Open letter to the thing I am not going to whine about, not one more time.

Dear the thing I am not going to whine about, not one more time:

First of all, today was a lovely day. That's a fact. Evidence:

gonna need some of this.

1. It was my Online Teaching Day (tm), which I have reserved for working at home. Ergo,
2. I worked at home.

Secondly, there was sunshine in the sky which flooded all over the things of the earth.

drinking pots full of this.

It was windy, and that's a (third) counter-fact. However, (fourthly) in the wind's defense, it stayed outside. And I stayed in. And thus it was that the wind had no force upon me.

Fifth: I finished some things today. I worked and worked away. I finished responding to some drafts and grading them. I polished up some Prezis. I sent some e-mails. 

So let me be clear, the thing I am not going to whine about, not one more time: you did not defeat me. Not remotely and not even.

I should literally
buy stock in this.

However--and I am saying this in the most measured of tones, a neutral tone, even, calm and merely observational:

You did not make my day better. The thing I am not going to whine about, not one more time: you did, in fact, make my day worse.

Although I am categorically not whining, I am brandishing my ginger tea and DayQuil at you, and my depleted packet of Kleenex. 

a bushel of these would not go amiss.

I'll say no more, the thing I am not going to whine about, not one more time. There's really no talking with you or about you, not without complaining. And I won't. You can't make me.

I said good day,

htms

Return of the repressed.

Last night when the arson, I mean fireworks, started, I felt a sudden tickle, not to say scratch, in my throat.

I thought, am I getting sick? I coughed a few times, experimentally. Then not so experimentally. I coughed phenomenologically. Or perhaps existentially. It was a for real cough, not a trial.

The historian asked, "Are you coming down with something?"

I said, "I don't know." I thought about it. "I think it might just be the smoke." Because, as you know, the people, in a patriotic suburban neighborhood such as my own, the fourth of July is Fireworks City, and we're not just talking about a few sparklers.

We went out into the night, late, with Bruiser. We navigated the smoke like Aguirre in Aguirre, the Wrath of God navigating the Orinoco River on a misty morning.  I coughed a few more times.

I went to bed and thought, I'll wake up in the morning, the smoke will be cleared, I'll be fine.

the view from Sick.

But when I did wake up this morning, my head and eyes heavy, sneezing, I thought, shit. And took a DayQuil.

(Parenthetical: The people: I need to see a movie today. We have had all sorts of important and fun activities, many of which have kept us away from the SLC on the weekends. We are behind in our movie-going. This, despite the fact that I have made many efforts to see movies such as the Joss Whedon Much Ado About Nothing, Frances Ha, Oblivion, Man of Steel, and others I can't remember at the moment because of my heavy head and eyes. I was and am counting on this weekend to make a dent in that deficit! Is that too much to ask? I ask you! I mean really.)

After the historian's bike ride, and my second DayQuil:

Me: ...but I want you to know, I'm going to try really hard to feel good enough so we can go to a movie this afternoon.

The historian: Well, please do your best.

Me:  I'm going to give it my best effort.

Ill Christmas.

Man.

I hate getting sick at the ends of semesters. However, it appears that it is the way of my life. Via dolorosa de mi casa, as it were. I remember one time, I was so sick at the end of the semester, my first husband and I took to our beds for what seemed like days. We arose from our bed of affliction to go to the mall the day before Christmas, so we would have a present for each other. When I saw some people dressed up like reindeer (can that be right? I was delirious), and I thought, I wish I had brought Prudence (our cat)--she would have loved this.

I'm not that sick this time. But I am all DayQuil'd up and trying to overlap the doses so there's no complete experience of how sick I really am at any time. Because that would be horrible. I can't even bear to contemplate it.

I'm almost done whining about it, hang on.

I did have to go into school to "teach" my last class. Then there was a meeting I chaired. By the end, I basically was walking around like The Empress of Contagion. I considered, briefly, stopping at a store on the way home, but the last shred of reason still firing in my brain told me NO.

Medium.

"Are you sure?" our server asked.

We looked at each other. The menu was basically one large CAUTION sign, suggesting that the diner was probably was not up to it, spice-and-heat-wise. This wasn't our first time at the Thai restaurant rodeo, though. We thought we were man enough. We thought we were okay with medium. But our server gave us pause.

So we went with mild, which was, as it turned out, as hot as we could go, and maybe just a little bit more so. Even though at our regular Thai place, medium was fine, at this place, which was really, really good, medium would have been too hot, and that would have been a tragedy.

