STRESSED IS JUST ‘DESSERTS’ SPELLED BACKWARDS

It’s like the Universe is trying to tell me something ... like “go make a rhubarb crisp” or “this is a cinnamon bun baking kind of day”.  Heck even a puffed wheat cake would be a good use of my energy.

My jittery, hyped up, nervous energy.

I’ve got some things on the go.  Nothing Earth shattering, really: just Life.  Projects I’ve started, stuff I’m involved in, committees I belong to.  Individually they are all just small things - just a meeting here and there and a little volunteering from time to time.  I actually like this role of giving back to my community.  It’s just that back in February when plans were first forming for our summer season it all seemed so far off and laid back.  As of yesterday we are officially past the first day of summer and February’s far off big picture has made its usual progression into multiple lists and details and duties that seem to get more numerous each day.  July 1^st is only nine days away.  The crunch is on.

We’ve literally done everything there is to be done at nine days out.  There have been blips along the way, for sure, but at this point in time we are on top of it.  I think. 

I’ve double and triple checked the lists from other years and nothing seems to be missing.

We’ve made up the worker’s list and even have a few new names to work with.

The posters and ads have been proof read several times – let’s hope we caught all the important stuff.

And there’s absolutely nothing I can do about the weather.

I try (in vain) to recall how it feels to have the whole day behind me:  that happy kind of tired we get because it’s all done for another year, the writing down of ‘lessons learned’ so we have them for next time, and the occasional pat on the back for the work we’ve done.  I know the antidote for all this pre-event stress is a successful ending, and I just can’t wait to get there.

I also have come to understand that it always is a success – even if it rains, or the band cancels, or we run out of hotdogs.  It is what it is.  People will eat cake in damp clothing, sing Oh Canada with a lump in their throat and stay for the fireworks because it’s our country’s birthday and we are all there to celebrate.

And yet I still can’t shake the anxiousness I feel.  I wish it was July 2^nd already!

Whenever an award like Citizen of the Year or Woman of Distinction comes up on the news I always listen in awe to the years of service these people have devoted to earn such a reward.  I add up their years of service and multiply that by the meetings they’ve attended, the ideas they’ve tried out, the cold calls they’ve made, and the donations they’ve asked for, and I think to myself that the recognition they are being given is like the light of a single candle when the mega watts of a search light is what should be called for. 

And as I watch the winner of the award accept her pretty plaque and graciously acknowledge all the people who deserve this prize with her I think to myself ... did she spend the time between the planning stage and the actual event baking desserts because she was stressed too?

PURVIS STEW

Given the kind of day it is today – cool and rainy (finally, thank goodness!) it seemed like a great day to make a pot of stew.  Comfort food, and since I like to cook it in the oven, the added warmth of having the oven on all afternoon is an extra plus.  Yes, it was a good day to make stew.

As I thawed out the meat there was a decision to be made:  would it be Hainsworth stew?  Or Purvis stew?  The regular, safe, ordinary gravy-based stew, or the weird concoction written in my mother’s handwriting that includes tomato soup and chopped cabbage along with all the regular meat and veggies normally found in stew? 

It had been quite a while, I decided ... out came the tomato soup.

Since tomorrow is Father’s Day I had been thinking about the man whose surname this recipe has taken on.  I smiled as I peeled the potatoes; he didn’t even know that he had a stew named after him.  Eons ago, in my growing up years, it was just ‘stew’.  It was only after joining this Hainsworth clan that I had to differentiate between two kinds of stew – after I learned how to make the meeker, plain, gravy version.

And, personally, I’ve often wondered how much dad liked mom’s version of stew.  I remember the food that his mother served – it was good, and wholesome, and plain.  I cannot imagine Grandma Purvis being so adventurous as to experiment with tomatoes and cabbage in a stew, let alone cooking the meat with some brown sugar and vinegar first to give it a bit of a sweet and sour flavour.  I think that would have been way outside the box for her.  Dad probably didn’t have ‘Purvis’ stew for the first thirty years of his life.

Which means, of course that it is not named correctly.  In the interests of not putting my mother’s maiden name out there on the Internet, though, we’ll just leave that one be.

