It's chilly here today. Cold, dark, with rain spitting down from time to time. A bit of meteorological backsliding, weatherwise, to this year's version of May/June. Conditions that have me hiding indoors, grousing about the gray world outside, spending far too much time online. Thankfully, birds continue singing outside the house, which helps. And no snow has fallen, something I sincerely appreciate.
The local world has slipped into high tourist season, cars with license plates from all over suddenly in evidence everywhere. An influx of tourists that has brought a startling spike in the number of overweight people walking the streets of Montpelier.
I don't mention that out of mean-spiritedness -- I bring it up because I find it strange. This is the first time I've noticed a display of that kind here, of fatness being something close to the norm. The sheer number of plus-sized folks spotted over the course of the last two weeks has been impressive in a sad way. Attention-snagging. Especially when compared to the general unfatness of the local population, the few exceptions providing a kind of awareness-sharpening high contrast with the rest of the relatively fit, healthy natives.
It's something I did not grew up with, obesity. My folks were slim, my brothers were slim, despite the prominent position sugary food had in the family's godawful Irish-American diet. I was chubby, but not a butterball on the scale of what I've been seeing lately -- my excess weight came off during my 13th summer, has never been a factor since. It's been a long time since I've had people in my environment who carried big excess poundage. And suddenly folks like that are all around. Strange.
Meanwhile, have been slowly, so very slowly continuing the work of going through stuff in the house, preparing for a yard sale (next weekend) and beyond that the getting rid of big bunches of stuff one way or another. Dug into boxes of photos and correspondence about a week ago, bringing to light handfuls of cards the 'rents gave to each other in years before I arrived on the scene. Sweet, romantic cards, expressing devotion, sloppy affection, all that ('I love you, sweetheart'; 'with all my love, honey'). A whole different thing from the couple I knew, a husband and wife who slipped from no-touching/no verbal affection into a long-running state of combat. Coming across a version of those two people that I never knew, never witnessed, reading those silly, goopy, heartfelt cards and notes touched my little heart, left me feeling very tender.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, I got the urge to throw together a batch of curry, a big pot of chickpea-potato hooha. A fairly major production, tossing a pile of ingredients into an oversized saucepan, doing a fair imitation of a methodical person. And found out when it was all done and I had the first forkful in my mouth that in all the measuring I'd gotten everything right except for one crucial bit, managing to dump in twice the red pepper called for by the recipe. Which combined with the can of chiles already tossed in to produce a whole lot of heat, the kind of heat that gets tears streaming, empties out sinuses. Reminded me of a meal I'd had in L.A. with a group of people, including a hilarious French guy named Marc who had never eaten food of that kind of heat before. A meal in a family-owned, hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint, the proprietor/cook producing plate after plate of fare that brought Marc joy and suffering, intense mouthfuls of chow producing frantic physical reactions, his hands grabbing for water, emptying glass into mouth.
I may have looked like that once or twice this week.
Life –- pure comedy.
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Yesterday morning, northern Vermont:
España, te echo de menos
rws 5:26 PM [+]
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