Tag Archive | the cheese sandwich

This Week in Cheese

May4

I’m grateful for the easy sourdough pizza crust recipe that Garden Buddy shared, and for cheese. And the right tools for the job.

I’m grateful for several salads with garden lettuce and arugula, as well as extras like toasted cashews, celery, cheddar cubes, pickled onions, and one of the miracle tomatoes from the sunroom.

I’m grateful for occasional store-bought organic chicken thighs with bones and skin. So hard to find any kind of chicken with skin, and it’s the best part! I made a delicious sheetpan roasted chicken and veggies and enjoyed several meals over the next days, including a chicken and cheese sandwich, chicken and veggie salad, and broth for Wren.

Once all the chicken was gone, I still had skin from two of the thighs. Too much fat for Wren, too good to throw away, too tempting to compost, so I fried it and used it for extra flavor in a cheese sandwich, along with more miracle tomatoes.

Plenty also to be grateful for in the garden over the past week, with new flowers blooming daily, lots of bees, bountiful sunshine, and mild spring weather.

I’d been craving fish sticks after seeing this recipe, and so made a few one night and also breaded and baked some wild asparagus with them. The scallions are young perennial onions from the garden, and the tartar sauce is homemade, including the last pickle and onions from a jar of refrigerator pickles I made at the end of last summer and lost in the back of the fridge. I’m grateful for using up odds and ends in the kitchen.

I’m grateful that the tender new cherry tree has opened its buds, one by one and five by ten.
Wren enjoys a snack of Atlas (or mat) daisy. I keep telling her, “Please don’t eat the daisies.” But she won’t listen. Look how she clutches it!

I’m grateful to spend time under the crabapple tree in full bloom and buzzing with pollinators. More from here another day.

I decided to make cheesos with the three leftover fish sticks, but the white cheddar melted just too holey, so I flipped it onto some corn tortillas, then loaded them up.

Yes, even more sunroom tomatoes! Tiny but prolific, considering. And garden greens.
I’m grateful that the onion patch is popping up nicely.

I unintentionally let the sourdough starter sit out for a few days because I couldn’t find time to start my usual bread. It grew tall in the jar, then subsided. So I looked for a way to use some discard before feeding it again and refrigerating until I have more time. Found a quick recipe for a sandwich loaf, which didn’t use as much discard as I wished, but made a lovely loaf! Despite forgetting to halve the yeast for altitude compensation, and then falling asleep and letting it rise too long, it turned out pretty well.

And so today’s cheese sandwich included avocado, Havarti, garden lettuce, and I opened a new jar of last summer’s peach salsa for extra punch. I’m grateful for a lovely lunch under the red umbrella, reading The Left Hand of Darkness, by master story-weaver Ursula K. LeGuin. I’m so grateful that I can read.

After lunch I potted down the French lilac I’ve been gradually training toward bonsai, from the large black pot into a much smaller pot, trimming more than half the roots, and all twigs except those with flower buds. In another year, I anticipate downsizing again into its final bonsai pot and drastically pruning. I’m grateful that today, I felt better physically and mentally than I have since before the face poison in early December. I attribute this to a number of new health protocols including allergy and anti-inflammatory, and some other lifestyle changes I’m in the midst of making. I’ve been awake all day and gotten a lot accomplished that I’ve been wanting to do.

Before coming in for the day I battened down the hatches, stowing chairs and other loose items around the yard, in anticipation of a potential fierce wind storm tomorrow. I moved the car away from trees. As I write tonight, the wind is already picking up outside with an occasional moan. Things may look quite different around here tomorrow night. This is the most dramatic high wind warning I can recall here. Steady southwest winds up to 50 mph with gusts to 65 are expected. Precautionary and Preparedness Actions advised on Weather Underground include “avoid being outside in forested areas and around trees and branches… People, especially those with respiratory illnesses… are recommended to stay indoors and avoid prolonged outdoor exercise or heavy exertion due to wind-blown dust.” I’ll gratefully stay inside and rest. We’ll know more later!

Where’s Wren?

