Quinoa, chickpeas, and some cheese

Heated up a bowl of quinoa and chickpeas with some slices of cheese, watched Ed Hartwell say to Lisa for the first time that he might give up on his football dream. His knee just isn’t getting better. That’s so intense, when you realize something you always wanted just isn’t going to happen. Poor Ed.

 

Bread, cheese, fruit, and a chocolate bar

So listen, you guys, I just discovered this amazing new show called the West Wing. It’s about the president and his staff and everybody’s relationships and the pressures of being in charge of the whole show. It’s funny, and there’s this character C.J. who L. likes, and I don’t know who my favorite character is yet but maybe Josh. I guess I’ll have to watch three or four more episodes all in a row, over and over again in order to find out. If L. had to contract probably-swine-flu, at least we got one last fevered lunch with some pretty great TV on DVD.

 

Quinoa with chickpeas and tomatoes, plus cheese

Put down the list. Back away from the list. Fill a bowl with what you swallowed last night when you finally got home from class. Turn on the Real Housewives of Atlanta, which you missed last night because you were in class. Think about how great the housewives are in Atlanta, how honestly loud they get when they’ve been wronged. Think about how much therapy has reduced your ability to be wronged. Feel wronged by your therapist. Rinse and repeat, it feels like, every Friday in late summer. God.

 

Quinoa, salad greens, cheese, and chickpeas

Taking a break from the whirlwind of furniture moving (how amazing that the new people moving in across the hall wanted some of those pigeonhole boxes, and one of the old book shelves! it’s fate!), I did my best to get somebody else to make lunch for me and my beloved. But alas, Sunday brunch–the taco place would only deliver eggs. In the rain. I’d rather eat quinoa, salad greens, cheese, and chickpeas. L. and I kicked up feet and watched 48 Hours: Mystery. Apparently, the entire population of the Philippines is really, really dangerous to white Americans. I consider myself warned.

 

Carrots and hummus, cheese and crackers, and peaches and tomatoes

L. and I leaned back against the wall, away from the deluge, eating the carrots and the hummus, watching the wet crowds rush from the beach, waiting for the let up. As the last of the carrots disappeared, we made our way to the boardwalk and found an empty spot against the fence, slid down and finished the rest, sun coming out.

 

Vegetable broth, plus some cheese and bread

No two ways around it, I feel awful. Tired, damp in the center of my face, fuzzy headed, whiny, so tired. I heated up some vegetable broth and spooned it into my mouth for total realness sick day, a little cheese and bread on the side so I wouldn’t feel too hungry. The list of things I’d rather be doing is very, very long.

 

Deviled eggs, chicken wings, cheese and bread, and mint juleps

I was all jangly from the trip to the OTB, like it used to feel when I had two cigarettes left and an overnight at somebody’s parent’s suburban house, miles from the nearest bodega-around-the-corner, and I can’t drive. A mint julep will probably help said L. I stuffed my fistful of what would turn out to be losers (random fifty-to-one shot from New Mexico? huh?) into the pocket of my bag, put my bag in F.’s bedroom, and took a drink. There were three kinds of deviled eggs, F. was filling them with the kind of kitchen gun you’d use for pressed cookies–regular, blue cheese and bacon, and a set with truffle oil that L. had warned me against. Aluminum bins of chicken wings sat on a table up against the wall. I ate cheese. The view was of the Brooklyn Bridge. It wasn’t standing in a buffet lunch line with Michael Strahan and betting on Hard Spun, but I got to tell that story a couple times. And Calvin Borel is a hoot.

 

Cheese plate, chicken sandwich, cheesecake, and two glasses of wine

Because that morning I’d dragged L. into the visitor’s center at Hill Cumorah–I swear I didn’t know they would shut us up into that tiny little room and force us to listen to a tape recording of Jesus talking–I had to consent to getting the cheese plate even though I do not believe cheese counts as dessert in a world where you can still buy cake. (France knows not what it does.) Luckily it didn’t come to that–the cheese plate was the appetizer, piles of local cheddar, blue, and a soft goat doused with olive oil and these hard crisp toasts. I picked the chicken sandwich with potato gauflettes (a high-tone waffle chip) and drank a couple glasses of the dry rose the menu said went well with it. L. had the duck and a flight of four New York ales. We ate and looked out over Lake Canandaigua and split the cheesecake and agreed it was the best lunch yet. The place was empty save for us. A shame; fine local food for not much more than you’d pay at the Applebee’s.

 

Chickpeas, quinoa, arugula, and cheese on a plate

I like these three-meals-with-you days said L. as we sat on the couch and tucked into plates of greens and grains that had me feeling like I just might indeed make it through another day. But really we were looking at a four-meal day, if you rolled over dinner last night, pretty much like the Tiger Grand Slam of shared mealtimes. I forked lunch into my mouth and paged through last week’s New York magazine (where I learned about Dunkin’ Donuts new waffle-bacon-and-egg sandwich; brilliant!) while L. wrangled the Sunday magazine crossword next to me. L.’s got a tv with rabbit ears, if you can believe that, but when I suggested that at my house we’d be watching last night’s Jeopardy with our meals, L. shrugged. We’re doing this instead. I had to concede the point.

 

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cheese, and a granola bar

You know what’s not going to work between now and the end of April? I’ll do it later. The notes from last week’s meeting were threatening to move from daily list to daily list to that final list, the one of things I just never did. So I said no sandwich until you’re done and that did the trick. I struck through meeting notes on my list and leaned way way back in my cloffice chair and ate my granola bar and listened to my Ryan Adams station on Pandora and closed my eyes and daydreamed about holding hands in front of an extraordinary view, today it was somewhere in Arizona.