Cooking

The weather is finally turning and Fall has arrived.

This was TBHITW's favorite time of year. Apple picking, pumpkin picking, cool nights and glorious days. Oh my.

My heart aches with it all.

I have been doing a lot of cooking. Not a lot of eating, but that's okay, it is the act of cooking that soothes me.

I made chicken paillard the other day for the 16 year old kidadult. This is one of his favorite meals and he can eat it morning, noon and night. Seriously, he does.

The problem I am having is right now is that all of our food is packaged in three to five people quantities. I am a bit of a food hoarder and because I buy all of our food direct from the farm I have HUGE amounts of it. For instance, when I buy beef, I buy a 1/4 steer. When I buy chicken I buy ten chickens. Or an entire pig. I then divide it all up into meal servings.

Got Chicken?

See what I mean? Way too much food.

Anyway, I canned apples the other night because it is apple picking time and my CSA share is giving me about twenty apples a week. An apple a day? How about three or four?

Canned with lemon slices and nutmeg. 

I also made mussels with pesto because the last of the basil is here. I have bushes of it. Bushes!

Even when I try to cook for just two of us I make too much. I made pan fried cod the other night and it multiplied in the pan. I swear it didn't look like that much at the fishmongers when I bought it.

My sister and her two littles came to visit last night and I made chicken flautas. It was good to cook for someone. The kids liked the flautas but of course I made way too many. If TBHITW was here he would have eaten with gusto. Then he would have scolded me for "doing it to him again".. making him eat too much.

I am a cook who has lost her biggest fan. I am a wife without a husband. I am lost.

Fifteen Days

It has been fifteen days now.

I am coping. Minute by minute, day by day. I had no idea that death could be so hard. So lonely, so empty and so complicated. 

Just when I think I am cried out, I cry. 

Just when I think I will drop, I move.

I go through the motions. 

I miss him so. 

It has been two weeks. I know, I know, a drop in the bucket. 

I am muddling through all the complications of death. 

TBHITW did it all. He handled all the finances, the business, the complicated stuff of daily life... taking out the garbage, oil changes, paying bills. We always said that if he "made the living, I would make it worth living"... 

I got lazy in the last two years since I left the "corporate world"... now I am trying to pick up all the pieces. His business, my business, the house, kids... dog... ugg. On top of that I would just like to lay around in his robe with his picture and a glass of wine. I'm trying my best. That has to do for now. I get up, get dressed, and go through the motions of life. I walk the dog. I watch the clock until it is a respectable time to go to bed. Then I get up and do it all again the next day. I feel like a puppet on a string. Or a fragile glass. Any one twitch or bump and I will shatter and break. 

Everyone says it will get better with time. Really? I want to shout at them REALLY???? How??? Is he going to walk through that door? Is he going to hold me in his arms? Is he going to kiss me one more time and tell me I'm beautiful?? Well, if not, then how is it going to get better?

But I don't shout at anyone. I just nod my head and say thank you and agree with them. 

And while I am screaming inside I am getting two kidadults ready for college and one 16 year old ready for his junior year in high school. And I'm doing the laundry and running the vacuum. And all the while I'm thinking... how can this be?

He came and kissed me the other day. I was napping. I always read or napped (okay, okay, napped) between 3 & 4pm on the weekend (okay, okay, during the week too)... he would be up in his office and would ask me what time I would like to wake up if I happened to fall asleep (while reading). I would say, "oh, four o'clock. I was in that half way zone of awake and asleep and I felt someone sit down and gently kiss me. It was so nice, so gentle.. I opened my eyes and it was four o'clock. 

That is what keeps me going.