Daffodils!
Monday, April 19th, 2004 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanni...just the verymost tippytips of sturdy green rising above the mud, mind you, but -- daffodils!
The office is tidy. I have significant floor space, and significant table-top space. I still have a slight backlog of bookkeeping to deal with, but that's for tomorrow. Can't have too much fun in one day, now can we?
So, the novel ideas are off to Madame the Agent, and I have here at my right hand the Copious Notes for the novel-or-novella that no one wants to read, but which I must write, nonetheless. Pesky characters.
Mozart is stretched belly up to his full length on the floor behind my chair. Snoring. Snores like a line backer, that cat.
******
I was thinking, the other day, of pickle sandwiches. This came about because Steve had returned from extended errand-running bearing a Subway Italian coldcut, with black olives and dill pickles. Pickles on subs -- the more, the merrier -- is one of my heresies, and it was kind of Steve, who favors many less pickles on his subs, to have asked for them.
So, there I was, contentedly tucking into my half of the footlong, watching Steve de-pickle his half.
"Didn't you used to get pickle sandwiches when you were a kid?" I asked.
Turns out, he hadn't, his mother having employed other economies to keep her family of seven within budget. My mother needed to resort to pickle sandwiches from time to time because my father was an automotive worker, and Strike was a familiar landmark in the landscape of my childhood.
Sometimes the strike was "legal" and the strikers got paid, or could collect unemployment. Sometimes, the strike was "illegal" and there wasn't any money, except what my mother could make as a temp secretary, or my father could make doing pick-up jobs.
Those were pickle sandwich days -- the kids got the bright-white, squishy bread that was all the kick back then, spread thin with margarine and lined with a single row of sliced dill pickles.
Dad never ate pickle sandwiches, though baloney wasn't a stranger to him, and he'd tell us stories about when he was a kid and his mother made him and his brother mustard sandwiches, and how good they'd tasted. I had and still have no trouble believing this: I'd eaten my grandmother's cooking.
Submarines were a celebratory food form in my childhood. In good times -- read, "when there was lots of overtime" -- my father would stop at Village Sub over on Belair Road on his way home from work and pick up two subs, dripping with oil, thick with fried onions, and as unhealthy as you please. Man, they were good.
Pickles or no.
The office is tidy. I have significant floor space, and significant table-top space. I still have a slight backlog of bookkeeping to deal with, but that's for tomorrow. Can't have too much fun in one day, now can we?
So, the novel ideas are off to Madame the Agent, and I have here at my right hand the Copious Notes for the novel-or-novella that no one wants to read, but which I must write, nonetheless. Pesky characters.
Mozart is stretched belly up to his full length on the floor behind my chair. Snoring. Snores like a line backer, that cat.
******
I was thinking, the other day, of pickle sandwiches. This came about because Steve had returned from extended errand-running bearing a Subway Italian coldcut, with black olives and dill pickles. Pickles on subs -- the more, the merrier -- is one of my heresies, and it was kind of Steve, who favors many less pickles on his subs, to have asked for them.
So, there I was, contentedly tucking into my half of the footlong, watching Steve de-pickle his half.
"Didn't you used to get pickle sandwiches when you were a kid?" I asked.
Turns out, he hadn't, his mother having employed other economies to keep her family of seven within budget. My mother needed to resort to pickle sandwiches from time to time because my father was an automotive worker, and Strike was a familiar landmark in the landscape of my childhood.
Sometimes the strike was "legal" and the strikers got paid, or could collect unemployment. Sometimes, the strike was "illegal" and there wasn't any money, except what my mother could make as a temp secretary, or my father could make doing pick-up jobs.
Those were pickle sandwich days -- the kids got the bright-white, squishy bread that was all the kick back then, spread thin with margarine and lined with a single row of sliced dill pickles.
Dad never ate pickle sandwiches, though baloney wasn't a stranger to him, and he'd tell us stories about when he was a kid and his mother made him and his brother mustard sandwiches, and how good they'd tasted. I had and still have no trouble believing this: I'd eaten my grandmother's cooking.
Submarines were a celebratory food form in my childhood. In good times -- read, "when there was lots of overtime" -- my father would stop at Village Sub over on Belair Road on his way home from work and pick up two subs, dripping with oil, thick with fried onions, and as unhealthy as you please. Man, they were good.
Pickles or no.