I remember when I first started eating spicy food--Indian--I thought the hotter the better. I loved it. I remember going to a place just a few blocks from my place of employ for lunch. One day, I suggested going there to a colleague. He looked doubtful. He said, "I have a meeting after--I was sort of hoping I wouldn't be digesting on the outside of my body." A good description--the heat sort of radiating from the inside out after eating curry.

At our regular Thai place, I can usually get curry--Panang is my favorite--at medium heat, but we have the papaya salad at mild. "With just one pepper," I always say when we order it, holding up the one finger. Because more than one pepper  drastically affects my enjoyment and even my ability to eat it. It wasn't always this way. But now, it is. It just is, and no amount of aspirational ordering, nostalgic for the heat, will ever make it otherwise.

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons has a man sitting up in his bed, the Angel of Death standing at the foot. "I'm the Angel of Death," he says. "I'm here to take your muscle tone and your ability to digest fried foods. That's all for now." I remember when I was in my early 40s and I was all hahahahahahaha I can still digest fried foods. And my muscle tone's not bad either! And then BAM. Fried food, spicy food--I am the equivalent of a woman of Scandinavian descent in the 50s who worries about too much garlic. It's tragic.

Today, after a couple of weeks of not enough sleep, I woke up with my payback-cold. My body's making me slow down for a minute, DayQuil and green tea. We had leftover Thai food in the refrigerator. I heated it up, ate my curry, the medium heat feeling plenty spicy. It was hot and it was hot, medium hot. It made my lips tingle and it cleared my sinuses. For the moment, and a few moments afterward, it was just right.

Strange days.

Yesterday, I swept out the floor of my closet and by the end of it, I was sneezing, leading me to believe--indeed, confirming my lifelong belief--that I am allergic to housework. Alas. I continued to sneeze all night, which led me to the inexorable conclusion that I must take an antihistamine. But lo, twas not allergies, but a summer cold. Yes! the Dread Summer Cold Roberts! Whatever is to be done with but take DayQuil and stare at one's computer screen:

and madly edit code which seems to shapeshift like a chameleon or Proteus or some other shapeshifter: embed it into this platform, and the code gets scrubbed. Embed it into another, and all the links lead back to a single target. Embed it into the platform for which you intended it, and it is entirely dysfunctional. DayQuil haze? or is html the fruits of the devil?

Meanwhile, tonight, after attending a training session on workplace grievances (but who needs training? [rim shot]), I came home and am now watching a weird movie called Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker, which has Alex Pettyfer, of Magic Mike fame, but also Bill Nighy, Ewan MacGregor, Robbie Coltrane, Stephen Fry, Missy Pyle, Damian Lewis, Andy Serkis, and--get this--Alicia Silverstone as a mom or way big sister or something. It's like a collage of Sherlock Holmes, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Potter, Galaxy Quest, Revenge of the Sith, Lord of the Rings and Clueless. It is just 45 minutes until my last DayQuil of the night. DayQuil of the Night!

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

The curd: an inquiry into its nature and uses.

What is lemon curd? It seems like an almost existential question. I have made it several times, given it away here and there, and yet I am not quite sure I know what it's for, even though it is delicious.

I made some lovely Meyer lemon curd and gave a bottle to a friend for a New Year present. She told me the other evening that she had just finished it, and in the ensuing discussion, she said that you could put it on chicken. What? This use had never even occurred to me--although I almost never eat chicken, so there's that. I think I'm less a sweet/sour person, unless it's in the context of a dessert.

This leaves me with my questions about the curd, and my one-two-three uses.

One: put it on a muffin, or a scone, or a crumpet, or an English muffin. This means to spread it on a toasted baked good. This makes sense to me. It puts curd in the category of jam or honey. This also makes sense to me, since I generally decant it after cooking into a half-pint jar, just like jam and just like honey (except for the kind that comes in a plastic bear, but that is another category altogether). I know it's probably not good logic, to generalize contents from containers, especially when I was the one who put the thing in the container in the first place. Regardless: use one, on baked goods.

Two: make it into lemon squares. I did this tonight. Yes, I arose from my bed of affliction a couple of times, when I wasn't feeling as crappy, i.e., at the apex of the Day-Quil effectiveness  parabola. First, to make the curd (see below), and second, to make the squares. Although technically, since among my zillions of baking pans I happen not to have a square one, neither of metal nor of glass, I baked my squares in a round pan, so really they're lemon wedges. And actually, they're lime wedges, since I happened to have a bounty of key limes, so my curd was lime. Use two.

