Beauty and Cooking

Originally Posted Thursday, October 24, 2013

As you might have suspected, driving all day and drinking rum did nothing to improve my cold.  This morning I am no better and perhaps a bit worse than I was two days ago.   I woke in the night with a sorer throat and a chill.  Taking three aspirin, though, seemed to help so that I was able to fall back to sleep.  I am not devastated, just sick.  I will have to let my beautician know so she can decide whether or not to spend the three or so hours it takes to make me look like myself again tonight.  Yes, yes, it is like the scene from the "Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy and her crew get spruced up, you know, "A snip-snip here and a snip-snip there, and a couple of ha-ha-has. . . ."  A woman I have known for a long time, a woman my age and a Ph.D. with two important academic books about film, chastised me for my vanity. . . I think.  She just seemed awfully proud that she was taking no trouble with her looks as she "matured."  I thought that was great if it made her happy, but I thought it was troublesome that she worried about what I thought to do.  I don't think I am superior to her because I get beautified (and I even laugh at myself for it), but I don't think she has the inside track on the right way to live, either.  I'm happy.  I have fun.  But it will be the beautician's call. 

Last night, I tried to put the big ass printer that I bought back together, but I was achey with the flu and it just seemed too much trouble, so I decided to get the fixin's for tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.  I used to have a girlfriend who made tomato soup from scratch, and boy, was it wonderful.  How did she do it, I wondered?  I hadn't paid enough attention.  There are times when I just like having someone else take care of me, and that was one.  I know she used stewed tomatoes and milk, but that surely couldn't be all of it.  I tried calling her, but she wouldn't pick up the phone, so I knew I was stuck with Campbell's for the night.  I bought some aged cheddar and some bread and realized I wasn't certain how to make a grilled cheese, either.  I was thinking that I would put it into the toaster oven, then a fellow I know said that I should put it in a pan on the stovetop.  Oh, yea, I remembered that.  But suddenly I was in serious doubt that I had ever made a grilled cheese sandwich, either.  I was troubled.  Surely I had.  I must be losing my mind.  But truly, it is not the kind of thing I eat, and it is wholly possible that I had never made one before.  I have never made a pastry, either.  I've never made a pie or a cookie or a cake.  These are the things I've left to wives and girlfriends.  I've done the "manly" things--meat and fire.  I began to miss what I was missing, someone to make something for me once in awhile. It had, I realized, been a long, long, long, long time. 

The sandwich turned out weird somehow, but edible, and the soup was, of course, the standard.  It all went down well enough and I could have eaten more, but the sun was down and the achey-ness was beginning, so I let myself fall into the couch.

"Do you need anything?" nobody asked me.  I guessed that maybe one whiskey wouldn't hurt.  I mean sometimes you just need a companion.