Nothing Gold Can

The weather has changed. 

The remnants of Hurricane Delta, (the Greek letter, not the name, although I like that it works both ways-- it makes me imagine Delta Burke storming through Sugarbaker's on Designing Women) are sweeping through, turning our fine, bright blue October days into a muggy gray morass. The rain is good for the plants, this I know; that cool dry weather we relished last week had crisped up what is left of our summer herbs and flowers. Still, I feel disappointed. There is something about perfect weather, the exhilaration and joy it sparks, that beguiles me into believing that, this time? 

It will stay.

Pandecorating

Just a little over a week ago I read that retailers were cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Halloween season. "If it's anything like Easter," one guy was quoted, "then we'll be fine. We sold a lot of bunny suits." The thinking was that parents are going all out to compensate for having to keep their kids at home. 

Anecdotally, I can confirm that it's going to be a boom year for Halloween. Walking around our neighborhood, as we do every day, we have noticed a lot of decorations cropping up as October gets rolling. Some houses have little cemeteries in their front yards, complete with tombstones and all sorts of skeletons, both human and other. There are cauldrons and brooms and witches and giant spiders, caskets and cats and ghosts and zombies and mummies, some scarecrows and hay bales and tons of pumpkins, of course. 

When we went to our local big box craft store today, their Halloween section was already on clearance and nearly cleared out, too. Why wouldn't it be? Halloween is sooo three weeks from now. On October 10 it's time to be planning for Christmas, people. 

And this year, I'm looking forward to some spectacular lights.

One Shoe, Two Shoe, Orange Shoe, Blue Shoe

It was three o'clock this afternoon when I finally noticed that I was wearing two different shoes-- both athletic and of the same brand, but clearly unmatching. I felt lucky for two reasons. One, I haven't been anywhere today for anyone to see my feet, and two, there was no toilet paper stuck to the heel of either one. 

Because? 

If I can't match my shoes, then there will be a train of TP (or worse) trailing from one of them, probably sooner rather than later.

She Could Feed Herself

I woke at 3 AM last night. As Paul Simon sang, I don't expect to sleep through the night, but usually I can get back to sleep after I pee. Not this time, though. 

Neither mindfulness, meditation, nor podcast could get my brain off school. I had signed off my computer the evening before with a lesson plan I felt was less engaging than I wanted it to be, especially given the restraints of distance teaching, and I turned it over as I tossed to get comfortable. 

We are preparing the students to write short personal narratives centered around a food memory, and the plan was to give them several model texts to study and use as examples. Earlier in the day I had searched the archives of this blog for any food-related posts that I could turn into an exemplar for the assignment. Oh, there are plenty of tales of food and cooking, but none that I felt would be right for the kids. 

I reached back in my memory to when I was their age, or perhaps a bit older. Did I even cook then? I wondered.  When did I learn to cook, anyway? And as curious or ridiculous as it seems, I could not remember when or why I learned to cook. My mom was a great cook, and when we moved overseas I went away to boarding school in Switzerland, then a few years later, college. 

For most of my teens and early twenties I ate in the dining halls nine months of the year and never even had access to a working kitchen until the fall semester of my junior year. But then? I cooked, and it was full meals with a little help from my roommate's Joy of Cooking. I didn't even get a meal plan, and I never had one again even through graduate school. 

In high school, our dorm room had a room with a sink and a stove that didn't heat properly, but no refrigerator. There was one thing that I could cook on that stove. Some days, I would walk to the tiny store that was in the cobbled square behind our school and buy 1 egg and 1 roll delivered fresh from the bakery in town. A little butter saved from breakfast in the one skillet that was stored in the oven and some patience would yield a perfect egg sandwich. 

Bread, butter, and eggs made just as I liked them: it was a dish I couldn't get in the dining room or any restaurant in town. No one made it for me, and eating it offered an enormous sense of comfort and home.

I guess that's when I became a cook.

The Key Word is "Imaginary"

Apologies for another WOD post so close on the heels of the last!

The word of the day yesterday was "Cockaigne", a word I recognized but could not define. According to my calendar, Cockaigne is "an imaginary land of great luxury and ease". Reading the definition, I took a deep, centering breath and acknowledged its relevancy.

You see, for me Cockaigne is simply the adjective that Irma Rombauer and her daughter Marion affixed to the names of their signature recipes in The Joy of Cooking. It is a weird, but quaint, shorthand signifying some sort of stamp of approval, and a word that I have skimmed thoughtlessly over hundreds of times.

Of course, a bit of research was in order to determine why the Rombauers chose such a label; as wonderfully metaphorical as it is now that I know its definition, I think I can safely say that Cockaigne is a pretty obscure reference. As it turns out, the family named their country home Cockaigne, and the dishes so labeled were those that were favorites of the guests they entertained there.

So informed, I looked up from my computer at my own dining table, the center of all the entertaining I have done for the last 21 years. 8 weeks ago, when I set up my lap top and monitor, I draped the bags for them over one of the chairs on the other side of the table. "I'm going to put this school stuff away every weekend!" I promised Heidi.

"Why?" she shrugged. "It's not like we're having anybody over."

Farfetched

I've been working on "getting right" with the election results if they don't go my way. As unimaginable as it seems, there is a real possibility the next four years are going to be hellish, and I feel like I need to be psychologically and emotionally ready. I haven't been applying the same practice to returning to in-person teaching before a vaccine is available, though, and the messaging today from central office indicates that I really should get on that.

Because as equally unimaginable as it seems, there is a real chance that I may soon have to spend my days doing this same exact type of teaching I am now, except in a poorly ventilated classroom full of 11 year olds. The kids will be directed to wear masks and stay 6 feet away from me each other, but I will be teaching them in person, on their iPads, and, at the same time, teaching the other two-thirds of their class remotely. Most kids will come to school two days a week, and I will see them once. That can only mean distance learning for all, with the distance varying from 6 feet to a couple of miles. 

Earlier today, a friend and I were texting about this proposal. "I'm wondering if this is a show to appease the vocal public with no plan of following through," I wrote. "Because if it's a real plan? It sucks."

It's Going to Leave a Mark

The word of the day on my calendar today is "demarcate" meaning to fix or define the limits of. 

The challenges of demarcation neatly sums up the good and the bad of working from home. No longer do I need to stay late at school just trying to finish that last thing before I can pack up and go home with clear conscience to enjoy the evening. 

But, no longer do I leave work at all. My desk is in my dining room, and any unfinished business greets me several times a day.

But, I can eat and drink and bake and stretch and pet the cats and dog any time during my day. Which is good, because the days are really long.

My calendar tells me that the word probably comes from the Italian, marcare, or to mark. Funny, I can't decide if I'm marking the days until we return to normal, or if the days are marking me. Either way, there has got to be a limit.