FOUR WEEKS DOWN... FIVE TO GO...ONE WEEK OF WORK...

Well, here's to things settling down, and everybody being relatively happy with what I turned out, after all. Every time I get a job after a period of unemployment, there is always a period of COMPLETE PANIC during which I am sure that everyone will find out that I can't in fact cut it any more, etc., etc.

Well, eventually, the dust settles and I can just get on with it. What does seem to be getting harder is the shift from enforced indolence to the discipline of staying at it for six to eight hours a day... and that I wrestled with mightily.

What I could once, I think, have packed into four days by using the evenings, took me over a week because I kept drifting away and not pushing through... All sewage under the bridge at this point.

Let's talk about the important things: when my wife left on her trip, I was sure that I would fall into the bad habits I have had before, such as eating nothing for supper but microwave popcorn [and then wondering why I had no lips left...] or eating peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches all week. Well, I've done better than that. My daughter got me hooked on banana-yogurt shakes, which I tart up with frozen wild blueberries, and I have become a salad cultist, if not a salad snob.

Which brings me to today's topic: a perfect avocado. The one argument for living in California or Florida would be the availability of the weirder staples of life [artichokes, avocadoes, citrus, mangoes] in one's own back yard. As it is, we have to buy avocadoes hard and hope that they ripen well. And I bought one last week with the idea of putting slices in black-bean-and-cheese burritos [anothe staple], but was moved to open it the other night when I had salad on my mind. And it was perfect. That strange green that is mostly yellow, aromatic and JUST soft enough to be a pleasure slightly mashed into the salad dressing...

One of the best appetizers I've ever had was half an avocado with the pit-hollow filled with red wine. Don't try it; you might not like it. But I sure do. And I can never look at a pitted avocado half without thinking of the hostess who served me that wine and avocado surprise over twenty years ago. It makes me nostalgic and fond and happy. Born in 1908, she was in theory old enough to be my grandmother, but we were just, in her words "very good friends". There is something about connecting across the genders and generations that makes a connection particularly meaningful, I think.

In the meantime, the lilacs are in crazy full bloom, and when I walk out the front door, the smell hits me like a blow [a blow given with an eggplant?].

The only compensation for their rapid fading is that the mock orange come into bloom right afterward... and then there are the peonies...