I’m tired.  I spent the whole day at work, and then went straight to class tonight.  I pulled into the garage at around 9:30 pm and lost fifteen minutes between parking and walking through my front door.  I’m really looking forward to the end of my job, because the balancing act I’m performing right now is starting to wear me down a little.

I say all that to say that I don’t have anything good or clever to say right now.  Hopefully I’ll be back to my regular, witty (I like to think of myself that way) self sometime soon.

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another set of the Random Ten from the pod.  I’m heading out of town for the weekend in mere minutes, so I’m going to make this one short and sweet.  You know the rules: Set the pod to shuffle and report back your first ten songs.  Be honest and don’t be afraid to ‘fess up to your embarrassing selections, the paradoxes we inhabit are what make us interesting.

1. Oh Well, Okay, Elliott Smith (XO)
2. In Time, Sly and the Family Stone (The Essential Sly and the Family Stone)
3. Sweetest Goodbye/Sunday Morning, Maroon 5 (Love Actually)
4. Nashville, Indigo Girls (Rites of Passage)
5. Pancho and Lefty, Willie Nelson (Willie Nelson*Songs)
6. Things We Said Today, The Beatles (A Hard Day’s Night)
7. If You Want Me To Stay, Sly and the Family Stone (The Essential Sly and the Family Stone)
8. Alice Adams, Skymonters (Skymonters)
9. Spider Web, Joan Osborne (Relish)
10. Metal Firecracker, Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels on a Gravel Road)

Favorite Song: Things We Said Today

Favorite Album: Skymonters.  They were a band that rose out of the Subud commune in Virginia in the early 1970’s.   My parents knew all the guys in this band, and last October I had the priviledge of hearing Lewis Ross, an old friend of my dad’s and a member of the band tell the story of how he started playing music and came to evolve into the Skymonters.  He tells a compelling story reaches back into roots of folk music.  Maybe someday someone will tell it.  Maybe me, who knows.

I don’t have time to do a list links at the moment, but Howard over at The Smedley Log can always be counted on for a pretty complete collection of the day’s players, so go check him out.

Tonight, I was the last car in a line of five that snaked through the dark, rainy streets of Lower Merion to McShea’s in Narberth.  In the cars were students from my writing program, going out for a little post-class bonding and drinking.

When the last person settled down in a seat at the table, there were eight of us.  Drinks in hand, we loudly and sloppily clinked our glasses in recognition of this thing we are doing together.  Pockets of conversations formed and I bounced happily between the one on my right and the one my left.  Ideas for future parties were tossed around, and our lone international student told us of his time working as a journalist in Iraq.

Slowly people drifted away, needing to head home to pets and partners.  We walked out, having designated a couple of dollars leftover from the bill as starter money for next week.  I followed Emily’s red Jeep back out onto the main road, feeling both sleepy, invigorated and happy to be part of something.

I have always been a sucker for a picnic, packed neatly into a basket, with sliverware neatly slotted into elastic holders attached to the lid, cloth napkins tucked carefully around the cheese and sausage.  Not that I’ve really ever had any picnics like that, but still.  When I was a kid, I so romanticized the idea of picnics, that in my mind they were not complete without a basket (any basket).  My mom would surprise us with sandwiches and a trip to the park, and I would pitch a grumpy fit, because it did not fit my mental ideal of all an outdoor meal should be.

For my tenth birthday, my mom’s best friend Maria (and my defacto second mother) gave me a light colored wicker picnic basket.  She stocked it with compartmentalized plates, multi-colored cups and a pack of purple plastic utensils.  It was the hit of that birthday, and I skipped around the living room with it looped over my arm, imaging myself to be both Dorothy and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Today, after a couple of meetings at school, I found myself behind the wheel of my car with a free hour.  I felt an internal tug towards my old favorite Germantown thriftstore and pointed myself in that direction.  An initial tour around the store left me disappointed.  They’ve moved since the days when I stopped in there twice a week, and current organization of the clothes somehow clashes with the way my mind works.  I never find anything there anymore (that might be a slight exaggeration). I did select a random ten books before heading for the vintage section.

On that pass, a perfect bent wood picnic basket caught my eye.  It was lined with cherry-printed oil cloth and the silverware holder stapled to the lid was still intact.  I felt a flurry of excitement in my chest.  After I paid for my purchases and the books were tucked into the basket, I looped the handles over my arm in the same way I had done when I was ten. I felt my inner child chortle with excitement and then start planning a fall picnic.

