Lots of flowers, crazy weather, and seems like everyone’s tired of it all

This week, I’ve taken lots and lots of pictures of flowers, both out on walks and and on my kitchen counter.

Today, Saturday, when we got up, it was about 49°. We wore gloves biking to the farmers market. The prediction was for a high of 80°, and now it’s 86º at 5:30, and super windy. But it’s still cold in the house so I opened the windows to let some of the hot wind blow in. It’s pretty weird, really – the floors are cold and the living room is cold and there’s a sirocco blowing in the kitchen window.

I worked a bunch this morning, grading, paid the taxes, and washed the sheets bathroom rugs, and changed the bed over to summer bedding. Well, spring bedding, really, still flannel sheets but the blue summer bedspread, that the cat really likes. I think she must have a penchant for summer bedding, or else she’s just got a seasonal calendar in her mind and in her mind it’s time for the winter comforters to be gone. She’s been hanging out in the guest bedroom, since I changed that over to summer, after John & Megan left.

Today after I put the blue spread on our bed, I went downstairs, picked her up off her comfy spot (as above) and carried her up and plunked her on the upstairs bed. She didn’t immediately jump off, thought about it for awhile. So I think she really does prefer the summer spread.

After all the hard stuff, I went to get a hair cut, and although of course everyone at the salon is masking and disinfecting religiously, sounds like they have all just about had it with pandemic.

At work it’s the same; the staff is ready to mutiny. I think from everyone working in our own little bubbles, a majority feels that important decisions are being made that effect the whole department, too hurriedly and without enough input; problems are not being addressed; everyone’s overworked; super touchy.

Last night for dinner I made spinach salad with hot bacon dressing – my grandmother’s recipe for the dressing; I’d made it awhile back and wanted to get it used up. I heated the dressing in a big deep skillet, added some sliced red onion, turned the heat off, and dumped in the spinach and I got just the right wilt on, not too much, just enough that it reduced 1/2 a pound of spinach enough that the two of us ate it all. Topped with croutons made from the soft white bread from the sub shop on the corner, $1.35 for the loaf that I picked up biking through their drive-up on my way home from picking up library books. I had my salad with a toasted English muffin; Mark made a ham sandwich on a hunk of the sub shop bread that I didn’t crouton-ize, just for that purpose.

And then we had this cake for dessert, cornmeal-rhubarb-strawberry. My oven is still being a little reluctant to stay hot, so I ran it on convection, and the edges got pretty dark & crusty but it’s still good.

That’s my breakfast banana, off to the side.

I wish it would rain. That’d be better than this hot dry windy weirdness. I’m going to go make pasta for our Saturday dinner – turkey meatballs & Marcella’s famous 3-ingredient tomato sauce, that I made last summer when I had CSA tomatoes, from the freezer. The only decision is whether to have it on spaghetti or rigatoni. And if I should have a glass of wine or maybe three, with dinner.