Resilience

Mar30
In the pockets created by frost heave through the winter, I scattered handfuls of old wildflower and herbs seeds mixed with seedling soil and vermiculite, right before this past week’s precipitations. This weekend I’ll lightly rake the soil smooth over the pockets, and cross my fingers as I see what comes up .

I am profoundly sickened by this report of the former president (convicted rapist, coup-plotter, insurrectionist, and defendant in four criminal cases) posting an image of President Biden bound in the back of a MAGA pickup truck. I literally lost my appetite when I read this. How is it possible that this madman continues to evade justice for dragging our country ever deeper into depravity with statements and actions that would have landed any other American in jail long ago? Seriously. How is it possible that this lunatic hasn’t yet been restrained?

Major media of all stripes continue to essentially ignore his vociferous threats to American freedoms no matter how explicit he gets. Voters wearing blinders of greed, ignorance, and hatred see him through some perverted tunnel vision that allows them to continue to support him. The man desecrated The BIBLE, for fuck sake, and some Christians still sing his praises. I can’t help but wonder whether my uncle the General would have continued to support him through this astonishing trajectory.

Where’s Wren? Eyeing the grilled smoked Gouda and fresh sunroom tomato sandwich…

In the summer of 2016, when I was anxious about a possible Drumpf victory, I asked my Republican Christian uncle what he thought about the potential dangers of his presidency. My uncle said, “He’s a loose cannon, I’ll grant you that, but once he gets in office he’ll settle down and do the job right.” My uncle didn’t live to see that his naive vision failed to transpire. Would he have lost his moral compass along the way like so many of his fellow party and church members, if he hadn’t succumbed to a brain tumor? Would he have drunk the MAGA kool-aid? The fascist GOP candidate must be stopped in his march to destroy American democracy. His USA is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. It’s time to lock him up!

Where’s Wren? Hiding behind the hollow tree…

Like many decent, hardworking Americans who truly believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of genuine happiness for all Americans, and in the inherent value and equality of all human beings, my mental and emotional resilience is being put to the test. I’m grateful that mindfulness practice has made me more capable of handling the assault of the fascist ideology that has erupted like pus from the bowels of the Republican Party. But it still makes me sick.

I’m profoundly grateful for the solace of the forest, the rhythms of nature, the coming of spring; and for the community of kind and virtuous souls I’m fortunate to know in the neighborhood and beyond. I’m grateful for the teachings of the Buddha and the teachers who guide me on the path of peace. I’m grateful for the weekend celebration of Christ’s resurrection and pray that his preachings of peace and love will prevail in the hearts of his followers: that those who wear blinders now will see the truth of his light before it’s too late.

I’m grateful for variations on a theme: the Cheese Sandwich in a bowl. This cauliflower-cheddar soup recipe was so simple, so delicious; especially with the last toast from the tarragon loaf. I hope my appetite rebounds tomorrow.

Singular Impermanence

Mar13

I’m grateful for a small garden success. Seeds I planted around New Year’s Day are sprouting in one covered bed. In the other, just a few sprouts so far, but they had a setback in that big wind storm when their cover got blowed away. Finally found it though, the other day, out in the woods. Grateful it’s now back over them, and hoping they didn’t get killed in the cold nights the cover was missing.

I’m grateful for the Urbikany tomato in the sunroom that keeps on giving! I harvested two small ripe fruits the other day for a magnificent cheese sandwich, as three more ripen, even more grow green, and flowers bloom. Amazing! I will definitely play with more of these this summer.

I’m grateful for my fast little girl, who comes when called. I knew she was out there this time, because I was too; but today she disappeared while I was sitting outside on the phone, and was nowhere to be seen when I was ready to go in. I called just a couple of times and she came flying around the bend again, panting, racing to me. It was impossible to scold her for slipping through the gate when she came so promptly and eagerly.

