The rain finally stopped

So, OK. On Monday, I got back from helping John sell the car and it started raining, so instead of biking I drove across town to the community center to see what I could make for the food pantry breakfast on Tuesday morning. Despite my hours of worry and dread, and the car smoking and the check engine light on, and the heat, we got an OK price for it – $500 less than the offer the Oak Lawn CarMax made John a month ago before all that stuff started happening. Whew. And BTW, I think Oak Lawn is a pit. I thought it 25 years ago when I was a regular sub at the Oak Lawn Public Library, and I still think so, with apologies to its residents – it’s ugly. After the rain, it stayed hot, but there was a bit of a rainbow while I was stuck in traffic crossing the isthmus.

I scoped out what there was for food, and decided to serve scrambled eggs from the pantry, muffins that I’d go home and make, and cereal and juice that I bought at Costco.

On Tuesday morning it was still raining, plus I had two big pans of muffins (72, whole wheat muffins filled with all the open jams from the fridge, so there were about a dozen blueberry and the rest were apricot or apple butter) and the cereal and juice to take with, so I drove to the community center again. The cereal & juice would’ve fit on my bike but not the muffins. And, anyways, Hanne was going to be arriving by bus, back from Chicago and would need a ride home.

After the breakfast, I headed to work, changed, and was mildly productive. I picked up Hanne at the University Bookstore where she was buying gifts to take back to Belgium, and brought her home. I had lunch – a bagel with cheese and my zucchini pickles – and went back to work, where I was not productive at all the rest of the afternoon. I had a terrible headache, and felt like I just wanted to lie down.

After Hanne’s AFS liaison came for her final visit, for dinner we had farro and chard with tahini dressing, over lettuce – some of the giant red romaine that came in my last CSA box. I liked it well enough that I bought more farro at the co-op on Saturday.

On Wednesday morning I went for a walk with Jane. We decided it was OK to walk since it wasn’t raining too hard, and it was cool enough to wear a rain jacket. We did a loop where I walked to her house, then she walked me back, and walked home on her own. I didn’t get too wet, but there was a pretty hard downpour when I calculate Jane was about 10 minutes from her house. I offered to drive her, but she said that since she’s retired it wasn’t like she had to go to work, and she could change at home. I bet she got a little wetter than was OK even for a retiree.

I took the bus to work, and it was still raining after work, so I drove to the library, and bought Luigi’s pizza for dinner, instead of making the planned turkey & bok choy stir fry that I ended up making Thursday instead.

On Thursday it was still raining. I started off by bike because it seemed dry, but by the time I was on the last two blocks on Park St. to H.C. White, it was actually raining. I had to go back home to take Hanne to the post office to ship her boxes, so I took advantage of what seemed like a lull, and rode home and left my bike safe in the garage, and walked back to work after the (expensive) shipping. I had meetings all afternoon, then made the stir fry for dinner. After which, I wrapped my phone in plastic and took a raincoat, and biked to the east side for Make Music Madison. To be fair, it seems like it ALWAYS rains on that event. The band I most wanted to see, The Getaway Drivers, had been moved indoors to the Crystal Corner, instead of Bob Queen’s roof. Which was OK, although not quite in the Make Music event spirit of music in alternative venues. I had a beer and talked to some friends at the bar. I also saw a bit of a band called The Periodicals, on somebody’s porch on Few St., they had a Brit frontman and some nice guitars. I also saw some young punk rockers called Distant Cuzins under a pop up tent in a driveway across from the middle school.

On Friday, it finally seemed safe to bike to work, and I finally made some actual progress on my fall course syllabi. I came home after work, and after some discussion, bought tickets for me & Hanne to go see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, since it seemed like the best choice of what was available in theaters. The movie turned out to be pretty awful in terms of story, everything just an excuse for CGI dinos. But fun to watch, as a summer popcorn movie, and Hanne liked it. My other miscalculation was I picked the 7:30 show, since the only seats left for 8:00 were way too close to the screen. I biked off to see Girls Are Go at the happy hour show at High Noon, and, since I had to get home for the 7:30 movie, only got to see their first couple of 3-minute songs. Another miscalculation. I didn’t realize they were the headliners, so on second, after No Dice, the Badfinger cover band, whose set I got to see all of … after almost 50 years of going to rock & roll shows I guess I should know better. But, like the movie, it was fun, anyways, except I still have Badfinger running through my brain, though “You don’t own me” powered my bike ride home.

Saturday was lovely, finally a nice sunny and mild day. I went to the strawberries U-Pick out at my CSA farm in Evansville. I did some grocery shopping by bike, and made strawberry refrigerator jam, and rice, tofu, and lettuce wraps. I added the whole wheat tortilla things (Costco purchase, pretty good, but, since it was a Costco-size package, I was quite happy to finally use up the last six of them from the freezer) with a layer of tahini to glue it all together, so the recipe was still vegan though no longer gluten free. And of course, I ate strawberries.

Saturday evening was another slight miscalculation on my part. I had one ticket for Bach Dancing & Dynamite’s concert at Overture Center. Hanne had a friend over helping her pack, to whom I am extremely grateful, and we all kind of wanted to go see the Shake the Lake fireworks. I couldn’t figure out any better way to work it all out, so I biked to the concert, and told the girls I’d text them at intermission. Which meant I got to see up to the  Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach concerto, which was a big group for Chamber music, the flute surrounded by cello, piano, viola, violin – I think actually two violins – but then I had to leave because I couldn’t be sure the second half would end in time for me to get back. We biked back downtown, and watched the fireworks from the dock behind the Brittingham Boathouse, that I thought would be a good spot, but because Hanne’s friend rows, it was very familiar to her. So again fun, just again missing out on parts of stuff.

Shake the Lake fireworks from Debra Shapiro on Vimeo.

Sunday morning I got up and made the cimmy buns from the Violet Bakery Cookbook, the ones that have a serious misstatement of the amount of flour required, and a recipe I am still trying to perfect. This time they came out kind of hard; I think I should’ve made the dough wetter, but I also baked them a little too long, trying to follow the recipe that says 25 minutes. I wanted to take some of the rolls and some jam out to Al & Emma’s, and decided to bike for a long ride. It’s about 15 miles round trip. Ms. Google took me up and down some serious hills, and I was on my commuter, 7-speed bike, instead of my joy-riding 21-speed. I walked a few places, and collapsed sweating on Al & Emma’s porch and mapped an easier way back.

Finally finishing this post on the following Tuesday afternoon, when it is raining again, while I am trapped in my office waiting for the rain to abate enough to head home.