I am the Audience

Proust Questionnaire

October 8, 2020

a day in this life

Shamelessly lifted from Vanity Fair. I don’t intend to answer these questions here. I don’t think my answers are useful to anyone but me. And they change. I don’t even have coherent answers for a couple of them. But, I do think the questions are interesting to consider as we muddle along.

__1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness?

__2.__What is your greatest fear?

__3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

__4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others?

__5.__Which living person do you most admire?

__6.__What is your greatest extravagance?

__7.__What is your current state of mind?

__8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

__9.__On what occasion do you lie?

__10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance?

__11.__Which living person do you most despise?

__12.__What is the quality you most like in a man?

__13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman?

__14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

__15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life?

__16.__When and where were you happiest?

__17.__Which talent would you most like to have?

__18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

__19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement?

__20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

__21.__Where would you most like to live?

__22.__What is your most treasured possession?

__23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

__24.__What is your favorite occupation?

__25.__What is your most marked characteristic?

__26.__What do you most value in your friends?

__27.__Who are your favorite writers?

__28.__Who is your hero of fiction?

__29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with?

__30.__Who are your heroes in real life?

__31.__What are your favorite names?

__32.__What is it that you most dislike?

__33.__What is your greatest regret?

__34.__How would you like to die?

__35.__What is your motto?
Esme is a little weirdo

August 7, 2020

a day in this life, food & drink, pets

A while ago, I realized that if I buy plain yogurt and add my own jam, I always get to have the flavors I want. And it wastes fewer containers. Also, I use plain yogurt in place of sour cream when I’m cooking. It’s a habit I developed ages ago after ready that 0% fat yogurt tastes and cooks the same but doesn’t have the crap in it that low fat sour cream does.

I tend to use a particular bowl when I stir up my yogurt and jam.

Esmerelda loves yogurt and she loses her mind waiting for me to put my empty bowl down so she can have her turn. Sometimes I give her a little dab of plain in her wet dish just to shut her up until I can finish my concoction.

Last week, our tomatoes started coming in. We have 3 plants in our garden (red, purple and yellow cherries) and we have been getting a farm box. And they have been including tomatoes. That’s been lovely. I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches with mayo and with pesto. We’ve cut them up in our salads. Fresh, flavorful tomatoes make enduring the heat of summer worthwhile.

We’d gotten a glut, though, and I couldn’t eat them as fast as they were ready. So, I had Chuck pick up some feta when he went to the grocery and I made a tomato salad. It was 8 oz of feta, 2 pints of cherry tomatoes cut in quarters, a small bell pepper, a handful of fresh basil rolled together and cut very fine, equal part olive oil and apple cider vinegar and a little salt and pepper. When I fix a serving, I add some Kalamata olives to the bowl. (Do you notice that there is nothing resembling cat food in that recipe?)

When I made a tomato sandwich yesterday, I cut the bits that didn’t fit well on the bread into bites and added it to the tomato salad. When Chuck cut up a tomato for our green salads at dinner, instead of overwhelming the lettuce with tomato, he did the same with the surplus.

So, I have been eating tomato salad like a fiend for days and the container is still full.

This morning I decided to have a little dish of it for my breakfast. And I used the yogurt bowl.

When I finished and headed for the sink, she lost her mind. She knew she needed what was in that bowl. I told her that I don’t think cats like tomatoes and set it down to prove it to her.

She licked every last scrap/drop/morsel out of that bowl. I couldn’t have looked cleaner if it had just come out of the dishwasher.

I don’t know that I’m ready to start sharing my salad with my cat.
Joys of parenthood

August 6, 2020

a day in this life, family

My 2.5 year old child could see me in the gas station as I was paying. And had been told, “I will be right there I am not going where you can’t see me. Wait right here for just a minute.” Got out of the car seat, cranked open the sun roof, climbed up and out, slid down the windshield and hood and ran across the parking lot cheerfully calling out, “I finded you, Mommy!”
Apero!

August 4, 2020

food & drink

I have been exploring the joys of aperitifs. I read an article about the European habit of a little snack with a cocktail before the dive into preparing dinner and it really appealed to me. I’ve been having fun creating the little snacks.