I’m grateful for another successful Teddy Roosevelt’s Clove Cake. I’ve almost got it down! Cooked just a couple of minutes too long this time so it was a little dry, but the rise and crust were perfect. I was looking forward to sharing some of this with a friend who was supposed to stop by yesterday but he didn’t show. It wasn’t like him to not text, so I figured something urgent had come up. But I was staggered to learn that evening just how urgent: he had suffered a heart attack on his way, and undergone emergency surgery. I’m grateful that he survived, that he was able to get the rescue and medical attention that he needed, and that last I heard he was doing well and expected to recover fully. It brought home like a slap in the face the exact fragility and transience of our fleeting lives that I wrote about last time.

I’m grateful, at the end of the bread, for a thick slice of buttered toast with Havarti alongside the last of the frozen carrot-ginger soup, with a dash of yogurt and a squeeze of lime. So simple, so delicious.

All these quotidian gratitudes pale in comparison to the gratitude of someone surviving a heart attack; and so best not to compare. Best to savor the flavors of every day, humble or grand; each success, delight, or genuine connection made all the more meaningful through awareness of its singular impermanence.

23,795 Days

Mar10

I’ve so much to be grateful for. These little irises going strong through snow and cold and sun all week exemplify the fragility, beauty, and resilience of life. They show up day after day, year after year, just like the rest of us. Even as their blooms fade and their leaves grow tall, then brown and die back, their little bulb hearts keep beating underground all year, even when they lie dormant through winter.

After sharing the dramatic photo of tumbleweeds in Utah over last weekend, I noticed the new weedpile stacked up in the corner fence of the neighbors’ field along my driveway. Mostly weedy tall mustards, but that darker spiny blob toward the west is a tumbleweed… and there are several more along the fenceline. I can only be grateful there are not more, and then turn my attention to find gratitude elsewhere.

Like in this perfect loaf of sandwich bread. Because sourdough is a living thing, and bread is an art, I have yet to get utterly consistent results, but I continue to practice. I have to laugh at my attachment to my contentment ritual, which includes a cheese sandwich for lunch while watching one TV show, and then another show or two after the workday is done, with another meal or snack. So when I don’t have bread I can get a little flustered about what to make for lunch. When I don’t have TV, well, that was a new challenge last week. It worked out pretty well, as I had to focus on a project early in the week and spent the evenings on the computer. But the second day of no TV, the first day of new bread, I broke the mold and made a sandwich for dinner and streamed RuPaul’s Drag Race España All-Stars episode 5 so I didn’t get behind. I’m grateful for ample technological options in this first-world entertainment emergency.

I’m grateful always for drag queens, and to RuPaul who has brought this art form into the mainstream, introducing many of us who were raised in rigid, self-righteous, judgmental, narrow-minded and bigoted families and subcultures to the expansive, fabulous creativity, humor and diversity of the drag world. Any given week, I enjoy watching whatever current English-language Drag Race season is airing, and usually an episode from one of the many international franchises available. Once I finish España All-Stars I’ll start Drag Race Belgique Season Two.

Tonight I enjoyed the latest episode of the current season of the original Drag Race, an episode whose time has come. At last the drag queens are stepping up their political presence! In this episode (S16E10, available on MTV or for purchase on Prime), their main challenge was to write verses for and perform this song encouraging gay people and those who love gay people, as well as everyone else, to register and vote! It’s no secret that one presidential candidate will continue to advocate for LGBTQ+ people, and the other will persecute them mercilessly, implementing more hateful laws that will cause even more suffering. I repeat, if the sexual orientation of you or someone you love is anything other than straight, YOU BETTAH VOTE! And there’s only one viable candidate:

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen on another night, because I can’t eat a cheese sandwich for dinner every night, I made Tofu Musubi. I mixed Dijon mustard with a little water, and added some spices and baking powder to flour, then dredged the drained tofu slices in those and fried them until crispy. After cutting the Nori wraps to the right size I tried a scrap on Wren, and she loved it.

I was grateful I could text my Portland sister to remind me what I was forgetting in the construction of the delicious snacks and it was the Furikake, which I located in the tertiary spice cabinet. Then I scooped some Hoisin sauce into a little bowl and sat down to enjoy an incredibly messy supper listening to Radio Swiss Jazz. On account of no TV still.

