Hi Slowly! Thanks for stopping by. The brunch went very well. Following is TMI on the menu, copied and pasted from an e-mail to my mom, so the details are legion…I didn't cook much, but the spread was beautiful. I had:
a big fruit salad of mango, asian pears, blood oranges, and dried cherries, a plate of papaya chunks, a plate of chunked bananas with lemon juice, maple syrup drizzle, and cinnamon sprinkle (which were SO delicious), a bowl of plain yogurt and a bowl of granola, a plate of ruby red grapefruit that I had sliced and cut into bite-sized pieces, orange-cranberry scones that I baked (turned out really well), two different kinds of olives, four cheeses (bucheron, double gloucester with green onions, danish blue, and brie), cracked pepper water crackers, and artisanal bread, green and red grape bunches, a bowl of half-and-half dried figs and apricots, a prune coffee cake that S. made, a spinach-mushroom-goat cheese tart I made, and a big plate in the middle of steamed (cold) asparagus, tomato slices, and cucumbers.
And I made mimosas with good champagne and had really yummy fresh-ground coffee.
I have such lovely mixed plates and serving utensils (mixed Japanese pottery from SF and teak serving spoons I brought back from Thailand). All the colors on the table were so beautiful... and I completely forgot to take a picture. Also, I’d been up until 2 a.m. finishing the upholstery on an armchair in my LR (it started as a slipcover and turned into full-blown upholstery), and it looks fantastic! So my house looked great, topped off by a colorful woven throw I brought back from Chile with which I made two chairs into a bench.
Things have been going pretty well. These last two days S. has been wiped out (I mean flat in bed) with a terrible flu. He’s had fever and chills and body pain, and so I stayed at his place day and night and took care of him. When he was sleeping, which was about 20 hours a day, I got a lot of work done. I’ve never seen him sick, and so it was pretty bad. He’s never missed a day of work, as far as I know, and for this he missed two. He was really appreciative of my being there all the time and taking care of him.
I couldn’t help but wonder if it dawned on him that he had been completely absent for me during my neck crisis, but I didn’t even need duct tape (saffron, apricot, or otherwise) to keep my mouth shut. It’s amazing to me if he doesn’t make the connection, since he said to me, after I’d come in while he was sleeping and he didn’t hear me, but hours later croaked “Hello?” from inside the BR – “I didn’t hear you come in or hear you in the LR but I felt your presence there, and it was really comforting to know you were there, even while I was sleeping.” Of course, when I was bedridden and asked him to stay home with me, he said, “There’s nothing I can do for you. You just need to lie here and try to relax and get some sleep.” After which he left me lying there, racked with pain and in a panic over it.
Last night I took two hours off to go to a movie down the street, which was amazing. It opens in a few weeks in major cities, and I highly recommend it to the un-faint-hearted among you: “Oldboy,” directed by Park Chan-Wook (same director as “Joint Security Area”). Wow. Disturbing, but an amazing film, with a story that is over the top, and beautiful camera work.
Otherwise, since the brunch S. and I had an interesting conversation about what we are expecting to see as far as readiness to settle down, and we both had some doozies – he is expecting these “signs” from me that just ain’t happenin’, and as it turns out, the signs I am expecting from him are off the mark for his behavior, as well. So it was interesting to see that we were both en attendant Godot, and now we have a better idea of what those signs realistically are.
A big positive is that he’s really made moves to get his house repairs going since that conversation (in which I told him that he is always talking about fixing his house so that he can move out of it and rent it or sell it, and I’ve never seen him do ANYthing toward that end, meaning he must not be ready to be with another person). His house is a four-family, of which he rents the upper three floors and lives in the ground-floor apartment. Since our conversation on Sunday night, he has called four contractors, had them come over to look at the place, and sent eviction notices to his tenants, which is necessary to do the repairs and renovations. So, wow. With S., it’s excruciating glacial movement for years, then suddenly a renegade piece breaks off and causes an avalanche. Ah, Chile… fertile ground for metaphors!
And on the high PMA front – I just was solicited by a prestigious new client, whom I turned down because I was way overqualified for the work and the pay was low (I never would have turned down work in the past); I was offered and accepted a great new project (with great pay) from an existing client a few hours later; I’ve been to four movies in the last week and a half; I just finished a fantastic book and started a new one; and I found a new brand of jeans that fits me perfectly – a minor miracle!
