It's Saturday Morning

It is Saturday morning, and my house still smells -- deliciously -- of grilling steak.  I came home last night, unpacked the food box, and turned on the skillet.  The steak had been thawing in the fridge for two days and was now completely thawed.  I seared both sides and then covered it and turned down the heat.  I got out an enormous baking potato and scrubbed its golden skin.  I toyed, briefly, with the idea of making a salad or roasting an ear of corn to go with the steak and potato, but I knew I wouldn't be able to (comfortably) eat them all.  I did, however, eat both steak and potato, comfortably, while watching "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" and mulling over America's ridiculous need to pretend that everyone in this country is beautiful.  The actors in this Swedish movie were, every single one of them, imperfect in all sorts of ways.  Wrinkles.  Weird hair.  Saggy bellies and strange faces and corrugated necks and floppy eyelids.  And those are just the main characters.  The common people are practically deformed, by American movie standards.  And I've just been watching a few television shows, so I am familiar with that.

It's Saturday morning, and I'm eating a toasted peanut butter sandwich and drinking Paul Newman's Virgin Lemonade.  I'm really uncertain as to how lemonade can be virgin, or how you cause a lemon to lose its virginity.  But then, I'm still pretty vague on the whole olive oil thing, too.  And don't even get me started on "Extra Virgin" olive oil.  The mere concept makes my head spin on my shoulders.  It sounds like the sort of thing the Catholic church would come up with to describe the Virgin Mary, whom they delineate a virgin long after the birth of Christ and his twelve or thirteen brothers and sisters.

It's Saturday morning, and I'm just returned form the library, where I returned a bag of books and DVDs, and picked up a further bag of books and DVDs, and then sat outside on the fountain's rim and read one of the new books (which I have read before, just to be completely accurate about my description) for half an hour or so, enjoying with the second track of my mind, the way the sun felt, warm through the cotton of my shirt, and the stones felt, cool through the cotton of my jeans.

It's Saturday morning, and I'm sort of marking time, emotionally, until two, when Paget's memorial service starts.  I am, strangely, not feeling sad at all about her sudden and completely unexpected death by stroke.  I don't feel anything.  But I know, from dealings in the past with both the Engen family, and the Powell family, that there is at least a fifty-fifty chance that this gathering is going to be one weird, crazed, tense, uptight and emotionally shredding way to spend a few hours.  Aunt Margy will probably begin to cry loudly.  Jeffi may begin to cry in that choked, strangled way she expresses herself these days.  We will be lucky if she doesn't cry in baby-talk.  Kyle will no doubt cry, and will probably also yell and scream and may very well throw things and break glasses and have a huge tantrum.  I will come home in a state of aggravated but suppressed nerves and sit around staring blankly at nothing until I grab, like a drowning man at a straw, at a book and read until I fall asleep.  Unpleasant to look forward to, sort of, even if I am feeling nothing at the moment.

It's Saturday morning.  Joe was supposed to come over and get his hair cut.  But he slept late and then "forgot" all about it, I imagine.  Later will have to do for that.