“You BETTAH not try to take my seaweed!”

Days continued to pass, and spring bulbs to open. Spring again. I got to thinking, Realistically, how many more springs might I get to experience here? And the number shocked me. Maybe more than ten, or maybe in the single digits. That got me thinking how many actual days might I have left, which also didn’t seem like many, and that led to wondering how many days I’ve been alive. I am supremely grateful for each of the 27,795 days of this one precious life so far.

Different day, different cheese, different condiments; same perfect bread.

I could start wondering how many cheese sandwiches I’ve eaten in all those days, but I’m not gonna go there. I will say, I’m grateful that they seem to be good for my teeth! Or at least, not doing any damage. I went to a new dentist this week, got a new set of x-rays as those haven’t happened since 2012, and got a kick out of the newfangled full-mouth x-ray, which shows no worrisome abnormalities in my mouth and jaw. Yippee! I’m grateful for a clean bill of dental health. (But yuck, look at all those amalgam fillings from the old days, which are starting to crack some of the molars.)

I’m grateful for another lovely sunset inside the kaleidoscope last night, and for a fun playdate for Wren this afternoon. The new neighborhood puppy has learned some restraint since his first encounter with her, and they had a blast chasing each other around the yard. She showed off all her favorite places, and then she showed off her long jump. We were down by the pond, Deb and I minding our own business, and seconds after she told me “He loves the water,” Oso ran right into the curly rushes edging the pond. Which led to him splashing into the water in the middle and paddling to the near side where we stood. He needed a little lift to get out. As we laughed he shook off and took off again. A few minutes later, Wren ran straight for the pond and leapt, clearing the full width of it. What was she thinking? Was she showing off? Was she teaching him? Was she trying to trick him into the water again? He ran after her, right up to the edge, and stopped; stood there for a few seconds puzzling out how to get to her, then ran around. And off they went again. May I find as much delight and gratitude in each of my remaining days as I have in the past five.

Voting

Mar3

I’m grateful that I live in a democracy, still, and that my vote counts. I question the truth of our democracy, even now, as Republican officials in many states and at the federal level continue to sabotage the voices of people of color with gerrymandering and laws that make it harder for people to vote in many districts. Imagine how many more Americans will be disenfranchised if the GOP wins more offices this fall. If you or someone you love is gay, trans, lesbian or anywhere on the gender spectrum besides white male; if you or someone you love uses marijuana recreationally or medicinally; if you or someone you love of any age has a functioning uterus: please take the threats to their liberties and their lives seriously, and support and vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

However, if you’re a registered Independent and you live in a state where you can choose which primary ballot you use, you might do as I did and vote for a woman running for the Republican nomination. I admire the courage and conviction that has kept Ambassador Nikki Haley motivated to remain in the race despite her minimal chance of trumping her opposition. As a fierce Independent myself, I’m grateful that I can offer this protest vote against the rapist, insurrectionist, lying, demented frontrunner. Nothing personal, just the facts.

The past few days have been a wild rollercoaster of weather, as in much of the country. The mini irises weathered one snowstorm and continue to bloom, while the crocuses are still going strong. The garlic beds are drinking up precipitation. I’m grateful to have spent a little bit of time outside on short breaks during a long work week, though the planetary winds the past couple of days have kept all of us hunkered down inside for the most part.

In another stroke of earring luck, after carelessly losing another favorite earring off a table, but not noticing until I’d rearranged some furniture and thoroughly vacuumed the floor, I was delighted when Topaz found the missing bauble hiding behind her play box. This earring also carries sentimental value: I bought the pair with a matching pendant for my mother decades ago when we visited Canyon de Chelly, from a Navajo artist at the visitor center. On one side of each piece is the traditional bear paw design inset with a polished pink shell; on the flip side is a design in turquoise and red stone. She loved them; I inherited them. They carry the history and love of our travels together. I’m grateful to Topaz, and the universe, that I still have them all.

