Just to drive home my point about the rain, here are two photos from yesterday. They were taken (by my daughter) about ten minutes apart in the early afternoon.

This morning I was playing with this first photo, thinking about switching it to black and white, and then I was like, Um, why? It’s already totally gray. Rain really does take the color out of life.

And then, a few miles down the road, brilliant green and almost sunny.

Virginia weather is crazy.

It’s scheduled to rain all next week, I hear. But the next week? TONS OF SUN. Can’t wait!

PS. It’s Friday and I’m still upright. I planned my week carefully, scheduling at least one social interaction for each day. My I-need-people plan continues through this weekend and right into next week. Go me.

PPS. This is sort of a non-post. I apologize. I will be back (who knows when) with cookies. Peanut butter and chocolate are involved. Sit tight.

PPPS. Come to think of it, maybe this is a good time, what with the rain and the upcoming weekend and all, to share book/movie suggestions? Yes? Okay then! I’ll go first.

Reading: Currently, On Acting, by Steven Breese, and next up, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (for book club) and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith (reviewing it to see if it would be a good family read aloud).

Watching: Seinfeld (because some friends gave us a bunch of seasons for our broken-back son), Catastrophe (because a friend mentioned it on Facebook), and House of Cards (I’m a couple episodes short of completing the show). As for movies, I’ve recently seen Brooklyn, Spotlight, Concussion, and The Big Short, and I’m wanting to see The Lady in the Van, Eye in the Sky, and The Intern.

Your turn! What are you watching and reading?

This same time, years previous: on getting a teen out of bed in the morning, the quotidian (5.12.14), maseca cornbread, two quotidians, lemon rhubarb chicken, rhubarb sorbet, and bald-headed baby.  

Soon after we got home from the hospital, a nurse from our congregation phoned to make a suggestion. Back when she was a beginning nurse (or maybe even still in school?) this woman had worked on a floor for children with scoliosis. At that time, treatment for scoliosis consisted of requiring the children to lie flat on their backs for six months, can you even imagine?! These kids were given special glasses—prism glasses—so they could read books that rested on their stomachs while still lying flat on their backs.

“You might want to check them out for your son,” she said.

The glasses sounded like a joke. Prism glasses? I imagined frames with sun catchers in place of the lenses. How in the world could a person read through those?

But then I looked them up, and I was like, Oh yeah, mirrors. I ordered a pair straightaway, but I kept my expectations low. The glasses sounded gimmicky—they didn’t cost that much—and I doubted they’d work all that well.

Turns out, the glasses are amazing. You really can stare straight ahead and clearly read whatever it is you’re holding in your lap!

My son uses them all the time. I’ll walk into his room to find him flat on his back, his laptop balanced on his clamshell belly, watching a movie or studying his EMT text while staring up at the ceiling. It’s wild.

Prism glasses…who would’ve thunk it? (And why didn’t they tell us about these at the hospital?)

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (5.11.15), one more thing, lemony spinach and rice salad with fresh dill and feta, hummus, and the mother of his children.

This rain is slowly killing me. Death by dripping clouds, is what it will read on my tombstone.

I know we need the rain, and I’m not one to think that the weather should bend to my every whim (I lie; I totally believe the weather should heed my moods), but really. Five straight days, then a mostly-no-rain break over the weekend and then another string of rainy days this week? It’s a bit much. 

By the end of last week, I had plummeted. My husband was nearing the end of a six-day work week, the kids were crawling out of their skin, I was in that horrible creativity wasteland known as play letdown (and to think I thought I might get to skip that stage, ha), and the rain would. not. stop. I can make all sorts of jokes about my emotional state when I’m mostly okay, but last Friday I wasn’t laughing. It got so bad that my son texted the following to my husband:

Help! Call Mom and tell her you love her. She is driving me mad! She needs someone to care for her. She has stopped listening to everybody and she is getting unreasonable! Heeeellllllppppp!!!!!! Call and talk to her. Just don’t say I put you up to this. 

So yeah, it was bad. (For the record, my husband did not call because he was working and when he is working he forgets I exist. But he did show me the text later that night and…I chuckled!)

That night I made a coconut tomato soup for supper. I get a kick out of combining basic ingredients to get complex flavors, which in this case involved sauteing onions with cumin, curry, and coriander, and then adding canned tomatoes and giving the whole thing a leisurely simmer. When it was time to eat, I pureed everything, whisked in the coconut milk, chopped some fresh cilantro (the leftovers from this salad), plopped a loaf of fresh sourdough on the table, and supper was served. Simplicity is so gratifying.

The soup was a delicious antidote to foul weather blues, but—no rainbow endings here—it didn’t fix ’em. I struggled through Saturday and finally arrived at Sunday (whew) which was much better, thanks to church, Sunday company, a book, a movie, and sunshine, blessed sunshine.

This week started out fine enough. Actually, fabulously fine: my running-resistant husband, spurred into action by the previous night’s crazy movie, (a bit of swearing but otherwise a great movie for family night—recommend!) got up to run with me before going to work. We hit the road before it was light, but soon after arriving back home, the skies dumped yet again. The grayness steadily pressing down, the constant drip-drip-drip, proved too much for my fragile state. Within minutes, I could feel my tentative grip on sanity start to slip. At lunch, I drank a mug of bad weather-antidote soup and felt mildly healed. But only mildly.

The forecast is calling for another week of rain. I may not be upright for much longer….

Tomato Coconut Soup
Adapted from Luisa’s recipe over at The Wednesday Chef.

This is the original recipe, doubled. Use coconut oil in place of the butter for a lactose-free soup. Instead of cilantro, Luisa says you can garnish with chopped fresh basil or mint. Also, the recipe calls for 6-8 cups of water—it’s supposed to be a thin soup. I only added 1-2 cups (if that), and the soup was thin enough to sip from a mug.

Updated March 2019: made this without any water and it was still sippable and delicious. Also, I used half coconut oil and half butter, and garnished with chopped mint — yum.

4 tablespoons butter
2 onions, cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced
1½ teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon each ground coriander and cumin
1/8 teaspoon chipotle or cayenne pepper
2 quarts canned tomatoes
2 13.5-ounce cans coconut milk
chopped cilantro, for garnish

Saute the onions in the butter until tender, or about 10 minutes. Add the salt, curry powder, coriander, cumin, and pepper, and cook for another minute. Add the tomatoes and a cup of water (or more: see headnote), bring to a boil, and then simmer for about 20 minutes. Puree the soup, whisk in the coconut milk, and simmer for another ten minutes. Taste to correct seasonings (it will probably need another ½ teaspoon of salt) and serve. Don’t forget to pass the cilantro.

This same time, years previous: happy weekending and margarita cake and apricot pandowdy.