Not feeling like myself

I feel like I’m forgetting everything I ever knew, and especially how to do all the things I’m supposed to be good at. Getting old and irrelevant, not keeping up.

Maybe I’m living in that Billy Collins poem.

I know one of the ways I’m feeling not like myself is how little documentation of cooking and eating I’ve been doing. I guess I can fix some of that now.

Way back on June 10th, Maja and her friends organized a party in our back yard. We bought drinks and chips and ordered a platter of subs, and I made a cake using Nigella’s Victoria sponge recipe instead of my usual. It was good – and saved me having to go out and buy a carton of whipped butter. Along with lightly mashed raspberries and whipped cream, there’s jam in the filling. I used this rhubarb-chia jam recipe that my co-recipe-writer for CSA, Phoebe, contributed a few weeks ago, that I just realized I should be stirring into my yogurt. Will do that today for breakfast.

I wrote recipes for CSA last week, and made toasted noodle stir fry, and scallion meatballs. The first time I tested the stir fry I had to use udon, because our student ate the last package of ramen. I wanted to make potstickers but I couldn’t find the wrappers, and making my own, which I do want to try, seemed like too much for a Tuesday night. I like this recipe from i am a food blog. As it was we didn’t eat until 7:30 the night I made the meatballs. I’ll get recipes added to my blog Real Soon Now.

And we did a super-touristy Thursday to Saturday trip to Chicago. It’s our student’s last couple of days here – she returns on Monday. Umm, tomorrow.

We blew through Cezanne at the Art Institute in about 45 minutes when we first got in. I took pictures of the apples that I taught when I was the art mom at John’s school. We talked about it and then I showed them how to cut up apples and we ate apple pie. And I also took pictures of Cezanne’s bathers that influenced Picasso – in the show they even had a version that Picasso owned. The exhibition stressed that Cezanne was an artists’ artist and had commentary by other artists on the labels – like Kerry James Marshall. I actually sat down and read his whole essay in the catalog that was excerpted on the label, in the little lounge area at the end of the show, where they had the catalog out, since  I got though the show first. As I do.

We had dinner at Xoco. Good margarita. I think everything they serve has avocado in it.

We went to see Six, a musical about the six wives of Henry the Eighth. Six singers and a small band, singing their hearts out for about 90 minutes, no intermission and no dialog. It was good, but I don’t really remember any of the songs. There was one about about the house of Holbein – did Holbein’s portrait of Ann of Cleves dupe Henry into thinking she was prettier than she really was? And if that’s true, has Holbein’s portrait of Henry been fooling all of us for like 500 years? I mean, we only know it from copies.

Saturday morning we ate donuts and went on the architecture boat. I still think I could lead that tour pretty well. Art history major, former photograph cataloger for a big collection of Chicago architectural photos, and of course librarian. Maybe a retirement gig to consider.

Saturday afternoon, Nick Cave at the MCA was a highlight.

I love all the ones with the tole flowers.

And the spinner forest – video is best.

But I got some of that too.

We had dinner at a pasta place in the West Loop, and then went to the symphony, with a woman conductor, CSO’s Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprentice Lina González-Granados, standing in for Muti, who had Covid, and Anne Sophie-Mutter, who played Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The second half was Brahms Symphony No. 1.

And home by 3:30 on Saturday afternoon.

And OK, writing about food and art and tourist-ing is making me feel better. But the news is still unrelentingly awful; everywhere is either too hot or flooded or on fire. Here a few Mondays ago we had a crazy downpour with what they called 75mph straight line winds, in the middle of the afternoon. Lots of trees came down, lots of people without power, and semis blown over on the highway. We’ll have heat, crazy storms, and then a few beautiful June days, in the 70s wth bright blue skies.

Trumpers are getting elected – I know, it’s only the primaries – respected institutions seem to be falling apart, and I worry that I am going to retiring next year in the middle of a recession. We’re going to the library conference in DC at the end of the week, first time back in person in 3 years. I have to overcome the bad taste of my last in-person, which was also in DC, summer of 2019. It was a conference where I had either big gaps with nothing in my calendar or 3 things all at the same time. Disappointing. Speaking of calendar, I only have two things on mine so far for this year, on the same day, but not the same time,  and I don’t think I have ever been so not ready for conference on the Monday before it starts as this. So I guess I better go start looking for stuff to add. Maybe that wil make me feel better, too.