Moody Mondays in Never-Spring

Writing’s tough these days. At first because I was just burnt out from working too much, but it’s more than that these days.

I was ecstatic for this weekend, last week. The forecast was for 18-to-20-degree Celsius days, sunshine. SUNSHINE. I’m seasonally affected in the best of years, but this long, slow, cold spring of ours has been more crushing than normal, thanks to the dreary state of the world.

But you know how it is when all you need is that ONE little thing, and you know you’ll make it through a tough patch?

That was the sunny weekend we were supposed to have.

A recent night when I went to see the “sunset.” Beautiful, though.

Instead, my lovely microclimate part of town has been socked in next to a fogbank. Lightly overcast, hardly any sun, and a high of 14 degrees yesterday. In fact, it was warmer at 4am today than it is now, at 10:30.

THAT’S NOT HOW DAYLIGHT WORKS, OKAY? Ahem.

The weekend has been a dog all around, though. A migraine through the night has subsided, so it’s looking up. Plus, over the weekend, computer problems saw about three hours of my time wasted with customer service* and remote-control computer tinkering by tech nerds, which is a super thing to pile onto your long weekend when you’re already burnt out and on the brink of a depressive plunge. Do you know who hates talking to tech help? (Everybody, right? And me, yes!)

It’s hard, folks.

But you know that.

I know a lot of us are struggling for whatever reasons. That “on the verge” feeling is something I know a lot of us are sporting. I hear from friends less, but I know they’re just holding on the only way they know how.

I see other people having Life As Normal and I wonder how that’s possible. It’s like watching Twilight Zone and I don’t know how they got there while I’m here.

Such is life in 2022.

But it occurs to me that this is why I’ve been obsessing about food.

I decided to channel the 1990s for dinner one night and made baked goat cheese, focaccia, and crispy pancetta in my salad.

Food is something I can control. It has no expectations of me. I don’t have to find the right words or avoid offending anyone or deliver the money-shot my client needs. It’s not a deadline that looms overhead. It happens when it happens, with as much effort or as little as I wish to expend.

Plus, it tastes good and nourishes me and connects me to memories of a life and world that was quite unlike the one around us now.

That’s a lot to put on a plate of food, isn’t it? Well, I guess I’m accepting now that I’m officially depressed, but it’s “wow, life is heavy” depression rather than “my mind is waging war on me” depression, so it is what it is and I’m just doing what I can to keep it curtailed.

I’ve fought off depression for most of this pandemic / economic meltdown / insurrection / conspiracy-addled ridiculousness / etc. But this unending not-spring-nor-summer thing is unhelpful in said battle.

Luckily, there’s always something to eat or cook.

So, today I’m trying something new. I’ve got the start of a batch of ciabatta on, that crusty Italian roll that makes wonderful things of sammiches. Tomorrow, I’ll bake the rolls. All day now, I’ll be pondering “what can be a ridiculously good sandwich for dinner tomorrow?” A good schnitzel sandwich could be a fun challenge. But what else? Homegrown lettuce, homemade mayo, something pickled, something cheesy, and what else? Ahh! These are the fun choices of life. And perhaps I shall make chips with my fancy sammy.

A spring favourite is fresh pasta with lemon, ricotta, walnuts, and spinach.

And if that’s what brings me joy during a tough time, then so be it, right?

Unfortunately, inflation (sigh) is making us all think about differently about groceries we want versus the ones we need. It’s an “opportunity,” I guess, to rethink what and how we eat.

It doesn’t need to ring alarm bells or be hard, but of course it kinda always does/is, because it’s nice to not have to Math when shopping for tasty things. “That looks tasty, I shall buy it and put it in my piehole!”

Alas, inflation requires more ingenuity and planning. In my world, I’m finding it translates to more beans, plants, and bread, with less meat, but I’m still not as strategic as I once was.

Once upon a world, I was a very broke woman with a fear of losing my home and everything I had. I kept it together through smart food planning, and it was a thing of beauty sometimes. I’d buy a grocery on sale, then plan a week’s menu with that item as the cornerstone. It was amazing how far a batch of beans, for instance, might go.

Last week, I did that for the first time in a long time.

