Is it midnight yet?

 

Jacob at three
but the cookbook has some 
of my favorite reciipes

Ever have those nights when you feel at eight o’clock that it surely must be midnight already? That’s how I feel. Although I am constantly trying to rid myself of obsessive schedules, I’m pretty much tied to my own routine. I don’t want to go to bed at eight or nine, because I don’t want to wake, sleepless, in the middle of the night. I try to sleep from eleven to eight, the Lord and Sophie willing. But tonight I’m sleepy, worn out by some conflicts swirling around me. I tell myself—and others—I don’t want to be involved in intrigue, but sometimes I can’t remain aloof. And so it is tonight.

To soothe my soul, I began to do some menu planning, always an activity I enjoy. For instance, I found a recipe tonight for rosemary pot roast. Between now and the holidays, the calendars around here are full, and I foresee meals on the at-home evenings of leftovers or heavy hors d’oevres. But it’s never too early to stash things away in my “never tried” file, which is bulging. Periodically, I go through it and firmly say to myself, “It sounds great, but you’ll never fix it” or “You like this, but your family wouldn’t.” And, plop, it goes in the trash. I waste a lot of printer ink and paper that way, but I haven’t gotten sophisticated enough to keep my recipe collection online. And if I did, I’d just have to print each recipe out as I cooked it. As it is, I do that with recipes from the manuscripts of my cookbooks. But I foresee rosemary pot roast on the January menu—see how I’m jumping ahead?

Tonight, looking through appetizer recipes for our neighborhood ladies very small happy hour next week (Jordan wants to make my salmon dip), I came across my mom’s pickled shrimp. She always said it would keep a week in the fridge. In early adulthood I developed an allergy to shrimp—made me break out, so I was afraid to try it for fear the next time would be anaphylactic shock. Allergies come and go, and I might well be able to eat shrimp now, but the fear lingers. Still, for nostalgia’s sake, I’d like to fix that. We do still as a family treasure Mom’s cheeseball recipe. This year, sixteen-year-old Morgan said she would make it, although she pointedly said she would not eat it.

Funny what one person will eat and another won’t. For our four-person neighborhood event, I said I would buy a small jar of pickled herring—one of the ladies and I both love it; the other and Jordan turned up their noses. But when Jordan suggested goat cheese log with wasabi, the pickled-herring friend said, “I don’t eat wasabi.” I’ll probably make it pesto instead of wasabi, but it’s good quick appetizer. Just split a log, small or large, of goat cheese lengthwise, put wasabi (be cautious, not too much—a wavy “S” pattern) or pesto down the middle, put the two sides together again, and roll the log in toasted sesame seeds. So good. Are you like me and have to toast two batches of sesame seeds because you always burn the first one?

This morning I was productive. I’m trying to clear the decks as it were as I prepare for the holidays and try to focus more on my writing projects. The trouble is that I’m programmed—there it is again, that routine I can’t let go of. I do this every year, get so efficient about Christmas and all my projects that by about December 10 or 12, my desk is clear and I wonder what I should do next. Too close to Christmas to start a new project—but I have old ones in limbo I can work on.

At any rate, back to clearing the decks. Yesterday I wrote my December column for Lone Star Literary Life. The schedule is changing so I’m not sure when it will appear, nor when the January column will. But today I wrote the January column—I was on a roll, with good material, and it flowed easily. So I wrote the publisher and said I’d just written the most interesting column I’d ever sent her. And then I said I’d send it in a few days, which made her laugh. But it was fun—two women who team up to write fiction, and a woman who decided she didn’t need a super sleuth but needed a team. If you don’t subscribe to this weekly free literary newsletter, you might consider it. Just go to Lone Star Literary Life

Enough. I’m written out. Going to calm myself with a book. Sweet dreams of sugar plums and all thinks good.

Learning to adjust

It’s hard for me to believe, but I have now lived in the cottage for three and a half years. I still love it, am so glad my family made this move possible. But I’ve had to learn to make some adjustments. One of them is that I am now pretty much dependent on other people’s schedules, mostly Jordan.

Jordan doesn’t like me to go to public places—i.e., the grocery store—alone, because she’s afraid I’ll fall getting in and out of the car or that my attention will be so much on getting the walker out and set up that I won’t be aware of my surroundings—and I’ll be mugged. Add to that, the fact that I am not much liking to drive these days. It’s an old fear that I thought I had conquered but has now come back to haunt me, and it’s complicated by the fact that I know my reactions at my age are not what they were twenty years ago. That pretty much means that Jordan takes me to the grocery, although I do curbside pickup at Central Market alone.

