Terms of En-dear-ment

Lately a number of people have called me "dear." These people fall into several categories:

Close friends (this category has all rights to do so)
Middle-aged waitresses (this category gets a pass)
Young waitresses (unsettling)
Guys 6-7 years younger than I am (inexplicable)

Foodstuffs

Once we become close enough for them to notice, my friends are often surprised by my hoarding mentality. Julie used to come to visit, drop her backpack down in the bedroom, and wander out into the kitchen to open all the cabinet, refrigerator, and freezer doors. "You have so much food . . . " she would sigh, half dreamily and half reproachfully.

I love having food around. When there isn't good food in the house, I graze on candy or whatever edible bits I can find (a bit of candy, a crust of bread, a glass of juice) and then grow increasingly langorous and pallid and too exhausted to cook. This cycle continues until I go out to McDonald's, which is probably not the best solution. But the mere presence of good, fresh ingredients--fresh fruits and vegetables and meats, ingredients to make yummy sauces, etc.--makes me happy like almost nothing else.

It's true that I've never "gone hungry," in the truly dolorous sense. But it's also true that I've been hungry and pretty much always am hungry. That's why in my office, where I am right now, I have several different kinds of granola bars, a package of easy-mac, some Girl Scout cookies, a can of Spaghetti-Os, a tube of saltines, and peanut butter and jelly. Otherwise, I find myself stranded here working late and growing faint with hunger (touch back of hand to forehead).

So Sam tells me I eat like a hobbit, who apparently needs first breakfast, second breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, supper, etc. He comes over to the house, eyes up the fully stocked, walk-in pantry, and I can see him measuring the space and comparing it skeptically with the shelving at the new house. Then he asks me hypothetical questions about how many cans of vegetables I really have to have on hand, and reminds me that because of his peculiar sensibilities, "expiration dates matter now." (Chocolate chips or Cheerios don't really expire, do they? And not on the exact date . . . it's a rule of thumb. Don't worry--I don't serve anything really gross . . .) The other day he demanded to know exactly how many rolls of toilet paper I had on hand at my house just that minute. But the reason we had the conversation was that he had actually run OUT at his house! Which exactly proves my point!

I sense the beginnings of a regime change, but I will fight to protect my food supplies!

Good Student News

There are days when I wish for 9-5 job with a nice group of civilized businesspeople, but then there are days like these:

I just found out that one of my favorite students (am I allowed to say that?) just won a $5000 scholarship to study abroad in India this summer. I feel especially proud because she is the second of my students to win this scholarship, after another who toured 13 cities in Italy & Greece last summer. In both cases, the students had not been sure whether they should apply--the usual lack of confidence and feeling that there must be so many better qualified candidates. When I think about how my own perspective has benefited from learning to think about the world as big and varied, I'm so delighted and proud of these two young women for their courage in applying and for all that they'll be able to do, all the better and all the more wisely, because of their travel experiences.

Then, a few hours later, I found out that another student had gotten accepted to a program for undergraduate history majors at the G1lder Lehrman Institute. He wants to be a history professor, and he'll be a great one, so the idea of his getting this experience makes all those letters of recommendation we're always writing feel worthwhile . . .

All-Nighters

I've done three of them in the past four months, after avoiding them since around my first year of college. The two most recent ones were both in the last week, and both due to work on the house. Last Thursday night, Sam and I were preparing for the installers to come to put in the kitchen cabinets the next day. As of 4:00 Thursday afternoon when we arrived at the house, there were still missing pieces in the floor, holes in the walls, and wallpaper gunk still stuck on various surfaces. In short, the place had been gutted (thanks, Dad!), but the reconstruction had not yet really begun--we had wanted to be prepped earlier in the week, but a long traffic-jam of delays had held us back. We worked until 5:00 a.m. Friday morning, and the place was ready when the installers arrived three hours later. I had never fallen asleep standing up before, but it happened twice that night.

The crazy thing was that in the middle of that evening, I had to slip out to host a little party for my students from last semester (we're hoping to recruit some of them to go to Greece). I literally rushed from the new house to my place, changed clothes, put some cookies on plates, had the students over, and rushed out the minute they left to get back to the house. So many days have been like that lately that I've been losing track of things . . .

Every now and then, there are periods of life that just seem way too crazily busy--periods that you know you'll look back on and think, how did I survive all of that? It's been something of a blur, but Sam said something nice about it--that because so many of the things going on are good ones, he feels like he's really living.