I walked out of class tonight, feeling invigorated despite the fact that all I had eaten for dinner had been one round, red wax-enrobed sphere of Laughing Cow cheese and the dreges of a box of faux-Triscuits.  Class had been good, and had confirmed for me the choice of program and school once again.

Earlier in the evening, I had not been feeling so good.  I sat in the waiting room of my garage, stressed and anxious over the fact the line was long and I had exactly 45 minutes in which to get from Center City to St. Joe’s.  As I compulsively spun that mini-wheel of cheese around in my hand, I realized that I needed to change the energy I was putting out into the world about the wait for the car.

So instead of sending agita and angst out into the air, I started thanking the universe for bringing my car down in a speedy manner.  I told the universe/myself that I appreciated the fact that one of the young, spry attendants had gone to get my vehicle (as opposed to one of the older guys who has a hard time getting out of the seat when it’s time for him to surrender the car).  As I repeated these thoughts, I started to calm down and believe them.  At 5:44 pm I glanced at my phone, and noted that I needed to be getting into my car in one minute in order to get to class on time.  I heard the screech of tires coming down the ramp and got up to check, fully expecting to see a BMW SUV or a shiny new Mini Cooper pulling up.

But it was my car.

I walked over as the attendant bounced to a stop and got out.  It was the youngest guy in the place.   I tipped him, threw my bag into the back seat and climbed in.  As I pulled my seat forward and snapped my seatbelt into place, I glanced at the clock.  It said exactly 5:45 pm.

I made peach sauce twice last night.  I bought eight peaches yesterday afternoon, with the intention to cook four and have four for eating later.  I cut up half, put them in a pot with a little water, cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon juice/zest and let them do their thing.  Only their thing included burning, leaving a blackened mess on the bottom of the pot.  I tasted it, hoping that the flavor was isolated to the bottom layer, but the whole thing was acrid and harsh.  I was puzzled and a little frustrated.  I know my stove is kind of crappy, but I felt that over the years we’ve come to an understanding.  It betrayed my trust last night, and our relationship still hasn’t totally recovered.

Thing was, I needed that peach sauce.  I had made cornbread as my offering for a Saturday morning breakfast with friends, and it required something to elevate it a notch above it’s humble Trader Joe’s beginnings.  So, when the first batch burnt, I did what any other crazy girl does at 10:30 pm on a Friday night.  I started over.

I sliced up the peaches, put them back in the same pot, and added the same spices and acids (adding a little powered ginger this time around).  I was starting succumb to the call of sleep, so I didn’t cook them as long, added a little evaporated cane juice to sweeten them up and gave them a quick buzz with a stick blender.  I gave it one last taste, and went to bed kind of sad, because it just didn’t live up to my expectations of what fresh peach sauce should be.

As I walked over to Jame-n’-Scott’s this morning, my mind whirred with excuses and apologies, feeling embarrassed that I was about to bring lackluster food to sit on their table.   I walked up the stairs to their kitchen, warning them that my peach sauce was mediocre even as I leaned in for a hugs and kisses.

It was funny though, when we sat down and started to eat, the spoonful of sauce I spread over my square of cornbread wasn’t bad at all.  In the warmth of the company, I was able to stop judging the product of my time and energy so harshly and realize that it was pretty darn good.  I looked around an noticed that other people were enjoying it as well.  I relaxed into my chair, eating my scrambled eggs (deliciously spiked with parmesan cheese by Jamie) and started mentally applying this lesson to other areas of my life.

It’s been a little while since I’ve spun a Random Friday set, but I’m excited to restart the habit. Most of you know the rules, but for the new folks, here they are once more. Set your pod or other digital musical device a’shufflin’ and report back the first ten songs it spits out. No skipping, omitting or obfuscating allowed.

1. Mysterious Whisper, They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)
2. Orange Sky, Alexi Murdoch (Four Songs)
3. Let’s Not Shit Ourselves, Bright Eyes (Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground)
4. Bridge over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel (Simon & Garfunkel Greatest Hits)
5. Blue, The Jayhawks (Live At the World Cafe Vol. 1)
6. Ocean Breathes Salty, Modest Mouse (Good News for People Who Love Bad News)
7. Invisible Ink, Aimee Mann (Lost in Space)
8. Hole in the Road, Cross-Eyed Rosie (Lookin’ Up)
9. Sandy Land, The Whites (Down from the Mountain)
10. I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone (My Baby’s Gone), Elvis Presley (The Sun Sessions)

Favorite Song: Sandy Land by The Whites. This is my favorite for no other reason than I am a complete and total sucker for the mandolin, and it’s a prominent instrument in this song. It makes me think of family gatherings at my grandmother’s house in Woodland Hills, CA when my dad and his brothers would start jamming, often joined by other friends and family, in the ping-pong room.