One day, I boiled 3 eggs and deviled them. Another day, I used a spoonful of Chuck’s home-fermented sauerkraut with about an ounce of Cambozola cheese and 5 Kalamata olives for each of us. Yesterday, it was 5 cherry tomatoes and a Babybel cheese each. I cut the tomatoes in half and the cheese into 5 pieces and drizzled the plate with balsamic vinegar and Tuscan herb flavored olive oil. A baguette that Chuck picked up for part of my birthday celebration has been cut into pieces and frozen. So, I can pull out 4 pieces to thaw, along with a portion of smoked salmon. Cream cheese and capers live in my fridge. So, that’s an easy one. Or just pickled cauliflower in a dish with a couple of cherry tomatoes alongside it. Or hummus and crudites. I think Chuck’s been getting a kick out of seeing what’s going to come out of the kitchen when I start stirring around at 4:00.

My grandmother set 4:30 as the cocktail hour and that has been my “it’s not too early” time forever. She did, once, say “It’s 4:30 somewhere in the world” when she wanted bourbon and Coke at 3:30. But, I generally reserve that attitude for vacations. And, for the record, in order for it to be 4:30, we would have been at sea.

Our summer cocktails are usually wine, gin and tonic, a gin rickey (if I’m feeling lazy), a lemon drop martini or a non-alcoholic shrub. And I only make my own drink. Chuck gets to decide what he prefers in that instance for himself.

We discovered shrubs last year. Chuck decided to give his liver a break about the time there was a little explosion of bartenders in better places creating interesting concoctions for designated drivers, (or anyone else who didn’t want to imbibe). It’s usually a flavored syrup, vinegar and soda water. We already had a SodaStream for the fizzy water and we have been keeping a small bottle of apple cider vinegar and a collection of flavored simple syrups in the fridge. The syrups we keep around are homemade vanilla, lavender, ginger, mint and a couple of berry flavored syrups I found at IKEA. A shot of syrup, a shot of vinegar, top it with fizzy water and we’re set. More fun than just a glass of water with a twist of citrus.

I’ve been trying to decide on the word that describes how it feels for me to make a little taste of something lovely as a mark of the shift from day to evening. I think “gracious.”
gra·cious /ˈɡrāSHəs/ adjective:
1. courteous, kind, and pleasant.
Similar: courteous, polite, civil, civilized, indulgent, magnanimous, beneficent, benign, friendly, pleasant, amiable, affable, cordial, hospitable
Learning a new trick

August 2, 2020

a day in this life, home

A decade or so ago, my friend, Ann, decided to try a block-a-month quilt project and learned a new trick that way. She has been a quilting fiend ever since. It’s been to my benefit. I have 2 gorgeous quilts that she made me and she made another one for my kid when they were getting situated elsewhere. Offspring loves that quilt.

I have tried various crafty things to keep my hands busy and none of them stuck. My paternal grandmother taught me how to make a cathedral window quilt. Ann helped me cut enough blocks of muslin to make one that would cover my bed. And there they sit. I took a class in chainmaille jewelry. Bought a collection of rings from a young friend who had gotten tired of it. And there they sit.

The only projects I stick with (much) are outside. I plant things, let the grass grow in the beds in the heat of summer, and fight the grass all Spring. And I do a little bonsai. Those are not things to do while I listen to a book during the blistering heat of the afternoon or watching TV in the evening.

I’ve been playing a lot of solitaire on my tablet and it was becoming really tedious.

So, when I saw a kit-a-month crochet ad on Instagram right after the shutdown started, I thought, “That’s kind of how Ann got started quilting. And I can quit after the first month if it just sits there. OR, I’ll end up with an afghan.”

I’m liking it. The kit teaches me 3 blocks a month and, in the end, I’ll have 30 blocks and the 11th month will be putting them all together. The difficult part has been getting a handle on how to do the end of the row correctly. I have ripped out you-wouldn’t-believe-how-many sections that either wanted to become trapezoids or magically expanded. But, that’s OK. It’s not like I have a deadline.

Frankly, the kits don’t come quickly enough because it’s too hot to do anything outside and I only work 2.5 days a week anyway. Three 9″ blocks hasn’t really been enough for the muscle memory to kick in either. And, I got the first kit done in a little over a week. So, being the mad genius that I am, I decided to do another afghan, at the same time, parallel to mine for my kid. Hello, practice!

Offspring likes black, grey and red. I am here to tell you that black yarn is impossible for 60 year old eyes to see worth a damn. So, they’re getting shades of grey and some finishing scarlet.

And, I still didn’t have enough to do. So, Ann gets one, too. She asked for “bright” and we had a photo consultation via text while I shopped, masked and well spaced, at Michael’s.

I have no clue what I’ll do with this new skill once I have finished a few afghans. Honestly. How many blankets can you give to your friends and family?

Proust Questionnaire

Esme is a little weirdo

Joys of parenthood

Apero!

Learning a new trick