It’s times like today when I’m thinking about such questions, and there is no one left who can answer them, that I enter into the world of regrets that all grown children visit from time to time.  Why do I only have my vague, one-sided memories to go on?  Surely there were times when we could have had conversations that covered silly, every day things like this!  Why don’t kids pay attention to these details that will matter to them some day?

The memories I do have of meal times are sweet though; our places at the table were him at the head of the table and me to his left, just around the corner.  I always had to watch him if green beans were on the menu.  He didn’t like them and if I wasn’t paying attention the serving on my plate mysteriously got bigger; it was a game we played.  As far as I can remember I never had to make him take back a scoop of stew, but I know mom only made that new-fangled dish, chilli con carne, on nights he wasn’t going to be home for supper because he said it was too spicy.  Something just tells me that dad would have preferred Hainsworth stew over his namesake.

And, for some reason, my sisters insist that I have the recipe wrong – that’s not how mom made it.  I had to show them the page in the wedding shower recipe book that mom gave me that proves it was her recipe.  Again, it would be nice to ask mom if her recipes evolved over time and I just got the 1973 version?  Something else I’ll never know.  All I know is that I’m the only one who makes it this way.

Which, ironically, means that it is only made by me – now a Hainsworth – so technically it should be the one called ‘Hainsworth’ stew. 

How’s that for a weird twist of Fate?  Something for my kids to try to figure out someday after I’m gone.

HIDING OUT

The dog and I are hiding out today.  We’ve been at it a lot this past week or so.  It’s just plain too hot to go outside.  When I say this aloud poor Turbo just rolls his eyes at me.  Apparently he feels that I don’t know the half of it – I’m not wearing a permanent, fluffy fur coat designed to withstand an Arctic climate.  He needs to understand that my genetics have evolved to keep me from dying of starvation and/or hyperthermia in the Scottish highlands.  We are both out of our element.  The 2019 version of June on the Canadian prairies is going to be the undoing of both of us.

The house maintains its cool, thank goodness.  We open the windows at night and close them when we get up.  Years ago we installed a very large area of ceramic tile flooring.  At the time everyone kept saying “Oh, I’ve heard they are so cold to walk on.  You’re going to be sorry with your choice.”  I can’t claim that I knew what I was doing, I just liked the tile and wanted something that could stand up to the wear and tear a family of six can dish out, but I have since learned that the miracle of heat conductivity in ceramics is my friend, not my enemy.

Those tiles take on whatever temperature they are surrounded with.  In the winter when the furnace is running they stay at a pretty constant and acceptable temperature.  If you’re cold and want some extra warmth you go over to where the furnace venting runs under the floor and stand there for a while.  Much more beneficial though, is how in the summer it takes on the night cool and keeps the house an oasis of cool the whole next day.  We don’t have an air conditioner but people don’t believe me when I tell them that.  It’s 28 degrees outside today, and only 22 inside without so much as a nickel being spent to keep it that way.

It’s not like I haven’t been outside.  Every day I go out and survey what this nasty heat and lack of rain is doing to all my plants.  Some are just withering in the sun.  Some are cooking against the black soil.  The poor things that survived 4 degrees of frost a couple weeks ago are now sun scorched and giving up in the intense heat.  I water them and apologise profusely every day that I can’t make it rain. 

I’ve tried ... washing my car, hanging clothes on the line ... nothing seems to work.

So, me and the dog are just hanging out in the house.  He is laid out flat on the cool floor, only to open an eye when I enter the kitchen – he wouldn’t want to miss out on a treat if there is one to be had.  Other than that his only movement is to get up and find a new cool spot when his body heat has cancelled out the cool where he was at.

As for myself, I tend to wander from window to window, looking out at the jobs that need doing.  Jobs that I would even enjoy doing – if only the sun wouldn’t melt my brain while I was doing it.  There are dandelions to cut, and weeds to pull, and trees to water, not to mention dead trees to clear out of the shelterbelt and branches to put through the wood chipper.  I could be busy for days.  But also I might die.

I have also gone back to my weather app habit that got me through the winter.  What is Environment Canada predicting for my future?  Is it ever going to rain again?  How long are the brain-melting temperatures going to last?  Can I go outside tomorrow? 

You do all realize that summer isn’t even here yet, don’t you? 

If you happen to drop by and find me laid out on my ceramic floor next to the dog, don’t worry.  It’s no accident – just us coping with eons of evolution in an era we weren’t designed for.