Wednesday, June 11, 2003

I’ve said it before, but it bears reiteration – the Julie/Julia Project would never have come to pass were I still a single girl.  In fact, if I were still single, I think I would have long since retreated into full –fledged agoraphobic and sloth-induced catatonia.  (Catatonia – it sounds like the perfect undiscovered Euro vacation spot.)  Eric has been gone a week.  In that week, my cooking has dwindled precipitously, but not only that.  I haven’t made the bed in a week, there’s a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, the keyboard of my laptop is still fucked – I posting this to you via a complex circuit from ancient desktop Compaq to floppy disk to laptop – and I haven’t done anything about the light fixture on the landing that doesn’t work, the lack of cold water in the kitchen sink, or the ghastly filthiness of the apartment at large.  Instead of working on this looming mass of problems, I have spent a week watching Buffy reruns and playing Civ III, eating the occasional pork chop.  On Tuesday, I had big plans when I started off the day.  At lunch I went to the new lower Manhattan greenmarket, where I bought beautiful asparagus and tomatoes and snap peas, (and also a really yummy falafel sandwich, because boy do I love falafel, this is a realization I have come to late in life.)  I planned on making Cotes de Porc Robert, Pork Chops Braised in Fresh Tomato Sauce, followed by Souffle aux Amandes, Almond Souffle.  Then Wednesday, in celebration of Eric’s triumphal return, I’d do Jambon Braise Morvandelle, Ham Braised in Wine with TWO kinds of Cream and Mushroom Sauce, followed by Souffle Panache, Half-and-Half Souffle. You can see where this is going already, can’t you? By the end of the work day, I realized that I have a surfeit of leftover pig meat in the fridge, and seeing as how I’ll be leaving town on Thursday for a wedding in Austin – Catholic weddings in 95-degree heat, ain’t nothing like it! – I felt pressure to purge.  No sweat – I’d at least make myself the Souffle aux Amandes. You know, I’d forgotten how much I love that episode of Buffy, Season One with the invisible girl -- “Be my deputy!” -- hee…. Where was I? Ah.  Yes.  Well, you see my problem.  And as much as I liked Porc Braise aux Choux Rouges, and as much as it was probably even better leftover, the Project is not exactly galloping along on winged hooves, is it? And this is all very odd, vis a vis my husband, because I don’t know if you have picked this up, but Eric is, in all frankness, a lazy bastard of the first stripe.  I mean, seriously.  Let’s just say that when he’s here, he’s not exactly egging me on to domestic greatness.  This is a guy who finds the notion of throw pillows repugnant, a guy who would quite literally spend an entire Sunday doing nothing at all except reading the paper and maybe catching some golf in the afternoon, a guy who – and he hates it when I tell this story – didn’t know what an iron was until he was like twelve years old.  So why is that I can only strive, can only move forward and be the person I want to be when he’s here?  My God.  At risk of getting my fingers all in George W’s platform issue, and spontaneously morphing into some scary Christian Right freak, I think I really love my husband.  I think I miss him, and I think I need him back RIGHT NOW.  Gee, maybe marriage really is a base camp. Oh God.  Must mainline some William S. Burroughs, immediately….   7:26:07 AM    comment []