Week 19

This week I went to the office to assist with some filming for a video that honors our graduating seniors. It was the first time I'd really been back, other than to pick something up. It was a surprisingly emotional afternoon as I met the seniors we were filming. I have a soft spot for soon-to-graduate students anyway, but talking with them about their uncertain futures made me appreciate what they are facing, even within the next couple transitional weeks. They are building resilience and facing reality sooner than previous classes ever had to. I am pulling for them.

It was a long and tedious week filled with small but important tasks to prepare for these videos, among a number of other things. By Friday afternoon, I was fried, so I turned off my computer at 4:30 and walked by myself down the hill to downtown. With my only walks lately being with Luna, who's only good for about 15 minutes, it has been months since I've had a nice long walk, the kind I need to clear my head. So I headed out with just my cell phone and earbuds and a house key (Joel was heading out on a bike ride). I listened to weird jazz and sad ballads and exuberant Mexican folk songs (thanks to a random Spotify playlist) and made my way to Riverfront Park where a couple of sax players were providing festive music for people who were sharing take-out by the river. It was good to have an hour of movement, to observe my surroundings, to mourn all the closed spaces with window fronts featuring dated posters and newspapers from early March, but also to feel part of my city again and to be among others who inhabit it. 

Making

I made it through a whole week of #MeMadeMay and it was a fun challenge to work with the weather forecast and it made me realize I sew for summer and knit for winter, mostly. I still have more me-made stuff to wear this month but I'm not sure if I can pull off the daily challenge after this point. But it's been fun! 

Recipes

I loaded up on produce on my weekly grocery store trip, and I am glad I did, because I used up our remaining produce (broccoli) for pizza. I specifically bought chard to make a gratin recipe from David Lebovitz, and strawberries for a recipe that I couldn't recall after I brought them home (ended up being wine-roasted strawberries to serve with a lemon cornmeal cake). I also bought cucumbers and tomatoes and romain to make my favorite Mediterranean chopped salad for lunch each day. We ended the week with pasta carbonara, thanks to Joel and fresh eggs from our friends. 

Reading

Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters? Old person worry: What if everything I do does?

Jenny Offill's Weather was likely not written with a pandemic in mind, but the fragmented style and doomsday talk certainly made this feel this much more salient right now. I love Offill's passages, filled with zingers and gut punches, and the way they offhandedly reference each other on grand and small scales. This felt less like a novel and more like my own scattered thoughts: caring very much about everything that is going wrong with the world, and seconds later worrying about my wrinkles and death, then admiring a sharpened pencil, then laughing uncontrollably about something nonsensical. "Of course, the world continues to end." I didn't finish the book with any less hope for the future, but I did feel more connected to it.

Watching

We are nearly finished with the second season of My Brilliant Friend, and I continue to think it's one of the best book adaptations I've seen. 

The second season of Netflix's Dead to Me is here as well, and we plucked off the first two half-hour episodes easily on Friday night. I think we watch it begrudgingly as we feel it's a show that should have ended after season one. 

By the way, we just finished season five of Frasier. Roz had her baby in this season and I am super annoyed that the very next episode after her giving birth featured her, back to normal, at a surprise party for Frasier, and no one mentioned the baby! The episode that followed, the final of the season, barely mentioned it by way of Bulldog, who commented about her post-baby body looking hot. In another episode right before Roz had the baby, there is a very rare scene of her and Daphne sitting at a table, talking about children - it was noticeable because it had never happened before. Pretty much every moment of the show is dominated by a man. Watching this show 20 years later is a reminder of how on 90s TV, being gay was mostly a punchline or an awkward plot point, and women were either supporters of men and/or objects of desire - if they're not, they're ice queens (i.e., Niles' ex-wife Maris). Acknowledging this, I still love the humor and physical comedy.

Listening

There's never an inappropriate time to listen to this Paul Simon song.