Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
— G. K. Chesterton

When one spends a great deal of time with a chef one doesn’t so much lose one’s waistline as develop a circumference. I am eager to get moving. Thus, last weekend, Pete and I conquered household tasks at his place together and separately, and with vigor. I went out and worked on the garden, which was reassuring. While I had my hands in dirt I was in no way making and eating exotic sandwiches. This reminds me: jazz, Georg and I and a dozen or so of our friends used to go camping and during the few hours between I Meant To Do That and When Does the Bar Open?, we played a glamorous game called I Am A Sandwich. It was like Twenty Questions, except with lettuce and tomatoes, and everyone’s goal was to get over on the group with some obscure cheesy goodness. Speaking of tomatoes, I staked up the tomato plants with bamboo poles and zip ties, in anticipation of the day when fresh mozzarella and basil solve the problem of pomodoro prosperity.

One of my least favorite tasks is transplanting and tying up the bean plants. Pete had sowed the seeds generously, so I had to spread out my little hostages and wrapped a bit of cotton string around each. I tied the other end to a line stretching across each row. Beanstalks, as every child knows, climb to the firmament, though most stop after about three feet and seldom cost a cow. I transplanted my fingers to the bone but I only tied up about one-third of my leafy captives before moving on to other tasks like mulching, food prep and plotting the cocktail hour. You get just one 5 p.m. each day, and gin isn’t going to drink itself!

Yesterday was the anniversary of Steve Gilliard’s passing, and at the Group News Blog, you will find heartfelt laments. I can’t add to that, and if I could, what would it bring into being? At lunchtime, I drove to Home Depot in glorious sunshine, bought four bags of shredded pine bark and after work, put down mulch with Gilly in mind. I used to go dancing when someone died because grief needs a place to go and we can’t let it settle or it stays. Likewise, the house we care for now was the place Pete’s family moved when his mother died, and grief settled in. Painting, gardening, sewing seeds and making repairs in anticipation of life celebrates what we had and what we will. So for Gilly, I put pine bark around a bed of decorative and fruit trees. In ways we are still learning, he was so very wise.

The Systems Guy has known me for over a decade. He appears at the doorway of my cubicle today to do some hour-long higher form of magic, during which my workday comes to a close. He has come to our office with two new assistants. He tells me his last assistant spent ten minutes talking with me and developed an embarrassing crush. I tell the Systems Guy I’m crush-proof, but I still have to leave and my stuff is on the other side of him.

Tata: I bicycled to work. See?
SG: That’s a bicycle helmet?
Tata: Yup, and that’s my basket.
SG: I just thought you were special.
Tata: Special or Special? Because I am special.
SG: Well, Special, obviously and specially padded.
Tata: Co-workers! Co-workers! Systems Guy thinks my job is so stressful I might get a concussion sitting at my desk.
Co-workers: We kind of have a betting pool. So: yeah.

I’ve been a little tense lately. Yesterday at the family store, I re-wrapped a wedding gift twice because I kept tearing the double-thick formal paper when I folded hospital corners with extreme prejudice. Though Pete manned the register at the toy store while I womanned the till in the gift shop and we love working together, it was a long day. After work, we bicycled to my house, drove to his, gently wedged a tree into my trunk and planted it in Mom’s backyard two towns away. By the time we got home, leftover Chinese under one arm, we were exhausted, determined and scheming a scheme. As we’d bicycled to the stores in the morning, I was carrying so much weight in my messenger bag I could barely breathe, let alone pedal, and damn it, I was not doing that again.

You know that moment when you get over yourself in a big way? It’s strange, really. You’re marching down life’s highway in fetching Ferragamos with your dogs barking for ages and finally – finally – you think ‘Hey, maybe Adidas and sweat socks wouldn’t cut out my still-beating heart and who the fuck invented pantyhose anyhow, the Marquis de Sade?’ You reluctantly switch to flats and learn to live without podiatric agony. The sun comes out and angels sing. Even so, you look back and wonder what took you so long.

When I couldn’t breathe – and thus could hardly utter topical dirty words – suddenly I was completely, totally over my reluctance to put a basket on my bicycle.

A Boy And His Cat

This morning, we ran errands. While Pete picked up bagels, I stood on a one-way street and epoxied a finger puppet to my car’s antenna. Pete was and remains skeptical, but I have every confidence that in the seas of look-alike white cars and gray cars through which I sail to purchase my elitist arugula, which until recently was a peasant lettuce, I will easily navigate to my own white car now that I’ve glued a five-inch irridescent grasshopper to the antenna. It might’ve been more fun to affix gold-painted macaroni to the roof but imagine the glare. By the same token, I dare you to NOT imagine me pedaling around town with a megaphone, instructing people to surrender Dorothy. As you can see here, Drusy was very helpful as Pete assembled the basket.

Lovely Topaz basked in the sun during all the commotion, which I understood because I made the mistake of putting down the camera and nodding off for two hours. The day was gorgeous. We’d gone walking around Lake Carnegie and sat on a lock in lazy afternoon sunlight. We drank our Joint Juices and read all the plaques. We stopped at a farmer’s market wedged into a tiny house on Princeton’s Nassau Street and picked brussell sprouts and lemons for grilling. By the time we got home, I could barely hold the camera.

Then we took lazy catnaps in golden afternoon light.