Changing of the guard—again

 

With Megan. Not my best picture,
but my new tortoise-shell glasses are cool!

Colin left around noon, and Megan arrived about four. I am the most spoiled mom in town. Burtons will be home tomorrow night, but Megan will stay until early Tuesday morning. We have lots of great plans—dinner at Pacific Table, organizing my freezer (she did it not long ago, and it made such a difference!), a drive to the Stockyards because Megan wants to see the new restaurants and hotel on Mule Alley, and I just want to get out. She has promised Sophie a walk around the block—a rare treat. But we both have work to do, so we’ll see what plays out.

I am eating well during this week of kids. Megan and I collaborated tonight on a recipe new to me: Light Chinese Chicken Salad with Hoisin Sauce. I knew Megan likes salads, Asian food, and light suppers. It was a perfect choice, though Christian may think I’m invading his territory. He’s the Asian cook in the household, though less inclined to make salads than more complicated Asian dishes. When I once suggested a chop suey recipe, he informed me that the chop suey of my childhood is today’s stir fry. He gets a bonus from tonight’s dinner, because he didn’t have hoisin sauce in his armament of Asian condiments, and now he does. I bought it for the salad.

At any rate, the salad was good—a vinaigrette with sesame oil, hoisin sauce, rice vinegar, soy; salad was cabbage—do you know how much Napa cabbage costs? I didn’t use it. Used shredded cole slaw mix, shredded cabbage, scallions, bean sprouts, chicken. We topped each serving with chow mein noodles, though Megan points out slivered almonds would add the same crunch and are healthier.

In addition to my children, I have been helped several times by the pet sitter here to take care of the Burtons’ two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. The girls are old and a bit of a challenge, but Andrea has gone about it, five times a day in this heat, with good grace and a smile. And she has gone above and beyond to help me with kids locked out of the house, packages on the porch, keeping June Bug out of my cottage (her house manners are unreliable) and other small things. If you ever need a pet sitter, I recommend Andrea Rutledge highly. Email or call me for contact info.

Colin stayed to go to virtual church with me this morning, which was a treat, but he chided me for not paying close attention to the readings. I did pay better attention to the sermon, which was about the role of doubt in faith and the wrongness (is that the right word) of being certain you are right about faith and that yours is superior. We “attended” early church and after that, I got a lot more reading done on Helen Corbitt

Now Megan is looking at her phone, and I am going to read. I’m still reading the mystery series by Helen Currie Foster, and to my delight, the current one, Ghost Dagger, takes Alice to Scotland, so as I read, I’m reliving my own visit to the land of my ancestors—and loving it.

We’re to be cooler this week—in the nineties. Six months ago we would not have thought that sounded like relief, but it does now. Enjoy the break everyone and pray for those threatened by fire.

How soon can I go back to bed?

 

Do some moments from your childhood—ordinary moments, nothing of special importance—come back to you with amazing clarity? I remember one morning going to the garage with my mom. She was going to drive me someplace—not school, because I walked to elementary school and took public transportation to high school (and I’m so old that we didn’t have middle school in Chicago in my day). Out of the blue she suddenly said, “I woke up this morning wondering how soon I could go back to bed.” For her, at that time in our lives, the answer was at least ten at night. I can’t date this incident precisely but we had the pale blue Ford (I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye), so it was undoubtedly the Fifties, and I was too young to drive but old enough to understand what she was saying.

This came back to me today because that’s the way I’ve felt all weekend. I’ve said before that even though my schedule is my own, I somehow let down on weekends, move at a slower pace. And this weekend I wanted to sleep a lot. Two things kept me from it: the first is Sophie, though she slept until eight yesterday, praise be! And today her snuffling and coughing woke me at six-fifteen, but I gave her a Benadryl and talked gently to her about it not yet being daylight. She went back to bed and slept until eight.

