Today I cooked a lasagna.
Okay that’s not exactly true. It will have been true later, if all goes to plan. This isn’t a merely notional lasagna - I’m not saying just that I intend to make a lasagna - I am entirely certain that unless something out of the ordinary happens, a lasagna will have been cooked and by me, it’s just not currently finished. It’s in the oven right now. Fate might still intervene, it was hubris on my part to consider my layered vegetable and noodle friend’s journey to be foregone, I see that now. I hope chance will be kind, forgive my overstepping due to my contrition on realizing the error. One can only ever wait and find out, we live lives something something about unforeseen outcomes.Got a bit tired of that paragraph in the final stretch, not unlike the last bits of making the lasagna, and also like a lasagna that paragraph was delicious and underappreciated. I’m in over my head now, as I’ve started a new paragraph without a paragraph’s worth of ideas to fill it out. This paragraph’s the lackluster side salad served, uh, along side of the lasagna. Is that enough filler to call it full? I hope so, and anyway I bet no one will complain - tempting fate again, this is me living on the edge. (Not quite enough dressing to salvage this saladgraph but maybe enough to not call it a full write off? I’ll find out when I see how high the tip is.)
I had a cup of coffee and made a pot of tea as well after I’d got the lasagna in the oven, to sip on while I did a bit of clean up. The coffee I mean, I didn’t sip on the tea pot, I’d burn my lips, and it’d be rude anyway. I’ve done the washing up yet as my wife’s in the bath and I don’t want to use up any of the hot water.
We’ve hit hot bath weather, as in hot baths are a necessary break from the perpetual cold toes of living our hundred year old fixer upper house. When I think about this I get angry quickly because my mind goes to my class background and how I’ve been paid (or rather, not!) for a very long time. We’ve recently tipped over into what feels like safe stable income at a sufficient level. I say recently, but it’s a couple years, though on the other hand I’m an age where I measure recent in multi-year units, so little in my life changes quickly - as the tedium captured in this blog attests! My kids change fast (not their actual clothes, especially when we’re trying to get them to leave the house for any reason), which is rewarding above all because I love them so much of course but also they do provide some needed dynamism, and of a good kind, to a life otherwise calcifying into stasis (though still punctuated by worries about unnecessary - systemically necessary, if we wanna get marxist! - dynamism of a bad kind). Ope, the timer’s going off in the kitchen, be right back.
That took longer than expected, sorry. Where was I? Tedious blog, calcified life, dynamic children, okay right, got it. So I - ah, well, I can see I’ve disrupted your flow as well. We’re in a kind of dance here, you and me, and we have to both have to move in time for this to work. Do you need a moment as well? Oh, maybe you’re miffed about the delay. That’s very fair. You didn’t sit down to read this (spot the lie! no one sat down to read this! he’s talking to himself, and weird pivots to second and third person don’t mask that fact! Just as you can’t throw a tarp over the Grand Canyon, you can’t cover over the yawning aloneness and world’s indifference lived out here!) expecting to be interrupted by a timer, you expected about ten minutes and no bother, but the beep beep beep beep beep was bothersome, and why did it take so long just to get a lasagna out of the oven? This is very fair of you to wonder about, so let me tell you the whole story.
The lasagna boiled over slightly, leaking onto the tray below - this is a slap on the wrist from chance for my aforementioned hubris, and I am grateful for the lesson and its being delivered with a light touch - so I’ll need to clean that up later when the oven’s cooled. Then I remembered the tea, so I poured a cup and another to bring up to my wife - just one for my wife, not a cup for her and another for her, the first was for me - and carried that - just the one, I left mine on the table - upstairs to bring to her in the bath. It turns out she was just getting out of the tub at the time, so it was a lower value gesture ultimately (must remember to deduct some points when I log it in my spreadsheet that tracks the value of all my actions). So that was the delay. I hope this account satisfies.
And time’s up, more than up, so I must go, no need to overstay, that’d be rude - hubris twice is to tempt chance exponentially, probably. Just real quick then, three things. One, I was gonna say, to some extent I feel like the frame around the picture that is my kids’ lives sometimes, in a way I’m largely at peace with (I like this role, I just wish I was a better frame sometimes), though that metaphor doesn’t really capture the static/dynamic thing I was messing with. Two, writing this little blog I feel like little happens in my life day to day, which I’d like to believe helps make this a more beneficial exercise as I’m having to make something out of things that are not of obvious interest (not to assume any of this is of interest!) while a lot of my life involves reading, watching, and listening to things. I’ve hesitated to write about that stuff here and I guess I do want to focus on recollecting non- reading/watching/listening activities and events (non-events!) in my life here but think I will let myself write about stuff I read, watch, listen to here if so inclined. Today I listened to Alexei Sayle’s radio show Strangers On A Train and at least two people he talked to had never heard of him, which I thought was very funny and humble of him. I also listened to Burial this while time, which is nice. I recognize few of his songs by name but some of them, the sound is like an old friend saying hello and giving a hug or warm handshake. The third thing was Burial but I took care of that in the second thing saving us all some time, a model of efficiency, me. My wife's out the bath now and has the radio on, some brit show, music show, they're playing The Specials, "Ghost Town" right now. Absolute banger, gonna stop and enjoy the rest of the tune. "Do you remember the good old days, before the ghost town?" Nope! But hearing your musical nostalgia for it sounds great, same thing I love about Burial, according to Mark Fisher anyway. Christ, enough enough - oh I wonder if the lasagna's ready to eat?
