Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

I just don’t think I’ll ever catch up, and this being perpetually sick stuff doesn’t help either. I finished grading Monday at about 5:30, came home and made some dinner, and mostly laid around. Watched the Game of Thrones I’d been too sleepy to really see on Sunday. And then this morning at 7:00 a.m. realized I had been supposed to bake the bread-a-week loaf – totally forgot. Today was meeting to meeting to meeting, and lots of email – but I still didn’t quite get to all of it ….

Errands by car after work – haircut, E. Wash to get an old laptop that will display the Twitter feed at this conference I’m on the planning committee of, that starts tomorrow, and goes to noon Thursday, groceries – just a few because Thursday I am off to Seattle for Dave & Jen’s 25th – I think it’s gonna be at this place, which looks pretty nice. I wanted to make it a family vacation, especially because John is the same age as my brother & his wife’s marriage, but nobody else could go. John’s busy season at the school photo place where he works, graduation and proms; Al has to be at camp. I made a tiered tart for the wedding – in all the pictures baby John is being held by other people so I can bake, or by me at the rehearsal dinner where pretty much screamed nonstop. Gonna recreate some form of it for the anniversary.

Tonight for dinner I made this bought gnocchi & spinach gratin that I’ve made often before – this was a good one because I used more spinach that you’re supposed to – the whole pound I got in my first CSA box last week.

But my eyes are irritated, and my nose is stuffed and I have these needley pains in my head, even though I’m on the antibiotics that are supposed to cure the sinus infection. I think the only thing to do is go flop on the couch and make a cat come to hold me down.

1. Or at least, thing by thing. For our Dutch exchange student, this was the weekend of the senior prom. For me it was mother’s day, and a brunch at School Woods.
2. On Saturday, I got up and went to the Farmers’ Market on my own for serious shopping – potatoes, cheese, green onions, asparagus, eggs, meat – I think I spent $60. Then to Willy Street Co-op, to spend another $70 or so. I intended to stop by the house, drop off the fragile stuff, like bananas and strawberries, not have to transport them again, OJ to thaw, that kind of thing. My renters were home, so we got to talking – the furnace install seems to have gone OK, but we’ll all have to learn how to program the new thermostat. I have one electric mower and one push – I loaned them the power one to get over that very first mow of the season, but they were finished with it, so I brought it back home.
3. I had started out at 7:30, and by now it was almost 10 and I still needed to go to the regular grocery store. One of my library students was visiting from IL and I knew she was going to call me between 11 & noon, to meet back downtown for coffee. I’d get to hold her baby, so I didn’t want to miss her call. So I headed off to Sentry with my iPhone UN-silenced, and got through there pretty darn quick, and even had enough time to get my knives sharpened. On Wednesday (the night I made two dinners, salmon with asparagus and smashed potatoes that showed up again for breakfast on Friday, and beef enchiladas) my too dull knife bounced off the parsley I was chopping and scraped a thin bit of skin off the second finger of my right hand.
4. Home, put stuff away, ate a bowl of honey nut cheerios and home made granola with an apple cut up in it.
5. Biked downtown to meet my student, her husband, and baby Hannah. Went back to the market to get tomatoes from Mark’s favorite place, Canopy Gardens – on my first trip I’d been mostly buying for the brunch, not for us for the week.
6. Then I had to go to my office to send some emails and make copies of the invoice for the new furnace for the application for the energy efficient rebate. I guess I’ll get $275 back (out of the $3000 spent on the furnace) eventually – 6 to 8 weeks.
7. Home again in time to drive Joëlle to another girl’s house where they were all doing each other’s hair & makeup for the prom – they were so intent, no one even noticed when I walked in – they only noticed Joëlle, who had already done her hair – made her naturally curley straight – and eyes, and was in her sparkley dress.
8. Home again, started making the crusts for the mom’s day quiches – I inadvertently made sweet dough the fist time – 3 TBLS sugar to the 3 cups of flour, instead of the 1 TBLS I cut back to for savory pie. But that means there’s pie dough in the freezer now, for a future sweet pie
9. And the tree guy came to give us the quote on trimming several of our trees including the shrub by the back door that’s been hitting us in the face when it’s wetted down after a thunderstorm in the night, and the birch that hits the house and you can hear while you’re watching TV up at Mark’s.
10. Then I biked to Allen Centenniel Gardens on the UW campus – it used to be the home of E.B. Fred, Professor of bacteriology and president of the University from 1945 – 1958. In the early 1980s, my first few years in Madison, Mrs. Fred still lived in the house, and my friend Mary Terese Volkman, MTV, lived there with her as a kind of caretaker/amanuensis. We had a few picnics in the back yard where the gardens are now; somewhere I have a picture of me and my bike by a tree back there. And I remember taking a pile of records over, and dancing in the front hall to the Grateful Dead. The attic was scarey and full of bats. And bat shit.
11. We decided to go see Dark Shadows, the 7:05 show, so I had just enough time to bake the blueberry muffins, and eat a tomato sandwich. Dark Shadows was cheesey, but I liked it, just like I thought I would.
12. Home again, baked the cranberry corn muffins and the rhubarb upside down ones – a new invention, with chopped, sugared, and drained rhubarb in the bottom of each muffin cup, with a plain brown sugar muffin batter on top. Recipe real soon now, pictures below. Asparagus and bacon quiches. Took me till about 1:00 a.m., then I crashed on the couch with the cats until 3:00.
13. Sunday morning, roasted the potatoes. Cleaned greens and made vinaigrette. And took an extra bag of potatoes, baking pan, olive oil and garlic, with me. Good thing, too – I did end up making more spuds – I had to ask my own family to hold off on eating potatoes until the paying customers got enough, and til the extras were close enough to being done. Somehow, though, despite almost running out of potatoes, I felt like I had plenty of time for everything, and it was a leisurely brunch. Lots of little kids, and I got to sit down and eat with John & Mark & Ethan.
14. Home again, put the pans in to soak, and drank a beer on the back deck and read. John & Al were actually both here in the kitchen for about 10 minutes, and didn’t fight – pretty good for mother’s day.
15. Joëlle cooked Dutch food for us for dinner – meatballs and cheesy cauliflower. Watched game of thrones, resisted having another beer, and was really really sleepy by 10:30, so I crashed on the couch again till 12:30. My throat started getting sore.
16. Woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Monday with a full-blown sore throat, and that “what just happened feeling?” Got up at 6:30 for several hours of intense puttering around the house – unloaded and reloaded the dish washer, fished out 2 dough scrapers that had gone missing since cookie season from behind the big drawer full of plastic containers, put seldom used bowls & trays that’d been gotten out for weekend cooking away into the most overstuffed cabinets where stuff falls out when you open them, cat litter, coffee, bring in the newspapers, logged in to my online course and answered a few student emails, took out the compost, sorted newspapers for recycle, rinsed and cut up strawberries, got dressed & brushed my teeth, packed lunch. And still got to work before 9:00.
17. Whew

