Reading: WIlliam Faulkner, Light in August

Moving: walked 2.7 miles and did weights

Listening: Fathers and Sons

Learning: That mammals have four characteristics no other class of animal has: mammary glands of course, and hair; also a four-chambered heart, which I thought birds had too; and--this is the one I'd never have guessed--a single bone on either side of our lower jaws.

Watching: Yesterday, when I went to the Museum of Nature and Science and learned about mammals, the IMax "Whales"; later at home, "Sex and the City" and "The Adventures of Tintin" (Destination Moon).

House: weedwhacked the insidious baby cherry trees and edged garden; mowed all grass; cleared brush from under pear tree; took pictures of various stuff in bloom.

25 April 2001: Tulips

I was going to answer another survey today but in truth I don't like answering them so I won't so there.

---

I found this picture of my town from the Lyme-Old Lyme Chamber of Commerce.

---

When I called my mother last week to tell her I was coming, she didn't exactly whoop, but she was pleased. This morning she called at 6:30, after behaving for months about not doing that, because she thought RDC would be gone and I'd be lonely (if he were gone, 6:30 a.m. is not when I get lonely) and to say "hi" (because apparently the disparity of my having placed the majority of our recent calls bothers her because of "my nickel") and to ask what I would like to eat when I'm there. Well. I had intended to bring home however many days worth of instant oatmeal for breakfast and eat my other meals at Hallmark's with one metric buttload of Lactaid. Best milkshakes in the world, but since I don't eat a lot of milk any more my gut doesn't digest it well.

What should I tell her?

I don't eat much in Old Lyme, which is how CLH comes by the perverse idea that I don't eat anything, which is why my fat is a mystery to her. I don't eat much in my mother's house but water (the best anywhere, from a well) and fruit (mostly McIntosh apples, which she buys in bulk because they're cheap from down the road, even though they're the worst all-round apple) and peanut-butter toast. This is one of the reasons my stays in my mother's house are so short. That and the fact she doesn't have a spare pillow. (There are others.)

I don't like her shake-n-baked chicken, a home-made mix of breadcrumbs etc. in which she dredges pieces of poultry and whose remainders, festering with raw chicken blood, she returns to the fridge until next time. I don't like vegetables much (my finicky fault) and not at all when they emerge from a can to be boiled for half an hour; I eat RDC's because he steams or sautées fresh ones with lots of love (maybe I should just get my mother to watch "Like Water for Chocolate"...?) and garlic. The animals humans generally eat are herbivores; carnivores don't taste good. That's one reason that what meat I eat is organic and guaranteed not to have been fed animal by-products, like manure or the leftovers of their own or other kinds. Although I do now like fish, I still don't like the (Long Island Sound) species I was fed, fried, as a child, flounder and blue fish. I can't drink milk without Lactaid, so she always harps about my getting osteoporosis. I don't want meat to be the centerpiece of every meal, as my father thought and therefore as she cooked when I was child; but nor can I stomach any of her penny-pinching ill-assorted casseroles. I still don't like plain white rice and don't eat buttered noodles. Although otherwise I love pasta and love cheese, I hate macaroni and cheese to this day.

What can I cook that she might eat too? Besides pancakes, if she had real maple syrup, and peanut butter toast, and from the ingredients already in her cupboard?

It's a mystery.

When I and then we watched "Shakespeare in Love" this weekend, I would toe RDC every time Geoffrey Rush said, "It's a mystery." This has become one of my taglines and I have used it enough to frenze [<--back formation] RDC every time I say it. Now I have another favorite line, except it's mostly applicable to myself and it's not as fun for me if other people say it, which they wouldn't quite as much as I would, since I am the Movie Quoter Monster. Lord Wessex tells Viola that her father has said Wessex can marry her, and Viola protests, "But I do not love you!" and Lord Wessex, puzzled, returns, "How your mind does leap about."

(Kymm said something like this last week, "Your mind really jumps around, doesn't it?")

My problem is my problem, that I don't like her cooking but can't cook on my own very much at all; also her problem, because even if I could cook with her food, she doesn't like anyone else using her kitchen and her supplies. She might have eased up on this now, now being the intra-BDL period, which has lasted, with one glitch and one hitch, since fall 1996, and has, somewhat tardily for our closer relationship, made her a happier camper.

Yesterday RDC heated up textured soy protein ("Smart Ground") and the chewy, nutty rice from the day before and we put those, with baby spinach and tomato and salsa, in spinach wraps, i.e. Usanized tortillas. The day before we had Lake Victoria perch, which still makes me ask what the folks on Lake Victoria ate, baked with basil and grated ginger and fresh lemon, with rice and steamed asparagus. Sunday we each made our own big lunch; I sautéed garlic and frozen shrimp and baby spinach and basil in olive oil and tossed it all into fettucini with a restrained amount of romano. For lunches I eat prepared pasta salads or microwave pocket sandwiches with organic vegetables and cheese.

And if I told her those menus, she wouldn't know what I meant by Usanized or tortilla or Lake Victoria.

However, I'll be home with my sister, who doesn't share my concern about GM vegetables or hormones in beef or overfishing, but who can cook. Which is another reason I want her to come home with me when I go.

---

Someday soon I'll empty my camera and post photographs of my lovely tulips, brilliant scarlet to flame to yellow cups wavering on tall stems, at which point the title will make sense.