Bike riding in February

Weird winter weather continues. Last Thursday, after the temps had been in the 50s, in other words, completely unseasonable for February, we got rain and wind in Madison and a tornado to the southeast.

One of the tornadoes touched down maybe a 10 minute drive from my CSA farm. I emailed them and they said they were lucky, the tornado passed over them and took out a few trees but didn’t hit any buildings or vehicles. And they were safe in the basement.

On Friday morning I had a bag of trash to take out – Thursday I had thought maybe I could wait on replacing the newspaper under the kittens’ litter boxes, but they ripped it up so much I took it out – and I couldn’t find the trash bin. It had almost blown into the backyard, and got stuck on the railings of the cement stairs that go to the backyard. But that’s all that happened here.

On Monday after I volunteered at Memorial Library on campus, I was going to bus to the public library to pick up a book. But I guessed wrong on the buses. Leaving the Memorial at 1:24, I figured I’d miss the bus that was supposed to leave Brooks & Johnson at 1:26. And that bus isn’t the most direct route anyways, you have to go all the away around University Hospital backwards, back towards downtown, before it goes up Highland, and out Speedway to the library. I decided to stop at the Historical Society to go to the bathroom, and figured I could catch a more direct bus at 1:42 at Park & University. When I got to the stop it was still only 1:32, and that more direct bus was delayed to 1:50. I decided that was too long to wait, so started walking home, and as I passed Brooks St. the bus I thought I couldn’t make pulled out. Hence bike riding in February. The sun was nice and warm on my back.

I feel like the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing more things that I haven’t taken pictures of, and reflecting and thinking and I feel like I don’t have the best ability to express without a picture. I’ve been thinking a lot about the weird weather.

I took these  two pics of an escaped ivy leaf in the driveway, that sort of mean something, something about how all the snow melted so I’m seeing the leaves like this, something.

And aging. Aches and pains and how much time do I have left. I keep thinking about offering to teach a class for my old department, but haven’t done it and last week I had a bad dream that I was in a work setting and didn’t know how to do anything anymore because I’m an old retired person.

Although – there was one day recently, can’t quite remember which day it was and I certainly don’t know what I did to bring it on, but I had about 5 minutes of that elderly happiness I keep hearing I’m supposed to be feeling now that I’m elderly. I was thinking well, I guess it sucks that I might only have 10 or 12 or 20 years left, but I will make sure to enjoy all that time. And I felt a kind of acceptance and weight lifted. I have no idea what I did to bring the feeling on, if I did I’d do it all the time.

Maybe it was a week ago Wednesday, after Jasper went home. Earlier, we walked to the coffee place after he woke up happy from his nap.

We got the Eustace Tilley New Yorker (overleaf) and I was feeling like, “hmm I guess they’re not making much of Eustace & mom’s 99th birthday this year, maybe they’ll go all out for 100 next year”. But I found the animated version online and it’s kinda cool.

Saturday Pia and I made gluten-free apple pie and galette.

On Sunday, instead of the Super Bowl, we went to the opera in Chicago, Champion. It’s the 2nd opera by Terence Blanchard that we’ve seen, but I guess Champion was actually Blanchard’s first opera, and Fire Shut Up In My Bones, that we saw in 2022, was second. In between, in 2023, we saw the Factotum, another modern opera, about a barber shop on the south side of Chicago (tho I think the real one is on the west side) but Blanchard didn’t have anything to do with that one, there was just a bunch of crossover on the cast – Will Liverman, the co-creator of the Factotum, was in Fire Shut Up In My Bones, and won at least one grammy for the recording.

On Saturday night, I made super bowl appetizers, and we ate them while watching Killers of the Flower Moon. Guacamole & chips; potato skins, made with some of Matt Smith’s potatoes, filled with roasted poblano and onion and cheese, with a little dab of sour cream on top; little strudel-shaped spanakopita (I had a little container of spanakopita filling in the freezer from the cookie party and half a box of filo in the basement fridge); carrots and red pepper strips with ranch. Such a long movie. Mark thought it was a mess. I thought the acting and costumes were great, and I also liked the non-linear-ness of it. And radio show synopsis with Jack White and Marty himself at the end. And cookies. I’ve been making my regular chocolate chip cookies as browned butter cookies. Brown the butter, add the sugar, let it cool a bit then add everything else and scoop it while it’s still soft, then chill and bake about a dozen at a time. I first tried with the annual batch of chocolate chop M&M cookies to use up the holiday M&Ms. I put them in the spritz cookies but I always buy a big bag. I make them big, then smash them with a spatula when they come out of the oven. These had all kinds of stuff, some chopped white chocolate, dark chocolate chunks, heath bar chips, and some smashed up almond brittle somebody sent at the holidays.

I made a batch of my better-than-Stella’s-cherry-muffins. I’d been thinking they were too dry the last couple of times I made them, so I made the batter wetter; used 2 eggs and 1/2 cup less flour. They’re moist but the cherries sank, so they’re not visibly cherry muffins at all.

I also tried a different sourdough recipe with honey and oil in it, and you don’t refrigerate the dough. It’s good. Not crusty, but stretchy and soft and will make great sandwiches and toast. I have to figure out the timing better. It’s an 8-10 hour rise at room temp. I left it to rise at 9:30 at night, so I got up at 6:30 to shape it into loaves. Then it needs to rise 2-3 hours in loaves. I only did two hours because we wanted to get out of the house to walk to a pre-valentine’s brunch at Marigold, and I think it could’ve gone longer.

And oh yea, valentines day – I had an 8-inch cake layer leftover from the chocolate desserts class that I’d frozen, so I thawed it and layerd it up with whipped cream and raspberry jam, because Pia doesn’t like cherries so much. It was OK, but the fall apart version with cherries and cherry syrup at the class was better. I walked something like 7 1/2 miles that day, and couldn’t stop eating. Besides the cake, I made spinach crepes for dinner, whole pound of Snug Haven spinach ($15) creamed with cream cheese instead of roux, so it was gluten free. Mark bought a box of fancy chocolates and I got chocolate covered marshmallows and chocolate toffee at Trader Joe’s. I’m not telling how much chocolate I ate. I think it’s everyone’s job to OD on chocolate on valentines day.

I got a valentine from public radio, and also one from Goodman Center where I volunteer. And donate, come to think of it. The Goodman one came with chocolate, one of Gail Ambrosius chocolate covered salted caramels.

Lucy helped me write this post on Tuesday night and now both she & George are helping me finish.

I have less pictures of Jasper this week because he went on the family ski trip, although not on skis yet. He wants to, though!

Next week we still have a different schedule – Monday instead of Wednesday, due to Presidents Day – but I’ll try to get a few pix then.