Not my favorite time of year
With my brother, at his ranch
This time of year brings outmy negative thoughts, so I’m going to put them all in this blog and get rid ofthem. I bet you share some with me. Tonight we set the clocks back an hour—veryfew people want to do that. I used to hear that it was for the farmers’ sake.But to my understanding with new farm technology, that extra hour in themorning doesn’t matter to farmers (someone correct me if I’m wrong). To therest of us, standard time means it gets dark—and depressing—in the lateafternoon. Truthfully, I don’t care about an extra hour of daylight in themorning. All it means to me is Sophie will wake up an hour earlier than I wanther to. But I love the late afternoon sunshine. So there! That’s my firstwhine.
Second is that weekends inthis season are all about football. Okay, I understand that the nation is crazyabout watching young (and some not so young) men fight over a pigskin ball on ahuge field. I am not intrigued, but I would be willing to be gracious about it,if it did not mean that regular news programming is cancelled. I am my father’schild, which means that I want to see the national news every evening,particularly in these times when both the international scene and our own Houseof Representatives is exploding. Football takes a distant second to the threatsto our democracy, our climate, our world.
And then, tonight, there’s mygreen bean story: I am slowly learning to mark the “No subs” box when I orderfrom Central Market, because I have gotten some really strange substitutions.Like skinny baby eggplant, when I wanted nice round ones to stuff. I have founda brand of frozen green beans that taste just like the fresh—they are easy tokeep in the freezer and cook however many I need. One day I got instead apackage of green beans to microwave, which didn’t do me much good because I don’thave a microwave. Last week, I got a pound of fresh green beans when I orderedfrozen. Okay, I’m not above snapping off the ends and cleaning them, thoughJordan tells me tonight that she doesn’t like them fresh.
Anyway this pound of freshbeans came in a baggie that was not closed in any way. Yep, you got it. Idumped it all over the floor. Had to call Jordan because the only way I can getthings off the floor is to sweep, and I didn’t want to sweep the floor with thebeans. She was all for throwing them away, but my Scots blood rebelled. So asshe was carefully picking them off the floor, she muttered, “You better washthese carefully.”
Tonight I double washed them,first in a bowl of salted water—a trick I learned from my mom who insisted thesalt scrubbed things clean. She used to clean mushrooms that way, which I thinknow was probably ill-advised, but I thought it would work with beans. And itdid. The second water was much clearer. Then I blanched the beans for my dinnertonight. Then Jordan comes out to tell me she and Christian do want theleftover meatloaf I was having. So we’re having a delayed dinner together. Shestill doesn’t want the beans.
One complaint I can’t erase bywriting about it: my big brother (and the only sibling I have) is back in thehospital with what he, a physician, would probably call old man’s problems.Please pray with me for a speedy recovery. As I think back over our lives, Irealize how much each of us has shaped the other’s life. I wouldn’t have leftChicago without his prodding; he wouldn’t have moved to Texas if I weren’t here—notthat he moved to be close to me, but that because of me (and my ex) he knew ofthe opportunities here for him. Over the years, we have been close, then not soclose, then especially lately closer. Perhaps our golden era was when we wereboth single with kids in high school, and I used to gather everyone for Sundaysupper—such treasured memories. I’m feeling a bit nostalgic tonight.
