nuts

Ed asked me a day or so ago -- what is that?
What?
You know, what you say…
Oh, you mean Geeze Louise?
Yes, exactly.
It's just so appropriate to so many situations.
He stares at me, as if trying to figure out how any one person can have so many peculiar habits. Oftentimes he'll shrug and say -- what do you know -- you didn't grow up here (which is only partly true). But this time it's not as if he could attribute my repeated use of these words (such as they are) to my Polishness.  Geeze Louise is most definitely not a Polish expression.

Later, in class (it was the third class and so I was tired) it slipped out again. Geeze Louise.
Sorry, I say to the class, just a pairing of words that I seem to have adopted.
Oh, that one's been around for a while -- a student tells me.
Who knew.

Habits. I pick them up, I cannot break them. Ask me about my enduring habit of eating nuts and crackers after dinner. Not hungrily. Just out of habit. Geeze Louise.

In other news -- it's Thursday. The hard day. The day when I finally accept Ed's (repeated) offer of Chinese take out.






The day when I ride Rosie to work as the sun rises over the fields of corn and return as the sun has set over those same fields.





Ed sleeps, Isis sleeps, I listen to the silence. No more robocalls, no calls at all, just the quiet of a farmhouse evening. Time to reach for the crackers and the pistachio nuts.