Wine and Grilled Cheese

Hey Family,

The awesome thing about blogging is that you can blog about everything and nothing. The terrible thing about blogging is that you can blog about nothing and everything.

I write this today hoping that it will mean something.

I have never blogged on the weekend. I thought I would try it out. Ali and I spent the night with a good friend and her toddler, we woke up on the slow train and eventually made it home by 11:00am. The decision to not go to church in light of my blessings (a new car) might have been too easy.

I just know that I run from my own home because it is not the tidiest and it is a constant reminder of everything that feels wrong. There are all these projects from sewing to reading to my writing that I want to get done. Piles of fabric, books and papers are everywhere. While the reminders are mostly in the car; there is also the nag of the lesson plans and other preparations for work that are either half done or not done.

I typically walk in the apartment and peruse for what is in need of the most urgent attention. Today (like most) it is the laundry. After my decision I went on to the kitchen to prepare Ali some lunch and realized that I have a lower oven that may work. I made this discovery in a calm still moment. This is I am sure mundane for you but sadly critical for me.

The gas stove/oven was given to me around Ali's 5th Birthday (April 2007) shortly after I moved in. It was January of 2008 before I stoppped up everything long enough to purchase and have installed the proper piping to actually operate it. Ali's Godmother who gave it to us never recovered the stove top burners, but we now had a conventional oven or ovens I should say. For what its worth we had been using a toaster oven, microwave and griddle to prepare our meals.

I have for a year baked cookies, chicken and pizza in the top oven for which you can only "bake" (heat comes from the bottom). I have unsuccessfully, but persistently prepared cheese toast/grilled cheese without the benefit of a top heat element to broil these items. I recently began preparing pig/turkey-in-a-blanket where it became most evident that something was going to have to give. Most items I'd been preparing the last year of course cook from the bottom though at an accelerated rate. Cookies and thin crust pizza do just fine. Croissants wrapped around turkey dogs however come out baked sometimes burnt on bottom and mildly gooey (virtually uncooked) on top.

On Saturday this was our fate. I awkwardly flipped them over and baked the other side which made them Gobble Gobble's in a rectangular blanket. Well today in a calm still moment as I stood in the kitchen for longer than my obligiatory 10 minutes I stared at the stove/oven thing and realized that instead of using the lower oven to store other pots that maybe I should turn it on. Ali's lunch menu was soup and sandwich and grilled cheese sandwiches would go nicely with the soup I was also heating up.

I turned on the temparature knob to 400 degrees and turned the "selector" to broil. I put the cheese toast in, waited and scored. I served the soup and sandwich delicacy to my son with pride.

I settled myself in a lot of humility and yes some shame. I ate my own soup, prepared my own cheese toast and poured myself a glass of wine. Another quiet still moment emerged (Shiraz does that). Though not 4 star, my son was satisfied and for once so was I.

These "wrong" things (all around me) will never be "right" if I don't pause long enough to see the solutions that have been staring me down all along.

Blessings from and on a Sunday
danna