cherry moon

In the romance of missing my husband last summer, I forgot how underfoot he can get when he is always hanging around the house with us.  He needs to up his time spent in the treehouse.  He needs to eat more cheery cheery bars!

The weather is glorious and thank God because we picked 15 pounds of sour cherries last week & Holy Baking, Batman!  I am not sharing, yet, but I see Mr Fox slinking around outside our door, wistfully. 

I invited him to come with us!  There is a sour cherry tree that grows one block away, in a neighbor's yard.  The neighbor there is new -- this is her 2nd cherry season -- the previous neighbors had a whole Cherry Harvest Weekend, with a lot of coming and going and rollicking, and it was a thing.  Not a neighborhood thing, just a household thing, but we knew about it, because I am not as standoffish as I pretend to be.  Well, kind of.  Onward!

I emailed the Current Neighbor a couple of weeks ago and asked if she had plans for harvesting the fruit, or if she would like to enter a temporary sharecropping situation, or if she had already bequeathed her amazing lot to friends closer than the neighbor down the way with the feral children.

She did not email me back, but last Friday I saw her, on the street.  "Omigod, I have been meaning to get back to you!" she called out to me.  "Have at it.  Don't worry about any kind of compensation or trade, just use them, yes."

Yes!  Yay!

Friday afternoon there was no ballet, and so Mari & I got over there.  It was relaxing & fun, and my fear of heights lent a great deal of levity to the outing. 

"Stop, you're making me so dizzy!  I'm going to fall!" I would complain, wailingly, every time Mari rattled the canopy around my head. 

"Honey, you're not even three feet off the ground," he would point out. 

"I'm in the treetops!  My brain thinks this is dangerous!"

Seriously, this is how he has to live.  I love him. 

Anyhow, I sent Mr Fox a text letting him know he could meet us at the picking site & he texted back a lot of ribbing about trespassing and stealing.  I responded calmly, twice, telling him I had permission, but he was all sassy-molassey, so I let it go & we left.  Later, the next day, he found out I had been totally serious + also legit.  He was dumbfounded & Mari rebuked him pretty solidly for his lack of faith in my powers to get extra, plus share. 

I don't know.  I mean, I think Jeannie said yes to us less due to my charms and more because who can waste food in these times?  It is just like last week:  I went to pick up the car from the mechanic, stopping on the way home at a really delishy diner over in the mechanic's neighborhood.  I came home to Mari, inexplicably laden-down with a half-roasted chicken and a giant wedge of strawberry shortcake.

He asked why & I shrugged, telling him I had to, that the waitress forced it on me.  He pressed & I plead for him to let me get into the house & get my bearings already.     

Once I explained it to him, he got it perfectly (and stopped making fun).  It was a time of great interactive distress for me!  All I wanted was to eat from the Salad Bar ($8.99), because it has a delicious beetroot salad and also sheep's-milk feta, but the waitress was insistent that during this Early-Bird Special Time it was better to order an entree (many of which where $8.99 or less), which during Early-Bird Times, came with the salad bar, plus a drink, plus also dessert.

"And I didn't even want all that food, but I just didn't want to flout," I finished kind of weakly, exhausted.  I mean, this is the greatest problem I have encountered this year so thank God.

Oh, this one, too:  I am auditing a class this summer, and it's fine, whatever, high-higher-ed society's summer school, lol.  Last week, this kind of funny thing happened where we were talking about the word obra, because there was a dude who didn't know what it meant.  So, the adorable profesora was casting around, trying to find the English for it -- It's like in the theatre ... when there is a play ... and it goes ... everyday until it ends  -- and then she was looking at me, prompting, because she noticed I was casting, too.

I said, No sé, pero es la misma palabra como "oeuvre," en frances.   Which, it is, obra & oeuvre are the same word, but they are not used the same way in their respective languages, colloquially, but that was what we were discussing, anyhow. 

"Yes, ok," said the dude, looking from me to the professor, back & forth.  "But what is the English word?"  Yeah, no, dude.  We don't know.  And it made me angry in a way I have not been chapped for many, many years, which was this:  Dude, aren't you the one who speaks the English?  I mean, there's one language in his head & he can't fork it out?  Whatever.

 

I'd love to chat, but there are still 12 pounds of cherries.  This recipe is next.  Then this one!  Maybe I'll follow up about their outcomes!  Remember, if yr sundress is clingy, just use an old half-slip!  Silky, not squeezy!  xoxoxoxox