Upside down rhubarb muffins

Mark’s out for a walk, and Al is at work, so Joëlle & I had creamed spinach and leftover rice for dinner. The rice was cooked in coconut milk and homemade veggie broth – I made it to go with the Thai vegetable curry a few nights ago.

I went to the doc this afternoon to see if I could get any of my aches & pains explained. She poked me and did a blood test and I’ll know in a few days. And I got busted for having to go for a colonoscopy – even though I said I’d never do that again – I guess they’re calling to schedule me also in the next few days.

Now I’m watching Red Hot Chili Peppers get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Anthony Kiedis gave the acceptance speech, and then they all took their shirts off to play. They closed with Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground, and Ron Wood, Billie Joe Armstrong, Kenny Jones and George Clinton were all on stage – I didn’t realize Billie Joe was there till  Rolling Stone told me so. And next a True Blood repeat – seems appropriate somehow.

And so far the reviews I’ve seen for Dark Shadows are only so-so  – 2 1/2 stars in the Milwaukee paper. But I still just know I’m gonna love it – Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, Barnabas Collins, vampires – what more could you want? They’re all saying it’s stilted and the plot goes nowhere, but what do you expect if you make a movie based on a soap opera? Besides, it’s a Tim Burton movie, so it’s going to look great, and that’s what I’ll go to see it for. And, of course, Johnny Depp with fangs and Nosferatu fingers.

Posted from my iPhone at least partly

Today I was so tired I just felt like giving up all day. I’ve been thinking it’s a sinus infection – sore glands in my neck, really crusty eyes in the morning, tired, tired, tired. Today I searched “middle aged women fatigue” in MedlinePlus”, and the first thing was Subacute thyroiditis. It’s every symptom I’ve got – even the hard to swallow sometimes. I am hypothyroid – I’ve been taking a thyroid replacement since 2005. Maybe my dose is outta whack, or something. I like how the treatment for Subacute thyroiditis is aspirin and wait:

The condition should improve on its own. However, the illness may last for months. Long-term or severe complications do not usually occur.

I had plans to cook a nice dinner – steamed asparagus, smashed new potatoes with lots of butter, salmon with chopped tomatoes on top, big salad. But Mark was just heading out for his walk at 6:15 when I got home, and the big dinner didn’t seem like such a good idea – so I just made the salad.

Now I think I’m going to go flop on the couch, and hope the cats will come to hold me down.