So, don’t you think the answer to that question simply defines people? I always want the bad news first and then I can’t hear the good news by the time I get it, which tells you a lot about me.
Hmm, since I don’t know your answer I’ll go for my system: we have no heat or hot water! No, your cursor didn’t accidentally send you back to last week, or to last month. Nope, it’s happened again. But let’s skip right from that and the fact that I am completely sweaty and stinky from shelving all my books, and Avery’s hands are beyond inky, but no one can take a bath. Really, we’ll skip right from that to the good news which is… which is… see? I can’t remember. No, now I do: my bookshelves are filled! The flip side of that is the fact that there is still a box of my books to be shelved, plus four boxes of Avery’s books. I think the only solution is a quick trip to John Lewis over the weekend and see what we can just take home with us in the way of a piece of shelving furniture, if anything. London furniture stores delight in that dreaded phrase, “lead time.” It could easily be eight weeks, but let’s not think about that.
I found so many things I forgot I had! Excellent mysteries, although I’m ashamed to say how many duplicate copies I have (“I really need to read ‘The 4:50 From Paddington’ and I can’t find my copy! Quick one-click stop on Amazon”), a copy of my own dissertation! and other treasures. I cry every time I read “Under a Wing,” the Lindbergh daughter Reeve’s stunning memoir of her father), and then there were all my childhood Nancy Drews. Avery is right now running up and down the stairs with piles of books she forgot she had, happy as a clam.
Listen to what we’re having for dinner and put it in your memory for the night you can’t bear to go out to the grocery because it’s sleeting and you have no heat and hot water. No, don’t put it under that nasty memory. It’s just totally easy. Place a whole stick of butter in a heavy pot, throw in several sliced cloves of garlic and an onion that you’ve cut in half and sliced roughly. Add two large cans (not the cans, I mean the contents) of peeled plum tomatoes, a splash of cheap red wine and a good two tablespoons of Italian seasoning. Now put it on a simmer and go away. Look at your filled bookshelves and gloat. Come back every 15 minutes or so to stir, and burst the tomatoes with your spoon. After 45 minutes it’s ready, but it can also sit there, for close to two hours, really low heat, if it needs to while your husband walks in and goes apoplectic over the non-existent boiler. Grrr. Boil some spaghetti during the last ten minutes, make sure you’ve got some grated cheese, pecorino of parmesan, and you’re done. With this we’re having a variation on the salad I talked about last, this one chunks of tomato and avocado, with a dressing I think is a pretty good imitation of the weird steakhouse one from yesterday. Three parts olive oil to one part any kind of vinegar and one part dijon mustard, plus a quarter teaspoon curry powder and a quarter teaspoon ground cumin, plus some salt and pepper. And a blueberry coffee cake of my own design, with a sunken gooey center that Avery loves.
I’m dropping with tiredness!
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