Friday afternoon I had just finished saving all three of the syllabi I have due on Monday, and was wondering if it was time to check with John & Megan if they were still coming to Madison this weekend as planned, when John called to say they were not coming – because they had gotten some awful news. Megan’s Dad, who’s 5 months younger than me, died unexpectedly, and they were on their way to Clinton IA instead of Madison WI.
I’m in mild shock – we just saw him in May when Megan graduated. What’s the relationship between the parents of a couple? Bill would be John’s father-in-law – is he my brother-in-law? Not sure but whatever the relationship is, I’m feeling the standard responses to death: sadness, anger, disbelief, and an extra helping of guilt, that I’m not doing enough to help Megan.
I just left her a message that she could borrow my car ….
I had avocados and extra fizzy water and iced coffee laid in for her & John’s visit … and a little container of ratatouille for a goat cheese & ratatouille appetizer with baguette. It’s in the freezer now.
So meanwhile, because we’re in WI and not IA, Belana and Mark and I went off a movie last night – Hell or High Water, with Jeff Bridges, and Chris Pine, who I’d only seen as Captain Kirk before. And a lot of other good actors, Gil Birmingham, and Ben Foster, and there were two great scenes with women actresses as waitresses, Katy Mixon as a young one, and Margaret Bowman as an older one. I thought it was a good movie, right up until the end, which was just a bit too “live by the sword, die by the sword” noble for me. I thought the scenes where the bank robbers were confronted by local Texans pulling guns out of their handbags and pockets and shooting wildly at anything were more realistic, but hey, I’m a white liberal from Madison WI. Richard Brody thinks Hell or High Water is a bad movie in the school of overly portentous, director’s-vision-above-all movies, but goes a little easier on it in his capsule review, which is, of course, intended to attract people to see the thing. Of the two main New Yorker movie reviewers, I usually find myself agreeing with Anthony Lane more often than Brody, anyways.
We had nachos with black bean & corn salsa (the last of that salsa, that I made with Taco Tubb’s black beans leftover for the new library students’ bootcamp, and corn and tomatoes and cucumbers and chiles from my CSA box) before the movie, and peach crisp with ice cream after. Used up the last of the Door County peaches from last week’s market.
Peach crisp
It rained pretty hard and of course there was basement cleanup for me to do – but only enough leakage that it could be sopped up with towels, not shop vac-able.
On Saturday, Mark & Belana headed to Chicago. I stayed here to work, and go to the farmers market, and check the raccoon traps.
I thought I was living right, because I left for the market right after the rain stopped and got back right before it started again, but I decided to park my bike kind of under a tree, to shelter it, and ended up tipping it over trying to get it loose from where it was locked, while loaded with a dozen ears of corn. I knocked over my coffee cup and spilled the dregs in the gutter, and bruised the flowers, and the heirloom tomato. It must’ve been stormier up towards Door County – none of the Door County fruit sellers were there, so cherries or peaches, but I got apples, and a little lettuce, and green beans and flowers and that tomato. And the corn. And a melon.
I divvied up the flowers so now there’re flowers in Rach’s room for when she gets here tomorrow, and in Belana’s room for when she moves downstairs on Monday, and in my kitchen.
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