We try to make Friday morning our grocery shopping morning, but her business as a luxury travel assistant has gotten busier, and she often has appointments that we work around. One problem, for me, with such indefinite timing is that if I know I’m going to be interrupted sometime but don’t know when, it’s hard for me to settle down to work. Before I can get serious about research or writing I need to know I have a block of time. So on “waiting” mornings, I spend way too much time on Facebook.

Today though it was a momentous occasion—she had to register Jacob for his first year of high school. High school? That kid who used to crawl into my bed to keep me safe from storms? He’s now almost as tall as I am and has this deep voice that I’m still learning to recognize. Yep, he’s going to high school.

As I expected, the process took longer than anticipated. So I waited patiently, knowing she’d come get me when she was through. Oops—she went out to eat, where I thought we’d go  to Local Foods and get tuna for our lunch. (If my kids are smart, they will disable “Find your friends” on my phone—for me, it’s “Find your kids.”) I ate cottage cheese.

We went to Local Foods about 12:30, height of  the lunch rush. Got something for dinner tonight and headed to Central Market, where she realized she had forgotten to get chicken for Jacob’s supper. Got my groceries from curbside pickup and came home.

I have a bit of an ordering problem with Central Market. The website says, for instance, lemons are two for $1, so I thought hitting “Add to cart” put two in my basket. Not so—more than once I’ve gotten one lemon. So today, ordering four chicken thighs for a family dinner, I hit it four times. And ended up with four four-packs of chicken thighs—sixteen thighs is a bit much for an elderly woman who lives alone! Guess what Jacob is getting for dinner tonight while we have turkey burgers with pesto. Central Market was gracious when I called, handled it to my complete satisfaction, and gave me a hint about using the notes section to specify quantity.

Tonight we had a festive Valentine’s supper in the house with a proper table setting, as opposed to eating off the coffee table in the cottage. Jordan used red chargers and water goblets and added a bouquet of red, white, and pink daisies that Christian had brought her. Lots of chocolate for each of us, and Christian and Jacob had a great time guessing what was in various pieces. We found out Jordan does not like coconut!

I’m learning to adjust, and in the long run it was a good Valentines day. And, hey, the sun was shining today. Pretty cold, but it’s sunny.

The inflexible routines of aging

Excuse me if I digress for a moment to say how blessed I am. For part of this morning and the early afternoon, Jamie was here, nose buried in his computer. But he was here, in the same room where I was working. Tonight ten-year-old Jacob is on my couch, buried in his iPhone while I work at my computer. But he’s here. (He’s so wrapped up in whatever’s on his phone that he didn’t even blink when I took the photo above.) It brings me great joy to have them here. I don’t care that they don’t carry on conversations or pay attention to me. It’s enough that they are here with me.

Jamie’s visit caused me to reflect on how we get set into routines, particularly as we age. I think we find comfort in doing the same thing at the same time every day. I eat breakfast, such as it is, between eight and nine every morning; lunch is between eleven-thirty and twelve-thirty, and diner is sixish. Living not exactly with the Burtons but not far from them, one of the adjustments I’ve had to make is that they don’t eat dinner at six. Sometimes they don’t eat dinner until eight or later. Hard for an old lady to change.

On those treasured days when Jamie comes over from the Dallas area, we go to breakfast. The goal is always nine o’clock. This morning it was at least ten before we were settled in the restaurant, and I was so ravenous I ate a double order of corned beef hash (with a lot of ketchup). We hadn’t been home long when I looked at the clock and realized it was nearly noon. Then, suddenly, it was almost two, and Jamie had to rush back to Frisco to take one of my granddaughters to an art lesson. He literally ate leftover chicken-fried steak out of his hand as he ran out the door, and I ate a light lunch of leftover tuna salad and a bit of smoked salmon with cream cheese.

I napped, as I always do, but later than usual. See? There’s my routine again. I nap about two, read in bed for five to fifteen minutes. Today, it was almost three before I crawled in bed. I slept so hard I thought I was in bed for the night and woke with a start at four-thirty to scramble to make an appetizer for neighbor Margaret who was coming for happy hour. By five, we were on the patio, sipping wine and eating hummus that I’d topped with chopped onion, cucumber, and tomato (oops, forgot the feta).

And so I didn’t eat dinner—leftover lamb, cold, with cherry tomatoes and gherkins--until almost eight. I’m clearly off my routine—and it’s a great thing. But tonight, as usual, ten is my bedtime.

I’m not sure if routines are a good thing. I think my mind tells me flexibility is good, but my body votes for routine—with such strong votes as hunger and sleepiness. I hate to admit it’s age, but I think maybe that’s at least part of it.