Hva er nytt, my little treacle tart?
I hope that all is well with you and the family out there in Virginia. Did Deisel get home safe & sound? Did you get your ac fixed at last? How's work going -- still want to guillotine most of the staff?
The even tenor of my quiet existence continues to both please and baffle me. Each day seems to blend seamlessly into the next, with little or nothing to demarcate one sunrise from the next. Even the weather is uniform -- sunny and hot. Every prayer I hear at church asks for rain -- but when you live in a desert isn't requesting a weather aberration kinda presumptuous? Me, I hibernate inside my snug little apartment with the ac cranked up nice and high -- I rarely leave my abode after 9 a.m. for anything less than an emergency craving for pickled herring. I don't even go out to have lunch at the new Thai restaurant on Center Street. I'll try them again this fall.
I always thought I'd be cursed with wanderlust all the rest of my days -- wanting to dash hither and yon in a mad quest for satisfaction. That's how I seemed to be hardwired earlier in my life. But today I rejoice in knowing ahead of time just about everything that is going to happen to me today and knowing just where I'll be going and what I'll be seeing. The thought of travel actually alarms me.
My health is so-so; no better than before and no worse than expected. One new wrinkle is I've developed a rash over most of my body, probably from the heat. I use up a bottle of Calamine lotion every week to keep the itching under control. My skin is permanently streaked with pink.
I've been spending most of my time, when I'm not writing or reading or napping or watching Netflix, experimenting with food. Last week I made several batches of refrigerator pickles. My pickled green beans turned out well -- Sarah loves them and wants me to make her some more. My olive salad was a disaster -- I mixed several kinds of olives with onions and Thai basil leaves. I thought the mixture would be interesting -- it had an aftertaste of old typewriter ribbons. This week I am going to pickle some Thai eggplant and some Thai long beans. I get them at the Asian Store that is across the street from Fresh Market. I'm supposed to make a pasta salad to bring to Sarah's house this coming Sunday for dinner, but think I'll just pop a roast in the crock pot instead -- if I use pork it's just about as cheap as making a good pasta salad and takes much less work.
Oh, before I forget. Here is my new motto for the town of Provo:
PROVO, A GOOD PLACE TO TAKE NAP.
My other food project this week has been vichyssoise, which is a chilled potato soup. I have a friend from my swim class at the Rec Center, Bruce Young, who teaches English up at BYU. His wife has left him all alone for the summer so she can go play humanitarian in the Congo. So I feed him about once a week. Since he lived in France for several years, I decided to make him something French and easy. Nothing easier than cold potato soup. You just boil some potatoes and onions in chicken broth until they fall apart, then whip them in a food processor, add cream and refrigerate for several hours. Serve with crackers and cheese. And the beauty part is that when you let it sit overnight it tastes even better the next day. I'm going to start making it every week, I think, for myself, until the heat goes away in September. Today I had a big bowl of Bush's Baked Beans, with sliced hot dogs thrown in, with a fresh onion bagel, for a late breakfast, and I doubt if I'll eat anything substantial again today -- probably some ramen noodles tonight. Beans really fill me up. I even have a piece of cheesecake sitting in the fridge that I haven't wanted to eat for the past two days. My appetite ain't what it used to be -- and yet I stay so fat. Life just ain't fair.
Your mother was here last weekend, I forget why exactly. She came over to visit and we had a pleasant time. Not at all like when she ripped me a new one back on Memorial Day. It's a strange thing, but whenever your mother is nice to me I fall back in love with her and pine for her company. But it's a foolish wish; we can only manage to be pleasant to each other at long intervals of time and when we both know we don't have to be around each other very much. I would like to fall in love again, but I'm afraid I have grown too eccentric and selfish (and fat) to ever please another woman, no matter how complaisant. So I spend my evenings listening to the symphonies of Sibelius. Not a bad way to end my life, I guess.
I wanted to write another mini-memoir today, but am just absolutely out of inspiration and ideas. Is there anything in particular YOU want to know about my young life? Just let me know and I'll turn it into another family memoir.
Well, my snowy egret, I guess I'll wrap things up here. A long afternoon stretches ahead of me. But the ac is working well (in fact I'm thinking of turning it off for a few hours) and I have the Salterton Trilogy by Robertson Davies to read. So why complain?
Adieu, dad.
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