Organizing

My over-scheduled existence is supposed to be easing up slightly … I think it actually is, but I still feel pretty busy. And tired. But I do feel like I have a little more time to get organized so let’s do it – a catching up post to list all the activities since last we talked.

Last post ended on Earth Day (well, I wrote it the next day, but the coverage only went through April 22) when we were just back from Chicago. I spent that Monday afternoon grocery shopping and setting up my bedroom for Rach who was coming for the week, which involved turning the red Danish couch that my mom got at Century House into a bed, which is tricky, and finding sheets to fit it, also tricky because we’re the house of mismatched sheets. Turning the red couch into a bed is tricky because instead of the bed part simply extending from the couch this one is sort of side-by-side. The other half of the bed is under the seat of the couch and you figure out which position is unlocked and raise it and tilt it so the two sides end up next to each other. I had to move my tooth brush and hair brush and skin lotion and towels and some clothes upstairs. While I was doing the transfer of personal items, I brought a few things up as far as the kitchen, and went back down for another load. Mark instantly whisked each thing off to what he deemed the appropriate place, a little unnerving since I was already intimidated about bringing up my stuff.

I think Monday was the night I made the leftover pepperonata and goat cheese from the porch party into pasta, with ricotta and other cheeses in it. It’s also the night I broke the tank lid from the toilet in the kids’ bathroom. I thought Pia needed help with the float, it’s been being wonky – she didn’t – and I went in and grabbed the lid to show her and dropped it. Leaving Pia standing surrounded by shattered porcelain and with a cut toe. I told her she could say her host mom was so mean she threw the top of a toilet at her.

Tuesday was Lunch for Libraries with Tommy Orange. It was a fun event, probably because of the author, and they had a good moderator, Aaron Bird Bear, who was the first Director of Tribal Relations at UW-Madison, just retired in 2023, same as me except he went in January and I went in June. And because we knew so many people there. And because the food was surprisingly not terrible. It was salads and I ordered the vegetarian one because I feared rubber chicken and hoped for garbanzo beans. I got avocado. I got Mark the chicken and it wasn’t rubbery at all. I first heard of Tommy Orange last fall because his first book There There was an everybody reads one book selection by Chicago Public Library. They call it OBOC, One Book One Chicago. So there were big kiosk signs along the sidewalks in Chicago with the cover of There There in September and October.

 
I liked There There and a lot of people said Wandering Stars is even better – it’s a sequel and a prequel. We each got a copy at the lunch.  I’d been #117 on hold at the library and I canceled the hold as soon as I sat down and saw the stack of books on the table.

Mark walked to the lunch planning to stop for coffee downtown, but I wanted to hang out at home a little longer, so I biked down and met him. I wrote that last post and made more kimchi pimento cheese and more sourdough naan. And muesli rolls, using an old bag of King Arthur Green Mountain Muesli that’d been in the freezer. Although … I think maybe I made the pimento cheese Monday night.

Couldn’t quite finish this the last day of April. Will resume in May. And now it’s already May 2.

I was going to go in order, but I wanted to fill in some of the little stuff, the sort of ongoing facts of life. Like how much the low water pressure in the kitchen sink bothers me, as does being tired. At Passover dinner both Rach and Mark asked me if I was OK. When we were chatting over the remains of dessert it was all I could do not to fall asleep. When I’m so tired I always think I must be ill – like un-diagnosed cancer or something. One of Pia’s friends might have mono, so I’m worrying about that and just read something on insta about elevated blood sugar and pre-diabetes, and now I think I have that. Rach was here for a week and much as I loved having her, having another person in the house and living partially upstairs put me off. But then the first couple mornings after Rach left, my first thought was, “oh I can go down the kitchen and talk to Rach” followed by missing her not being around. 

OK back to chronology.

I forgot to mention that on the Saturday in between the porch party and the trip to Chicago, I judged National History Day websites. They send us judges the websites in advance so we can do some preliminary evaluating – you have to fill out a rubric and write at least 500 words of comments. I looked at all 8 of mine but had only done the rubric for 5 and comments on only one. They have us assemble in a meeting room at the UW business school, then you get to meet with the kids for 10 minutes each so they can show you their websites, then you go back to the conference room to fill out your comments over a box lunch. I think the best one was the one about interracial marriage and the Lovings. The student nicely connected the Lovings to her own family history. Her grandparents were an interracial couple in Milwaukee who got married in 1969 when it was still barely legal. The oddest one, to me anyways, was the student who concluded that the Protestant reformation was necessary and beneficial to the Christian religion because after the Reformation there were more Christians. When I met with the student, I tried to gently ask about anything negative they had found during their research into the Protestant Reformation, and they immediately said, “It was really violent!”, so that gave me the opening to include the “this project would be strengthened by ….” in my comments. Home by 1:00 and then it was the UW Band concert night. And Sunday was the trip to Chicago I told you about last post. 

