A Bitter Weekend

By late Sunday night, I was ready for the deathly weekend to end. An acquaintance my age, with whom I worked at a transportation and logistics firm, died unexpectedly of a heart attack. His obituary was in the Sunday newspaper. There were the shootings in the news: Brown University in Rhode Island, and Bondi Beach in Australia. Then came the apparent murders of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer in California. It was public death overload.

It didn’t help the bitter cold kept me inside most of the weekend. I cleared snow from the driveway, but that’s about all the time I was outdoors. The saving grace was the visit of our child beginning Friday. They couldn’t make it home on Saturday because of the blizzard. They left Saturday morning, then turned the vehicle around, and headed back when the Interstate proved to be impassible. The extra night was a blessing for parents.

Despite the deaths, things weren’t all bad this weekend.

• The bean soup and cornbread tasted good and was well-received Friday night.
• I finished reading The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. It’s the kind of novel I enjoy reading, set in a time before electronic devices dominate society.
• I read Adrienne Rich’s 1991 book of poetry, An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991. I found it hard to access yet there was at least one relatable poem.
• Preparing enchilada sauce began a process of re-thinking how I make it. I tried substituting a slurry of all purpose flour, vegetable oil, and spices for arrowroot as a thickener. This approach has potential. More to come.
• Used an aging can of pumpkin puree to make pumpkin bread. The results were so-so. Next time, I’ll use pumpkin I preserved myself.
• I drafted another chapter in my autobiography.
• Boxed up a donation of books for the public library used book sale.

Ambient temperatures warmed to the upper-20s on Monday, which meant a break from bitter cold. I’ll work to make this week better than the bitter weekend just past. Hard to keep a positive outlook sometimes, yet we must.