Grumpiness, Watermelon Aguas, and Weeds

This is one of the days when I can feel my already-austere face scrunching up into a sour old-woman scowl at the state of the world and of life. I could list all the reasons, but some of it (unfortunately) is just that I might be becoming a sour old woman in a sorry state of a world. So I came to the local coffee shop (which I will not name) and I’m treating myself to a coffee and a lemon pound cake – even though Starbucks (oops, there I said it) makes only passable coffee and pretty-bad pastries. It makes me feel a little better anyway. At least I’m not sitting at home nursing a severe old-age back ache.

Just last week we got home from a great trip through countries of the former Yugoslavia, Venice and Vienna, plus another week with Doug’s high school friends. We relaxed, enjoyed the personal connections, got lots of exercise, and learned lots of new things about places here-to-fore unknown. All, I might add, in great weather even if a bit hot. We got home to about three days of severe jet lag which led to depression. At least I, unlike Doug, didn’t have to go to work right away. Which leads me to one of my reasons for being grumpy. This is my last day of my two-month summer time off. All of which is topped off by an associate who is on one of his nuttiness rolls – and I don’t mean “nutty” in an endearing sense.

Then too, we just had the shooting in the Aurora, Colorado which is sad and horrific and beyond comprehension. But when I listen to the commentators and reporters, I hear over and over ad nauseum that the freakin’ NRA lobby is so powerful that there is nothing any reasonable and peace-loving politician (are there any?) or citizen can do. And by “peace-loving” I’m not talking only about the good old lefty, anti-war die-hards; I’m talking about all of us who harbor the Very Reasonable expectation of being able to go to a movie and come out alive. I expect that’s most of us and yet "most of us" seem to be more on the side of the NRA gun lobby than we are on the side of peaceful living. Can anyone explain that???

We were just in Mostar, where the bullet-riddled buildings, cemeteries full of the grave sites of those who died too young, and the stories and videos of dodging sniper fire stand as legacies to the absolute idiocy of violence and war. Makes one listen to the news from Syria in a whole new light.

And with all this, I think of my dad who died in April and who loved his guns and deer hunting. But he also never joined the NRA and there was never a loaded gun in our house to protect us from anyone. In fact, he was a conscientious objector who decided that his love of God meant that he could never kill another human being, not even (the part that most Americans in their love of blood and gore find unbelievable) in an act of self-defense. I miss my dad so much this summer.

So what’s a woman supposed to do when she misses her dad, has aging-body aches and the just-back-from-vacation blues, has to go back to work, and lives in a world of tea-party lunatics? First, I’m going to the library for a completely inconsequential book (James Garner’s memoir). Next, I’ll write – that does something for my mood. And finally, I’ll make good food before I return to work and we resort to the fastest options (made just a bit more palatable thanks to Costco spinach ravioli and veggie burgers.) This doesn't alter the craziness, but I will feel a little better.

Even in my jet lag, I've been making food that we love in an effort to ward off the world-weary melancholy. And it was all vegetarian which (to my delight) utterly confounds some of the Big Meat Eaters out there. There were cumin-bean tostados heaped high with local tomatoes and lettuce, salad nicoise (beans in place of tuna), fresh pesto on bow-tie pasta, salads made with tomatoes-from-Jessica’s-garden, homemade salsa and chips, watermelon and cantaloupe (always makes me feel better on a hot summer day), and the watermelon-basil agua that kept both my mouth and me (Doug’s too) happy for most of an entire evening.

Tonight there will be eggplant pizza with lots of garlic and a Greek salad with yummy feta and black olives. And I have enough watermelon and basil (also from Jessica’s garden) to make us each another Basil-infused Watermelon Agua. And we’ll share it with my friend Pauline. Good friends being cranky and eating good food together is a great way to beat the blues.

That should hold us for another evening while we watch the latest season of Weeds. Life is good. Mostly.