The cheese sandwich project has been going well, as I continue to experiment with different proportions of regular flour and heartier varieties. Yesterday I used up some cheese ends in a fromage fort to which I added the little green sprout from the garlic, and a palmful of sautéed shiitake mushrooms from the night before. It made a delicious spread that tasted very like a paté. I spread some of this on bread and topped it with lettuce and avocado. Different, but good!

The real culinary success of the week, though, was this French Onion Farro and Lentil cheesy bake that Amy and I cooked together last night. The onions are simply caramelized first, then you add in garlic, white wine, farro, lentils and broth, bring to a simmer, and pop in the oven for a long enough time to enjoy a glass of wine and satisfying conversation. The recipe calls for thyme sprigs, but Amy and I don’t like thyme, so we used a bay leaf. Once the farro and lentils are softened, top with grated Gruyere (or Swiss, if you shop at City Market) and broil until it’s melted and browned.

Living on solar power, I have the lowest end oven in the industrial world, so the broiler is at the bottom, never works right, and continually frustrates me. I melted the cheese on the top rack of the oven, then pulled it out and browned it with a cute little kitchen torch, which ran out of butane before I finished. Oh well. It was fun to use it, and I’m grateful for Amy’s suggestion that I try that. Once I replenish the butane supply, I’ll be torching everything that calls for a broiler. As for the dish, it was so simple, and so unbelievably delicious.

Relief

Feb27
I’m grateful for homemade granola, for Honeybadger whose gifts inspired me to try my hand at it, for all the ingredients from oats to syrup to dried fruit and nuts that I happened to have on hand, and yes of course I put chocolate bits in it.

We got a taste this morning of the severe winter weather that’s rampaging across the country. We woke to a blizzard with stinging snow blowing every single direction all at once. It only lasted a couple of hours and dumped three inches of snow. No one wanted to go out in it. I’m grateful that my little pets can hold it a long time. Shortly after it stopped snowing I persuaded Topaz and Wren to go for a short walk in the woods, just long enough to find Topaz a small spot without snow under a juniper. I’m grateful it was largely melted by late afternoon so we could take a longer walk, and grateful that tomorrow promises to be warmer and sunny.

We were asked in a group this morning where we find gratitude in the day. One person said “In relief,” i.e., when something happens or doesn’t happen and the emotion is relief, gratitude follows. Once it was articulated, a number of us could relate to that; though I hadn’t thought before about being grateful for Relief. Or if I did, I’ve forgotten. My answer to the query was, “Every morning when I wake up alive in my bed, for waking up alive, for the bed, for the house the bed is in, and on from there….” And of course, I’m grateful for my almost daily cheese sandwich.

Today’s version included mayo, mustard, dill pickle relish, Havarti, two fried eggs, and shredded lettuce, piled between slices of fresh-baked bread an hour out of the oven. Grateful for the convenience of ready-made condiments in the fridge, for the fridge, for the solar power to run the fridge; for the flour, salt, and sourdough still going strong, and the water and how it gets here, and the oven and the propane that fuels it and how those got here; for the fresh organic free-range eggs, and the non-stick skillet, and the wooden spatula; for the organic lettuce and those who grew it and transported it; and for the cheese, and the Danish cows it came from, and all the roads it took to get to my doorstep. I suffer some, but I really have nothing to complain about. And that’s a relief.

Impermanence

Feb23
Walking up the driveway with Topaz in the warm light of late day in earliest spring…

Even late, fatigued, I’m grateful for the little gifts of today. I’m grateful that I’ve noticed the first tips of mini irises popping through the dirt over the past few days, and the crocuses which opened yesterday. Suddenly, just since Monday, all these little beings have sprouted from the ground.

I’m grateful that after an intense work week, and a full day of meaningful interactions, I was able to rest and reset with a long afternoon nap. I know that I did some good things today. I feel nonetheless the malaise of self-doubt and resistance to the way things are. I made the mistake of reading some articles this evening that I found disheartening, even frightening. Corruption, profiteering, heartlessness, and just plain meanness surround us, in our broken medical and political systems, in our neighbors, in corporations, big Tech and big Pharma, big Banks and big Oil… There are days it is just hard and wearying to know these things.

