It feels like every small and arbitrary decision I make today is undermined by a bad luck conspiracy to annoy me. Like that scene in Office Space, when every time Peter changes lanes traffic begins to move in the lane he just exited.
On top of that, I just can not get away from people enough to satisfy my need for external peace and freedom of being. It’s impossible to be free around other people- even people who, in theory, want you to be free and don’t much care what you do. Just the proximity to their energy and incidental noise and vibrations feels like an assault on my liberty from human influence. An affront to my inherent human right to personal sanctity.
Alright, I’m crabby. But- it isn’t my fault! The world is conspiring to make me this way I swear it! Or do I only feel like it is because I am crabby? Bit of a chicken-eggy I suppose.
My uncle gave me a huge bag of frozen chopped up rhubarb from his garden that he had stashed in his freezer, and I used some of it to make a very basic experimental cobbler recently. I added extra lemon juice and a little less sugar than was called for. If you’ve never had rhubarb, it’s a weird pink celery looking plant with enormous leaves that grows like weeds. In fact it might be classified as a weed. It’s most popular mixed with strawberries in a pie, but on its own it has a tart almost pink lemonade flavor to it, and is a bit of an old world delicacy.
I had only one tiny piece, and it was so good I had to share the rest. Once slice went to my mother, another went to her mother my grandma- who used to grow rhubarb in her own garden before she had to give up gardening a couple years ago- and the last piece I was going to give to my uncle who gave me the rhubarb, but I couldn’t catch him at home.
I decided to give it to the young polish married couple that runs a small 2 person (and a baby) authentic polish cuisine restaurant, him doing all front of the house tasks, and her doing all the cooking. They are native polish, very traditional, and very kind people. I eat there probably once a week, and whether or not I order one they always bring me out a little raspberry dessert crepe because they know I love them. They don’t charge me.
Everyone loved it. He said he got one bite and his wife scarfed the rest. My grandma also called and left a message ranting and raving about how she forgot how much she loved rhubarb. It was her mom, my GREAT grandma, that lived with us when I grew up, and would keep an eye on us while we crawled around the back yard that was shared by all the old victorian houses on the block. All occupied by old ladies, back then, with overgrown yards and fences and gardening sheds and thin wooden gates that had been painted white a thousand times all still hanging around and overgrown from the turn of the previous century. Rhubarb grew wild in the back yard, and she would snap it off and encourage us to chew on it to pass the time- and we did, and were merry doing so. Definitely has a welcoming audience in anyone with a flavor for old world northern European culture it seems.
There are not words for how much I miss the NPR of my youth, and this radio show in particular.
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