Shucks, I’ve been writing this post in my head all day, and I have forgotten the good parts.
It’s Saturday of Labor Day weekend, so truly the end of summer. I started the day feeling kind of melancholy and nostalgic – oh, summer’s over, back to work. The feeling was intensified because last Saturday I went to a memorial for an old friend and saw an old boyfriend, who I literally had not seen for 32 years. So, all week I’ve been thinking about the girl I used to be back then, and not too happy with her. But I’m also feeling really pressed – have to go help John move from beer town to Chi town tomorrow, and be back in Madison by noon on Monday to pick TIFF tickets, and then host a potluck for exchange students and their families at 4:30. And I got a bunch of stuff in my CSA box that are the kind of vegetables that need processing – corn and edamame – not to mention that I bought 25 lbs. of plum tomatoes and those needed to be dealt with as well. And, classes start Tuesday. And, we leave for TIFF Thursday.
We went to the Farmers Market on the early side, and it was a miracle of holiday-weekend coolness and emptiness. And late summer goodness.
Cherry tomatoes, melon, slicing tomatoes, and Door County peaches – the bananas are from the supermarket, not the farmers market
Mark went to the football game – I begged off – too much to do – and I went off to shop for the potluck and just in general. It was while I was cruising around on errands (I went everywhere: Costco, Willy St. West, Brenanns, Sentry and Target – so plenty of time yo think) that I realized that it’s not so much that I miss the old days, or regret the way my life has worked out. Mark and I have been together for 18 years. All our kids are doing fine. My job keeps me too busy, and I still wish I was an artist or making my living writing cookbooks, but I am doing creative work [some of the time]. Sure, things would be different if I’d decided to start an MFA at 24. Sure things would be different if I hadn’t moved back to Madison when John & Al’s dad and I got divorced. In the mood I’ve been in the last week, it’s seemed like an insult to have to see the sites where I lived my wayward youth all around me. But I think I’m just jealous – like I told the old boyfriend, I feel like somehow we switched places. He’s from Green Bay WI and I’m from Pittsburgh PA. Now he’s in Rochester NY with a kid that graduated from Pitt; I’m still here with both kids in Chicago, graduates of Milwaukee Institute of Design & U of MN. I wish I lived in a bigger city – I feel sort of stuck in Madison. It’s the way I always feel when I come back from visiting my brother in Seattle – my big city attempt was Chicago, right after grad school, with kids aged 2 and 4. When I went to work I was an hour and a half away from their daycare. It was just too much. What if I’d moved to a more medium-size city back then, in the early 1990s after grad school? Like Pittsburgh, Seattle, Minneapolis …. maybe I’d still be there, living a different life.
Instead I spent the afternoon here, in Madison, working. After the shopping, I put everything away and rode my bike to the library to return a book. I had a long talk with John’s dad about $$ for grad school. I blanched and peeled and diced and pureéd 20 of my 25 lbs. of tomatoes. (I oven-dried 5 lbs. on Thursday night) I shucked a dozen ears of corn, and cut the kernels off 8 cobs (we had the others for dinner). I cooked some pinto beans from dry for an edmame, corn and bean salad for the potluck. I made ribs and corn on the cob and Romano beans with diced tomato for dinner. I plucked the edmame pods off the stems and boiled them and shelled them – there was barely half a cup, so I boiled up a bag of frozen too. Now my right hand hurts from squeezing the edmame out of their pods. I have dough for cimmy buns rising right now – I have to go shape them and let them rise in the fridge overnight.
scant half cup edamame
Ribs, corn and beans for supper
Processing tomatoes
Peaches
Oven dried tomatoes
Oh yea, and we went over to E. Wash to swap the regular 30 in. Weber for the big blue one that Mark gave me for my birthday in something like 2008. We have room for it now, since Ethan has taken the Accura back to MN. From the turds in the corners, I’d say some largish animal had been living in the garage. Steven, my upstairs renter, thinks it’s a possum. On the ride back here, I perched on the folded down seat, and worried that the cop who followed us from Blair St, onto John Nolen Dr. was going to stop us because I wasn’t wearing a seat belt – but Mark noticed that he had a headlight out – so he could hardly give us any guff about no seat belts. Sometimes getting old is OK.
