I am so very, very tired today, Toasties. I was up late helping my husband roll grape leaves for his department potluck today (for whatever reason, every single work potluck he’s ever had has been a ‘bring traditional family foods’ party, which in my own case would mean day-old pizza or a box cake frosted with Cool Whip, but in his invariably means the only Lebanese dish he really knows how to make: grape leaves). We couldn’t even get rolling until very late, because last night was back-to-school night at both our kids’ schools and principals are so long-winded. I always forget just how long it takes to roll a million grape leaves for a party when you are tired and would prefer to be doing just about anything else, so we didn’t get to bed until after midnight. And then the coffee was bad this morning, SO BAD, because I was busy and didn’t drink it while it was hot and had to reheat it in the microwave, but I still drank it because: I have a problem.
Anyway. After I finish this I’m going to take a long, bracing walk — the heat has finally broken here, thank god — and then make a second pot of coffee and drink the whole thing myself, because I am only a human being.
at last, my love
I have shed the tunic and the armor of a boy
and donned the light sandals and the dick-ribbon of manhood
Every Southern Gothic Novel Ever
YOU DON’T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES to live as if it’s still 2012.
“At twelve, in my eyes, Dana Scully was Athena, Justice Ginsburg, and Princess Leia all rolled into one.”
Laura Passin reflected on Oliver Sacks, and how he helped her understand her mother’s illness:
Anticipatory grief is a strange animal, as I knew from my mom’s dying years. The knowledge that death is coming, but not for you, is an uneasy knowledge. It makes your limbs heavier; it makes the dying person seem nearer, and everyone else seem farther away, mirage-like. My breath would catch when I caught Sacks’s name in the news or on the radio; the walls would shiver. It’s not news: everyone who’s ever meant anything to you, near and far, will die. It’s just terrifying. How do you stand back up, when the world keeps falling away?
Sophie Unterman wrote this lovely essay about her Grandma Eva — a Holocaust survivor — and her grandparents’ love story.
A Hole Album In Which California is Not a Metaphor for Anything and Being a Woman is Super Chill
If you want to give someone flowers, make it count.
Have a glorious weekend, friends! I hope you make the most of it and sleep a lot.
my hands hurt and my eyes feel dull and achey just thinking about staying up all night rolling grape leaves. you are a good and commendable life partner/grapeleaf assister and deserve some kindof grateful hand massage thank you.
sometimes after a morning of meetings, i will drink the old half inch of left in the mug on my desk coffee, because i too have a problem.
Sometimes I think about the innocent girl I used to be, the one who didn’t drink bad coffee because she didn’t have a chemical dependency, she just liked it, and I feel a little wistful.
Here is a life hack for you, Nicole’s husband: go on the internet and find the easiest Lebanese dish possible and just TELL people that your grandma made it all the time. Feel free to go big with it, say she got the recipe from a mysterious peddlar or something. No one will know.
I will pass this on. Grape leaves are not DIFFICULT, just time-consuming. But they are DELICIOUS so you never really regret it.
I never regret eating them, because: DELICIOUS. I still regret the one time I tried to make them. What a tedious mess.
Fortunately there are plenty of good purchasing options within a few miles of me.
Oh yeah he can just buy them and put them in tuperware too, that’s a classic.
Here is a life hack for you, Nicole's husband: go on the internet and find the easiest Lebanese dish possible and just TELL people that your grandma made it all the time. Feel free to go big with it, say she got the recipe from a mysterious peddlar or something. No one will know.
Oh yeah he can just buy them and put them in tuperware too, that's a classic.
SLEEP A LOT — that is a really wonderful wish to receive, lord knows I need it.
I TRIED SO HARD TO SLEEP IN TODAY AND COULD NOT
STILL SO MAD
GRAPE LEAVES! So delicious. You are a bringer of goodness to humans.
One of my favorite ever family moments was a spirited conversation between my 90-something-year-old Lebanese great aunts about “how they roll” and how some other woman criticized how they roll, but come on, that’s how their mother rolled and that’s how they roll.
GRAPE LEAVES! So delicious. You are a bringer of goodness to humans.
One of my favorite ever family moments was a spirited conversation between my 90-something-year-old Lebanese great aunts about "how they roll" and how some other woman criticized how they roll, but come on, that's how their mother rolled and that's how they roll.