Crazy start to the day

 

These guys are on the alert for fireworks. 
They want to remind you to follow city laws and be considerate.
Actually they're wondering why their human went across the street
and when he is coming home where he belongs.

Once upon a time a gentleman I liked a lot ordered lunch of chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes with gravy. When he brought it to the table, I said in horror, “You don’t have anything green on your plate.” He rolled his eyes and said, “Once a mother, always a mother.” This morning I proved him right, although I think it might be changed to “Once a mother, always a worrywart.”

After Sophie’s last visit to the doctor, when we got the definitive word about the time relationship between her meals and her insulin shots, Jordan and Christian committed to giving her a shot at nine a.m. I committed to feeding her at eighty-thirty. This morning, I texted, told them it was eight-forty. Zenaida came to clean the cottage, took the laundry inside to start, and came back aside, “They’re asleep. The door is locked.” I gave her a key and said, “Nonsense. They know they have to give Sophie her shot. Jordan is leaving town and has promised to go to the grocery store first. And Christian has to go to work.” So I called. No answer.

I asked Zenaida to go back inside, but she was hesitant. I told her we had to wake them up. Thus began several trips, with Zenaida resisting each time, saying they would get mad at her. I said no, they might get mad at me, but not her. Each time, she went a little farther—first to the kitchen where she called their names. No response. By this time I was seriously worried; she was still reluctant. At my urging she went back, said she peeked through the open bedroom door and saw an arm over a forehead, so they were sleeping. My first thought was “Well, if they were dead, the arm would have fallen off the head.” That’s how paranoid a mother can get. I knew there was nothing on in July that would cause carbon monoxide poisoning, but what else could have happened? Christian is almost always up well before nine, though Jordan can be a slug-abed.

About the fifth or sixth time Zenaida went back, they woke up and weren’t angry at all. They thought it was funny. Seems a neighbor had come to visit late last night—and stayed until three o’clock.

So now all is well. Jordan writes that she and a couple of friends have safely arrived at one friend’s family house in Key Largo, all set for four or five days of sunning and fishing. She swears she is not going in the ocean, and between sharks and rip tides I’m just as relieved (there’s that worrywart mother again).

Christian and I had a good supper of chicken hash (it doesn’t look like much, but it is delicious), corn salad (a new experiment for me and a keeper recipe), and sugar snap peas. I snapped and strung and they still had strings. I may give up on them, sweet and good as they are.

It was a cooking day for me, but an awkward one, between working around Zenaida who tried to clean while I made a mess. I kept telling her I would do my dishes, and she kept telling me she would wash them. We didn’t quite come to blows. She helped me clean my refrigerator—Zenaida loves to throw away useless things, and we got rid of old bottles of salad dressing, and dried bouillon flavoring, and a couple of unidentifiable small jars. I was beginning to remind myself of my mom. She had lived through the Depression and saved everything in little jars (maybe baby food jars she somehow got or saved since we were babies) in the back of her fridge. When she went to assisted living and we cleaned out her kitchen, we found several jars with mold.

Living through the Depression made an indelible impression on people. Mom saved bits of string and scraps of aluminum foil, and the one I remember most—paper towels. If she used one to wipe a counter spill, it went into a special space beneath the sink to be re-used for the next floor spill. I inherited some of that and tend to be frugal, though in her old age she accused me of being too willing to pitch things.

Christian, like me, is frugal, and Jordan and I were talking about something food related one day, and she said, “Christian Burton lived through the Depression.” I was indignant. “No he didn’t. I wasn’t even born then.” She was philosophical. “In another life,” she said.

Tomorrow I’ll cook supper for my good friends Subie and Phil and then it’s coasting on leftovers the rest of the week. Jordan and Jacob will both be home next Saturday, and Christian and I will be glad to have life get back to normal. Meantime, we’re flourishing.

Happy Fourth everyone. We’re a proud country, and we will survive the current unrest and divisiveness. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The moral arc of the universe bends slowly, but it always bends toward justice.”” I have faith in democracy.