So now we’re up to Wednesday of last week (this is Thursday of this week, just to keep myself straight), which was another trip to Chicago for the John Tedeschi memorial. I had to drive, so I was kind of dreading that but it was OK. We met my friend Alison for lunch – she treated us at Bistronomic – and then we got the curator’s tour of  A Night At Mister Kelly’s since Alison’s the curator. Alison tipped us off to the parking deal Newberry has with the ramp at a nearby apartment building – $12 parking that would’ve been $32. The memorial was nice – I mostly went to support Paul & Rob; Paul who’s a retired curator from Newberry and Rob who’s one of my LITA chums. Paul spoke at the memorial. I also was there to transport the UW Friends of the Libraries Board president who spoke about what UW Libraries are doing in Tedeschi’s honor, mostly buying a special book for special collections, but there is a page on the Libraries website.

Thursday looks like it was just a normal two volunteer thing day, food pantry in the AM and library in the afternoon. I made this kale and lentil salad and I think not much else besides that. Pia wasn’t home for dinner that night, and I think there was leftover pasta or something that Mark could eat instead of the salad.

Friday was a Jasper day. We walked to the bagel store in the morning and he went to sleep so easily at around 12:45 that I thought I had done everything right, but then he only slept for half an hour. We went to the Stevens St. playground and he wasn’t as thrilled with swinging as he used to be and the play structures had too many places where he could fall off the side on the way to the slide, so we had to go down together, and he wasn’t so happy about that either. Er, no wait a minute – Stevens St. must’ve been the week before. I think it was too rainy Friday and we watched Go Dog Go and walked the edges of the rug in the screen porch. In contrast to this week (yesterday) when he didn’t fall asleep nearly as easily, took him about 20 minutes, then he did sleep for an hour but woke up crying that I’m-too-tired-to-be-awake-yet kind of crying. I made him a bottle that he didn’t want and went in and rocked him and got nap-trapped for another half hour. That hadn’t happened for a long time, since he was much littler. I kind of napped too. And this week we did find a Jasper size slide at another playground, which was great but of course there were two older kids on the big structure right beside it and he wanted to follow them. No pics this week; here’s last week.

Friday night was Alejandro Escovdeo. On tour with a band composed of James Mastro from the Bongos on guitar (and opening act) and the same keyboard player and drummer we saw him with last year. We got Gold Circle tickets at Barrymore, and the $46.50 price tag must’ve been too rich for most people because there were empty seats all around us, although the rest of the place was pretty full. I don’t think I’ve ever been as comfy at a Rock & Roll show. I could see sitting down, I could get up and dance, I could get a beer, and there wasn’t even a line in the bathroom. And Alejandro was great. 

Saturday morning I got up and biked to volunteer at the farmers market selling the cookbook and doing SNAP/EBT transactions at the info booth. The wind kept trying to blow everything away but it was a pretty good morning.

Then I came home and put the Passover turkey in the oven. We were having a non-traditional like 7th night Seder so why not turkey? A reduced Passover this year, using the Peeling a Pomegranate Haggadah that Molly and David got in something like 2009. I had a copy of it from way back then myself, so we had like 3-4 copies for seven people; pretty good odds, although some copies had printed with oddly tiny text. I initially lobbied for a no-Haggadah Passover, given world events, but the Pomegranate one didn’t have too much talk about the specialness of the Jews and next year in Israel. It was more of set everyone free instead of set my people free. Plus it was the appropriate length to roast the vegetables in the upstairs oven perfectly. Because Covid ruined Thanksgiving, I had a 16-pound turkey from Matt Smith in the freezer and Passover seemed like a good occasion to roast it. But it was very much cognitive dissonance to have the house smell like Thanksgiving on Passover. Plus it was too hot. Fortunately it got chilly Sunday and the heat thrown out by the oven cleaner felt good.

Mark went to Chicago on his own Sunday to hear a concert. I went to the Y and did the egym with Susan and we had coffee after.

I went for a walk in the rain to pick up a prescription and to test the new rain pants I bought for England. They worked OK. I made a rhubarb strawberry crumble for Sunday dessert that everyone liked. I think that’s the most successful thing I’ve made recently. Lots of disappointments like the lemon poppy seed muffins that I made last night that are dry because Rachael left me a bucket of non-fat Greek yogurt and I don’t like it so have to cook with it. I like full fat and I think it would make moister muffins. Or the sweet potato cimmy buns that were great except just a teeny bit doughy in the middle. Not Carla Hall’s fault – she says to bake the rolls until they’re not doughy, but I was afraid of over baking & pulled them too soon. I’m thawing out my last carton of winter squash purée from last fall to try the rolls again with that instead of sweet potato. And cinnamon date filling. If it works I will post. Or the kale lentil salad that was ok but a bit blah. Or even the muesli rolls that were perfect fresh got dried and crumbly despite being stored in a plastic bag in the fridge. 

Or the piecrust cookies (trimmings baked with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top) I just made tonight because I had to make piecrust for an asparagus and mushroom and Gruyere tart because the puff pastry I’d left thawed in the fridge for too long that I was going to use was moldy. They got too dark. So I pulled out the darkest ones and ate them hot while trying to finish this post. Elevated blood sugar be dammed. And we have reached that time of the night that seems to happen almost every night when the sink is full of dishes and I need to go clean up and I’m just feeling tired and sort of gross. But I will feel much better when the kitchen is clean.

And I’m almost caught up! Seeya next time. When there will be more food pics, promise. xxx