Hot, yet again.
Before going to bed last night, I finally reached for my old fashioned oats, and two apples, and yogurt, and milk, and a jar of honey and I made Bircher Muesli. With added dried cherries and a few walnut bits. It keeps for up to a week in your fridge. The important bit is that it needs a rest of a minimum of six hours.
This morning, I finally have Bircher Muesli for breakfast.
And immediately I am reminded not of my rambles in Switzerland (where a morning with Bircher Muesli was de rigeur), but of the fact that a dish, transported from its place of origin to your kitchen table, does not bring with it the wealth of cultural provenance, does not put you right back in the milieu of where you first ate it, does not taste as sublime as it did then and there. On the up side, the Muesli is healthy and good enough. Just not with the depth and power of, say, a croissant with homemade jam.
In mid-morning, I drive over to the farmhouse. If this is to be a fine day, at the very tail end of a warm weather system, with gusty winds to lessen the impact of the unseasonable highs, then I want to be in nature. The farmette is a good jumping off point.
I still have pockets of stuff to clear out at the farmhouse, and today's task is to finish up the kid room closet (easy -- there's hardly anything left there) and the liquor cabinet. That last is hard. For many years my most favorite alcoholic beverage was the aperitif. If I could have only one solid one in a day, then the predinner drink is the drink of choice for me. Whether an Aperol or a Campari or a Prosecco with a splash of cassis -- I had the ingredients for them all. But of course, I stopped drinking last April. My aperitif these days is a non-alcoholic beer. (And yes, I will be very mad if they tell me in a few years that wine is actually just fine for your health and that sleeping better without it is just a psychological thing.)
So what to do with all those bottles of opened and unopened alcohol? I took some with me to the Edge for special occasions. I imagine I'll break down when the whole family visits for the holidays and crack open a bottle of (leftover) champagne. But the rest? We lined the bottles up and took pictures and send it around to local friends. You want it? It's yours!
And then Ed and I head out for a walk to our favorite park along our favorite trail and as always, it's beautiful.
Ed brings along the kite I had kept in the basement for years (ever since the day we tried it out with toddler Snowdrop and found that she hadn't the patience nor interest in watching it fail again and again). The wind is gusty, Perfect for kite flying!
Except that the darn thing refuses to climb the skies, way up high, where birds do fly... We try again, and again. He runs with it, I run with it, and then I run some more. It never went up. Not once.
On the upside, it was good exercise.
I am just about to head home to start in on dinner for the young family when I get a text telling me that one of the kids is sick. I suppose that's not altogether surprising -- both the mom and Sparrow were down with a bug last week. But the timing is awkward. The mom and Sparrow are headed out to the east coast tomorrow for a conference, leaving the dad and the two other kids (one of them now sick) at home. The one drawback of having a grandmother babysit your kids is that she backs out when they come down with something. Their short-lived virus can be a 72-year old's nightmare. So, no dinner tonight and who knows how the week will play out.
But now I am not in a hurry to head home. Nature and Ed are a powerful draw!
I pull weeds in the lily field.
(an October beauty)
He cuts me slices of watermelon, I make myself a coffee and munch on a granola bar. And again I have this weird feeling of being here, and not being here. Of being of the farmette lands and of being far from this place. Present but not present. Watching the changing season and being removed from it all. But not really removed at all. Not one bit.
And then comes another twist to my day: I ask a friend if she'd like my booze loot. She and her husband entertain a lot. Surely guests would like to try a Swiss pine liqueur served as a Spritz maybe? With Italian Prosecco? Perhaps out of compassion for my plight, she agrees to take the bottles. And here's the odd coincidence: she and her husband are in fact having a dinner party tonight -- for a couple I've known for a long time -- my daughters' pediatrician and his wife. And the doc happens to be Swiss.
I'm tempted to stay, really I am. I love everyone in that gathering. It's the perfect chance to become socially engaged once again. And yet...
I stay just for a wee bit.
One step at a time. I've been a recluse for too long to plunge. (And haven't I done enough plunging of late?)
As I get in the car to head back to my neighborhood, I text my daughter -- I'll be stopping by your place to drop over Snowdrop's backpack. (She'd left it in the car.) She texts back -- stop by Capital Brewery if you want to meet the dog we just adopted!
Seriously?! Seriously.
It appears she's been scouring listings of rescues. And she found one that may well fit into her large and active household. Three kids, two cats and a partridge in a pear tree.
So, meet Goose, a new member of the young family.
(He's an abandoned mutt with obviously some black lab in him. Seems to love people. And a babe at barely a year and a half. About. They're not quite sure of his age.)
At home now, I take stock. I wish I'd still adhere to my drink before dinner habit. I'd pour a good one tonight. Instead, I open a pilfered from Ed Heineken 0, open a box of buckwheat crackers and try to remember what lead me down this path. Broadly speaking.
Life can be very unpredictable!
with so much love... `