On days like these, when I’m exhausted by my own efforts to resist the weight of evil in the world, it’s more important than ever to turn some of my attention budget to the little precious things I’m fortunate to have in my life. To savor the tiny beautiful things and moments, to find renewal and nourishment in them when there feels like little else. There’s a peace in remembering Impermanence: these small pleasures are fleeting but they are endless; they coexist with the paucity of spirit in the species that allows and perpetuates inequality and evil. I’m grateful to recall that the human spirit, the human species, also holds generosity, goodness, and love, and that I’ve also seen a lot of that today.

I marvel sometimes at the transient meaningfulness of my simple cheese sandwich lunch habit. There’s nothing at all remarkable or special about it, except that I always have enough to eat. So far.

Courage

Feb10
Leftovers: a crabcake smashed into a cheese and avocado sandwich.

I’m grateful today for courage. Not mine, but the courage of the many voices being raised in the independent news and opinion sphere about the recklessly biased coverage of the two presumptive candidates for president this coming November. Once again, mainstream media is following the lead of rightwing so-called ‘news’ like Fox propaganda, by trumpeting the grandiose theatrics of the former narcissist-in-chief while ignoring his daily distortions, lies, and cognitive failures; at the same time, pouncing like a starving cat on a single mixup by an accomplished and proven statesman who cares more about Americans than about his own ego, and more about the planet than his own profit.

The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other infotainment outlets, won the 2016 election for Trump with their free nonstop promotions, and seem on track to do the same thing again in 2024. Their recent egregiously skewed coverage of the biased Hur report and their relentless attacks on President Biden for his age and occasional mistakes is unfathomable. I can’t say anything about it nearly as well as courageous writers like Robert Hubbell in Today’s Edition:

“Perhaps voters don’t question Trump’s sharpness despite more frequent and serious misstatements because the NYTimes devotes an inordinate amount of coverage to Biden’s missteps but hardly mentions Trump’s. The Times creates the dominant narrative and then claims it doesn’t have to report on the counter-narrative because voters aren’t interested in it! What arrogance!

Within the 24-hour window of the NYTimes raking Biden over the coals, the following Republicans misspoke but the Times reacted with indifference:

  • “An hour after Biden says the President of Egypt is the President of Mexico Trump says the Prime Minister of Hungary, [Viktor Orban] is the President of Turkey”—a repeated mistake by Trump on the campaign trail.
  • Speaker Mike Johnson confused the countries of Iran and Israel in an interview on Fox News, saying that the US has already “funded Iran” in the existing US budget—a mistake viewed as slanderous by the tens of millions of citizens in both countries.
  • Fox News infotainer posing as a journalist Jesse Watters introduced South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as the “South Carolina Governor.”

Another daily voice for sanity is Jessica Craven, who shared in her newsletter yesterday her letter to the NYT editorial board. A bonus with her newsletter is a weekly dose of good news which celebrates political, environmental, and social justice victories in the previous week, of which there are many. Here’s an excerpt of her letter to the Times:

“What can the New York Times be thinking? Trump shows clear signs of cognitive impairment. You regularly give him a pass. President Biden is considered by all who’ve interacted with him—including his political enemies—to be sharp and capable. The Hur report was written by a former Trump associate; it was a political hit piece and the Times bought into it with zero journalistic scrutiny. 

I have to ask again, do your editors WANT a Trump presidency? Because that’s what your misleading, biased, and hysterically one-sided coverage will bring us. 

History will not be kind to the Times for its relentless attacks on the one man capable of saving us from dictatorship. Shame on you.”

As agitated as I am by the unraveling political coverage, I still make sure that I appreciate the simple pleasures in life, taking time to enjoy a simple, delicious lunch: homemade sourdough toast with ‘fromage fort’ and avocado, salt, pepper, and a sprinkle of homemade paprika. We have to nurture and take care of ourselves, and find joy in our lives, in order to have the strength and resilience to rise to the demands of our current crises, be they personal, local, national, or global.

