Time's a ticking

It's 2:02pm and I just sat down to lunch. Other than a quick trip out to the doctor, I've spent today at home waiting for another FedEx package. It was a loud morning, and I have appreciated the peacefulness since.

The leaves on my sugar maple that have started to turn golden are falling like a lovely foliage rain. I'm watching them as I slowly chew hearty bites of massaged kale, walnuts, dried cherries and roasted potatoes. It's an interseason salad; it's fitting for today.

A pork and beef ragù is simmering on the stove, nestled by my old Staub's trustworthy walls. Sometimes I wonder what you can count on more than cast iron. I like that about my Staub, which is why I have several.

Although the sauce has been cooking for nearly an hour, it remains in the "vegetables melting into the meat fat" stage which is to say, it's still in the nascent stages of what will become a savory ragù. It's not there yet. But it smells so good in here, and this netherworld is nice. It smells like cool fall days which, in this interseason, isn't quite right, but it's close enough. 

Because of the FedEx uncertainty, the boys are getting a ride home from school. Tuesday is early dismissal day. They get off at 2 which I don't understand. Why not 3:15 like every other day? I love the extra 75 minutes that Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays provide. On Tuesdays, I feel a bit cheated.

I cannot wait to see them, but I am also not ready for them to get home. I suspect I have roughly seven minutes left. Seven minutes more of quietly chewing and quietly stirring, quietly watching the leafy rain and quietly able to hear the pets snoring softly. Seven minutes more of quietly being with myself and my own thoughts.

I don't like saying goodbye to all that until tomorrow, even though I welcome warm, wriggly boys who adore me and whom I adore. I don't like feeling this countdown even though it also leads to laughter and kisses. But it's there, like leaves falling on a hot day and half-cooked ragù. And there is magic on the fulcrums in and around life. It's just harder to find on some days than others.

In the news...

Restaurant review a'coming tomorrow, but yesterday was a good day and today a damn busy one. In the news, in short order:

I taught a terrific Canning 101 class at Strosniders. We made my Apple, Pear and Lemon Thyme Jam; those who stayed to chat after class ended got to take home all the leftovers. Fun!
Thanks to everyone who came and to Strosniders for having me back. 

I had another essay, The Sweetest Traditions Are Often the Simplest, published on The Huffington Post. Exciting!

And, a sandwich I recently created - was nominated for a community pick on Food52. Want to eat some seasonal deliciousness for lunch this week? Make this: Apple, Bacon, Caramelized Red Onion Sandwiches with Arugula-Thyme Spread. I thought it was so good that as soon as I finished the first, I made a second one and ate that too. 

Under the gloss

For the past several months, the color of our basement bathroom's walls has made me feel peevish. I get a burr in my butt every time I go in there.

The lovely shade of green I once found peaceful and whose name, Sweet Caroline, I continue to adore, lately smacks of institutional hallways in need of scrubbing and better lighting. 

On Tuesday, Jack stayed home with an upset stomach, and during our hours together, I began outlining the dingy green room with thick strips of bright blue painter's tape. Pull, rip, align and press. Pull, rip, align and press. And on and on, in fits and starts, long strips and short ones, around the corners and up and down.

Yesterday, I finished the first coat of Smoke Embers plus 25%, a soothing dove gray. Already I feel the burrs slinking away.

I love to paint walls, or any flat expanse really. There before me lies the proverbial empty canvas, ready to be given new life with little more than a clean brush and a freshly shaken gallon.

Up and down I roll the brush, pausing only to dip it in more paint or check for spots I’ve missed. It’s meditation in action. Not only is a room transformed, colored anew with promise, but so too is my mind, blissfully unfettered now from having focused on just one repetitive task for the unknown number of minutes that have swept by.

This sort of focus, on a basic job that requires concentration but little other effort, allows me to both lose myself and remain present. My subconscious mind can flit and flutter, processing all manner of idea and query on which I may have been noodling.

During the brief, intimate time I spend with the walls, I see cracks and imperfections that I didn’t before. I run my fingers over slightly protruding nails, the drips and scuffs, the unknown gunk that landed on the surface one day and decided to stick.

It's not a perfect plane underneath an aging coat of shine but rather an imperfect thing that's been added to and taken from over the years. It has supported and weathered, been asked to hide and also to bare itself completely. I like being reminded of this. I like knowing these walls better.

The walls are much like people really, even those who seem glossy and impervious to bump or fault but who, of course, aren’t. It’s worth taking time to get to know people, and it’s worth letting people really get to know us.

In all the ways society today makes us feel more connected, I think it often does so only superficially. It’s so easy to show and share only what we want others to see; impressions more than selves. A coat of paint rather than the supporting structure.

But what’s lost is depth. History. Knowing. Being known. Being proudly unique and proudly fallible, for each of us is both original and imperfect. That’s what makes us human.

Three girlfriends came for breakfast this morning. One brought fruit, unwashed and still in the plastic clamshells, and apologized for that. Another teared up as we talked about our kids and our pride in and worries for them, and she apologized for that.

But I couldn’t have been happier because plastic clamshells and random tears are just real life slowing down long enough on a busy Friday morning to wash fruit and share a Kleenex or two with unvarnished friends. That’s what’s under gloss. No apologies needed.