It was a two-for-one special on 2-pound bags of peppers. I made Romesco sauce for the first time ever – nuts, bread, roasted peppers and tomatoes, other tasty things like paprika and garlic, oil, sherry vinegar – to enjoy with saffron rice, homegrown spinach, and air fryer roasted chicken quarters I’d rescued from the freezer. It was one of the most satisfying meals I’ve had in eons. Then, I made a big batch of pepper soup, which I’ve only had two bowls of. Thus, $8 of peppers became the basis of 6 meals so far with probably 4 meals yet to go.

I adored this meal — top right is the Romesco sauce, a paste-like spread of roasted peppers, paprika, nuts, bread, and other goodness. Chicken, I rubbed in lemon powder and white pepper after an overnight dry-brine in sea salt and just air-fried it till crisp/cooked. Saffron rice and spinach.

Tonight’s dinner is a mystery. I have lots of ‘rainbow’ carrots, so there’s that. I have leftover rice. There’s the soup. I may thumb through a Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook for inspiration. I’m tempted to make a fancy roasted carrots with nuts and a tahini dressing, a la Ottolenghi, plus the soup and some easy flatbread.

And this, menu planning, is the big thrill in my life.

Because I suppose the isolation of the pandemic is taking its toll on me. I want to socialize, but I’ve never created the friendships here on the island that match the ones I left behind on the Mainland, and that lack of depth of connection makes me go “eh, is it worth it?” when it comes to risking contagion.

I’m not THAT paranoid, but I still remember those AIDS ads from the 1980s – “do you really know who you’re sleeping with? When you have sex, you’re having sex with every partner that person has had sex with…”

[dun-dun-dun-dah, ominous chord strikes]

That’s paraphrasing, but I remember this hazy commercial with a deep, serious voiceover that made me think twice about being promiscuous in college, not because I have morality issues with sex, but because I’m not wild about infectious diseases and I can math AND imagine worst-case scenarios.

It’s the same situation now. I understand what’s at stake. I don’t know how cautious people are, how many risks they take, who they’re hanging out with, how vigilant THOSE people are, and so on. I hate having an active imagination right now, because all I imagine are these concentric rings of contagion.

While some things are more depressing to me, I’m thrilled that my body is beginning to heal and I can “take the long way” home and walk more for basic errands. This? The long way home.

So, socializing becomes a game of calculated risks. Will I have such a great time that I come home feeling lighter and like I’ve spent meaningful time with someone? Because that could be worth the risk. But if it’s an engagement where I’m left going “why have I just talked about ____ for 30 minutes, because it’s irrelevant to me?” then it’s not a worthy risk.

And I don’t care about getting sick; that’s not a big deal to me. What I do care about is Long COVID, which women are four times as likely to get. I care about being self-employed, not having sicktime because I’m my own boss, and knowing my credit’s maxed out because of two years of pandemic. That’s what I care about – COVID is a financial risk to my entire lifestyle that I can’t take.

But I’ll tell ya, the fatigue of worry is getting old, friends.

Somehow, I believe truth and science and good will prevail in the next few years, but I’m steeling myself for a long struggle ahead.

You know what would help, though?

A few days of sunshine. I’m solar-powered. I need sun.

If you gotta live someplace that’s often cloudy, make it by the seaside. The Pacific is good for the soul.

In the meantime, a Facebook friend provided some much-needed levity today, by way of a poem. George does voiceover work professionally, so once a week or so, he picks a poem for a one-minute poetry reading and puts that up. It’s usually beautiful, but this time I appreciated the words more deeply, and not just because he delivers them in a rich baritone.

I’d like to leave you with that poem today. I love that the “you” at the end of the poem is life – I’ll love life again, because I know it won’t always be such a challenge. I’ll love life in quick fleeting moments, on in-between days, when I least expect it. Maybe it won’t be all day, every day, but it doesn’t need to be — the life-loving thing just needs to be enough to remember what we’re fighting for.

Travelling taught me that as I bore witness to all the things people have survived through the millennia, and I know that this time will pass too. Joy is to be had in moments, and if all we do is find little moments to keep that alive, then that’s all we need. For now.

The Thing Is

BY ELLEN BASS

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

*I should say it’s probably a good thing my computer was a bitch when it was — it falls under a previous service call, which was a day from lapsing, and will save me from reinstalling Windows a second time. So, grumpy though I am, perhaps the gods smiled in me in their weird, inconvenient-seeming way, and for that, I am grateful. See? Perspective DOES help. Ha! Be well, friends.