If you feel discouraged by the media narratives that are shaping the opinions of Americans, then take some action to shape the media narratives. Write to the papers or networks you follow, share your outrage on social media, use your right to free speech, and speak truth not only to power but to the media that seems to control it. Join one of the thousands of grassroots political organizations that sprang up during the Trump regime to fight his agenda of power and tax cuts for the wealthy, stepping up the rape of the planet, racism, antisemitism, white male supremacy, and oppression of minorities of all kinds. Subscribe to Hubbell’s and Craven’s newsletters, they tell us how to fight this fight every single day. If we don’t beat Trump at the ballot box in November or legitimately stop his campaign before that, we are in for a worse nightmare than you can imagine.

But as Hubbell often says, we’ve beaten him and his agenda in almost every election since 2016, from special elections to midterms and the 2020 presidential election; we can do it again. “We have every reason to be hopeful, but no reason to be complacent!”

Patience

Feb5
I’m grateful that Wren has become so well socialized that she makes friends easily with visitors; I’m grateful she feels safe enough at last to seek and accept affection even from strangers, once she understands that we’re ok.

I’m so grateful for my increasing surrender to patience. I guess I have that lightning strike last summer to thank for it. Internet just hasn’t been the same since then; not that it was great before, but it’s been utterly unreliable for the past six months. Last week I was grateful when Mike came by and spent an hour fixing things in and outside, and I had great speed for a few hours. That afternoon, download speed crashed from 34 to 2.3 megabits/second.

So I was back on the phone, and I didn’t even feel any aggravation at all, that’s how gigantic my patience has become. Allowing things to be as they are. Allowing doesn’t mean you like what’s happening, it means that you understand this is how it is right now, and that frees you to move forward and do what’s within your ability to do about it. I simply committed a few months ago to patiently, cheerfully, relentlessly hounding the company, until they started bumping my calls automatically to Advanced Support.

So Mike came back today, with his calm, even good cheer, and replaced the antenna, and also told me that he’d run into the tower guy in town, who had just replaced something on the tower, and they were both confident the combination would solve things once and for all. Well, fingers crossed, but it seems true. Everyone on that tower on this mesa can thank my squeaky wheel for getting that tower thing replaced! I’m grateful for a great connection so I could watch the tender, challenging, ‘Love on the Spectrum’ tonight while FaceTiming with my Kiki of the Northwest.

Patience is serving me so well these days in so many more ways than simply technical troubleshooting. Life is just so much easier now that I’m so patient. My expectations of myself and others have softened to more reasonable levels, I’m a better listener, I rarely ‘should’ on anyone else and no longer castigate myself for missteps. In the unexpectedly long time the repairs took today, work interrupted, I patiently waited twenty minutes to make my sandwich after spontaneously quick-pickling some red onions, romaine, and red pepper. They were quite tart, so I spread a little apricot jam on one side; I’m grateful I learned the trick of putting sweet jam on a savory sandwich from a couple of restaurants recently. I’m grateful for the locally milled Rouge de Bordeaux flour that gave this week’s bread a rustic color and flavor, and for the friends who delivered it. And grateful, as always, for the simple joy of a cheese sandwich.

Leftovers

Jan17

Oh my. What a cheese sandwich I made today. Leftover roasted chicken, lettuce, and havarti, with of course mayo and Penzeys sandwich sprinkle, and a little Grey Poupon. It was a masterpiece. I’m grateful for the ongoing abundance of my leftovers. I made a little pot of stock for the animals with the bones from last night’s dinner, and have plenty of meat and bones for more meals.

I learned today that two friends caught covid for the first time on the same day last week, hundreds of miles apart, and both while caring for loved ones. One at an assisted living facility, and one at a doctor’s office. “No good deed goes unpunished,” said one of them. I’m grateful that it wasn’t too terrible an illness for either of them, and that they’re both feeling better already. They had been so careful. I’m sorry that people in general have thrown caution to the wind, making life more risky for those of us still hoping to not get it. So it goes.