Sunday, February 25, 2007
This afternoon I went to use the bathroom and noticed that the sounds outside the apartment were noticeably louder than usual. SOMEONE, I thought grumpily, has opened the window AGAIN. This has happened on and off for the past few weeks. I will be out, running necessary errands in miserable cold and wind, trying not to slip on the deadly sidewalks. I will finally reach my apartment, and stagger in the front door. And the window will be open, and no one will be around to provide an explanation for why we have a window open in February in dire, bitter weather. I will curse wildly and shut it, and then I'll forget to ask the roommates later whether they were possessed by the devil at the time that they committed this act of insanity. Which is probably just as well, because tact is important when dealing with roommates. But then it will happen again. As I told a co-worker last week, my apartment is a logic-free zone.
So this afternoon, I was about to be annoyed again, but then I realized that it wasn't cold. Whoa. Newly inspired, I went off to school to copy reserve readings. Just smelling the muddy odor of the thaw made me cheery. The smell of spring made me want a Frappucino, and the Frappucino made it feel more like spring. It's as though the whole world was saying to me, almost there! you've almost made it through February!
Never mind that it will probably be miserable and cold for at least the first half of March. Lately I've personified February as my personal nemesis. I've never liked the month; it's always that part of winter where even snow isn't fun anymore, and you just want weather that won't eventually kill you if you don't get into a heated building. But after last year's bout of major depression, it feels personal. February doesn't just hate everyone and want them to die. It has its eye on me. I know it. Part of it is that I know that once you have been seriously depressed once, you are significantly more likely to have it happen again. This seems ridiculously unfair. It seems like if you get through it once, you should get a free pass for a decade or so. But they don't call psychology the dismal science because it's fair. Actually I don't think they call it the dismal science at all, but my point still stands.
So today the whole day was chanting to me almost there! almost there! as though February were some demarcated time of vulnerability, as though this really were spring and not some fluke of a warm day. As though I couldn't get through the month, breathe a sigh of relief, let my guard down, and then have life sneak up and kick me in the head, like the Colgate hockey team at the end of Harvard's power play the other night. But maybe it doesn't matter. If the weather makes me feel happy, why not be happy? I try to remind myself that intermittent moments of perfect happiness are probably the best that anyone can do, no matter what their life is like.
As I walked home I decided that none of the food in my apartment would do for dinner. I wanted to eat something that felt like spring. So I stopped at Trader Joe's and got fresh onion-leek focaccia bread, artichoke tortellini, and sparkling limeade. The store was unbearably crowded, like it always is on weekends, so I gritted my teeth and waited in line. As I watched the customers in front of me, I noticed that the cashier sorted the next person's items while the first person was still swiping their card and signing the receipt. He sorted them into things he could type in and things he could scan in, and sometimes he even bagged the type-in items while the first customer's receipt was still printing. As soon as the first customer was gone, he typed in the items in the bag and scanned all the barcoded items, which he'd placed barcode-up next to the register. The transaction, except for the paying bit, was finished almost instantaneously. When it got to be my turn and my seven items were scanned in in under ten seconds, I said "Wow, that was really, really efficient." The customer behind me agreed.
"I try to do a lot of it from memory," he said. "It gets pretty boring after a while, so this makes it more interesting."
"It helps you, it helps us, everyone's happy," I said, but I thought, making the best of a crappy situation.
I came home and started cooking. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but one of my favorite solitary things to do is to turn up the music and sing while cooking. I made a sauce from scratch even though I'm not terribly good at sauces, and it was probably the most unhealthy thing ever conceived. I started off thinking you know what goes well with artichokes? BUTTER! you know what else goes well with artichokes? GARLIC! you know what goes well with butter and garlic? BASIL! and then thought hm, what would make this more saucelike? maybe flour. okay, now it's grainy, now what? a bit of cornstarch... okay, that didn't really do anything. cream? hm, that kind of helped. maybe some more cream. okay, just a little more. okay, now THAT looks like a sauce... That sort of behavior will no doubt someday lead to my death by heart attack, but it was totally worth it because artichoke tortellini with garlic-basil-buttercream sauce, onion-leek foccacia garlic bread, and sparkling limeade taste just how the air smells which is just how I feel right now. And death by heart attack is better than death by February any day.