The other thing that calls me to get out of bed is my conscience. I don’t remember it ever being said directly, but in the house of my childhood, sleeping late was a bit slothful. There is the world’s business to be up and about. This morning I finally got up for real about nine and felt terribly self-indulgent. One of the things that distinguishes weekends is that I generally don’t try to write fiction. I don’t know why Saturday and Sunday feel different, but they do. I did today read some background material and work out the genealogy of a family whose history I hope will play into the story—found I needed to slip in another generation or I would have had women having babies in their sixties.

And I had the neighborhood newsletter to get out. We will lose two working days this week, so I was anxious to get it to the designer in the hope that it could still come out about the first of December. I had done most of the work on Friday, proofread what I’d done yesterday, and waited for stragglers to send their stuff today. Frustrating. But tonight it is in the hands of the designer, and one more thing is off my conscience.

Last night, Jean came for supper. I made a chicken casserole and cooked an artichoke a neighbor gave me. The casserole is part of my current interest in retro food—used good old cream of mushroom soup, with chicken and hard-boiled eggs and a lot of diced celery for crunchiness. Made a sauce of mayonnaise, lemon, garlic, and pecorino cheese for the artichoke. Another time I’ll leave out the minced garlic—just hard little bits you don’t want to bite on. The dinner was so good, I had it all over again tonight.

But before I had my supper tonight, friends Subie and Phil came for happy hour with their son, Sean, and his girlfriend. I haven’t seen Sean in a while and as glad to meet Roni. We had a jolly time, arguing over literary figures and movies and somehow avoiding politics. Sean and I are Facebook buddies, on the same page about everything from Kyle Rittenhouse to covid vaccinations (he’s a nurse practitioner). When the Rittenhouse name came up tonight I simply said, “Don’t get me started.”

Now I’m off to read a mystery I just started: Funeral Food, by Kathleen Taylor. Set in a small-town café in South Dakota and so gritty you can smell the dust off the prairie. There’s a lot of focus on sex and inuendo, and the narrator’s tone is irreverent and wonderful to read. The story involves two Mormon missionaries adrift in this town but more than that I don’t know.

Tonight, I read; tomorrow I get back to work.

Lessons in frustration, or Am I addicted to the internet?

Today was an exercise in handling frustration. From the moment I got up and to my computer, the internet was agonizingly slow—when it would respond. It simply wouldn’t open some sites. Lest you think I simply wanted to spend the day on Facebook, let me tell you the serious chores I had: I am the Thursday monitor for the Sisters in Crime listserv, which means I have to check pending messages online every couple of hours; one of my daughters-in-law had a birthday today, and I wanted to send an electronic card; an online grocer from which I ordered a few items automatically enrolled me in a membership and charged my credit card $60—thanks to Discover for alerting me; I had to go online to cancel that; and, my task for the morning was to prowl the internet looking for images for the cover of my cookbook. I couldn’t do any of that and spent the morning mostly wringing my hands in frustration.

Mid-morning, I sent an email to the neighborhood listserv and found out that many in my neighborhood were affected; tonight, friends came for happy hour and they, some ten minutes from here, had also been affected. Several people had called AT&T and been told a service person would be out or, my favorite, get a new modem. Apparently, AT&T didn’t think to discover if it was their problem. I meant to call but about one o’clock, it was suddenly up to speed and okay. I worked frantically to accomplish all the things left undone.

And then I crashed for a nap.

Tonight, Teddy and Sue came for happy hour, full of wedding plans and anticipation. Sue had been to a neighbor’s house for a fitting on a dress—hidden talents of my neighbors but I had no idea that Margaret was such an accomplished seamstress. She’s accomplished is many other arenas and this just added one more talent.

Sue, Teddy, and I had a good visit, and our talk ranged far and wide beyond the wedding, though it’s obvious that’s on their minds all the time. But we talked about work and kids and politics and had fun.

And now having worried enough for one day, I’m going to read. Almost to the end of a most suspenseful novel.

A beautiful day in Texas—hope yours was too, wherever you are.