Riffday: the last sardine of summer

The anniversary of my dad's death was at the beginning of the summer.  I almost missed it, because we were traveling that day and were in and out of airports and planes and rental cars.  But that afternoon my sister texted me a picture of her kids grouped around the gravesite-- they had gone for a visit in honor of the day.  There's been a lot of water under the bridge, so to speak, in the year since my dad died.  Lots of processing and thinking and letting go of things, and that picture brought on another round. This weekend I wrote a long, angry post while we were out at the lake, well out of internet range.  My reaction to writing it was so strong I couldn't sit still after I typed it.  Nausea, sweats, chills.  I had no idea I still had that much in me.  But in the end, I decided not to post it.  There's just no point-- without the context of the 49 years of history I had with him, it would have sounded silly.  I guess I just needed to write it.  Rest in peace, Dad.  We both deserve it.

My thesis is coming along.  Not nearly as far as I would like-- I had hoped to have it about half done by the end of July-- but progress is being made.  Part of what's slowing me down is re-reading the book (Ulysses by James Joyce).  Finally, the third time through, I can read it without constantly checking secondary materials to figure out what is going on.  In fact, this time it makes so much sense that I'm having a hard time figuring out why I found it so opaque before.  What can you say about a book that takes three readings to be able to follow?  I still can't decide whether I think it's worth the effort.  But it is turning into a great thesis project.

We had some friends over for dinner tonight and the menu was just one disaster after another-- at least, at some point in the afternoon each part had been a disaster.  But oddly enough, they all turned out great.  Dessert was supposed to be Key Lime pie, because I needed to use up some of these eggs, and Key Lime pie would have required six.  But I came home from the store with Key Lemon juice instead of Key Lime juice.  I didn't even know there was such a thing.  And I would have just made Key Lemon pie, but the bottle doesn't have the recipe on it, and I forgot to get sweetened condensed milk, etc.  It was one of those days.

So I decided to make brownies instead and I found a recipe that used EIGHT eggs.  Because apparently that is the only reason to cook at the moment:  to use up eggs. I managed to get together enough chocolate by combining about a third of a bag of Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate chips, half a bar of Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate, and a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips.  but then I got further into it and realized I didn't have enough sugar.  So I had to substitute powdered sugar.  Whatever.  It must have worked, because the brownies were heavenly.  Almost like a dense chocolate mousse.  And never to be repeated, because there's no way I could reproduce all the little things I had to do to make the recipe work with what I had on hand.  They will just live on in my memory.

Let's see, what else.  It is a bit smoky here, but not too bad.  Although we do have one forest fire not too far away, apparently the smoke is being blown in from out of state.  Some years it gets so bad that by the end of August you can smell smoke inside the house.  But not yet this year.  School starts two weeks from tomorrow for me, and two days after that for MadMax.  We are not looking forward to it.  Or at least, we aren't looking forward to being back on a schedule.  If he were totally honest, I think MadMax would admit to being a little bit excited about starting high school.  and I would admit that I'm really looking forward to the one class I'm taking this fall-- Teaching Young Adult Literature.  But we're still pretending like we wish summer went on forever. 

And wasn't this a wide-ranging post, but I needed to get something up before I got completely out of the habit of posting.  Hope you had a good weekend, and bring it on, Monday.  Oh, and everybody wave at Nell, who is in New Zealand.  She reads here, so if enough of you say hi, maybe she will leave a comment (finally!) and tell us what it's like.