An ode to Saturdays

    

Kitchen sink soup in the pot

I’ve said this before, but I cannot figure out why Saturdays feel different from the rest of the week when you’re quarantining and practically a recluse. I stay home all the time, so why does Saturday seem a different day? And yet it really does. It’s not a workday, like Monday through Friday, and Sunday is its own day because, at least in this household, we attend online church and we make Sunday dinner a more formal, special meal than weeknights when we might scrape by on leftovers. Nope, Saturday is definitely its own day.

In reverence to that feeling, I did not much today. Spent a lot of time on social media this morning. I will be so glad when the election is over because I expect the posts and controversies and things I absolutely must read will quiet down. That may, however, be a fool’s dream. I also expect confusion, chaos, even civil disobedience, no matter who wins the election. I have gotten to the point that I don’t want to read polls and prognostications and predictions—I simply can’t bear it.

So today I did eventually get back to proofreading my novel, Jessie. I had started over last night, because I didn’t feel I was in the rhythm of the thing when I first went through it. Today I got to page 125, finding new errors along the way but eventually reaching a point where I thought I had done the best I could. I sent it back to the publisher, figuring anything else would amount to chewing it to death. Glad to have it off my desk, and I’m ready to move on next week to the audio version of Saving Irene. I admit I’ve been stalling because I’m a bit intimidated—I’ve never done an audio book before.

Compared to yesterday, today was lovely, bright and sunny, but it was still most chilly. A soup day. I fished six icebox dishes out of the freezer to defrost—not sure what was in them all, though I did recognize the remnants of short ribs and the gravy from them. There was something with a lot of hamburger and spaghetti—Stroganoff? As I assured Christian tonight, none of it was anything he hadn’t already eaten. I dumped it all in my big pot, added a can of tomatoes, a cup of beef broth, some fresh green beans I have to find something to do with, and some frozen corn. Voila! Soup! It smelled so good as it simmered that I was impatient for dinner. Christian ate two helpings, and Jordan ate most of Jacob’s. I’ll eat it again tomorrow for lunch.

Like most of us, I have been horrified by the fires in Colorado—two huge fires only ten miles apart with the threat of them meeting and combining. Estes Park completely under mandatory evacuation. For some dumb reason—maybe because fires always seem remote—I didn’t think to worry about my oldest granddaughter who is in school in Boulder. But today I read that fires in Boulder County were almost under control. Oops! I texted her instantly, but she reports she is safe, although the fires came quite close. And she sent pictures of the smoke. In the one below, it seems to me there is a great contrast between the comfort of the beautiful sunset and the dark cloud of billowing smoke.

Tomorrow we in the DFW Metroplex are due for a sunny, pleasant day with temperatures in the seventies. Christian will cook a roast, and Jordan and I plan an artichoke appetizer because we were gifted with two fresh artichokes. We will have a proper Sunday dinner, the kind my dad would have approved. But then it’s going to turn cold. Patio weather is gone, and that makes me sad.