random moments

Last evening, as Ed fell asleep (so early!), I played music. The kind that makes your life spin before you, so that you can chastise yourself at all the points where you think you didn’t quite pull it off. Ever since I purchased the Beatles collection on iTunes, I can go pretty far back now – to when I was ten and didn’t do my French homework as required... or twelve and took my skateboard out on the streets of Manhattan even though I knew I shouldn't...

Over breakfast, I ask Ed about his lunch the previous day with his business partner.
Chinese, in Waunakee. All you can eat buffet.
I wasn’t envious of the all you can eat buffet. That kind of set up makes me fill up with foods like broccoli because I want to take advantage of the all you can eat idea without piling on the calories. And yes, there is such a thing as eating too much broccoli.
But I was envious of the Chinese. We never go to a Chinese place for dinner anymore.
You don’t like any of the Chinese places in Madison.

Not true! It's been years! Maybe there are fine new places. You know, fresh and honest.

At the downtown farmers market, things were looking so good! So very good! My daughter and I circled the square (!) and she nibbled the curds and I stared at the tomatoes. And the eggplant. And the apples. And the corn. I felt like I was leafing through a catalogue of favorites foods. Nothing seemed unappetizing. And it looked still so richly end-of-summery! As if a hard frost hadn’t come by to shut down production! (It hadn’t.) Raspberries! Flowers! Peaches from Door County!





At the farmhouse, Ed is painting again (after a four day pause). I ask him – if you’re going to do such a small detail, why would you do it in the most invisible spot ever? Because it’s the most difficult one and I want to be done with it.





Okay. Makes sense. Still, I look forward to the day when I will approach home and think – my, what a fresh and lovely building! Not there yet.

In the evening, Ed asks – so, we’re going to a Chinese place for dinner?

But where?

We go to the Orient House on Park Street. Quite new. Call it a neighborhood place for us. A couple of soy/corn fields, a couple of city blocks and you’re there. Ten minutes door to door. And the food is fresh tasty and crisp (if a tad heavy)  and the waitstaff is young and charming.
It’s our special place now, isn’t it? I ask Ed.
He rolls his eyes at my sentimentality.





On the way home, we stop on the county road, just shy off where we turn off to go to the farmette. A new road is going up, getting the highways dangerously closer to where we live.





It’s a threat. It could be, that five years from now, we’ll be surrounded not by market crops but by a subdivision.

Few things are today as they will be tomorrow. For the most part, that's a good thing. For the most part.