Favorite Album: Lookin’ Up by Cross-Eyed Rosie. They are band to whom my sister introduced me, as they play bluegrass out of Portland and so she has crossed paths with them more than once. They are good stuff, and when I googled them to find their website, I discovered that they are about to release a new album. This fills with me levels of joy and excitment not necessarily fit for polite company.

Random Other Thoughts: Scott will be happy that my pod produced They Might Be Giants as the very first song, even if it is only 29 seconds long and doesn’t contain more than two words. I have no idea how I came to possess Live at the World Cafe Vol. 1, as it has been out of print for longer than I’ve lived in Philadelphia. I guess miracles do happen.

Need more Random Friday than I can give you? Check out these folks…

Andrea
Ashley
Ben
Brian
Dodi
Ellen
Howard
Kate
Sherri
Sparky

Yesterday was my last day of full time work.  For the rest of the month, I’ll be working part time, and by October I will be unemployed.  It’s hard concept to get used to.

My mom attempted to give me a long distance mini-lecture yesterday about how important it will be for me not to indulge my sleeping-in habit now that my days are more open and most of my commitments are in the evening.  I was forced to remind her, once again, that I am adult.

The thing is, when I got up this morning, I didn’t feel so much like an adult.  I lay in bed, listening to the last ten minutes of morning edition, before crawling out of bed and into a mostly unstructured day.  It feels more like summer vacation than the start of school, and I know that I’m going to have to shake off that sensation sooner rather than later, or I’m going to sink fast.

I’m realizing that unconsciously, I had always equated having a job with being an adult, and now that I don’t have one, feeling like the other is challenging.  I’m not entirely sure where this belief came from, because my parents haven’t been 9-5ers in the traditional sense in years.

As I wrote those last couple of paragraphs, I realized that all I’m trying to say that is that with the end of my job and beginning of school, the markers with which I build my identity are shifting dramatically, almost to the point where I’m not sure I recognize myself entirely.  It’s fascinating and a little unnerving, but it’s a trip I’m exciting to be taking.

Tonight the small, metal door that, on ordinary days, opens up to a world of bills, ads and junk mail led out onto a field of lavender.  I stood there, keys in hand, for a moment, letting the scent surround and transport me to 27 different places, all more lovely and comfortable than the bleak, impersonal mailroom off the lobby of my building.

A neighbor came up behind me and cleared his throat in a way that distinctly and economically said, “could you please hurry it along, I need to get my mail too.”  I shook myself out of my mental travels and pulled four envelopes and one magazine off the shelf and into my hands.  As I slowly walked to the bank of elevators, I raised the white crumpled envelope to my nose and breathed in deeply, to fill my head with images of sturdy purple-tipped flowers.  I had known without looking that it would be from my mother, but seeing her familiar handwriting was a pleasure nonetheless.

I waited until I got upstairs to open the envelope, not knowing for sure what the state of the buds would be after traveling 3,000 miles.  They were neatly sealed in a plastic ziptop bag.  Also enclosed was an article about Vaux swifts, a breed of bird that roost in abandoned chimneys and funnel into those chimneys in dramatic fashion every evening at dusk, and a note.  The note said “The lavender is from a house a block away.  Ours doesn’t smell this good.  I love you, Mom.”

It’s good to know that my mother will always stoop to petty thievery in order to make my day.

After three nights on a hard bunk I was more than a little rest-deprived when it came time to get up for breakfast this morning.  So I spent most of this morning in my sleeping bag napping under an adolescent tree.  I wrapped the arms of a hooded sweatshirt leftover from college around my eyes to block out the sun and drifted. Twenty-five yards away, a man sitting on the front porch of his cabin picked out a casual tune on a mandolin. A pack of kids on bikes zoomed down the gravel road and down to the shore, hoping to tease one more speed boat ride out of the waterfront staff.

The weekend at church camp was almost over, and all those who had made the trek down to the Chesapeake Bay were determined to squeeze out every last moment of pleasure that Camp Tockwogh had to give. I spent the weekend kayaking, reading a book for one of my classes, eating wonderfully crappy food, drinking wine in a field while looking at the stars and standing on a dock, watching the sky clear and talking with a new friend.

As always, church camp was a great way to say goodbye to the summer.