lasagna

I make lasagna approximately once a year. Because I only make (and thus usually only consume) it once a year, I don't bother worrying about using low-fat products. Lasagna is meant as a vehicle for cheese and marinara. I add the veggies for taste and color. The once-a-year goodness usually falls on or near my birthday, but we all know how that worked out this year. Instead, still craving my fall lasagna fix, I made it for my co-workers last Monday night at our monthly dinner. It's easy enough, though certainly not the cheapest or least-time consuming dish to make and I, for one, find the results both impressive and tasty.

Click the photos for advice and directions at Flickr.

a short list...

of things I now remember, based on the brief stay in Wisconsin I've had thus far:

1. snow makes me angry.
2. people still drive stupid on the Beltline in snow.

Predictably, there has not been a lot of joy in my life lately. The changing season and early darkness every day are not helping. I have mostly been rolling out of bed, going to work, and wiling away a few hours in the evening before going to bed at an ungodly early hour to start it all over again. Work has been truly hellacious these last two weeks, both in the amount of time and energy it has required when my stores are dangerously low, and the relentless onslaught of crisis after crisis after crisis.

However, on Thursday evening, I had to attend a dance party that one of my student organizations organized. It was a little over two hours of pure joy for me to watch students, who I usually only encounter when something is wrong (and in some cases, VERY wrong) or bad in their lives, just have fun with their friends. There were no crises--just good times and music and happiness. It reminded me why I do this work so that these students can have those experiences.

I also had a happy small town moment today. As I was driving home from running an errand, a black lab was crossing the busiest street in my town, narrowly missing getting hit several times. I am not really an animal person, most of the time. But I didn't really feel comfortable just driving past and not stopping like I'd seen a lot of other people do. The lab crossed and I was able to turn right and call him to me on the safe side of the street. He had no tags, only a shock collar. Two different people--one elderly woman and one 20-something man--stopped to check in with me as I stood with this dog on a busy street corner, trying to determine what the heck to do with him. I don't think I've lived many, if any, places where random strangers stop to talk to the girl who pulled over to get the dog off the street.

The dog was unbelievably friendly and wanted lots of scritches. A quick drive through the neighborhoods in the area didn't yield any owners, so I had to take him to the Humane Society. They were both grateful and annoyed to receive him; apparently, he's been a regular visitor lately as his owners haven't been good about keeping him safe. I was glad to know that he was identifiable and would be reunited with his owners.

best of them all

Grief manifests itself in strange ways. I just got home from the grocery store. Somehow, during the course of my half hour visit, 3 boxes of cake mix, 1 box of Cool Mint Creme Double Stuf Oreos, and 1 pint of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream ended up in my cart. I do not regularly buy, nor consume, any of these things. But there they were.

***

When I was in Madison at the end of September, I e-mailed my aunts and uncles and asked them to go to lunch with my grandmother, my parents, and I. Over the last couple of a years, my grandmother has regularly taken out her kids for lunch every week or two and knowing I would be home, she was eager for all of us to get together.

She was convinced that the soreness in her shoulder, the jutting of the bone, meant she had cancer, even though at least two different doctors told her she was perfectly fine. It was typical Grandma lunch conversation and my uncle and I did our best to deflect her fear about her shoulder, to convince her that no, she was fine. She was 85 and in near-perfect health. She took no medications at all. She didn't need to worry; we didn't need to worry.

At the end of the lunch, she rummaged in her pockets, pulled a bill from them, handed it to me and said, "I better give you your birthday present now," for no real reason that I can recall. It was September 28, fully more than a month before my birthday. My grandmother had always been a religious observer of birthdays; I don't think she had ever missed sending me a card in my entire life and so there was plenty of time for her to do that. Still, she insisted I take the gift.

***

My birthday was this past Thursday. Two days earlier, my beloved grandmother passed away unexpectedly after the aneurysm in her stomach burst (it was the other malady she was convinced would kill her, though it was stable for many years) while I wrapped up a conference I was attending in Northern Indiana. Her death was mercifully swift and though I could not be there, I take enormous comfort in knowing that most of my family was able to hold her hands as she passed peacefully.

Over the next couple days, I heard from my cousins--my sweet, beautiful cousins--that Grandma had been thinking of me. Sending a birthday card and gift to Alison was on the to-do list they found in her apartment. A friend of the family told me at the wake on Friday that she had spoken with my grandmother earlier in the week and she had told her friend that she needed to get a card out to me.

Until I left for Madison on Friday morning to be with my family, I was afraid this card had magically made it into the mail and I would find it when I was least expecting it to appear in my mailbox. It hasn't arrived yet; accepting that it won't is the hardest thing.