in Crime) and I'm amazed at these women who get rejection after rejection and still make a science out of querying, in spite of a pile of unpublished manuscripts. They have the fire, and I wish I did. I refuse to beileve it's an age-related problem!