HI FI

And now for a new post.

Life is much more challenging and intense here than I anticipated. I am not entirely sure how I thought it would be, but I did not imagine that it would be two months with so little accomplished.

Everywhere I look around here, or most places, I see something that needs some kind of attention, sometimes little, sometimes big. The “to do” list doesn’t get shorter.

In many ways, this is the most challenging place I have lived in many, many years. My mother and I are having a very stormy relationship and I think we are both exhausted. My writing silence is partly due to an inability to encapsulate the experience.

On the positive side, I made one of the best dinners of my life on Friday night. We have a surfeit of avocados, if such a thing is possible. Someone who goes to church with my mother brings her a new batch every week. Last week, they were all ripe at the same time, so I undertook a new recipe I had stumbled across. Guasacaca is a Venezuela form of guacamole, but smoother and tangy-er. We had so much I decided I had to make dinner for PAS. I found a Venezuelan chicken recipe, Brown-Sugar Crusted Chicken. We have enjoyed the neighbor's tangerines which dip into our yard, so I also made Tangerine Coleslaw.

I enlisted Janet's help, something I don't normally do. It must be a mother-daughter thing, but she complained and was recalcitrant about making the Tangerine Coleslaw, telling me to make less, blah blah blah. I pointed out that it was just the kind of thing she likes and that a few leftovers would not be a bad thing. By the time we got up from dinner, she had eaten the whole bowl, save for a helping each for me and PAS.

See, I don't even know how to natter any more. 

I drove my mother to church today so that I could have the car, but I haven't gone anywhere. It's been nice to have it so quiet, so I worked on my computer and did a little bit of gardening. We already have a tomato growing. On the way home, I took some snaps of the hi-fi store my dad used to frequent.