So this afternoon, I was about to be annoyed again, but then I realized that it wasn't cold. Whoa. Newly inspired, I went off to school to copy reserve readings. Just smelling the muddy odor of the thaw made me cheery. The smell of spring made me want a Frappucino, and the Frappucino made it feel more like spring. It's as though the whole world was saying to me, almost there! you've almost made it through February!
Never mind that it will probably be miserable and cold for at least the first half of March. Lately I've personified February as my personal nemesis. I've never liked the month; it's always that part of winter where even snow isn't fun anymore, and you just want weather that won't eventually kill you if you don't get into a heated building. But after last year's bout of major depression, it feels personal. February doesn't just hate everyone and want them to die. It has its eye on me. I know it. Part of it is that I know that once you have been seriously depressed once, you are significantly more likely to have it happen again. This seems ridiculously unfair. It seems like if you get through it once, you should get a free pass for a decade or so. But they don't call psychology the dismal science because it's fair. Actually I don't think they call it the dismal science at all, but my point still stands.
So today the whole day was chanting to me almost there! almost there! as though February were some demarcated time of vulnerability, as though this really were spring and not some fluke of a warm day. As though I couldn't get through the month, breathe a sigh of relief, let my guard down, and then have life sneak up and kick me in the head, like the Colgate hockey team at the end of Harvard's power play the other night. But maybe it doesn't matter. If the weather makes me feel happy, why not be happy? I try to remind myself that intermittent moments of perfect happiness are probably the best that anyone can do, no matter what their life is like.
As I walked home I decided that none of the food in my apartment would do for dinner. I wanted to eat something that felt like spring. So I stopped at Trader Joe's and got fresh onion-leek focaccia bread, artichoke tortellini, and sparkling limeade. The store was unbearably crowded, like it always is on weekends, so I gritted my teeth and waited in line. As I watched the customers in front of me, I noticed that the cashier sorted the next person's items while the first person was still swiping their card and signing the receipt. He sorted them into things he could type in and things he could scan in, and sometimes he even bagged the type-in items while the first customer's receipt was still printing. As soon as the first customer was gone, he typed in the items in the bag and scanned all the barcoded items, which he'd placed barcode-up next to the register. The transaction, except for the paying bit, was finished almost instantaneously. When it got to be my turn and my seven items were scanned in in under ten seconds, I said "Wow, that was really, really efficient." The customer behind me agreed.
"I try to do a lot of it from memory," he said. "It gets pretty boring after a while, so this makes it more interesting."
"It helps you, it helps us, everyone's happy," I said, but I thought, making the best of a crappy situation.
I came home and started cooking. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but one of my favorite solitary things to do is to turn up the music and sing while cooking. I made a sauce from scratch even though I'm not terribly good at sauces, and it was probably the most unhealthy thing ever conceived. I started off thinking you know what goes well with artichokes? BUTTER! you know what else goes well with artichokes? GARLIC! you know what goes well with butter and garlic? BASIL! and then thought hm, what would make this more saucelike? maybe flour. okay, now it's grainy, now what? a bit of cornstarch... okay, that didn't really do anything. cream? hm, that kind of helped. maybe some more cream. okay, just a little more. okay, now THAT looks like a sauce... That sort of behavior will no doubt someday lead to my death by heart attack, but it was totally worth it because artichoke tortellini with garlic-basil-buttercream sauce, onion-leek foccacia garlic bread, and sparkling limeade taste just how the air smells which is just how I feel right now. And death by heart attack is better than death by February any day.