Today rocked. Even though it was
Wednesday, and Wednesdays are the days that suck the hardest, when
everything was cleaned up and put away, I thought “Wow. Today was
GREAT.”
I went to Berkeley today like usual,
got all the cakes and pies and breads and donuts and whatnot, then
took a nap, like usual. But I did NOT hit “snooze,” which
probably made all the difference in the world. We made a lot of food
yesterday, anticipating like 60 people, which is what usually shows
up around this time. But since it was the first part of the month,
everyone had gotten their checks from the government, and had spent
it on Burger King or whatever instead of coming to us for food. So
yesterday there were only 25 people, meaning that there were lots of
leftovers for me to pass out today, which was nice. Today's menu was
beans and rice (of course!), salad, a plum/apple, muffins, a sweet
potato and a piece of bread. It's always nice when I can offer a
heaping plate of healthy food to people on the street. That sounded
super........ idk..... like I'm some sort of pure-hearted healthy
food fairy distributing food to the poor beaten down souls who just
need a ray of hope in their lives; and I definitely don't think that.
It's just that I know that sometimes healthy food is more expensive
than like a bag of Doritos, and so it's nice when I can give away
lots of nutritious food that actually tastes good.
Well anyway, after I passed out about
20 plates of food, I shifted into MAJOR CLEANING MODE, which meant
that I did a really thorough job with the cleaning, which is really
actually kind of fulfilling (this is the point at which my mother
sits at the computer, throws her hands up in the air and shouts
“YES!!! I did it!!!”). So anyway, the house is nice and
sparkly-clean now. At least until tomorrow, when we unload and
distribute several tons of produce and track onion skins EVERYWHERE.
While I was cleaning, the “heat wave” (85 degrees, HA!) broke and
a nice cool breeze sprang up. I stood in the wind on the back porch,
listened to the car wash playing the radio coverage of the Oakland
A's while “The Piano Guys” played on Pandora and thought “Yeah.
Ok. This is good right now. I can do this.”
While I worked on the cleaning, I also
started preparing supper, which was going to be white chili. I
grabbed a frozen chicken out of the freezer and threw it in a pot to
boil, which I'm pretty sure is what you are absolutely NOT supposed
to do. I think it needs to be thawed first, but I forgot. Supper
was kind of late because I didn't throw the beans in until about 445,
and they need 2 hours to soften up. Oops. But when it was done, it
was a SMASHING success. Everyone loved it. We had white chili (with
cilantro and CHEESE!!!), watermelon, tortillas (that I heated myself
on the stove, which is hard), and sweet potatoes. The chili was
super spicy because I had added a lot of cayenne pepper... but they
all said it was good. I was sweating and sniffling, though. Oh
well.
About halfway through, I realized that
I had forgotten to pull the sweet potatoes out of the oven, so I
brought them out. Everyone here loves sweet potatoes. Like, LOVES
them. They were so excited! I don't like sweet potatoes. They are
so soft and squishy, and the texture is just gross! And they're
ORANGE! Who does that? The residents were all trying to convince me
to eat them, but I told them that they were too soft and I couldn't do
it. Then they decided that I didn't like them because they felt like
“sapos,” or toads. So they had a grand ol' guffaw about eating
toads. But when it was all said and done, DP said that the meal was
“bien good,” which is just about the highest compliment you could
get, because he only whips out the English on special occasions.
They decided that I was the best cook in the house. Haha, take THAT,
Grace!
Oh, and this was all done in Spanish.
In the last week or two, my ability to speak and understand has just
ROCKETED upwards. I'm almost to the fluidity that I had when I left
Guatemala two years ago, which is nice. So all in all, today was a
really good day.
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