Term What I first think
Spin Class I should show up with my spinning wheel and a bag of wool
Gaslighting Old-timey London street lights
Pickleball People in tennis whites batting Kosher dills back and forth
Culture Wars Yogurt-making competition
Delulu Coming from that print-on-demand site
Bussin Taking public transit
No Cap Hatless
Cash Grab An encounter with a pickpocket
Doomscrolling A papyrus copy of the Book of Revelation
What ones did you think meant something else?
An appropriate time to resurrect a recipe from my childhood: The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford
A bushel of Ginger Golds from Warwick Orchards and Nursery. Made twenty-eight pints of applesauce, plus 12 apples still in the fridge for snacks this week. Yum! The house smells so good.
I spent a delightful day yesterday making apple jelly and apple butter with a friend. I usually do my canning in solitary confinement, standing for endless hours at the kitchen sink. I don't mind that; I usually have music playing or something entertaining going on in my head to while away the hours. I like the steamy scent of cooking apples, the coziness of autumn being tucked thriftily into jars. I feel close to my farming ancestors when I'm putting up food for the winter. It's simple goodness.
But it was a different experience doing it with someone. Interesting conversation, a lot of laughs, and catchy enthusiasm that kept me going for 8 hours without even feeling the passing of time. This particular friend is witty and articulate, and the banter never lagged. She's also experienced and competent at canning and preserving food, so there was never a feeling of having to teach or drag each other through the process. Just two women cheerfully moving around the bright, yellow-painted kitchen, dividing the labour, knowing what to do, carrying on the tradition. Thanks for a great day, Erin!
Cars zooming up and down the road in the dead of night. Splashing of fountain outside the window my husband insists on leaving open. Dog shifts and sighs and shivers, and I reach to cover him with a blanket. Night-owl son three floors down turns on a light switch. Husband deep in sleep. And I'm irrevocably awake at 2 a.m.
I move to the couch downstairs with a blanket and pillow...and the dog, of course, who now thinks it's morning and wants his walk and treat. The fridge hums. A raccoon walks across the roof. The low thrum of son's video game below me. The fountain is louder here, but not as loud as the stream of thoughts I can't turn off. What to leave out of the freezer for dinner...the latest sign language lesson I studied...whether the present I ordered will be delivered to my son today...should I bother planting peppers next year?
Now it's 4:30, and I've read my daily scriptures and checked my social media and puzzled over the latest book I'm writing and considered what to have for breakfast... I have church at 10:00, where I provide the closed captioning for the hard of hearing and also serve as sign language liaison for a deaf friend. I need to be high-functioning and alert for this. Maybe I can try snoozing again...
Sigh. Nope. Anyone else up?
Bottled fifty pounds of tomatoes the other day (19 litres). Diced, blanched, and dehydrated 17 bunches of celery from the garden. Made 2 loaves of zucchini bread to freeze, instead of just freezing the zucchini itself. Got 9 baggies' worth of green beans from the farmers' market this morning to blanche and freeze. Started harvesting the carrots. I love this time of year!
The shishito peppers have produced well, but the Mennonite stuffing peppers will be a challenge to stuff!
We were friends for 53 years. We met when we were in Kindergarten, had chicken pox together, sleepovers, and secret bacon fry-ups over a tin can in the backyard. We played ball with her poodle and lay on the family room floor reading Archie comics. We were baptized on the same day. She good-naturedly participated in plays I wrote and staged, and she helped me rip ivy off my parents' house and clean the rocks in my Zen garden. She was a server at my wedding reception and forgave me for not being around when she got married.
Sheri visited me often here in Canada, aiming to visit at least once in every month of the year. One year she went to St. Jacobs and the Mennonite market, and one year she attended the Fergus Highland Games with me. She never complained about the bizarre lodgings I plunked her into, and she enjoyed serving and working with me on whatever project I was in the middle of. We both enjoyed doing puzzles, and she was the type of low-maintenance friend you could sit and read with, with no expectation of having to talk. She liked lemongrass and Nancy Drew, while I liked mint and the Hardy Boys, but we could always meet in the middle. On her last trip in April, she spent half the time cooking health food for me and trying to convince me to go off sugar. She introduced me to The Chosen, and we walked along Lake Huron and visited a friend's newborn chicks.
I was in awe of the fish ponds and sports days and outings she planned for her family. We went to New York City together and saw Come From Away on Broadway and ate amazing pizza. We stayed in Park City one year, and the power kept going off. We talked about going on a spectacular trip for our 60th birthdays. She was always generously cooking up great adventures.
She's gone on this latest adventure without me, now. She passed away on Friday night, and Saturday I had to go to the Fergus Highland Games without her.
I believe this life isn't all there is, and someday I'll see her again. In the meantime, no doubt she'll be organizing angels into softball teams and converting St. Peter to cauliflower crusts. She's probably tie-dying heaven. But some of the colour has gone out of my world. I'm not quite sure how to navigate this new planet without Sheri in it.
