Tired

I'm feeling old. I don't want to argue, I can see from the tilt how things are going to fall. Argue how you might, once the point is tipped there is an inexorable fall. The call of gravity. Sure, it's all drainage, but stop, for a moment, observe the way a pebble alters the flow, first thing you know you're calling up friends to alert them. Beware the water flowing down hill. Too dense. I snap back, to a kind of reality, this is that, a relative universe. Just when I'm going over the edge, a friend responds, and we discuss various means of cooking acorn squash. I know we're only avoiding the issue, what is actually happening. Flowers, for one, a kind of pansy, blooms by the side of the road. Second day with the new bosses, Charlotte and I take down the print show. She's easy to work with. Then I stripped the hardware and filled the hundred or so holes in the walls. We'd been given about thirty pieces of art, for our fund-raiser auctions (one high-end, one somewhat kitsch) and I brought all of them out for the three curators to divide into good and bad piles. Fun to watch them decide. Hot outside, and a line of thunder storms moving in, so as soon as I locked up I hurried home, beating the first waves of rain. I let the first rain wash off the roof, then put out a couple of buckets to harvest some water. Kim's going to make me a tenderizing/flattening mallet, cast iron with a wooden handle. I've always used a wine bottle. Be nice to have the correct tool. I figure I'll clean it with boiling water and rub it with walnut oil after every use. Booby was killing some chickens and I asked him to sell me the livers; he gave them to me, of course, and I had picked up a couple of remaindered lamb sirloin chops that had a fair amount of fat, decided to make a pate. I only don't, more often, because it's such a mess to clean up, but I have a lot of rain water right now. Perfect hot weather fare, with gherkins and olives, a chunk of stinky cheese. When I make pate now, I don't even think about it. It's actually a force-meat, I think, a spread. This one, I mortared some various peppers, dried morels, and watercress to a paste and mixed them together. Outstanding, really. Not on the menu anywhere I know. If you're right handed you take a saltine in your left hand, and smear on a blob of pate with the right, lean the knife against the paper plate, bite off half a gherkin, a black olive, then pop the saltine loaded with pate, then the other half of gherkin. I mean, come on, how long would it take to get used to that? I'd cave right away. Your call.