Here's how I made my wedges:  I took 1 stick of unsalted butter, cut into little pieces; 1/4 cup granulated sugar; 1 c. flour (I used King Arthur's White Wheat flour); and a pinch of sea salt. These are Ina Garten's proportions, but not her directions. I put all that in a glass bowl and microwaved it for about a minute, until the butter was softened; then I used my fingers to rub the butter into the flour and sugar, and when that seemed to be "happening," I collected the crumbs into a dough, and patted it into the round cake pan, a 9-incher.

You bake this crust for 15 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven.

But before any of that, you make lemon (or in this case lime) curd. I did this earlier in the afternoon. Here's what you do:  whisk 3 large eggs, 3/4 c. sugar, and 1/3 cup lime (or lemon, depending on your citrus fancy) juice in a heavy saucepan. Whisk it good. Put this over medium heat. Now, when I made the Meyer lemon curd, I did as my recipe suggested and rigged up a double boiler. But this took for freaking ever, and I realized that, with as much attention as I was paying to that double boiler and the curd therein, I could simply pay an equivalent amount of attention to a pan directly on the heat, and probably do just fine, and I did. So whisky frequently, perhaps constantly, or almost. You're aiming for the eggs/sugar/juice mixture to thicken, like hollandaise sauce or sour cream.

When it thickens--and it will, and if you've been paying attention, it will have thickened without (a) burning or scorching on the bottom or (b) curdling (I know--ironic)--remove from the heat and add 4 T. butter, cut into small-ish pieces. Whisk that in as it melts. When that's done, add 1 T. zest to it all. Pour it into whatever container you're keeping it in. It will continue to thicken as it cools.

To make the lemon/lime squares, wedges: after the crust has baked for 15 minutes, take it out of the oven and pour your half-pint of curd over it. Spread it to the edges. It will not be thick, but it will be adequate. Put this back into the oven and bake for about another 10-12 minutes. Cool and then behold how dang good it is.

Back to the curd making: while you're pouring the curd into your chosen container, you'll find, I'm sure, that you have a pan to scrape out with a spatula and maybe a cooking spoon. You should by all means eat the scrapings/spoonings, because it would be a crime to leave any of the curd whatsoever. It is delicious. This leads me to my third and final use: eat it out of the jar with a spoon. You could probably put away an entire batch of curd in this fashion over the course of a week or two. Is it good for you? Of course it is. It's delicious and it's made of eggs (protein!) and citrus (wards off scurvy!).

The sick.

Given a requisite amount of contagion and proximity to it, you might find yourself sick in bed on a Monday after the long weekend. Sick, as in, maybe I'll catch up on the last of the grading, but no. Sick as in, maybe a shower would make me feel better, but no. Sick as in, I might need to go out for a couple of minutes to mail my manuscript times six, but that made my eyes, teeth, ears and skin hurt.

Sick as in, where's the justice, the people?

In case you are planning a bout of this type of illness, here's a handy guide to the things you can do while sick, and some things you can't:

1. you can read 25 pages of a novel

2. you cannot read 2 paragraphs of a theory book

3. you can heat soup in a microwave

4. you can toast bread

5. you can make a cup of tea

6. you cannot chop anything

7. you can lay in bed with the dog

8. you cannot take the dog for a walk

9. you can watch television, but your eyes will hurt

10. you can assist your beloved with the crossword with your eyes closed

11. you cannot grade

12. you can remember when it is time to take the DayQuil Severe Cold and Flu again.

In conclusion, it is time for me to lie down again. Good night.

New York, recollected in DayQuillity.

What the hell? You take a trip to New York City--a trip you're taking for the benefit of your place of employment, or else why would they be paying for it?--you overpack, you learn a bunch of new stuff, you go to sessions, you buy judicious amounts of useful books at the bookfair, you schlep your sorry self from JFK to midtown and back again, hauling your judicious amount of books plus the extra new shoes you bought in Soho or wherever, you eat yourself into bliss/a stupor several times, you improve yourself by seeing (a) art and (b) a play, and when you get home, you feel tired and sick. For crying out loud. I'm kind of bitter about it, if you want to know.

But actually, even this illness comes with a little Manhattan aura. The day we left, I got to see these paintings. I saw them first at the Tate Modern, and since I thought I'd never see them again, I sat there in that gallery and looked at them for as long as I could. But then, when Dr. Write and I walked down the stairs in the MoMa, there they were, big as life or even bigger.