Brussels sprouts with a little cheese over pasta

MBWF is back from her trip, but sadly had patrons eager to take advantage of her collections during lunch. So I took my dish of sprouts over pasta out to the alcove with a magazine. I couldn’t focus–the review of the new Garibaldi biography plunged me right into the back seat of my father’s car driving too fast around a corner, and then my mind went ranging over memory a la Sebald–so I put on a record conducive to reverie and stared at the sky. A storm cloud, edged all around by sunny blue skies that I could see, moved in, over, and past me, spitting rain just a little when it was right on top of me. I’m more than due for a soaking from wide open skies, but I guess it’s not my turn quite yet. I passed the Gryphon on my way back into the library–they’re taking shots of it ‘in action’ for next year’s viewbook.

 

Red lentils with lime over rice redux, plus a cookie and a half

M. and I met at the Pub–me with my dish of lentils, she with her chicken fingers–and sat at a round table in the corner and talked while the room filled up with summer writers having their way with their lunch buffet. M. runs the best meetings I’ve attended on campus, hands down, and she is just as good at lunch. We talked about nieces and nephews and potential children of our own, how weird high school was but how it’s probably even weirder now, prom, Division I athletics (I wowed myself by knowing the Winthrop mascot off the top of my head), and southern California weather. Flik staff were just pulling a batch of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven when M. placed her chicken fingers order, so she brought three warm ones, and we each ate one and a half. This is quite a thing to do with a new lunch friend over your first lunch together–split a warm cookie with your hands.

 

Red lentils with lime over rice

I put some frozen lentils into the microwave to thaw while I finished putting things away and hanging things up and readying the paper recycling and then ate them really really fast over some newly cooked rice in an effort to minimize the break in my housecleaning rhythm. I have folks coming to stay next week while I’m eating lunch in another time zone, one of whom I do not know, so the cleaning thing is sort of unavoidable. I never spend as much time with my things as I do when I’m dusting them. So far, I’ve learned two things: Even though I don’t really buy books anymore because books are held in common for all of us at the public library, I buy too many books and need another bookshelf. Also, I have spent an ungodly amount of time reading books to impress cute people who turn out not to be watching. This approach has actually left me quite broadly read. Back to it.

 

Scrambled eggs with black beans and tortillas, plus a bloody mary

Today I answered one of the less profound questions about self and solitude that has structured my interior life in the two-plus years since E. left with roughly half the housewares: does a person who lives alone really need more than one towel? I bought two and celebrated the unexpectedly exhausting errand with scrambled eggs and a complimentary bloody mary at a burrito place on Flatbush. As I was paying my bill, L. called, so I walked over to 5th Avenue and nursed a cafe au lait while she ate a chicken sandwich for lunch and we deconstructed our respective Friday nights. Hers was infinitely more exciting, though it lacked Camp Rock.

 

Tofurkey sandwich on a roll plus chips

I was about done with my tofurkey on a roll–enjoyed out front of the Pub with L.–when I got a phone call with some very sad news and was reminded just how fleeting and blessed is the chance to eat a meal at roughly the same time in the middle of every day. How instantly the patterns of our mealtimes can change. So I walked over to this bench that was recently put out on the lawn as a tribute to another kind of life-changing moment–”On this spot in 1965 S. first met P. Married in June 1968, this bench celebrates their lucky encounter.” I took off my shoes and stuck my feet in the grass and got hot in the sun and finished reading the newspaper. Bees were flying back and forth low to the ground amid the clover, but I did not get stung.

 

Spicy chickpeas with tomatoes over rice

I scarfed down the last of the chickpeas in a lukewarm pile out in the alcove and waited patiently for D. to return my call so we could postmortem last night’s shenanigans. I am good at waiting. In the meantime, I talked to K. on the phone, walked over to the main lawn and back, and read a few pages of this book I found via a friend’s suggestion that has landed in my lap at precisely, exactly, indubitably the right time. D. called when I had about twenty minutes left on the lunch clock, and that’s about as long as we talked. It’s a bit of a scatter-y day.

 

BBQ chicken, tofu dog, coleslaw, veggie burger, baked beans, and several cookies

All-campus picnic! I had something I needed to finish, so I walked over with MBWF about twenty minutes after the scheduled start time, prompting choruses of “Wait. Aren’t you going to the picnic?” from confused coworkers passing through my office. I loaded up my plate–taking the tofu dog largely because I wanted a platform for a slice of American cheese–and joined MBWF, B. from ACD, and folks from the student affairs staff at a picnic table next to the new dorms. We discussed whether the food was better overall than usual or just the chicken, whether a politically radical person can date a liberal and either way does anyone stand a chance at tonight’s homosexual singles mixer, how long it takes to get from LAX to Anaheim, and which of the cookies were soft enough to eat. I went back for seconds and grabbed a veggie burger, but only ate half and threw the rest in the garbage can. There is apparently a relationship between excess and waste.

 

Tofurkey sandwich and a couple of cookies

I espied the remnants of a free lunch buffet for the Westchester Vocal Institute just inside the Pub but decided in the face of a few sad-looking lettuce leaves and a stack of chopped chicken to go ahead and pay for a tofurkey sandwich on a roll and a couple of cookies. C., C., and I had a ‘working lunch’ with the folks from Yonkers Middle/High School and A., the stone-fox-iest public librarian I have ever met. B. brought us all monogrammed golf shirts celebrating the school’s new Newsweek ranking and we set up the schedule for the coming year. I was totally distracted by a squirrel lunching away out of the trash bin on the back deck. It kept scrabbling away, shaking the bin a little, and emerging with remnants of sandwiches and unidentified gray bits in its scrabbly little claws which it would then chompchompchomp before diving back in for more. At one point it leaped onto a low-hanging branch holding a big piece of a spinach-flavored sandwich wrap in its scraggly little mouth, shaking the tree with much vigor. Such acrobatics!

 

Annual library director’s luncheon, plus birthday cake

It’s that most wonderful time of year again: the annual library luncheon at S.’s home in Chappaqua! I took a little bit of everything: edamame, chinese broccoli, lemon noodles, smoked tofu and mushrooms, chicken, shrimp. I landed a place at the table with MBWF, J., E., E., C., G., A., and G., and we all fell silent over the clatter of forks on plates. I also drank a couple of Molsons–sadly neglected by the rest of the crowd in favor of the Sam Adams. The rest of the library staff assembled on the porch and in the living room, and we all ate and talked with general good humor. Then it was dessert. S. made Ruth Reichl’s chocolate cake and decorated it with the initials of all the Gemini birthdays on staff. Because today is my actual technical special day (!), I got to blow out the candles, and blushed under the song. Then MBWF drove C. and I home all the way on the Saw Mill and we saw lots of deer and teenage goslings on the side of the road. “Teeming with wildlife,” as C. said, and it certainly was.

 

Spicy chickpeas with tomatoes over rice

I reheated some of these spicy chickpeas, another reliable standby, and ate them in front of the fan while watching a little final round coverage of the U.S. Open. Tiger is in the lead following an off-the-hook last nine holes yesterday. I love Tiger Woods. I tend to pull strongly for underdogs and unproven scrappers in sports and in life, but Tiger is something else, like watching the sun break over the Pacific Ocean. Sublime, and beyond all calculation. Watching the highlight reel on NBC brought me to tears. And now I’ll start the laundry, a task that will surely take about one-sixteenth the amount of time I’ve spent thinking about it.